Kenyatta University is slowly emerging as a centre of excellence as far as writing essays in the region is concerned. Two of its students, Nancy Odemu and Michael Asudi, recently returned from the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) Telecom Africa 2008, in Cairo Egypt, after winning an essay writing competition on the role of ICT in the promotion of development and peace.
The essay writing competition had been organized among university students in 10 African countries. In Kenya, the universities that were invited to participate in the competition included University of Nairobi, Strathmore University, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, and Kenyatta University.
Last year, another Kenyatta University student, Domnick Ochieng’ K’olale, participated in another intervarsity essay writing competition and his winning essay was published in an international journal titled Africa’s Youth Define leadership.
Each university was required to come up with a nomination process that produced four best students, two men and two women, who after the overall evaluation in Geneva Switzerland would result in the two students to represent the country.
After receiving the letter, asking them to come up with a vetting process, from the ITU headquarters in Geneva, the Kenyatta University Vice-Chancellor, Prof Olive Mugenda, tasked Dr Ezekiel Alembi, with the role of coming up with the best two student essayists from the institution.
Ordinarily, Dr Alembi, who heads the Kenyatta University Radio Services, says the temptation would have been to get the essays from students with essay writing or ICT backgrounds. Had this happened, only students from departments like Literature, History or those taking ICT related courses, would have been considered for participating in the evaluation process.
“We instead chose to give the whole student community a chance to take part in the exercise,” explains Dr Alembi. After a circular was posted on the institution’s notice boards listing what was required, willing participants brought in their essays in readiness for the vetting process. Of the more than two hundred essays submitted only four were judged to be the best.
Among the winning essays were those of Odemu and Asudi, both 22. Odemu takes a Bachelor of Science course in Food Nutrition and Dietetics, while Asudi is a Bachelor of Commerce student. The two acknowledge that while they were quite aware of their limitations as far as essay writing is concerned, their major concern was how well they argued their points in the essay.
When the results were received from Geneva, their initial fears proved to have been unfounded. They had emerged winners and thus were chosen to represent Kenya at the youth forum for ITU Telecom Africa, 2008 in Cairo.
They went to Cairo on May 9 and came back on May 16. It was an all expenses paid for trip.
Odemu says her win came with the added satisfaction of the hard work
she put in writing her essay, “It did not come easy,” she says. Her essay was titled ICT Facilitation and youth empowerment for peace and stability in Kenya and Africa.
On his part Asudi says that his win is only the beginning of a much bigger challenge, that of exploring the world of ICT “to whichever direction it is headed.” His essay was titled Promoting peace through ICT compliant youth.
They had been required to outline what measures they would put in place, as presidents of their respective countries, far as ICT is concerned. They were supposed to discuss how those measures would bring about development as well as fostering peace among the youth
Both essays spoke of the need to make ICT available throughout the country and especially among the youth. They also stressed the need to make them affordable particularly to the out-of-school youth in the rural areas.
Odemu would have actually missed out on the entire exercise altogether, were it not for her never-say-die attitude. “The night I read the notice, other students had seen Dr Alembi, earlier that day for instructions,” she recalls. “As if that was not enough, lights went out as I was reading the notice. I had to resort to the light on my cell phone to read the rest of the notice.”
In spite of the fact that she was already late Odemu nevertheless went to see Dr Alembi the following morning and managed to beat the deadline for submission.
Asudi had just sat his last paper for that semester, and thus was idle enough to scan what was on the notice board. “Students normally overlook what is on the notice boards,” he says matter-of-factly. “This particular notice stood out, and again it touched on a subject I am really keen on.” He is a member of the Kenyatta University Peace Unit.
The real challenge, when it came to writing the essay, was in how to bring out the message in a space of five hundred words. “It is then that I realized how short five hundred words are,” remarks Asudi.
The results of the competition were sent through e-mail, which means they landed into the winners’ inboxes. Although something inside Odemu told her she had performed well, she still could not believe what she was reading out of her inbox. “I actually trembled,” she says with a shy smile. She had to rush to Dr Alembi’s office to confirm the news.
At Dr Alembi’s office, she found an equally anxious Asudi also waiting for similar confirmation. When he read the mail from inbox, Asudi’s first reaction was that it was a prank, many of such sent by his friends. But on closer scrutiny, he noticed that ITU’s website was included there. “My friends could not have been that smart,” he says.
Category: News
The Movie Hotel Rwanda might have done a lot to sensitise the world on the 1994 Rwandan genocide, but not many people in Rwanda are happy about it.
So much such that there is nothing in or around Hotel des Mille Collines that says that this is actually the hotel that was famously depicted in the movie.
One naturally assumes that the huge publicity generated by the Hollywood movie, directed by Terry George and starring Don Cheadle, might be taken upon by Rwandan authorities to promote it as a popular tourist destination.
