Nothing but the truth

It is a sun­ny day and I am stand­ing at the park­ing lot in front of the court in Nanyu­ki. Through the open door I see Fred­dy in the wit­ness stand. He ges­tures wild­ly and cuts through the air with an imag­i­nary pan­ga. A police offi­cer keeps me com­pa­ny. He real­izes that his lunch is …

The great little man

On Sep­tem­ber 21, the inter­na­tion­al day of peace, ter­ror­ists killed dozens of civil­ians in a shop­ping mall, includ­ing chil­dren and preg­nant women. Most vio­lence in the world is no longer in the news. Drugs mur­ders in Mex­i­co, gueril­la wars in Con­go. Vio­lence always moves in cir­cles. After the attack in Nairo­bi, the dan­ger is that …

Facebook society

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 …

Crime and Punishment

This month, the Kenyan par­lia­ment accept­ed a motion to with­draw from the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court (ICC). 15 years ago, a con­fer­ence of 160 states adopt­ed the “Rome Statute of the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court”. This treaty was the basis for the ICC; a court that pros­e­cutes crimes of con­cern to the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty as a whole: …

The future is gray

After an ele­phan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence today, a blog with flop­py ears. Some time ago we saw Ahmed the ele­phant, who lived from 1919–1974 in the north of Kenya. Because he seemed to have enor­mous tuskers, con­ser­va­tion­ists were afraid he would be an attrac­tive tar­get for poach­ers. So he got pres­i­den­tial pro­tec­tion of Keny­at­ta (father of the …

Wild life

After 10 full days in The Nether­lands, I am back in Nanyu­ki. I came with a lot of greet­ings, meet­ings, hugs from Ivan and liquorice sup­plies. In the mean­time, Fred­dy has car­ried out sev­er­al field trips so he has been every­thing but bored.  Some­one else who is going to vis­it The Nether­lands is the pres­i­dent of …