The Naked, Running, Screaming Girl

Unable to sleep, an old veteran of Vietnam spends his time and money in a bar, where he meets the perfect person to listen to him. Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and audience may benefit

Journey in a Forgotten Land - Part 1: Food and Drought in Ethiopian/Kenyan Border Lands

The herding peoples who live in the border areas of Kenya and Ethiopia share a common complaint. They believe themselves to be a forgotten people, unknown and unwanted in the capitals of Addis Ababa and Nairobi. This is not entirely true, but the remote, inhospitable nature of their land supports the belief that they are indeed untouched by the outside world. The majority of the people on both sides of the border are Boran, or their near cousins the Gabbra. They are traditionally pastoralists who move with their cattle, camels, sheep, and goats over vast areas of this dry land. Although they are peoples who have always known drought periods, and who have a great capacity to survive in hard times, the abnormal drought of the past 30 months has caused enormous suffering. It is by far the worst in living memory

Assassination and Political Unity: Kenya

The July assassination of Tom Mboya was called in Europe the prelude to another African tragedy similar to Biafra. Western-style gangsterism seemed all too apparent, particularly just after the young Luo politician was shot down on a busy Nairobi street. Violence erupted at the hospital where Mboya\u27s body was taken, and subsequently in other parts of the country. Four days later, when Kenya\u27s President Mzee (Old Man) Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, arrived to attend the requiem mass, angry crowds of Luo tribesmen stoned the president\u27s car and shouted Dume (bull), the symbol of Kenya\u27s Luo-dominated opposition party, the Kenya People\u27s Union (K.P.U.). In the subsequent mêlée with police, two died, sixty were injured, and three hundred arrested

Population Review 1970: Kenya

The Republic of Kenya, located astride the equator on the Indian Ocean, enjoys the distinction of being the first tropical African nation to initiate a serious government program in population analysis and family planning. Ghana, Botswana, and the Reunion Islands off the African coast recently followed suit and have positive programs underway. By contrast, most other African states remain apathetic toward their own population problems, and a few are vigorously pronatal. Perhaps the most extreme example is Kenya\u27s island neighbor, Zanzibar, which reportedly has introduced the death penalty for illegal abortions, and banned the sale of all contraceptives

The United Nations Environment Programme

It was once described as a part of the quiet side of the United Nations family, one of those organizations that did good works but rarely made headlines. Times have changed. Today the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, has come into prominence, not because of UN cliches about spaceship earth, but because a great many ordinary people have come to realize they could be physically harmed by environmental hazards. The common man in industrial states has begun to worry about the environment in respect to his health and the health of his children. He is asking hard questions about contamination and industrial waste, about poisons and noxious gasses in the air he breathes

The Political Survival of Traditional Leadership

VIEWED from the higher echelons of government in the new nations, the rural leader is an insignificant individual who goes about managing his local affairs and carrying out with varying degrees of success-the policies and hopes of the government. Viewed from below, from the inner recesses of the village, the leader is a man of authority; a man who has used wealth, heredity, or personal magnetism to gain a position of influence. As seen by nation builders and development experts, the rural leader is tacitly pointed to as the key to success. It is he who can mobilize the people. It is through him that more energy will be expended, more muscles used, and more attitudes changed. Conversely, it is the leader\u27s lack of initiative that will entrench the status quo and doom the modernization schemes before they begin

Teaching African Development With Film

The mushrooming importance of the film media in education needs little documentation; today the average high school graduate has seen 500 feature-length films and been exposed to 15,000 hours of television. By comparison, he has had only about 12,000 hours of live instruction. The facts are sobering if for no other reason than that film is commandeering the minds of students and displacing face-to-face teaching. However, the amount of quality film material that analyzes foreign areas, particularly Africa, is shockingly small. Many of the films ordinarily shown are patronizing and badly distorted, often illustrating the film-maker\u27s lack of substantive knowledge, and in fact contributing more to misunderstanding than to enlightenment

Witchcraft in the Press

Between 1960 and 2010, Professor Miller collected about 720 newspaper reports on witchcraft in East Africa from local sources. Reports for Malawi and Zambia were dropped from this analysis to establish a collection of 521 reports for Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. This database has yet to be fully analyzed, and is made available here for further research and publication in the understanding of witchcraft violence. The data may be sorted by date, country, press source, or by major topic using the Excel spreadsheet referenced below. Instructors in such organizations as police academies and NGOs concerned with violence against women may use these press summaries to build case studies on witchcraft-related crimes