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Archive for July 4th, 2010

“Friends with benefits”

Posted by jambonewspot on July 4, 2010

At one point in your life, a boy or girlfriend has asked you to be his/her friend but with certain ‘benefits’. This usually happens after the two parties have agreed that a relationship will not work for them. It’s more like a contract, only without a piece of writing to authenticate the agreement. But I’m normally confused with the ‘benefits’ part. For one, that will mean you are a friend, but more than a friend and of course the benefits part will mean that you have to be physically involved with the person, but isn’t that some sort of a relationship? You do have to agree that physical contact with someone you are attracted to will lead to some form of emotional attachment…true? So I write down my opinions hoping that somewhere along the line I will get to one solid conclusion.

Let’s begin with why two people who are obviously attracted to one another should settle for something less like ‘friends with benefits’. It should be natural that they want to be more than friends…right? Wrong! In my way, I think that its either one person in the relationship who is not ready to make a serious commitment to the other or both of them are afraid to confront their emotions. Either way, that is an obstacle to their happiness or maybe even freedom.

What really amazes me is the way people react to commitment. It is the real issue behind this ‘benefits’ saga. I do confess I have been in such a situation and not just once, that’s why it’s such a concern to me to understand the concept. Commitment is a serious thing between two people. It’s a solemn if not strict agreement that the two will stay true to each other no matter what temptation comes their way. “Friends with benefits” however means that it’s just a casual hook up for sex or otherwise and if something better comes your way, you are free to mingle. But does that not include putting all your emotions on the line and also in the long run risk your health? You might not know how many partners the other person has mingled or even “been” with casually and are in the same position as you.

Little by little one of you might also start getting attached to each other and forget about the ‘contract’ they had earlier agreed on. Then trouble starts brewing in paradise. What was once seen as a casual hook-up might start evolving into a series of insecure and hurtful emotions. It gets old and emotionally drenching to have what you don’t own so to speak. It’s like renting a movie that you know you have to return to the store. You might love it, but it still will never be yours. And what happens when you spoil it? Simple; you have to pay.

Same goes for such ‘arrangements’, you might think that you are ready to deal with such issues but what you are doing is just postponing the inevitable. You cannot expect to treat a relationship like a contract and get away with it scot free. You cannot do friends with benefits and still expect that it will lead to something more serious. Why buy time being friends and what you do is basically what people in a relationship do? Why the cover name and pretence? Does it make it sexier that you are not lovers but friendly lovers? I’m not condemning anything here, just giving a few pointers that one should be careful in such matters.

The solution, I think, is to explore your emotions about the other person without rushing into any unnecessary agreements. If what you feel is truly genuine, then it won’t be hard to settle for a relationship. But under no circumstance should you agree to use and test the other person in your quest to see if things will work out. Chances are that deep down you know they won’t and you are probably a coward for not telling the other person how you truly feel about them.

Source: Capital FM Lifestyle

Posted in Features, Sex and Relationships | Comments Off

After three kidney transplants in 15 years, Lorna determined to make best of life

Posted by jambonewspot on July 4, 2010

Lorna Irungu. She says when she finds her ideal career she will run with it like no one’s business. Photo/FILE

Lorna Irungu. She says when she finds her ideal career she will run with it like no one’s business. Photo/FILE

By DANIEL WESANGULA
Posted Saturday, July 3 2010 at 20:21

It’s Thursday morning in uptown Nairobi. The cold weather seems to be out to make a point: do not leave the house without warm clothing. Most people have heeded the call and are wearing thick jackets and scarves. But some walk the streets on their own terms, wearing what they chose.

At around 10.15 a.m. Lorna Irungu walks into a city restaurant. Dressed in a white T-shirt, blue jeans, black shoes and brown sunglasses. Despite the greyness outside, her world is full of sunshine and, as she says, the best she can do is bask in its glory.

Worst person

“I’d love to tell you that I am always this bubbly, but that would be a lie. Sometimes I’m the worst person to be around,” the 35-year-old says as she lets out a chuckle, sits down then lightly scratches her short, reddish, dyed hair.

From looking at her, it would be hard to tell that she has been floored by illness on several occasions. And after each punch, she has dusted off.
Going by a doctor’s prognosis, her family should be huddled somewhere trying to figure out what flowers to buy, what kind of music to play, what kind of farewell message to write on yet another card and ultimately whom to invite to her 13th memorial service.

