W2C021K
Riots: Let's reason together 
Early this week, most university campuses were ordered closed because of students violence. The students were protesting the introduction of a `fees' system at the university a system the vice-chancellors said was <-/irreversable> and were supported by parliament. Athanas Tuiyot name gives details.
Student violence was once again witnessed early this week in most campuses of <-/he> four public universities. The students were protesting against the introduction of fees at the university from next academic year (1991-92).
The new fee structure was announced on Friday last week by the vice-chancellors of the four public universities. The announcement took the students by surprise. They demanded an explanation from the vice-chancellors. Students at Moi University, Eldoret were the first to give their vice-chancellor an ultimatum. Others followed.
The students protested against the new regulations and resorted to violence. One student died at Moi University and others were injured. It was also reported that property worth millions of shillings was destroyed during the disturbances. This led to the closure of some of <-/he> campuses by university authorities.
On Tuesday, the vice-chancellors held a closed door meeting to discuss the crisis. The vice-chancellors said after the meeting that the new loan structure and the payment of fees was not negotiable. They argued the students should contribute something small towards their education.
Under the new loan scheme the students will receive Shs 21,500 each of which Shs 13,000 will go towards tuition, food and accommodation a year. A further Shs 8,500 will be used to buy books and other materials. The students are expected to pay a token fee of Shs 6,000 per year directly to their respective universities.
Some people have argued that taxpayers should not be expected to carry the burden of financing the growth envisaged in higher education, particularly since few directly enjoy its financial benefits. They further argue that beneficiaries should make a direct and fair contribution to the cost of higher education to supplement the funds provided by the taxpayers.
The <-_governments><+_government's> contribution in financing education has grown from 33 to 38 per cent of the budget in just four years. It has been said this contributes substantially to the government's deficit and thus an important constraint on the government's ability to stabilise the <-/econonomy>.
For example, the government recurrent expenditure on higher education in the 1989/90 financial was close to Shs 1.8 billion. This high education bill has been attributed to rapid growth in student population which has increased from 7,000 in 1981-82 to 41,000 in the 1991-92 academic year.
Some economists have also argued that the current levels of subsidy in university education was introduced at a time when there was a desperate shortage of skilled manpower in the country. But the labour market situation has changed in the last few years for graduates have increasingly found it difficult to get jobs both in the public and private sector.
The government introduced cost sharing in both primary and secondary schools a few years back. Parents seem to have accepted the idea of sharing the burden of financing education, although a few of them have not been able to cope with it.
Perhaps this widespread acceptance of cost-sharing in both primary and secondary schools, convinced the government that time was ripe for the introduction of fees at the university.
According to sessional paper No 6 of 1988 on "Education and manpower training for the next decade and beyond", students in public educational and training institutions including universities, should pay the full cost of boarding and feeding.
On student personal allowance popularly known as "boom" the document says: "The provision of the student allowances for personal use is historical and was initially meant to be an inducement. The government does not consider this to be any longer necessary, nor does it appear to be reasonable charge to the exchequer".
The government was quick to remove personal allowances for those students studying at various middle level colleges. But university students continued to receive their personal allowances. In fact according to a source at one of the local public universities, the students receive about Shs 700 million a year.
Students seem to have <-_a> taken the allowances as a right, because it was part of the loan to be repaid after completing their courses.
Some of the students interviewed said they depended on the "boom" to buy their clothes, books and other personal effects. But on Tuesday the vice-chancellors said students should not regard the money as a salary or a stipend.
The vice-chancellor of the university of Nairobi, Professor Philip Mbithi said: "The country cannot justify its spending money on any group of people unless it is in broad national interests".
The vice-chancellors noted that Kenya was lucky because in most African countries, students were expected to pay for their accommodation, food and their personal needs.
In Nigeria, students at federal universities receive free tuition and subsidised housing, but pay full costs for food. Those unable to pay are given loans by the government.
Most of the students who were interviewed argued that the restructuring of the loan scheme was a breach of contract between them and the government. They said they should have been consulted before introducing the new fee.
But the vice-chancellors argued that the students should not blackmail them into changing their decision. But they emphasized that no student would be penalised for failing to raise the amount.
They further said a bursary scheme would be set up to assist the needy students. The bursary fund, they added, would be managed by the universities themselves. They noted that committees had been set up in the four public universities to look into the current situation before the students were recalled.
The vice-chancellors also said loan recovery should be intensified. They said about Shs 2.2 billion had been loaned to students since 1974 and yet a small amount had been recovered.
The vice-chancellors added a revolving fund would be set up with funds recovered from the <-/loanees>. The loan recovery has not been easy due to lack of adequate staff among others. The ministry of education has also failed to trace most of the defaulters.
Some economists have therefore suggested that <-/unversity> students should understand that the country, just like any other developing countries cannot meet all their needs.
Other people have suggested that ways and means should be found to identify genuine needy students, so that the bursary fund is not abused.
Educationists who talked to The Standard suggested that universities should consider allowing students to have their own bodies to air their views. They pointed out that the recent riots could partly be attributed to lack of dialogue between the students and university authorities.
They called on university students not to take law into their hands by destroying property belonging to the public and their universities. "What justification do students have in destroying the property of the taxpayer, who supports him at the university?" one of them asked.
The frequent university closures is also a waste of money and time. This should not be allowed to continue.
On Wednesday, members of parliament condemned students' violence in the closed public universities and supported a statement issued by the vice-chancellors on Tuesday that students were required to pay fees and their personal allowances `boom' was not a right but a privilege.
Contributing to the debate, the Minister for Education, Mr Peter Oloo Aringo, said the policy being implemented now was approved by the House as Sessional No. 6 of 1988, which proposed cost sharing. 
A valuable course 
Many students studying in Kenya universities have linguistic problems, which affect their performance in their areas of specialisation. But the introduction of communication skills programme to all 8-4-4 students who were admitted to the universities was aimed at curing this disease. Athanas Tuiyot has details.
In the past many people have said the standard of English at various levels of Kenya's education system has declined over the years. This has been attributed to lack of adequate books and teachers. But efforts are being made to rectify this situation both in secondary schools and in universities.
The introduction of communication skills as a common core course for all the first year students at the four public universities under the 8-4-4 system of education was welcomed by everybody. The course was designed to sharpen the language and study skills of the 8-4-4 group of students, who were admitted to the university for various courses.
Some people have, however, argued that the course should have also been offered to the "A" level students as well. The communication skills programme was also designed to develop student's use of a language in which they were already reasonably fluent as an instrument of <-/acamedic> development.
According to MS Gill Westaways of the British Council, the communication skills programme was set up in 1988 to prepare a programme designed to teach all the 8-4-4 entrants to the university.
"The aim of the project was to train communication skill lecturers, prepare materials to be used in the programme and to help universities set up mechanisms through which communication skills could be taught, " said Ms Westaways.
She added that a group of 29 lecturers were sent to British universities for their masters degrees in English. Other members of staff from all the four public universities have also benefited from a three-month course in Britain. The programme was funded by the Overseas Development Administration and administered by the British Council.
The teaching of communication skills to all first year 8-4-4 entrants started late last year. About 90 lecturers teaching it in the four public universities and other specialities from Britain, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa met in Nairobi this week to discuss what they had achieved and what to do next.
The participants discussed issues related to the design of communication skills, communication skills material development, the testing and evaluation of the course among other things.
The students are taught communication skills in reading, listening, writing note taking and notemaking, library and study skills. Most of lecturers felt that <-/he> majority of students had certain linguistic weaknesses which hampered their learning at the university.
One of them said: "Students are conscious of what the speaker is saying with the language but not of what he is doing with it. The result is that they are at a disadvantage in the academic context where many speakers spend their time arguing a thesis, in other words using the language to DO something".
Some lecturers also said many students were unable to write notes because they had no way of judging what was important and what was not.
They argued that the course will assist such students to become better readers and listeners and be in a better position to collect and separate information. The students should be able to discard what they do not need for their assignments.
A senior lecturer at the department of communication skills, Moi University, Dr C.M. Lutta-Mukhebi said most university students cannot express themselves effectively.
"Sometimes our students do not perform well in their examinations, not because they are not bright, but because they cannot interpret data and present it in an organised way," she said.
She added all students at the university need the course to enable them perform better in their academic <-/persuits>. She said most students speak <ea/>sheng and sometimes use it when writing. She further said: "Many graduates who are employed cannot write a good report. This is not fair because it affects their performance."
The chairman of Communication Skills Department at Kenyatta University, Dr J.N. Kimemia said most of the students had problems in both English and Kiswahili. He added that most students could not write good essays. "Perhaps this problem can be attributed to the reduction of number of English lessons in secondary schools. The students are required to be taught for only six lessons per week instead of eight as it used to be about six years ago. 
W2C022K
Education system in crisis. 
Are modern graduates functional illiterates? 
There is every indication that the unusually muted fashion in which the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination results were announced on Wednesday is a pointer to a deep malaise that has infected our educational system.
Conspicuously absent was the pomp and excitement habitually accompanying such announcements every year. The ceremony was short, the speeches subdued and the details scanty.
Never before has the Minister for Education failed to release the names of the best students, the best schools or the best districts (of course the chief losers in this respect were the newspapers which, for the first time in ages, were not provided with ready-made copy to play up and analyse for weeks on end).
There may have been a good reason for this low-tone approach to the announcement, for these are hardly the times to exult in numbers, names or statistics, but again there could be more to this melancholic state of affairs than meets the eye.
One fact emerged clearly from the announcement: There has been mass examination failure this year, and no amount of playing around with words can hide this stark reality. 
This is the first time ever that Form Four leavers, after twelve years of education, sat for an examination designed to catapult them straight into university. The 1989 examination was the culmination of the second stage of the 8:4:4 system of education, and this being the first time such a thing has been tried in Kenya, there were bound to be loose ends.
But as the Minister candidly admitted, the candidates performed dismally in all the major subjects including Mathematics, English Language, Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, Fine Arts and Music, and all the commercial as well as secretarial subjects. They appear to have done well only in the humanities and technical subjects.
There had been indications, right from the outset, that all would not be well with the examination results. Many teachers who marked last year's papers started complaining very early that the scripts they were working on (both `O' and `A' level) were worse than anything they had ever seen before, and they wondered loudly whether those students were really ready for university education.
Later, sources at the Kenya National Examinations Council expressed the same disquiet, even going to the extent of broaching the idea of recommending that `A' level classes be re-introduced forthwith.
But when the Minister for Education, Mr Peter Oloo Aringo, was asked to comment on the question of declining academic standards in the country's schools and institutions of higher learning, and whether there was any possibility of reinstating `A' level education, he did not appear to be too impressed with the suggestion.
"Those people who are saying the standards of education have fallen are detractors... out to sabotage the 8:4:4 system of education. The 8:4:4 system is here to stay," he said.
There is a great deal to be said for the new system, and given time, say the next 20 years, something may come of it, but the fact that this year's results are too discouraging does not sit very well with the Minister's assertions.
It is also interesting, and revealing, that an overwhelming number of secondary schools seem to have been very reluctant to forward applications for university places on behalf of their students. Nobody has said why this should be so, but could it be the headmasters of those institutions know something about the quality of their students that we don't?
Already, there is a great deal of unease among knowledgeable circles about the educational attainments of those students who graduate from the country's institutions of higher learning - including the universities.
Indeed, a joke is doing the rounds about adult literacy classes. Instead of them being conducted for the rural folks, the joke goes such classes should be made mandatory for people leaving universities. 
