A Kenyan lawyer has offered US president Barack Obama 50 cows and other assorted livestock in exchange for his 16-year-old daughter Malia’s hand in marriage, a report said on Tuesday.
Felix Kiprono said he was willing to pay 50 cows, 70 sheep and 30 goats in order to fulfil his dream of marrying the first daughter.
“I got interested in her in 2008,” Kiprono said, in an interview with The Nairobian newspaper.
At that time President Obama was running for office for the first time and Malia was a 10-year-old.
“As a matter of fact, I haven’t dated anyone since and promise to be faithful to her. I have shared this with my family and they are willing to help me raise the bride price,” he said.
Kiprono said he intended to put his offer of marriage to Obama and hopes the president will bring his daughter with him when he makes his first presidential visit to Kenya, the country where his father was born, in July.
Obama‘s Kenyan grandmother, who is in her early 90s, still lives in Kogelo, in western Kenya, home to a number of the president’s relatives.
“I am currently drafting a letter to Obama asking him to please have Malia accompany him for this trip. I hope the embassy will pass the letter to him,” he said.
Kiprono dismissed the notion he might be a gold-digger.
“People might say I am after the family’s money, which is not the case. My love is real,” he insisted.
The young lawyer, whose age was not revealed, said he had already planned his proposal, which would be made on a hill near his rural village, and the wedding at which champagne would be shunned in favour of a traditional sour milk called “mursik”.
Kiprono said that as a couple he and the young Obama would lead “a simple life”.
“I will teach Malia how to milk a cow, cook ugali (maize porridge) and prepare mursik like any other Kalenjin woman,” he said.
Victor Mpofu aka Doc Vikela performs during his stand-up comedy at the Bang Bang Club in Harare, on February 26 2015. (Pic: AFP)
With Zimbabwe’s economy on its knees and life a daily struggle for most people, there is one luxury that many can surprisingly still afford — laughter.
“We laugh at ourselves. We laugh at funerals. We laugh even when things are not going well for us and we should be moaning and groaning,” says award-winning dramatist and poet Chirikure Chirikure.
Out of difficult times, with unemployment rampant and poverty widespread, a new generation of comedians has emerged to give the stressed nation’s funny-bone a much-needed tickle.
Simuka Comedy – made up of Victor Mpofu, better known by his stage name Doc Vikela or simply The Doctor, Michael Kudakwashe, Samm Monro and Comic King – attract full houses to their regular shows at The Book Café, a popular arts joint in the capital Harare.
The young comics spare no sacred cows as they poke fun at anyone from veteran President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace to corrupt traffic police officers, former white commercial farmers and local celebrities.
Donning a doctor’s white coat and stethoscope, Mpofu dishes out what he calls “doses” of humour to audiences sick of hard times after 15 years of economic decline blamed on the policies of Mugabe’s government.
The “Doctor” has his audience in tears of laughter as he imitates the 91-year-old president announcing the list of countries he has just visited on one of his frequent trips abroad – while the government can’t find the money to pay civil servants’ salaries.
He also takes a dig at Mugabe’s 35 years in office.
“Zimbabweans, for all our literacy – with a 99.9995 percent literacy rate – we are the only country that will fail to answer a simple question: who is your former president?”
For many, Mugabe, who has been in power since independence in 1980, is the only leader they have known.
Explaining the growing popularity of their shows, Mpofu said relentless hard times made people look for comic relief.
“Humour is a medically proven stress reliever,” he told AFP.
“Things are tight and people need something to take the stress off their lives. People would rather spend their little cash laughing and drinking.”
Comedy fan and regular showgoer Enright Tsambo agreed, while noting that the drinking part of a night out was seriously limited by a lack of cash.
“We can’t afford to drink as much as possible so some of us just buy one beer and spend an evening laughing at a comedy show,” he said. “It takes the stress away.”
In a country where insulting the president is a crime punishable by up to a year in prison, the comedians have found a way of tackling serious issues without making direct statements, so they get away with jokes that could get ordinary citizens arrested.
Fun and trouble
Away from the comedy venues, Zimbabweans share jokes across social media such as Facebook and WhatsApp and through street theatre shows – and some of them have landed in trouble.
“We have had several cases where people have been prosecuted for freely expressing themselves and in most cases they will just be sharing or cracking a joke,” said Kumbirai Mafunda, spokesman for Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights.
He cited the examples of a woman facing charges of insulting Mugabe after she sent a picture on WhatsApp purportedly showing the president in the nude, and a man who was arrested for joking that Mugabe was so old he would have a hard-time blowing up his birthday balloons during national celebrations earlier this year.
Mpofu’s colleague Samm Monro, better known by his stage name Comrade Fatso, pokes fun at the internal feuding which has seen factions in Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party waging bitter fights among themselves in the race to succeed him.