“That was not in the grand scheme of things,” she says. “I am still here.”

After years of aches and pains and searching for the correct diagnosis from one doctor to another, she was finally diagnosed with lupus, a disease that affects the immune system.

Final curtain

Since then, her life has not returned to the original script. And in 2007 she thought the final curtain was about to fall. She was ready to succumb to what seemed to be her fate: an early death due to kidney failure.

“I no longer had the will to fight. I was scarred physically and mentally. Frankly, I’d had enough of life and all it had to offer,” she says. And just like that she was willing to throw away more than a decade of battle. Her time, she thought to herself, had come.

It all started with an infection that she hoped could be dealt with easily. But, as the year drew to a close, the infection evolved into something more serious – tuberculosis of the spine – earning her a stint at Nairobi Hospital.

She had hit rock bottom twice before, and on each of those occasions, she had been bailed out with some level of success. But this time round it felt different.

“I saw the outstretched hands of family and friends willing to pull me back up and set me on my feet again. But I did not care,” she says. At that point, she was falling freely into a dark abyss, and nothing, it seemed, would hold her back.

After her college education, Lorna, or Kui as she is fondly called by friends and family, had her own master plan in which everything was planned down to a T.

“I was to get my masters degree and maybe move to the US and start a life there in a house with a picket fence in a nice suburb. I seemed unstoppable,” she says.

And for a while she was, first as an actress with the legendary James Falkland’s Phoenix Players at the Professional Centre. Her acting led to the beginning of a career in television.

But then her kidneys put her on a journey she says she would not wish anyone to join.

“Some levels of pain are not meant for everyone,” she says.

And it was not just physical pain. Mentally, she had been hurting. Bad.

She had to have a kidney transplant. By this time she had lost weight, her skin colour had changed, and she looked a pale shadow of what television audiences knew from her days at KTN when she arguably made up one half of Kenya’s most popular TV couple after years of pairing on air with Jimmi Gathu.

“Almost everyone had something to say about what they thought I was suffering from, and most of them were not courageous to step up and ask me to my face,” she says. 

Eventually, family and close friends understood what she was going through and offered their support. 

She had her first transplant in 1998 at Nairobi Hospital. The kidney was donated by her father. Finally, a breath of fresh air was blowing her way. 

“He was not young any more, but he had a damn good kidney. He offered, we matched and I literally had a piece of him in me,” she says. 

Life resumed normalcy for the next several years and she even managed to get a number of jobs from employers who she says believed in her ability to do the work. The transplant did not slow her down. After her procedure, she worked with Radio Africa and with the Tamarind group of restaurants as events manager at The Carnivore. This required tremendous energy and working crazy hours. She did all this while still taking post-transplant medication. 

“And I repaid them greatly by giving them the best of my working years,” she says. “Plus, I had bills to pay.” 

But her run of good luck and apparent good health was about to come to an end. Towards the end of 2000, the kidney she had received from her father became infected. There was only one solution: get another one. 

Luckily, she was not short of organ donors. This time, her sister stepped in and offered one. Lorna had to accept it. She still had some fighting spirit left, and her hopes and ambitions had not yet slipped beyond reach. 

“I was determined to make it work and make the new kidney last even longer than the one I had received from my dad,” she says, sipping a cup of cafe latte. 

When she speaks about her bad times, her look appears so distant that an eavesdropper would think she is talking about someone else. 

During one of her stints in hospital she lost her appetite.

“Each time anything reached my stomach, it came right back up. But my doctors encouraged me by assuring me that for the five seconds between the time of ingestion and when I threw up, my body retained some nutrients,” she says.

And so she just kept forcing food down.

In 2001, she went under the scalpel again. The surgery went well, and it seemed her body and the kidney were doing just fine. Then one of her worst fears came true. The post-surgery drugs were not working , and the domino effect began. The infection moved from her kidneys to her lungs then to her liver.

“My blood pressure went out of control; this also affected my heart,” she says.

The evidence that all would not be well between her and her sister’s kidney was overwhelming. In 2008, she once more faced a problem that had become all too familiar.
She has been in and out of hospital so many times she talks like a doctor, tossing out words like dialysate, crossmatching and glomerulonephritis.

She doesn’t just have a doctor; she sees a nephrologist. As she talks, it seems as though she has never quite left the operating room.

