This is a reblog. Anyone from the diaspora please read this. I don’t know about others but there is a breed of diasporans emerging who are tending to believe that Africans in Africa are amongst the lowest breed of humans and that they are too stupid to understand things. Its getting worse because now we are being accused of being ignorant. Lets clear the air. Kibaki is my black President and my idiot. Obama is yours. You cannot claim you know whats really going on in Africa when you are watching CNN and BBC. Trust me, what you get from the media, facebook, twitter, texts and emails from family and friends, phone calls does not amount to 10% of what is really going on here. You need to be here to make your comments and thoughts. There are diasporans who understand this balance and I respect them for that, but the others don’t seem to think that we even have the brains to work a Blackberry or iPhone or don’t understand what IPOs and who our CEOs are. Like we don’t build our own technologies. I don’t mind working with diasporans, but hands down, I can do what you can or better with the same resources you have, with the same money you have. But simply the fact that we have less, work from less and are close to doing more that you are with all your resources, should let you know that Africa rules. We rock, and we code and we are brilliant and we have the prettiest girls. Need more? Africa welcomes open minds. Got one, share. Don’t, don’t.

Two Faces

I have struggled to name this post. It was previously called Two Africans.

Just to clear the air, I am not and have never been (can’t speak for the future) anti-Google. I admire their business model and them as a business. But with the Barcamp thing as it was happening, a lot of people have become uncomfortable with the idea, and with Google creeping up within Africa, a lot of people are seeing their chances in IT sinking. I personally feel like we are sinking quickly to whatever new platform that comes out of the west. A lot of people have not noted but we don’t use Mixi or Cyworld. This are other social networks. And these are viable businesses, but difference is that they are Eastern Technologies. But I am not talking about them. And this is not a pity post.

I’m talking about two Africans. I used to live in London and Poland, and I would talk about Africa’s problems from afar. How pissed I would be about slow internet, expensive call costs, and impossibility to get anything done there. And I would talk about all this mostly to Melat, and one day she said something that was so significant. She said we are two different Africans. My problems and her problems were not the same. I was talking about “BBC problems” and “CNN problems”, but not the problems of being here. I was talking about late trains and she was worried about war not breaking out, I would talk about petrol hitting £ 1.00 and she was talking about elections and terrorism. I was worried about missing my weekly flights to Scotland, or hating hotel food (which I do) and she was talking about getting anything to eat, and surviving disease. I was talking about Northern Rock and bankruns, and she was worried about the bank being opened tomorrow.

ViRN Instruments (my baby) was never intended to be launched in Kenya. It was a London Business, supposed to be based in London for solving African problems. But every time I asked people to join up, they said, glad to but we have many more issues to solve. So I left London came home, and it all made sense. There are a ton of people here, with brilliant ideas and there are a lot of people in the diaspora who have a lot of ideas. Difference is that the African here won’t make it because their problems are far greater than for the African there. To attend say BarcampAfrica in Seattle, they have to apply for visas (which the won’t get), buy plane tickets at I think US$ 1500 and then there is the issue of accomodation for a week or so, to come talk to people who will probably not change how they do business because in reality, it won’t be about making the trip, but surviving. For the other African, all he has to do at the least is get inside a taxi and drive up the road, at the most buy a US$ 200 ticket on Virgin or Jetblue and tread across the country. And the people to who this camp would have mattered the most, if very very few if any will attend. And it won’t matter if there is a livestream, or skype stream, people won’t be as much interested as they were in their own Barcamps. Because to them, it has very little or nothing to do with them. And hearing things from a far is not the same as coming and talking about  it. You sit here local ground with all this Africans who have to fight Google in the morning, and then try get money together in the afternoon, and you will know the difference. I am an African caught between both worlds. I actually was planning to attend Barcampafrica, but the say US$ 3,000 I would have spent has gone to a couple of microfinance ventures. I asked myself, why would I get on a plane, travel to the other side of the world to talk about my problems to people who don’t share the same problems as I do? And skunkworks people are thinking the same thing.

The African over there is thinking, Jetblue is late, crap, I’m gonna be late for this Camp thing, and the African here is thinking Google moved into this line of business, here, crap, there goes that idea. Which is why I believe Joe Mucheru made the wrong decision in going to work for Google. I believe he would have fullfilled a better role locally in developing local technologies. But we all have different agendas and goals in life. This is Barcamp, but not for the Africans who so deserve it here. And no matter what you believe you want to achieve, and as much as you want to try involve as many Africans as possible, put yourselves in their shoes and not yours.

For the Barcamp guys, I won’t bitch about this anymore. With all the Barcamp Spirit I can offer, I wish you all the best, looking forward to reading reviews and seeing pictures from Barcamp.

