Markus Kamau: News

Pesa ni Pesa is this month's free download.

The song is about how the Big Man is always expected to pay for the party. There's a bit of a Neil Yong riff in there, too.

Go to the music page to download it.

Week of January 27th

I’ve been on the road and the Great Kenyan Election Robbery has becoming the Never-Ending Story.

In the last week of January, while Kofi was in Nairobi working very hard, I got the Tanzanian view.

When I want to gauge how a place views a situation --- be it the American election, the Iraq war, Kenya turmoil, floods in Mozambique, whatever --- I talk with taxi drivers. Taxi drivers, while waiting for their next passenger, do nothing but read the newspapers or listen to news. And they have strong opinions and love to discuss what is going on. So I had a long conversation with one Mohamed in Dar while we sat in a traffic jam going into town on Ali Hassan Mwinyi Boulevard.

There is a view here that Tanzania, because of Nyerere’s commitment to burying tribalism, could never fall into the type of situation Kenya is mired in. “Hakuna ukabila hapa (There is no tribalism here),” says Mohamed. On one level, there is a certain smugness, pride and “told-you-so” about the whole thing. Tanzania is on a strong upward trajectory, and in its growth and economic possibility, it relishes in hope of surpassing the greedy hoards of Kenya.

On another level, people also are worried and very sad for Kenya, and they are eager to see the see the situation resolved. As a nation, they have been pro-Odinga family since the 60’s, and most Tanzanians I spoke felt that Raila had rightly won the contest. The Kenya story was on the front page of the leading newspapers.

A joke going round in Dar es Salaam: The only country in the world where a Luo can get elected president? America.

Salaam.

A great take on what goes on in Kibaki and Raila’s minds, based on the freeze-frame “Ongea” advertisements against HIV-AIDS.
http://youtube.markacadey.net/video/Kibaki/WlBI8RB48RY/Redykyulass___Kibaki_and_Raila_having_lunch

Week of the 20th January

I first saw the Mighty King Kong at Nyayo Stadium about nine or ten years ago. It was one of those heavily politicized, non-descript poorly-organized shows where a variety of local artists were on parade, and it went on way too long. On that day, newcomer King Kong stormed the stage and “rogaed” the crowd. A larger-than-life oversized voice issued from his diminutive misshapen form, and he used his staff as a walking stick, a dancing pole and a prop. He pivoted about on that stick, singing, growling and rapping in that adopted Jamaican patois.

Overnight, he was a public figure, part of the local reggae scene, a performer at Hollywood, Florida and NGO road shows. A positive vibration person, he carried with him a unique regal enthusiasm only found in people who have overcome huge obstacles to “make it”. And the stage he made it on was Kenya.

He died Christmas day just before the election, after unexpectedly collapsing and being rushed to the hospital by musician Gidi-Gidi. It took three weeks before Kenyan musicians, and the Sarakasi Trust, could get it together to organize a commemorative event. Of course nobody is in the mood to honour or celebrate a life. Most Luo musicians --- King Kong came from Nyanza --- are too confused and bitter to throw a proper event.
So his body had already been sent home and buried in Kisumu by the first tribute. On the strength of his reputation, the hearse convoy carrying him had avoided the many thug-manned barricades and road blocks between Nairobi and his resting place.

So, on a depressing Friday night, Gladys and I went down to Alliance Francaise, made our contributions to the Mighty King Kong funeral fund, paid our respects and watched the show.

The crowd was small, a few score of people sitting in the plastic chairs of the Alliance’s garden. The Jabali brothers were there, Gidi Gidi was there, some of the press, mzungus from the AF mailing list. But it was dismal and nobody even got up to dance until an uninvited Jah’key Malley occupied the stage and performed some reggae to a CD of backing tracks.

Note to Sarakasi Trust: When doing a tribute, please use artists who actually know the music of the musician being honoured, not hacks who just want to get on stage. As Joseck Asikoye says, one’s own people must send him home.

On the political scene:
Kofi Annan, Benjamin Mkapa and Graca Machel arrived in town to walk the path where Desmond Tutu, John Kufuor, Jendayi Frazier had tread, the first two with dismaying results. The Rift, full of rising smoke from razed homesteads, Nairobi subdued, surreal and entrenched. Tension can hold you hostage only so long. Then the kids have to go to school. So we work our day jobs, and watch the latest episode of the Kofi Annan Show.

Kofi, he of the powdered white beard and proper diplomatic English, manages to get Kibaki and Raila to agree to talk. The adversaries in their suits emerge from closed one-on-ones with Kofi in Harambee House. They shake hands for the assembled press. It’s what the wananchi want --- a signal, a cup of tea, the first melting of the ice. Odinga again speaks from notes, while Kibaki, woodenly reads text prepared by his minders. The Kibaki speech, which reminds the nation that he is “duly elected”, draws immediate fire from an Orange House press conference.

Week of January 14th

That’s what the managing editor of a weekly newspaper had to say Saturday night about the Kenya situation. We were sitting in his damp Loresho garden, at a birthday party for his kids, while the waxing moon ripped through a sky of pregnant clouds. Neighborhood dogs yapped at the night.

Over the last 10 days I’ve been riding out this bad karmic storm here in the city in the sun. While sporadic killings and riots reign, for us working middle class stiffs in our enclaves, a false peace reigns.
Bad shit going down, indeed.

300,000 IDPs in a country known for sheltering refugees. On the tube, police dispersing Mombasa protesters with gas as I write.

Economically, it’s a disaster. Over 80,000 January booked tourism beds in Mombasa are now down to 2000. Eighteen thousand containers are stuck in the Mombasa port, as they can’t be shipped up country or to Uganda, Rwanda or Sudan. Businesses shut down. KLM is detouring flights through Dar. Children can’t get to school.

Using tear gas and plastic shields, a ninja-turtle paramilitary effectively bottle protesters in the Kibera and Mathare slums, where they are only able to do damage to themselves. Making city protests ineffective and spotty affairs. And the population goes about its business in town, with alert eye watching for roving mobs --- or cops with tear gas.

In Eldoret, and various parts of the Rift Valley, roving bands burn kikuyu homesteads. The Sabaoti (or Mt Elgon Maasai) militias are a force to themselves on the Ugandan border. There’s some serious ethnic violence going on.

The New York Times paints a scene out of old Africa. Warpaint. People dressed in skins. Bows and arrows. Crude implements of war. Kalenjin youths bragging to the reporter about killing kikuyus.

Sellable yes, but not the whole story. Displaced kikuyus moved into the Rift generations ago, when the kalenjin and maasai were still herding cattle, forced by colonial settlers from their farms in the White Highlands. They staked out farms and built shops, and prospered. Over 50 years, it’s been an issue under the surface, festering while land pressure has built up. Disappointment in the ballot box and failed electoral process provides a convenient opening for politicians intent on milking pus from festering wounds.

Sunday, I made a three day trip to Kampala --- on East African community business --- and got to look at Kenya from the perspective of Uganda (where people have experience watching a thriving economy disintegrate). There, petrol prices are skyrocketing. Rumors and mobile phone messages are running wild (the most prominent being that Museveni has sent troops to support Kibaki). Kenya news in on the front page of both dailies.

Our group of Tanzanians, Rwandans, Ugandans and Kenyans could hardly do the work we were tasked to do on energy policy and access strategy --- what with all the discussion of the Kenya situation.