“I just wanted it to be over,” she says. “I was just tired. I was really, really tired of the fighting, of the struggling, of being sick. My body and my mind seemed to have given up.”

She did not believe she would win the battle this time, and it that state of mind, she spiralled into psychotic fits and endless bouts of depression.

But her family and friends understood that she was going through a rough patch and were determined not to let the dark times linger.

“At the third time of asking they came through again.” It was her brother’s turn. He offered one of his kidneys.

“They just couldn’t let me walk this road alone.”

But the guarantee of a donor was not the end of her tribulations. Another thing stood between her and another transplant: the cost.

Locally, the procedure was too expensive. So she began looking elsewhere, sending out emails with her medical history and making phone calls to hospitals in other countries. Doctors at Fortis Hospital in New Delhi, India, were the only ones who responded to her somewhat complicated case.

Dr Vijay Kher, the hospital’s director of nephrology, talked to Lorna by phone and made travel arrangements for her.

But she could not leave as quickly as she had wanted. Her health was failing again. Fast.

Her vertebrae collapsed. Her heart was in no condition for a flight to India. Her blood pressure was off the charts, and her whole being was not in the right place. She drifted into a coma on December 27, 2007.

As she lay in her hospital bed comatose, the rest of the country went up in flames over the bitterly disputed results of the presidential election. To an observer, she might have seemed lucky in a way not to witness the killings that went on.

But, in her own way, she took it all in, a visitor at a time.

Bits and pieces

“In its own little way, my brain picked bits and pieces of almost every conversation that was going on around me. From the facts to the rumours. In that state, I couldn’t tell one from the other,” she says.

She emerged from the coma on January 27, 2008. The pre-coma depression plus the conversations on the post-election violence that went on around her were the perfect trigger for some of her psychotic episodes that were characterised by nightmares and hallucinations and a removal from reality.

Two weeks after regaining consciousness, a semblance of normalcy was restored in her life and she finally made it to New Delhi accompanied by her sister and boyfriend.

Again there was a catch.

“This was a new territory, even for the doctors. One of my surgeons had performed more than 400 transplants but had never seen a triple recipient. They made me understand the dangers involved,” Lorna says.

She went in for the first surgery to remove one of her four kidneys to create room for the third transplant.

The second surgery, the transplant operation, lasted five hours and went well. She says the doctors thought it unnecessary to remove the three other kidneys because they were not causing harm and they didn’t want to subject her to more surgery.

“This is normal procedure. Of the four kidneys, only one functions well. The rest are only removed to create more space or in case of infections,” Dr Kher told news channel CNN after the transplant.

And the extra kidneys seem to have given her a new lease of life. With her legendary fighting spirit, Lorna is determined to live life as best she can.

“I blame no one for the life I have had. All I can do is make lemonade from it,” she says.

Broken dreams

The easier option was to think of her life as a boulevard of broken dreams and unfulfilled promises. But she looks at all that has happened as a blessing in disguise.

“It’s been 15 years, and I am still here. There must be a reason for that,” she says.

There was a time she was angry at the world, angry at God for making her go through all this. But she says she made peace with both herself and her maker.

“If I were to bump into Him in the streets, I’d extend my hand and tell him that for a guy his age, he sure does have a sense of humour,” she says. “And I know He is looking out for me.”

For now, she is still trying to figure out what her ideal career is. When she does, she says, “I will run with it like no one’s business.”

Source: Saturday Nation

Posted in Features | 2 Comments »

Are you a keeper or a plaything?

Posted by jambonewspot on July 4, 2010

By  CAROLINE NJUNG’E
Posted Friday, July 2 2010 at 15:04

What if you had a manual that revealed how men think and what goes on in their minds when they look at you? What if this manual also offered step-by-step pointers about how to tell whether a man is genuinely interested in you or passing time? What if this manual also went ahead and offered a fool-proof formula of how to get him to finally propose?

Well, there is such a manual, at least that is what Steve Harvey, that popular American comedian, promises of his book, Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man.

Harvey points out from the onset that he is no psychologist or relationships expert, that he is merely offering women advice and insight from a man’s point of view. But this is probably what makes this book so appealing – the fact that it is written by a man. I mean, who better to offer a glimpse into the (closed) mind of a man than a man himself?

