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@Owaahh
One Story is good, till Another is told.
8 subscribers
Mar 9, 2020 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
“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.”
Feb 25, 2020 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
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.

The commission managed Nairobi until 1992.

Moi is clearly not dead. 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."

Emman Omari, DN, Jan 2000 (nation.co.ke/news/1056-3754…)
Jan 27, 2020 • 18 tweets • 5 min read
Part two of the healthcare conversation we’ve been having is in today’s meat wrapper as well (up on the blog soon, part 1 is already there).

Part 3 tomorrow is responses from regulators, hospitals, probably their owners, doctors, patients... 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...
Jan 21, 2020 • 16 tweets • 8 min read
Another appearance by Nairobi Women’s Hospital.

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.

businessdailyafrica.com/markets/Nairob… This one is Aga Khan; it was only a matter of time before they made an appearance.

“Private hospitals are the main reason health insurance is out of reach for majority in this country.”
Jan 21, 2020 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
So it begins...

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.
Jan 7, 2020 • 52 tweets • 20 min read
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. 2. 1953
Dec 22, 2019 • 25 tweets • 7 min read
Since I posted this offer for old notes, multiple people have gotten in touch with more of the 1k old notes (@CBKKenya I might have found the entire stash you didn’t mop up).

Any other fellow collectors willing to buy them off our hands? We need money we can use.

Thread. Batch 1. Any offers?
Dec 19, 2019 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
If the independence generation wants to survive until 2022 or after without us eating the rich, they need to,

1. Roll back the state. A lean government is what we need.

2. Retire progressively or we push them out.

3. Let us in everywhere. Especially into money and ideas. 4. Invest their money into nursing homes and just leave.

5. Stop trying to parent millennials. We are parents now, and we have taken back our mental health, and we see their ongoing mistakes.

6. Understand that we have not lived their experiences, and we never will.
Dec 18, 2019 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
The Mau Mau was a class war that played out, as these things often do, as a generational war. Almost any actual leader you can think of was in their 30s and 20s in 1952.

Kimathi was 32,
Mwariama was 24,
Matheng’e was 33,
Itote was 30,
Muthoni was 19... Even among the Kapenguria 6, Jomo might as well have been a grandfather.

The true Mau Mau and radicals among them were in the same age bracket as those in the forest.

Kaggia was 31,
Kubai was 35,
Ngei was 29,
Oneko was 32...
Jul 23, 2019 • 9 tweets • 6 min read
Going through the #MauritiusLeaks released last night by @ICIJorg, because Kenyans and people investing in KE have been using Mauritius as a tax haven for a long time...So here are a few names in the leaks.
1. @umaticapital, where ICT CS @joemucheru is an investor and shareholder Lamu Oil and Gas Ltd, owned by Qatar National Bank and Edgo Energy. The Qataris opened their embassy in KE in April 2012; on June 1st 2012 Lamu Oil and Gas Ltd was opened in Mauritius, and won the block concessions a month later. #MauritiusLeaks
Sep 28, 2018 • 48 tweets • 23 min read
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."
Sep 27, 2018 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
The Man Who Sold a Country owaahh.com/the-man-who-so… In Lieu of a King: "The raids on the public coffers have become the national soap opera, each new twist being fed as tantalizing fodder to a tabloid generation." owaahh.com/in-lieu-of-a-k…
Sep 21, 2018 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
On this day, five years ago, Westgate was just waking up the way malls do. What begun just a few hours from now could have been prevented, could have been stopped before it escalated, could have been solved fast, could have been investigated so we never go through it again... The clusterfuckery that's the other side of this social contract we call Kenya failed in every instance. It ignored warnings, reacted like a drunk sloth, brought tanks to a gun fight, frustrated international investigators, and blew up a pile of explosive mattresses.
Sep 20, 2018 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
Also, freedom of expression? That one that has been under threat for a while, there's a new wave coming with the Copyright Amendment Bill (2017), now in heading to its 3rd Reading.

Everything on this page is a real threat to the stories you want to read.
Let me tell you a story. Two years ago, after I did the Tatu City series (owaahh.com/war-tatu-city/), several things happened. One of them was that someone in Lagos sent a takedown request to my host. I didn't know until I had all of 12 hours to respond to it.
Sep 20, 2018 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
Are we angry yet?

Are we angry enough yet?

What will finally break us? Because not only can the center not hold, it has been mortgaged for generations. It seems there are only ways to experience this country today, as a subservient, overly optimistic (even with a gun to the head), voting citizen who stays quiet and prays for Ushuru and Bill the Teary.

Or as an anarchist. Because this can't be how this story ends.
Aug 31, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
― Frederick Douglass “The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.”
― Gore Vidal
Aug 14, 2018 • 29 tweets • 5 min read
A few more stories, in the "Gospel of Peter" (discovered in 1886), Jesus doesn't just rise from the dead. Two angels first appear, then after he rises, the angels heads "reached to heaven", and Jesus head "overpassed the heavens". Also, a cross is following them (and it speaks). In the Book of Enoch, the explanation for the great flood is that fallen angels had sex with humans, who gave birth to giants "whose height was three hundred ells." The giants then eat the humans, then ate "birds, and beasts and reptiles and fish" before eating each other.
Aug 11, 2018 • 10 tweets • 7 min read
Baobox is such a cool place.

Also, I am happy to report that the water cutting on #NairobaeIGTour 4.0 has begun. My crown is at stake today (or rather tomorrow morning). ...and then we won! (although by we here I mean @Atetwee and @theMagunga). The game was Kenya 50/50.
#NairobaeIGTour
Aug 11, 2018 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
The oldest written customer complaint dates back to ancient Mesopotamia.

In the cuneiform tablet, a customer claims he was sold inferior copper ingots (and that his seller had treated his emissaries rudely "in enemy territory" and refused to refund the money). In 1974, the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis published a paper titled "The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of 'Writer’s Block.'" It contained zero words.

It has been cited more than 60 times.
Aug 7, 2018 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Observing a moment of silence at the 20th anniversary of the August 7 '98 bombings.
#Aug7at20 "Al Qaeda had three main goals
1. To kill and destroy
2. To divide us
3. To undermine the values we hold dear.
...Although we have suffered, we are not beaten."

-@BobGodec

#Aug7at20
Aug 7, 2018 • 5 tweets • 5 min read
The only aerial photo of the August 7th 1998 blast taken in real time by a construction worker at Times Towers.

#Aug7at20
#iSurvived98 August 7th was the end of a normal week in KE. Bankers' strike (hence reduced casualties at Coop), teachers' strike, petty politics...a time like now, just an hour to the blast, this is the headline you would have been reading.
#Aug7at20
#iSurvived98
#Kenyanhistory