Like almost every day, Fred­dy yes­ter­day vis­it­ed an agri­cul­tur­al entre­pre­neur for an inter­view. He was accom­pa­nied by J., his unof­fi­cial super­vi­sor who bought the motor bike togeth­er with us, the one that is now stolen. When J. got a call about the motor dur­ing the inter­view, the farmer sud­den­ly rec­og­nized the sto­ry: Hey you’re that guy that was robbed, I saw it on Face­book! That is how we dis­cov­ered that the sto­ry has reached the news (The Star, The Laikip­i­an), and the Laikip­ia Face­book page (at Sep­tem­ber 26).

The main point of the news item is that two peo­ple have been caught. We heard about this on Wednes­day, when we were ordered to come to the police sta­tion. They want us to iden­ti­fy one of the rob­bers. I could not remem­ber any­thing about the faces, but Fred­dy was pre­pared to try. He had to rec­og­nize the rob­ber from a line of 8 men. It turned out to be the one who was hit­ting with the pan­ga, and I am proud to say that he did rec­og­nize him! Now they will bring him to court. The doc­tor also has to tes­ti­fy. Because he has to arrange a replace­ment for the time he will spend in court, we had to pay him money.

This is also the moment to reflect on the report­ing of the ter­ror­ist attack in Nairo­bi. For days on end, the tv broad­casts con­sist­ed of two ele­ments: A livestream of the West­gate mall on such a dis­tance that in fact all you could see was the enor­mous cloud of smoke, and announce­ments of press con­fer­ences that were final­ly held after hav­ing been post­poned for half a day and then end­less­ly retold by the pre­sen­ters. All of this above the ban­ner ‘Break­ing News’. Dur­ing the press con­fer­ences we noticed that the author­i­ties were extreme­ly pos­i­tive about their achieve­ments and repeat­ed­ly announced vic­to­ry, while there were still hostages. This col­umn com­ments on these matters.

It so hap­pens that in our fam­i­ly only Ivan has Face­book, so we can not Like the above. We leave that to the peo­ple who are more into social media, like the farm­ers in Laikipia.

(PS: I can not guar­an­tee that all these hyper­links are still work­ing after a cou­ple of weeks, but that is just the dynam­ic dig­i­tal reality.)