National Heroes

Geoffrey William Griffin:founding director of Starehe Boys' Centre and School

2011-11-15T06:21:00.001-08:00

Dr. Geoffrey William Griffin (June 15, 1933 in Eldoret – June 28, 2005) was the founding director of Starehe Boys' Centre and School. He founded the school in November, 1959 with the help of the late Geoffrey Geturo and Joseph Gikubu, the current senior deputy director of the school; he directed the school from its founding to the end of his life. He was also the founding director of the National Youth Service between 1964 and 1988, when he retired from the Kenyan Civil Service.

Starehe offers a free, high-quality, education to many orphaned and poor African children (on a model similar to Christ's Hospital). Many old boys are now prominent people in Kenya and the world. (Raphael Tuju, retired Cabinet Minister, Paul Ereng, Olympic gold Medalist, Dr Amrose Misore, Senior Deputy Director of Medical Services and Prof George Magoha, Medical Surgeon & Urologist who is the current competitively appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nairobi are just a few of the Old Stareheans).

It is fitting to note that the first successor to Dr. Griffin as Director of Starehe Boys' Centre & School was Prof. Jesse Mugambi a respected and renowned educationist in Kenya and previously professor of philosophy at the University of Nairobi. Three sons of Professor Jesse Mugambi have passed through Starehe Boys' Centre as students at different time when Dr. Geoffrey William Griffin was still the director. The professor resigned from his duties as Director of Starehe Boys' Centre on Friday, January 16, 2009. The reason given for his sudden resignation was that the University of Nairobi had refused to extend his contract and required him to resume his duties as a professor of Philosophy.

Griffin had a humble educational background: after leaving school early, he joined, first, the Survey of Kenya, and then the King's African Rifles. After serving during the Emergency, he became convinced of the justice of the Mau Mau cause, and tired of the brutality of war.^[1] He did not review his commission, and began to participate in attempts to rehabilitate former fighters held, or recently released from detention camps. After some years, his attention turned to children orphaned by the war, and he started a rescue centre, out of which grew Starehe.

Griffin rose to become a pioneering educational leader and was awarded an honorary PhD in Education by Kenyatta University for developing Starehe Boys' Centre and School to become one of the premier schools not only in Kenya but in Africa that is renowned the world over as a centre of educational excellence.

He was awarded the Moran of the Order of Burning Spear by President Kenyatta in 1970, the Moran of the Order of the Golden Heart by President Moi in 1986 and the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 2002, and the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Kenya National Human Rights Commission in 2005

Source: Wikipedia

Mohamed Amin: a maverick front-line cameraman driven to get out the truth

2011-11-15T06:03:00.001-08:00

The turmoil of Africa’s emergence into the 20th century has long been the focus of the critical eye of the Western World. From exploration to exploitation; from war-torn horror to wildlife wonder; it has all been exposed to the relentless gaze of the international press. No one has caught its pain and passion more incisively than Mohamed Amin, photographer and front-line cameraman extraordinaire.

He was the most famous photojournalist in the world, making news as often as he covered it. “Mo” trained his unwavering lens on every aspect of African life, never shying from the tragedy, never failing to exult the success. He was born into an Africa at the high noon of colonial decline and by his early teens was already documenting events which were soon to dominate world news. He witnessed and recorded the alternating currents of his beloved continent and beyond, projecting those images across the world, sometimes shocking, sometimes delighting millions of television viewers and newspaper readers.

His coverage of the 1984 Ethiopia famine proved so compelling that it inspired a collective global conscience and became the catalyst for the greatest ever act of giving. Unquestionably, it also saved the lives of millions of men, women and children. The concerts of Band Aid & Live Aid and songs “We are the World” and “Do they know it is Christmas” were a direct result of Mo Amin’s moving television images.

Born in Kenya in 1943, the second son of a poor railway worker, Mo was soon faced with racism, an inevitable product of colonialism. He never forgot those underdog years and fought against prejudice for the rest of his life.

From the time he acquired his first camera, a box brownie, Mo’s future was determined. Quickly he learned photographic and darkroom skills and was already applying them to commercial use when he went to secondary school in the then Tanganyika. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Mo covered every major event in Africa and beyond, braving torture, surviving bombs and bullets, overcoming disability to return to camera work within six months of losing his arm, to emerge as the most decorated news cameraman of all time.

His frenetic life was cut tragically short when, in November 1996, hijackers took over an Ethiopian airliner forcing it to ditch in the Indian Ocean killing 123 passengers and crew. Mo died on his feet still negotiating with the terrorists. By any standards, Mo’s life was truly remarkable; action-packed, full of pain and passion and inseparable from the troubled chronicle of emergent Africa.

At the end of 1997, David Johnson, an American and Christel de Wit, a South African, collaborated with Salim Amin, Mo’s only son, to launch The Mohamed Amin Foundation’s Broadcast Television Training Centre, a professional media training centre based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Source: http://www.moforce.com

Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: a Literary and Social Activist.

2011-11-15T05:46:00.001-08:00

Ngugi wa Thiong'o, currently Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, was born in Kenya, in 1938 into a large peasant family. He was educated at Kamandura, Manguu and Kinyogori primary schools; Alliance High School, all in Kenya; Makerere University College (then a campus of London University), Kampala, Uganda; and the University of Leeds, Britain. He is recipient of seven Honorary Doctorates viz D Litt (Albright); PhD (Roskilde); D Litt (Leeds); D Litt &Ph D (Walter Sisulu University); PhD (Carlstate); D Litt (Dillard) and D Litt (Auckland University). He is also Honorary Member of American Academy of Letters. A many-sided intellectual, he is novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist, editor, academic and social activist.