Best wishes.

Kahenya

They Made Us Slaves (Part 2)

I’m very disappointed in the diaspora cause its full of haters. And its sad because when they talk about we, they refer to them and their adopted country folk. Which is ok, cause we don’t really need them back here, we are doing just fine. This is to the Kenyan and Ethiopian haters. Kenyan haters cause you have been trying to fuck our game up and Ethiopian haters cause when I wrote the first post, you nearly murdered me on the net. And also offline. I’m not here to try and impress you. So stop trying to impress me. I’ve heard of American National Bank Of Texas, have you heard of Ndetika Rural Sacco Ltd Savings & Credit Societies or Dashen bank? Does that impress you? Yes we know Visa, you heard of Kenswitch or Pesa Point? Yes, this is a 3rd world country, hell, the entire Africa is 3rd world, but we are building our own technologies, our own systems and we are doing it from here. Not there. We have crawling internet, Safaricom is fucking us over, Zain is confused, EMTN wont allow competitors, but the mutherfucking cable is here. Amen. And its changing. We have Berries, we Tweet, we Mac, fucking hell even Wesonga has Nancy. Even Meles Zenawi is on twitter and thats something to be proud of. We might be fighting for one acre of land with those matoke eating bastards Ugandans, and Martha Karua has gone to find God, Jesus and State House, I’m wondering if her clande is guiding her on some of those topics, and the sun is still melting our asses making us a tad shade darker when we walk through our streets hustling for bread and water to become closer to Jesus, and I can even afford to have a muthefucking stalker., we had our own Enron, and matter of fact, Obama ain’t Kenyan. Don’t mistake heritage with your own personal bragging rights shit. I’m Kenyan like Obama. Its on your blog. Being born in Nyandarua is far from birth in Honolulu. Even I know that. But your ignorant asses are sweating us. Treating us like we are down here and you are up there, hell even Meles Zenawi is on twitter. Progress. Look, we love politics, and Raila and Kibaki will still rumble, Kibera will still pull out train tracks in years to come, but we are not yet forgotten, obscure or dead. You are.

Don’t get me wrong, there are brilliant geniuses out there in the diaspora who we are working with, there are those who say they will do, and I’m still waiting (I know I’m guilty of this one), there are those who are busy doing shit and won’t want shit to do with us which is cool, but its you who from two oceans away want to stick your tongue up my asshole get into my business and criticise me for what I say or do without any construction in your words. What? is your mind still under construction? Do you fucking see a million dollar budgets around here? Nobody is against constructive criticism, but you are just hating. There are people in the diaspora who have are magicians, I mean Window is building us a window to explore the world, Erik and Juliana are giving us voices, and we are talking, Wangari is playing that movie again, guys I haven’t ever talked to like Maluka are painting the world, SomaliaArtiste who is waiting for her day to play with Mogadishu sand, alongside Knaan, Jal is rapping the shit out of the Sudan war, Obie and his birthed out a new soldier (God bless), but all you haters are simply showing us that they bought new cars and shit. 401 and credit cards, dudes, we have Okoa Jahazi by Safaricom. Even Wesonga insured Nancy so he is somewhere. And we even got greens we call veggies and digest them over the roofs and make yesterday disappear for a minute or two but we are not fucking with the white lines not even when we are parking our cars. You are. Shit, we can’t afford that in the first place, and who knows who to ask for that shit?

All I’m saying is come on, give us a break. Let us hustle as we know how to, or how the day permits us to. We are doing our best and if its not good enough for you, Frisco bridge has sure lots of spots which have diving boards and the ocean water looks so inviting.

They made us slaves

I have just had an interesting conversation with an Eritrean guy I know, good buddy called Mike. We hang out a lot when I’m in his side of town. This postl is intended for the Ethiopian Community on Twitter or those who read my blog. Get pissed off, really, if you read my blog, you know that I really don’t really give a fuck.

We know that the African Union holds office at Addis Ababa. Ethiopia also happens to be the only country in Africa that was not colonized. Hence the people are more proud. But I’ve been hanging out with Habesha folk especially because my wifey is Habesha, and the one thing I have come to learn is that America is your Promised Land. And its all good. Guess we all need that. But it is sad for you to be sitting in a small room in Chai Road (near Eastleigh, Isilii) waiting for a UN process to make you a citizen of some Western Country where you will have a better life. Or worse still be a nice beautiful thing, 20/21 ending up married to a 60 year old guy because he gave you that hope of getting a visa to go to America.

Not to be rude or anything, but there is nothing out there for you. You are making us slaves. Your lives are here. I know its tough to hear when work is not coming and life is not going anywhere, but we are going to make it happen now, together. From changes of guard to employement, to reduction in social ills, but you have to wake up and make the first step, not me. Its not about being broke, poor, illiterate, its first about taking charge and saying I will make it better. Ethiopians are very proud but lose their pride when it comes to America. Or money.