Tuesday night, as we waited in Entebbe airport for our delayed flight back to Nairobi, a group of Kenyans huddled around cell phone, awaiting SMS reports about the election of the Speaker. Kibaki has opened Parliament quickly, and the Speaker of the House had to be elected. ODM’s candidate Marinde won in a narrow third round vote. The final result beeped in on my seatmate’s phone as we were taxiing to the runway and he raised his arms in victory.

Back home Thursday nite, after another day of riots, on TV we watched a Kisumu youth get shot and killed. He was only taunting the police --- Nah-Nah-Nah Nah-Nah Nahhh --- not even brandishing a stone, and a police officer hunted him town and took him out. The next day the police spokesman accused the television station of fabricating the footage. We watched Balala, an opposition leader run through tear gas in his prayer robes.

I’ve been listening to lots of music to get me through this. Many types of music. Benga. Macy Gray. Punk rock and militant reggae when I want justice. Lingala. Retro-militant Gil-Scott Heron. Leonard Cohen’s experienced despair. John Lennon peace mantras. Some times old school pop. Yesterday, I caught myself listening to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”. Bad shit indeed.

In Saturday’s papers, Odinga called off the protests. A peace offering? In the same pages, the Kibaki Government published a hard line advert explaining how the opposition planned the Rift Valley killings of kikuyus.

Saturday afternoon, Gladys and I drove past the Ngong Hills to Olonana. We’ve been having some weird rains. Which is good, because Kajiado is parched. On the shamba, the saplings are sending out fresh emerald shoots, after two days of drizzle followed by two days of hard rain. Olonana’s dusty brown of last week is now tinged with green. Caretaker Ligam and I put in a line of wind blocking casuarina saplings and then transplanted some red thorn acacias sprouted from locally gathered seed. We watched the sun set into a pool of violet clouds over hills in the Rift. As we drove homeward around the backside of the hills, an evening rainbow settled over Ngong town.

On the radio, Kibaki announces his “negotiation team”. Its composition: Saitoti --- one of the MP’s accused of rigging his seat in this election and a Moi-era goon. Uhuru Kenyatta – Odinga’s back stabber in 2002. Martha Karua --- a prominent lawyer hawk who has been cawing acid sentiments about Odinga for weeks. And to cap this, Kalonzo Musyoka -- the turncoat who left ODM five months ago then ran as independent candidate --- was handed the vice-presidency. He accepted Kibaki’s offer smiling like a hyena at the kill. Nothing like sending out the Dobermans to negotiate. Of course, this came after Kibaki named his cabinet a few hours before a major negotiation.

A Kikuyu doctor-writer (married to the daughter of a prominent Luhya politician), said: “What are we doing? The middle class has let this country down. We’re doing nothing. Watching this crap play out on TV, going to pick up out DVDs, meeting each other at Java House (Nairobi’s equivalent of Starbucks). Worried about our kids getting to school. Doing nothing… It’s the poor that are in the streets.”

Another observer talked about Kikuyu beehive mentality. He said their response to the crisis is amazingly uniform, they all buzz with the same story. Even more so than the Bush camp’s handling of Florida in 2000, or their subsequent railroading of the UN to war in Iraq. How slickly the perpetuators move. We stole the election fair and square. Live with it. Take it to the courts (that we own!). (Ha! Ha!).

In Sunday’s paper, Odinga reversed himself and called a new round of protest --- and boycotts of businesses owned by ruling party members. PNU called it “economic sabotage”. ODM also published their evidence of how the election was rigged, with photocopies of allegedly adulterated forms. More fuel for a fire burning out of control.

Cellular phone SMS rumour-mongering is out of control. Gladys reads messages from her brothers, friends, network. They beep in, people read, send them on. Telecomm companies are profiting from millions of entrenched messages of hate.

I get one anonymously from “GEMA”, the old Gikuyu, Embu, Meru Association (how I got on the mailing list I don’t know!): “Now UK & Indians don’t recognize KIBAKI as our PREZI & r funding Raila’s genocide. BOYCOTT their BARCLAYS, STANCHART, BAT & NAKUMAT NOW until otherwise advise!”

Bad shit indeed.

Sunday is declared a day of Prayer for Peace. God help us.

“The birds they sing/At the break of day/Start again/I heard them say/Don’t dwell on what has passed away/Or what is yet to be/ Yeah, the wars they will be fought again/ The holy dove she will be caught again/Bought and sold and bought again/The dove is never free//Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack/A crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen, Anthem.

Week of January 7th

Even for one who supposedly understands Kenya and has called Kenya home for 20 years, this is difficult shit. The fabric of a nation ripped apart, close friends --- metaphorically and literally --- carrying ugly nail-studded clubs, looking for vengeance, staring across battle lines.

This week, what comes out more than anything, is that Kenya is ill-prepared for this sort of tragedy. Food is in short supply. The bottom rung of the economic ladder is hard hit, hungry, on the move, angry. It has hit the fan, and it stinks.

But still, we in the middle class are more or less isolated from the worst of it. At least we can move around in Nairobi, provided that we know of the latest plans for demonstrations. That means we go out to buy food, for meetings, and yes, even parties. But where else are you going to information?

Patriotic peace adverts are on TV. My Burundian producer and next door neighbor, RKay, is working with the media peace efforts with the gospel and secular music community. In a sound bite, he warns that Kenya should avoid what has been going on for several generations in his home country.

He should know --- he got his start in music jamming with refugees in tents at the Kakuma camp, Turkana. Gladys and I walk over to his garden, where a small crowd of young musicians, mostly gospel, are organizing food drives and pledging assistance to local refugees. Abbi and Suzzanne Owiyo are in the studio recording a peace song.

On a Monday, Eric Wainaina is interviewed over the phone on the BBC, and his latest song, “Twende Twende”, with Oliver Mutukudze, is played. He says “Apparently, the election was rigged” Significant, this, coming from a kikuyu.

Our house help Mary, finally makes it home from her unexpectedly extended Christmas vacation in her home, Kakamega. Road through the Rift Valley have been impassable for a week or so. She heads straight into Kibera, where her daughter is, where she keeps lots of her stuff. She tells me in Luhya-Swahili --- “Howa watu wame ipa kura (Those people stole the election)”.

My friend from Jabali Africa, whom I’ve been sms’ing and calling a few times a week, also finally makes it back to Nairobi, after being stuck in Western where he voted. He complains that direct roads back from Western and Nyanza are full of roadblocks, manned by organized youths intent on preventing Luos and sympathizers from making it back to Nairobi. His car was forced to travel south to Sotik, then bump through murram roads along the north perimeter of the Maasai Mara to avoid the road blocks. Eventually, the detour took him through Narok town.

We drive out to the parched shamba in Olonana, have some nyama choma and then head back to Nairobi for a drink in the bar above the National Theatre, now a hotbed of intellectual artist dissent. He isn’t happy about the peace efforts by musicians. They’re missing the point, he says. He quotes Peter Tosh: There ain’t gonna be no peace, unless we get equal rights and justice.

March-demos are occurring every other day along Ngong Road, along on my running route. One friend, who lives in Woodley Estate, tells how his watchman has been benefiting. Before looters flee back across police lines into Kibera, he lets them toss their booty --- so far mattresses, LPG canisters, a sofa set --- over the wall into the compound. The watchman takes a cut of swag for letting the looters leave the stuff there until the situation cools. When the cops are gone, they come to collect and share out.

Gladys and I clean out closets of old clothes. She packs them in an old suitcase and takes them to a church in Westlands so that they can be handed out to the homeless.

Jendayi Frazier, the US Under Secretary of State for Africa, has entered the diplomatic fray. A black American who spent part of her childhood in Kenya, she has got Raila and Kibaki to agree to speak. Maybe she can do better than Desmond Tutu, Kaunda and the others. A bit more hard line on the Government than others, even she has said publicly that there was rigging. So we'll see what happens next.

