FEAST OR FAMINE

Future Leaders (1973) is set in rural Kenya. Like the author, the protagonist, Reuben Ruoro, has just graduated from Makerere University College in Nairobi with a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture in 1958. This is a significant achievement, considering that from a class of 32 elementary Kenyan students, only 2 went to primary school; of 30 primary students in his final year, only 5 went to secondary school; and of a class of 25 secondary students, only 7 went to university. Only 5 Africans graduated from his agricultural science course (2 of them Kenyans). “I think I was born a very lucky boy,” Reuben says. His university years taught him many things, not just subject matter. “You were taught to have an open mind and to keep it open even if all the others are closing theirs around you … An open mind is neither indiscriminating nor immutable. Ability to change one’s mind in the face of new evidence is not so common a gift” – it comes from training. At his graduation cerem

For the first time in the world, a survey ranks countries according to their contribution to humanity and the Earth as a whole (rather than only to its own citizens). T he Good Country Index surveyed and ranked 125 countries on 35 indicators based on those developed by the World Bank, United Nations, and other institutions (National News, June 26m 2014). Indicators include the way a country responds to issues such as education, health, science, war and peace, trade, culture, censorship, environment, freedom, climate change, economic crises, terrorism, drug trafficking, slavery, equality, and poverty. The seven main categories were: (1) world order, (2) prosperity and equality, (3) planet and climate, (4) health and well-being, (5) science, (6) technology, and (7) culture. Indicators cannot be measured in a single year, so the researchers collected data over a period of 10 years with 2010 forming the baseline. The study was conducted by Simon Anholt, University of Ox

Since the international travel advisories cautioned tourists to Kenya in May this year, some areas have recorded a decrease in tourism revenue. Narok County in south-west Kenya (about 270 kms from Nairobi) attracts tourists to the Maasai Mara National Reserve. It is the county’s main source of revenue. It is famous as a year-round destination for the Maasai people, migration of wildebeest from July to October, the ecosystem, range of resorts, and the “big cats.” Narok County recorded a 23% decrease in tourism revenue in the past month (Daily Nation, June 27, 2014). In Mombasa County and Kilifi County, on the southern coast, international tourism revenue also slumped, but due to a conference of secondary education principals, domestic tourism revenue has helped to mitigate the downfall. From about 30% occupancy rate in hotels during the slump, this week has seen an occupancy rate at 98%-100% capacity. The Secondary School Principals Conference, held annually during

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author of:-  Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

In Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, the Somali civil war from 1991 until the new government was elected into office in November 2011 has left the country with many internally displaced persons (IDPs) and weakened infrastructure. But the children of Mogadishu are resourceful.  Children make kites from discarded plastic bags. Even the ‘string’ is made from plastic bags knotted together. MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author of:-  Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

A mog, or moggy, is a British term for a cat, sometimes all cats in general and sometimes cats that are not pedigree. It is also the name of the cat in Judith Kerr’s series of children’s books from 1970 to 2002. The origin of the term, mog, is not quite clear. But for me, the term mog is derived from the letters that graphically depict a cat – the M is the ears, the O is the head, and the G is the abdomen and cat’s tail. Mogadishu is the capital of Somalia in the Horn of Africa. There is also a cat breed known as the Somali cat. The cat photographed is a Somali cat, or Abyssinian, and is golden brown with streaks of black. MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author of:-  Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir (2010) commences in 1954 in Limuru, Kenya, with the “disappearance” of the narrator’s older brother, Wallace Mwangi, better known as Good Wallace. Police caught him with a pocketful of bullets. He eluded the police, narrowly escaped death, and fled to the mountains. To understand the actions of Good Wallace, Thiong’o takes the reader back to his own Kenyan childhood, and the year of his birth, 1938. He was the fifth child of his father’s third wife (of four wives), among 24 of his father’s children. He was born into “an already functioning community of wives, grown-up brothers, sisters, children about my age, and a single patriarch, and into settled conventions about how we acknowledged our relation to one another.” His father was born “sometime between 1890 and 1896” when Britain ruled Kenya, before independence. His mother, Wanjiku, was a thinker and a listener, but above all she was a great storyteller. In 1947 his mothe

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author of:-  Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

If you meet a stranger, do you say hello? Should you say hello? Well, yes and no. Maybe. It depends. BBC’s The Quora Column (June 15, 2014) advises against talking to strangers when travelling on the London Underground rail system. The Quora readers wrote, “Don’t talk to a stranger, except about how bad something is or about the weather” and “Avoiding eye contact is the only way to preserve your sense of personal space.” But CNN’s Dr Sanjay Gupta thinks just saying hello can extend your life ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NpEVheoTMc ). Gupta says studies on “being lonely” – chronic loneliness – is on par with the act of smoking in terms of risks to people’s health. “Loneliness can register as physical pain,” he says, and maintains the act of saying hello [to break the loneliness cycle] can be “empowering” and may bring health benefits. This is not new – there have been studies on pessimism and optimism in the past, which state that optimists are more likely