This, as anyone who has gone through the rigours of higher education will attest, is a joke in very bad taste. But, as in most of these things, there is a grain of truth in it, and many employers would be the first to say so, for they are the first people to make any kind of contact with the extremely raw material that is the product of our university system.
In short, there is a general feeling that Kenya's universities are and have been for some years now, producing a good many functional illiterates masquerading as graduates. The employers have been forced by circumstances to start from scratch teaching them the rudiments of communication, logical thinking, responsibility and the job itself.
There is also a feeling that the malaise starts right from the beginning, in primary schools, and our inability to address the fundamental problems at that level is making matters worse for those children we would help.
Functional illiteracy is the inability to translate the theories one has learnt into practice; the inability to function outside the classroom or lecture hall. It has nothing to do with the idea of on-the-job training, which is inevitable for everyone.
From time immemorial, of course, university systems all over the world have been known to produce complete dunderheads, unemployable geniuses, semi-literate snobs and effete intellectuals.
They have also been known to produce well-rounded men and women (no pun intended) of adaptable intelligence who could go straight from the classroom and master any discipline whatsoever out there in the field.
History has it that the school system was "invented" somewhere around 3000 BC by the Egyptians and perfected by the Greeks of classical antiquity. Their idea was to inculcate in youth the values of education as a tool for societal cohesion - understanding the bonds between the individual and the community - and as a tool for individual advancement.
This is still the goal of education. For, although a scholar in those ancient times was expected to be thoroughly well-versed in the arts, sciences and fine arts - and although this is impossible today - the idea still should be to produce an individual who has some passable acquaintance with all the disciplines and an intimate relationship with one or two. 
But, today, it is entirely possible to come across a university graduate who has never heard of Shakespeare, Chaka the Zulu or Adolf Hitler.
There are those who might think the "scramble for Africa" is an indoor game or that Gamal Abdul Nasser is a Coast politician. 
These sorts of fellows, after graduating, will not read anything beyond the page one "splash" story in a newspaper of which they will talk learnedly the whole day, or study anything but the payslip once a month. 
Of course, they will know a great deal about their jobs - and that for the noble motive of basic survival - but ask such a fellow why he thinks the "Iron Curtain" is being torn down in another part of the world and he will look at you in a manner that suggests you may not be all there.
This is a pretty unflattering picture of a person who will have undergone 15 years of education, but, with exaggerations here and there, it is a true picture, nevertheless. Why? What could have gone wrong? Why is our education system producing half-baked ignoramuses who speak English in strange accents and cannot write it down, and whose sole intellectual pursuit is to decipher liquor bills?
Many observers believe the rot starts right from the beginning, right from the roots, so to speak.
When a pupil joins primary school these days, he will be six years old or thereabouts. he will already know how to read and write - after a fashion - and he can do a few sums.
Six years later, his real "education" begins. His teacher brings to a class a bundle of past examination (KCPE) papers. A syllabus is drawn up diligently by the Kenya Institute of Education and an intense session of coaching and cramming begins, followed by even more coaching and cramming. There is no respite for the child; there is an examination to pass.
The vacations will be shorter, and even they will be spent on more coaching and cramming at home (some teachers are making fortunes during vacations) and the child will forget games, playmates, and everything that might have helped him learn something about the real world: There is an examination to pass.
Come the eighth year and the child will have crammed everything there is to cram. Virtually the whole year is given to rehearsals and it does not matter whether he has really learnt anything.
All the inquisitiveness has been stilled. Everything is in notes the teacher has given out and there is no point in trying to find out how or why anything works. It is, of course, anathema to read anything that is not in the syllabus. After all there is an examination to pass.
In the process, many pupils are being left by the wayside for the pressure is too much. There is no room for everybody in the great ark of learning and only the <-/swotters> and the prodigies can make it.
Of course, even those pupils who do "pass" the examinations will have learnt nothing much more than those who do not, for the inequities of our examination system are sometimes too much to bear, but now the lucky few have another chance. 
It does not matter that the intense incarceration in the classroom may have warped their characters beyond redemption: there are four more years of secondary education and who knows, something may yet be made of them.
What is not generally realised - and this is the sad fact - is that the four years may just turn out to be a mere extension of the last eight. Oftentimes, there is little change, except that the teachers are more educated and most of them know what they should do. 
Unfortunately, the teachers are working with raw material that is already flawed and they are working within a system they can do nothing to change for the better.
The students are already intellectual cripples and their heads mere vessels for pouring in undigested facts that will be reproduced in the same state during tests.
This is in spite of the introduction of the 8:4:4 system of education. That, too, has got its shortcomings and contradictions, but no system whatsoever can work when the premises are fundamentally flawed. 
Many observers agree that there is far too much emphasis on national examinations which are both external and fateful. That, in itself, has created a situation in which competition, and not education is the key word, and the poor <-_students><+-student> is being torn apart by the demands of a society that is coming to believe that the external examination result is the only gauge of intelligence - a system with inbuilt contradictions regarding the best way to achieve this desired result.
Education is supposed to broaden the horizons of the mind, not narrow them down. It is amazing that, in recent years, many students who were supposed to be preparing for university education were being given dictated notes by teachers, that they did not know the first thing about footnoting, and that they had no idea about how to use a library and why.
It is true that, on this latter po student may not be entirely to blame, for he may never have seen a library in his life. But the same cannot be said for those teachers who take their work so casually that they never mention to the student that he might have to use this facility and that there is no learning without independent study and wide reading.
It is thus not surprising that the same student may have no idea whatever that he is supposed to be taking down notes while the teacher or lecturer is talking. It comes as a surprise to many that a lecturer will go on and on for weeks without writing anything on the blackboard or dictating notes.
W2C023K
Most incest babies born in Kakamega are abandoned 
Children of the lesser parents. 'Luhya custom dictates that such children are a bad omen and destined to be outcasts.' 
Seven babies lay fast asleep in the cots neatly arranged in the spacious, clean room. Next to the babies was a larger cot and a weighing machine on top of a sideboard.
Several women chatted animatedly, one of them cuddling a baby. They all sat watching the sleeping babies.
To a stranger, the babies, aged between a few <-_day's><+_days> and two <-_month's><+_months> old, would be rightly there because after all the Kakamega Children's Home, like all others, takes care of children in difficult circumstances.
But the circumstances of the birth of these children were unique. They were not abandoned and left for death. Their mothers and relatives took them to the Home themselves.
Born in Kakamega District, the eight children are taboo children, born of incestuous relationships or between relatives.
The Luhya custom dictates that such children are abominable, a bad omen who are destined to be outcasts for as long as they live.
Such children have to be sent away immediately they are born to avoid the wrath of the gods "otherwise all the children in the family will die," a Kakamega elder says.
The children's wing of the Kakamega Children's Home, which was established about four years ago is a manifestation of the problem.
"Almost all the children we admit here are those born of such relationships," Mathias Wabwoba, the administrator of the home, says.
The eight children in the home and another one who was in hospital when we visited the home, had been brought by relatives or mothers soon after birth. They were all waiting to be adopted.
The home has a capacity for nine babies, and 25 older ones.
This year alone they have received 29 children, 23 of whom <-_are><+_were> born under these circumstances.
In 1989 the home had 46 children for adoption while in the previous year they had 29. "In actual fact 99 per cent of the children we admit here are those born between relatives," Wabwoba says.
"But because the community does not accept them, they ask us to take them for good."
Among the Maragoli, a sub-tribe of the Luhya, such children were traditionally left to die immediately they were born.
"Such a child would be placed on a rock in the sun and left to die," says Meshack Agoi, a senior chief, in Vihiga/Sabatia division.
"The parents of such a child would be sent away to another clan or to a neighbouring ethnic community, never to return to their home.
Rachel Musoga, a counsellor at the Family Planning Association of Kenya office, Kakamega, narrated a case in which a man in Isukha, Kakamega had a child with his daughter. The daughter went to live with the uncles but the man was forbidden <-_never><+_ever> to return home.
He returned years later, but died soon after. "Everybody believed he died because he disobeyed the rule of law," she says.
Chief Agoi explains that if such a child was let to live with relatives, all other children in the family could either die, become mad, lame or abnormal.
"But incestuous relationships were a rare occurrence then. It seems to be happening more often now, but because the law and Christianity forbids killing, some people are trying to deal with it quietly and in a more humane way," he says.
They do so by approaching the Children's home and the children's officer in Kakamega long before the children are born.
Others, mainly single girls dump the children at the Kakamega Hospital where they know they will be taken care of.
"We do not even need to go for the children ourselves," says the Kakamega Children's officer, Hezron Miyienda. The girls (normally in school) or their parents just come to the office to request us to take the children when they are born.
He says he deals with at least two such children in a month but last year 38 such children were taken to him, although he knows there were other such cases which were not reported.
The number goes up at certain seasons, months after school holidays. He said he had dealt with seven this year.
Some of the children stay at the Kakamega hospital while waiting the fostering or adoption procedure which is done through court. He says he hardly deals with abandoned children.
"There are many childless couples who need to adopt children, hence benefit from this arrangement," he adds.
He gets an average of four adoptions in a month, all of which are from outside Kakamega District.
He says he receives most such children from within Kakamega district and that the <-/neighboouring> districts - Busia and Bungoma did not seem to have similar problems.
But while he appreciates those who bring the children to the Provincial Children's Office, he is disturbed by those families who get rid of such children through middlemen. The latter have been alleged to sell such children to desperate parents.
"Children should never be sold because they are a gift from God. In any case we have a procedure to follow concerning fostering or adoption."
He appeals to the public in the province to avoid middlemen and to follow the right procedure whenever they want to adopt children or give away children.
The Kakamega hospital has not been free from this 'burden' either and a source told The Nation that many such children are dumped at the hospital by their mothers quite often 
Dr Jonathan Baraza, the Medical Superintendant, said last year 21 children abandoned at the hospital were adopted.
"Most of these were said to have been born out of incestuous relationships or those born illegitimately by married women whose husbands live away from home."
Other victims of this customary law seek to abort and according to Maina Keengwe, area manager of the Family Planning Association of Kenya, Kakamega, they try to find out if his office can help them abort.
However, he says his office only helps such people cope with the trauma through counselling, and not abortion.
"It is surprising that <-_the> incest is so common here, probably unlike many other parts of the country. In Kisii where I come from, sexual relationships between relatives <-_is><+_are> sacrilegious. Such a man would be killed."
But <-_that><+_although> incest is increasingly becoming a common feature than ever before, it has not made the Luhya community soften the punishment or change its attitude towards those involved.
That we could tell by the way people reacted when we asked to be shown such homes. Efforts to get a girl who has had to send away her child because of the societal demands over her family <-_was><+_were> almost in vain, although several people we talked to knew such girls or their families. Most of them turned down our request to show us the homes because they claimed that would only be rubbing in the embarrassment or `terrible experience they have had to cope with'.
In another case, an assistant chief could not take us to a home because he said the family would never forgive him for making the family suffer more by talking about it.
Punishment subjected to victims of this anomaly seemed to vary among the sub-tribes. For while the Maragoli would leave them unattended until they <-_die><+_died> and send the parents away, the Isukha would bring up the <-_child><+_children> up to about the age of ten then send them away while the parents remained. The Tirikis on the other hand would send them away immediately they were born.
But the Isukha community would not put the matter at  rest until some ritual was performed to cleanse the two people who were later allowed to stay in the community.