Thursday 3rd January

This is supposed to the big day. Since the “lost’ election, ODM has been using demonstrations to shut
down the country. Supporters were called to converge on Uhuru Park today for an event that is variously called a peaceful demonstration, a “prayer meeting” and a march.

Housebound, I shuttle upstairs, downstairs. With three different deliverables due and official holiday over, I peck away at my computer in the office, keeping an ear open for the latest headlines, rushing downstairs to see what’s on TV. It’s very different from the Moi days when rumor was the only thing. Kenyan television stations are creatively circumventing the ban on “live broadcasts”. There are 5 major television stations as well as BBC, Al Jizeera, CNN and the internet. Glady’s cell phone beeps incoming SMS’s. On TV, paramilitary police ring Uhuru Park, attired in storm trooper armor straight out of Star Wars.

Attorney-General-for-Life Amos Wako issues a statement calling for a recount --- which Odinga rejects. He will only accept an international independent recount, nothing within Government machinery.

Lots happening in our hood. A crowd is moving down Ngong Road towards town, trying to get around the barricades, cajoling the police. We hear that Three Wheels, a drinking spot, has been burned. A few blocks up the road at Orange House, ODM is meeting with Desmond Tutu.

Neighbor Stanley (a Luhya from Mt Elgon) roars up in his Land Cruiser pick-up after failing to get through the road blocks to his office. I follow him across the car park to his place and he invites me in. It’s 11:00 AM: “Forget it, Markus. There’s no way you’re going to get any work done today”. He brings out some Tuskers, and the TV unfolds events as we look through our beers.

While sipping, I call Luo guitarist Dave who lives out Ngong Road in Dagoretti Corner and ask him what’s happening there. He tells me that he’s been locked in his upstairs apartment for a couple of days --- Mungiki mobs are roaming about in the market below. Looking for Luos.

After meeting with Tutu, the ODM leadership and their following rabble march down Argwings Kodek Road, which parallels Ngong Road and is a stone’s throw to the other side of our compound. Outside on the roof, Bob is listening to their progress and watching the smoke rise. We watch the walkers on TV.

The front part of the procession, where Ngilu, Balala, Mudavadi and Ruto have locked arms, are chanting “We want peace, we want peace”. A mile behind them, the rear of the marching group is rowdy. They’ve looted a fruit and vegetable stand, torn open a container full of Coke crates, and are chanting “No Raila, No Peace”.

When they reach Hurlingham --- outside our local pub, Sippers --- the GSU draw the line in the sand and block the way. Charity Ngilu comes out front and has dialogue with the police. “Why are you blocking us?” “Don’t you know this is our right?”

Listening to Charity as they might a teacher, the policemen are patient and puzzled. No shots are fired. In this scene, there is no intimidation. But they will not allow them to pass. From the sunroof of his SUV, Ruto tells the crowd to disperse. No rally today.

It’s after three, a few beers later, when I leave Stanley’s place and go back to the TV in my house.
Desmond Tutu’s mediating efforts have thus far not yielded much, and there is still a large gap between Kibaki and Odinga positions. Odinga/ODM demands that Kibaki step down. Kibaki says they must go through the courts to change the outcome.

The ODM meeting rally cancelled today is re-scheduled for tomorrow, Friday.

A friend asks, by email, if she should fly down to a meeting in Nairobi next week. Not unless you have the meeting in your hotel room, I reply.

Bob cooks pizza for dinner

I've been quiet for a long time. Too much work, too much travel.

Musings about the current situation from my Ngong Rd perch in Nairobi.

Peace.

"The sound of gunfire/Off in the distant/I'm getting used to it now"
Life During Wartime -- Talking Heads

January 2nd Update

In the international press, BBC and Al Jazira picked up the Kenya story
first, and kept on it since. Last night, CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post moved Kenya ahead of Pakistan in their news rotations. Mass killings in churches and ethnic beheadings make people sit up and listen.

So by now, anyone who watches CNN in airports or reads the NY Times on-line is familiar with the tragedy in Eldoret’s Kiambaa church. A poor group of kikuyu refugees found themselves on the wrong side of battle lines they had nothing to do with drawing up.

This is not the Kenya most of us know. And those who only know Kenya as a holiday destination in Africa --- safaris, tropical beaches, pleasant people --- will now think seriously about any family trips they might have planned here in 2008. Beheadings indeed. The official death toll is over 200. Thar be dragons.

Things were fairly quiet yesterday and today. This morning Gladys went to the supermarket, did some shopping, tried to send a fax for me (it wouldn’t go), bought phone credit and paid bills. Violence has cooled. People are working their routines, waiting to see how this plays out.

There is intense pressure on both Kibaki and Raila to sort things out. Gordon Brown called both saying the UK is willing to lend a hand to resolve the impasse. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has volunteered to mediate. The ex-President of Sierra Leon is still here as a leader of the election observers. Ghanaian president Kufuor, and Head of the African Union is scheduled to fly in. The US ambassador is appealing for calm, asking Raila and Kibaki to reach out to each other.

Both the US and EU have said the official election results are fatally flawed and are pressuring the Government to re-examine election results. But Kibaki’s people — in public — have boerishly rounded the wagons, and Justice Minister, Martha Karua, sounds militant and hawkish. The opposition will have to go to the courts, she says.

Kibaki made a televised New Years Day announcement. Speaking slowly, he thanked Kenyans for voting him in, reminded them what a wonderful country God has blessed them with. With unconvincing wooden platitudes, he too appealed for peace. As the pupils in his eyes moved back and forth across the teleprompter, he appeared benignly sedated.

In his own press conference, a much more lucid Raila spoke of his conversations with Gordon Brown. He asked his supporters to desist from violence but maintained that his minimum demand. Before negotiations Kibaki must step down.

11:30 New Years night, Robbie and a car load of ravers showed up at our place. I pulled out the six pack in the fridge and the last bottle of scotch. We celebrated the New Years telling war stories of the past few days, exchanging rumors. They left when the booze was finished.

I wake up late, clean the bottles, empty beer cans and ash trays off the coffee table. Children in the compound are making a racket, but at least its comforting. The number of kids in the compound has tripled, as a few parents have imported siblings here from more violence-prone areas of the city.

Throughout the day, I try to work, but find myself surfing for Kenya stories, tuning the BBC and calling friends.

My Brit friend Mathew is stranded on the south coast with his kikuyu wife and kids. He reports that all ATMs are closed, there is no fuel or phone cards. He does, however, have an ample supply of gin and lobster.

Band leader Makadem, is holed in his house in Mombasa with his family. He can’t even get phone credit, much less a ticket to Nairobi where he was due to sing this week.

Singer Abbi is also holding out in his house without phone credit watching TV. We talk about the need for musicians to do something.

In Ngong, Ngigi says that everything is quiet out there.

A friend from Washington DC calls. She is stranded in Malindi. Her flight leaves Nairobi in three days and she wonders if she’ll be able to get out.

In the afternoon, a co-consultant friend comes by. Another PNU kikuyu. Thinking he’s come for work --- we are way behind on a job --- I ask him if I can get him something. A stiff drink, yes. All I have is the last of our Merlot, and he sips on the couch. We do not discuss work – we talk about the need for sanity. He partners a firm with an ODM Luo --- and politics has never been issue between them. But like me, he can’t work. He’s worried about his kids in school in western Kenya, Kakamega, who are now IDPs at a police station chief camp. His kikuyu father-in-law has run a store in Kisumu for forty years. Its been torched.

