African Proverb of the day

"A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing" An igbo proverb

Pic of the Day:Compassion and Love

Anya, a 24 year old gorilla, holds her newborn Amelia at the Ramat Gan Safari, an open-air zoo near Tel Aviv Israel

Legends:Tom Mboya

To Mboya was a prominent Kenyan politician during president Kenyatta's government, he died at an early age of 38 through an assassination in the capital. nevertheless he achieved so much at a young age. though men die ideas will always remain and thats why we will try and relight his ideas.

Tom was born on August 15 1930.After completing his studies he was employed as a city inspector at the Nairobi City Council. he joined the African staff association a year  later he was elected its president.

He organized an airlift project in 1959 together with African american students foundation in the USA.81 Kenyan students were flown to the USA to study at the US universities. Mboya also contested for the airlift project to include Uganda, Tanganyika ,Zanzibar and Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi. 230 Africans students received scholarships and hundreds more followed. Mboyas statue stands in the capital at exactly where he was assassinated. The messenger may be dead but the message lives on.

 

First aid:stomachache

stomach aches can occur anytime, mostly when one has eaten too much or eaten something that didnt go too well with the stomach, here are a few remedies one can use at home;

ginger-has anti inflammatory properties. fresh ginger is the most potent form and can be taken also with tea or hot water.peel the ginger then grate it and dip in the tea.

 




Lemon water-use clean fresh lemons,cut into half then dip in hot water.

warm salt water- i cup of warm water and 1 teaspoon of salt

AM

First Aid:Headaches

Headaches are part of our day to day huddles,most ruin your day. below are some natural ways to deal with headaches:

Consume foods that are high in magnesium i.e brocolli, beans, soya milk, spinach. magnesium and calcium  are known to be good stress relievers. so the more your diet contains magnesium the less a chance you get headaches.
Lemon juice in hot water
Limiting foods rich in sodium(salt),fats,sugars and gum.
hopefully if you get a headache you have enough info to cool it down.

AM

Rowan Atkinson:Mr Bean

Legendary character who has inspired the world of comedy. Born 6th Jan 1955 Rowan is an engineering fellow from Queens college of oxford. He is the youngest of four brothers and married with two children. Mr Bean has a passion for cars as well. Mr Bean's creativity and ingenuity inspires us all.

Putting back the pieces:Dedan Kimathi

Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi was executed on Feb. 18, 1957, by the British occupiers of Kenya. Being captured with a loaded revolver was enough to send this freedom fighter to the gallows. Kimathi was hanged because he was a leader of Kenya’s Land and Freedom Army, demonized by the media as the “Mau Mau.”

According to David Anderson’s Histories of the Hanged 1,090 Africans were hanged in the 1950s by Britain’s colonial regime in Kenya. Just for supplying food to guerilla fighters—labeled “consorting”—the colonialists sent 207 people to their deaths.

In her Pulitzer Prize winning book Imperial Reckoning  Caroline Elkins estimated that 300,000 Kenyans were thrown into concentration camps.

Elkins and her assistant Ms. Terry Wairimu, a researcher at the Kenyan National Archives, interviewed 300 survivors. They heard how Alsatian dogs mauled women inmates at the Athi River camp and guards clubbed prisoners arriving at the Manyani camp.

Six hundred children were confined in Kamati camp alone. Almost none survived. “Hard Core Mau Mau” supporters were selected to bury the children. “They would be tied in bundles of six babies,” recalled former inmate Helen Macharia. . . . Over a million Kikuyu people were forced into 800 “emergency villages” built with their own slave labor. . . .

Stealing the land

In 1895, British Queen Victoria declared a “protectorate” over Kenya and Uganda. A few British settlers stole the best land. One named Lord Delamere grabbed 160,000 acres.

Troops wielding machine guns forced Africans into “native reserves” that were modeled on U.S. Indian reservations. As in South Africa under apartheid, Africans were forced to carry a pass, known in Kenya as a “kipande.”

“We have stolen his land,” declared the British explorer and land-grabber Colonel Grogan. “Now it is time to steal his limbs.” The colonial regime enforced compulsory labor from African women and men. Ten thousand workers, many from India, were killed or maimed building a 582-mile long railroad from Mombasa to Lake Victoria.

“Illiterates with the right attitude to manual labor are preferable to products of the schools” declared a 1949 report written by Anglican Bishop Leonard Beecher. Three high schools at the time annually admitted 100 African students.

The average yearly wage of 385,000 African workers in 1948 was $73. . . .

Kenyan revolutionaries made preparations for armed struggle against the oppressive colonial rule. Kenya’s colonial Governor Evelyn Baring responded by declaring a state of emergency on Oct. 20, 1952. The governor’s family controlled Barings Bank, founded in 1762 by the slave trader Francis Baring. . . .

