#nairobi

[kropotkindersurprise]

June 20, 2024 - A protester takes on the role of mobile eyewash station to deal with police tear gas during a demonstration against proposed tax reforms in Nairobi, Kenya. [video]

[whatevergreen]

Massive protests against the 2024 Finance Bill continue in Nairobi and across Kenya. Parliament has been stormed, and City Hall set on fire.

The bill imposes taxes that will further impoverish those already suffering from the increasing cost of living. The government even tried to put a tax on bread and cooking oil, but this was apparently withdrawn. The International Monetary Fund is putting pressure on president Ruto to impose austerity measures and raise taxes.

Supreme Court staff and lawyers helping demonstrators with water.

Some protestors have been shot, with fatalities. The police have apparently arrested a number of paramedics trying to treat the wounded.

Homes of several MPs who support the finance bill have been looted and set ablaze. I have no sympathy.

A protestor stated:

“We are the flames burning up the country. We cannot stand still while we are robbed and made poor. “This movement will not stop until we have won. They can kill us but they can’t beat down our movement.”

[dream-world-universe]

Giraffes & Giraffe Manor, Nairobi, Kenya: Woman Shares Breakfast With Giraffes from Hotel Balcony in Nairobi. People enjoyed the lovely interaction between the woman and the giraffes. Giraffe Manor is a 5-star hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. Nairobi is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The city is commonly referred to as The Green City in the Sun. Wikipedia

[coochiequeens]

Thousands protest against increasing violence against women in Kenya as they march to the parliamentary building and supreme court in the capital Nairobi [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

Published On 27 Jan 202427 Jan 2024

Thousands of people have gathered to protest in cities and towns in Kenya against the recent slayings of more than a dozen women.

The anti-femicide demonstration on Saturday was the largest event ever held in the country against sexual and gender-based violence.

In the capital, Nairobi, protesters wore T-shirts printed with the names of women who became homicide victims this month. The crowd, composed mostly of women, brought traffic to a standstill.

“Stop killing us!” the demonstrators shouted as they waved signs with messages such as “There is no justification to kill women.”

The crowd in Nairobi was hostile to attempts by the parliamentary representative for women, Esther Passaris, to address them. Accusing Passaris of remaining silent during the latest wave of killings, protesters shouted her down with chants of “Where were you?” and “Go home!”

“A country is judged by not how well it treats its rich people, but how well it takes care of the weak and vulnerable,” said Law Society of Kenya President Eric Theuri, who was among the demonstrators.

Kenyan media outlets have reported the slayings of at least 14 women since the start of the year, according to Patricia Andago, a data journalist at media and research firm Odipo Dev who also took part in the march.

Odipo Dev reported this week that news accounts showed at least 500 women were killed in acts of femicide from January 2016 to December 2023. Many more cases go unreported, Andago said.

Two cases that gripped Kenya this month involved two women who were killed at Airbnb accommodations. The second victim was a university student who was dismembered and decapitated after she reportedly was kidnapped for ransom.

Theuri said cases of gender-based violence take too long to be heard in Kenyan court, which he thinks emboldens perpetrators to commit crimes against women.

“As we speak right now, we have a shortage of about 100 judges. We have a shortage of 200 magistrates and adjudicators, and so that means that the wheel of justice grinds slowly as a result of inadequate provisions of resources,” he said.

People gather to protest in an anti-femicide demonstration, the largest event of its kind ever held in Kenya. [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

Kenyan media outlets have reported the slayings of at least 14 women since the start of the year. [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

A protester holds a Palestinian flag during a march to protest against the rising cases of femicide, in downtown Nairobi. [Brian Inganga/AP Photo]

Women and feminists in Kenya took to the streets to march against the rising cases of femicide. [Brian Inganga/AP Photo]

In Nairobi, protesters wore T-shirts printed with the names of women who became homicide victims this month. [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

Protesters react against the rising cases of femicide. [Brian Inganga/AP Photo]

A human rights activist reacts as she attends a protest demanding an end to femicide in the country. [Monicah Mwangi/Reuters]

Protesters gather during the anti-femicide demonstration. [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

The crowd, composed mostly of women, brought traffic to a standstill. [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

[brutalistinteriors]

Kenyatta International Conference Centre, Nairobi. Karl Henrik Nøstvik.

[artnlife2]

[tsalala]

A young lion looks toward the Nairobi skyline from Nairobi National Park in 2015. Photographed by Tony Karumba.

[sgtgrunt0331-3]

On January 15, 2019, lone SAS operator Christian Craighead, enters the Dusit Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya, in respond to a terrorist attack. This famous photograph was seen on social media and major news outlets around the world.

Off-duty at the time, Craighead wore his combat gear over jeans and shirt when he entered the complex alone. He was able escort civilians to safety, then went back inside the hotel where he shot and killed two of the four al-Shabaab gunmen.

(Photo courtesy of AFP/Getty Images)

[reasonsforhope]

"Samuel Onyango’s office at Kibera Primary School is serene and spacious. His table is neatly arranged, with an assortment of files and an array of books. One side of his cream-colored office is decked with aggregate performance scores, and another shows off several trophies in a glass cabinet. Last year, Onyango’s school performed a traditional dance and scooped third place in the National Drama and Film Festivals, where schools across the country competed for the top prize.

But today Onyango, the school’s principal, is bragging about something much more basic: Thanks to an innovative community program, his students and teachers are no longer getting sick from dirty water.

Onyango’s school, with a staff of 30 and a student body of about 1,700, is in Kibera, a neighborhood in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi that is widely known as Africa’s largest informal settlement. It is a community of houses made from mud or tin sheeting where residents have to hustle to meet even their most basic needs, like electricity or clean water.