Stir crazy, I decide to go for a jog Wednesday evening. I put on my i-Pod (it starts out with Sex Pistols, "Anarchy in the UK") and run a couple of kilometers up quiet side streets, past people on their way home, watchmen, the odd police officer. On my way back down Ngong Rd, most shops are closed; in the few that are open, wananchi are rushing to buy provisions for the next few days.. At the Adams Arcade roundabout Total Station, a tanker truck has delivered and a long queue of vehicles waits for fuel. Except for the reduced traffic, it seems like another day. People smile at the mzungu jogger.

Tomorrow, Thursday, ODM has called for a peaceful demonstration at Uhuru Park. Although the Government has banned the gathering, Raila says it will go on. In the current climate, it is hard to imagine this being peaceful.

From Bethuel Kiplagat, who is mediating between parties from a donated Serena Hotel HQ room: “In times like this, history is decided not by how we relate with our friends, but by how we relate to our opponents.”

Peace. Kamau.

December 31st, 2007

Happy New Year. We can't wait for 2007 to end.

Gladys, Bob and I have been camped in our George Padmore Road compound for 3 days now, a couple of leafy blocks north of the Ngong Road thru fare. A mile on the other side of Ngong Road is the Kibera slum, now a giant bonfire of burning tires, trash and petrol.

The 29th was the last time anyone from this household drove anywhere. That afternoon, while we were in front of the TV waiting for results of the election, Gladys went shopping. Though most businesses had been closed up by then, she was lucky to find Uchumi Hypermart open, and stocked up. The same Uchumi is now barricaded, after looters opened the cage full of LPG canisters outside.

Yesterday, the new Government banned all live broad casts --- forcing all television stations not to broadcast any information that might "incite" the population. So we listen to BBC and watch Al-Jezira. SMS traffic may be halted (as in Ethiopia).

Hundreds have been killed all over the country. On TV, Mombasa burns. Kibera burns. Kisumu burns. Kakamega burns. Having to sit inside a walled compound and watch political proclamations on TV as things disintegrate --- it's more like the bad old Moi days or, I don't want to contemplate this, like life in a compound in Somalia or Rwanda. Angry Luos are looting Kikuyu shops in tenements, buses on the road sides. Kikuyus are rounding the wagons. A bad scene.

Yesterday, Raila Odinga announced a "People's Inauguration" at Uhuru Park. That was immediately banned by the Government. So the Opposition is more or less under house arrest, unable to have press conferences or rallies.
Even if it’s not the only thing (because money and power are at the bottom of this), the tribal dimension of Kenya’s tension is huge. This is mainly about the two major tribes: Kikuyus and Luos (Don't forget that there are another 39 tribes here, but to understand the politics going on, you have to "get" the kikuyu-luo "thing"). The agriculturist kikuyus from lush Mt Kenya are known to be entrepreneurial and hard-working. Fisherman Luos from Lake Victoria shores are known to be intellectual, natty, football-loving and artistic. A kikuyu drives a pick-up, a Luo drives a Mercedes. A simplistic characterization, yes. But that's the thing.

So at independence, Kikuyu Kenyatta became the first president, and his inner circle ran the show. Oginga Odinga, father of Raila, was reluctantly the vice-president. Moi, who took over from Kenyatta in the late 70's, is a Kalenjin (smaller tribe from the Rift Valley best known for winning olympic medals in steeplechase). Daniel Moi ruled despotically for 20 odd years and was forced out at the ballot in 2002 by the combined efforts of Kibaki (kikuyu), Raila (Luo) and a hoard of others. Raila graciously stepped aside so that Kibaki could be president, saying "Kibaki Tosha" (Kibaki is enough).

After Kibaki became president, there was a major disagreement about the "MoU" a document describing their new political arrangement. So he and Raila parted ways, and became fierce opponents. According to Raila, Kibaki did not honor power-sharing promises. Raila and his followers lost their Ministerial posts and became the opposition. In 2005, Kibaki and Raila were pitted against each other over a referendum for a new Constitution. Kibaki (and many kikuyus) adopted the Banana symbol to vote YES --- for the promised new constitution that the Government was trying to push through. Raila --- and Ruto, Balala, Musyoka, Ntimama (from diverse tribes) --- formed a coalition AGAINST the new constitution, the Orange Democratic Movement. Their symbol, of course, the very same citrus fruit. The ODM orange vote --- "NO" --- won the referendum and stopped what many thought was a flawed constitution. It also established Raila's political platform for the 2007 elections.

(End of history lesson).

Raila has a strong team and a well organised political machine, very much on top of things. Kibaki's last-minute jury-rigged party, PNU, and his stalwarts were caught flat-footed by a unified grass-roots ODM on the verge of sweeping them out. I think they were surprised at how isolated Mt. Kenya is, and, from what we've seen, resorted to Big Man tactics to wrestle results.

So people are up at arms. Tempers are flaring and people are taking sides --- or finding themselves unwittingly on one side or the other. Most are doing their best to keep calm, chilling at home, hoping this ends soon, so that the shops can reopen and they can get some maize meal. Trying to make sense of the unfolding situation.

It’s been a beautiful three days. The odd shower, but mostly warm sun. Trees are in full blush from recent rain. Clouds are fluff balls on blue skyline. A cool dry season wind blows up towards Ngong Hills.

An hour ago, a mob was making its way from Dagoreti Corner down Ngong Rd --- where police blockaded Ngong they detoured down side streets like ours --- to try and force their way to Uhuru Park. But Uhuru Park is barricaded by well-armed GSU, so one wonders what will happen there. We hear passing shouts, lorrys of cops, firecracker shots --- like New Years celebrations.

I called a musician friend of mine who came back from the US to vote for Raila. Out in Kakamega, he is fuming. "Those bastards just stole the election".

My landlord, a PNU kikuyu, is the friendliest, most decent man I know. This morning he came down in his SUV to see if everyone was okay. Today there is so much more to talk about than the weather, no? So we talked elections; I was critical of PNU, he bristled & got back in his car. "I'm not a politician!", he growled.

A Luo friend who works for a German aid organisation was in a car on his way to town yesterday from Karen. The car was stopped by a group of kikuyu youths. They were looking for "kabilas" --- tribes. Insinuating Luos. They pulled him out, took his cell phone and made him sit at the side of the road. He thought he was going to be killed. Luckily, one of the youths said --- "Yeye ni beshti" --- "this guy is cool". They gave him back his cell phone and let him go. He jumped in a taxi to Karen, called his travel agent and arranged a flight to Kampala --- where he lives. He's there now.

I called Robbie, the Seychellois who introduced Gladys and I. He was at his office at the Nairobi Show Grounds, which abuts the west side of Kibera. He said "Man, this place is an IDP (Internally Displaced People) camp". Refugees from Kibera are living there in tents.

Another New Years Eve. There goes the call for evening prayer from the Kilimani Mosque. Children are playing in the courtyard. A flock of hadada ibis, bound for their nests at dusk, squawk. A gunshot cracks the quiet. Time to make dinner.

December 30th 2007

As I write, Mwai Kibaki is being sworn in as President in a hastily-organized State House ceremony straight out of Orwell. This comes less than an hour after the state media, KBC, announced the results of an obviously flawed election.