“Zanu-PF is the biggest opposition to Zanu-PF and now what is (opposition leader) Morgan Tsvangirai supposed to do?” Monro queried in one of his sold-out acts at the recent Harare International Arts Festival.
The University of Zimbabwe also came in for ribbing as the record holder for the fastest conferment of a doctorate – after Mugabe’s wife Grace was awarded a PhD three months after registering.
Monro is also among newscasters on the satirical Zambezi News, which parodies the state broadcaster Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, renowned for its pro-government spin.
Zambezi News bulletins, shown online on YouTube and on stage, feature characters such as the Minister of Impending Projects and the Minister of Mines, who owns a mine called Mine Mine – “because it’s mine”.
In the news bulletins white farmers whose properties were expropriated during the country’s controversial land reforms – partly blamed for the country’s economic collapse – are called “formers or farmers because most of them are former farmers”.
One of the country’s top production houses has produced a play, All Systems Out of Order, portraying the collapse of amenities such as public toilets as a symbol of the state of the country.
“There is so much pain, and people find solace in looking at themselves and laughing at themselves,” said theatre producer and actor Obrien Mudyiwenyama.
Jemimah Kansiime is being charged in a Ugandan court of law for wilfully and unlawfully producing, trafficking, importing, selling and abetting pornography, the first person to be indicted under the new anti-pornography law. (Pic: AFP)
Bouncing and grinding, singer Jemimah Kansiime’s music video was a hit among her Ugandan fans, but not for conservative politicians who say it broke a tough new anti-pornography law.
The 21-year-old singer, who uses the stage name “Panadol wa Basajja” – literally, “medicine for men” – has already spent five weeks in jail after her arrest for a music video that gives a lingering and generous focus on wet and soapy buttocks.
Now she faces up to 10 years in jail, if found guilty in the first full trial under the law – which took effect in February 2014 – that critics such as Human Rights Watch argue so loosely defines pornography it has encouraged public attacks on women wearing skimpy clothing.
Critics say it is part of a growing anti-liberal movement including tough laws against homosexuals in Uganda, where religious-driven conservatism appears to be on the rise and where US evangelical preachers rather than pop stars like Kansiime often receive rock star welcomes.
“I was aware that there are some sections of society that are conservative,” said the singer, smoothing her rainbow coloured hair extensions that always cover one eye.
But one thing she thought she had learnt from her idols – including Rihanna and Nicki Minaj – is that sex sells.
“I was just experimenting to see if I put on a short dress, will the audience like it?” said the singer.
She made the video that has placed her in hot water last year for her song Nkulinze – or “I am waiting for you” – about “a young lover’s intimate fantasies”.
It has proved popular, and the video has been watched over 140 000 times on YouTube. But Kansiime said she never dreamt that writhing in her underwear was breaking the law. She and her then manager Didi Muchwa Mugisha were arrested in November.
Mugisha pleaded guilty and was fined 200 000 Ugandan shillings (75 dollars), but Kansiime pleaded not guilty, and was held for five weeks before raising the cash bail.
“When I was making that video I never intended it for children, I intended it for adults. I did not sell or distribute the song,” said Kansiime, wearing a short, leopard print dress with tiny straps, revealing a push up bra underneath.
“My rights have been trampled upon, my freedom of expression has been trampled upon,” she told AFP in her simple tin-shack home in the capital Kampala.
Shocked minister
Her lawyer, Isaac Semakadde, argues the case is a test for the right of Ugandan performers to “express themselves”.
“That right to erotic entertainment, there has to be a space for it in an open and free society,” he told AFP, saying divisions must be made between clearly criminal offences such as child pornography.
“To ban all forms of pornography, all forms of nudity, is outrageous,” he said.
She was tracked down and arrested after Ethics Minister Simon Lokodo was shocked at the video. Lokodo has recently boasted that he and his “intelligence team” of spies are “on the ground” watching such singers closely.
“That’s why Panadol was arrested,” he said, describing her videos as “very obscene and vulgar”, and warning of more arrests.
The former priest said singers such as Rihanna were “the type of people I’m condemning.”
“She’s a very provocative dancer… there’s nothing at all good there,” he said.
In his continued crackdown on pornography, Lokodo has this year ordered police to arrest men who procure prostitutes and described a popular local television dating show as prostitution. Local media reported that he also confronted Uganda’s youngest MP when she walked into parliament in a short skirt.
Semakadde accuses the ethic ministry of ignoring more pressing issues.
“The decadence in society does not start and stop with prostitution,” he said. “There’s corruption – but they have no answers to that, so they go for the most vulnerable.”
Kansiime is due next in court later this month. But Semakadde said he will request the case is halted while the Constitutional Court deals with a separate petition brought by activists against the law, arguing it is “overbroad and vague”.
