The truth is that indigenous peoples were practising sensible and balanced resource management long before the invasion and takeover of their territories, and long before the colonial conservation organizations appeared, convinced that only they knew best.
Humans are much more than just a small player in the constantly shifting picture of life on Earth. Together with atmospheric change, we have been one of the controlling hands of nature for a very long time, including – and this is a vital point – when our population was far smaller than it is today.
The prehistoric environment was created by humans who enhanced biodiversity, altering the plants and animals to suit themselves. Contemporary tribal peoples are still doing this today. The fact that they are the world’s best conservationists is not a “noble savage” romantic fantasy; it can now be proven. Yet the conservation industry is destroying these peoples and forcing them out of the territories they made and could save. However, as STEPHEN CORRY argues, if we stop this, everyone will benefit, along with the environment.
The earliest bicycles in Kenya were used by the unholy tripartite of colonial conquest: administrators, missionaries, and settlers. Some were given as presents to servants and friends, such as Nabongo Mumia, and before long the domestic market grew.
Even with the apparent success of the Kenya rugby team, the politics of the Kenya Rugby Union seem over and over again to be an impediment to the flourishing of the sport.
The paradigm that we inherited (and still ignorantly embrace) firmly places a black man exclusively in the position of a ranger. In this context, “ranger” describes a non-intellectual participant in conservation who enforces policies created for the benefit of other people in other places, often to the detriment of locals.
One could rightfully argue that protest music in Kenya is muted, not because artists are not producing it, but because the genre has been effectively driven underground. It’s vibrant in the digital repositories where the masses have little access.
For millennia, tea has graced the tables of the mighty and the lowly, fuelling wars, building empires, and bonding societies in a relentless quest for that ‘wondrous beverage’ packed with caffeine and theanine.
Every digital circuit in the world, has its unlikely origin very long ago in Africa, and the humble kitenge is just part of a much bigger legacy.
Ayub Ogada remained largely unrecognised and unacknowledged at home – but he will be remembered globally for being a nyatiti prophet.
