A Life with Purpose _ In Memory of Dr Eunice Songa-Saraceno

I recently reposted a piece that moved me, entitled A Call To Action below is the story of the the incredible woman that wrote that powerful piece  Dr Eunice Songa-Saraceno, BA, MD

In Memoriam of Dr Eunice Songa-Saraceno, BA, MD and on why Kenya needs to change 

At approximately 4:30 pm of Friday the 27th of January 2017, my wife, my best friend, the love of my life, Dr Eunice Songa-Saraceno, died like a hero. Aged 34, she died young and beautiful, like the heroes of the ancient myths; willing to change her Country she died fighting inequality and injustice, like only true heroes do.

She knew and understood the challenges of her Country and fought for Kenya when, with a BSc in Psychology and Physiology at the University of Western Ontario, Canada and a Doctor in Medicine Degree Magna cum Laude at the University of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, she decided to come back to Kenya, to work in a Country where there is a patient / doctor ratio of 0.2 doctors for 1,000 people, that means one doctor every 5,000 people (any doctor, not a specialist!).  

I remember the day she came back home exhausted after she pumped oxygen into the small chests of children whose lungs got burnt by the flames of exploded paraffin lamps, the only source of lights in the many areas of Nairobi where electricity is a luxury

As Eunice said with some of her last words “We want leaders who put our interests and well-being first and their pockets second. We want leaders who take pride in their positions and use their power to inspire and create rather than trample on and destroy.”

Read More 

Mind Thoughts: Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.  

A Call To Action

I read this well thought out piece on the complacency of the Kenyan middle class and thought to share by  Eunice Songa

 

https://thenewmaumaurevolution.wordpress.com/2017/01/24/a-call-to-action-wake-up-middle-and-upper-class-kenyans/

Kenya is a beautiful place, isn’t it? Opportunities abound for those willing to work hard; the land where you can be born in a small village, work hard and enjoy your lifetime in lush suburbs of Nairobi.

But we get caught up in that rat race don’t we? The never ending pursuit to get a bigger, flatter TV, a smarter phone, a more expensive car and holidays to those exotic destinations we see on our friends’ timeline. While we make sure our children are in elite private school “A”, that our houses are on the right side of the CBD, while we are sipping our 500 shilling mojitos with colleagues at the hottest after work watering holes in the city, our beloved Kenya, our land of opportunity is crumbling right around us.

But hey we know these problems right? They are plastered across the dailies: “Doctors strike again!” “ 2.5 Bn shillings scandal in Ministry of “take your pick”” “KCSE exams leaked!” “Security at all time low in Kenya!”

What do you really feel when you read those headlines? I won’t lie, I am guilty of it as well. you skim the article to keep informed and have something to say during polite conversation and continue flipping through the newspaper. So when billions of shillings disappear, money that we break our backs to earn, why aren’t we up in arms about it? Why aren’t outraged, enraged by these scandals? Why isn’t there a fire burning inside of you when you realize the people you put in charge of the well being of your beloved Kenya do not measure up and are in fact draining us of the little we have.

We, the middle and upper class pay most of the tax but why don’t we demand quality service?

 

 READ MORE

 Mind Thoughts : 'The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.'_  Andre Gide

Odde To Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi

In 1967 Colonel Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; however, by the time he was assassinated, Gaddafi had turned Libya into Africa’s wealthiest nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the continent. Less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands.
After NATO’s intervention in 2011, Libya is now a failed state and its economy is in shambles. As the government’s control slips through their fingers and into to the militia fighters’ hands, oil production has all but stopped.

On one side, in the West of the country, Islamist-allied militias took over control of the capital Tripoli and other cities and set up their own government, chasing away a parliament that was elected over the summer.
On the other side, in the East of the Country, the “legitimate” government dominated by anti-Islamist politicians, exiled 1,200 kilometers away in Tobruk, no longer governs anything.

America is clearly fed up with the two inept governments in Libya and is now backing a third force: long-time CIA asset, General Khalifa Hifter, who aims to set himself up as Libya’s new dictator. Hifter, who broke with Gaddafi in the 1980s and lived for years in Langley, Virginia, close to the CIA’s headquarters, where he was trained by the CIA, has taken part in numerous American regime change efforts, including the aborted attempt to overthrow Gaddafi in 1996.
In 1991 the New York Times reported that Hifter may have been one of “600 Libyan soldiers trained by American intelligence officials in sabotage and other guerrilla skills…to fit in neatly into the Reagan Administration’s eagerness to topple Colonel Qaddafi”.
Hifter’s forces are currently vying with the Al Qaeda group Ansar al-Sharia for control of Libya’s second largest city, Benghazi. Ansar al-Sharia was armed by America during the NATO campaign against Colonel Gaddafi. In yet another example of the U.S. backing terrorists backfiring, Ansar al-Sharia has recently been blamed by America for the brutal assassination of U.S. Ambassador Stevens.