The Kenya of his birth and youth was a British settler colony (1895-1963). As an adolescent, he lived through the Mau Mau War of Independence (1952-1962), the central historical episode in the making of modern Kenya and a major theme in his early works.

Ngugi burst onto the literary scene in East Africa with the performance of his first major play, The Black Hermit, at the National Theatre in Kampala, Uganda, in 1962, as part of the celebration of Uganda’s Independence. “Ngugi Speaks for the Continent,” headlined The Makererian, the Student newspaper, in a review of the performance by Trevor Whittock, one of the professors. In a highly productive literary period, Ngugi wrote additionally eight short stories, two one act plays, two novels, and a regular column for the Sunday Nation under the title, As I See It. One of the novels, Weep Not Child, was published to critical acclaim in 1964; followed by the second novel, The River Between (1965). His third, A Grain of Wheat (1967), was a turning point in the formal and ideological direction of his works. Multi-narrative lines and multi-viewpoints unfolding at different times and spaces replace the linear temporal unfolding of the plot from a single viewpoint. The collective replaces the individual as the center of history.

In 1967, Ngugi became lecturer in English Literature at the University of Nairobi. He taught there until 1977 while, in-between, also serving as Fellow in Creative writing at Makerere (1969-1970), and as Visiting Associate Professor of English and African Studies at Northwestern University (1970-1971). During his tenure at Nairobi, Ngugi was at the center of the politics of English departments in Africa, championing the change of name from English to simply Literature to reflect world literature with African and third world literatures at the center. He, with Taban Lo Liyong and Awuor Anyumba, authored the polemical declaration, On the Abolition of the English Department, setting in motion a continental and global debate and practices that later became the heart of postcolonial theories. "If there is need for a 'study of the historic continuity of a single culture', why can't this be African? Why can't African literature be at the centre so that we can view other cultures in relationship to it?" they asked. The text is carried in his first volume of literary essays, Homecoming, which appeared in print in 1969. These were to be followed, in later years, by other volumes including Writers in Politics (1981 and 1997); Decolonising the Mind (1986); Moving the Center (1994); and Penpoints Gunpoints and Dreams (1998).

The year 1977 forced dramatic turns in Ngugi’s life and career. His first novel in ten years, Petals of Blood, was published in July of that year. The novel painted a harsh and unsparing picture of life in neo-colonial Kenya. It was received with even more emphatic critical acclaim in Kenya and abroad. The Kenya Weekly Review described as “this bomb shell” and the Sunday Times of London as capturing every form and shape that power can take. The same year Ngugi’s controversial play, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), written with Ngugi wa Mirii, was performed at Kamirithu Educational and Cultural Center, Limuru, in an open air theatre, with actors from the workers and peasants of the village. Sharply critical of the inequalities and injustices of Kenyan society, publicly identified with unequivocally championing the cause of ordinary Kenyans, and committed to communicating with them in the languages of their daily lives, Ngugi was arrested and imprisoned without charge at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison at the end of the year, December 31, 1977. An account of those experiences is to be found in his memoir, Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary (1982). It was at Kamiti Maximum Prison that Ngugi made the decision to abandon English as his primary language of creative writing and committed himself to writing in Gikuyu, his mother tongue. In prison, and following that decision, he wrote, on toilet paper, the novel, Caitani Mutharabaini (1981) translated into English as Devil on the Cross, (1982).

After Amnesty International named him a Prisoner of Conscience, an international campaign secured his release a year later, December 1978. However, the Moi Dictatorship barred him from jobs at colleges and university in the country. He resumed his writing and his activities in the theater and in so doing, continued to be an uncomfortable voice for the Moi dictatorship. While Ngugi was in Britain for the launch and promotion of Devil on the Cross, he learned about the Moi regime’s plot to eliminate him on his return, or as coded, give a red carpet welcome on arrival at Jomo Kenyatta Airport. This forced him into exile, first in Britain (1982 –1989), and then the U.S. after (1989-2002), during which time, the Moi dictatorship hounded him trying, unsuccessfully, to get him expelled from London and from other countries he visited. In 1986, at a conference in Harare, an assassination squad outside his hotel in Harare was thwarted by the Zimbwean security. His next Gikuyu novel, Matigari, was published in 1986. Thinking that the novel’s main character was a real living person, Dictator Moi issued an arrest warrant for his arrest but on learning that the character was fictional, he had the novel “arrested;” instead. Undercover police went to all the bookshops in the country and the Publishers warehouse and took the novel away. So, between 1986 and 1996, Matigari could not be sold in Kenyan bookshops. The dictatorship also had all Ngugi’s books removed from all educational institutions.

In exile, Ngugi worked with the London based Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners in Kenya, (1982-1998), which championed the cause of democratic and human rights in Kenya. In between, he was Visiting Professor at Byreuth University (1984); and Writer in Residence, for the Borough of Islington, London (1985) and took time to study film, at Dramatiska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. (1986). After 1988, Ngugi became Visiting Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Yale (1989-1992) in between holding The Five Colleges (Amherst, Mount Holyoke, New Hampshire, Smith, East Massachusetts) Visiting Distinguished Professor of English and African Literature (Fall 1991). He then became Professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University (1992 –2002) where he also held the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of languages, from where he moved to his present position at the University of California Irvine. He remained in exile for the duration of the Moi Dictatorship 1982-2002. When he and his wife, Njeeri, returned to Kenya in 2004 after twenty-two years in exile, they were attacked by four hired gunmen and narrowly escaped with their lives.