Incumbent Kibaki --- and his Party of National Unity (PNU) --- allegedly beat opposition leader Raila Odinga by 300,000 votes. Shortly before the official results were announced at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre election HQ, Odinga and the credible senior members of his party (Orange Democratic Movement) had tried to present evidence about rigging in Election Commission of Kenya (ECK) offices. Beleaguered but unperturbed, Samwel Kivuitu, the ECK Chairman, attempted twice to read the flawed results in front of the press --- yesterday and today. Both attempts were halted by the Orange Democratic Movement protests. Having ample experience with Government-controlled institutions, they did not want to let this one go to go to courts...

After a massive voter turn out, 19 members of Kibaki's cabinet were ousted in the Parliamentary vote, so it is clear that --- however you draw the tribal lines --- people want change.

Shortly after his second attempted announcement of flawed results was cut short in an uproar over contested Molo constituency counts, Kivuitu was ushered out of the Kenyatta International Conference Center by the GSU, Kenya's Paramilitary Police. At the same place, when the confusion had subsided, Raila Odinga walked to the podium and held an impromptu press conference, during which he presented compelling evidence of Molo's rigging, and rigging in 41 other stations. Odinga also brought out a senior ECK officer, who said that he had been forced to participate in doctoring of results from the three constituencies to which he was assigned. Then things got ugly.

The GSU cleared the press from the KICC, and hustled Kivuitu to an undisclosed KBC studio where he made the forced announcement of the results. Shortly thereafter, he announced the results again at the State House "Garden Party Inauguration" for which arrangements had obviously been made well in advance.

At issue here is the Election Return Form 16A. This is filled in at the grass-roots constituency polling site by the returning officer after the vote count. Copies of this form are made available to the each party and observers. ODM representatives were able to clearly follow results all over the country using these. According to Raila, at ECK Headquarters, these forms were "doctored", and presidential tallies were altered. ODM was not given the opportunity to air these grievances.

So here we go. The tension in the past two days has been palpable, despite attempts by the business community, foreign embassies and observers to diffuse the situation.
Kibaki just declared tomorrow a public holiday. Riots commenced all around Nairobi, Kisumu, Mombasa and Kisii as soon as the results were announced.

We expect no holiday. So we ride into the worst case scenario...

Peace. Kamau.

Two Markus Kamau songs, Pole Pole and Imba Nairobi, are featured in Robbie Bresson’s new film, Help!

The film crashes three events in the scenic backroads of Lukenya. A recently-repaired matatu – minibus – embarks on one of those trips from hell with a motley assortment of wananchi. Taking a detour to avoid the cops it loses a wheel in savanna scrub on the edge of an escarpment, near a “picnic” site. Meanwhile, two armed gangs have a rendezvous at the site to divvy up stolen cash. Each gang intends to off the other and make away with the cash-stuffed briefcase. In the third thread, a diplomat and an MP are headed, with two lustful hotties, and a basket of booze and food, for a picnic at the same rendezvous site. When all of these groups collide (as they might in Kenya), its scenic, messy, funny, bloody violent, and jolting.

The film tells an entertaining story, with great performances from Peter King playing the matatu owner, George Simba, his estranged and would-be hip-hop star son Lumumba (played by Mike Rewa) and the villains -- the smooth Musa Milele (Paul Makumi) and the roughneck Zangi (Melvin Alusa). It’s a low budget Kenya film, yes, but also great value. The shots are realistic, with engaging cinematography, and the story is editing together so that it tells a nice story.

This September, see it at the Nairobi Nu-Metro Junction until the 25th and at the Village Market the week after.

Nice feature by Emmanuel Mwenda in last Saturday's Standard. Mwenda is a great writer, covering the Nairobi music scene.

Check it out.

"All of us know little shorties, and we see them when they are young. Something is happening to them around age 4 or 5. A darkness comes over them, and you can see the loss of hope in them. There is a reason they shoot each other: because they don't love themselves --- and the reason they don't love themselves is we are not loving them, we're not paying attention to them, we're not guiding them, we're not disciplining them. We've got work to do."

Barack Obama on Black-on-Black Violence

Anybody notice how much tree planting is going on in Nairobi city these days? Wangari Maathai must be in on this --- but I've never seen so many jua kali nurseries and saplings on the roadsides.

In our place out at Olonana, we've planted over a hundred trees in the past month. Our focus is indigenous --- olives, crotons, nandi flame, acacias, terminilia --- with some grevellias, casuarina, bottle brushes and wattle in between.

Its a windy site, so lets see what survives the blast gusts. So far, the wind has chilled and the rain has been good. Give them saplings a chance to spread their roots.

My plan to be a rock star took a little longer than expected. In my mud hut, I was filling up my notepad with bad song ideas (like This Song is in English), but it was hard to figure out a melody without an instrument or accompanying players. Given the isolation of my Chuka school, there was little chance of collaboration, so I was on my own. My early poems were bad enough without music, but there accumulated some gems in the rubble pile of my songbook, and I kept scribbling, adding pages, with the beat poet notion that everything had to be written down and everything written down was valuable and was not to be thrown away. I had lyricist potential and I kept at it. I listened to songs on my battery-powered boom box, I composed poetry, I lived the life of an artist and worked my day job.

Fortuitously, one of the members of my Peace Corps group, fed up with his Disneyland posting at the President’s Palatial Secondary School, COS’d and sold me his Fender acoustic guitar and case. It was a lucky buy. Thereafter, on a trip to Nairobi, I acquired an early edition of Guitar Playing for Dummies, or something like that, and songbooks for 5 acts that I considered to be important.

Like many delta blues players, I started out as a rural musician. I learned to play at Kiriamburi (“the place of eating goats”) homestead where I was given a space by Mwongera to put up my hut. It was a small holder’s coffee farm in a mud hut reconstructed when Severino’s brother left the village to find work in a Timau saw mill on the other side of the Mt. Kenya. It took Gitonga and me three days to build the structure, digging out the mud floor foundation, putting up the stick frames, patting on layers of mud, cow manure then ash onto the walls and floors. We raised the tin roof, we placed an empty drum rain barrel near the door.

Mwongera, who spoke with a drawl and sported stretched earlobes, had two chief occupations. First, he grew a small plot of high end tobacco, which he planted and nurtured with great care, and then pounded and sifted and funneled into little banana leave sachets as very strong – and highly demanded ---- snuff. After each harvest, he would pack up his harvest and travel to Ishiara market, an ancient tribal intersection where the Kamba, Meru and Kikuyi traded stuff. He would hike the whole day to Ishiara, sell his snuff, buy uki, and stagger back two nights later lit up like a Christmas tree with a fist full of currency.

Mwongera’s second activity was as circumciser, which meant he kept the veritable old blade that had been handed down by Chera folk, and took responsibility for cutting the foreskins of quaking stern-faced groups of young boys each year. He never did show me that knife.

I would sit out under the moon on a three legged stool, in between the coffee trees and maize patch border to my hut, and bang on the Fender. With very little instruction --- a simple guidebook, the guitar chord shapes, the lyrics in the 5 song books --- I learned my own peculiar way of playing rhythm guitar, a tortured strumming of chords. I might as well have been playing an autoharp, actually. Open chords came fairly fast; once you can work a G, C and D, you are home free in rock and roll and folk music. Or Congelese lingala, for that matter.

I followed John Lennon’s method of self-taught guitar lyricism. Every time he learned a new chord or chord change, he composed a song that incorporated that particular chord or pattern. Then he made it part of his set. Of course, he had help from Paul McCartney --- and some of their collaborations are quite impressive. For me, the method was also effective, and it helped build my own set of songs that were important to me, but --- let’s face it --- were mostly forgettable throwaways.