Hifter is currently receiving logistical and air support from the U.S. because his faction envision a mostly secular Libya open to Western financiers, speculators, and capital.

Perhaps, Gaddafi’s greatest crime, in the eyes of NATO, was his desire to put the interests of local labour above foreign capital and his quest for a strong and truly United States of Africa. In fact, in August 2011, President Obama confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of the African IMF and African Central Bank.
For over 40 years, Gaddafi promoted economic democracy and used the nationalized oil wealth to sustain progressive social welfare programs for all Libyans. Under Gaddafi’s rule, Libyans enjoyed not only free health-care and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans. Now thanks to NATO’s intervention the health-care sector is on the verge of collapse as thousands of Filipino health workers flee the country, institutions of higher education across the East of the country are shut down, and black outs are a common occurrence in once thriving Tripoli.
When the colonel seized power in 1969, few women went to university. Today, more than half of Libya’s university students are women. One of the first laws Gaddafi passed in 1970 was an equal pay for equal work law.
A decade of failed military expeditions in the Middle East has left the American people in trillions of dollars of debt. However, one group has benefited immensely from the costly and deadly wars: America’s Military-Industrial-Complex.
Building new military bases means billions of dollars for America’s military elite. As Will Blum has pointed out, following the bombing of Iraq, the United States built new bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
Given that Libya sits atop the strategic intersection of the African, Middle Eastern and European worlds, Western control of the nation, has always been a remarkably effective way to project power into these three regions and beyond.
NATO’s military intervention may have been a resounding success for America’s military elite and oil companies but for the ordinary Libyan, the military campaign may indeed go down in history as one of the greatest failures of the 21st century.

 Read More by Garikai Chengu research scholar at Harvard University

False Pride - KRS ONE

Okay now, listen to this

A mystical teacher sat by the seaside
It was about five o'clock 'coz we heard the free ride
Anyway, the teacher was talking in stride
Sitting upon a rock that was wide
And warning against false pride
"Come to where I reside!" a woman cried
And the teacher replied, "Do you serve your fish fried?"
"Yes," she replied, "With potato salad on the side"
And the teacher replied, "Well, where do you reside?"

She said, "Up on the hillside, it's not a far ride
If you came to have dinner, I would be so gratified"
The teacher replied, "It's six o'clock, seven o'clock, you decide"
She replied, "Seven o'clock, do you like stir-fried?"
She was mystified and felt so dignified
The teacher was coming to the house where she resides
So she purified with pesticides
Called her friends up nationwide
Some of her friends were tongue-tied, they felt so glorified

She made steamed fish, baked fish, fish that was fried
Soup, steamed vegetables, potato salad on the side
You could smell the bread in the oven far and wide
Natural juices and water purified
Organic fruits brought from the countryside
With silver forks and knives placed side by side
You could not be dissatisfied
Looking out the window, staring at the mountainside
You would have died

6:59 she's swollen with pride
As the moment intensified, there's a knock from outside
She opens the door, for the teacher has arrived
But to her surprise, it was a bum who cried
"Please, I smelt the bread from outside
One piece" and then she replied
"The teacher is coming, he's soon to have arrived
You're making me look bad, come on now, step aside!"
The bum then replied
"When I say I'm hungry I haven't lied
Give me some of that chicken that you just fried"

She replied, "Chicken, fried?
No that's for the teacher, you're not purified
Then she slammed the door and went back inside
Sat on the couch with the TV Guide
She looked at the clock, it was 7:09, then 7:30
He still hasn't arrived
Eight o'clock, she's on the downside
Nine o'clock, by now she's teary-eyed
She's pissed off and her anger multiplied

She cried, then fell asleep dissatisfied
Next day she woke up, and was preoccupied
With meeting the mystical teacher who lied
Where could he hide?
She ran down by the seaside
He was there teaching about false pride
"You lied" she replied, "You lied
You said you'd be there at seven o'clock, you lied"

He replied, "No, I have not lied
I came at 6:59, and you told me to move aside
I asked for bread and the chicken that was fried
And you said, that I wasn't purified"
She replied, "I wasn't notified
I had no idea that you was the bum that cried"
And the teacher sighed, then replied
"This concludes our lesson on false pride"