Ngugi has continued to write prolifically, publishing, in 2006, what some have described as his crowning achievement, Wizard of the Crow, an English translation of the Gikuyu language novel, Murogi wa Kagogo. Ngugi’s books have been translated into more than thirty languages and they continue to be the subject of books, critical monographs, and dissertations.

Paralleling his academic and literary life has been his role in the production of literature, providing, as an editor, a platform for other people’s voices. He has edited the following literary journals: Penpoint (1963-64); Zuka (1965 -1970); Ghala (guest editor for one issue, 1964?); and Mutiiri (1992-).

He has also continued to speak around the world at numerous universities and as a distinguished speaker. These appearances include: the 1984 Robb Lectures at Auckland University in New Zealand; the1996 Clarendon Lectures in English at Oxford University; the 1999 Ashby Lecture at Cambridge; and the 2006 MacMillan Stewart Lectures at Harvard.

He is recipient of many honors including the 2001 Nonino International Prize for Literature and seven honorary doctorates.

Source: www.ngugiwathiongo.com

Pro. Wangari Maathai: First female African Nobel Prize winner

2011-09-26T01:33:00.000-07:00

Wangari Muta Maathai was born in Nyeri, Kenya (Africa) in 1940. The first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree, Professor Maathai obtained a degree in Biological Sciences from Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas (1964). She subsequently earned a Master of Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh (1966). Professor Maathai pursued doctoral studies in Germany and the University of Nairobi, obtaining a Ph.D. (1971) from the University of Nairobi where she also taught veterinary anatomy. She became chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy and an associate professor in 1976 and 1977 respectively. In both cases, she was the first woman to attain those positions in the region.

Professor Maathai was active in the National Council of Women of Kenya in 1976-87 and was its chairman from 1981-87. In 1976, while she was serving the National Council of Women, Professor Maathai introduced the idea of community-based tree planting. She continued to develop this idea into a broad-based grassroots organization whose main focus is poverty reduction and environmental conservation through tree planting. With the organization which became known as the Green Belt Movement Professor Maathai has assisted women in planting more than 40 million trees on community lands including farms, schools and church compounds.

In 1986 the Green Belt Movement (GBM) established a Pan African Green Belt Network that has exposed many leaders of other African countries to its unique approach. Some of these individuals have established similar tree planting initiatives in their own countries using the methods taught to improve their efforts. Countries that have successfully launched such initiatives in Africa include Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Lesotho, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and others.

In September 1998, Professor Maathai became co-chair of the Jubilee 2000 Africa Campaign, which seeks debt cancellation for African countries. Her campaign against land grabbing and rapacious allocation of forest lands has gained international attention in recent years.

Professor Maathai is internationally recognized for her persistent struggle for democracy, human rights and environmental conservation. She has addressed the UN on several occasions and spoke on behalf of women at special sessions of the General Assembly during the five-year review of the Earth Summit. She served on the commission for Global Governance and the Commission on the Future. She and the Green Belt Movement have received numerous awards, most notably the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.

Other awards include the Disney Conservation Award (2006), the Paul Harris Fellow (2005), the Sophie Prize (2004), the Petra Kelly Prize for Environment (2004), the Conservation Scientist Award (2004), J. Sterling Morton Award (2004), WANGO Environment Award (2003), Outstanding Vision and Commitment Award (2002), Excellence Award from the Kenyan Community Abroad (2001), Golden Ark Award (1994), Juliet Hollister Award (2001), Jane Adams Leadership Award (1993), Edinburgh Medal (1993), UN's Africa Prize for Leadership (1991), Goldman Environmental prize (1991), the Woman of the World (1989), Windstar Award for the Environment (1988), Better World Society Award (1986), Right Livelihood Award (1984) and the Woman of the Year Award (1983).

Professor Maathai was listed 6th in the Environment Agency (UK) peer review of the world’s Top 100 Eco-Heroes. She was also included in UNEP's Global 500 Hall of Fame and named one of the 100 heroines of the world. In June 1997, Professor Maathai was elected by Earth Times as one of 100 persons in the World who have made a difference in the environmental arena. In 2005, Professor Maathai was honored by Time Magazine as one of 100 most influential people in the world, and by Forbes Magazine as one of 100 most powerful women in the world.

Professor Maathai has also received honorary doctoral degrees from several institutions around the world: Williams college (1990), Hobart & William Smith Colleges (1994), University of Norway (1997), Yale University (2004), Willamette College (2005), University of California at Irvine (2006), and Morehouse University (2006).

The Green Belt Movement and Professor Maathai are featured in several publications including: Speak Truth to Power (Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, 2000), Women Pioneers for the Environment (Mary Joy Breton, 1998), Hopes Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet (Frances Moore Lappe and Anna Lappe, 2002), Una Sola Terra: Donna I Medi Ambient Despres de Rio (Brice Lalonde et al, 1998), Land Ist Leben (Bedrohte Volker, 1993. Dr. Maathai has also written two books of her own: an autobiography, Unbowed, and an explanation of her organizational method, The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience.

