Just thinking… is this what happens when you use your voice to tell someone else’s story? The ability to be heard does not necessarily mean that you should be the one to speak.
I still don’t understand this quasi-sport/activity…
In Focus: The Maasai Cricket Warriors
In Kenya, a group of young Maasai warriors from the Laikipia region formed a cricket team with big hopes: to promote healthy living, to spread awareness about HIV/AIDS and women’s issues, and ultimately to become role models in their community and ambassadors for both the Maasai and Kenya. The Maasai Cricket Warriors have been training hard, having recently left their village for the city of Mombasa to attend the Legends Cricket Nursery for further coaching. Their next goal is to travel to South Africa to take part in the Last Man Stands World Championships. The team has an open invitation and is now raising funds to make the trip.
See more. [Images: AFP/Getty]
In response to the Kony 2012 video from Invisible Children, Al Jazeera has launched a project called Uganda Speaks, which is, among other things, using the hashtag #UgandaSpeaks, (solid explainer here) to track the reactions to the film from Ugandans in Uganda.
There was a strong sense from the audience that the video was insensitive to African and Ugandan audiences, and that it did not accurately portray the conflict or the victims. Watching the film was upsetting for many audience members, and a group of viewers nodded their heads in affirmation when one viewer said, “This was very painful to watch, it brings back to me many bad memories and that is not good.”
When the administrative chief of this western Kenyan village received an urgent 4 a.m. call that thieves were invading a school teacher’s home, he sent a message on Twitter. Within minutes residents in this village of stone houses gathered outside the home, and the thugs fled.
“My wife and I were terrified,” said teacher Michael Kimotho. “But the alarm raised by the chief helped.”
The tweet from Francis Kariuki was only his latest attempt to improve village life by using the micro-blogging site Twitter. Kariukiregularly sends out tweets about missing children and farm animals, showing that the power of social media has reached even into a dusty African village. Lanet Umoja is 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of the capital, Nairobi.
“There is a brown and white sheep which has gone missing with a nylon rope around its neck and it belongs to Mwangi’s father,” he tweeted recently in the Swahili language. The sheep was soon recovered.
Kariuki said that even the thieves in his village follow him on Twitter. Earlier this year, he tweeted about the theft of a cow, and later the cow was found abandoned, tied to a pole.
Kariuki’s official Twitter page shows 300 followers, but the former teacher estimated that thousands of the 28,000 residents in his area receive the messages he sends out directly and indirectly. He said many of his constituents, mostly subsistence farmers, cannot afford to buy smart phones, but can access tweets through a third-party mobile phone application. Others forward the tweets via text message.