The movie tells the story of Paul Rusesabagina, acted by Cheadle, the manager of the hotel, at the time of the genocide, and who is credited with saving the lives of more than 1200 refugees, who had camped there.
Now, the name Rusesabagina is spoken of, not with fondness, but with contempt, by certain quarters in the country. In fact, government officials want nothing to do with Rusesabagina, a Hutu.
The Rwandan government, comprised mainly of Tutsis and moderate Hutus, and who were on the receiving end of murderous Hutus during the genocide, are angry that the movie depicts Rusesabagina as a hero who saved people’s lives. They say that is not the case.
While at some point, following the release of the movie in 2004, Rusesabagina carved himself a high profile career, in Europe and the US, giving talks about the genocide, he is currently faced with tough questions back at home.
Authorities in Rwanda are deeply angered by the fact that Rusesabagina, courtesy of his high profile, today goes around the world allegedly trying to absolve the genocide masterminds of the crimes they committed.
So concerned, about Rusesabagina’s alleged portrayal in the movie, and what he is doing with the recognition, that a book has been written to specifically challenge his story in the movie.
Hotel Rwanda: Or the Tutsi Genocide as seen by Hollywood, co-authored by Alfred Ndahiro and Privat Rutazibwa was launched on Thursday, March 13 in Kigali. It was launched at Hotel des Mille Collines, the very place Rusesabagina was supposed to have carried out his heroic deeds.
Speaking in halting English that rainy evening, Bernard Makuza, Rwanda’s current prime minister, expressed his disgust with the movie and particularly the Utalii College-trained Rusesabagina.
The Prime Minister’s anger is perhaps informed by the fact that at the time of the genocide he was among those who sought refuge at the hotel.
He narrated how, during the Screening of the movie at the Serena Hotel in Kigali, he actually averted his gaze from the screen during the whole time the movie was being screened. “I only attended the screening of the movie out of protocol, as a government official. Otherwise there was no way I would have gone there,” said a fuming Makuza.
Apart from the prime minister, there were other persons who were at the hotel then, and who gave their testimonies, all of them saying that Rusesabagina was anything but the hero depicted in movie.
Serge Sakumi, who was 14, at the time recalls how a relative brought them to Hotel Mille Collines, only for Rusesabagina to turn them away for lack of money. He had turned out at the hotel with nine of his siblings.
All the while, armed Interahamwe militia were roaming the road waiting to pounce. “I was about to be killed in front of the hotel because I had no money. Rusesabagina does not have a human heart,” he charged. “How can he call himself a hero if he had no mercy on children.”
The book is filled with testimonies of how Rusesabagina harassed those in the hotel for payment and threatened to throw out those who did not have money.
“Many other Rwandans who took refuge in the hotel have publicly declared that the heroic acts attributed to the character of the film bear no resemblance to the reality of events there over that three-month period,” says the book.
It adds: “it should also be pointed out that the hotel manager, unlike the saviour portrayed in the film, initially prevented the refugees from procuring food from the Red Cross because he preferred to sell them the hotel supplies.”
Among other evidence book reproduces a copy of fax sent to Rusesabagina, from the hotel owners in Belgium, instructing him not to charge for food that was acquired for free.
In the movie Rusesabagina is depicted as a resourceful person, who persuades the architects of the genocide to spare the refugees by bribing them with cigars, alcohol and a little money.
“… General Bizimungu and his cohorts were not poor wretches that could be bribed with goodies…they were the cream of the genocidaires, that is, hardened killers with everything they could desire at their disposal, who had the power of life and death over almost everyone,” writes the authors.
In any case, the book argues that these genocide plotters were Rusesabagina’s friends, and that they would constantly drop in at the hotel for refreshments. It adds that through his ‘useful’ contacts with Georges Rutaganda, the Interahamwe vice-president, Rusesabagina was able to have a steady supply of alcohol at the hotel. “Not surprisingly, the senior officers of the Rwandan Armed Forces needed a quiet, safe place where they could quench their thirst and organise their next move after a killing spree,” says the book.
However, in his book Shake Hands with the Devil, LGen Romeo Dallaire acknowledges that Rusesabagina’s act of giving alcohol to the genocidaires contributed in a small way in saving the refugees in that hotel.
It should also be recalled that Rusesabagina’s wife, a Tutsi, and their children were also camped at the hotel, thus he had an obligation, if only to his family, to ensure that Tutsis in that hotel were out of harm’s way.
If as the book claims that Rusesabagina did not save the refugees from the genocide plotters who used to frequent the hotel, then how come these people did not come under attack?
Among other things the book owes the people’s safety to the UNAMIR, the United Nations peace keepers in Rwanda. It also says that expatriates, UN and other NGOs personnel, as well as international journalists were housed there, “which was enough to deter would-be murders from the wholesale massacres that were going on in the rest of the country.”