Professor Maathai serves on the boards of organisations including the Women and Environment Development Organization (WEDO), World Learning for International Development, Green Cross International, the Global Crop Diversity Trust, Prince Albert II of Monaco Environmental Foundation, and the National Council of Women of Kenya.

In December 2002, Professor Maathai was elected to Kenya's parliament with an overwhelming 98 percent of the vote. Until 2007, she represented the Tetu constituency, Nyeri district in central Kenya (her home region). From 2003- 2007 Professor Maathai served as Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources in Kenya's ninth parliament.

In 2005 Professor Maathai was elected the Presiding Officer of the Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) of the African Union based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. ECOSOCC was formed to advise the African Union on issues related to the African civil society. Dr. Maathai was also honored with an appointment as Goodwill Ambassador to the Congo Basin Forest Ecosystem, where she serves in an advocacy role for the region's conservation and protection.

In April 2006, the President of France, Mr. Jacques Chirac honoured Professor Maathai with France’s highest honour, Legion d’Honneur. The decoration ceremony took place in Paris in April 2006 and was presided over by Minister of Ecology and Sustainable Development, Madam Nelly Olin. Also in 2006, Professor Maathai founded the Nobel Women’s Initiative with her sister Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan. In 2007 Professor Maathai was invited to be co-chair of the Congo Basin Fund initiated by the UK government to help protect the Congo Forests.
Source: Greenbelt Movement

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A tribute to the late Wambui Otieno

2011-09-26T00:58:00.000-07:00

When history tides shall silt in the books, they shall in no doubt eulogies the legend of Wambui Otieno Mbugua in careful review not to use words lesser than gutsy and brave. I too here walk on egg shells at the fall of a giant, an empress who renounced her dynasty for a popular nationalistic cause.
Yet what shall history scribe when she already has cast her own on stone with blood and sacrifice? Etched in blood and sweat deep in the blood-spattered Aberdares’ 1950s are accounts that extol Wambui’s virtues as a defiant teenage girl from an elite household (the dynasty of Waiyaki wa Hinga), educated at the best African girls’ school in colonial Kenya (Alliance, you bet it), a practicing progressive Christian, uncircumcised (she refused to), daughter of a police inspector with a Nairobi rental income who gave up the comforts of complacency to join the Mau Mau.
This daughter of a Kikuyu and an Ogiek (her mother) , took oath as a Mau Mau, stole guns and killed for them, fought alongside the men in the forest, and traversed huge distances by foot conducting espionage missions and gathering intelligence from British troops while coordinating a network of female agents who funnelled information to the Mau Mau high command. An ancient legend of Kenyans for Kenyans.
So effective and fatally notorious was Wambui Otieno Mbugua that she was arrested by the British in 1955 but later released thanks to her sassy mouth. In coming years she would be rearrested and ordered to report for weekly interrogations in her home village. Detentions and weekly interrogations only made her stouter in the nationalistic cause with the Mau Mau.
In her nationalism, she joined the Kenya African National Union, and was elected as head of the women’s wing. The British government would have none of it, Wambui was arrested and detained at Lamu Island, where she was brutally raped by Chief Inspector Rudolph Speed and tortured in ways gory that David Cameron would cringe at the account.
She surprised Kenyan women when upon her release in 1961, she complained at pitch of being raped and demanded the prosecution of her rapist. Such was unheard of, some lowly creature, some woman, some native savage going against a God endowed white aristocrat? But trust Wambui to fight like a lioness, like a Mau Mau veteran until Inspector Rudolph resigned and fled jurisdiction to avoid charges.
A reasonable man would think that the torture, the years of detention, would deter one as plucky as the daughter of Waiyaki from hiding guns for the Mau Mau which she did – between her legs as she transported them to River road for repair. Worse still, at the height of imperial apartheid when the inferior lethargic black natives were not allowed to lay step inside the celestial Thorn tree restaurant at the now Stanley Hotel, she did the unthinkable drama that would eventually lead to the opening of the hotel to Blacks; she, with a fellow woman activist, dared to match right into the hotel amidst security protest, proceeded to stand on a table inside the Thorn tree.
As was expected, the white manager in rage struck her face with a slap! The national and international media cameras they had mobilised captured the virulent racist discrimination and attack on the black girls leading to national and international outcry.
In the crowded streets of pre independence downtown Nairobi, Wambui frenzied in demonstrations, deputations, choral and dramatic productions choreographed by Luo activists who Wambui had nothing but love for.
So much was her trans-ethnic strength that Wambui flew loathe of public ethnic biases and married a fine Luo criminal lawyer, SM Otieno, making her a potentially unifying line, an object of fear for Kenya’s divisively ethnocratic rulers. In her thirty years of marriage, she validated the biblical ’till death do we part’ herself being a progressive Christian.
Any student of law worth a bar certificate must nuance and cite Wambui’s court of appeal jurisprudence which threw candle on the problems and position of women in the long and anguished record of imperialism and post-imperialism. Jurisprudence that highlighted the gender discrimination in African countries where contemporary law has often been either ambivalent about traditional law or allows traditional gender discrimination to have precedence.
Sadly, the latter prevailed-but not without a bitter fight to the last court of the land and a visitation by her teenage ghost of defiance when she refused to attend the funeral only to later immortalize her husband and lover with a mausoleum in her matrimonial home in Ngong.
After years of helping shape the women movement in Kenya and at the UN level, years of trashing Moi’s perpetuation of gender discrimination, she found comfort and boundless love in the arms of Samuel Mbugua, more than 40 years younger than herself. By marrying Mbugua, Wambui opened up vast acres for the Kenyan woman’s freedoms and rights.
In particular, she debunked the myth and affirmed that women just like men have a right to choose their own happiness, that they too should enjoy rights and freedoms just like any other person by virtue of being human. This feminist, nationalist and progressive Christian will be sung for reconstructing masculinity at the height of a patrochial order and flinging open iron gates long locked by men. She has unsuccessfully run for political office, unbowed by patriarchal dirty politics on more than three occasions.
When history rests, the SM Brothers from the Umira Kager clan will find nothing but trepidation, ignominy and dishonour for sticking to an era long gone, long fought, long lost. As if the infamous SM Otieno case of appeal was not enough, one Mr Ougo the brother to SM Otieno stated without blinking in self disdain that a woman over 60 years has no right to get married – leave alone the freedom to chose her burial place, that a giant of steel as Wambui should be as dishonoured and her wishes disregarded and be buried in Nyalgunga to please the likes of Mr Ougo… Such men, such words, such clans represent nothing but an analogy of what Wambui called in her autobiography ‘men who back a conveniently divisive tribal, patriarchal `tradition’, instil a fearful toadyism …and do not hesitate to use violence against … uppity women’.
We hope that they will finally heed this wise counsel this time. This once!
The life and times of Wambui represent a courageous struggle for moral agency in the turbulence of modern Kenya. My dirge for this legendary daughter of Kenya affirms of her positive jurisprudence and legacy on issues of gender and ethnicity, past and future, whose agitation was robustly nationalist, progressive, and feministic in visionary ground breaking ways beyond her times and our collective history.
Not a chance that Wambui goes unsung, for I now refer to Mau Mau’s Daughter: a life history of Wambui Otieno and raise my wounded pricked spirit to a soulful mourning of my mother, hero and strength. I wail touting her vintage horn and giving tongue to Wambui’s poetic reference which I now borrow and own as I remember her dreams of her husband’s corpse singing `Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye’ wish me luck Wambui. Earth to you heroine, feminist, Mau Mau veteran and nationalist. Earth to you oh trans-ethnic sister!
(Ann Njogu is the chairperson – Centre for Rights Education and Awareness)