But Lena Kanule, 63, a Tiriki from near the Kaimosi Hospital, says although some people still uphold the traditional punishment, Christians in her church meet and pray for the two people concerned `so that God can forgive them'. 
<&/> Jemimah Mwakisha Daily Nation 12/7/91 (1)
Father paid Sh2,000 to Kakamega woman to have two girls and a boy 
'How we got taboo children' 
It is a chilly morning in Dagoretti Children's home, Nairobi. Four children emerge from one of the dormitories as others watch. The youngest is carried by one of the women attendants. The children look stranded, scared and helpless. They are led to a nearby Land Rover parked just outside the administrative office of the home.
There is no sign of resistance as they are placed on the back seat of the vehicle. No bye-byes for their peers who have come out of the home to watch them go.
Have they resigned to fate or have they no regrets leaving the home? Do they know where they are going?
In their little minds, they could have been pondering what next. They had gone through a harsh experience which their young minds could not probably perceive. But was it coming to an end?
Were they being returned to the `parents' at last?
They dare not ask the woman beside them, a police officer in civilian clothes. They dare not show resistance! They had probably been through too much to care.
But the puzzle on their faces is only but a pointer to a more intricate past, which not so many people appreciate.
Ruth Wangui, 8, George Gikuni 4, Wambui, 2, and Wangui 1 1/2 are the four Limuru children who were reported to have been sold to a childless couple by a middlewoman from Kakamega where they were born.
The police got wind of it and since then, they have lived away from `home' in uncertain circumstances.
They have experienced what may never be rubbed off their young minds - 'invasion' of their home by police, arrest and a two-week stint in the police cells living among strangers in what must have been to them a strange home away from their parents.
The Kiambu police had on tip gone to the couple's home last May where they arrested the parents along with the children. For two weeks, they stayed in the Kiambu cells with the adoptive mother while investigations were going on. The father remained in the Tigoni cells.
During that time, a CID officer from Kiambu went to Kakamega to find out more about their origin and how they ended up in Kiambu.
They were later taken to the Dagoretti Children's Home where they stayed for at least two weeks while waiting for the final decision. The transfer of the children was effected by the Kiambu Children's Officer J.N. Njoroge who was concerned that the conditions they were exposed to were most unfavourable for children.
Narrating the incident, an anxious adoptive father, Joseph Mutungu Muchiri, 46, said he had been in police custody for two weeks before he was released. He said his wife and the children had also remained in the cells for at least two weeks.
The whole experience had caused them a lot of anxiety because "we were living happily with the children."
But had the couple bought the children? And if so what crime had they committed?
He did not deny that the children had been brought to them by a woman for a fee.
He said they had brought all the three children up and the eldest was already going to a nearby primary school. "They all came to us when they were a few days old," <-/Muchungu> said.
They have had the eldest for eight years and she is already going to a nearby primary school.
He said they had no difficulty in bringing up the children because he is employed and they have a seven-acre land as well as six dairy cattle.
But whether they were bought or not was not what concerned the couple.
"We just hope that they will return the children to us," Mutungu said. "Life is so empty without them here and you see it was not our fault that we do not have children of our own," he said emotionally.
W2C024K
Why let widows suffer this way? Some are treated like public property 
She screamed. Villagers rushed to her house. And <-/>aaah, they grumbled as they returned to their homes.
What the villagers found to be an anti-climax was a matter of life and death to the woman. It was tearing her apart. Who was going to help her?
The woman was a widow. Her husband had died in a road accident a short while ago. In her particular community, a widow is considered to be a public property. Any man who knocks on her door should be opened for and actually entertained according to his wishes.
On that night, a man had forced his way into the house. The woman asked him to leave. He refused. He insisted on what he called "his right" because he was a man.
When he was at the point of raping her, she screamed. The villagers were surprised that she was screaming just because of a man. They would not help.- It was her problem and hers alone.
The incident was narrated to an attentive audience of church women leaders by Dr Sister Anne Nasimiyu, a lecturer at Kenyatta University recently at Sirikwa Hotel, Eldoret. She said it happened in her home area in western Kenya.
"If you become a widow and remain unmarried, you become public property," she said emotionally.
Dr Nasimiyu was reacting to a comment made by the Rev Jane Kamau of St Andrews Church, Nairobi. The Rev Jane had expressed shock as a result of what she found during a recent visit to Malawi.
"I was shocked to find that widows must remain dressed in black until they remarry," she said.
That is a form of intimidation to force women to remarry, she argued. The group was to learn of other absurd ways of forcing widows to remarry.
One woman gave an account of a widow who recently died. Nobody would bury her body arguing that she should have remarried. That, they argued, would have ensured her a decent burial.
"We the church women, joined our efforts together, and buried her," she said.
The church women leaders who had a three-day visit to Eldoret paid visits to two widows, Herma Muge, wife of the late Bishop Alexander Kipsang Muge and Rael Mutai, wife of the late general secretary of the reformed Churches of East Africa the late Rev Justin Mutai.
It was a time of expressing solidarity with the two women, giving them sympathy and what they called "a little consolation."
The women who hold leadership positions in their respective churches all over Kenya were led by the co-ordinator of the NCCK Women's desk, Julia Mulaha.
They explained that the consolation was little in that "no human being can be able to completely touch the aching heart and remove the pain left by a husband's death.
The Rev Jane who conducted a short, but touching sermon said the actual mourning for a widow starts at the funeral. Then all the mourners disperse to their respective homes and the woman experiences loneliness, a sense of despair and sees nothing to live for.
With or without realising this state of affairs, society is often quick to try and impose "traditional norms" on the widow as soon as possible.
Such traditional customs vary from one ethnic group to the next in Kenya. They sometimes vary from one section to the next in the same district. Information compiled by Institute of African Studies of the University of Nairobi reveal interesting facts about various customs in certain districts.
Taking Baringo District, as an example, there are the Tugen, the Arror and the Ilchamus people. When a Tugen woman is widowed, she is not supposed to be inherited by her husband's brothers or cousins. She is supposed to remain in her late husband's home.
She is free to continue bearing children with other men of her choice but who are not blood relatives of her late husband. Her chosen lovers are however, to be kept secret.
Like the women of Malawi, this woman is supposed to remove the beads around her neck, earrings and <-/armuletes> and replace them with others indicating widowhood. Such removal is known by three words <ea/>mosoget, <ea/>mosoge or<ea/>mosok.
For the Arror, a widow's fate is mainly determined by the gender of her children. A widow who has at least one son need not go away when her husband dies. If she has only girls, she is given the option of remaining or going back to her parents.
If she remains, she is free to have children with any man in the village except her brother-in-law.
Unlike the Tugen, children born to her in this way do not belong to her late husband but to the biological fathers. Such fathers are expected to add resources to bring such children up.
The Ilchamus on the other hand give the widows an option of leaving or remaining. If she leaves and had no children, then the bride price has to be returned.
If she remains, she is instructed to select a man to father her children. The criteria here is that such a man must be of the same age group as her late husband and of the same lineage but not a brother-in-law.
In the case of Iteso people of Busia, the widow is "held" by one of the husband's brothers who becomes responsible for her and the children.
For the Masaai, widows can not legally marry but can cohabit with other men.
Custody of a Kamba widow, called <ea/>ndiwa, goes to the husband's full brother or cousin. This custodian is given the name of <ea/>musina. He is expected to live with the woman and manage the property had been left with  but not to use for his own gain . 
This violence should stop now
Rape and murder of girls has been an occasional occurrence in the country. During a recent women's meeting in Nairobi, it was deliberated that the society was not doing enough to end the violence and if nothing is done about it there might develop a culture of violence. 
Stop excusing rape. Stop associating it with any reasonable human behaviour!
That was the no-nonsense reaction by Jennifer Riria Ouka an educationist during a women's meeting at Maendeleo House on July 29, 1991. The 60 women of all walks of life were deliberating on the recent wave of violence against girls and women.
"If my son kills, he faces the law," was her reaction to the ideas expressed that women were parents of both the girls and boys. As far as Jennifer is concerned a crime is a crime whoever commits it and must be punished quickly to deter others.
During the meeting which was chaired by Mrs Wilksta Onsando, chairman of Kanu Maendeleo ya Wanawake, it was observed that rape and murder of girls has been an occasional occurrence in this country. That if nothing is done about it immediately, the society might normalise it.
Reported cases of violence have just been the tip of the iceberg. And to prove it, women cited individual cases which  they would have liked to see firm decisions taken. 
When school girls were sent home from a Tumutumu School for being late and they were raped on the way, was any action taken? Asked one of the participants. What about the headmaster, did he not realise he was exposing them to danger?
Milicent Abetsa, a nurse at Kenyatta Hospital, recounted a case where two girls were being raped by their father because the wife had run away. Eventually one of the daughters committed suicide. Why is this happening? she asked.
She recounted the many rape patients they have had to attend to at the hospital. Some of them are so young. Their bodies are battered and can never be the same again. The psychological impact of rape is deep rooted, said Dr Ruth Nduati, a paediatrician. the scar remains throughout life. 
She suggested that women should know how to defend themselves against what is generally known as "friendly rape." This is a situation where a woman is raped by a friend whom she did not expect to rape her.
She at the same time posed the question of what happens to the many girls who get raped in this country. Many of them are peasants' children with no social influence or financial backing. Who will fight for such girls and women? She asked.
Dr Lore, a gynaecologist said she has had to treat many rape cases. Rape, she said, is as bad as a death warrant. "A rapist could be an Aids carrier who has had many sexual escapades."
She urged Kanu Maendeleo which has the right structure to get to the root of the problem and eliminate rape.
This meeting was a follow up of meetings by other women's groups which had been meeting during the month. One such a meeting  was held on July 25, 1991, in Commerce House, Child Welfare Office. The meeting, coordinated by Ms Njoki Wainaina of Femnet, was attended by 20 women.
Among their deliberations was one of trying to identify the root causes of disrespect and disregard of women in this country. Nobody was spared from that scrutiny. Both the homes and the schools came under fire. "They perpetuate an attitude that teaches boys physical bravery and aggressiveness while teaching girls to accept intimidation and defeat.
Children grow in an atmosphere where their mothers and sisters are treated like trash, abused, sometimes beaten and at best ignored.
Caught up in that kind of a dilemma, the women have nowhere to go for <-/counseling> or any other help except perhaps the church. There again they recount their problems to <-_make> pastors who in many cases abuse their own wives and daughters.
Dr Naomi Gathirwa who has been involved in <-/counseling> informed the participants of the existence of a programme known as Kenya Family Development Association (Kenfad) geared to assist both girls and women in difficult situations. The project was to be sponsored by Danida.
Gathirwa said they intended to run a Peace House and a hotline for such endangered people. She cited what their newsletter says:
"Before you kill that woman who is a nuisance to you and her children who are simply piglets to you, call us. We are interested."
Dr Gathirwa said this programme was caught up by the Gulf War and Danida had to shelve the commitment for a time.
The group said it is willing to sponsor the programme with or without Danida's help. That it will soon provide all females in this country with a hotline and an address to contact in any eventuality of violence them.
The women expressed dismay at the leaders' public utterances which they said have continued to scandalise and demean women in particular and society at large.
They further demanded that before anybody is allowed to lead any institution and especially schools, they should go through an attitude test. That they should never be given such positions by virtue of being any big shot's girlfriend, boyfriend, wife or husband.
The group wants the Ministry of Education to implement the idea of <-/counseling> in schools which it has only been having on paper.
