[kictanet] Election fiasco reveals Technological dinosaurs

[Geoffrey Shimanyula]

Dr. Ndemo et al,

I wish to attempt to my one cent worth of contribution this mailing list by
giving a story of my early schooling. Having started my schooling in a rural
setting, vernacular was one of the lessons that we had to learn. The
unfortunate thing was that the dialect we were learning was quite different
from that which we spoke back at home. I now understand the reason for that
being that no one had ever published a book in our dialect. To this date, I
see no value in having learnt that dialect for it does not help me in my
every day life today.

Fast forward to December 30th 2008 and for the first time, my children ask
me what tribe they are. This is because they are descendants of a mixed
marriage. For them, the language to use is English or Kiswahili depending on
the audience. And the only reason why they asked me this is because they
heard of the tribal fighting's that were going on around the country. 

I am saying all this because as one of the contributors to this forum stated
recently, over 60% of KENYANS are literate and when I say literate here I
mean those who can utter a word or two in English because Kiswahili is
by-and-large used all over the country with the flavor varying from one
region to another.

I believe that we need to be confident enough to let "other" people
understand that which is being spoken and by this I am referring to the FM
radio stations that use proprietary languages/dialects. I am not in any way
against radio stations having a niche in terms of captive audience but I
believe that they can still achieve their objective in a transparent
language in this case - Kiswahili. This way, we shall eliminate all sorts of
mistrusts that we are seeing today in this beautiful country. 

We don't need these vernacular radio stations in a country that is striving
to move from the LDC quadrant. 

Regards,

Shim...

-----Original Message-----
From: kictanet-bounces+gshimanyula=ke.uu.net at lists.kictanet.or.ke
[mailto:kictanet-bounces+gshimanyula=ke.uu.net at lists.kictanet.or.ke] On
Behalf Of bitange at jambo.co.ke
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2008 7:47 PM
To: gshimanyula at ke.uu.net
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions
Subject: [kictanet] Election fiasco reveals Technological dinosaurs

Dear Yawe,
Asante sana.  You have said it all.  We need your participation in
reaching all our villages and shanties with the hope of creating wealth
there.  If we manage to create wealth for our people and they use that
wealth to acquire properties, there will be less conflict because they
have something to lose.  Where I live, I know two politicians from both
sides but what is striking is that they are good neighbours.  They
jealously guard their properties but their supporters in Kibera and
Mathare fight and even kill one another.

The ICT Bill is coming up and we need your views on Venacular FM stations.
 Perhaps we all need to revist Nyerere's philosopy of undugu.  There is
much to learn from our neighbours in TZ.


Bitange Ndemo.




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