Source: Capital FM

Makau breaks marathon record (September 26, 2011)

2011-09-26T00:19:00.000-07:00

Not content to cover 26.2 miles in a neat loop, Patrick Makau of Kenya turned the Berlin Marathon into his own personal conga line Sunday while setting a world record of 2 hours 3 minutes 38 seconds.
Just before Mile 17, Makau swung from one side of the flat course to the other, once, twice, three times, then surged. This zigzagging tactic exposed and dropped the previous record-holder, Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, who had run 2:03:59 in Berlin in 2008.
The race kept growing more futile for Gebrselassie, who did not finish. He stopped briefly after Makau’s swerving and then again for good just before 22 miles, experiencing a surprising and debilitating flare-up of exercise-induced asthma, his agent said.
Gebrselassie also dropped out of the New York City Marathon after 16 miles last November, citing a knee problem. He briefly retired, then reconsidered, but will again be forced to confront his athletic mortality.
While Makau, 26, became an early men’s favorite at the 2012 London Olympics, Gebrselassie’s stirring international career — considered by many the greatest ever — appears to have reached irreversible decline. At 38, he seems to have set his last world record and surrendered to emerging runners who might soon cover the marathon in less than 2:03. That time would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
“A new generation is coming that is running very well,” said Makau, who averaged 4:43 a mile and shaved 70 seconds off his previous best, 2:04:48, which was run at the 2010 Rotterdam Marathon.
Not all of the older generation is ready to concede, though. Paula Radcliffe of England, 37, the women’s world-record holder, ran her first marathon in nearly 23 months Sunday after giving birth to her second child and easily qualified for the London Games with a third-place finish in 2:23:46.
In a Kenyan sweep, Florence Kiplagat won the women’s race in 2:19:44 and became half of what may be the world’s best marathoning couple. In April at the Boston Marathon, her husband, Moses Mosop (2:03:06), and her fellow Kenyan Geoffrey Mutai (2:03:02) ran faster than Makau’s Berlin time. But the Boston race does not qualify for a world record because of its elevation drop and its failure to meet international requirements for a loop course.
In the Berlin men’s race, six pacemakers formed a V-shaped formation, leading a pack of five elite runners as if they were migrating geese. They stayed on record pace the entire race, with the lead group going through halfway in 1:01:43. By 16.7 miles, the pacemakers were down to two for the only remaining contenders, Makau and Gebrselassie.
Makau then veered from one side of the road to the other three times, with Gebrselassie drafting a step behind him. He thought it might confuse Gebrselassie and also tire him. It did.
“He was trying to use me to maintain the pace,” Makau said. “I decided not to carry anybody.”
Makau then stepped on the accelerator and Gebrselassie could not respond.
“He knew that Gebrselassie was a front-runner,” said Makau’s agent, Luis Posso. “Once there was some space, he couldn’t catch up.”
Gebrselassie slowed, then stepped off the course, put his hand on his stomach and bent over, struggling to breathe. He has experienced exercise-induced asthma during his career but not in recent months. In fact, he did not use his inhaler Sunday, said Jos Hermens, Gebrselassie’s agent.
“Maybe he should have taken it,” Hermens said.
Less than a minute later, desperately needing a fast time to preserve any chance at making the Ethiopian Olympic marathon team, Gebrselassie jumped back into the race. One pacemaker, then another, eventually drifted back to assist him, but he stopped again, unable to breathe sufficiently enough to hold his pace. He will probably look to run the Dubai Marathon in January seeking qualification for his fifth Olympics, Hermens said.
“It’s the end of an era, but not the end of Haile,” Hermens said.
By 20 miles, the last pacemaker dropped away, like the booster stage of a rocket. Makau blazed ahead on his own for the final 6.2 miles. In April, he had fallen at the London Marathon but recovered to finish third in 2:05:45. There was no such accident Sunday as Makau ran unimpeded, arms swinging wide, repeatedly blowing his nose, drawing away with a muscular style that made him the fastest marathoner in history.
He might have run a second or two faster, but Makau had to jump over a small advertising placard in his final strides to align himself with the tape at the finish line. One of the pacemakers, Stephen Kwelio Chemlany of Kenya, hung on for second place in 2:07:55, four minutes behind the winner.
“This has been the greatest day of my running life,” Makau said. “When I woke up, my body didn’t feel very good. As the race went on, I felt better.” At 15.5 miles, he said: “I felt I could break the world record. It’s a great thing to beat Haile, one of my heroes.”
And, he added later, it was great to beat an Ethiopian, especially one who has set 27 world records, has twice won Olympic gold medals at 10,000 meters and has been a primary challenger to Kenya’s primacy in East African distance running.
“Everyone in Kenya is very happy,” Makau said.
Gebrselassie was left to consider a career inevitably muted by age. Even for an athlete as remarkable as he has been, there are a finite number of great races in a runner’s legs.
“Whatever happens, he’s always going to be looked at as probably the greatest male distance runner the world has ever seen,” Radcliffe said of Gebrselassie. “I hope he doesn’t retire, but he’s achieved so much. After some point, you have to say, ‘My body’s probably done with it.’ ”
Source: New York Times

