region:western kenya

‘Any way possible’
▻https://africasacountry.com/2018/06/any-way-possible

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A Kenyan football fan reflects on a lifetime of World Cup finals.

Image credit Laurence Griffiths via Getty Images.

1986 World Cup Finals I was only 4 years old during the 1986 World Cup finals. I don’t have many memories of this particular World Cup except my dad and my uncle’s animated conversations about the infamous “hand of god” goal by Maradona. My father, a very idealistic young university graduate, had moved with my mother to a rural high school in western Kenya, where he taught history to high school students. My mother taught English. They brought a 14-inch black and white television that would turn our house into a major community sports center during World Cup finals. I would later learn from my father that ours was the only (...)

Dakar’s African Renaissance
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/06/dakars-african-renaissance

I have wanted to come to Dakar since I was a young man growing up in western Kenya reading Léopold Sédar Senghor’s poetry. My mother, a schoolteacher, made me read Senghor’s poetry aloud before asking me to explain what Senghor was thinking when he wrote his poetry. In my late teenage years, I read Mariama…

In Kenya’s Forbidden Forests, Conservation Can Turn Violent | The Huffington Post
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kenya-climate-change-forests_us_58b72d35e4b0284854b3886b

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Covering a 54,000-acre swath of rolling hills in western Kenya, Embobut is one of the country’s last intact mountain forests. It’s a vital watershed. The hills capture rain clouds, which feed rivers, which flow downhill to supply thousands of smallholder and commercial maize farms in Kenya’s breadbasket. The forest is also home to several thousand Sengwer, a hunter-gatherer ethnic minority.

Embobut looks like a place frozen in prehistory, or lifted from Dr. Seuss. Ancient trees tower over carpets of grass; strange fluorescent flowers mingle with twisted vines and ferns; crystal-clear creeks crash through boulders.

But the beauty belies an undercurrent of controversy. The forest has become a flashpoint in a debate about indigenous peoples’ land rights ― and the trouble that can ensue when those rights conflict with the country’s strategy for fighting climate change.

The Sengwer have lived in this forest for generations, building simple wooden houses, and keeping bees for honey and livestock for milk and meat. The population is spread over a large area, and signs of their presence are few. Without a guide, a visitor could walk for hours and only encounter occasional cows.

But the Kenya Forest Service sees forest dwellers like the Sengwer as squatters whose growing demand for timber, water, pasture and farmland puts too much strain on a delicate ecosystem, especially as Kenya works to confront climate change and adapt to its impacts.

#Kenya #forêt #climat #conservation #peuples_autochtones

Kenya’s Ogiek people forced from homes amid ’colonial approach to conservation’ | Rachel Savage | Global development | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/aug/18/kenyas-ogiek-people-are-seeing-their-land-rights-brutalised?CMP=share_b

They came without warning, forcing people from their homes with no time to collect their possessions. A deaf old man was attacked when he didn’t hear the orders to leave. Then the houses were burned to the ground.

More than 200 families, all from the indigenous #Ogiek minority, were evicted from their homes on the slopes of Mount Elgon in western Kenya by a force of about 50 police and Kenya Forest Service (KFS) rangers in June. “They were armed,” says Peter Kitelo, an Ogiek activist.

While some people found refuge with friends and family, or have been able to build shelters, many still have only trees for cover. “We are really cold. There is no food, there [are] no blankets, there is no shelter,” says Cosmas Murunga, 68, who fled his home with 10 family members as it was set on fire.

About 80,000 Ogiek live close to the border with Uganda and in the Mau forest, roughly 140 miles to the south-east, according to Kenya’s 2009 census (pdf). Both communities of hunter-gatherers have experienced multiple evictions since the British colonial authorities expelled them in the 1930s to make way for forest reserves and white settlers.

c’est beau un paysage sans clôture

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#Kenya #chasseurs_cueilleurs #forêt #évictions_forcées #peuples_autochtones

Luo Home Pitt Rivers Museum
▻http://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/Luo/luo/page/home/index.html

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Explore around 350 historical Luo photographs from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, taken between 1902 and 1936.

This website is the result of a collaborative project between the Pitt Rivers Museum and members of the Luo community of Nyanza Province, western Kenya, with the assistance and co-operation of National Museums of Kenya. All of the photographs and documentation seen here has also been deposited with Kisumu Museum under a memorandum of understanding, and printed copies have also been presented to the British Institute in Eastern Africa and the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Museum and Mausoleum in Bondo.

Besides making these collections available to the research community, this project resulted in a series of four local exhibitions in Nyanza in early 2007, centred upon locations where the original photographs had been taken. Exhibiting these images locally enabled further research with members of the community and descendants of those photographed. Read more about the Paro Manene exhibition project...

http://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/Luo/luo/photos/600/1998.349.301-O.jpg

The website provides a number of ways in which to explore these photographs, such as by photographer, places or people mentioned in the documentation, or even by themes such as archaeology, landscape images, portraits, images of homesteads and cattle-keeping and the famous #Luo funerary ceremony of #Tero_Buru.

#afrique #archive #photographie #Kenya #Kisumu_Museum #musée #histoire

Want to fight #poverty ? Just give the poor cash:
▻http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-25/want-to-fight-poverty-just-give-the-poor-cash #aid

“The research focused on households in rural western #Kenya, where nearly two-thirds of people report not having enough food in their house for the next day. [..]

Food consumption increased 20 percent, with a 42 percent reduction in the number of days children go without food. Recipients were also able to increase their ability to earn income. Revenue from raising livestock rose by 48 percent; total revenue from self-employment rose by 38 percent.

In some cases, the researchers gave money directly to women, and noticed lower levels of spousal abuse, as well as lower levels of stress especially when transfers were sent to women rather than men”