One of my early attempts, "This Song is in English," started as a very weak poem about the imposition of alien English culture and language upon rural Africans. It was a personal lament --- perhaps even a musical imposition. Here I was, in the remnants of a highland mountain rainforest eaten out by small holder coffee farmers, teaching a foreign language --- the language of the oppressor, my language --- to blasé but polite students fully aware of the fact that they were the rural peasant class. I was a guilty-minded spear head of neocolonialism in a neocolonial institution --- my students weren’t even allowed to speak their mother tongue on the boarding school grounds. Clumsily, the poem tells of the foisting of English into the minds of young Africans --- Ngugi rages about this stuff --- and the burying of tradition. In the second verse, using anguish like a bludgeon, its scope expands to America 200 years ago, revisiting English schools for native Americans and the demise of that culture.

Open E minor is a soulful chord that can jump out and grab the listener. It is in the tool bag of all great players. But most of all, it is easy to play --- hold down two strings, strum and our come those blues --- a magic nighttime spell of the life full of pain. "This Song is in English" was built around a monotonous four bar repetition of E minor, A, D then G, with a bridge change that offers scarce relief from the dreary monotony. Add to that my exceedingly poor voice of the time, and you have a disaster. But, lets face it some people are born talented and rise to superstardom quickly. Those with less talent must fight their way to the top, and live through the character-building phase of being godawful.

(Luckily, even before I took up guitar playing and singing, I had experience being truly bad at something. On my high school cross country and track team, as a budding high school runner, I consistently placed in the last quarter of the field. I was lapped and beaten in competition, laughed at and humiliated by beer-drinking football team bullies. For some reason I doggedly stuck with running, and even at Karamugi I went for a jog each evening through the red earth, the banana and coffee groves. As coach of the school cross-country team, my lack of running talent led to an internal coup plotted by athletes who did not agree with my rather strenuous training program, arguing that my own regular practice had not helped me get better. So why would it help them? But that’s another story.)

"This Song is in English" became a dreary part of my repertoire (when I recorded it much later in a Reading UK home studio --- it became a moderately less bad song. But that’s getting ahead of the story). With my guitar and limited, imperfect repertoire, I would travel to Nairobi and stay at Michael Glass’s house. He was our Peace Corps group’s bearded Californian hippie-cum-Bill-Gates-type who somehow got posted in the Ministry of Finance and was teaching computer programming to mid-level Nairobi bureaucrats. His Westlands flat became a perennial flop house for any of our group who happened to be in town, and if you showed up with your sleeping bag, there was always space. As well, there were always 3 or 4 other volunteers around with whom you could catch up on gossip, drink beer or light up a pipe.

So, given that the local Mt. Kenya East audience at my site did not --- ah --- appreciate ---- my unique talent, I relished the opportunity to carry my guitar down to Nairobi and impose it upon whoever was staying at Michael’s place. Being open-minded volunteers, they were normally receptive --- or would just politely leave the room and not say anything (to me, at least). Of course, Michael, and several others of the group, were far better gitar-pickers in their own rights, notably Stephan who is as fluent with six strings as he is with languages, or John, who quickly learned some clever Kenyan songs in training. So they would be happy to do the campfire thing, take the instrument away from me, and add something perhaps more melodic to the assembly in the living room.

A few of these performances whet my appetite. But I was still hungry for bigger things. Obviously, if one plans to be a rock star, eventually one must go up on the stage and sing. There is no rehearsal for this. The real event is the only way to do it and, for the truly bad, those watching must suffer along and share in the angst and embarrassment. In this way, my first appearance on stage was dreadful.

In the 80's, Peace Corps Kenya had a big enough budget to call all two hundred and fifty volunteers down to the coast for a week or so. It was functional --- medical could make sure everyone was healthy and sane, the administration folks could sequester those that needed to be sequestered and make them fill forms, forums could be held for important topical issues --- the politics of Moi, rabies, venereal diseases. And we could get more basic training in education, rural women’s extension, water, small business: all the good stuff we were supposed to be doing. So, with the Corps paying the way, we all trooped down to Turtle Bay Hotel in Watamu, a pure white-sand blue-watered beachfront located on the Malindi north coast in front of miles and miles of coconut plantations.

In between the boring --- and required --- sessions that took up much of the day, we did what decadent Peace Corps volunteers are good at the world over. We played and partied. On the beach, there was swimming, snorkeling, volleyball, pick-up soccer, beach-combing --- or simply drinking, basking and chatting at the pool side. At nite, there was group dining in the banquet room, drinking, hanging out at the bar, drinking, walking neath the moon on the sand, late night dancing in the mirror ball disco, clandestine smoking of weed and more drinking. The highlight, of course was the talent show, where any of the 250 souls with “talent” were invited to stand up on the makeshift stage on the opposite side of the pool, and play their instrument or sing, recite poetry, engage in buffoonery, read prose --- or --- make a spectacle of themselves.

I took the talent show very seriously. This was the artistic and emotional centre piece of the whole week --- perhaps the whole year or even my whole life --- and I had endlessly been practicing the 4 stark monotonous chords to This Song is in English at my hut and in my hotel room. Everything --- my career as a rock musician, my Peace Corps legacy, my romantic relationships, my peace of mind --- revolved around that performance.

A modicum of talent, grim determination and enthusiasm --- that’s all I took to the stage. And, under that ruthless Swahili moon, I played. For three minutes and some seconds, the audience held their collective breaths and endured those ransomed chords and that embarrassing intensity (lord I did mean every word I sang). Then it was over and everyone heaved a sigh of relief.

So many years later, it is hard to understand why I could not see beforehand what was plain to everyone: the brutal reality of how bad I was. Does the “will-of-the-wanna-be” insulate the bad artist from what should be a plain fact? What was I thinking? Is this blindness perhaps like the numbness that overwhelms the dying prey in the grips of the predator? Because if I knew then what I know now, I certainly would not have played that terrible song. Not then, at least.

In a totally unexpected turn of events, a Markus Kamau song was nominated by popular Washington DC blogger "Ball-Wonk" as "People's Anthem of the Washington Nationals".

"Commissariat honors citizen Markus Kamau of Nairobi, Kenya, as the most distant known member of the Nationals caucus, and nominates his song, "Randa Randa," as the People's Anthem of the Nationals Movement. The Academy of People's Arts declares that the song sounds like early Johnny Clegg. And the "ho yeah, ho yeah!" chorus seems to be the perfect beat for the bouncing lower-deck stands at RFK Canyon National Monument."

Kamau looks forward to rocking in the lower deck stands of RFK to Randa Randa this summer.

For more information, go to:

http://www.ball-wonk.com/

The Chants Sans Frontier project is doing well. I wanted to share a free download of one of the songs from the project. If you're new to M. Kamau --- listen to Pole Pole, which will be offered as a free download over the next 4 weeks.

With Pole Pole, I wanted to show Markus Kamau as a song-writer. So i asked Eric Wainaina to sing the lyric. Eric is a dedicated and generous musician. He came into the studio immediately, and the first "dummy" take was good enough to be the final.

If you like this, let people know!

After I played Randa Randa at Sauti Za Busara Zanzibar, a few people asked me if they could get a copy of the song. I'm putting it up for download during the month of March! Go to the music section of the site.

Enjoy!

Markus Kamau played at the Sauti za Busara (Sounds of Wisdom)
music festival in Zanzibar Stone Town on February 11th. Musical collaborator and Afro-fusion rocker Makadem “Ohanglaman”, who had a 40 minute set, invited Kamau to guest on one song. Makadem was a headliner on the Sunday nite show on the big stage, under the stars, up against the 500-year old enclosure walls of the Stone Town fort.