Amnesty International has called for the law to be repealed and Semakadde ultimately wants it scrapped, too.
Inspired by her struggle, Kansiime’s next song tackles unemployment.
As she awaits her next court appearance, she insisted that she had the right to film “whatever I want”, but conceded she may need to cater for more conservative tastes if she is to make a living from her music.
“I have to do something that people like, I have not benefitted from that video,” she admitted.
An overview of part of the eastern sector of the IFO-2 camp in the sprawling Dadaab refugee camp, north of Nairobi. (Pic: AFP)
Soon after dawn Bashir Bilal sat outside on his usual plastic jerry can surrounded by young girls and boys chanting Quranic verses.
Each child clutched a worn plank of wood instead of an exercise book, writing on it in Arabic script with ink made from charcoal and water.
In Somalia the Islamic madrassa is often the only education on offer, but here in the Dadaab refugee camps it is just the start. Later in the day the children are able to attend, for free, primary and even secondary school while scholarships are available for college education.
Uprooted and dispossessed, life as a refugee is tough. But for the Somalis who have for years, or even decades, called Dadaab home there are opportunities too.
Bilal (47) used to live in Afgoye, a breadbasket town 30 kilometres northwest of the capital Mogadishu. When he came to Dadaab five years ago he found better schooling options than at home where fees were high and children would often spend their days helping out on the family farm.
“Children here in Dadaab have the privilege of better education,” said Bilal. “They will bring change in Somalia when they go back.”
Just when they will go back is contentious. Kenya’s government has hosted refugees from Somalia since 1991 when civil war tore the country apart. Since then Dadaab has grown into the world’s largest refugee settlement, with over 350 000 residents.
Camps seen as a security threat Kenya now wants the camps shut down claiming they are a security threat used by members of al-Shabab, Somalia’s al-Qaeda branch, for recruitment, training and downtime.
Albert Kimathi, the area’s top government official who, as deputy county commissioner is responsible for security, called Dadaab “the breeding ground, the training ground” for al-Shabab. “They use the camps as safe havens,” he said.
“I’m not branding anyone a terrorist, but quite a number of these terrorists come from Somalia. These people are one and the same,” said Kimathi.
Hopes and dreams
People living in the camps find such allegations perplexing.
Yakub Abdi left the southern city of Kismayo in 2011 after al-Shabab gunmen accused his father of being a spy, and then executed both his parents. He hates and fears the militants and so volunteered to chair a neighbourhood watch group in one of Dadaab’s five camps.
“This is not the place they are recruiting,” said the 29-year old father of two. His 260 fellow volunteers in the Community Peace and Protection Team keep tabs on new arrivals to their camp, reporting anyone suspicious to police.
“Shabab are not here,” said Abdi, but he warned that the invisible, largely unprotected border just 80 kilometres to the east, meant they were not far away either.
Despite living in temporary shelters and barely subsisting on food handouts, Dadaab is not a place of universal misery and hopelessness.
“People think there’s no life in the camps, but there is life,” said Liban Mohamed, a 28-year old filmmaker from Kismayo, in southern Somalia. “There are problems here but there are also hopes and dreams.”
Mohamed’s dream is to be resettled in the US where his mother and siblings already live, and to continue making films. For others the dream is closer to home, and nearer to being realised.
Mohamed Osman is a trained medical officer who for the last 15 years has provided free consultations, affordable drugs and in-patient treatment at his private pharmacy. He left Somalia in 1992 seeking safety and prosperity and in Dadaab, his family and business have thrived.
“Children in Somalia have no hope,” said the 42-year old father of 12 children from two wives. “My children are learning here.” He has no desire to return to Somalia because “there is still fighting there”.
A short way from Osman’s pharmacy, along flooded and uneven dirt roads, the daily delivery of khat, a herb with a mildly narcotic effect when chewed, was unloaded.
A broker who runs four pick-ups piled high with 50-kilogramme sacks of khat into Dadaab every day said he sells out his entire stock without fail, making more than 30 000 shillings (280 euros) on each truck.
Traders deliver khat to the market at IFO main camp of the Dadaab refugee camp. (Pic: AFP)
In a frenzy of activity the retailers, including 43-year old Fatima Ahmed, split the sacks open on the ground sorting the vivid green shrub into kilo bunches. Prices are seasonal and low during the current rainy period, but still, Ahmed said, she buys at 100 shillings (1 euro) and sells at 150 shillings (1.40 euro) making a modest daily income. “It’s a good business,” Ahmed said.
Sellers’ profits are ploughed back into Dadaab’s thriving economy which, according to a 2010 study, is worth around $25 million (22m euros) a year. The research, commissioned by Kenya’s Department of Refugee Affairs, found that Dadaab also earned the nearby non-refugee, or host, community $14m (13m euros) a year in trade and contracts.