Harvey dares to say it as it is and thanks to his characteristic matter-of-fact humour, the book actually makes an interesting, entertaining read, something that cannot be said of your average textbook-like, clinical book on relationships.

We’re not saying that the book provides all the answers to all the questions you have ever had concerning men, but there is certainly a lot that you can learn about a man’s way of thinking. Read on:

Are you a keeper or a plaything?

How many times have you wondered whether the man you are with is after a genuine relationship or simply having fun at your expense before dumping you for the next hot thing that comes along?

Harvey says that by the time a man decides to approach you, he is half sure about whether you’re the marrying type, (the keeper) or the kind to make a sport of then toss on the side, (the plaything).

He defines the plaything or the ‘sport fish’ as the woman who has no self-respect, the one without any rules, requirements and guidelines that determine how she carries herself and how you treat her. According to him, such a woman is easy to pick out from a room full of women since her body language alone tells the man that she is ready for anything he throws her way.

This woman also gives men the impression that they can treat her in whatever way they like and get away with it, and for this reason, she is very popular with guys, who rarely pass the opportunity to get a free ride.

The keeper, however, is a different story. This one does not give in easily and makes her standards and requirements known from the start.

“She understands her power and wields it like a samurai sword. She commands – not demands – respect, just by the way she carries herself,” writes Harvey.

According to the author, shooting straight and letting a man know where you stand from the onset weeds off jokers. The man on the lookout for a meaningful relationship will stick around though. 

Underneath her no-nonsense demeanour, however, this woman still manages to send out signals that she is capable of “being loyal to a man and taking good care of him, appreciative of what he’s bringing to the relationship, and ready for true, long-lasting love.”

Think about it, the mistake many women make is thinking that if they are indispensable to a man and if they show him just how valuable they are, the men will want to keep them. But it does not work this way in Manville– If a man is not looking for a serious relationship; you’re not going to change his mind just because he pays for your coffee and takes you to his house afterwards.

“If he’s not ready for a serious relationship, he’s going to treat you like a sports fish,” says Harvey. In Harvey’s definition, a sports fish is just good for looking at, feeling before getting tossed back into the water.

But only you, the woman, can decide whether the man will use and dump you since it is you who decides whether you are a keeper or plaything in the man’s eyes. After all, you are the one who decides whether he buys you a drink, goes home with your number or takes you home with him.

 

Saturday Magazine 

Are you a keeper or a plaything?

  

By  CAROLINE NJUNG’E
Posted Friday, July 2 2010 at 15:04

What if you had a manual that revealed how men think and what goes on in their minds when they look at you? What if this manual also offered step-by-step pointers about how to tell whether a man is genuinely interested in you or passing time? What if this manual also went ahead and offered a fool-proof formula of how to get him to finally propose? 

Well, there is such a manual, at least that is what Steve Harvey, that popular American comedian, promises of his book, Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man. 

Harvey points out from the onset that he is no psychologist or relationships expert, that he is merely offering women advice and insight from a man’s point of view. But this is probably what makes this book so appealing – the fact that it is written by a man. I mean, who better to offer a glimpse into the (closed) mind of a man than a man himself? 

Harvey dares to say it as it is and thanks to his characteristic matter-of-fact humour, the book actually makes an interesting, entertaining read, something that cannot be said of your average textbook-like, clinical book on relationships. 

We’re not saying that the book provides all the answers to all the questions you have ever had concerning men, but there is certainly a lot that you can learn about a man’s way of thinking. Read on: 

Are you a keeper or a plaything?  

How many times have you wondered whether the man you are with is after a genuine relationship or simply having fun at your expense before dumping you for the next hot thing that comes along? 

Harvey says that by the time a man decides to approach you, he is half sure about whether you’re the marrying type, (the keeper) or the kind to make a sport of then toss on the side, (the plaything). 

He defines the plaything or the ‘sport fish’ as the woman who has no self-respect, the one without any rules, requirements and guidelines that determine how she carries herself and how you treat her. According to him, such a woman is easy to pick out from a room full of women since her body language alone tells the man that she is ready for anything he throws her way. 

This woman also gives men the impression that they can treat her in whatever way they like and get away with it, and for this reason, she is very popular with guys, who rarely pass the opportunity to get a free ride. 

The keeper, however, is a different story. This one does not give in easily and makes her standards and requirements known from the start. 