Mau Mau fighters stole weapons and ammunition. Blacksmiths made hundreds of guns. Britain mobilized 55,000 soldiers and cops to fight the Mau Mau. The Royal Air Force bombed guerrilla strongholds in Aberdares Forest and Kirinyaga.

A posse led by Ian Henderson finally captured Field Marshal Kimathi on Oct. 21, 1956. A notorious torturer of Mau Mau suspects, Henderson’s cruelty couldn’t stop the revolution. Twenty thousand Mau Mau guerrillas didn’t die in vain. Kenya declared its independence on Dec. 12, 1963.

Africa remembers its heroes. Kimathi’s execution is commemorated and streets are named in his honor. A statue of Dedan Kimathi was unveiled in Nairobi on Dec. 11, 2006.

In October 2006, Mau Mau veterans filed a suit against the British government for reparations, charging it with systematic torture of Kenyan freedom fighters during the struggle for independence. The fallen and wounded “Mau Mau” are being avenged in Iraq and wherever else people are fighting against imperialist occupation for land and freedom.

*   *   *   *   *

Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi Waciuri was the head of the Mau Mau, a militant group that waged a guerrilla war against the British colonial government in Kenya. Kenya's independence from British rule is largely attributed to the spirited fight the Mau Mau put up under the stewardship of Dedan Kimathi. The Mau Mau began as the Land and Freedom Army, a militant Kikuyu army out to reclaim their land that had been stripped from them by the colonialists. As its influence and membership widened it became a major threat to the colonialists.

The Mau Mau movement sprung from Central Kenya, home of the populous Kikuyu community. The movement, even though heavily Kikuyu, enjoyed nationwide support as it forced the colonialists to pay attention to Kenyan demands. The Mau Mau was outlawed in 1952, amid rising tensions in the Kenya political scene. The banning also saw a massive round-up of Kenyan political leaders, including Kenya's first President, Jomo Kenyatta.

On February 18, 1957, Dedan Kimathi was executed by the colonialists at the notorious Kamiti Maximum Prison, where his remains are still believed to be buried in an unmarked grave. This has been a very contentious issue among Kenyans, and indeed other prominent African nationalists like President Nelson Mandela, who believe that Kimathi is a legendary figure and should be accorded a state burial with full rights. Such requests have fallen on deaf ears for reasons nobody can/or will ever comprehend. In fact, on President Mandela's last visit to Kenya in 1990, he almost caused a major embarrassment to President Moi's administration when he inquired about the whereabouts of Kimathi's widow.

*   *   *   *   *

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 enroll 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.

Revelations by contemporaries of Dedan Kimathi, the Kenyan hero who led the Mau Mau rebellion against the British colonial regime and was eventually hanged, indicate that his remains were buried at Nairobi’s Langata Cemetery and not at the Kamiti Maximum Prison as is widely believed.

He was buried in his own grave, not in a mass one, as has been assumed all along, they say.

In the light of these revelations, it is being asked whether the government has deliberately kept the public in the dark about the location of Kimathi’s grave in the face of persistent demands for the reburial of the remains with full national honour.

On November 29, Assistant Minister in the Office of the President William Ruto told Parliament that the Commissioner of Prisons "ought to know, by law, where the graves of all the convicts who have been hanged are."

He was answering a question by Adolf Muchiri of the Democratic Party regarding the release of Dedan Kimathi's remains as well as those of other executed convicts for reburial by their relatives.

On November 14, a similar question was asked by the same MP. Assistant Minister for Home Affairs Wycliff Osundwa answered that the remains of Dedan Kimathi "will not be released from Kamiti Maximum Prison," adding that the law prohibited the exhumation of a prisoner’s body for reburial.

The debate continues, with the front bench advising the relatives of Dedan Kimathi and others to petition President Daniel arap Moi.

Kimathi was hanged in the early hours of February 18, 1957, after being tried and convicted under the Emergency Regulations promulgated by the colonial government.

Chief Justice Sir Kenneth O’Connor, who presided over the trial of Kimathi, found the Mau Mau leader guilty of possession of a revolver and six rounds of ammunition, an offence that carried a death sentence, and consequently sentenced him to hang. . . .

Mirror on the Wall

(Nothing to say..the picture says it all)

Philosophies

Build a philosophy that defines you, learn to adapt with scenarios but always stay true to your philosophies. a lion will always look for ways to survive in the jungle but will never eat grass. build your philosophies based on who you are and what you want in life.

“He who feeds you, controls you”

we all should know that in order to be self reliant we have to feed ourselves. methods are there to practice small scale farming even in our city homes.let us all plant food for our selves and desist from dependability.

