Sweden: Mr Clay Onyango saddened by Kenyans rumour-mongering in Stockholm

Clay Onyango is sad. The fact is that he feels he helps people as a businessman and yet they spread rumours that he is in jail. He would like the rumour-mongers to stop their ill-intentioned motivated initiatives destroying others due to jealousness. Here below, Clay speaks to Kenyans by letter, APN editorial, 

Dear Kenyans,
There is a rumour going on in Stockholm that I am in jail for dealing in drugs and fake cards.

I have been called by several people trying to
confirm if this is correct. Well, the answer is NO. As a businessman, I am aware that I have to have enemies.

I have been a businessman for the last 7 years and I am proud to say that I have not been summoned by the police or even been in jail. Yes, as a business man, I have debts, I have made mistakes, I can be bankrupt and these includes major business companies as British
Airways, Alitalia, KlM, Ericsson, Xerox and many others.

Even governments do have debts. For example, the Kenya government, Tanzania, Afghanistan and many others.

Big airlines like SABENA went bankrupt and so as other big companies. As a businessman I have also been a victim of fraud through visa cards and these goes to all large airlines and big companies.

Now one wonders how somebody can wake up in the morning and build rumours that I am in jail. This has been going on for a month now, I did not want to comment on this, but it has gone too far now. It is not funny to receive calls from friends asking the same question.

I have been in touch with some of these rumour mongers and it’s unfortunate that these are people who have been living in Sweden for the last 30 years. One wonders if they are
becoming infants as they grow… One even went to an African embassy, got an appointment to meet the ambassador and started saying that I do organise parties so that people can attend and fight, and then they report to the police so that they can get compensation and then I share with
them.

Surely, isn’t this a sick person, mentally? I do not want to mention names…, but I would advice Kenyans to keep these two individuals away from their lives.

They would come to my office, rush to the kitchen, make coffee, and before they leave they ask for 20 Kr for cigarettes.

Now they have smoked their cigarattes and out of their mouth comes rumours… Sometimes I wonder why good people around us leave this world, leaving the rotten ones to continue distabilising the society we live in.

By Clay Onyango

Published by African Press in Norway, apn, africanpress@chello.no, tel +47 932 99 739 or +47 6300 2525

TV explodes, kills woman in Norway

*”A 78-year-old Norwegian woman died this week from burns suffered when her television set exploded in her apartment.

Police in Odda confirmed Thursday that the TV exploded and sparked the fire in the victim’s apartment. PHOTO: POLICE

The woman lived alone in a senior citizens’ housing project in Odda, western Norway. The explosion was apparently so powerful that the TV itself was virtually pulverized.

Newspaper Hardanger Folkeblad reported that the woman died at Haukeland Hospital in Bergen, where she was flown after the explosion sparked the fire on Tuesday evening.

Ragnar Kaldheim of the Hordaland Police District, warned that televisions, especially older one, gather dust that can ignite from the warmth of the set. The dead woman’s TV was said to be a 1990 model.

Fire prevention experts recommend dusting TVs, turning them completely off when not in use and unplugging them during lengthy absences.”*

*”/”*Lifted by Korir and published by African Press in Norway, apn, africanpress@chello.no, tel +47 932 99 739 or +47 6300 2525. source.aftenpostenENG

East Africans to choose anthem this month

The process of choosing the East Africa Community anthem began last evening. It is reported to be on track in all the three major states of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzanian.

This is part of the process to restore the East African community which began in 2000 after a ratification of an East African Community Treaty by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. Rwanda and Burundi were also admitted to join the community recently.

Speaking at a press conference last evening, the Minister for Gender, Labour and Social Development Syda Bbumba said that 6 songs have been proposed and the public would choose the best which will be the community anthem.

Bbumba says that the process of choosing had begun by last evening and that the public would soon hear the anthem played on local radios to enable them participate.

She says that participation would be through writing massages on mobile phones and calling on the radios to vote for the best song.

The songs which have been nominated are Tupendane sote from Kenya, Mungu ibariki jumuiya from Tanzania, East Africa anthem from Uganda, jumuiya ya Africa mashariki from Tanzania, Bound for ever from Uganda and tupendane na tuungane pamoja from Kenya

Bbumba says the process of selection would run for three weeks starting this week in all the three states.

