Dispatch from Mombasa

Phyllis Mwema KECOSCE Executive Director  Thursday 6 th November 2014 Mombasa Kenya: Mombasa based Civil Society Organizations have expressed their displeasure with the rising cases of insecurity in Mombasa that has seen close to twenty community leaders killed for their effort in containing radicalism and violent extremism. Led by the Executive Director of the Kenya Community Support Centre Ms Phyllis Mwema, the group noted that the murders have been committed using illegal firearms whose numbers seems to be on the increase. The group urged the Government to protect and facilitate community leaders who despite their loyalty and commitment have remained vulnerable to the attacks which are perpetrated by people who adhere to extremist ideologies. The latest killing is that of Sheikh Mwarangi of Bilal Mosque who was shot and killed after Tuesday's evening prayer. “Community leaders are soft targets because they are helpless, they have no weapon or any other protect...

Last week #KOT and Facebook exploded over claims by American tele-evangelist   Pat Robertson that one could contract Aids through the use of towels and especially here in Kenya. The popular presenter Pat Robertson even warned that water in Africa was the most unhygienic and therefore the most unsafe to drink. Although Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) retracted the utterance from the octogenarian right wing preacher, I must admit that his view represents the views of many people in the North largely because of the influence of the western Media and the way we in Africa project ourselves. Ask any political leader or development advocate who went to the west for a mission. If they can be honest with you, they would tell you that they went to market Africa as the ultimate place of suffering. It’s a place where all children have protruding bellies because of suffering the ravages of a combination of kwashiorkor, marasmus and beri beri. They will carry with them photographs of ...

I do not hold any brief for the Hon. Abdulswamad Shariff Nassir Mvita MP and this assessment is based purely on the instincts of a communicator. As an old journalist, the last time I covered Nassir was in 2003 in an interview that was organized by Tobby Otum, the then Coast Province Basketball Executive. Otum who popularized basketball in the Coast the nineties is now a journalist and is popularly referred to as “Chairman” because he now advocates for the “interests” of journalists to news sources. Since then we have never crossed paths with Abdulswamad except when he gave dates to be given to people in my former workplace Baraka FM. However, I have closely followed his political path and I believe this is the new kid on the block and he is the man to watch as he rises to become the new coast political supremo. Like a chip off the old block, Nassir a scion of the late long serving cabinet minister Shariff Nassir Taib, the young Nassir seems to carrying the same bag of tricks that wa...

The quiet of a Sunday afternoon in Majengo Mombasa was shattered by the sound of gunfire and depending on where you looked at it from, the aggressors had done it again. For the police, they had come to keep peace by “ejecting” Muslim youth who were congregating in Masjid Musa to listen to a “ radical extremist” sermon. They knew this because they saw black flags that had gun drawings draped on the minarets of the mosque. Pix: Courtesy of  The Star Newspaper On the other hand, local youth, leaders both political and clerical saw it differently.  The youth were exercising their constitutionally guaranteed religious rights and the police should not have attacked them. In fact they claimed the police transgressed on the rights of the youth and according to area MP Abdulswamad Shariff Nassir on his Facebook page that was a “terror act”. As accusations and counter accusations flew, two people lay dead , either felled by the police or injured by the youth. Many others were i...

A mud walled tin-roof thatched house in Githumu, Gicici area. Efforts need to be made to improve the lives of people  living in such houses.  There is an untold story in central province. The story is lost largely due to statistical figures that claim that living standards are very high.  What with the coffee, tea and food sufficiency stories that say relax, Central Kenya is better than the rest of country. There can be nothing further from the truth than this. I have just returned from a journey I dubbed “Tracing the roots of my fathers” in which I went to Githumu market in Kandara Division of Muranga County. I witnessed firsthand how the first quartile of the population in the area is reeling under the immense weight of poverty. For them, only God knows what next and this will not be said because it is not part of the statistical mean. Like any other poor place in Kenya, a good number of the residents live in mud walled tin-roof covered houses that I am reli...

You can call me a coward if you want but fact is after what I went through at the hands of Njoroge, I have never had the will and strength to fight. After witnessing too many street and bar brawls I am reminded of my experiences with Njoroge and which made me never to bring, lay or point a finger at anyone’s face. Well, Njoroge was the village bully, the kind of a bad guy who has all the negative qualities found in a bad child heaped on him. He had even been remanded in a juvenile prison because of his exploits and after he was convicted of stealing mandazi from Morris' Hotel popularly corrupted to   Mkawa wa Molethi . He was so feared among boys in the village more so because he had a head that seemed bigger than the rest of his body. His eyes were ever bloodshot and his broad nose added to his menacing look. Njoroge was also a known thief and local residents of Sokoro did not have to look for answers far and wide when a shop was broken into and mandazi had made a disap...

I am writing this from my hotel room in Kisumu. Well there is nothing to write home about the Hotel which though a masterpiece of its time, it is now run down and a litany of complaints is what I have heard from my colleagues and those who have been here before us. In fact one of the thoughts that hit me was that it must have a connection to Government and which was confirmed by one of the employee who told me that it’s a ministry of tourism run establishment. What hit me was that the government has been spending millions to promote tourism abroad for the benefit of the private sector but its very own establishments are run down. What a contradiction. However what concerns me is not the discomfort of my room and that I have had to shift rooms because an attendant broke a key to the lock while I was out, but what is happening in Kisumu. In 2008, Kisumu was at the centre of the post election violence. We saw images of wanton looting and burning and to an outsider this was the epit...