Below are some of our heroes:Ms Harriet Nakabale

Surprisingly, her crops are grown from sacks, jerrycans, soda bottles, old gum boots, crates, and pots. She lives on a 32 by 50 ft plot. With a house, she remains with less than a 20 by 20 ft piece from which she plants crops.
Ms Nakabale, is living a good life, thanks to her smart idea of farming on a very small piece of land.
While many people wake up very early in the morning to get to their workplaces, Ms Nakabale moves to her verandah and work begins.
"I have been doing this work for more than 10 years with no regrets whatsoever. I have been able to achieve a lot from working around my small compound, more than many that have acres of land. I have won different awards in recognition of my exemplary services to the community," Ms Nakabale said while taking me around her small farm.
She added: "I have got local and international friends. People come from all parts of the world to visit and learn from my experience. We feed on a balanced diet, my children go to school and one has been able to finish at Makerere University. I pay their school fees from the profits I make from this small business."

She mainly grows food spices, vegetables and fruits. Spices include Basil, Lavanda, Spearmint, all types of onions, Chives, Dill and Oregano among others. Vegetables in her compound include Sukuma wiki, Lettuce, Beetroot, Pakchoi, Chinese cabbage, Spinach, Butternut and Paslee. She also has a growing apple tree.She does not have enough land or soil to cultivate, as a result; she improvises; mixing sorted household garbage, chicken and animal residues and ash to form soil.

Naked Truth

It is perfectly natural that a Japanese has a different skull than a black man, an Inuit or a German. These disparities do not presuppose that any race is more developed or less progressed than any other and can never count as evolutionary evidence. These differences simply reflect the diversity and supremacy of God's creations.

We are all equal what .you do with your life is what matters

I jumped from space today wtf did you do with your day?

Felix Baumgartner on 14 October 2012 managed to jump from space. He prooved to the world that the unthinkable is achievable. do not set limits for yourself. He tweeted the following after the amazing jump:"I just jumped from space today WTF did you do with your day today?"

Blunthought

“I speak on behalf of the millions of human beings who are in ghettos because they have black skin or because they come from different cultures, and who enjoy status barely above that of an animal.

I suffer on behalf of the Indians who have been massacred, crushed, humiliated, and confined for centuries on reservations in order to prevent them from aspiring to any rights and to prevent them from enriching their culture through joyful union with other cultures, including the culture of the invader.

I cry out on behalf of those thrown out of work by a system that is structurally unjust and periodically unhinged, who are reduced to only glimpsing in life a reflection of the lives of the affluent.

I speak on behalf of women the world over, who suffer from a male-imposed system of exploitation. As far as we’re concerned, we are ready to welcome suggestions from anywhere in the world that enable us to achieve the total fulfillment of Burkinabè women. In exchange, we offer to share with all countries the positive experience we have begun, with women now present at every level of the state apparatus and social life in Burkina Faso. Women who struggle and who proclaim with us that the slave who is not able to take charge of his own revolt deserves no pity for his lot. This harbors illusions in the dubious generosity of a master pretending to set him free. Freedom can be won only through struggle, and we call on all our sisters of all races to go on the offensive to conquer their rights.

I speak on behalf of the mothers of our destitute countries who watch their children die of malaria or diarrhea, unaware that simple means to save them exist. The science of the multinationals does not offer them these means, preferring to invest in cosmetics laboratories and plastic surgery to satisfy the whims of a few women or men whose smart appearance is threatened by too many calories in their overly rich meals, the regularity of which would make you—or rather us from the Sahel—dizzy. We have decided to adopt and popularize these simple means, recommended by the WHO and UNICEF.

I speak, too, on behalf of the child. The child of a poor man who is hungry and who furtively eyes the accumulation of abundance in a store for the rich. The store protected by  a thick plate glass window. The window protected by impregnable shutters. The shutters guarded by a policeman with a helmet, gloves, and armed with a billy club. The policeman posted there by the father of another child, who will come and serve himself—or rather be served—because he offers guarantees of representing the capitalistic norms of the system, which he corresponds to.

I speak on behalf of artists—poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, and actors—good men who see their art prostituted by the alchemy of show-business tricks.

I cry out on behalf of journalists who are either reduced to silence or to lies in order to not suffer the harsh low of unemployment.

I protest on behalf of the athletes of the entire world whose muscles are exploited by political systems or by modern-day slave merchants.

My country is brimming with all the misfortunes of the people of the world, a painful synthesis of all humanity’s suffering, but also—and above all—of the promise of our struggles. This is why my heart beats naturally on behalf of the sick who anxiously scan the horizons of science monopolized by arms merchants.

My thoughts go out to all of those affected by the destruction of nature and to those 30 million who will die as they do each year, struck down by the formidable weapon of hunger. As a military man, I cannot forget the soldier who is obeying orders, his finger on the trigger, who knows the bullet being fired bears only the message of death.