Rusesabagina’s credibility was dealt a further blow when Valerie Bemeriki, who was a presenter with the infamous Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines, (RTLM) and who is currently serving a life sentence in prison, for her role in the genocide, told researchers for the book that Rusesabagina used to pass on names to RTLM. “…I also know that if you reported anyone, like I used to do on radio…you put them on death row. That’s what he (Rusesabagina) used to do; he gave us the names we broadcast on RTLM,” Bameriki is quoted as saying.
It would appear that authors of the book put in quite some work in researching for the book. They even unearthed information to the effect that Rusesabagina at some point, while still working Hotel Mille Collines, in the early ‘90s, used to spy on Tutsis for the Rwandan Intelligence services.
And in what appears to be an obsession with the man, they have traced his every move. They are well aware that Rusesabagina formed the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation (HRRF), and whose registered directors are Rusesabagina, his wife and his two sons-in-law.
The authors also know that all the monies raised by the foundation actually goes into Rusesabagina’s personal account. Perhaps their real reason for hounding him, is the fact that “he used his newly-acquired fame, thanks to Hollywood to indulge in petty politicking that exposed his ethnic and revisionist tendencies.”
At some point Terry George, Hotel Rwanda’s director found himself in the thick of this controversy. In an article he wrote to the Washington Post in May 2006, seeking to clear his man, he suggests that the fact that Rusesabagina intends to form a political party, is causing the Rwandan ruling elite anxious moments. He nevertheless concludes that Hotel Rwanda 2 “is a sequel I never want to make.”
Suggested reading Shake Hands with the Devil by LGen Romeo Dallaire, An Ordinary Man, by Paul Rusesabagina, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide by Linda Melvern.
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Maisha Yetu gets recognition
Barely two months after Maisha Yetu came into being we seem to have caused quite a stir in the literary scene. We first received a favourable mention on Kenyanpoet, a blog that deal in literary issues with specific focus on poetry. in the piece, Kenyanpoet, who appears to be well versed in matters IT (I am still learning the ropes) gives an overview of blogs in the country and how they have evolved over time. The illuminating story also tells of the edge blogs have over other journalistic medium. Kenyanpoet had some really flattering words about Maisha Yetu:
Amidst all these, one journalist has realized the future of media- the internet. He runs a literary blog, www.kenyanbooks.wordpress.com which focuses on Kenyan books, Kenyan writers as well as what is happening in the local literary scene. The Blog, which was not setup too long ago, has become a platform where thespians as well as readers of African literature can engage in discussion forums.
The blog allows visitors to post their comments without any admin moderation which gives a feeling of one being in room where thoughts and feedback given are in real time.
You can read the full story here.That is not all. The immensly popular youth/entertainment magazine Pulse, which appears every Friday in the Standard, on their December 7 edition (Their fourth anniversary edition), reproduced a story that appeared in Maisha Yetu; Literary Gangster: Smitta’s Poetry book. In the story, I had reviewed the book What If I am a Literary Gangster by Tony Mochama. Mochama also answers to the name Smitta Smitten, a star columnist in Pulse. Smitta thought that the review was quite good and that it deserved to be reproduced in his culumn Scene at under Special Edition tag. That way Maisha Yetu made history as the only guest columnist (we appeared under the pen name Joe Mondie) to have ever graced the paged in the four years that Pulse has been in existence! It is not for nothing that the story was carried in the Standard, Kenyan’s second largest circulating newspaper.The story has has generated a lot of debate in the comments section as you will see. These are some of the things that tell us that we are doing the right things and that we are headed in the right direction.
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Meja Mwangi’s book honoured
Meja Mwangi’s book The Last Plague, published by Kenya’s East African Educational Publishers (EAEP) has been included in the current issue of African Writing (AW), a bi-monthly online journal, under the Books Worth Reading column. This is a column that makes a case for potential African classics. This is a major honour for the book that addresses the issue of HIV/Aids.
The honour is not misplaced though. The book, which was published in 2000, won the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature, Kenya’s biggest and most prestigious literary prize, in 2001. AW pays glowing tribute to Mwangi’s book by comparing it with Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s latest masterpiece Wizard of the Crow.
In his 449-page novel, THE LAST PLAGUE, Kenyan writer, Meja Mwangi, achieved two things: he wrote a restrained AIDS novel that was true to the apocalyptic character of the pandemic, and he wrote a classic of delirious humour. It is this combination of tragedy (that never quite loses its grasp on hope), deft satire, and unexpected humour that bushwhacks the reader at the most sombre moments, that makes this book compelling rereading, even seven years after its first publication.
Read the complete review on AW here
Meja Mwangi’s other book Kill me Quick, also by EAEP won the inaugural edition of Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature in 1974. During this year’s edition of Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature, his book The Boy Gift, also by EAEP, took third position in the youth category. The second position was taken by Ken Walibora with his book Innocence Long Lost, Published by Sasa Sema. The Overall winner was Kingwa Kamencu’s book To Grasp at a Star (EAEP)