Songwriters
PARKER, LAWRENCE KRSONE

The Philosopohy Of Poverty

Most of my Latino and black people who are struggling to get food, clothes and shelter in the hood are so concerned with that, that philosophizing about freedom and socialist democracy is usually unfortunately beyond their rationale. They don't realize that America can't exist without separating them from their identity, because if we had some sense of who we really are, there's no way in hell we'd allow this country to push it's genocidal consensus on our homelands. This ignorance exists, but it can be destroyed.
Niggas talk about change and working within the system to achieve that. The problem with always being a conformist is that when you try to change the system from within, it's not you who changes the system; it's the system that will eventually change you. There is usually nothing wrong with compromise in a situation, but compromising yourself in a situation is another story completely, and I have seen this happen long enough in the few years that I've been alive to know that it's a serious problem. Latino America is a huge colony of countries whose presidents are cowards in the face of economic imperialism. You see, third world countries are rich places, abundant in resources, and many of these countries have the capacity to feed their starving people and the children we always see digging for food in trash on commercials. But plutocracies, in other words a government run by the rich such as this one and traditionally oppressive European states, force the third world into buying overpriced, unnecessary goods while exporting huge portions of their natural resources.
I'm quite sure that people will look upon my attitude and sentiments and look for hypocrisy and hatred in my words. My revolution is born out of love for my people, not hatred for others.
You see, most of Latinos are here because of the great inflation that was caused by American companies in Latin America. Aside from that, many are seeking a life away from the puppet democracies that were funded by the United States; places like El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Colombia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Republica Dominicana, and not just Spanish-speaking countries either, but Haiti and Jamaica as well.
As different as we have been taught to look at each other by colonial society, we are in the same struggle and until we realize that, we'll be fighting for scraps from the table of a system that has kept us subservient instead of being self-determined. And that's why we have no control over when the embargo will stop in Cuba, or when the bombs will stop dropping in Vieques.
But you see, here in America the attitude that is fed to us is that outside of America there live lesser people. "Fuck them, let them fend for themselves." No, Fuck you, they are you. No matter how much you want to dye your hair blonde and put fake eyes in, or follow an anorexic standard of beauty, or no matter how many diamonds you buy from people who exploit your own brutally to get them, no matter what kind of car you drive or what kind of fancy clothes you put on, you will never be them. They're always gonna look at you as nothing but a little monkey. I'd rather be proud of what I am, rather than desperately trying to be something I'm really not, just to fit in. And whether we want to accept it or not, that's what this culture or lack of culture is feeding us.
I want a better life for my family and for my children, but it doesn't have to be at the expense of millions of lives in my homeland. We're given the idea that if we didn't have these people to exploit then America wouldn't be rich enough to let us have these little petty material things in our lives and basic standards of living. No, that's wrong. It's the business giants and the government officials who make all the real money. We have whatever they kick down to us. My enemy is not the average white man, it's not the kid down the block or the kids I see on the street; my enemy is the white man I don't see: the people in the white house, the corporate monopoly owners, fake liberal politicians those are my enemies. The generals of the armies that are mostly conservatives those are the real Mother-Fuckers that I need to bring it to, not the poor, broke country-ass soldier that's too stupid to know shit about the way things are set up.
In fact, I have more in common with most working and middle-class white people than I do with most rich black and Latino people. As much as racism bleeds America, we need to understand that classism is the real issue. Many of us are in the same boat and it's sinking, while these bougie Mother-Fuckers ride on a luxury liner, and as long as we keep fighting over kicking people out of the little boat we're all in, we're gonna miss an opportunity to gain a better standard of living as a whole.
In other words, I don't want to escape the plantation I want to come back, free all my people, hang the Mother-Fucker that kept me there and burn the house to the god damn ground. I want to take over the encomienda and give it back to the people who work the land.
You cannot change the past but you can make the future, and anyone who tells you different is a Fucking lethargic devil. I don't look at a few token Latinos and black people in the public eye as some type of achievement for my people as a whole. Most of those successful individuals are sell-outs and house Negros.
But, I don't consider brothers a sell-out if they move out of the ghetto. Poverty has nothing to do with our people. It's not in our culture to be poor. That's only been the last 500 years of our history; look at the last 2000 years of our existence and what we brought to the world in terms of science, mathematics, agriculture and forms of government. You know the idea of a confederation of provinces where one federal government controls the states? The Europeans who came to this country stole that idea from the Iroquois LEAGUE. The idea of impeaching a ruler comes from an Aztec tradition. That's why Montezuma was stoned to death by his own people 'cause he represented the agenda of white Spaniards once he was captured, not the Aztec people who would become Mexicans.