Ham Mukasa
www.freewebs.com/hammukasa-buganda
www.buganda.com

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They say: “A Good Muganda is a Dead one”, writes Caroline from Sudan

 

I have been in some discussions with some people here in Juba, Sudan who told me about this slogan - a good Muganda is a dead one. The men told me that their hate for the Baganda will never change.

They claim the bagandans are the source of instability in Uganda, because they have no side, they are purpets. One took me through history and told me about how they learnt that Sir Apollo Kaggwa was a purpet for the Europeans.

He claimed that the return of Museveni was the end of a republic they fought hard to establish. He told me they abolished the monarchies and now see what M7 has done.

I asked him what grudge he had towards the baganda people, he told me that it is because of what baganda did to his father.

First of all, he says, bagandans were forcing his father and other tribes to plant many trees in Tororo.

Secondly, that he used to watch his father travelling to go and pay tax to the Kabaka. He and his brother tried to stop their father all the time whenever he was going to pay these taxes but he refused. He said that he wanted to.

Now this man he is carrying this grudge with him. He told me that he was happy seeing bagandans die on the way to busines too juba. Today, he is today in the sudanese army.

Whenever he meets bagandans he starts “a good muganda is a dead one”. He claims one day they will be back and then this time there will not be any forgiveness.

He told me that they were boys from Makindye barracks in Obote two. He claims that he was in Kenya when Okello took over and he rushed to reach Uganda to advice Baaz (could not get the name correctly) not to make that coup but it was too late.

He says, if I could catches a muganda here in juba trying to trick some people as they always do, he will show him what a muganda should look like.

Now I understanding why it will take much time to reach and get a democratic Uganda.

 

By Caroline

Published by African Press in Norway, apn, africanpress@chello.no, tel +47 932 99 739 or +47 6300 2525

Circumscision as admission criteria

In the early 90s, an expatriate teacher at Nkubu High School in Meru decided to show two films to the high school boys.

Being a teacher of Social Education and Ethics, he knew just the right way of sensitising the boys to the dangers of early sex. One of the films this American teacher screened was on the process of birth.

Students watched in amazement. The movie on abortion graphically showed images of techniques like vacuum suction curettage, in which contents of the womb are forcefully sucked out.

In one of the film shifts, students were keenly following the movie, when, suddenly, there was uproar.

The shouts and screams were so intense that, for those students in class, lessons had to be suspended as everyone ran out to find out what the matter was. Outside the laboratory hall in which the movies were being screened, angry students were almost going bizarre.

 
Students of Burieruri Secondary School in Maua, Meru-North, playing at the institution. According to the school’s principal, Burieruri is one of few high schools in the region where boys do not face discrimination on the basis of circumcision. Picture by Lawrence Kinoti
 
What could the matter be? Inquiries yielded a finding that made sense to the students and teachers from the local communities: While they were watching a scene that involved nudity, the boys had made a shocking discovery. Among them was a classmate who was not circumcised!

Violation of rights

When 20 Form One boys were recently turned away at Kiriani Boys’ High School for being uncircumcised, condemnations flew from far and wide.

Some people described the move as “insane and an embarrassment not only to the Meru community, but also to the Kenyan society as a whole”.

A local medical doctor, who is also a politician and a human rights activist, Dr Charles Mwirabua Thiakunu, denounced the school management’s action, terming it a gross abuse of human rights. “The right to education is a human right, which should not be denied or violated by anyone,” he said.

Reacting to the principal’s letter barring the boys from school, Thiakunu said two weeks was not a sufficient healing period. He stressed: “Circumcision is not merely the surgery but the ritual, and a rite of passage, which should not be viewed by the students as punishment.”

The important ritual of circumcision, he said, is meant to leave a positively indelible mark in one’s life history, and must not be stigmatised.

Cultural debate

During Thiakunu’s high school days at the local Miathene Boys’ High School (where he did his O-levels between 1975 and 1978), no boy went to secondary school uncircumcised.

Why then does he condemn Kithinji’s action? He believes that, even where some uncircumcised boys today join high school, there are civil ways of handling the matter, without necessarily barring them from studies.

Kithinji’s letter to the parents of the suspended boys read in part: “You sneaked your son in school without reporting to us that the boy was (not circumcised). When such boys are in school, they not only bring a lot of discomfort to the other boys but also cause a lot of psychological torture to your son… Please do the needful within two weeks (ie have him circumcised), and let your son report back to school with you immediately he is well”.

Even some local headteachers have been outraged. The Principal of Burieruri High School, MM Mutuma, describes Kithinji’s action as a “crazy one”.

