TO SEE AND
TO KEEP
PART ONE
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Everyone for himself, God for us all
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Traders and passers-by lie down at the Race Course roundabout, Nairobi, when police and gangsters exchanged fire on Wednesday 27th February, 2002 - Photo by East Africa Standard, Nairobi, Kenya. |
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London FASHION week
TEAR'S a new look. Crystal arrangements instead of clothes. Top Brit designer unveils black and silver 'skin jewellery' at London Fashion Week. Other designs based on tribal tattoos were painted on in black ink
For crying out loud...
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Eye-catching ... skin jewels TEAR’S a novel twist on floral fashion — crystal arrangements instead of clothes. |
Bold front ... paintwork Other designs based on tribal tattoos were painted on in black ink and worn with a head feather. Heap brave! |
Top Brit designer Jeanette Maskrey unveiled hand-made black and silver crystal “skin jewellery” at her London Fashion Week show on Tuesday 19th Feb. 2002. The former make-up artist was inspired after messing about with sequins and glue.
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It's fashion's blag trade
going out of the way
Stocking filler ... model |
 In the bag ... new catwalk style |
 Tangerine dream ... model |
MODELS at London Fashion Week turn the rag trade into the blag trade — by looking like dead-ringers for bank robbers. The girls took to the catwalk with stockings over their faces to show off designs by students at Central London's St Martin's College.
In the past, the famous fashion school has produced talents such as Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen. So it's no surprise that the audience for the college show was packed with talent spotters. Students Asa Westland and Jessica Hunter drew gasps from many of them with their bizarre all-over body stockings.
MORE NEXT YEAR
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Signs of the times
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Kenyan lioness adopts another oryx
The lioness that adopted a baby oryx has done it again . . . on Valentine's Day. Less than a month after the love that astonished the world ended when a lion from another pride killed the calf, the lioness has adopted another new-born Beisa oryx at Samburu national park. But this time, to make sure the law of the jungle does not reign supreme again, game wardens have mounted a round the clock watch over the odd couple. "We do not want anything to happen to the calf," Mr Simon Leirana, chief warden at the Samburu reserve told the Nation.
All wardens now have orders to keep away other lionesses in the pride - and particularly the lion that made a meal of the first oryx baby. "We cannot attempt to feed the calf since the lioness is keeping a very close watch," Mr Leirana said. By yesterday, the wardens had established where the mother oryx was - two kilometres from the site and afraid to go any closer because of the pride of lions that has made the area their home. Unless the baby is fed within the next two days, it is likely to die from hunger. The lioness too has given up hunting since adopting the oryx, 24 hours ago. Guests from the Samburu Serena game lodge within the park have been streaming to the site after news of the bizarre new adoption leaked out. "It is fitting that it happened on Valentine's Day," said Mr Herman Mwasaghu, Serena lodge manager.
Mr Leirana, who made hourly checks on the calf and its new mother, said the first 72 hours of the calf's life were crucial. "Unless we feed it or entice the mother to come closer, the calf might die," he said. He was concerned that although they could feed the calf, it might then be rejected by the lioness. "It would take on the smell of humans and thereby interfere with the natural course of things," he said.
He said the calf was not as frisky as they usually are and attributed this to lack of food. "It is walking along with the lioness but this is likely to change as it gets weaker," he said.
Mr Leirana said the
lioness had been following herds of oryx since its first adopted calf was killed
by the lion. "But it never kills them. Instead, whenever it is hungry, it goes
after antelopes and warthogs," Mr Leirana said. By late yesterday, the lioness
and its new baby were resting in the shade of an acacia tree. - Daily
Nation 16th Feb. 2002.
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Can we be friends? The Oryx calf that was
recently adopted by a lioness is weighed at the Animal Orphanage in Nairobi
after it was flown in from Samburu National Reserve .
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Rescued oryx calf flown to Nairobi
The oryx calf which was befriended by a lioness at the Samburu National Reserve last week was on Wednesday 20th February 2002 flown to Nairobi. The oryx, christened Valentine, arrived aboard a private aircraft that touched down at Wilson Airport in Nairobi at 11.45 am and immediately driven to the Animal Orphanage at the Nairobi National Park. Accompanying Valentine all the way from Lewa Downs private animal sanctuary in Isiolo was its special veterinary doctor, D Adeela Sayyid of Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS).
On arrival at the orphanage, Valentine was received by KWS Assistant Director (Education), Mr Samuel Ngethe, his deputy, Mr Charles Muthui and a host of other senior staff. Speaking to reporters at the orphanage after introducing the eight-day old oryx to a three-month old orphaned cab named Charlie, Sayyid said the oryx is in a “super state”. Sayyid said she has prescribed lactogen for the oryx that will be fed to it at intervals of two hours each day for several months before being introduced to milk.