The philosophy of Poverty| Felipe Andres Coronel|Revolutionary Vol 1 |2001 | Immortal Technique

All I Seen Today

Yes I want back the picture that hangs on your wall
For where once the sun rose now night falls
Some may say oh what a blue sky in sight
Well now out of the distance I see lightning strike
I will never hide them, hide them all
I could never fear them, fear them all
Over there shall come a new light shinning in this here dark life
For the Most High dwells with man tonight

See the fountain of Eden flow
Was born out of the heart of man
Who could not see them as they pray on them
Just as war fell upon our land, I do not understand
For who Jah choose is why?
Shall bring forth these axes freeing us out of bondage
And we could finally rest our weary souls
In which we fight the holy wars

I want to roll,

I want to hide,

I want to drift away,
Beyond these bombs,

beyond these walls,
Beyond these hypocrites
Oh, but I will never right them, right them all
I could never fear them, fear them all
Over there shall come a new knight shinning in this here dark
life
For the Most High dwells with I tonight
Down in the valley of decision cry
Echoes of the tears shed for life
While they refuse to hear they pray on them
Just as war fell upon our land, I do not understand
Shall bring forth these axes freeing us out of bondage
And we could finally rest our weary souls
In which we fight those holy wars

See them as they come to this a paradise
We shall know them who have come to service upon the right
We  see them as they try to take their paradise
I know them who have come to hide their
Hearts beneath these lies,
And this is all, I've seen today, yes this is all I've seen
today.

Groundation|Hebron Gates|Picture on The Wall

Who fired the shot that Killed JM Kariuki?

Who fired the shots that killed Josiah Mwangi Kariuki (JM) Kariuki? New evidence shows that the first bullet was fired by General Service Unit Commandant Ben Gethi in a Nairobi building and that it was not intended to kill and didn't kill him. The fatal shot was not fired until the fiery Nyandarua North legislator was driven behind Ngong Hills by men assigned by President Kenyatta's bodyguard, Senior Superintendent of Police Arthur Wanyoike Thungu. 

By early 1975, somebody had decided that Josiah Mwangi Kariuki - popularly known as JM - had to be eliminated. 

President Jomo Kenyatta was old and ailing. JM was believed to have his eyes on the presidency. Besides, JM had a dashing style and struck a powerful chord with the masses. It earned him bitter enemies in Kenyatta's State House. 

Not only did the dapper Nyandarua North MP give generously to charity, but his speeches were increasingly populist. He was known to have given the princely sum of KSh 80,000 to a public cause at a time when the President's highest known donation was KSh 3,000 to the Jomo Kenyatta College of Agriculture at Juja. 

His repeated attacks on the establishment did not help matters. On the 10th anniversary of Kenya's independence (1973), Mzee (Jomo Kenyatta) joyfully extolled the country's achievements while JM remarked elsewhere that Kenya had become a country of 10 millionaires and ten million beggars. 

The first danger signal to JM came a few days before Christmas 1974. JM was playing darts over a drink at Nakuru's Stags Head Hotel with Mark Mwithaga, his long-time friend and MP for Nakuru Town, when Assistant Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Muigai Kenyatta and Nakuru Mayor Mburu Gichua walked in. They strode right up to the two and one of them barked at JM: 'You have brought trouble here from Nyandarua. Be warned: This is Nakuru and we can finish you at any time!' 

Mwithaga recalls their deep surprise. 'Muigai and Gichua never even bothered to say hallo to us. They just lectured JM and left. We were very, very shocked'. Muigai, President Kenyatta's eldest son by his first marriage, was a key member of the Kiambu political mafia. 

If JM wished to dismiss the Stags Head encounter as an isolated incident, he was in for a surprise. 

In January 1975, a well-connected Assistant Minister asked JM out for lunch at the Norfolk Hotel to 'discuss a worrying matter'. At the mmeeting, the Assistant Minister spoke of a secret meeting by a politically influential group which had decided that JM must be eliminated. The conspirators, said the Assistant Minister, hoped to convince President Kenyatta that JM was organising a citizens' revolt against the government. They had shown Mzee selective extracts from JM's speeches. And although Kenyatta had not approved their plan, the conspirators believed they had sufficiently poisoned his mind. The friend advised JM to seel audience with the President and give him his side of the story. One hurdle stood in JM's way. The leading anti-JM conspirators also happened to be the gate-keepers of Kenyatta's State House. 