Mutuma says he finds nothing wrong with boys being enrolled in Form One while uncircumcised. He points out that, at his school, a few boys have been completing their secondary education uncircumcised, yet, as he claims, they have never been victimised.

Uncircumcised captain

He cites a case where two boys entered Burieruri at Form One in 2002 and were there for four years, uncircumcised. One of them scored an A- in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination, while his counterpart attained a B. This, according to Mutuma, is evidence that circumcision is not an issue in schools. Says he: “Every year, we admit more than 10 boys uncircumcised, and they interact freely with their colleagues.”

Last year, one uncircumcised boy at the school was a dormitory captain who ably served in his role. But Mutuma says such co-existence is only possible in an atmosphere of discipline.

In good faith

The Principal of Meru School, the oldest school in the region, David Gideon Kariuki, has some kind words for Kiriani’s headteacher. He says Kithinji may have taken the action in good faith and should not be condemned unheard.

“But my colleague should have consulted widely, before making the unlawful decision.”

Kariuki has observed that, where the majority of students in a school come from the neighbouring communities, local cultural practices inevitably infiltrate the students’ social life, because, as he observes, a school is an integral part of the socialisation process.

“But this should not be let to supersede an institution’s code of rules and regulations,” he cautions.

What does Kariuki have to say about his school’s curiously sexist and chauvinistic motto, “In understanding be men”? Listen to him: “Here, a real man is judged by his academic performance, and boys have no time to think about circumcision”

If anything, Kariuki adds, “Ours is like a national school, and some of our students are drawn from certain Kenyan communities that do not circumcise”.

Discrimination rife

But Dancan Kirimi Mbatau, a former student of Kanyakine Boys’ Secondary School, which is located about 12km away, harbours memories of a harrowing experience. When he joined Form One at the school in 1986, Mbatau faced such ferocious discrimination that, when schools closed, he had one demand for his parents: “Have me circumcised or I will drop out!”

Now an accomplished accountant based in Nairobi, he says he could not have withstood the daily taunts and insults hauled his way, especially when time came to take showers or sleep.

To feel safe, he says, “I had to share a bed with the dormitory captain, and only went to sleep when he also did.” He adds: “I was literally a slave of the other boys. At times, I even got a beating from the boys for retorting when I felt pushed to the wall.”

Mbatau had to be circumcised immediately the schools closed. To this day, the accountant says he could never take his son, uncircumcised, to Form One.

Teach human rights

An official at the Meru-North District Education Office, Mrs Charity Kimbira, says that, culture notwithstanding, the decision over whether to circumcise should be left to the child and parents, not to a school.

She says unhindered access to education is a basic human right. To curb the rampant practice of discrimination, human rights studies should be included in the curriculum.

A local bank manager, Moses Murianki Nabea, describes the barring of boys from school on account of their circumcision status as “Bad news and primitiveness of the highest order… We are no longer in the 17th century, when a Meru could not share a room or other property with someone from a tribe that does not circumcise.”

Social misfits

Some of the affected parents have resolved not to return their sons to Kiriani. Peter Meeme and Samuel Muriuki say they had arranged to have their sons circumcised after the school closes for the first term.

They could not, as requested by the school, have had their children circumcised last December, because they were not sure their sons would qualify for high school.

Although the Ministry of Education has intervened and ordered the unconditional re-admission of the boys, parents are wary of returning their children to a school where they have been labelled as social misfits.

A parent, Naomi Ngunjiri, appeals to the government to pardon Kithinji, saying the headteacher may have sensed danger at the school, whose majority of students come from the local community.

Ngunjiri’s sentiments are echoed by the local Njuri Ncheke Council of Elders Chairman, Mzee Paul M’Ethingia, who says the teacher took the right decision.

Had the suspended students been harmed, M’Ethingia argues, the principal could solely have been held responsible.

The leader believes there was more to Kiriani’s circumcision saga than meets the eye, especially considering that the students went on strike expressing support for their headteacher. Already, the principal has been reinstated.

Isnt this amazing to read such stories today in the year 2007?

source the Standard lifted story
ira Ndunda

source The standard -lifted story.

