Africans Liberate Zimbabwe

As Bob Marley famously sang at Zimbabwe's Independence Ceremony in 1980:
"Africans liberate Zimbabwe..."

Ironically, the dawn of their independence from Great Britain was the onset of what turned out to be an era of the tyrannical, hamfisted rule of Robert Gabriel Mugabe. Africans liberate Zimbabwe indeed...

After 28 yrs of dictatorial wand-waving, economic rape & political manipulation - the last 13 or so of which have seen Zimbabwe plummet from being a potential economic African powerhouse to an inflation world-record breaker & a nation of suffering and despair (not to mention a pain in the ass to buy a beer, which cost Zim$1,000,000 as of December 2007) - the change is hopefully coming. After Zimbabweans went to the polls this past weekend, an opposition victory has been projected. However, suspicious delays in the announcement of the results of March 29th's election are giving rise to unnecessary tension, frustration and nerves (Juliet, thanks for a wonderful article - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7322727.stm)

My Zimbabwean friends here are probably gonna massively celebrate this weekend and I am planning to join them as they celebrate breaking free from the Mugabe shackles of oppression, ending the nightmare and heralding in rapid winds of great dreams, change, hope and a bright future.

However, an arduous journey of transition lies ahead. My prayer is that this road to recovery for Zimbabwe will be swift, progressive, successful and peaceful. I also hope they will not need to carry truckloads of notes to grab a cold beer at the pub.

"Every man got a right to decide his own destiny'. Well spoken, sons and daughters of Zimbabwe...change is coming.

Fall, Bounce...Get Up?

Peeps, say "bonjour" to Denis Darzacq, French photographer extraordinaire. In addition to having a surname that every Scrabble player would love to plaster across a Triple Word Score, Denis has also introduced the world to brand of photography that has redefined and perhaps even confoundingly repositioned the imaginative locus of many a snapshot lover.

A few facts and thoughts on this:
- Denis was somehow inspired by the French riots of 2005, as well as "triggered" from the thought of people falling off the Twin Towers in 9/11 - to set off these series of pics, affably called "Le Chute" (The Fall)

- There is no Photoshopping involved in these pics, it's as real as it gets. Neo must be pissed that the guys from "The Matrix" didn't think of this before, instead of tying him up with all those cinematographic cables.

- These are actual "one shot per movement" takes of expressionessly-faced crazy Parisian streetcrobatic dancers "naturally" falling, leaping and hurtling themselves into and out of buildings, streets, concrete and roads. Whatever happened to taking the stairs down if the elevator was broken? I also have a feeling you don't get to choose your landing surface. Something soft and bouncy? That's so last season!

- As soon as you sign the disclaimer forms (which must be just a bit heavier than an obese blue whale), you also have to keep in mind that you will be featured in a sequel of blooper images in a series likely to be called "Le Crap, I just broke my ass in 2".

You can enjoy the entire breathtaking series of pics in the "Le Chute" collection here.

Lights, Camera, Action..and The Path

I'm surrounded by good people, great food, a demanding but progressively exciting work environment, a melting cauldron of cultures & and a more proactively optimistic outlook on life. The Path has never been more exciting.

1.5 months after making the big move to KL - Malaysia, this old e-junkyard of random tales, images, thoughts and reflections needed to be dusted up *cough cough splutter splutter* and updated. Consider it done.

There's too much to put up in one post. Guess a summary will suffice for now. And more consistent ramblings to follow over the weeks to come.

Surrounded by a great bunch of people who have been supportive, helpful, annoying, loving, hilarious, random, fun....all at the same time. For having me on their couches & mattresses, to showing me the nightspots and great food spots, to supporting me in moving into my new crib, to being my new, cool apartment-mates, to random shisha sessions (with conversations ranging from Darfur to Islamic banking to fictitious YouTube videos of 4000 cockroaches moving a car & PopRoaches...), to whiling away on Sunday evenings watching the funniest movies, to staying up till 2 am at the movies clueless while watching "Pirates 3"...I may not scream it out from the mountain tops or say it out loud or wear a t.shirt to proclaim this, but I appreciate each and everyone of you. No doubt, y'all.