JM's youngest wife, Terry Wanjiru, recalls her husband's fruitless attempts to see the President in his final years. A chance presented itself at the wedding of Attorney-General Charles Njonjo on November 18, 1972. Cutting through the throng of dignataries, JM walked over to Mzee and gave him a warm handshake. An excited Kenyatta replied 'You're so lost JM. These days you don't come to say hallo to me!' To which JM replied, 'Mzee, I have always wanted to come to see you but your men have been blocking me'. 'Is that so?' was Kenyatta's reply and he promised to look into the matter. 

By early 1975 nothing had changed. JM was still unwelcome at State House yet he was increasingly desperate to meet Kenyatta. Driving home to Gilgil in early February 1975, JM came across Njenga Karume, the Nominated MP and inflential chairman of the powerful tribal organisation GEMA (Gikuyu Embu Meru Association), near Naivasha. JM flagged down Karume and the two chatted by the roadside. Karume, now the MP for Kiambaa, recalls: 'JM looked disturbed. He was not the confident man I knew. He began by thanking me for having stood by him in 1974 when a powerful clique wanted GEMA to campaign against him in the 1974 elections. Then he told me of the plot against his life and his difficulties in reaching Kenyatta'. Karume sympathised with JM's predicament and promised to secure him an appointment with the President. 

Time was running out fast. By early February, JM's enemies had laid down a scheme to 'sort out' their problem. They resolved to stage a series of events that would turn the public against JM and at the same time convince Kenyatta that JM was a boil that had to be lanced. A shadowy movement calling itself Maskini Liberation Organisation was formed as part of the propaganda campaign. Since JM presented himself as the 'voice of the poor' the public would readily identify the movement's violent activities with him. Leaflets allegedly issued by the movement were printed and distributed in different towns. They bore the names of JM, Charles Rubia and five others as trustees of the Maskini Liberation Organisation, all of them 'outsiders' to the tight clique around Kenyatta. 

Suddenly a spate of bomb hoaxes hit Nairobi. Anonymous calls would be made to police and newspaper offices that a bomb was about to go off. In the second week of February, a bomb exploded at the Starlight Discotheque on the edges of the city centre. There were no fatalities but the message was clear: Not all bomb alarms were false. Someone called the Central Police Station claiming that Maskini was behind the discotheque blast and there would be another bomb at the Tour Information Office, next to Hilton Hotel. A bomb went off there two hours later. 

In Parliament that week, Embu East MP Njagi Mbarire asked the Vice-President and Minister for Home Affairs Daniel arap Moi to confirm or deny the existence of the Maskini Liberation Organisation. Moi declined to answer the question, citing ongoing investigations. Kamukunji MP Maina Wanjigi ventured that the VP was being non-commital because Maskini Liberation Organisation was the creation of government operatives. The conspirators were growing impatient. They met secretly at Nakuru's Midland Hotel on Wednesday, February 26, 1975, and again at State House, Nakuru, the following day. The JM matter, it was decided, had to be settled that weekend. 

Mzee Kenyatta had travelled to Gatundu for the weekend when the two Nakuru meetings took place. Evidence would later emerge that Kenyatta's chief bodyguard, Wanyoike Thungu, attended the Midland Hotel meeting and arranged the discussion at State House. JM, meanwhile, was becoming apprehensive. His doctor advised him to take a few days rest against stress. A friend called Elizabeth Koinange booked the two of them onto an OTC (Overseas Trading Company) bus bound for Mombasa on Friday, February 28. At the last minute a friend, Isaac Macharia, dissuaded the MP from going to the Coast. He was lucky. A bomb exploded in the bus he would have taken, killing 27 people and injuring 100 others. 

The plotters' February 27 meeting at State House, Nakuru, had resolved that JM be put on a 24-hour surveillance until the 'job' was done. A friend who had borrowed the MP's car noticed that he was being trailed by a well-known police reservist, Patrick Shaw, in a white Volvo. He reported the incident but JM had more pressing matters to think about. The next day GSU Commandant Ben Gethi, who had had been a close friend of JM, had called to alert him of a plan to implicate him in the city bombings and have him jailed without trial. Gethi pressed him to meet the country's security chiefs and explain his innocence. But the MP was adamant that. Witnesses later quoted him as saying: 'Why should I explain my innocence before anybody has openly accused me? I will wait until they arrest me and I'll prove my innocence'. Within two hours, Gethi was on the line again. He told JM that he had thought over the matter and convinced that JM's best option was to informally meet the security team 'in a friendly atmosphere'. Gethi promised to be at the meeting to ensure JM's security. 

JM finally caved in to the GSU chief's pressure when the two men met at the International Casino the next day. The meeting was set for Sunday, March 2. That was the day JM would disappear, later to be found dead murdered in the Ngong Hills forest. That Sunday morning Gethi visited JM at home. It was a rather unusual visit, as the Parliamentary Probe Committee later noted, but Gethi insisted that it 'was just a normal call to a friend's house'. 