Ira Ndunda

Published by African Press in Norway, apn, africanpress@chello.no, tel +47 932 99 739 or +47 6300 2525

Kenya: Neglect and Destitution Among Many Senior Citizens in Urban Areas

Despite the changing socio-economic structure of the African societies, the roles of the elderly remain very important within the family and the community. Culturally, they are revered, respected and often exert a great influence on the rest of the family. African societies are still at the beginning of the demographic transition: their populations are ageing but their life expectancy remains low.In Kenya for instance, 2.4 million people out of a population of 32 million are considered old while the life expectancy stands at 48.9 years of age, the 25th lowest rate in the world.

The standard definition of ‘old age’ used by the United Nations is 60+ years and according to the organisation, the continent is home to around 48 million older people. Analysts say that by 2025 their numbers will have almost doubled to 85 million.

The UN and some  non-governmental organizations argue for the need to address the well-being of older people, stressing that population ageing is a present-day development challenge for Africa. In Kenya most of them do not have access to medical care while only ten percent of them receive a pension.

Help Age Kenya is a charity working to monitor  the access the elderly have to health services and to ensure that issues affecting  them are at the centre of government health policy and programmes.

The organization has strongly emphasized that “Access to health services is not a benevolent act but is a basic human right for any human being regardless of age.” Tadeo Waweru is a programme officer at Help Age Kenya in Nairobi. 

He says, “For twenty years since it was initiated we are trying to look at the welfare of older persons, welfare in terms of food, in terms of shelter, come the year 2000. That’s when we started addressing the HIV/AIDS situation of the old people.”
Yet despite their efforts, lack of pensions further exacerbates the already unbearable situation of the older people in Kenya. Old age is often accompanied by chronic poverty and material deprivation.

Neglect and destitution among older people have emerged as a particularly visible ’social problem’ in many cities.

The current Bill of Rights enshrined in the Kenyan constitution does not specifically address the rights of the older persons and there’s no specific legislation to address their needs. 84-year-old Mutuku Mbuku, a retired civil servant, decries the prohibitive cost of health services whenever he seeks medical attention.

He says, “I have been frustrated all through; I have spent about [2,000 US dollars] walking from one office to another without success. Do you want to see my papers? I go to the hospital when I’m sick, I pay 20 shillings (0.3 dollars) for the diagnosis and then the doctor doesn’t even attend to me, I’m just told to go and buy expensive drugs yet I’m suffering. Nothing. “

Some of them claim that economic strain and the adequacy of customary family support systems - upon which the vast majority of older people depend - are weakening as 65-year-old Jeremiah Kaggwa explains.

“I used to be a primary school teacher, my pension is so small, and it doesn’t help me as much with my poor health. Yet my children who are married and are better off don’t even help me, I feel so abandoned and I hope that I can be able to get some help from the government. I don’t want to be a beggar.”

 But Some older people say that the government has started listening to their pleas and  is now taking their needs into consideration.

The government first presented a draft policy on the needs of older persons in March this year but was taken back to the cabinet for more consultation. The corrected version was retabled in September and is now awaiting approval of the cabinet for official implementation.

Although the new version doesn’t promise jobs, it says that all older persons will be entitled to non-contributory pension but is silent on the amount to be paid.

Maria Kasmani, a 63-year-old mother of eight who has been regularly visiting Kangundo hospital about 120 kilometres from Nairobi, says that things are gradually becoming better.

She says that “Since the Kibaki government took power there has been a lot of positive change. People have improved in the way they treat others. Before then they used to have a very negative attitude towards the old like us but these days they are much better. Services by public hospitals have also improved because they fear they might be sacked for being complacent.”

Waweru is optimistic about the future but says that the government must step up to the mark to ensure that the needs of older people are streamlined to an acceptable level because everyone will eventually become old.

She adds “The govt passed the gender bill very quickly, it passed the childrens bill very quickly, it handled the disability bill very quickly, and given that older persons are increasing, I think it’s something at least to be done. And then there’s a bottom line to all of the issues of older persons, we are all ageing we are all getting there, creating policies on older persons is not about making the life of the older person now better it’s about making our life better because that’s where we are heading.”                    

With every tick of the clock, the African population may see exponential rises in the number of people aged 60 and more.  At least among Kenya’s elderly, there’s a flick of hope that old age will not mean deprivation and neglect.

source voa-lifted story by Ira Ndunda

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Human rights groups blasts Kenya police

Human rights groups are blasting Kenyan police for killing one of Kenya’s most wanted criminals, saying that the suspect should have been taken into custody and tried rather than shot. As Cathy Majtenyi reports for VOA from Nairobi, there are conflicting reports of whether or not the suspect was armed when he was killed.