Another observation was that boys are a neglected lot in this country. While women spend so much time <-/counseling> their daughters on how not to get pregnant, boys are left to learn on their own. Fathers are too busy either drinking, or socialising to teach them facts of life.
On behalf of the young people, the group lamented <-_the> lack of healthy entertainment opportunities. This exposes the youth to early sex which they consider as an entertainment outlet.
The group promised to organise seminars for families. Dr Gathirwa said Kenfad had already identified counsellors, doctors, psychiatrists and other community workers who would be willing to give part of their time to assist the society identify the root cause of the culture of violence we are developing and how to overcome <-_them>. 
W2C025K
A rural community welcomes ... 
Noble project that's changing their lives 
You may have heard people talk of killing the goose that lays golden eggs but certainly not about this poor woman who slaughtered an ox donated to her for ploughing her <ea/>shamba.
The elderly woman from Kehancha Division in South Nyanza District was expecting visitors but had no idea how to entertain them.
And yet the occasion was very important to her. Her daughter was getting married and the future in-laws were visiting the woman's home.
What to do? the poor woman mused but soon found a way out. One of the two oxen she had ploughing her <ea/>shamba with had to go. And so she slaughtered and feasted her guests on it.
The 1990 incident was narrated to two reporters during a recent tour of the Ikerege Family Development Project of the World Vision International.
Ikerege, which is in Bukira Location of Kehancha Division, was started in October 1983. It is on the compound of the local Pentecostal Evangelistic
Fellowship of Africa (PEFA) church, 26 km from Migori town.
In their efforts to introduce modern and more effective farming methods in the area, the project's facilitators have had to grapple with a generally unenlightened community.
The project manager, Thomas Marwa, says that the poor woman had been sharing the animal she slaughtered with several neighbours.
"A neighbour went to fetch the ox but learnt that it had been slaughtered a few days <-/>days earlier," he said.
Members of the project's management committee spoke of other farmers who on receiving oxen from the project have sold them. For instance, a young man sold one of two oxen donated to her mother without her permission.
"Some of the recipients come to us and claim that the animals were stolen by rustlers," the project manager said.
But not all recipients abuse the compassion. Most have utilised them well with the result that their yields per acre have increased tenfold.
A case in point is Consolata Ngwena, a 43-year-old single mother of five. She knows that her oxen are more important on her <ea/>shamba than in the stomach.
Last year, Ngwena received two oxen each worth Sh3,400 from the Ikerege project. Hitherto, she used to cultivate and weed her crop using a <ea/>jembe.
She told us that before she had received the "live tractors", she used to harvest two to three bags of maize every season. "I harvested 10 bags last season," Ngwena said.
Out of these, she sold seven bags at a National Cereals and Produce Board depot in the area and retained the rest for her family.
Besides maize, Ngwena grows tobacco, cassava, sweet potatoes, finger millet, sorghum and beans. Her nine-hectare farm is in Bukira East Location near the Kehancha divisional headquarters.
Marwa says the practice of providing poor families with oxen complete with ploughs, yoke and hybrid maize seeds, has the long-term effect of ensuring food security for all. 
The project has initiated several other programmes for the benefit of the less-endowed members of the community and the public as a whole.
At the PEFA church compound, the project has put up a youth polytechnic which has 35 students. The institution offers two-year carpentry, joinery, masonry, tailoring and knitting courses to primary school leavers.
Amazingly, only 29 students have so far graduated from the polytechnic since its inception in 1983.
Samson Tururi, who is chairman of the project's managing committee, explained the disparity. For many years after it was started, the polytechnic failed to attract interest among the community.
"At first, people thought it was a PEFA church project and those who are not members of the denomination were reluctant to enrol their children," Tururi said.
Marwa informed us that <-_girls><+_girls'> and <-_boys><+_boys> dormitories have been constructed at the institution to attract trainees from far and wide. "We can accommodate more than 60 boarders now."
Another committee member attributed the poor enrolment to pre-mature marital habits peculiar to the area. Boys and girls alike drop out of school to get married.
"We already have in this area primary school boys who are polygamists," he said.
They told us that owing to the area's proximity to the Kenya-Tanzania border, school boys are allured out of school and become smugglers.
At the Isebania and Serari border markets in Kenya and Tanzania respectively, we saw a lot of young men on bicycles loaded with goods. We learnt that certain tycoons use young "bicycle-runners" to ferry contraband through <ea/>panya routes.
Notably, only a handful of the 20 former students of the polytechnic are gainfully employed. Two are operating their own carpentry workshops, one at Serari and the other at Isebania while a few others have been offered jobs in local workshops.
Tururi says that those trained in tailoring have had to make ends meet the hard way due to the competition posed by second-hand clothes from Tanzania. These garments are cheaper and popular in Kehancha and the <-/neighboring> Migori Division.
Students at the youth polytechnic pay Sh2,400 annual training fee. Elsewhere, the Ikerege project pays school fees and buys uniforms for children from poor families. Currently, more than 800 children are benefiting fully or partially.
The project also organises health care and educational programmes in the area.
Meanwhile, a number of individuals and women's groups have been set up in income generating projects. One such beneficiaries is Elizabeth Aligola who operates a kiosk about 50 yards from the PEFA church compound.
The 41-year-old woman was given Sh1,000 by the Ikerege Project last year to expand her fish vending activities. She told us that the project has financed the education of three of her seven children. She told us of plans she has to expand the kiosk to create room for more provisions. Right now, she makes between Sh500 and Sh600 a month.
The World Vision regional manager for western Kenya, James Njoroge, says that it is the committee and not his organisation that identifies priority areas to be assisted by World Vision.
The organisation will support the project until next September when it will phase it out. Hopefully, the community will have attained a reasonable level of independence to run its affairs. 
Water, water, everywhere 
The floods took the residents of Ngorobani, Kirinyaga District, by surprise late one night last week destroying property worth thousands of shillings. NGUGI wa MBUGUA who visited the area soon after the disaster reports. 
Simon Njagi and his brother, Joseph Nyaga, float in their tiny hut every night. On the floor below their bed is a knee-high pool of stagnant water that has defied all attempts to remove it from the hut.
Njagi and Nyaga are victims of floods that rendered 200 families homeless in Kirinyaga District early last week.
The blitz was brought to bear on Kithogondo village in Mwea Division in the small hours of Sunday, May 19 after gods of the Thiba River went on the rampage bursting its banks.
Swelled by heavy rains in the Mt Kenya area, the wild waters of the Thiba, stormed into the village turning it into a temporary lake.
About 100 mud-walled and thatch-roofed huts were engulfed but the more than 1,000 occupants escaped unhurt. For a whole week, the displaced flood victims have been living with sympathetic neighbours.
But not so for the 24-year-old Njagi and his 20-year-old brother, Nyaga. "We cannot be accommodated by neighbours, they have no more room left," Njagi says.
It took only a few hours for the two to accept their harsh predicament and act the only way they knew how. At daybreak on Sunday, they came up with the `floating bed' idea.
Using strong nylon ropes, they fastened a bed on wooden beams in their tiny hut and suspended it over the water that has collected in the hut.
Every evening, Njagi and Nyaga wade through the murky and slow-moving flood to their hut, 50 metres from the shore. It takes a lot of dexterity and luck for them to evade erstwhile rubbish and latrine pits on their submerged path.
Once in the relative safety of the hut, the two brothers wade through more water as they struggle to ascend to their `hammock'.
"The nights are long and cold," says the stoic Njagi. "But it is better than sleeping out in the rain," Njagi says.
We visited the Kithogondo village on Friday afternoon. As we walked toward the southern end of the lake that was once home to more than 1,000 impoverished squatters, we were surprised to see Njagi walking through the quagmire.
The lone figure waded through the murky thigh-high water, his trousers hitched up to the waist perhaps risking some water-borne diseases.
Njagi is aware that the foundation of his two-month-old hut will soon give in to the pressure of the water surrounding. He is also aware that they could drown if the `air-borne' bed collapsed while they were asleep.
"We sleep in snatches. Any day now, I expect the hut to be swept away but do we have a choice?"
We were astonished by Njagi telling us that he had slept in the water-logged hut during the previous four days.
Njagi and Nyaga's experience is certainly a most touching one. Yet, as each victim, young and old, narrated their harrowing plight, the full import of their tragedy was brought home.
The adults among them have to forego food for the sake of their children some who attend local primary schools. Many have not had a change of clothes since that Black Sunday as they salvaged none.
In the small hours of that Sunday morning, James Gitari was woken by a furious dance of <ea/>sufuria. The vessels were floating on water that had collected on the floor and were bumping into each other with a loud metallic report.
Gitari then heard the blood-curdling screams. Terrified women, children and men panicked as the entire village was enveloped by the floods.
"I didn't try to salvage anything from the hut," says the 28-year-old Gitari. "All that mattered then was to escape with my life."
His hut, 10 metres from the dry zone, still has its door ajar. He never bothered to shut it as he scurried away, the steady flow of water slowing his progress.
Gitari's family was away on the night the floods set in. The man who earns a living as a temporary employee in the rice paddies, hopes that the floods will subside so that he can repair his hut and re-occupy it.
At around the same time cooking pots were performing their dance in Gitari's hut, Justa Muthoni Muruga stirred in her sleep.
It was 1 a.m. and the mother of nine, felt the urge to answer a call of nature. She did not get far for the moment she opened the door, a powerful gush of water rushed into the hut.
She forced her way out, stood on  knee-high water and started screaming for help. Her children were sleeping in three other huts on the small unfenced compound.
"People from higher grounds where the flood had not reached came to our rescue but nothing was salvaged," Muruga says.
Her family lost seven chickens, six ducks and four goats. All utensils and clothes in the four huts were swept away. She estimates her loss at Sh20.000 including the mud-walled thatched huts.
The family is being accommodated by sympathetic families at a neighbouring village. "We sleep on the floor as there are no beds and live on rice and water," Muruga says with emotion.
During our visit, her eldest son, Wilberforce Maina, 22, and a brother had just returned from an unsuccessful fishing attempt at Karia, a tributary of the Thiba.
Like most other victims of the floods, Muruga winnows rice husks discarded in the locality by the Mwea Rice Mills, in the hope of salvaging leftover grains to feed her family.
Muruga, who settled at the now flooded village in 1986 says they have never experienced floods of such magnitude. Their only hope is for the Government or the Kirinyaga County Council to re-locate them to an alternative site, she says.
W2C026K
International Women's Day supplement 
How the fight for equality started
Today, the world celebrates the 1990 edition of the International Women's Day.
It is an event that dates back to one of the very first women-instigated and implemented social and economic <-_revolution><+_revolutions>.
On March 8, 1857, a group of New York women garment workers held a demonstration  protesting their working conditions.
Exactly 51 years later - March 8, 1908 - a march was held in New York to commemorate that demonstration.
The International Women's Day was first proposed by Ms Clara Zetkin, a representative of the Socialist Women's Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Europe was then on the verge of the First World War.
The colonial empires in Asia and Africa were feeling the first stirrings of nationalist revolt.
In North America, the movement for women's suffrage was questioning some of the basic assumptions of human relations.
Ms Zetkin's call to women to link their fight for equal rights with the fight to preserve international peace, struck a responsive chord.
The women's day was celebrated as a formal event for the first time in 1911 with more than a million women participating publicly.
in addition to the right to vote and to hold public office, they demanded the right to work, to vocational training and for an end to discrimination on the job.
Since that time, the significance of the event has grown and now has taken on a truly global character.
In Kenya, the International Women's Day was first observed on March 8, 1988. It was again celebrated last year.