Finally, it fills me with indignation to think of the Palestinians, who an inhuman humanity has decided to replace with another people—a people martyred only yesterday. I think of this valiant Palestinian people, that is, these shattered families wandering across the world in search of refuge. Courageous, determined, stoic, and untiring, the Palestinians remind every human conscience of the moral necessity and obligation to respect the rights of a people. Along with their Jewish brothers, they are anti-Zionist.

At the side of my brother soldiers of Iran and Iraq who are dying in a fratricidal and suicidal war, I wish also to feel close to my comrades of Nicaragua, whose harbors are mined, whose villages are bombed, and who, despite everything, face their destiny with courage and clear-headedness. I suffer with all those in Latin America who suffer from the stranglehold of imperialism.

I wish to stand on the side of the Afghan and Irish peoples, on the side of the peoples of Granada and East Timor, each of whom is searching for happiness based on their dignity and the laws of their own culture.

I protest on behalf of all those who vainly seek a forum in this world where they can make their voice heard and have it genuinely taken into consideration. Many have preceded me at this podium and others will follow. But only a few will make the decisions. Yet we are officially presented as being equals. Well, I am acting as spokesperson for all those who vainly see a forum in this world where they can make themselves heard. So yes, I wish to speak on behalf of all “those left behind,” for “I am human, nothing that is human is alien to me.”

Our revolution in Burkina Faso embraces misfortunes of all peoples. It also draws inspiration from all of man’s experiences since his first breath. We wish to be the heirs of all the world’s revolutions and all the liberation struggles of the peoples of the Third World. Our eyes are on the profound upheavals that have transformed the world. We draw the lessons of the American Revolution, the lessons of its victory over colonial domination and the consequences of that victory. We adopt as our own the affirmation of the Doctrine whereby Europeans must not intervene in American affairs, nor Americans in European affairs. Just as Monroe proclaimed “America to the Americans” in 1823, we echo this today by saying “Africa to the Africans,” “Burkina to the Burkinabè.”“

| Thomas Sankara

[excerpt from his speech at the United Nations General Assembly on October 4th, 1984]

Our African 'Christ'

Thomas Sankara may not be a household name, yet to many Africans, he was a leader almost of equal stature to Nelson Mandela and Kwame Nkrumah. Born in 1949 in a country formerly known as Upper Volta, Sankara embarked on a military career, quickly rising in the ranks. Sankara became his country’s head of state in 1983 after leading a coup d’état against the then current government. He renamed his country Burkina Faso, meaning “Land of Upright People.”

For a man referred to as “The African Che Guevara,” it is no surprise that he is still widely unknown in the West. Profoundly influenced by the work of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, he committed his presidency to eradicating poverty and to uplifting the common man. As a Pan- Africanist, he sought to end the political ventriloquism practiced by former African colonial rulers as well as the continent’s dependency on foreign aid. “He who feeds you, controls you”, he argued.

A leader ahead of his time, Sankara was also dedicated to seeing the status of women in his country improve. Under his government, female genital mutilation, polygamy, forced marriages, and other practices that undermine the dignity of women were discouraged and banned. He became the first African head of state to elevate women to multiple top government positions, as well as recruiting them in the army.

A frugal man, Sankara sold off the government’s fleet of Mercedes vehicles, making the Renault 5, the cheapest car available in the country at the time, the official vehicle for his ministers. He reduced his own salary to $450 a month plus his personal possessions. He also banned the use of government chauffeurs and first class airline tickets by his government officials. He encouraged the Burkinabe to purchase garments produced by their fellow countrymen. Sankara also refused air conditioning in his office, arguing that most of his fellow countrymen lived without such luxuries.

His other achievements include policies to fight corruption, environmental protection and reforestation of the Sahel, promotion of education and health, agricultural sustainability, and land redistribution. A charismatic Marxist revolutionary who was a thorn in the flesh of former colonial powers, it was Sankara’s outspoken anti-imperialism that got him killed in 1987. He left office the way he came, through a coup d’état masterminded by his former close ally, Blaise Compaoré, who was backed by the French. He died during the coup, at the age of 38.

A Challenge to All

When you think how much it costs the likes of NASA to take astonishing images like this, it’s even more impressive what a teenager can do on a £200 budget.
Adam Cudworth, 19, of Ombersley, Worcestershire, managed to capture these incredible views of the earth from space - using little more than a balloon and a second-hand £30 camera bought on eBay.
With a scientific background consisting of just a physics A-Level, Adam spent 40 hours working on a homemade box with a GPS tracker, radio and microprocessor
But the modest teenager, who is now an engineering student at the University of Nottingham, said today that the results were nothing more than 'a little project' and a ‘bit of a hobby’.
He said: ‘I just wanted to set myself a challenge - but I'm amazed at the results. I saw a guy who did a similar thing a couple of years back and I just wanted to recreate them - but better.