Work's awesome too: Working in a diverse team of some exceptionally smart people, working insanely hard to make our project a success. Will get to travel for work quite a bit across the Asia-Pacific region, which is definitely sweet. An massively great opportunity to grow and pack a plethora of experience & exposure as I get to work in an area that I am getting more & more passionate about as I walk in it each day.

The city and the country: There is still soooo much that needs to be seen and done in this hectic yet friendly and maybe sometimes puzzling city. The highlight is definitely the amazingly endless choice of food, available at pretty much any hour of the day. Why this amazes me is because where I come from (especially the Kenyan urban setup), we do not have a food culture. None. At least not compared to Malaysia and even to, say, a greater part of West Africa. Guess what I'm trying to say is....If eating was an Olympic sport, Malaysia would totally dominate it. Completely sweep the Gold, Silver, Bronze, Titanium medals. Hope to capture more of this in future posts, including visuals :-)

The Path: This adventure is continually teaching me a lot about me..the me that was, the me that is and the me that I want to be. As I continually walk through this excursion called life, I am becoming a greater believer in The Path. That which we walk, run, jog, sleep or just saunter through to get to where we don't necessarily know, but somehow want to get to. Making the most of our engagement within The Path defines where it takes us.

Only we can define what The Path will make of us, given all the factors that it presents. Good & sad times, tears & laughter, sleepless nights & conscious moments of daylight. Anthill-esque efforts at work & moments of just chilling. Friends & disappointments, music, noise and silence.

Lights, camera, action...

Some SMS Sugar!

"this narrative belongs to sugar man
who is falling apart
his psyche is unravelling
all his elements
his archetypes
are manifesting
and turning against him
he is an inferno"


SMS Sugar Man is an insane concept...the world's first feature film entirely shot using mobile phone cameras (or is it camera mobile phones?).

Set in the backstreets of Jo'burg, South Africa on Christmas Eve, it tells - from the lenses of upto 8 Sony Ericsson W900i mobile phones - of the Sugar Man "...a pimp with principles, shepherding his flock of working girls from client to client..."

Check out the trailer here

Seems like some really tight and smart stuff from Kaganof and the rest of the production.

I guess this one will be vibrating off an MMS near you soon!!

Bonn Giorno!

OK, before we go all mental on the messed up spelling of the greeting in the title, let me walk you thru it...

After a bunch of months chilling in good ol' Nairobi, Kenya - I finally managed to get my behind back into engaging my brain cells (after months of all that Tusker beer, I'm not too sure how many are left) into figuring out more than just what time it was.

The city of Bonn, Germany welcomed me with blasts of ice-laden winds that made me wish I had the ability to self-combust just to keep warm. Yeah, so that's where I be at...romancing the Rhine everyday to work, working on an extremely cool project with an even cooler team and staring down at my professional crystal ball to make out what the future holds for me.

And hoping to sort out all the language difficulties English speakers are bound to face here.

Especially when they scream "Bonn Giorno" thinking that it means "Good Morning Bonn!!"

80s Throwbacks!

Flashback to the early 80's.
Queue the then fashionable and in-vogue ladies pumps shoes, floral print dresses, overused electric keyboards in every song, outlandish hair, not to mention clothes.

This snapshot was taken right next to the house I grew up in for the 1st 12 years of my life.

The background lineup is (L-R):
Can't remember her, sis Wanji, bro Sammy, Mum at the back, neighbour Donna, bro Fanaté, sis Anne.

That's me rushing to the cameraman, wanting a piece of the flashing action too.

Damn! I can't believe they made me wear red shoes!

of Bananas and Oranges: Referendum Ahead

On 21st November, Kenya will be holding a National Referendum to give Kenyans the chance to accept or reject a proposed new constitution. This will be the first democratic referendum to be held in Kenya and this does bring an interesting, sometimes shocking and rather multi-dimensional dynamic to it.

