If you feel the need to talk to me, to be angry with me, or just to insult to me, my email address is at the end or this tweet. I will post screenshots of your email here, without your name or address. Let's talk. Let's unpack this feeling. This foreboding. >>
m@owaahh.com
They subject for this one was "I truly lack a subject."
We must all entertain the thought, and it's weird that we have to even do this because it should be default, that there are no second chances. No heavens or hells. No God and therefore, no power and no hierarchy. There's just life, right now.
The funny thing, this man gave me the first paid job I ever truly liked. I can't even remember what I wrote about then.
We have to beg for our own living space.
We have to beg to be remembered as human beings.
We have to beg to stay alive.
This can't be the story of our generation.
"This country is killing dreams in all aspects. Everything is frustrating and there is no hope. The only thing left is working hard to leave because staying means one is losing his or her mental health."
"I'm not surprised really, because there are so many out there blinded by tribe, short-term money favors and ignorance. As long as such people remain the majority I'm afraid the selling price for our country has already been set. "
See, for a moment while growing up, things looked like they were working for the country, for us. I even grew up promising to be part of the change. Make my country better for all. Now? Not so much. I gave up. Even before I turn 25. #TheManWhoSoldACountry
The article linked here starts with "As a journalist, then working for the Jubilee Party affiliated Newspaper, I felt a special duty to warn the country of the looming danger"
How do I feel about it? Nothing. It's not even apathy or hate.
This conversation is happening everywhere, in every space you occupy. It was happening long before I sat in the middle of the night and just my mind try to understand it's human experience.
"Is this the curse of Africa?" Is it? Are we the next generation of people who happen to have been born black that serve people with lighter skin or more money? Is it?
Or just, too much traffic. That's also a possibility. I doubt our state is competent or efficient enough [I have already said this], to even understand this entire process we are going through.
"Kenya is all I know. But now they don't want me on the internet so I'm wondering if me and my Kenya stand a chance against the rest of the globe. If it's worth fighting for." #TheManWhoSoldACountry
""This article is great because the man who sold a country could be anybody. From the founding father and his family to the electorate that voted in a totally criminal regime. "
"This article is great because the man who sold a country could be anybody. From the founding father and his family to the electorate that voted in a totally criminal regime."
"I’m so angry and helpless all at the same time... my current fantasy is turning myself into a modern day vigilante.. the options seem that limited.. revolt or relocate. "
"I knew shit was bad but now it's really been put into perspective. The future is bleak for us. We truly are fucked. I want to vent but I already have a bloody migraine. "
"It evokes sadness and excitement alike. I adore the fact that you have spread the blame to every Kenyan and portraying the systematic issues facing our nation."
"That is why no matter how angry we get, it doesn't amount to much. That's why they won't bother taking your article down. Because Kenyans will never be angry enough to do anything about what's being done to us and it's unfortunate." #TheManWhoSoldACountry
"Question: Who decided this way of living is a brilliant existence? Like what kind of mind conjures up this level of demented gut wrenching horrors and labels it existence? "
"Anyway I once told my girlfriend that if these guys came back to power, I'm leaving this place but she's reluctant for some reason and it's put a strain on us(tbh) idk if we still are dating but I'm leaving within a year and I don't feel a tinge of guilt" #TheManWhoSoldACountry
"Pens ultimately suffer acute malnutrition and they too, sometimes, have to end up in a dustbin-less train- chewed, broken and literally blank." #TheManWhoSoldACountry
"We still haven't reached that moment of clarity,the one you usually get after an orgasm."
"Remember the PRC has trillions of dollars, its small change for them, they should be least concerned about some poor mutura eaters, just learn to say THANK YOU thats the least expected from a thieving beggar." #TheManWhoSoldACountry
"Again, thank you. For the mirror. For the vision of our worn, shattered hearts, our minds full of shadows."
"Uhuru hasn't shut down the internet, we importing chinese goods, lets learn them and reverse engineer...to the farmers, do value addition an sell in international markets, everything is laid out, we can only blame ourselves build a local market." #TheManWhoSoldACountry
"Kenya molded me to believe that life is like a boxing journey only that one got spent the rest of his/her life training hard for a fight which will never happen.... what happened to us???" #TheManWhoSoldACountry
"Classic read!
Wish you spared a paragraph for the plight of Kenyan workers. Who are molested by JP government. When a government pays her workers a salary and goes round to tell them in public that THEY CANNOT LIVE ON WHAT THEY ARE PAID. #TheManWhoSoldACountry
"I read your article yesternight and I felt the heaviness in my heart. The several what ifs couldn't let me sleep.
"I'm also afraid of tear gas and being beaten by police if I went out to the streets no matter how peacefully. I'm all I have to depend on and I can't afford to be out of commission." #TheManWhoSoldACountry
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“There were two kinds of slaves, the house Negro and the field Negro. The house Negroes--they lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good, they ate good because they ate his food--what he left.“
“They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near their master; and they loved their master more than their master loved himself. They would give their life to save their master's house--quicker than the master would.”
If the master said, "We got a good house here," the house Negro would say, "Yeah, we got a good house here." Whenever the master said "we," he said "we." That's how you can tell a house Negro.
In 1983, Moi (or rather his cat's paw, Moses Mudavadi) dissolved the Nairobi City Council, then run by Mayor Nathan Kahara, and appointed a Nairobi City Commission in a scenario just like this.
Nairobi "was thereafter run by commissions which presided over an era of irregular land allocations, to the extent that every open space, including public toilets, was given out."
"But even under the commission, the city failed to reclaim its glitter... the city’s capital expenditure per capita for water and sewerage fell from US$28 in 1981 to US$2 in 1987...Per capita maintenance expenditures fell from US$7 to US$2..." standardmedia.co.ke/article/200009…
While writing this story, my focus was on describing how global finance has been driving up the cost (in both money and lives, for doctors and patients alike) of healthcare in KE. I used publicly available info to map out some of threads, and I barely touched the magnitude...
There are so many global corporate interests in Kenya’s privatization of its healthcare sector (as per the plan within Vision 2030) that it’s hard not see it as a hostile takeover in all but name. Hostile to us, as Kenyans, that is.
In 2013, the hospital was bought by two private equity firms, which might explain somewhat why they consider patients customers, and talk about us like our lives can be traded.
Thread on how private hospitals discuss your healthcare, like a commodity. Part expose, part commentary, part rant.
Buckle up, this is not going to be emotionally easy a ride to discuss.
Let’s start.
First on the chopping board is Nairobi Women’s hospital. These screenshots are from a Whatsapp group for the Nakuru branch staff, and they read, someone said earlier today, like the hospital is a trading floor.
1. Lock discharges.
2.
In this one, the COO Eunice Munyingi tells someone that s/he is discharging patients too fast, and it is “not sustainable.”
Someone should find these old movies shot in Kenya and East Africa and compile them...they would provide a primary teaching tool to kids about the white gaze, among other things.