Simon Matheri, described by police as “public enemy number one,” was accused of killing more than 10 people, most recently two American missionaries and a prominent Kenyan AIDS scientist during carjackings.

Police killed Matheri in the early hours of Tuesday after surrounding his home in a town near the capital.

The chief counsel of the public interest group The Chambers of Justice, Ababu Namwamba, tells VOA the police’s action violated the rule of law.

He said, “If we are a society that is anchored on the rule of law, and where justice is a fundamental public philosophy, then we must seek to apprehend criminals and arraign them in courts of law instead of resorting to summary executions like we have been witnessing in the recent past.”

Namwamba says the law allows for police to disarm suspects with guns by shooting them in the arm or leg rather than outright killing them.

Police spokesman Gideon Kibunjah tells VOA that, in general, the police try not to kill suspected criminals.

“Our aim is to shoot to disable,” he said. “But when somebody’s shooting at you, there is really not much time to decide how you are going to aim for the legs or something else.”

“It is a matter of life and death, and we have lost quite a number of officers to gangsters, so sometimes we really cannot take chances with them. If somebody wants to fight, then they should be prepared for the consequences of that,” he added.

There are conflicting reports of how 30-year-old Matheri died.

Police spokesman Kibunjah says Matheri was holding an AK-47 assault rifle when he stepped out of his house, but would not say if Matheri attempted to shoot police with the gun.

But Matheri’s wife was quoted as saying her husband walked out of their house, unarmed, holding his hands on his head. She said police interrogated her husband and another accomplice for about 30 minutes before shooting them.

Kenya’s police have repeatedly been criticized for shooting first and asking questions later.

A study conducted last year by former chief government pathologist Kirasi Olumbe found that, over a seven-year period, 70 percent of gunshot deaths were a result of police bullets. The study did not say if the gunshot victims were criminals.

As the public becomes more worried about what appears to be an increase in violent crime, police have become more trigger-happy.

According to a report last month in one of Kenya’s daily newspapers, victims of police shootings have increased from about 40 to 60 each month. On one day last month, police killed 13 people suspected of committing various crimes.

lifted story
Ira Ndunda

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THE coup which brought the WaBenzi to power was not immediately recognised

But it established then, firmly and immovably, in control of almost every African country from Algeria to Zimbabwe, espousing philosophies from Marxist through middle-of-the-road socialist to stout capitalist.

Certain characteristics distinguish members of the WaBenzi, They are usually educated; most have studied abroad; they wear well-cut three-piece suits; their homelands are the air-conditioned offices in capital cities throughout the continent. It is rare to find them in the countryside, save possibly at election time. If describing them as fat is caricature it is also often the literal truth, for African tradition requires status to be displayed in the frequent feasting of dependents. They are known by many names; but the one most often used describes their common aspiration; WaBenzi like to ride in motorcars made by the firm of Mercedes-Benz.

WaBenzi are those who have made it to the top. If you gain their confidence they will tell you much about the people of their country, the subsistence farmers or nomads. They may say they are lazy or backward, and describe the mistakes they make. People talk a lot about peasants but no-one actually wants to be one. This is wise; a peasant’s life is one of relentless work, poverty and stupefying boredom.

Nowhere on earth is the gulf between governors and governed, capital and countryside, so great as in Africa. This is not a matter of wealth, nor of corruption, though the continent has more than its share of both. There are honest leaders in Africa; but even they cannot get close to their people. How has this gulf come about?

A leader in modern Africa has made a sacrifice not required of his western counterpart, He has sacrificed his roots. The process begins early. At school he is taught arcane facts in an arcane language. Not one of these facts will bear on the life of a peasant farmer. If he reaches secondary school he may learn mathematics, English or French and the constituent parts of the atom; he will learn nothing of the right way to plant millet or to conserve the soil. His parents may have struggled hard for his school fees, remembering the glittering prizes that fell upon the educated few at independence. It follows that to return to subsistence farming after school is to admit failure.

The semi-literacy produced in most African schools may not qualify students for high office but it certainly disqualifies them from being peasants. Their learning guarantees their unemployment. Many decline to touch a hoe again and drop out to the urban slums. The exceptional few with influence and ability get to study abroad and then drop out to urban riches. The schooling of both has given them a language not spoken by their parents and a contempt for the life they led. The wealth that paid for their expensive learning came from the countryside but precious little of it returns there.