In many countries of the world, it has become an occasion to review the progress women have made in their struggle for peace, equal rights and social progress.
In 1977, the General Assembly of the United Nations Organisation invited each country to proclaim, in accordance with their historical and national traditions and customs, any day of the year as United Nations Day for Women's Rights and International Peace.
Many countries of the world observe the International Women's Day on March 8.
The theme of the 1990 edition is progress for women is progress for all.
As Kenyans alongside the other international communities mark this important annual event, several organisations and leading women and political personalities have sent their greetings and messages of goodwill to women the world over:
Mr James Njiru, the Minister for Culture and Social Services says:
"It is recognised by the leadership of President Moi that women's role in national development is crucial and that development plans cannot be effectively implemented if the role is ignored."
Mrs F.R.B. Oeri is the head of the Women's bureau in collaboration with women non-governmental organisations "will continue to foster and intensify programmes and activities which are of interest" to Kenyan women.
She wishes Kenyan women "fruitful celebrations, a prosperous year and successful development programmes."
A message from the African Women's Development and Communication Network (Femnet) office describes the International Women's day as an important occasion for African women.
A prominent Kenyan woman lawyer, Ms Lilian Mwaura, has sent messages in her capacity as chairman of the National Council of Women of Kenya (NCWK) and the Kenya chapter of International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA).
In one of her bulletins, Ms Mwaura says: "The future of women in Kenya seems brighter and it is our hope that there will be development in areas of law, customs and politics all aimed at improving the status of women."
Mrs Phoebe Asiyo is the good-will ambassador to the United Nations Development Fund for Women.
Mrs Asiyo wishes Kenyan women "good health and strength to forge ahead with our critical and central roles in the socio-economic development of our country."
The Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and several other organisations too, have a message for Kenyan women.
In its message, SIDA has pledged to continue supporting the women of Kenya, directly or indirectly through educational and health programmes, in water projects and soil conservation efforts.
In her statement to local womenfolk, Mrs Beth Mugo the national chairman of the Kenya Business and Professional Women's Club describes today's occasion as "yet another milestone in the struggle for equality and development.
Building castles on shaky ground 
Millions invested on plots without title deeds 
Simon Mwenjera knows only too well that a million shillings do not grow on trees. He is also aware that it is not glamorous to continue paying rent in a middle-class estate in Nairobi after you have built a home fit for a king.
Mwenjera, a city businessman cannot settle on a plot he developed at a cost of one million shillings a year ago.
The four-bedroom bungalow on the half-acre plot, eight kilometres from the city centre, is just the stuff the average Kenyan's dreams of a home are made of.
And so why is Mwenjera reluctant to occupy the beautiful house? Could it be that on completion, the house was invaded by ghosts that now haunt it? The answer is no!
Mwenjera is one of about 20 people who have built or are building country houses on the Thome Farm near Ruaraka. He is a pioneer having been the first to put up a dwelling house at a section of the large farm called Thome Five.
But like all plot owners in this Number Five, Mwenjera has nothing much he can show to prove ownership of the plot. He paid Shl00,000 for the plot in 1987 but has not got a title deed.
Being a "virgin" residential area, the Thome Farm has no infrastructural services such as water, electricity and roads.
The Nairobi City Commission is supposed to have provided these services but won't. It is said that the original shareholders of the Thome Farm owe the Commission nearly Sh200,000 in accumulated rates.
Mwenjera believes that these outstanding rates are the reason why plot owners cannot get title deeds. The Commissioner of Lands has to get a nod from the city fathers to release the deeds.
But due to the money said to be owed to it, the City Commission's nod is not forthcoming. At the centre of this stalemate are the Mwenjeras of Thome - home developers who desperately need the security of a title deed.
Mwenjera confesses: "We are building these houses without the City Commission approving our plans."
The Commission will not approve building plans for the Thome Five scheme until the reportedly outstanding rates are settled.
Real tragedy, says Mwenjera, is should the Commission decide to demolish their mansions. "God forbid, for we would hardly have any legal way of stopping the demolition."
The Thome Farm is an offshoot of Thome Farmers Company Limited which was incorporated as a private firm on June 29, 1972.
Records in the Registrar of Companies office indicate that the company was converted into a public entity on December 6, 1974. Its name changed to Thome Farmers Company (No.1) Limited on May 21, 1976. At its advent, it had 12 directors.
One of them, Simon Muchomba, was reluctant to discuss the issue of title deeds when contacted on Monday. He retorted in Kikuyu: "<ea_><ea/> (we don't want to be involved in politics and newspaper business)."
Muchomba, a retired teacher, was appointed secretary of the defunct Thome Farmers Company Limited on June 29, 1972.
Informed that a number of plot owners had complained about the company's failure to issue them title deeds, Muchomba said: "Some of those complaining are not shareholders. They are liars."
Mwenjera admits that most of the plot owners in the Thome Five scheme are not among the original shareholders. "After waiting for their title deeds in vain, about 90 per cent of the shareholders despaired and decided to sell their plots," he says.
To prove his point, Mwenjera produced a share certificate for Sh8,550 allotting him plot number 178 on the Thome Five scheme. "I bought the plot from a shareholder through a real estate agency," he adds.
The certificate, on an official letterhead of Thome, gives the name of a senior Cabinet Minister as the farmers' company adviser.
Some of the plot owners - not original shareholders - have been waiting for their title deeds for as long as 10 years. They say they have been calling or visiting Githunguri town where the Thome office is but to no avail.
"It has always been the same old story - that the title deeds are being processed," Mwenjera says.
A Presidential directive last year that all land-buying companies sub-divide land and issue title deeds by December 31, gave a ray of hope to the plot owners.
Mwenjera says that a `Mrs Kamau' of the Githunguri office assured him that the company would beat the Presidential directive.
That the "processing" of the deeds still drags on seven months from the expiry of the deadline, baffles him.
He has begun suspecting that some influential politician may have something to do with the company director's audacity in turning their backs to the deadline.
"He must be an absolutely powerful man," Mwenjera says of the politician. Last Friday, we called the Githunguri office where a woman employee said: "The matter of title deeds is with our advocates, Njoroge and Nyagah."
Asked about the roads, electricity and water, the women said without elaborating: "I heard the Minister saying that he is looking into that."
A lawyer at the Njoroge and Nyagah Advocates says they will hopefully "do the title deeds this year."
On the issue of accumulated City Commission rates, the lawyer says: "There is always a problem with urban plots. If rates are not paid regularly, they accumulate."
Mwenjera is not alone in the Thome dilemma. Although the City Commission will not approve building plans a lot of construction work is going on the half-acre plots.
Two of the most magnificent houses are being developed by a Nairobi obstestrician-gynaecologist, Dr Philomen Kiwool, and Stephen Ndichu who works for the Regional Centre for Remote Sensing.
Dr Kiwool says he bought his plot last November and has since been waiting for a title deed. His five-bedroom bungalow, about 200 metres from the Garden Estate Road is nearing completion.
Ndichu, who is building a stately double-storied house says of the title deeds: "We don't know what is happening. We have been kept in the dark."
He bought his plot in 1987 and like all others paid Sh650 to the Thome Company for the provision of roads, water and a sewerage system.
That was over three years back. The 2,000 or so acre Thome Five, is a large expanse of overgrown bushes with beautiful isolated houses seemingly trapped in the mess.
Anyone wanting to develop their plot has to cut a temporary road through the bush. A case in point is Mwenjera who says he spent Sh7,000 on a 300-metre dry-weather road. "Previously, I would drive over other people's plots," he adds.
Recently, the Kenya Power and Lighting Company gave him a Sh188,000 quotation for power supply. The bill would be smaller if shared among the home developers. Regarding the money the farm shareholders owe the City Commission as rates, Mwenjera is of the opinion that the plot owners could contribute if it will resolve the stalemate.
It would appear that the Thome Farmers Company (No. 1) Limited has been at perpetual loggerheads with the Commission over outstanding rates.
Records at the Registrar of Companies office indicate that way back in 1988, the company had defaulted on Sh250,000 rates.
At an extraordinary meeting held at the Marige's chief office in Githunguri on April 30 of that year, the company's vice-chairman, John Bosco Kanyua Njuguna, raised the matter.
The meeting had been called to "review points" which would enable the directors  issue title deeds as soon as possible.
Says a long-winded minute of the meeting:
"A few members of the company have not paid their dues and for that reason, the company is unable to pay the City Commission rates to enable (it) clear the company to the Commissioner of Lands so that the Commissioner would issue title deeds."
W2C027K
My ordeal in Somali war 
Rebels fight for Mogadishu 
FOR armed rebels in the raging civil strife in Somalia, life is a grim human tragedy and endurance peppered with occasions of extreme joy and <-/marymaking>.
Food and medical supplies are in the acute shortage. Badly wounded men are all over the place. Yet it is under this bizarre atmosphere that you also see glowing <-_face><+_faces> and merry-making. Is it that the merry-makers have ceased to care about the human tragedy around them? Or is it that the rebels triumph over runaway President Mohamed Siad Barre is enough to justify joy in the face of human suffering?
This is the stark contradiction I found during my short sojourn in war-ravaged Somalia after five weeks of horrific bloodletting which culminated in the flight of former President Siad Barre, last month.
It soon dawned on me that only in peacetime that one may have greater feeling and regard for the suffering colleague. To those used to the endless brutalities and the feeling of <-/beig> hunted, the appreciation of what it takes to be in agony, dwindles.
<-/Cousequently>, this strange human behaviour, born of war-time hardship is much evident amongst rebels with a strong belief in the cause of the war its dangers and futility, notwithstanding.
To members of the southern Somali rebel team, the Somali Patriotic Movement (SPM), the struggle must continue, until goals they are fighting for are achieved.
Colonel Ahmed Omar Jeish told The Standard on Sunday: "We are deeply concerned about the sufferings of our colleagues who got injured, maimed or even killed during the operations, merry-making not withstanding. But the rest of us are determined to continue fighting to the bitter end." I met him at his ground operational base at Afgoi, barely 30 kilometres to the south of the besieged capital city Mogadishu.
Col Jeish and his SPM officers can do little for injured soldiers because of lack of drugs. More injured men were being rushed from the scene of a recent <-/engagemet> to Afgoi. But the colonel's assurance gave confidence in his armed men totalling several thousands.
I had earlier travelled through various points of their strongholds in the southern region of Somalia. I was struck by the immense destruction of towns and trading centres which were the scene of the latest hostilities between the two main rebel factions.
Our first stop was at the thriving Marerey town, renowned for its sugar production. Just across the now virtually deserted district headquarters, the multi-million World Bank-sponsored Sugar factory lay in limbo.
With the exception of camouflaged army men who rushed out to meet us, it appears that all civilians have been removed from the vicinity.
At normal times, the Marerey Sugar Company (the only one of its kind in Somalia) employs an estimated 3,200 people. But now even their neatly arranged staff houses, looked grim and desolate.
It was evident that the small farming town had been pounded to some lesser degree in the war. In the factory premises alone, badly smashed cane implements were violently scattered across the place. Trolleys still packed with cane (now rotting) were mute manifestation of fear and plunder that gripped the area.
"In this town, there had been no fighting as such. There was a small band of Siad Barre loyalists stationed across the town but even they gave up the fight when the master passed through the area in his hurried flight," Brig-General Abdulwahab Makahil told The Standard on Sunday.
According to him, the residents and workers of the now abandoned factory were moved by the rebel group to safe grounds deep into the farmlands, for fear of reprisals by vengeful Siad Barre's fleeing soldiers.