“I have a team of trained personnel to mount a 24-hour surveillance on the oryx and this will go on until I am satisfied that it can be let to the wild,” said Sayyid. Ngethe said the decision to translocate the oryx from the Lewa Downs was reached after it became evident that the sanctuary has inferior facility was not capable catering for the oryx.
He further explained that KWS decided to cut the relationship between the oryx and the lioness to avoid a repeat of the incident that occurred after an old lion ate the first oryx adopted by a lioness. The director said the lioness will, however, remain in the plains. He said a team of researchers are already in Samburu to embark on studies on the lioness.
Meanwhile, a new controversy has emerged between the KWS and Samburu County Council over the translocation of the oryx calf to Nairobi.
The move by KWS to transfer the calf to Nairobi’s Animal Orphanage from the Lewa Downs game clinic in Isiolo was met with protests.The Samburu National Reserve Senior Warden, Mr Simon Leirana, acting for the Samburu County Council, opposed the KWS’ move to transfer the calf named Valentine to Nairobi. - East Africa Standard 20th Feb. 2002.
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What a sacrifice?
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This picture of Field Marshall Dedan Kimathi,
taken in the forest as the War of Independence raged, is one of the
priceless historical items the Sunday
Standard has in its possession. They include the Bible Kimathi used
on February 17, 1957 - exactly 45 years ago - the day before his execution.
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What happened to his family?
The making of a freedom hero
Dedan Kimathi was born on October 31, 1920 in Tetu location in the North Tetu Division of Nyeri District. He used the surname of Wachiuri, his mother’s former husband who had died some years before his birth. Wachiuri had three wives and so it was a large family. Kimathi had two brothers (Wambararia and Wagura) and two sisters.
There are many stories about his legendary pranks as a child but it is impossible to say how many are true and how many are mythical and have grown with the legend. At the age of fifteen he became a pupil at Karunaini Primary School in Tetu and excelled at English and poetry.
To raise money for his school fees he established a small night class where, every evening, he taught other youngsters whatever he had learnt during the day. In exchange he took money or paraffin or soap, which he then sold at Ihururu Market.
Three years later he became a pupil at a more advanced school, Wandumbi, on the Tetu/Thegenge borders. This time the fees came from the seeds of Grevillia Robusta which he collected in the Aberdares and for which the Forestry Department was paying a cent a tin.
On September 17, 1938 he was circumcised at the Ihururu Dispensary. In 1939 he got his kipande from the DC’s office and got his first job with the Forestry Department. Leaving there under a cloud he met and impressed a teacher called Eliud Mugo from Mathira Division. Eliud, blind in one eye and later to become a notoriously oppressive Chief in lriaini Location during the Emergency, arranged for Kimathi to enrol at the Tumutumu CSM School. He stayed there for two years, save for a three-month break in 1941 when he joined the army. He finally left Tumutumu in February 1944, being unable to pay fees arrears.
Over the next five years he tried different ways of earning a living, becoming a school teacher, a clerk with first a dairy and then a timber firm, and a trader. In January 1949 he got a job, but not for long, as a teacher at his old school Karinaini.
But wherever he went and whatever he did Kimathi became a welcome and popular figure with his fellow Kikuyus on his travels. He had a powerful and attractive personality and he began to involve himself in the politics of the day, and also of the night.
Initially he was just one of the stewards at the mass rallies held by Kenyatta and other politicians. However, he speedily graduated and became the chief organiser. He was elected secretary of the Ol Kalou and Thomson’s Falls branch of the Kenya African Union (KAU) on June 2, 1952. It is widely accepted that he was already planning a more proactive and aggressive strategy than the Muhimu Central Committee with whom he had long forged links.
Four months later he was involved in organising a mass oathing ceremony on the banks of the Gura River, which was attended by thousands of Kikuyus. Nderi Wang’ombe, the Nyeri District Senior Chief, got wind of what was happening. Fatally, Nderi decided to intervene and he was killed by the frenzied crowd. Kimathi became a marked man and shortly afterwards he was arrested by Chief Muhoya’s Tribal Police at a friend’s house.
At the Chief’s Camp, he did a deal with the guards and disappeared in the night to the Aberdares. He was now 32 years old and entering the most important four years of his life.
By the end of it he had been, at the least, a crucial factor in forcing the British Government to reassert its right to dictate the pace of constitutional change in Kenya. British Colonial Secretaries henceforth used this right rapidly too dismantle the white settlers’ political power in Kenya, some more ruthlessly than others.
Kimathi’s war became a most vivid real-life demonstration to the world that the British people, severely exhausted by the Second World War, no longer had either the will or the resources to impose colonialism in Kenya or anywhere else in Africa through the barrel of a gun.
It is one of the ironies of our history that in October 1956 Kimathi was shot and captured while at the same time Lennox-Boyd (Colonial Secretary) was telling the annual conference of the Conservative Party that “any other policy but that of moving towards self-government and satisfaction of nationalist aspirations in the colonies would be fraught with disaster”? - Sunday Standard, Kenya, 17th Feb. 2002.
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