It is also a community where creativity and innovation, at the heart of any hustle, are changing how some people can access clean water — and making major ripples in public health.

Onyango’s school has long gotten its water the same way many people in Kibera do: by buying it from independent suppliers, who truck water in and sell it for around $30 per 10,000 liters (about 2,650 gallons). But trucked water can be contaminated, despite suppliers’ promises, and Onyango’s students and staff were often using unclean water at home, too. It was common, he says, for both teachers and students to get sick and miss school because of waterborne illnesses.

Last November, Onyango’s school got connected to an aerial clean water system built by a local grassroots organization called SHOFCO, which stands for Shining Hope for Communities. “Once we got connected to SHOFCO’s water,” Onyango says, “cases of these ailments reduced to nil.”

SHOFCO’s water distribution system currently reaches about 40,000 people and distributes more than 3.7 million gallons of clean water per month.

Access to safe drinking water — and its equitable distribution — underpins public health. But for the estimated 250,000 people in Kibera, who live without any government infrastructure, clean water is often a luxury. Many people are using illegal water connections, which proliferate among the poor — there are nearly 130 in just three lesser-resourced Nairobi neighborhoods. But those DIY hookups can mix clean water with raw sewage, and Kenyan officials have recently warned of a looming public health crisis if water access is not prioritized.

Shifting weather patterns also increase the risk of waterborne illness, government officials say. The Ministry of Health and the Kenya Red Cross Society have called out severe flooding during the El Niño weather pattern as a source of a recent major cholera outbreak in parts of the country. Kibera was not spared this risk: The floods led to the contamination of various sources of water in the sprawling neighborhood.

But the aerial piping system SHOFCO built in 2012 — the one that brings water to Onyango’s school — saved some Kibera residents, quite literally. With collaboration from health and county authorities, SHOFCO has all but eliminated diarrheal disease in the communities that use its aerial piping system, according to Gladys Mwende, a program officer at SHOFCO. In the health facilities SHOFCO runs, the incidences of diarrheal infections have also gone down, she adds.

Pictured: People in Kibera’s Makina section pass by the signature blue pillars that hold up SHOFCO’s aerial water piping system. Visual: Sarah Waiswa/Harvard Public Health Magazine

“[Poor sanitation is the reason] that our water is aerial piped,” says Kennedy Odede, the founder and CEO of SHOFCO. Piping water in helps clean water maintain its integrity without interference from elements including tampering. In a huge community with no major infrastructure, piping seemed impossible — there was no money and no will to build a disruptive underground system connected to the city’s main water supply. Instead, Odede and his team put the pipes up in the air. “As somebody who grew up in Kibera, to see this clean water — which I have also drank — is powerful.”

SHOFCO’s water distribution system currently reaches about 40,000 people and distributes more than 3.7 million gallons of clean water per month — nearly 46 million gallons per year — at community water kiosks, which residents access with tokens linked to the mobile money platform M-Pesa. The water kiosks are pre-programmed to fill jerry cans that hold about five gallons at a cost of 3 Kenyan shillings, or about 23 U.S. cents.

A recent evaluation of SHOFCO’s clean water efforts, undertaken by the African Population and Health Research Center, shows diarrheal disease among children under age five have decreased by 31 percent where community members used SHOFCO water kiosks and received SHOFCO’s sanitation messaging.

“We don’t get as many cases of diarrhea even though now we are in the middle of the floods,” Mwende says. “Communities have not reported any outbreaks within the areas where we are working.”

Mohammed Suleiman is grateful for the change. Suleiman, 25, was born here, and it’s been his job for the last 18 years to fetch 135 gallons of water daily for his family’s personal needs and for their samosa business.

Two months ago, Sulieman contracted typhoid from the unsanitary water he was consuming. Once he recovered, he says, switching to SHOFCO water kiosks was a no-brainer.

“I don’t know where the other independent vendors get it from,” he says. But he trusts SHOFCO water. “Water sourced from SHOFCO is cleaner than that of other vendors,” he says. “I don’t have to treat water from [SHOFCO] kiosks before consuming it.”

And he’s the living proof: Since switching to SHOFCO water, Suleiman hasn’t been sick even once."

-via Undark, August 13, 2024

[blossomview]

Nairobi, Kenya @ Abdul Hakeem

[iko66]

Nairobi

[kropotkindersurprise]

August 2024 - Kenya’s political elite is trying to criminalize protests. The government is currently considering a bill that would give the police official authority to ban and crush protests, imposing fines and jail sentences for protesters. Due to the recent uprising, the government was forced to scrap the Finance Bill, an IMF plan that would have significantly raised the cost of living. During the protests in June, more than 50 people were shot dead by the police and many more were abducted, with some people still missing. While the Finance Bill was officially scrapped, Kenya’s top court suspended the ruling that denounced the bill as unconstitutional. This has sparked fears amongst Kenyans that the government will try to implement the law again. Nevertheless, Kenyans have said they will take to the streets should such an event occur. [video]

[mrs-trophy-wife]

[dream-world-universe]

Girafe Manor hotel, Lang'ata, Nairobi, Kenya: The main feature of Girafe Manor hotel in Kenya is the opportunity to have breakfast in the company of giraffes that come to the windows of the rooms... Giraffe Manor is a hotel in the Lang'ata suburb of Nairobi, Kenya which, together with its associated Giraffe Centre, serves as a home to a number of endangered Rothschild's giraffes, and operates a breeding programme to reintroduce breeding pairs back into the wild to secure the future of the subspecies. Wikipedia

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[vel17]