Sauti za Busara is the brain child of DJ Yusuf, who set up the organising non-profit NGO “to promote local and international music, build skills of regional artists and develop cross-regional promoters’ networks”. Busara is an exciting mix of local taraab beats, Tanzanian “bongo flava”, Swahili fusion and stuff from all over East Africa.

Our entourage included Tabu Osusa, virtuoso guitarist Dave Otieno, Makadem, Olith (from the Ketebul stable), an attack-oriented bass-n-drum team, and some fine back up singers. We flew down on a Friday and got to take in the Spice Islands over a long steamy weekend.

Olith played Saturday night. He put on a great Luo-flavored show and acted the rain-maker, summoning a downpour that put an end to the night’s entertainment.

The next night, we came on at 11:30PM after Mo’Some Big Noise, a Mozambican-Austrian collaboration that fuses Maputo vocalists, flutes, a trombone with punchy salsa and bass-n-drum beats. It was a great audience. About ten thousand people, evenly divided between African and Europeans.

Makadem roared into his ferocious Fela-style afro-funk, calling the house to order with the title track from his album, Ohanglaman. Makadem is a crowd pleaser. He stares out with menace, he postures, he stalks back and forth across the stage like a lion. He is a musician with a mission, and he has a great set. Check him out!

Midway through his act, Makadem calls Kamau up, who launches in Randa Randa, a rock-reggae swahili original with the explosive punkish changes, which bridges into “No Woman, No Cry”. A career moment. It was great rocking a multinational crowd in Stoned Town.

Asante sana to Makadem, who was a real gentleman to give me space in his show. Look for more Markus Kamau/Makadem collaborations in the future. Kudos to Sauti za Busara for a great time. Put it on your calendar next year!

For pictures, go to: http://www.busaralive.com/

Gladys, Bob and I made our usual Lamu pilgrimage, with stays in Shela, Manda Beach and points north on an island-hopping dhow. All is well in Shela. Tawfiq arranged the front rooms at Bahari Guest House --- our usual spot in the sea breeze over the Shela pier. The usual superb swahili cuisine --- honey-drenched banana pancake breakfasts served up with tropical fruit and fabulous fruit lime, banana and mango juices. Bob directed seafood lunches of prawns biriani, fresh tuna carpaccio, African crab, rockfish somosas, tuna steaks, lobster, coconut rice --- this was topped up with a fantastic traditional Swahili dinner at Tawfiq’s house in Shela village.

Strange psychic energy. On the day James Brown died, without knowing of his passing, I copied 40 of his songs from the laptop of Patrick --- a world traveling DJ also camped at Bahari --- onto my iPod. I spent the afternoon communing with the funk spirits of JB and Fela in the stoned baking sun of Shela dunes.

Tawfiq built a Mozambican-design dhow this year, christened “Hippo” after a poor beast wandered into the middle of Lamu island and was then shot by Kenya Wildlife Service (the butchered meat thereafter distributed to the community). Twenty-five beamy feet long, “Hippo” seats 10 comfortably for an evening sail. Its waterline sports black, blue and red stripes, has a shallow draft and points into the kazkazi wind better than most dhows. Anticipating a several day cruise, we tested it on a day’s Manda Island circumnavigation, out in the Indian Ocean swells, with Ali Bakari captaining. We were duly impressed.

****

After 3 days, we were graciously expelled from Bahari because some Swedes were willing to pay more had booked Xmas week. So we packed our stuff across the channel to Manda Island, and moved into grass huts on the artist colony cum resort called Diamond Beach. Over the last 4 years, Manda Island's deserted waterfront has become a little Riviera. Where there was only a rustic mosque, baobabs and sand, there are now stately residences, internet connections and sexy launches pulled up at the shore. Expats --- German magnates, Italian mobsters, etc. --- have snapped up all the plots between the Takwa inlet and Ras Kita. Land values are through the roof. There's even a desalinization plant supplying water, a little track behind the line of beach houses with a service tractor running up and down delivering supplies. It still has the empty feel of the Manda Island gulag it once was --- the birds, the savanna bush, the peace, the still heat, the quiet. But things have changed.

Sandwiched between the grounds of two beach palaces, Diamond Beach is a low-rent Swiss Family Robinson-style digs. With two other families and a group of Russions, we sat in the acacia shade reading, taking dips to cool off, drinking over-priced cocktails, going for sunset cruises, hiking in tide pools near the old Portuguese fort. With binoculars, Bob and I watched “Hippo”, captained by Peponi’s Mohamed, easily beat out two other Mozambican dhows on a Boxing Day regatta around the bay. I got through 4 books, including Jarid Diamond's "Collapse" (don't bother), John Perkins "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" (best read of the year) and Jeffery Sachs "The End of Poverty" (No end in sight, Jeff).

Christmas Eve, Diamond Beach proprietor Rachael had a mixed US-Kenyan group of writers over for an excellent evening dinner of dolphinfish curry. This was courtesy of Kwani literary group and Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina, now writer-in-residence at Union College NY. The literary group is in Lamu for writer’s workshops. I got to DJ -- at least until the gen-set ran out of fuel. When it kicked in again, beach boys demanding 50 Cent pushed me off the mixer in a cloud of ganja smoke -- and started up the ragga/hiphop/kapuka clamor that pulled the post midnight riff raff in off the beach.

Rachael and her mother Helen have done quite a bit with Diamond Beach in 3 years. From the lawn in front, it has a fine view of the Shela dunes across the channel. The bandas are serviceable, if not particularly comfortable. The driftwood bar --- festively decorated like a Gilligans’ Island Xmas set --- is the centerpiece. There’s a tree house in the baobab at the rear of the plot and a cement-floored family area with hammocks. After ample ‘06 rains, the landscaping efforts are working. Grass is growing in the sandy soil. Planted neem trees, papayas, passion vines, creepers and arrowroot are coming up. As a resort, it has character --- but it’s not cheap.

The BAD thing about Manda Beach -- or Diamond Beach -- or our low budget makuti cottage --- is sand fleas (maybe chiggers as well). While I was reading, they were having my legs for dinner. Even now in rainy Nairobi, I wake up in the night with an intense manic itching that puts me on insanity’s precipice, screaming for morphine, codeine, any phine. My legs and arms look like they had chicken pox. My foot looks like Frankenstein’s veined purple block of wood. In my day, I’ve been consumed by jiggers, bedbugs, ticks, botflies, fleas, tape worms, tsetse flies even evil anopheles mosquitoes. Rest assured, sand fleas en masse are the worst form of insect torture known, and the pain doesn’t come until after they have had their way with you.

Even before the fleas, my right leg had suffered a month’s worth of hard knocks. Upon arrival at Manda airport, I slipped while stepping off the dock onto the deck of a dhow, badly banging my knee’s soft cartilage, and nearly cracking my guitar in the process. On Shela Beach, two days later (as per the Jimmy Buffett song --- “Blew out my flip flop/Stepped on a pop top…”), I tripped over some beach flotsam, tore a dime-sized patch of skin off my big toe, and smashed the index piggie of the same foot into a swollen purple mess. A few days after that, valiantly out on a therapeutic jog along Manda beach, I twisted my ankle. That’s when the foot swelled to the size and shape of an ugly bottom-dwelling species of fish. Fluid welled like a balloon in my knee. Sand fleas just twisted the knife. So this was not one of those holidays where you get a tan and get in shape.