Investigations now show that Gethi had taken to JM a pistol he had promised him, to guarantee his safety during the Security Committee meeting. Witnesses testified that Gethi's visit was so secretive that he entered JM's bedroom instead of waiting for his host to be woken up. 

At midday JM went to the Ngong Racecourse, where he and Gethi had a brief chat. Later in the evening he popped in at the Hilton. Gethi would deny before the Parliamentary Probe Committe that the two of them met, but witnesses said they had seen him in the company of reservist Patrick Shaw. 

Witnesses have told the Nation that several things happened at the Hilton while JM was away. At around 5 p.m. Patrick Shaw and a Mr. Young, also a police reservist, chased away all parking boys who usually hang around outside the hotel. Some taxi drivers were also asked to leave. It has also emerged that then CID head Ignatius Nderi and then deputy director of the National Youth Service Waruhiu Itote were seen briefly at the Hilton with the two men. One of them was Pius Kibathi, a trained policeman who never joined the force, and the other Councillor John Mutung'u of Olkejuado County Council. JM arrived at the Hilton's Coffee House at about quarter to seven. He was about to settle down with a friend when Gethi suddenly appeared. He excused himself and walked away with the GSU boss. Apparently Gethi had not to find JM with anybody else. On noting the dilemma on Gethi's face, JM quickly excused himself as he told Macharia: 'By the way, Gethi and I were to meet, let me have some minutes with him'. 

A hotel security man, Mr. Fred Sing'ombe, saw JM and Gethi enter a Peugeot station wagon behind the hotel. JM's white Mercedes Benz, Registration Number KPE 143, was left in front of the Hilton Hotel, where the family found it when the MP disappeared. 

His movements from the hotel have for years been a mystery, even to the House Select Committee. But the Nation has now established that the two men went to the Special Branch headquarters at Kingsway House in Muindi Mbingu Street. Gethi and JM entered the building through a back entrance and headed for the office of a senior Special Branch officer. In the room were the senior officer himself, Kenyatta security chief Wanyoike Thungu, the NYS's Itote, CID director Nderi and reservist Patrick Shaw. JM was apprehensive to see Thungu in the meeting. The two had never had time for each other ever since JM worked as Kenyatta's private secretary in the early 1960s. He also knew of Thungu's roles in the Nakuru meetings which plotted against him. 

At Kingsway House, Gethi left JM to be questioned by Nderi and Shaw on the bombings. The MP, says a senior retired policeman, answered all the allegations raised by Nderi and Shaw until the two appeared satisfied that he had nothing to do with the bombings. Thungu, who remained silent, then took over the questioning. He wanted to know why JM had been 'going around the country insulting Kenyatta'. JM denied that he had ever insulted Kenyatta and that all he had talked about was social justice for all Kenyans, which was quite in line with Kenyatta's beliefs. 

Thungu then touched on a raw nerve. He asked JM to account for some money he allegedly received for schorlarships while serving as a private secretary to Kenyatta. He also referred to money issued as compensation to Mau Mau fighters who had lost their land during the independence struggle, which was handled by JM when he was an assistant minister for Agriculture with special duties. Itote, who had worked closely with JM at the NYS (National Youth Service), talked of money from the Chinese Government which JM had allegedly received on behalf of the service. 

The exchange between JM and Thungu became heated. Thungu, says an impeccable source, lost his temper and punched JM viciously in the mouth, knocking out three of his teeth. JM's body found at the City Mortuary eight days later had three lower teeth missing. Instinctively, the bleeding JM reached for a pistol in his pocket, the same gun he had been given by Gethi that morning. But Gethi, the only person in the room who knew JM had a gun, was quicker on the draw. He whipped out his service revolver and shot JM in the upper right hand arm to protect Thungu. As JM collapsed in a pool of blood, Thungu phoned a senior politician to inform of what happened. It is not known what the senior politician said. However, evidence received by the JM Probe Committee and later corroborated by Gethi in a confession to JM's sister many years later, stated that after the telephone call, Thungu called three men who had been waiting in another room (the three were named in other circumstances by the Probe Committee). 

He ordered them to handcuff JM and take him to a car downstairs. They had been brought to Kingsway House by Nderi to give evidence on JM's alleged involvement in the city bombings. The vehicle into which a bleeding and wailing JM was bundled belonged to a councillor, John Mutung'u of Ngong ward, the area in which JM's bullet-ridden body was discovered by two Maasai elders the following morning. Councillor Mutung'u was later summoned by the Parliamentary Probe Committe and asked to bring with him his car, a green Peugeot station wagon with a red inscription: 'Meat Park'. 