“She understands her power and wields it like a samurai sword. She commands – not demands – respect, just by the way she carries herself,” writes Harvey. 

According to the author, shooting straight and letting a man know where you stand from the onset weeds off jokers. The man on the lookout for a meaningful relationship will stick around though.  

Underneath her no-nonsense demeanour, however, this woman still manages to send out signals that she is capable of “being loyal to a man and taking good care of him, appreciative of what he’s bringing to the relationship, and ready for true, long-lasting love.” 

Think about it, the mistake many women make is thinking that if they are indispensable to a man and if they show him just how valuable they are, the men will want to keep them. But it does not work this way in Manville– If a man is not looking for a serious relationship; you’re not going to change his mind just because he pays for your coffee and takes you to his house afterwards. 

“If he’s not ready for a serious relationship, he’s going to treat you like a sports fish,” says Harvey. In Harvey’s definition, a sports fish is just good for looking at, feeling before getting tossed back into the water. 

But only you, the woman, can decide whether the man will use and dump you since it is you who decides whether you are a keeper or plaything in the man’s eyes. After all, you are the one who decides whether he buys you a drink, goes home with your number or takes you home with him. 

“We certainly want these things from you; that’s why we talked to you in the first place. But it’s you who decides if you’re going to give us any of the things we want, and how, exactly, we’re going to get them,” he says.
Get him to put a ring on it 

You have gone out for years; he has introduced you to his family, including his beloved mother, his friends, and everybody else that matters in his life. Unlike his previous girlfriends, you treat him like a king and even his boys like you. You are also sure that he is not seeing anyone behind your back, so just why is he not proposing? 

Harvey points out that unlike women, men are just not into the whole marriage thing. They are quite happy to get a child with you, share the same house, split bills and share parenting responsibilities – they are comfortable playing house, so giving you that large, fairy wedding you always dreamed of as a young girl is the last thing on his mind. To get a clearer picture of what men really think about marriage, here is his take. 

“To some men, marriage fits into the same category as eating vegetables: you know it’s something you should be doing, something that’s good for you, but you don’t really want to do it because, well, the greasy, fat-filled, salty, juicy burger and fries is just so much more satisfying.” 

Obviously, marriage, to men, is akin to a trap, and if they can get away with not being caught in one and still keep you, they count themselves among the happiest people in the world. 

“Responsibility and marriage do not fit into that feeling (being young and carefree) until all of the playing gets tired and we realise that we have to grow-up,” he adds. 

The tragedy of this, and one that Harvey does not point out, is the fact that there is no telling when a man will grow up, for all you know, yours might grow up when he hits 70. 

Does this then mean that you should sit put twiddling your thumbs as you wait for your man to finally grow up and propose? Harvey thinks not, in fact, he says that the wise woman pins her man down and gets him to set a wedding date.

If your man has agreed to move in with you, have a child with you and share parental responsibilities, he has consciously pulled himself out of the market, it is his way of telling you that he wants only you, but unless you make it clear that you want a marriage certificate, he will be content to let life sail along without it.

“The timeline is yours; stop giving up your power. The moment a man sees that you’re willing to put aside your hopes of walking down the aisle, he will shelve it too,” is his honest opinion.

He also asks women to get rid of the archaic mentality that it is a man’s duty to ask for your hand in marriage if he loves you. If you don’t ask, chances are that you might end up waiting for the rest of your life, simply because men are happy enough in a ‘come-we-stay relationship.

The man is talking from experience. In fact, he lets on, the reason he got married was because his then girlfriend had a timeline, had requirements and standards which she expected him to meet.

Apart from not asking your man to set a concrete wedding date, Harvey reckons that there are two other reasons that prevent a man from proposing – the possibility that he is still married to someone else, and the fact that you are really not the one he wants. In these two cases, it makes sense to move on sooner than later.
Why men cheat

Why would a man with a beautiful woman at home, who treats him well, is a good mother to his children, keeps the house clean and even more important, keeps things in the bedroom pretty interesting want to cheat?

Many women will probably find this reason preposterous, but According to Harvey, men who cheat do so simply because they can. Apparently, they don’t view sex the same way women do. Sex to a woman is emotional, it is an act of love, but to a man, it can be purely physical.

“A man can love his wife, his children, his home, and the life that they’ve all built together, and have an incredible physical connection to her, and still get some from another woman without a second thought about it, because the actual act with the other woman meant nothing to him,” he writes.