True to Brig-Gen Makahila's explanation as we left the town, some peace still exists in the area where there are extensive farming of sugar, millet, maize and vegetables. The farmers worry about when they are going to take over their abandoned homes.
In the next few stops, along the main River Juba up to its northern end, the pattern is repeatedly a workaday routine of business as usual. Apart from patches of land which is being attended by lone farmers in a community that is essentially pastoralists, there were others herding sheep, goats and camels. This is the area lying in the confluence of the river, across Din-Sor, Bardera, all the way to our next destination at Baidoa.
At the last stop, the more pertinent feature is the amount of military activity. Not only are there the armed pastoralists that are common all over the region, but there is also military gear and conventional soldiers all battle ready.
In the former Baidoa Military Garrison, I counted up to seven Russian MiG-23s, four tanks, and a host of other lethal weaponry, heavily guarded by hawk-eyed men in no-nonsense mood. Their ill-disposed stares are made all the more malevolent by the triggers of the sophisticated guns they fondle.
As I try to get a picture of these weapons of terror, three of the heavily armed men rush to me protesting.
"This is a military zone. Be careful. We will not allow you to take pictures the way you desire," I am commanded. It took a bit of explanation for them to let go of their tight grip on me.
From then on, I only <-/contended> myself with discussing with the injured and wounded men who were being ferried from a scene of recent contact between the SPM and the military wing of the other main rebel group, the United Somali Congress (USC) at Afgoi. In the meantime, I await the arrival of Col Jeish himself, who had been radioed saying he would meet us.
Inside the make-shift surgical rooms where about six seriously injured lay groaning in pain, the atmosphere was different. I could not bring myself to understand why nobody seemed to do something about those suffering. The soldiers apparently behaved as though things were <-/alright> despite the groaning and grunts.
Why for instance, I thought would one of the soldiers out there be shouting "SPM wa Guul" (SPM shall triumph), while his colleague in the struggle, was continuing to lose lots of blood from wounds sustained during the skirmishes? When I pose this question, a soldier tells me there are no drugs or medical facilities, leave alone pain-killers, for injured soldiers and militiamen.
During all this time, the heavy shelling is continuing in the main Baidoa town. I'm left pondering over the justification of the war. Have these soldiers and militiamen been pursuing the struggle to just remove Barre from power only to continue fighting in a bloody civil war?
Soon, word comes through that Col, Jeish, along with Maj-Gen Adan Abdillahi Noor, the two joint commanders of the SPM operations, are unable to travel down to meet us. It was therefore suggested that we travel to their base at Afgoi.
It was the most fearful moment of my life. To travel through an area traversing the scene of a military engagement, was to say the least, scaring I felt like cancelling the whole idea.
However, once a journalist always a journalist and I decided to gamble with my life and proceeded under armed escort to the Afgoi Operational Base, about 100 kilometres to the north of Baidoa. To accompany me were fully armed soldiers to-and-from Afgoi.
It was with great relief that we reached our destination without incident. Col Jeish was obviously under the strain of directing a large force of rebel team. He is a heavily bearded camouflaged soldier. Beside him was Maj-Gen Noor inside a special room which I was told was the command post. SPM was preparing for a major offensive on their enemy. I had a nagging fear of the journey back from Afgoi.
Maj-Gen Noor is a hefty, confident-talking former Defence Minister under deposed President Barre. He did the talking as a soldier-politician, and only referred to his colleagues when it had to do with the battle they faced against the rebel groups, now in control of Mogadishu.
Maj-Gen Noor regrets the occurrence of the latest skirmishes between the two rebel groups which were hitherto together under a loose alliance along with five other rebel groups. "But we do not want to always appear to be those wanting peace, although we shall strive for it in accordance with the wishes of the peoples of Somalia. We will only respect those who respect us," he explains.
According to the two commanders, the latest fighting was unprovoked, and came as it did when they held three previous rounds of talks with the temporary administration in Mogadishu under Mr Ali Mahdi Mohammed.
Their action was merely responsive, but were prepared to march to the capital city and rout out the enemy, unless they, too, learnt to honour their obligations. Maj-Gen Noor declared: "Forget about talks or negotiations. We will only talk through the gun ... and if need be, march triumphantly to Mogadishu".
But in spite of that, I still sensed that the commandants and all the troops they led, were getting war-weary and would prefer a peaceful settlement to the Somalia problem. But that is not to suggest lack of determination to have a go at each other.
As I left a smouldering town behind towards Baidoa, and onwards to the place of peace, I cannot help sympathising with the bleeding men whom I had earlier watched groaning in pain. If only the warring factions can reach a compromise and forge ahead a peaceful Somalia. At least in the name of the suffering women and children of the nation. 
Bunge this week
Parliament supreme - Moi 
Kenya's Sixth Parliament has entered its fourth session 
Kenya's Sixth Parliament has entered its fourth session. Most people ask what these words mean. It simply <-_mean><+_means> that since independence six parliaments have been elected. And every time the President <-/prorogues> Parliament, at the end of the year, that is, he effectively brings to an end that current session.
And under the powers conferred upon him under the constitution, the President at his own pleasure reconvenes Parliament through the proclamation in the Kenya gazette. This becomes a new session of parliament, whose opening is the colourful and significant State opening, again by the President.
The new session was officially opened by the President on Tuesday. The exposition of public policy contained in the Presidential address delivered from the chair, is such an important matter, that it forms the basis of debate in the House for the next seven days uninterrupted. But before coming to that, it is important to highlight some of the President's remarks as contained in the address.
During this address the President touched on several matters of public policy as well as national and international matters, and hinted to the members some of the government bills and papers that would be tabled before the house in the current sitting. In a no nonsense tone, the President said all and sundry must obey laws passed by Parliament.
He said whereas most people can debate on the merits of this or that law, it is no excuse to fail to strictly adhere to all the laws of the land passed by Parliament. And he assured members that the government will protect the dignity of the House, by ensuring that laws passed by the  National Assembly are followed to the letter. It is in the interest of Kenyan society, that the idea of a multi-party system be shelved until such a time the society is cohesive enough, said the President.
The next business of the house during a new session is to appoint members of the important sessional committee. This is the committee charged with the responsibility of drawing up the business of the House for the rest of the session which ends with the Christmas recess. The first day is normally dominated by procedural motions, making it a hectic time for the leader of government business. In his absence his deputy holds fast.
W2C028K
The Inside Story 
Border raids: The thorn in Kenya's flesh 
Slumbering bandits wake up with a vengeance 
Every so often, Kenyan security personnel are rushed to the borders with our neighbours after some communities in those countries cross into Kenya and massacre innocent people. The most recent example is last week when 17 Kenyans were killed by rustlers from Ethiopia. Staff Writer MUTHUI MWAI traces the history of this problem for Kenya.
Last week's massacre of 17 Kenyans by rustlers from Ethiopia shows yet again how vulnerable we are to turmoil in our neighbouring countries and the need to guard our borders even more stringently.
The massacre occurred when more than 500 armed raiders from Ethiopia crossed into Kenya's Turkana area and killed 17 herdsmen.
Those killed included seven children, six women and four men in the 4 a.m. raid in Tondenyang sublocation. The raiders stole 800 goats, 30 donkeys and 40 camels.
A Senior Deputy Commissioner of Police, Mr Elijah Sumbeiywo, later said that the raiders had all fled back to Ethiopia.
"They escaped into their country and, in accordance with the established protocol, we could not follow them there," he said.
When the Sunday Nation asked an administration official at the Rift Valley Provincial Headquarters what was the single contributing factor to last week's massacre, he replied: "The new Ethiopian administration is trying to establish itself and the bandits must have taken advantage of the lawlessness there."
But the Turkana raid is only the most recent in a long reign of terror by rustlers from Ethiopia and others suspected to be from Uganda and the Sudan.
In April 1988, 400 cattle rustlers, suspected to have come from Sudan, butchered 192 villagers near Lokichoggio in Turkana, before escaping with hundreds of livestock.
Later, in August, raiders again struck Kibish another division in Turkana, killing 50 Kenyans most of whom were administration policemen and civilians.
After the massacre of 192 Kenyans our sister paper, the Daily Nation, wrote an editorial, suggesting two ways of dealing with the problem.
The shorter-term course must be to intensify security in areas prone to this kind of crime while the longer-term solution, was to go for the minds of the younger generation and block them against the atavistic idea that all cattle, goats, sheep and camels belong to their community by any kind of natural right.
"This teaching can be made a special requirement in the syllabus so that we inculcate respect for other people's property in the minds of all our students while they are in their most formative years," it added.
After the Kibish raid, 66 bandits were killed and several others injured by Kenyan security personnel in the same area. Also killed in the clash were 10 administration policemen, five regular policemen and two home guards.
In a brief statement, the commissioner of police, Mr Philip Kilonzo, said the clash was sparked off by a group of Toposa and Dongira tribesmen who were armed with sophisticated weapons.
Six policemen were killed on Thursday evening March 21, this year, following a shoot-out with cattle rustlers. They were part of anti-stock theft unit personnel pursuing a band of cattle rustlers. The incident occurred at Balabala in Madogo division of Tano River District.
Other raids have occurred along the Somalia-Kenya border and Kenya-Uganda border.
Realising the gravity of the situation, the Government has signed a series of good <-/neighbouliness> accords with her neighbours, but the agreements have not been successful largely because of turmoil in those other countries.
Interestingly, it is only the Kenya-Tanzania border, except for an area near Lake Victoria, which has given Nairobi the least headache.
Kenya has not always had a comfortable relationship with Somalia and her worst border security problems have emanated from there.
In the years following Kenya's independence, a seccessionist movement, <ea/>shifta, which was covertly financed and equipped by the Somali government caused Kenya a serious security problem in North-Eastern Province before the war was stamped out through a combination of military action and diplomacy.
The political aspect of the <ea/>shifta movement has been dead for two decades but banditry has persisted to this day in parts of North-Eastern and Coast provinces.
And in her efforts to wipe out this banditry, Kenya has made many overtures to Somalia to help end the menace.
On August 8, 1983, Somalia and Kenya signed a <-/communique> of economic co-operation and exchanges in the mass media.
At around the same time, the two countries pledged to co-operate in the eradication of the <ea/>shifta menace in North-Eastern Province.
In July 1984, the two counties signed an agreement on how to administer their common border and on future economic and technical co-operation. 
This was followed by a fully-fledged border peace pact in December, 1984. They agreed in particular to establish joint security measures along the common border.
But despite all these agreements, complete security has continued to elude the North-Eastern Province.
The worst aspect of insecurity in the province was the systematic poaching of elephants in game parks and stepped up attacks on public transport vehicles during the period covering 1987-1988.
The poaching menace was so serious that the United States and some other Western countries cautioned their citizens against visiting national parks near these border areas.
To eliminate the menace, Kenya again resorted to military and diplomatic campaigns.
On January 20 1988, it was announced that Kenya and Somalia had agreed to work out strategies to jointly crack down on poachers operating across the common border.
The strategies were to make sure that any poacher fleeing either country was promptly arrested and the game trophies returned.
But either the Somali government was not serious in its agreements or it had no control over sections of its army as on Feb 20, 1989, its soldiers crossed into Kenya and exchanged fire with security forces shortly after they slaughtered six elephants at Liboi, about 150 km from Garissa town.