In it's final report, the JM Probe Committe recommended that Councillor Mutung'u be investigated alongside Thungu, the Minister of State Mbiyu Koinange, his bodyguard Peter Karanja, Nakuru Mayor Mburu Gichua, then Nyandarua District Commissioner Stanley Thuo, NYS deputy director Waruhiu Itote and JM's rival in the 1974 General Election, one Evan Ngugi. A member of the JM Probe Committe who talked to the Nation disclosed that it suspected that Mbiyu Koinange was the person Thungu talked to on the telephone after JM had been shot. 

The MPs established that Thungu had driven to Nairobi from Nakuru by a discreet route on the afternoon of March 2. Questioned by the committee, Thungu insisted that he spent March 2 with the President at Gatundu. The President, of course, couldn't be summoned to verify this. A confidential witness testified before the Probe Committee that Gethi remained alone at Kingway House until past midnight, chain smoking and talking on a police radio. 

Before his death on September 12, 1994, Gethi confessed to JM's sister, Rahab Mwaniki, that he had taken JM to Nderi and Shaw, for questioning on the bombs. He said he had left JM with the two senior police officers and returned much later to find a Mr. Pius Kibathi and two other men dragging a bleeding and groaning JM to a vehicle behind Kingsway House. But other sources say Gethi never left Kingsway House until JM had been taken away. 

In his memoirs 'A Love Affair with the Sun', Sir Michael Blundell, a well-connected former politician and businessman, said one some of the cartridges recovered from the place where JM's body was found in Ngong were fired from a pistol belonging to a presidential guard he did not name. The House Committee established that two different pistols were used to kill JM. Clearly, he was shot at different places, first at Kingsway House and later at the Ngong Hills scene of murder. 

The guns were either a .38 Walther or a .38 Mann, both of which also happened to be the pistols used by members of the GSU Recce Company. Officers in the Recce Company are used for special duties, the main one being providing escort to the President and visiting heads of state. Probe Committee members believed that JM's murder was a foregone conclusion and would have taken place even if Thungu had not provoked the shooting at Kingsway House. 

http://www.kenyan-post.com/2013/04/detailed-report-on-how-kenyatta-killed.html

I died in the Malaysian Incident

There she  finds him 
in the Hall of Lost Remembrance
Finds him lost among the arts there
Finds him
wanting . . . something

she can't remember how to speak
Can't remember . . . what words are for
Can't remember . . .
Turns to face him . . . puzzled

she says
“How is it young one
that I do not hear you?”

You do not hear me because I am not here

“How is it I see you
touch you
Know the look of your face
But I cannot know your heart . . . ?”

You can not touch my heart
Because I no longer have one
You can not touch my thoughts
Because my thoughts are my own

“How can this be
I have no small talent in this 
How can this be?”

I died in the Malaysian Incident
was dead for the longest time
in fact was never brought all the way back
And so I feel nothing
nothing at all
I walk through the hole in the zero of everyday

“Young one
should I feel pity for you?”

No more than for any other survivor
And a part of me still wonders
Are all survivors are worthy?

They stand silent for a small eternity
Looked upon by the twisted art wreckage 
The tortured memories of a by gone day

He holds forth a slip of parchment
She takes it
Holds it to the light
And finds the poem written there
By this young machine

William C. Burns, Jr.