My Photos - ICQ.com

2010-12-21T05:43:00.000-08:00

My Photos - ICQ.com

David Lekuta Rudisha: world record holder in the 800 metres with a time of 1:41.01.

2010-10-19T00:20:00.000-07:00

Rudisha competed at the 2009 World Athletics Championships, reaching the 800 metres semifinals. In September 2009, Rudisha won the IAAF Grand Prix meeting in Rieti, Italy, posting a new African record of 1:42.01, beating the 25-year old record of 1:42.28 set by compatriot Sammy Koskei. That effort put him in fourth place on the all-time list.^[2] In the 2010 IAAF Diamond League, he took on Abubaker Kaki at the Bislett Games in June. He defeated Sebastian Coe's 31-year-old meet record with a run of 1:42.04, giving him another place in the top-ten fastest ever 800 m and leaving Kaki the consolation of the fastest ever non-winning time.^[3] On 10 July 2010, Rudisha ran the 800 m in 1:41.51 at the KBC Night of Athletics in Heusden, Belgium; this new personal record placed him #2 all-time in the world for the 800 m.^[4]
Rudisha currently holds the world record for the 800 m. He broke the record at the ISTAF IAAF World Challenge meet in Berlin on 22 August 2010, with a time of 1:41.09.^[5] The previous record, held by Kenyan-born Danish Citizen runner Wilson Kipketer, had stood since 1997; Rudisha broke the record by 0.02 seconds.^[6] Rudisha claimed that it had been his "first real attempt" at breaking the record, and that he was capable of improving the time. This was proven one week later when he set a new WR of 1:41.01 in Rieti, Italy.

Source: Wikipedia

Evans Wadongo: CNN "Young Wonder" Top Ten Hero

2010-09-29T23:03:00.000-07:00

Evans Wadongo, founder of Sustainable Development For All – Kenya, skips two meals a day to fund his project that helps many people and the environment. Although he has an Engineering degree and could be making the big bucks, he prefers to dedicate his time, knowledge, resources and compassion to his project.

His organization’s mission is to help “poor communities attain sustainable development” through various initiatives like improving health systems in poor rural communities, increasing knowledge about positive environmental practices, increasing access to clean drinking water, educating youth about HIV/AIDS and drug use, encouraging the use of renewable energy, like solar power, and much more.

This young man is so special that CNN is officially recognizing him as a hero (he will be in the "Young Wonder" section)! SDFA-K is also the first Non-Profit Organization to use our “Donate” button, so you can contribute to his cause, help the environment and improve the quality of life for many Kenyans.

To make a donation, you can login to your account - if you have one already - and make an e-wallet or credit card payment. If you do not have an account yet, just fill in the simple form and make an instant credit card payment. It's super simple and secure!

Wadongo is a true specimen of heroism, philanthropy and environmental consciousness. Please help support his organization and help saves lives and the planet. Donate now with AlertPay!