Mini Dubai
Each camp has its own market but Hagadera is the most established. A Kenyan official described it as “a mini Dubai”.
A Somali refugee shops for fresh produce at a market within the Hagadera camp of Dadaab. (Pic: AFP)
There are hotels and restaurants selling grilled camel meat, chilli hot samosas and spiced tea with camel milk, general stores with shelves of pasta, rice, milk powder and sugar – much of it smuggled in from Somalia and sold at a steep discount – electronics shops with the latest smartphones, narrow alleys stuffed with stalls selling new and secondhand clothes, fabrics and shoes and shady passages lined with tarpaulins piled with mangos, avocadoes, potatoes and onions.
Ali Saha, a 23-year old university graduate who runs a cyber café, said he wants to return to Somalia, just not yet.
“Education is a privilege and from that angle being a refugee is not that bad,” he said. “I should return so I can help my community in Somalia but I need to go back when my country is stable.”
A man walks past an Ebola campaign banner in Monrovia. (Pic: AFP)
The UN health agency on Saturday declared Liberia Ebola-free, hailing the “monumental” achievement in the west African country where the virus has killed more than 4 700 people.
“The outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Liberia is over,” the World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a statement, adding that 42 days had passed since the last confirmed case was buried.
That period is double the number of days the virus requires to incubate, and WHO hailed its eradication as an enormous development in the long crisis.
“Interruption of transmission is a monumental achievement for a country that reported the highest number of deaths in the largest, longest, and most complex outbreak since Ebola first emerged in 1976,” it said.
The declaration was a source of both great pride to Liberians who had been stalked by the deadly virus they simultaneously sought to battle.
“We are out of the woods. We are Ebola free. Thanks to our partners for standing with us in the fight against Ebola. We are Liberians,” tweeted Liberian Information Minister Lewis Brown.
The news was also cheered by international organisations like the Red Cross, Unicef and Doctors Without Borders (MSF), as well as officials from the US and European Union.
However whailing the “important marker” White House spokesman Josh Earnest, in a statement, said: “The world must not forget that the Ebola outbreak still persists in neighbouring Sierra Leone and Guinea.
“We must not let down our guard until the entire region reaches and stays at zero Ebola cases.”
Relief and sorrow
The WHO warned that because the Ebola outbreaks were continuing in neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone, the risk remained high that infected people could re-enter the country.
Because of that risk, MSF also tempered its applause of the declaration with reminders that the crisis will not be over for any one nation until the virus has been eradicated everywhere.
For average Liberians, the development was a source of both relief and sorrow.
“I lost a brother in the Ebola crisis so I am happy and sad,” said 40 year-old Monrovia taxi driver Nyaningo Kollie.
During the two months of peak transmission last August and September the capital Monrovia was the setting for “some of the most tragic scenes from West Africa’s outbreak: gates locked at overflowing treatment centres, patients dying on the hospital grounds, and bodies that were sometimes not collected for day,” noted WHO official Alex Gasasira, who read the organisation’s statement Saturday.
At the height of the crisis in late September Liberia was suffering more than 400 new cases a week, with uncollected and highly infectious bodies piling up in the streets of Monrovia, a sprawling, chaotic city at the best of times.
The health system – embryonic before the crisis, with some 50 doctors and 1 000 nurses for 4.3 million people – was devastated, losing 189 health workers out of 275 infected.
“At one point, virtually no treatment beds for Ebola patients were available anywhere in the country,” Gasasira recalled.
Schools remained shut after the summer holidays, unemployment soared as the formal and black-market economies collapsed and clinics closed as staff died and non-emergency healthcare ground to a halt.
And then, as suddenly as it had spread, Ebola retreated.
‘Thank all Liberians’
Liberia, which had recorded 389 deaths in one week in October alone, saw fatality counts dropping below 100 within weeks, and into single figures by the start of 2015.
During a WHO-hosted ceremony Saturday in the Ebola crisis cell in Monrovia, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf saluted her fellow citizens and health workers for rising to the crisis.
“I thank all Liberians for the effort. When Ebola came, we were confused. We called on our professionals. They put their best in the fight, this is the result I have sent a message to the international community to thank them,” she said.
In the coming years there will be a reckoning on the response to the greatest ever Ebola outbreak, which left 11 000 dead.
The West was initially accused of ignoring the crisis and then treating Liberia and its neighbours as pariahs, blocking flights and quarantining returning health workers after the first-ever domestic infections outside of Africa, in the US and Spain.
The WHO, at times seen as overly bureaucratic and politicised, was berated for waiting until August – almost five months after the outbreak was identified – to declare it a “public health emergency of international concern.”
“Quite simply, we were all too late. The world – including MSF – was slow to start the response from the beginning,” said MSF’s head of Ebola operations in Brussels, Henry Gray, in a statement.