Thoughts with a Rastafari Brejrin from Kenya

KI. What about reparations for yourself?
GM. If black people received some form of reparations then I as an individual black person would also benefit.
KI. Do you feel your brethren no matter where they hail from (Europe, Africa, elsewhere) should repatriate to Africa?
GM. The Bible says that the earth is the Lords and the fullness thereof. Marcus Garvey said Africa for the Africans at home and abroad. Repatriation therefore is an individual thing.
KI. If you are repatriating, when and to where does the I expect to do so?
GM. I have done this already and Jah has brought I to Kenya for the present.
KI. Is the I actively working towards repatriating? Does the I send monies to others who are in Shashamane?
GM. From time to time I support a cause. Currently I am assisting 7 Kenyan youths to secure scholarships to go and study Theology in Ethiopia.
KI. Is the I a member of any organized Movement, which is working to further Rastafari or the Rastafari people, and would the I care to briefly explain the works?
GM. I am not currently a member of any particular Movement other than being a Rastafari. I work with individuals to realize their goals within Rastafari. IN the early days I along with some brethrens and sistrens established a Movement called Rastafarian Advancement Society in London England. The association worked in bringing the message of Rastafari to the masses and with the local authorities such as police, prison, hospitals and so one. We secured legal representation on be half of the Rastafari Community to the Lord Scarman enquiry into the UK riots, which started in Brixton. Whilst the Enquiry concluded that the Rastafari community was not responsible for ignigting the riots the movement was a new emerging religion in the 20th Century a statement InI did not agree with. I have worked with the Ethiopian World Federation in particular Ras Seymour Mclean and Lidj Mulugeta Aserrate in bringing to plight the issue of the Magdala Collection. I have also worked with Ambassador Wolde Selassie King of EWF Inc Shashamane in developing the concept of the model city for Shashamane. I continue to work with various groups so long as they are instrumental in bringing about a closer unity amongst InI
KI. What is the I current occupation?
GM. I am a director and shareholder of a Telecommunications company based in Kenya. I also act a consultant to business in the food and entertainment industry.
KI. What is the I Sabbath practice?
GM. According the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Saturday as the Sabbath has not changed. Sunday is truly the day of the Resurrection and InI should rejoice in it being the day that the Lord made. The Sabbath in Orthodox tradition is a day of relaxation and preparation for celebrating the day of the Resurrection of our Lord the centre of which should be the partaking of the blessed sacrament of the Eucharist.
KI. What is the I view of the Sacrament, considered Hola to some houses ands mansions? Is it necessary to partake of the Sacrament?
GM. I understand this question to relate to the taking of herbs as a sacrament. Again each person is free to follow whatever discipline he desires but to say InI is united in the spiritual sense would mean InI see the sacrament is essential which it is not. Anything taking into the body such as smoke cannot be good for the body. I have personally seen my dear Bingi brothers pass away after both his lungs collapsed because of the continual smoking of the herbs as the Hola Sacrament. The Hola Sacrament that InI King partook of is the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist which is onfiltered=of the seven Pillars of Mysteries of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The bible clearly states that if InI do not take this particular sacrament InI will have no life, as it is life i.e. the body and blood of Eyesus Kristos symbolized as bread and wine. His Imperial Majesty never failed to partake of this Sacrament so how can InI who follow him replace it for herbs?

KI. How does the I keep an Ital diet? Since there are some differing diets kept, what is your view of those who do not keep vegan?
GM. First the bible says that InI should not condemn InI brothers because of what he eats as it is not what goes into the body that defiles it but the words that come out of ones mouth. As a consequence the bible is also clear on what meats InI can eat. As a follower of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church one has an opportunity to fast for nearly half of the year. During this fasting period one eats nothing from the animal – the diet is completely vegan- all forms of animal products (meat, eggs, butter, milk, cheese etc.) are strictly prohibited. As the bible does not forbid one from eating meat and it also specifically request that InI should not do anything to cause thy brother to stumble, the periods of fasting gives the body time to cleans its self and it serves to weaken the force of the body so that the body may obey the soul which is of the Father.
KI. How does the I view Haile Selassie teachments, his major tenants from speeches you have read?
GM. Robert Nesta Marley (Berhane Selassie) sang, “Give us the teachings of His Majesty….” His Imperial Majesty is the central personality in Rastafari. The name Rastafari derives from his names Ras Teferi Makonen. In his various Utterances and Selected Speeches one can find the solution for InI development, the growth of the African Continent and the world at large in terms of collective security. His works in developing Ethiopia and his encouragement to Education is unsurpassing. His comments on his love of the Creator and Eyesus Kristos brings InI into some form of contradiction at least those who claim him to be God or the Son of God in the sense of the second person of the Holy Trinity. For this reason I follow Bob’s advice and not the tradition of men. I accept Him as he has told who and me who he is his lord and Savior is whom I also follow with all my heart and soul.
KI. How does the I see Reggae music (Roots) in the present time?
GM. Reggae music from its inception has always been the medium of the masses. An inspirational tool to uplift the people and it will always be that. It is for me the real classical music.
KI. Any feeling about Gospel Reggae or what they call Christian Reggae such as Judy Mowatt, Sis Carlene Davis, Papa San foe Isample?
GM. We all know that reggae music was seen as unsuitable for a Christian. It was shunned by the masses only InI relied on it for both spiritual and social inspiration. Now it is being used to promote mainstream Christianity. Jah is marvelous and he takes the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. Reggae music will permeate throughout the world and InI will use it as the medium to spread the true gospel of the Father Son and Holy Spirit. Let them spread to those who first denied it – in time InI will use it for the true works.


Adapted from http://www.alumbo.com/cgi-bin/article/14568