-Saturday Nation

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Two Kenyans die in Ghana match brawl

Posted by jambonewspot on July 4, 2010

Ghana's defender John Mensah (5) is comforted by midfielder Stephen Appiah and striker Asamoah Gyan after missing a goal in the penalty shootout during the 2010 World Cup quarter-final match Uruguay vs. Ghana on July 2, 2010 at Soccer City stadium in Soweto, suburban Johannesburg. The penalty shoot out ended 4-2 in favour of Uruguay. A brawl involving two Kenyan fans over the match ended in death July 2, 2010. Photo/AFP

Ghana's defender John Mensah (5) is comforted by midfielder Stephen Appiah and striker Asamoah Gyan after missing a goal in the penalty shootout during the 2010 World Cup quarter-final match Uruguay vs. Ghana on July 2, 2010 at Soccer City stadium in Soweto, suburban Johannesburg. The penalty shoot out ended 4-2 in favour of Uruguay. A brawl involving two Kenyan fans over the match ended in death July 2, 2010. Photo/AFP

A row over a World Cup match involving Ghana has left two fans dead in the Kenya capital, Nairobi.

The two young men brawled moments after African team Ghana lost its quarter final match against Uruguay in penalties.

One of the men was stabbed by his colleague before a crowd intervened and stoned the culprit to death in the densely populated Githurai Kimbo Estate.

Trouble started when a group of youths differed on predictions of results after Ghana’s opener.

Ghana’s chance to make history as the first African country to reach a World Cup semi final, ended Friday night after they bowed out of the tournament in post match penalties.

Last year, a Kenyan fan of Premier League side Arsenal committed suicide after the team was eliminated by rivals Manchester United in the Champions League.

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Palace coup at KBC over $1.3m World Cup deal

Posted by jambonewspot on July 4, 2010

Kenya Broadcasting Corporation managing director, Mr David Waweru. Photo/FREDRICK ONYANGO

Kenya Broadcasting Corporation managing director, Mr David Waweru. Photo/FREDRICK ONYANGO

A dispute over the circumstances under which the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC), the public broadcaster, exclusively sub-contracted World Cup television rights to Radio Africa Ltd, has exposed the hostile tactics and backroom dealings prevalent in the country’s broadcasting industry.

With 32 teams from around the world meeting in South Africa to battle over the biggest sporting event, broadcasters were eagerly expecting the World Cup to provide them a welcome increase in viewership, listenership and advertising

The snag, however, was that the cost of acquiring World Cup rights had soared phenomenally.

Indeed, in many countries, it was almost taken for granted that the World Cup was going to be viewed only on public broadcasting or Pay-TV.

In Kenya, according to documents seen by The EastAfrican, KBC paid a fee of $700,000 for the rights towards the end of last year.

With the public broadcaster having taken the lead, expectations within the broadcasting industry were that KBC would come up with a formula for sharing both the cost of acquiring the rights and the advertising revenues without locking out any interested broadcaster.

As it turned out, what was expected did not happen.

Instead, the scramble for World Cup rights evolved into an intriguing game of vicious manoeuvring and under-hand dealings, all of which resulted in last week’s removal from office of KBC’s chief executive, David Waweru, and the corporation’s legal secretary, Hezekia Oira.

KBC quietly negotiated an exclusive deal with Radio Africa — owned by prominent media entreprenuer Patrick Quarrco.

According to the correspondence, the deal was initiated by a letter by Mr Waweru dated November 6, 2009, to Mr Quarrco refering to his “expression to partner with KBC in broadcasting the World Cup” and informing him that the corporation had accepted his proposal.

Five days later, Radio Africa formally accepted, paving the way for the signing of the agreement.

That agreement, consumated through a four-page and casually drafted document, titled “Memorandum of Understanding between Kenya Broadcasting Corporation and Radio Africa Ltd’ was signed on December, 23, 2009.

How KBC — a public entity subject to public procurement rules — came to grant an exclusive deal to Radio Africa without subjecting the World Cup rights to competitive bidding, is one of the most intriguing asides to the saga.

The details of that agreement included the following: First, Radio Africa was to pay KBC 50 per cent of the total costs of the rights.

 

Secondly, it was agreed that the revenues accruing from the “exploitation of the football tournaments” (sic) less VAT and agency commissions, shall be set between the parties on a 60:40 basis, with KBC taking the larger share while royalty would be shared on a 50:50 basis.

