There are many reasons why I am thankful for the Internet. One of them is the fact that it keeps me informed of stuff going on all over the world and particularly now that I am no longer there, back home in Kenya. For instance, were it not for my online access to Kenyan newspapers such as the Star and others, by Tuesday this week I would have no clue of Kenya's announcement that it had struck oil.
The mainstream South African newspapers seem not to have deemed this newsworthy enough to make even the briefs section of the foreign news pages or even the business pages. As I don't work for any of the newspapers here, I cannot honestly say I know for sure why this is the case, except for the fact that on the whole, South African newspapers seem more interested in news from anywhere else but the African continent unless it has something to do with South Africans.
As well as the Kenyan online newspapers and the BBC, my friends on social media of course mentioned the fact and almost immediately there were debates on the issue as well as some of those very dry jokes that Kenyans are so good at. I read one such joke on the timeline of one of my Facebook friends, Dayo, where he warned against Kenyans now suddenly beginning to claim that they were part Turkana so as to try and finagle their way to the potential oil riches there.
There was also the joke by the cartoonist Gado where he asked when someone would discover water in Turkana. I must say, and all due respect to my former colleague the brilliant Vic Ndula, that cracked me up. Meanwhile of course there were the debates with friends about whether the oil find would in any way benefit the ordinary people of Kenya as a whole and particularly the people of Turkana in particular.
My old pal Neeraj from my days in senior school jokingly suggested that it was time for us to return to Kenya from South Africa to "share in the bonanza" but I had to let him down gently (some would say, cynically) and tell him that by the time we hopped on a Nairobi-bound flight in Johannesburg, the crocodiles and fat cats of Kenyan get rich schemes would have beaten us to it already.
As another former colleague Mburu Mucoki might have said, such people don't sleep on their ears. For me one of the biggest concerns about the announcement of the oil find is how it will play out in the weird and not always wonderful politics of the country. So for instance, will the so-called Mt Kenya mafia feel this gives them a chance to change the constitution as far as term limits are concerned and see if they can beg, borrow or steal President Kibaki another term in office so that they are sure to get their piece of the pie?
Such a scenario is not as completely crazy as it sounds especially now with the ever decreasing likelihood that the Mafia's preferred successors to the president will be in a position to run and win the next election. The real conspiracy theorists might even suggest the timing of the announcement was suspect and that it was possible that the oil found had been known about for some time and was delayed to give certain people a chance to position themselves to make the most of it by for instance acquiring property in the neighbourhood of the find for speculative purposes.
Such things have been known to have happened before in the history of the world and so would be nothing new. Of course the biggest headache right now would be if the people of Turkana, inspired by their neighbours in Southern Sudan, decided to choose this moment to announce that they wanted to divorce the rest of the country and take their chances with the oil.
mgithahu@yahoo.co.ke
The mainstream South African newspapers seem not to have deemed this newsworthy enough to make even the briefs section of the foreign news pages or even the business pages. As I don't work for any of the newspapers here, I cannot honestly say I know for sure why this is the case, except for the fact that on the whole, South African newspapers seem more interested in news from anywhere else but the African continent unless it has something to do with South Africans.
As well as the Kenyan online newspapers and the BBC, my friends on social media of course mentioned the fact and almost immediately there were debates on the issue as well as some of those very dry jokes that Kenyans are so good at. I read one such joke on the timeline of one of my Facebook friends, Dayo, where he warned against Kenyans now suddenly beginning to claim that they were part Turkana so as to try and finagle their way to the potential oil riches there.
There was also the joke by the cartoonist Gado where he asked when someone would discover water in Turkana. I must say, and all due respect to my former colleague the brilliant Vic Ndula, that cracked me up. Meanwhile of course there were the debates with friends about whether the oil find would in any way benefit the ordinary people of Kenya as a whole and particularly the people of Turkana in particular.
My old pal Neeraj from my days in senior school jokingly suggested that it was time for us to return to Kenya from South Africa to "share in the bonanza" but I had to let him down gently (some would say, cynically) and tell him that by the time we hopped on a Nairobi-bound flight in Johannesburg, the crocodiles and fat cats of Kenyan get rich schemes would have beaten us to it already.
As another former colleague Mburu Mucoki might have said, such people don't sleep on their ears. For me one of the biggest concerns about the announcement of the oil find is how it will play out in the weird and not always wonderful politics of the country. So for instance, will the so-called Mt Kenya mafia feel this gives them a chance to change the constitution as far as term limits are concerned and see if they can beg, borrow or steal President Kibaki another term in office so that they are sure to get their piece of the pie?
Such a scenario is not as completely crazy as it sounds especially now with the ever decreasing likelihood that the Mafia's preferred successors to the president will be in a position to run and win the next election. The real conspiracy theorists might even suggest the timing of the announcement was suspect and that it was possible that the oil found had been known about for some time and was delayed to give certain people a chance to position themselves to make the most of it by for instance acquiring property in the neighbourhood of the find for speculative purposes.
Such things have been known to have happened before in the history of the world and so would be nothing new. Of course the biggest headache right now would be if the people of Turkana, inspired by their neighbours in Southern Sudan, decided to choose this moment to announce that they wanted to divorce the rest of the country and take their chances with the oil.
mgithahu@yahoo.co.ke
www.doitadigital.com