Why did I point out Ethiopia? Because of the migrated numbers from Africa to the West, Ethiopians are the largest migrated. They by far request more Visas to Western countries than any other country in the world. However, worse than being in a dictatorship, the Number 1 cause of Ethiopian problems today is laziness, followed by ignorance. The search for a better life means that half of those who attempt to go to a Western country through a backdoor route end up dead or enslaved in a prostitution ring, or in a loveless marriage. The other half end up in foreign countries waiting for a UN process that turns them into Refugees. This in turn means that they will end up doing unskilled blue collar work, instead being the lions that they are. They will not get a vocation, they will not study, and they will never return home, except when the die or get deported. This also means that Ethiopia has an employement gap and this in turn causes investors to lose motivation. Only the Chinese are investing large scale, and they are primarily bringing their own people to work there, thus creating jobs for themselves but not for the Ethiopians.

Ethiopians, America is not your Promised Land.

I have struggled to name this post. It was previously called Two Africans.

Just to clear the air, I am not and have never been (can’t speak for the future) anti-Google. I admire their business model and them as a business. But with the Barcamp thing as it was happening, a lot of people have become uncomfortable with the idea, and with Google creeping up within Africa, a lot of people are seeing their chances in IT sinking. I personally feel like we are sinking quickly to whatever new platform that comes out of the west. A lot of people have not noted but we don’t use Mixi or Cyworld. This are other social networks. And these are viable businesses, but difference is that they are Eastern Technologies. But I am not talking about them. And this is not a pity post.

I’m talking about two Africans. I used to live in London and Poland, and I would talk about Africa’s problems from afar. How pissed I would be about slow internet, expensive call costs, and impossibility to get anything done there. And I would talk about all this mostly to Melat, and one day she said something that was so significant. She said we are two different Africans. My problems and her problems were not the same. I was talking about “BBC problems” and “CNN problems”, but not the problems of being here. I was talking about late trains and she was worried about war not breaking out, I would talk about petrol hitting £ 1.00 and she was talking about elections and terrorism. I was worried about missing my weekly flights to Scotland, or hating hotel food (which I do) and she was talking about getting anything to eat, and surviving disease. I was talking about Northern Rock and bankruns, and she was worried about the bank being opened tomorrow.

ViRN Instruments (my baby) was never intended to be launched in Kenya. It was a London Business, supposed to be based in London for solving African problems. But every time I asked people to join up, they said, glad to but we have many more issues to solve. So I left London came home, and it all made sense. There are a ton of people here, with brilliant ideas and there are a lot of people in the diaspora who have a lot of ideas. Difference is that the African here won’t make it because their problems are far greater than for the African there. To attend say BarcampAfrica in Seattle, they have to apply for visas (which the won’t get), buy plane tickets at I think US$ 1500 and then there is the issue of accomodation for a week or so, to come talk to people who will probably not change how they do business because in reality, it won’t be about making the trip, but surviving. For the other African, all he has to do at the least is get inside a taxi and drive up the road, at the most buy a US$ 200 ticket on Virgin or Jetblue and tread across the country. And the people to who this camp would have mattered the most, if very very few if any will attend. And it won’t matter if there is a livestream, or skype stream, people won’t be as much interested as they were in their own Barcamps. Because to them, it has very little or nothing to do with them. And hearing things from a far is not the same as coming and talking about  it. You sit here local ground with all this Africans who have to fight Google in the morning, and then try get money together in the afternoon, and you will know the difference. I am an African caught between both worlds. I actually was planning to attend Barcampafrica, but the say US$ 3,000 I would have spent has gone to a couple of microfinance ventures. I asked myself, why would I get on a plane, travel to the other side of the world to talk about my problems to people who don’t share the same problems as I do? And skunkworks people are thinking the same thing.

The African over there is thinking, Jetblue is late, crap, I’m gonna be late for this Camp thing, and the African here is thinking Google moved into this line of business, here, crap, there goes that idea. Which is why I believe Joe Mucheru made the wrong decision in going to work for Google. I believe he would have fullfilled a better role locally in developing local technologies. But we all have different agendas and goals in life. This is Barcamp, but not for the Africans who so deserve it here. And no matter what you believe you want to achieve, and as much as you want to try involve as many Africans as possible, put yourselves in their shoes and not yours.

For the Barcamp guys, I won’t bitch about this anymore. With all the Barcamp Spirit I can offer, I wish you all the best, looking forward to reading reviews and seeing pictures from Barcamp.

Best wishes.

Kahenya