Thirdly, that Radio Africa would pay the 50 per cent for the rights in the following manner: 10 per cent on signing the agreement, 15 per cent on signing of the agreement and 25 per cent by March 2010.

Fourth, it was also agreed that the parties would open “joint bank accounts” for the purposes of collecting and banking the revenues.

The accounts were to be closed after the money was shared equally.

Fifth, under a section titled: “Third party rights,” the agreement stipulated that no third parties would be allowed to enjoy the rights.

Clearly, the manner in which the deal was sealed beg more questions than answers.

Where was the value added in a deal allowing a private party to underwrite rights held by a public broadcaster?

Why couldn’t KBC do it alone and hog all the revenues, in view of the fact that the World Cup rights had been paid for by the government?

Is it not the case that KBC would have negotiated better terms if the deal had been subjected to competitive bidding?

There was an uproar among broadcasters when it came to light that KBC had signed this exclusive deal with Radio Africa.

A team, representing the media industry’s foremost lobby, the Media Owners Association, was forced to hurriedly make representations to the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Information and Communications, Dr Bitange Ndemo.

However, all this was water under the bridge because KBC had already committed to Radio Africa.

It is noteworthy that at this stage, KBC’s parent ministry did not raise a finger about the manner in which the deal was procured.

Still, throughout this period, and in the build-up to the World Cup, KBC and Radio Africa went about signing advertising deals without any ripple in the broadcast industry.

That was until the Committee of Experts on Constitutional Reform came up with an order for a massive Ksh100 million advertising deal.

The committee wanted World Cup advertising space for civic education.

Apparently, the Citizen Group decided that they would not sit back as Mr Quarrcos’s group hogged the whole of the lucrative deal

According to a Citizen Group insider, Citizen felt that, with several vernacular stations in its stable, what it offered KBC and the Committee of Experts was a superior product.

Hardly 48-hours before the World Cup, the Citizen Group managed to get Mr Waweru to sign a radio commentary deal with them, allowing them to claim a share of the Ksh100 million deal from the Committee of Experts.

The Citizen Group paid Ksh500,000 (about $6,410) for rights to air radio commentaries.

With almost all advertising deals mopped up by KBC and Radio Africa, rumours started circulating that Mr Waweru had surreptitiously gone behind Mr Quarcco’s back and signed a deal with the Citizen Group.

Mr Quarcco immediately demanded a meeting to seek an explanation.

On Monday, June 7, a meeting was convened at the KBC boardroom to discuss the matter.

According to a letter Mr Quarcco sent to Mr Waweru the following day, Mr Waweru admitted admitted to him at the meeting that a deal had indeed been signed by the Citizen group.

In that letter, Mr Quarcco makes the sensational claim that Mr Waweru admitted to him that KBC had been put under pressure by senior government officials to give the Citizen Group and its affiliates rights to the World Cup.

“You indicated to me that you had come under political pressure to breach the agreement,” he said,

The Citizen Group insists that it had a right to stake a a claim to the lucrative deal from the Committee Experts.

“You can’t blame us for wanting to share the prize’, said a Citizen Group insider.

In a new twist Dr Ndemo has asked the Office of the Inspectorate of State Corporations under the Prime Minister’s Office to investigate whether Mr Waweru’s decision to sign a deal with the Citizen Group had put the Ksh75 million (about $1m) which the government had invested in the World Cup rights in jeopardy.

Source: East African

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Discrimination still rife in Kenya

Posted by jambonewspot on July 4, 2010

The National Cohesion and Integration Commission Chairman, Mzalendo Kibunja, when addressing journalists at Kisumu reiterated that discrimination on the basis of race and tribe was still rife in the civil service and other administrative machinery in Kenya.

He was right. Many tax payers can attest to being subjected to some form of discrimination when seeking jobs or services. Sadly, the vice carries on with impunity.

Take the example of civil servants in the Coast region — which is home to the Swahili who are ranked among the minority groups in Kenya.

As a resident of the region, I have encountered a number of residents who feel like strangers in their own country, because they cannot get services in public offices done.

The government must act now and enforce policies that will emancipate the minority.

The government must also take action against the perpetrators in order to curb the vice.

Hussein S. Hafidh

Kenya

-East African

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