To a lesser degree, there have been border flare-ups along the Kenya-Uganda border and the MP for Bunyala, Mr Peter Okondo, recently nearly played into <-_the> Uganda's hands when he staked a claim on Wayasi Island on Lake Victoria which actually belongs to Uganda.
Cross-border raids by some communities of Kenya's neighbours are not the only current headache for Kenyan authorities. Of late, there has been a resurgence of bandit attacks and robbery with violence.
Major crimes in Kenya would seem to be seasonal. For a while there would hardly be a report of anything big happening anywhere but all of a sudden, the guns would start going off.
And this resurgence in crime seems to be giving Kenyans a siege mentality. A sociologist recently summed up the situation when he declared: "Most Kenyans live in great fear of being robbed and are despondent about the police's ability to contain crime."
"Individuals need to realise that banditry and other attacks are symptoms of an ailing society. Accepting crime as inevitable is to enhance violence culture," he continued.
But the public's mistrust of police in solving big crime is not wholly justified judging by their reported record of solving such crimes.
A random interview of workers in Nairobi confirmed to the Sunday Nation that most have a fear of their houses being broken into.
The fear is even more deep-seated among unmarried workers who leave their houses unattended when they go to work.
A worker said he scours the vicinity of his home for strange faces before locking his door.
"Sometimes I pretend I am leaving for work only to make a detour and then watch unobserved from a distance for anybody who may be attempting to break into my house," he added.
As a testimony to this robbery phobia, most homes in urban areas have been converted into fortresses with high concrete walls topped with glass shards fitted with other burglar-proof devices.
Other people keep guard dogs and watchmen and in some areas, the people have formed vigilante groups.
As regards robbery with violence, nobody could accuse Kenya of treating crooks with kid gloves.
During the early eighties when armed hold-ups appeared to be in vogue, police were accused in Parliament of being trigger-happy. Some government officials even advocated a policy of a shoot to kill  as a means of dealing with thugs.
Today, police work is as hectic as it was in the early eighties and the law enforcers now have the added advantage of improved training, sophisticated facilities and instant communication.
The effectiveness in police work is shown by a string of recent spectacular successes in foiling attempted robberies.
Early this month, three armed robbers had their attempts to rob a petrol station foiled by a team of criminal investigation policemen.
They had prepared to raid the Total Petrol Station at the junction of Outer Ring Road and Mutarakwa Road, in Nairobi's Kariobangi South area.
One robber, who was armed with an automatic pistol, was shot and wounded in the arm and his two colleagues arrested.
In June, police shot dead a Ugandan robbery suspect and seriously injured two Kenyans in a fierce exchange of fire with an armed gang in Busia District.
A gang of eight armed men raided the home of a relative of the late President Jomo Kenyatta in the middle of June this year and seriously wounded her before fleeing with more than Sh140,000 in cash.
Mrs Njeri Kamau Muigai, a business woman in Kwanza, in Trans Nzoia District, is married to a grandson of the late President.
On June 23, a Nairobi family was robbed of property worth over Sh500,000 by a gang posing as workers of the Kenya Power and Lighting Company.
The gang, whose exact number, could not be established, went to the home of Mrs Rem Chai on Shanzu Road in Spring Valley and claimed they wanted to carry out repairs on the power lines.
Towards the end of June, a businessman's wife kicked down and disarmed the leader of a four-man gang that attacked the couple.
Mrs Susan Wanjiri Kariuki of Sipili in Laikipia district fought bravely after the <-/>the gang had overpowered and pinned down her husband, Mr Samson Kariuki Mbuthia.
Also in June, four gangsters waylaid a Nairobi businessman and robbed him of property worth Sh1 million. Mr Mahendra Shah was waiting for the gate to his residence to be opened when four people in a Mercedes Benz pounced on him on Mathenge Drive in the Spring Valley area. 
Business and Finance
UK Minister appeals for clear policy on tea roads 
The visiting British Minister for Overseas Development, Mrs Lynda Chalker, yesterday urged Kenya to formulate a clear policy on the maintenance of roads in tea growing areas.
She told the Minister for Public works, Mr Timothy Mibei, during bilateral talks, that the British Government considered roads in tea areas vital to Kenya's economy.
The two held discussions which were also attended by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Mr Peter Wambura, the British High Commissioner to Kenya, Sir John Johnson, and senior ministry officials.
Mr Mibei had asked for British assistance in the rehabilitation of a number of roads in the tea zones.
Mrs Chalker asked the Minister who in the Government was responsible for the maintenance of the roads.
The Minister answered that the Ministry was conducting a study on tea roads and the findings would be made available to the British Government.
"We are keen to work with you but you must be clear in your mind who will maintain these roads," Mrs Chalker told Mr Mibei.
Mrs Chalker urged both sides to sign the contracts for the British funded Molo-Olenguruone and the Bomet-Litein roads estimated to cost Sh 144,057,000 so that work could start.
Mr Mibei asked Britain to take part in starting the proposed Highway Research Institute through which Kenya would provide services to global efforts in resolving road communications problems in the tropics and other areas with similar terrain and climate.
He said Kenya was grateful for the financial and technical assistance it had received from <-_the> Britain since independence.
W2C029K
THE 8-4-4 system: Is it really working? 
THE 8-4-4 system of education, believed by many to have been tailor-made for solving the country's chronic unemployment, social dislocation and economic problems, has finally entered the final stage in its implementation.
However, this has not been without shortfalls and deserved criticism from certain quarters.
After the announcement of the minimum university entrance requirements early last year, concern was voiced that the system was lopsided and unfair not only to students from <ea/>harambee schools, which were poorly equipped for practical subjects, but also for those students whose learning was more towards art rather than science subjects.
According to the new requirements, a student aspiring to join any of the universities, whether public or private, was expected to score an average B minus. The secondary school examination is graded from "A" to "E" with "A" carrying 12 points and "E" carrying only one. This is similar to the old examination grading system for the Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) examination.
University aspirants were also expected top excel in two compulsory subjects, maths and English language and literature as well as science subjects, among them biology or biological sciences, physical science or physics and chemistry, and geography, as a separate subject. Kiswahili was also compulsory.
Options lay in religious education, social education and ethics, home science, art and design, French, German, music, commerce, accounting, economics, office practice and typewriting.
The Minister for Education, Mr Peter Oloo Aringo, made it clear during the initial announcement of the new requirements that the grade B minus did not guarantee admission into university.
A candidate had also to satisfy the requirements of the particular faculties they intended to join, and in some cases, this could have been higher than the university entrance requirements. As in the old system, science students were to continue being admitted with lower marks than art students.
A controversy arose last year after Mr Aringo announced the cut-off points (grades). The ViceChancellor of Kenyatta University, Prof Philip Githinji, interpreted the B minus requirement to mean that a student must attain that grade in every one of the 10 subjects, thus needing a total of 80 points to qualify.
Mr Aringo later clarified the matter saying the qualifying grade could only be determined from the total of all the marks garnered in 10 of the subjects taken, and an average mark found.
To satisfy the requirements, a candidate must therefore attempt many more subjects than he had to in earlier years, if he is to qualify for university. But on average, he is bound to be far less prepared for the new challenge, mainly because most schools are faced by a chronic lack of proper equipment.
A survey conducted last year in Rift Valley Province indicated that out of the 2,409 workshops needed in secondary schools there, only 434 had been completed and only 274 science laboratories built by the end of 1988.
In Uasin Gishu District in the same province, of 59 schools surveyed, only 24 had laboratories, while 38 lacked farms for agriculture, and only one had an agricultural workshop.
Chemicals and textbooks are in short supply in many of the schools in the province and countrywide, while there is also a shortage of qualified teachers and time to cover the extensive syllabus.
The Government has pledged, in various educational policy papers, that so long as parents and local communities built the physical facilities, it would provide the equipment and staff. But at a time when Government spending on education has declined and cost-sharing at all levels is gaining rapid popularity with decision-makers, this promise can only be a dream.
Now a fresh crisis is looming in higher education of the 200,000 A-level and KCSE university aspirants, only five per cent (about 10,000) may be admitted into the four public universities.
Recently the Joint University Admissions Board (which represents the four public universities) announced that more than half the applications for university places had not been received. This could probably mean that those who did not meet the extended deadline, February 26, are bound to miss higher education altogether regardless of whether or not they met the minimum requirements. It is difficult to understand why there has been this reluctance by schools to forward the applications on time, but perhaps the reason is now staring at us in the face.
But now a question remains unanswered: "Will national polytechnics that ought to <-/obsorb> those who do not qualify to university be able to absorb them all? Will those who cannot get into those polytechnics be able to start their own small businesses in the crafts they may have learned in school? Do they have the capital to do so?" 
We must spend more on the child - UN 
A-six-year-old boy rubs his eyes and weeps. It is his first day at school and he is confused. As soon as his mother left him, the excitement of being at school vanished. He is now away from all that was familiar and he wishes he goes back home. He cannot understand that the education he is supposed to receive from this first day is supposed to make his life better in the future.
The little boy might as well cry. He is not aware of the pain his parents will undergo on his behalf, but he could be crying for them. They have to buy him school uniforms, textbooks and many other requirements as long as he is in school, and these no longer come cheap. The parents also have to pay a great deal of money at the beginning of every term and this will go on for the next eight years.
As he cries, holding the lunchbox that most probably contains some bread and fruit, he does not realise he is one of the lucky few who can afford to eat well, for 150 million children in Third World countries are either starved or malnourished. In Africa alone 30 million children fall in this class.
If the little boy realised that of the 100 million children who <-_begun><+_began> their educational career with him this year 40 million will drop out in primary school for various reasons, he would probably pray very hard to be among the 60 per cent who completed primary school.
Still there would be no guarantee that he would attain his educational goals (probably a first degree at the university) for in many Third World countries, spending in education is so reduced that 95 per cent of the money allocated to this area goes towards teachers wages.
After paying these salaries, there is very little left for essentials like books, writing materials or blackboards. And in the 37 poorest countries in the world, spending per head on schools has declined by 25 per cent in the last decade while in two out of every three countries spending per student is lower now than it was in 1980 according to United Nations sources.
Even the enrolment of 6-11 year-olds is declining in developing countries because parents can no longer see any benefit in investing in education.
They are almost sure that their children will not complete
school, so why send them there in the first place?
Health and education are two ways in which the children of Africa and the rest of the Third World are paying the debts their countries and continents owe to the developed world. Unfortunately, these two are the only forms of insurance they may have to lead to a better future in which they may try to solve the debt crisis left behind by their forefathers.
It is a well established fact, for instance, that education is strongly associated with lower child death rates, lower birth rates, better health and nutrition, and better income.
Economic returns from education are also higher than from most other kinds of investment. Sources indicate that four years of primary education can increase farm productivity by 10 per cent or more.
"With such high returns of all kinds available," says Unicef's Executive Director, Mr James Grant, "education for all is an investment which no country can afford not to make."
In the 1900 "State of the World Children report" Unicef points out that the most "obvious improvement in efficiency available to most nations would be a tilt in the balance of educational spending in favour of primary schools.
"In many countries, a dollar invested in primary education returns twice as much as a dollar invested in higher education. Yet governments commonly devote the majority of educational resources to higher education," the report says.
A Deputy Director of Unicef, Dr Richard Jolly, cautions that investment in human capital in the form of nutrition, basic education and health cannot be postponed. "It either takes place at an appropriate age when the need is present or it does not. For the young, there is no second chance, the director, who is an economist says.
