BARUA YA BARAZA: A Happy New Year?
Greetings, friends:
This week’s newsletter is continuing the tradition of inviting members of our community to write From The Curator’s Desk, and for this edition, I’m happy to hand it over to our HR Lead, Benter Dongo.
Please send your guest writing pitches for this section to chris@barazalab.com if you’re interested in being our guest curator on the newsletter, and you have something of interest to share to our community — a trend you’ve noticed or something you’d like us to think about.
~ Christine
I hope it is still socially acceptable to send you my Happy New Year salaams by the time this reaches your hands. And that you’ll truly have a great 2025.
It has been a rough couple of weeks in Kenya, following the recent wave of abductions.
How I wish we were starting the year on a sunny note, but here we are. Here we must be – fighting, condemning, and hoping for some, any, national miracle against this current regime however long it takes. As Larry Madowo once tweeted (quoting former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis)- sunlight is the best disinfectant. In these pitch-black undemocratic times, you cannot afford the luxury of silence.
In any other year, Christmas festivities would have been the usual warm chapati aroma, juicy nyamchom, infinite banter, tired Christmas carols, that little-too-drunk uncle and meddlesome aunt, until you stumbled upon the news. Distraught parents, their drooped shoulders screaming of sleeplessness and inexplicable anguish. Fathers breaking down on prime time TV in that gut-wrenching manner that makes you blink or look aside for a second to give the poor men their sorrowful moment. How on earth did we get here?
Is it a question of moral decadence as the new year’s presidential address and a few other emotionally detached fatuous claims tried to have you believe? The absurdity of all this is unbelievably funny. That six young men went missing from home for weeks in the merriest of seasons, and the best the state and its minions kept parroting was ‘indiscipline’, knowing acutely the actual root causes and pain points of Kenyans. Mr. President, on the grounds of morality, let parents raise their kids, you raise Kenya’s GDP.
Bobi Wine left a chilling tweet about how it started with one, then two, followed by ten and now it’s scores of persons missing under Museveni’s overdue reign, to the extent that Ugandans have become apathetic and unrattled. I know for a fact, that’s the kind of hell on earth I don’t want slowly shoved down my throat, through curated smokescreens, till it becomes normalcy. Kenyans, please stay on course and keep demanding better.
It is really great to have some of the boys back but…where is Steve Mbisi and many others still unaccounted for?
A state machinery that terrorizes and intimidates its people – especially the young – for expressing their unfiltered agony, is like a weak man that tries to dominate or demand respect by hitting a woman senselessly. Respect is, and always will be, simply earned.
#EndAbductionsKE
A luta continua
In the meantime, here’s:
What I’m Reading: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. A classic must-read novel about the complexities and simplicities of life in the 1930s American South through the raw perspectives of two little siblings. I’m on a quest to read the greatest books of all time before I encounter their oversimplified movie versions.
What I’m Watching: Cross on Prime Video. A great family storyline of a detective extraordinaire, raising his two kids and battling with his wife’s death while out to get DC’s most notorious serial killer. Anything with remarkably smart people, I’ll always click open. I like seeing life vicariously through their eyes.
What I’m Listening to: A Youtube podcast series on The Beat by Allen Parr- Subtle Signs Your “Church” is Secretly a Cult. Modern day cults are not your sensationalized bizarre rituals, attire, and blood sacrifices. It’s rather the soft psychological control and overtime manipulation by friendly and charismatic peeps in power. Most of us are unaware of the cult-like groups we are in today and would need an extremely open mind for such discourse.
My best,
Benter Dongo
HR Lead | Baraza Media Lab
BARAZA EVENTS
Africa Media Festival 2025
2025 is here, and in just a few days, so is AMF! We will once again gather an inspiring community of creators and thinkers shaping the future of media across Africa. This year’s festival will take place on February 26–27, 2025, at The National Museum of Kenya. Don’t miss your chance to join us, secure your spot now at africamediafestival.com