June 2011
58 posts
“Another annoying habit Kenyans have is their aggressive Christianity. Christianity is truly the opium of the average Kenyan. Christianity is more like product placement when the average Kenyan is speaking: the more he mentions God, the better his profit margin. But it’s not just enough for Kenyans to mention God; they are ever exorcising the devil, thwarting his plans and rebuking him. When the average Kenyan goes to a government office and he is denied service by some petty bureaucrat hoping to obtain a bribe before delivering the service, the Kenyan does not ask to speak to the manager. He does not protest. This is not a governance issue; this is spiritual warfare, a machination of the devil. So he goes to church on Sunday and prays hard that the devil and corruption be defeated. And while he’s at it, he prays also for poor, starving Turkana people in the North of the Rift Valley and all those emaciated hordes of people in North Eastern province that he learned about in primary and secondary school. He prays that God, the U.S. or the United Nations may deliver food aid to them. In Jesus name, Amen.”
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“In one of the training workshops we just had, I was explaining what Walking Papers was about and how it might be useful in Liberia. So I showed the example below and continued talking. But Kate jumped in and asked participants: “What do you see in this picture? Do you see the trees, the little roads?” She pointed at the features as she described the individual shapes. This is when it finally dawned on me that there is absolutely nothing inherently intuitive about satellite images. Most people on this planet have not been on an airplane or a tall building. So why would a bird’s eye view of their village be anything remotely recognizable? I really kicked myself on that one. So I’ll write it again: there is nothing intuitive about satellite imagery. Nor is there anything intuitive about GPS and the existence of a latitude and longitude coordinate system.”
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