John Waibochi, , won the Nokia $1000000 Growth Economy Venture

2010-09-29T22:48:00.000-07:00

Organization

Winner
Nokia GEV Challenge

Director
VirtualCity

John Waibochi of Virtual City, from Kenya, won the Nokia $1,000,000 Growth Economy Venture Challenge at Nokia World. This is an investment of $1m in John's business, so it comes with support and connections that only an organization of Nokia's size can provide. The award was given out by Stephen Elop, Nokia's new CEO, as the first action of his at Nokia -- this sends a certain signal to all devs around the world.

herokenya

2008-11-13T03:56:00.001-08:00

Disappearing Car Door - The most popular videos are a click away

KENYA HEROES

2008-08-20T08:14:00.001-07:00

KENYAN HEROES

Barack Obama (scroll down for details)

J M Kariuki

Wangari Maathai

Koitalel Arap Samoei

Mekatilili Wa Menza

Waiyaki Wa Hinga

Dedan Kimathi

Harry Thuku

Ezekiel Apindi

Mzee Jomo Kenyatta

Ronald Ngala

Oginga Ondinga

James Gichuru

Daniel Arap Moi

Tom Mboya

Barack Obama
(U.S. President with Kenyan roots)
* Born: 4 August 1961
* Birthplace: Honolulu, Hawaii
president
Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.Former senator from Illinois. Obama has spoken often of his multicultural background: his father was from Kenya, his mother from Kansas, and they met at the University of Hawaii. After his parents divorced and his father returned to Africa, Obama stayed with his mother and was raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. He earned an undergraduate degree from Columbia University in 1983 and a law degree from Harvard in 1991. He then joined the Chicago law firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland, which specialized in civil rights legislation. He also lectured at the University of Chicago. He was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, and then to the U.S. Senate in 2004, beating Republican candidate Alan Keyes. Obama shot to national fame after delivering the keynote speech in support of John Kerry at the 2004 Democratic national convention. The speech established Obama as a rising star in the party. Obama announced in February of 2007 that he would run for president in 2008; he became the presumptive Democratic Party nominee in June of 2008 when his last opponent, Hillary Clinton, dropped from the race. He published the personal memoir Dreams from My Father in 1995, and published a second book, The Audacity of Hope, in 2006. The title of the latter book was also the title of his 2004 keynote speech, and both books won Grammys for best spoken word album.

J M Kariuki
(March 21, 1929–March 2, 1975)
was a Kenyan socialist politician during the administration of the Jomo Kenyatta government. He held different government positions from 1963, when Kenya became an independent country, to 1975, when he was assassinated. He left behind three wives and a string of children.
Famous Quotes by JM

"Kenya has become a nation of 10 millionaires and 10 million beggars.”
"Every Kenyan man, woman and child is entitled to a decent and just living. That is a birthright. It is not a privilege. He is entitled as far as is humanly possible to equal educational, job and health opportunities irrespective of his parentage, race or creed or his area of origin in this land. If that is so, deliberate efforts should be made to eliminate all obstacles that today stand in the way of this just goal. That is the primary task of the machinery called Government: our Government."
"We fought for independence with sweat, blood and our lives. Many of us suffered for inordinate days – directly and indirectly. Many of us are orphans, widows and children as a result of the struggle. We must ask: What did we suffer for, and were we justified in that suffering?"

Wangari Maathai
( Activist / Political Figure)
* Born: 1 April 1940
* Birthplace: Nyeri, Kenya
* Best Known As: The first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize
Ecologist Wangari Maathai won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her years of work with women to reverse African deforestation. Maathai went to college in the United States, earning degrees from Mt. St. Scholastica College (1964) and the University of Pittsburgh (1966). She returned to Kenya and earned her PhD. from the University of Nairobi (1971), then worked as a professor in their department of veterinary medicine. Maathai began the Green Belt Movement, a tree-planting program to reverse deforestation and provide firewood for Kenyan women. The program led to the planting of millions of trees and Maathai became a major political figure in Kenya. In 1997 she ran unsuccessfully for president and for a seat in Parliament, but in December of 2002 she was elected to Parliament, and in 2003 she was appointed by President Mwai Kibabi to the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Wildlife. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, with the Nobel committee citing "her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace." She was the first African woman to win a Nobel.
Not long after winning the Nobel Prize, Maathai made headlines with the controversial suggestion that AIDS may have been a man-made biological agent. She later backtracked a bit, saying "I neither say nor believe that the virus was developed by white people or white powers in order to destroy the African people. Such views are wicked and destructive."
Koitalel Arap Samoei
A Nandi leader and an orkoiyot, a diviner. He detested the invasion of the British into the Nandi territory while building the Kenya-Uganda Railway. He prophesied that a black snake would tear through Nandiland and it would be spitting fire and would make its way into peoples' life. The construction of the railway saw this as a fulfilment of this prophecy.

He led the Nandi people into a fight against the builders of the Railway line for ten years. The British were determined to build the railway line and they tricked the orkoiyot into a meeting for an agreement, where a British commander shot Samoei and killed him during the conference. Without a leader, the Nandi were finally defeated in 1905 and the construction of the railway line continued without resistance.

Mekatilili Wa Menza
Mekatilili led the Giriama people in a rebellion against the British, in what many had seen as a fulfilment of a prophecy, that she would be a leader of her people. This was a rare prophecy in a patriarchal community. She resisted British invasions and attempts to stamp out the Giriama traditional culture through the destruction of kaya, sacred forest shrines and places of worship.

She was then captured and exiled to Mumias in Western Kenya, where she was held together with Wanyi wa Madori her cousin. Five years later, she returned to the coast. Her inspiring story has been told by the modern woman to re-assert the woman's place in Kenya's history and destiny.

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Waiyaki Wa Hinga

He was a Gikuyu pre-colonial chief who ruled around Dagoretti. He encountered the British around 1890 when he signed a treaty with Fredrick Lugard of the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEA), who later pitched their tent at Dagoretti.