So Africa’s elite are cut off from their roots. That is no easy life. Born into one world, trying to embrace another, they only half-succeed. Caught in between, they are pulled both ways. A doctor’s self-esteem or a politician’s power-base requires that wealth be displayed in the traditional manner. He is duty hound to support an ever-widening circle of family and dependents, pay their school fees, find them jobs (not on the land), feast the whole village when he returns there. A man is only as great as he is seen to he. So a District Officer must open a cattle-dip with pomp; a motorcade and a day of speeches. It may be that this will cost more than the cattle-dip but there is no escape.

His prestige is uncertain in the other world as well. The things that visiting Europeans take for granted represent the height of achievement in Africa. There is insecurity, the continuing need to impress; above all the fear that his new friends may find him ‘backward’. This is why governments sometimes deny the existence of famine and disease in their country. Nor is it unknown for the white WaBenzi of the international agencies to connive at the denial - politicians’ susceptibilities are more immediate than distant deaths of the nameless.

Photo: Maggie Black
Governments, both Western and Eastern, can do business with WaBenzi. They speak the same language. Five-year plans, co-operation, industrialisation, economic growth; modernized agriculture and huge irrigation schemes; this is the vocabulary of UN-speak, the words of International Man the world over. FAO meetings in Rome; OAU conferences in Addis Ababa: discussions everywhere with the multinational company pushing yet another agri-business scheme; Africa’s elite gets from one to the other and spouts the jargon with the rest. But frequenters of the endless round of cocktail parties in diplomatic suburbs do not refer to those who scratch at dust bowls with a hoe.

Most of the elite can ignore the existence of the real world encircling their dream island of a city. That portion of it that governs cannot. Its overriding preoccupation must be to remain in power. So civil servants and party officials descend on the countryside to control it. In theory these people serve their community. In practice the community serves them.

WaBenzi are good bureaucrats. And bureaucrats love uniformity. Running their countries from the top and seduced by the elegant neatness of overall plans, they ignore all diversity of climate and culture to make their subjects conform. That everyone should grow what he pleases is a policy that horrifies civil servants the world over. Agriculture, like everything else, must be brought into line with the central directives. If it has been decided that maize is needed for the towns and cotton for export. then maize and cotton shall be grown - everywhere. The whole of northern Zambia is unsuitable for maize; the agricultural authorities encourage it none the less and completely ignore millet and sorghum, the traditional crops that do well. The urge to standardize can be bizarre. It has been decreed, also in Zambia, that primary schools throughout the country shall be altered to conform to the same architectural design. There is no money to pay for pencils in the schools.

The WaBenzi of Tanzania favour uniformity too. And that means plenty of top-down control. ‘Ujamaa villages will be created by village people themselves and maintained by them’. So said President Nyerere and gave as his example a cooperative at Ruvuma that had done just that. A national body was set up to establish more Ujamaa villages. Its first action was to abolish the Ruvuma co-operative on the grounds that, having been created by village people, it must have been plotting against the party. You get more uniform villages by using the army.

Tanzania’s actions are no worse than its neighbours’, but its words sound better. Other elites - the Nguemas of Equatorial Guinea - grind their peasants without so much as by your leave. The rhetoric is in any case irrelevant. Guinea-Bissau is a country that contains no industry, no roads - only farmers and an elite which loudly proclaims its dedication to the needs of the poor. To achieve this its national plan is to build a single huge factory to centralise rice processing. The grotesquely unworkable scheme will feed the WaBenzi who run it and will spawn bureaucracy. What it will eliminate is the farmers - through bankruptcy if not starvation.

No government can do business with a peasant because even with the best will in the world, neither can understand the other. Where one sees an inefficient unit of production. the other sees a cow. To make the misunderstanding worse the government’s view is generally mistaken. A cow and the traditional community that lives off it have evolved over centuries for survival. It is unlikely to be bettered by any scheme dreamed up in an air-conditioned office. A peasant life involves feelings, traditions, neighbours. social aspirations. surroundings, ambitions and the future of the soil and of the firewood. Experts can deal only with the mere technics of seeds. But the dreamers’s urge to modernise. to improve. to practice social engineering on the grand scale, will not leave well alone a system that has evolved so complex a balance. The party instructions go out. The half-baked theories are put into action. Chaos and degradation of people and soil result. And ordered, traditional commun

Julian Champkin is a freelance journalist who has worked for.

By Longstory Cutshort,

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