Gladys and I were happy when a room opened up at Bahari, and we floated back across the bay to the Shela side where we had a civilised evening drink and meal at Peponi's, followed by an evening spent massaging each others’ insect bites with medicinal neem/aloe cream that smells – I swear -- like locker room BenGay.

****

The post Xmas plan, which even the agony of my leg is not going to cancel, is island hopping north of Lamu towards the Somali border. On the radio, reports of an Ethiopian invasion are coming in, and the Islamist militia is retreating southward through Kismayu, two hundred fifty klicks to the north. American marines are discretely patrolling the mangrove flats north of Manda in speed boats, larger ships loom offshore.

On the 27th, we book Hippo from Tawfiq and hire Ali Bakari as captain/outfitter. He brings a dope-smoking crew of two (Mwarabu and Adu), ample provisions organized in Lamu, some plates and cutlery, a sunshade tarp, a jiko, two jerry cans of gasoline, and a transistor radio (no flotation devices, mind you!). We bring kikoys, sunscreen, towels and overnite bags. The cargo is stowed into Hippos lockers.

High tide is 8PM. We set off from Bahari landing with gentle kaskazi breezes pushing us up the bay, a half moon lighting the way. As we silently pass the vrooming 1 MW KenGen power station and the seafront lights of Lamu town, Adu serves up tea, then beans and chapati with a dessert of cardamom-spiced coconut-rice bread. We sail all the way up Lamu Harbour, then motor through the recently-dredged canal on the mainland side of Manda. In the canal, we pass new green and red LED flashers marking the port and starboard. Dark mangrove stands shadow the perimeter swamp.

Entering Manda Bay, which opens to the Indian Ocean, we are greeted by fresh wind and swells. The sail is unfurled and we look up at a spray of stars in the big sky. Ali, fisherman student of the night, tells of sightings of coastal UFOs --- vitu visichotambulikana --- streaking across the dark heavens. Satellites, high altitude spy-planes, who knows? Two hours later, in the Siyu Channel, we are becalmed, and Ali guns the outboard. Astern, a jet stream of disturbed bioluminescent plankton glows in the propellers’ wake.

The moon settles behind clouds low on the horizon. Gladys is asleep amidships on a mat in the hold, Bob lies along the port rail. I sit astern with Ali who is chewing quat and tending a trolling line with his toe. We listen to late night taarab music on the radio, my aching leg stretched across the ample wooden transom. Abu is rolling cigarettes, pouring spiced coffee from a thermos. Mwarabu, at the bow, is on lookout. We come to a beach south of Faza, and Mwarabu pitches the anchor for the nights’ mooring. We doze, draped in kikoys, for a chilly dewy-damp half watch, until cockcrow. A predawn glow lights up the mangroves, and the crew pulls up anchor.

Dawn brings a red sun, a breeze, and rising tropical heat. Mwarabu and Adu fix breakfast: cardamom-spiced coffee, sliced papaya, orange and pineapple, more coconut rice bread, bread with jam and margarine. We are headed toward Kiwayu, an 8-mile long coastwise barrier island, one mile wide, with a backbone of high dunes on the seaward side and tidal mangrove wetlands on the mainland side. On the southern tip of Kiwayu’s archipelago is Shimu la Tewa (grotto of grouper), a sheltered little round cove next to a sandy beach and coral outcrop on which seasonal fisherman --- camped on a grass embankment --- dry their catch in the sun. As we drift in, they greet Ali. We moor in clear water and have a morning swim while Ali goes up to the camp to powwow.

****

There was, sort of, a purpose to the trip. We wanted to salvage lumber from dhow shipwrecks. Haji, a craftsman friend in Mombasa, fashions excellent furniture from old dhow wood. Our hope was to do a deal where we supply wood in exchange for much reduced prices on a dhow wood desk set. The Plan was to search beaches and locate dhows between Pate and Kiungu. Also, we wanted to check out a perfect beach just north of Kiwayu that Bob had located using Google Earth. So much for plans.

Right now we need sleep. Except for occasional blurbs from Ali’s radio, we are benignly unaware of the retreat of the Somali Islamists from Mogadishu, the major shift in Horn of Africa geopolitics. Even as we motor northward, Ethiopian soldiers are confiscating M-16s --- originally looted during the Blackhawk Down fiasco --- from fleeing Islamic Court soldiers. The Kenya border is being sealed off.

****

So we cruise up the shallow waters on the inland side of Kiwayu and beach at Kassim’s camp, on the edge of the islands’ small village. There, we run into Lali, ex-crew member of Ali’s, now captaining Kassa, another Mozambican dhow from Shela.

Our crew and passengers all take mid-morning naps, variously in the shade of an acacia tortilis, under the camp’s thatch awning, and under the Hippo’s canvas cover. A couple of hours later, in the mid-morning’s burning heat, Ali wanders off into the village, Gladys reads, the crew rolls cigarettes with Lali. Bob and I foolishly decide to trudge across the island to the Indian Ocean beach to look for driftwood.

After scaling the high dunes, we scour the deserted beach, the jetsam of the modern tide --- flipflops, jerry can fragments, bits of styrofoam, toothbrushes, water bottles, shredded rags along with driftwood, shells and sea weed. Fried from the sun, Bob and I carry back a couple of worm-eaten pieces of old wood. Slightly more productive, Ali comes back with a 15-pound grouper, which the crew promptly guts and grills, and packs into the boat as we set off towards Pate.

On the water, shaded from the brutal sun by the tarp, we lunch on fresh grouper fillet, chapati, kachumbari (tomato, green pepper, onion and chillis) and rice bread, while contemplating the next destination. Due to time limitations, we have decided not to go northward (a good thing for us given that the Kenyan army is massing near the Kiunga border island).

Initially, Ali is resistant to rounding Pate’s ocean side, but Bob and I manage to convince him, so we take a southeastwardly heading into the ocean swells between Mwamba Hasani and Pate. The wind is gentle, the sky incredibly blue. Ali wants to follow a route through Pate Bay, inside of the reef. This worries Mwarabu, Hippos’ much less experienced ordinary captain, who fears the coral outcrops. There follows a quiet discussion between Ali and Mwarabu --- in swallowed and mashed syllables of Kiamu, the local Swahili dialect. Ali wins out, and we follow the shoreline, and run with the outgoing tide.

Given more time, and higher tides, we would have explored the ruins of Shanga, where Chinese traders visited a thousand years ago. But the tide is going out fast. At low water, just past the Pazarli Rocks (a macabre formation of finger-like coral projections rising out of the shallows), we run aground in sand flats off the mangroves of Ras Chongoni. There, we founder benignly for an hour or two waiting for the tide to change. Eventually, rising water lifts us off the bar and we make for Manda Toto, an islet on the northeastern side of the big Manda island.

If not for Ali’s local knowledge, our night --- as the sun goes down in stunning red and orange flames over the mainland --- would have been another damp affair on the boat, this time with chilly winds blowing off the Indian Ocean. But, as we took an evening dip in the waning light, Bakari again wandered off, this time to a newly-built cottage owned by an Arab from TSS, a coastal cotton-trading company. The chantey, with a solar lighting system, is manned by lone Maasai caretaker, Wilson, who is quite happy to put us up, share a meal and catch up with news in his own language with Gladys. So the crew remains on the Hippo, and we spend the night round a fire underneath the light of a deserted island moon with the breeze gusting through casuarinas.

We pack up at dawn and catch the early morning wind back up Manda Bay to the canal. While motoring in between the mangroves on our way to the Lamu Harbour, we breakfast and watch herons pick out crabs in the shallows. A fine wind carries us down the harbor, and we are back at Bahari by 11 AM.