Lugard and his men harassed the Gikuyu people and demanded for their food and their women. In retaliation the Kikuyu burnt down Lugard's fortress at Dagoretti. In 1892, the colonial administration kidnapped and took him to Coast where he is believed to have met his death. He was buried alive by his abductors. Bones believed to be his have been discovered after many years.

Dedan Kimathi
He was the high priest of the Mau Mau movement, and the mention of his name spread fear among the settler community. At the height of the ongoing struggle for independence, he commanded thousands of fighters along the Aberdares. Kimathi became a cultic figure and his fame spread like bushfire.

An amount of sh. 10,000 reward was placed for whoever found him. He was eventually captured in October, 1956. He was sentenced to death by hanging and his remains are buried in an unmarked grave at the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison.

Harry Thuku
He was born in Kiambu, educated at mission schools and then employed by the colonial government. In 1921, he founded the Young Kikuyu Association to protest against alienation of land, forced labour, taxation, low wages and the kipande laws. In 1922 he was arrested after being declared 'dangerous to peace and good order' and was detained for nine years. After his release he joined KAU (Kenya African Union) in 1944 and later joined KANU (Kenya African National Union) in 1960. He died in 1970.

Ezekiel Apindi

He was born in 1885 in Siaya. He went to a mission school and became a teacher in Mombasa. He later taught in Maseno School and became a member of the Young Kavirondo Association and the Piny Owacho movement. In 1931, he travelled to Britain to air the grievances of the Kenyan Africans to the British Parliament. He died in 1959.

Mzee Jomo Kenyatta
Kenyatta was born in 1893, in Kiambu and was originally called Kamau wa Ngengi. He later changed his name to Johnstone Kamau when he was baptized. He joined a Mission in Thogoto in 1909. In 1928, he became the Secretary General of Kikuyu Central Association, (KCA).

He became the editor of Muigwithania from its beginning in 1929, which articulated the social issues of the Gikuyu before he got a job with the Nairobi City Council. In 1927, KCA sent Kenyatta to London to represent them in airing their land grievances. He made a brief return to Kenya in 1931 and stayed in Britain until 1946, during which he studied Anthropology and got married. He joined the Pan Africanists who pressed for Africa's independence.

In 1946, he returned and took leadership of Kenya African Study Union (KASU), the precursor of Kenya African Union. In October 20, 1952, Kenyatta and other nationalists were arrested for administering oaths and leading Mau Mau, which was an illegal movement. He was then sentenced to seven years imprisonment and released in 1961. He became the Prime Minister of independent Kenya and the first President of the Republic of Kenya until his death in 1978.

Ronald Ngala
He hailed from Kilifi and was a student of Alliance High School and Makerere University. He became a teacher, although his interest was in politics and as result founded the Mijikenda Union in 1947. In 1957, he was elected as a member of Coast and in 1960, helped found the Kenya African Democratic Union, KADU.

In 1964, KADU and KANU merged and Ronald Ngala was appointed a minister where he served his country until his tragic death in a road accident in 1972.

Oginga Odinga

Oginga Odinga was born in 1911 in Siaya District and was a student of Maseno and Alliance High School. He then went to Makerere University and in 1940, he returned to Maseno High School as a teacher. In 1948, he joined KAU and in 1957 was elected to the Legislative Council as member for Nyanza Central. He was one of the founder members of KANU in 1960 and was its first vice-president. When Kenya became a Republic in 1964, he was President Kenyatta's first vice-president.

After a disagreement with KANU, he formed his own party in 1967, Kenya People's Union (KPU). It was banned in 1969 and Oginga was detained.

James Gichuru
He was born in 1914 at Thogoto, Kiambu. He was educated at a mission school and Makerere College. In 1934, he qualified as a teacher and later ended his teaching career as a Headmaster when he became active in politics. He was one of the founders and the first president of KAU and in 1946, he stepped down from this post for Mzee Kenyatta.

During the State of emergency he was restricted at Githunguri from 1955 to 1960. After the restriction was lifted he joined politics again and helped found KANU, of which he was again the first president. He served as a government minister from 1962 until his death in 1982.

Daniel Arap Moi
Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi was born in Baringo District in 1924. He studied at Kabartonjo, Kapsabet and the Government African School at Kabarnet. He then followed a teaching career, becoming the Headmaster of Tambach Primary School and Assistant Principal of Tambach Teachers Training College. In 1955, he joined politics and became a member of the Legislative Council. In 1957, he was chosen as a Legco member for Rift Valley.

Daniel Moi became a member of Kenya's first Republican Cabinet in 1964. In 1967, he became the Vice-President and Minister of Home Affairs where he served until the death of Mzee Kenyatta. He was elected President in 1978 and since then he has led Kenya's development in the light of the Nyayo philosophy of peace, love and unity.

Tom Mboya

He was born in 1930, near Thika, although his parents came from Rusinga Island. In 1951, he began working with the Nairobi City Council after completing his education from the then Royal Sanitary Institute at Kabete.

He was a keen trade unionist and a member of KAU until it was banned. By October 1953, he became the Secretary General of the Kenya Federation of Registered Trade Unions, KFRTU, which later became the Kenya Federation of Labour in 1955.

He was elected as member of Legco for Nairobi in 1957. In 1960, he helped to found KANU and became its Secretary General. He was Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs in the first KANU government and later became Minister of Economic Planning. He was assassinated in 1969 by a gunman outside a shop on Nairobi's Government Road, now Moi Avenue.