The referendum has brought a huge divide in opinion and choice among Kenyans. The YES side supporting the new constitution is fronted as the Banana camp (symbolized by...yes, a banana) and the side strongly opposing it - the NO side - is the Orange camp (need I say they are symbolized by the Orange). The country's politicians are also split down the middle. Hardcore government supporters, led by the President himself, are Bananas while the Opposition and a collection of perennially rebellious government ministers and politicians are Orange "damu" (hardcore orange) .

Apart from sounding like a grocery store or a really crappy fruit salad, my biggest problem with this referendum is that is has been overly politicized. This mainly means that the referendum is being used a stage to flex political muscle while failing to address the content of the actual constitutional issues. Here are the highlights in the run-up to the big voting day:

- Right direction: In October, a televised debate was held to bring Banana and Orange politicians to one forum. This was a huge step in the right direction, but I still felt that they were a bit too politically inclined and it wasn't still clear in my mind what the issues of discussion vis-a-vis the constitution were. Another debate will be held with less than a week to vote and I hope that it will be more content-oriented and less of a political shouting match.

- Violence sucks: This past weekend, we saw the ugly side of the run-up to the referendum. One politician had his car burned to a crisp while campaigning for his side. Unnecessary and mindless actions from whoever was involved. Over the weekend in the highly politically charged Western Kenya, four people died when violence erupted in a referendum-related rally, with politicans on either side trading accusations and counter-accusations around this. There have been other acts of vandalism and backward-mindedness that I won't even give any time of day/night on cyberspace. I am sure a lot of the people making trouble have never touched a copy of the constitution in their lives (or can't even spell constitution) and need to do so before they think of shish-kebabing a Toyota Prado...or a dude for that matter.

- Edging on the ridiculous: There have been stories of people going to the extreme to show their allegiance to the Banana or Orange camp. At political rallies, politicians and people in attendance have been seen mercilessly eating bananas or oranges at their respective camps. There are stories of people not allowing oranges or bananas in their houses, depending on who they side with. A story is told of one guy who went for lunch and got served a fruit salad that contained a fruit he didn't side with. Let's just say that this guy went bananas when he found oranges in his fruit salad.

- Who do I side with? At this moment, I am still going through the pros and cons of both constitutions. I have chosen to blog on the lead-up to the referendum rather than take sides or share those pros/cons on my blog. At the end of the day, I am still very skeptical of whether majority of Kenyans will vote based on informed decisions around the constitution.

- Demo-crazy: This referendum, in my opinion, has been a reflection of Kenya's relative immaturity in democratic politics. Example? Some Banana proponents are calling for the President to fire the rebel ministers in the Orange camp for fiercely taking a stance against his. Come on! That's what a democracy is! And what fun would there be if everyone in the Government all got along? Everyone knows that some of the world's most exciting democracies are built on the fact that there are strong believers in extremely polar schools of thought and that does make it interesting for each of these guys every morning when they wake up scratching their heads...and for us every evening when we watch all their crazy antics on the news !

- What Direction? : The Civil Education campaign that was planned to ensure that Kenyans actually understood the content of the proposed constitution vs the existing one has been, in my opinion, very low-key and at worst a failure. This hasn't been helped by the fact that the referendum has been overly politicized. The media have made the effort to avail simplified copies of the proposed constitution in the dailies, facilitate live debates etc. Some workshops are being held around the country to sensitize the same. I'm also skeptical of how effective this campaign really is in effectively educating the public about the constitution.

I still feel that politicians have a big role to play in this, but they have been going about it the wrong way. In a perfect world, they should ideally ensure that Kenyans are initially educated on the issues that they will go to vote for come November 21st before taking sides and trying to woo Kenyans to these sides. Instead, both sides are using this referendum as a political vehicle and guess what will happen? A lot of Kenyans will vote Yes or No based on whether their favourite politician..or if the politician from their ethnic group sides on Yes or No...And not based on the fact that the decision they make is based solely on the content of the proposed/existing constitution that will affect their lives and those of generations to come.