But faced with many short-term problems and pressures, governments are finding it difficult to find the resources to invest in education. More than 50 per cent of their expenditure goes towards debt servicing and defence. Unicef suggests that progress towards education for all could be resumed in the 90s through a combination of increased aid and a new priority for primary education.
Mr Grant suggests that in the 1990s, enlarged aid programmes should be designed to support those measures which may offer little immediate advantage but which are essential to the improvement of human lives and human capacities. Aid, he suggests, should be part of a long-term effort to invest in the most reliable of all engines for future growth - a healthy, well-nourished and well-educated people.
It is imperative therefore that developing countries individually see education, especially at the basic level, as an investment they must make. Ways and means of reversing the present trends need to be formulated. Unicef suggests that developed countries come to the aid of developing countries by writing off most of the remaining debts.
"There is growing recognition that more dramatic and decisive action on debts is in the interests of both developing and industrialised nations," says Unicef. 
Women in the legal process 
A new subject is set to be introduced in the Faculty of Law at the University of Nairobi.
The subject entitled:
"Women in the Legal Process" seeks to make legal practitioners more aware of the plight of women and how they are catered for in the Constitution.
It will be offered as a credit for fourth year law students in the 1993-1994 academic year.
Mrs Janet Kabeberi Macharia, who will be in-charge of the subject, says that they will use experiences of women as awareness raisers to see what can be done to change attitudes and those aspects of the law that tend to discriminate against women.
But she points that Kenyan laws are supposed to be gender neutral but that there is a problem mainly resulting from attitudes and low esteem of women in the society in the application of these laws which tend to discourage them from achieving their objectives.
The new course, therefore, sets to enlighten practitioners in the legal process especially those who may aspire to be magistrates, who found it extremely difficult in the past to relate the theory to the practice.
She cites the example of rape victims or those of domestic violence, who are made to recount horrendous incidents both to the police and in the courts to prove their point. In the end, despite all these, they are not sure of getting any help because they end up being ridiculed instead of finding a sympathiser.
The course content will include development of female <-/jurispundence>, constitutional aspects of sex discrimination, legal regulation of the reproductive process and legal constraints facing women in socio-economic development.
Issues affecting the child under the law will also be examined and will naturally discuss issues such as <-/deliquency>, custody of children, street children and child prostitution in a bid to seek to help these children in difficult circumstances.
W2C030K
The Empire Leaky Built 
Did he become too powerful? 
"Everybody is free to support any party they want. But if you are doing battle with the president and you have several armed people under your command, your opponents get nervous", Mr Hilary Ng'weno the chairman of the Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS), was quoted by London Observer last weekend. Ng'weno's response to the query as to whether Dr Richard Leakey's acrimonious departure as director of KWS might have had something to do with his alleged sympathies for the opposition Democratic Party could be quite telling. When Leaky quit recently, only two weeks after President Daniel arap Moi had rejected his two month old "offer to resign", highlighted as one of the reasons why he could not take up his job the fact that it had been directed that the KWS armed services be placed under the direct command of the commissioner of police, a development he argued would have a negative impact on the Services' antipoaching activities.
Otherwise, not much else has been made of whatever security angle there might be to Leakey's departure. Even the Kanu-owned Kenya times newspaper, which has been selectively serialising the probe report on the KWS, has so far steered clear of the security angle. The Kenya Times, alone among a the Kenya media, was exclusively given the report by the ministry of tourism and wildlife, for the sole purpose, it would seem, of publishing portions damaging to Leakey's image.
The Economic Review managed to acquire a copy of the report of the special probe committee of the KWS. Marked "secret" and "confidential", the exhaustive 99 page report, prepared by a team chaired by the director of internal audit at the treasury, Mr W.K.Kemei, reads very much like the "smear" job Leakey had all along voiced fears would be the main purpose of it's appointment. After finding numerous faults with Leakey's management of the KWS, the report strongly advises that he should not return to head the institution he ran since it's inception at the beginning of 1990, recommends that his offer to reign be rejected, and that he be dismissed instead. That, at least, was one recommendation Moi ignored in rejecting the resignation and directing an immediate return to work, only to be spurned when Leakey resigned again barely two weeks later.
In resigning, Leakey made it clear he would not be the one to implement directives requiring that 75 per cent off KWS revenue be directed to areas outside national parks and reserves; and also expressed strong misgivings about having the armed wing of the KWS transferred from his command. Not much has been said about what the probe report has to say about the armed wing. Attention on the Leakey saga and the probe report has been focused on his management practices, especially in regard to alleged practising of favouritism, racism and even tribalism; his paying of salaries way above the normal parastatal guidelines to selected employees, and his flouting of procedures and general disregard for his parent ministry and KWS regulations, and also apparent disregard for the mandate dealing with effective establishment of community wildlife services. All these matters are covered in detail by the report, and credible examples are given where Leakey's management style might be truly wanting.
But a crucial issue not so far adequately addressed might be the security implications in an individual apparently not trusted by the powers that be, having an armed force at is disposal. Ng'weno's response might just be an indication that the factor, although publicly down-played, could well be the critical issue that led to Leakey's problems and eventual exit from KWS. As Ng'weno stated, it is conceivable that Moi might have had reason to be nervous if he suspected not only that Leakey was an opposition sympathiser, but that he might be contemplating using the armed force at his disposal for ulterior motives. It is notable, however, that an examination of the role of the armed Wildlife Protection Unit was not in the original terms of reference outlined in a letter to Kemei dated January 10 from the head of the civil service and secretary to the cabinet, Prof Philip Mbithi. It was over a week after appointment of the probe that Mbithi wrote to Kemei appointing more members to the probe committee, and two additional items to the terms of reference. One was to brief on the status of the Wildlife Protection Unit and its operational procedure in relation to the Wildlife Act and the Police Act, and the other to look into any other matters related to the terms of reference.
If, however, including scrutiny of the operations of the KWS armed wing to the probe committee's terms of reference was an afterthought rather than a mere oversight, the inescapable conclusion might be that along the way, it was realised that there were more matters  revolving around management of the KWS that could be used as ammunition against Leakey. One, naturally, would be to depict him as a threat to national security. In its investigation, the probe team found out a number of anomalies in relation to operations of the armed wing, but whether such anomalies were due to sloppy management practices or some ulterior motives, remains a matter of conjecture. It appears, however, that the probe report went out of its way to raise questions of a security nature, relying on ingenious use of very tenuous evidence.
The armed wing personnel is under two deputy directors, Mr Omar Bashir, security services, who served as acting director in the two months or so while Leakey's fate was pending after his mid-January offer to resign "reinstatement" on March 10; and Mr Joseph Kioko, the deputy director, wildlife services, who briefly served as director in an acting capacity after Leakey quit for good on March 25 up to the time Dr David Western was appointed to head the KWS a week ago on March 28.
The security department headed by Bashir, a former GSU paratrooper on secondment to the KWS since it's inception, is the combat unit of the KWS responsible for anti-poaching assignments, and also safeguarding of tourists in bandit prone protected areas (parks and reserves).
It has 785 employees, who include a complement of 468 officers and troopers equipped with automatic weapons. The wildfire services department headed by Kioko is composed of 1,600 (of the total of 2,385 armed wing personnel) employees. It is responsible for conservation and management of wild animals in protected areas, and also for the handling of problem animals. Its rangers are equipped essentially with spotting weapons.
The probe concentrated its efforts on the security services department, which includes a wildlife protection unit, an intelligence unit, an investigation unit (not yet operational), the Manyani Field Training School, and a Quarter Master responsible for the procurement of uniforms, equipment, stores, arms and ammunition. The report dwells at length on the last two items. It notes that a majority of the arms the KWS possesses were inherited from its precursor, the defunct Wildlife Conservation and Management Department (WCPD), and are mainly ordinary sporting rifles such as shot guns and .303 rifles. In June 1989, it is noted  (although the report fails to record that the KWS had not yet been formed), that the organisation procured some automatic arms from the Administration Police, and the following year received a donation of automatic rifles from Belgium, but flouted regulations by failing to notify the commissioner of Police and obtain proper authorisation under the Firearms Act to possess such weapons. "It should be noted," the report says, "that such deviation could easily cause serious security problems."
The report also notes that since 1990, the KWS has recovered 20 guns from bandits which were illegally being used by personnel in the field, or held in the KWS armouries. Keeping such arms without surrendering them to the Police constitutes an <-/offense> of acquiring arms without a certificate. The report indicates that some of the arms recovered from bandits might have been used to commit crimes such as murder and robbery (whether before or after KWS came into their possession is not stated), and Police investigating such crimes might have been denied vital evidence.
The probe committee also expressed its concern that the KWS had some excess ammunition recorded as 264 rounds of .380; 100 rounds of 7mm; 175 rounds of .38 special and an assorted lot of 10,683 rounds for which KWS did not have corresponding firearms. In four field stations sampled, the probe committee found that Lamu, Tsavo East and Manyani held 1,718; 604 and 200 rounds of ammunition of assorted calibres, respectively, without corresponding firearms, while in Tsavo West, one rifle and two pistols were found without ammunition.
The committee also looked into security aspects concerning communications equipment and aircraft operated by the security and wildlife services departments. As in the case of arms and ammunition held by the department, it would seem the probe dwelt not so much on making inventories and reviewing operational procedures, but was particularly briefed to look into matters that could compromise national security. As it turned out, there was nothing really alarming to report, but the committee would seem to have gone out of its way to highlight minor lapses and ascribe to them adverse security implications. The committee, for instance, went as far as checking with the directorate of civil aviation whether there was any record of KWS aircraft overflying restricted areas or deviating from filed flight paths. The answer was in the negative, but the committee apparently was keen to find area where security could be compromised in the operations of the KWS aerial services. It looked into the question of aerial photography, and found that the KWS had no specialised equipment for such missions and that there were no instances when strategic facilities had been photographed.
But the committee would seem to have been rather desperate not to give the KWS a clean bill of health in this area. The report notes, for instance, that while there was no specialised equipment for aerial photography, KWS pilots, while on flight, sometimes used their own personal, and rather ordinary, cameras to take photographs from the air. One <-/incidence> cited involved the senior warden of Lamu, who was reported to have taken aerial photographs of refugee camps, bandits captured by security forces together with their arms and ammunition, and interesting enough, "photographs of the alleged camp of [Somali warlord] General [Said Hersi] Morgan". It is not indicated where the latter photograph was taken, but not too long ago, the <-_Kenya><+_Kenyan> government was strenuously denying accusations that it allowed Morgan, a son-in-law of the runaway former Somali president, Mohammed Siad Barre, to set up an armed base on Kenyan territory.
The probe committee also looked into the radio communications capability of the KWS. Prior to 1989, the old WCMD purchased communications equipment through government channels, but since the KWS was set up, it was found new equipment has been <-/sourced> directly either through local purchases or through foreign donors. It was found that the KWS had type approvals for six communication radios, four of which were light-weight, backpack military types suitable for quick set up and dismantling. The committee expressed concern that the radios had excessive frequency, and could be used to scan and interfere with other communications. The probe team reported that the KWS did not need such powerful communication capability, recommending that the radios be "retrieved as they can be used for clandestine activities."
No evidence, however, of any instances where the radios might have been used for clandestine activities was adduced, just as there was not an iota of evidence to back the suspicion contained in the chapter to the effect that the KWS under Leakey could have been a security threat. Although examples are given where it was theoretically possible for the armed services of the KWS to be misused, it is glaring in the report that save for generalised innuendo and highlighting of trivial instances revolving around lax management practices, the committee failed, despite its sterling efforts to make its case.