Well, my blog is only mentioned by name, as an illustration of the diversity of Kenyan bloggers out there. Not even a mention that I'm gay?
Full text below, link here
SMART COMPANY
The diaries of mad Kenyan bloggers
Publication Date: 3/14/2006
Local online diarists are treading where professional journalists won’t dare to shape public opinion on everything from politics, economics to sex. Is this the birth of new media in Africa as faceless authors take on hot subjects? BEN SINGER reports
Nakeel updates her blog at a cyber cafe in Nairobi.Photo by ben Singer
Wambui Mwangi doesn’t look very mad. The political science lecturer at the University of Toronto, Canada, was animated, colourful and occasionally cerebral during the interview at the Norfolk Hotel recently. Could this really be the self-styled Mad Kenyan Woman whose online writings are read by Kenyans and foreigners alike all over the globe?
Ms Mwangi’s Web site, Diary of a Mad Kenyan Woman (madkenyanwoman.blogspot.com) is what is known as a blog (short for Web Log). Every day, from Nairobi cyber cafés to California campus computer labs, Kenyans like Ms Mwangi are online - and blogging. She’s part of a small but vibrant community of online journal-keepers, thinkers, diarists and poets. And some argue they are shaping the future of this country.
A blog is a simple thing: a regularly updated Web site that allows readers to leave comments and interact with the authors. Kenyan blogs have titles like African Bullets and Honey, The Future Diplomat, Nairobi Back in the Day and Invincible Kung Fu, highlighting the diversity in style and subjects. From serious political analysis, to personal diaries and even poetry, it’s all out there.
Mr Daudi Were, a Kenyan working in Manchester, UK, administers the Kenya Unlimited Web site (www.kenyaunlimited.com). It’s a sort of a gathering place for all Kenyans who blog or who want to. Mr Were started his own blog (www.mentalacrobatics.com) in 2003, but when he looked around for other Kenyan bloggers, he knew he needed to create more of a visible community.
“I decided to set up the Kenyan Blogs Webring (KBW) to bring us all together,” he said from England in an e-mail interview. “After a few months the ring started growing rapidly and I decided to set up Kenya Unlimited as the ring home.”
Political postings
The 27-year-old said the first month of KBW brought only three new members, but one-and-a-half years later, the group has nearly 160 and grows by an average of two per week. And this doesn’t include Kenyan blogs not registered with KBW.
Worldwide, the Web site Technorati.com estimates the number of blogs at over 27 million. The origins of the blog phenomenon dates back to 1996, but things really took off in 1999 when a San Francisco-based company launched the site Blogger.com, which uses an easy, non-technical interface to let people create and update their blogs for free.
By 2002 there were about 15,000 blogs and, by 2005, 50 were being created every minute. In the US, bloggers have even recently become major celebrities, appearing on magazine covers and striking multimillion-dollar book deals. Ms Mwangi — the Mad Kenyan Woman — has become one of the better-known Kenyan bloggers with her free-wheeling and overtly political postings. She started blogging last year after being impressed by a friend’s blog.
Online, Ms Mwangi tackles real issues from corruption to colonialism (her own academic speciality) but, on a recent visit to Nairobi, she said the format is a refreshing break from her research life. “(Blog) writing has been a way to keep my mind fresh and, my (academic) writing from going sterile and technical and basically gross,” she said.
Mwangi and Were, like many Kenyan bloggers, live overseas for study or work. Kenyans abroad often have faster and cheaper Internet access than those at home. Plus they are exposed to the blog-mad culture of countries like the US. But there are still many Kenyan voices blogging closer to home.
The most popular blog in Kenya, if media attention is any gauge, is the Nairobi-based Thinker’s Room (blog.thinkersroom.com). Known as “M,” the 29-year-old author’s witty and unflinching take on Kenyan politics and society has garnered quotations in major newspapers and is widely read by Kenyans who want to stay informed. In an e-mail interview, “M”, who works in information technology but wouldn’t reveal his identity for fear of being “pigeon-holed,” said bloggers “act as a mirror on society and an accurate barometer of the status quo.”
“They tackle issues that the media are either unwilling or unable to tackle, since bloggers do not have shareholders to account for and are not influenced by boardroom and public politics,” he said.
Western pundits have been quick to credit blogs with becoming the new Fifth Estate, a plugged-in, unfettered group of citizen journalists that would soon eclipse traditional media. A seminal moment for blogging came in 2004 when bloggers revealed false documents were used in an American TV news story about President George W. Bush. The result was much public hand-wringing and the retirement of national network anchor Dan Rather. Another watershed moment came in the lead-up to the 2004 presidential election, when the blogging community helped bolster the campaign of Howard Dean, a potential rival to President Bush.
But Mr Dean’s campaign fizzled and the great blogging revolution really happened. The Financial Times magazine recently opined in an article that the hype has been just that.
But Kenyan bloggers are not so cynical yet. “There is more than enough room in Kenya for both blogs and the traditional media,” said Mr Were of Kenya Unlimited. “The Kenyan blogging community gives voice to those who may not, for a variety of reasons, be able to get their opinions into the traditional media.”
Not all Kenyan blogs get political, though. Some resemble personal diaries that have been opened for anyone with an Internet connection to read.
Nakeel’s blog (nakeel.blogspot.com), for example, contains links to online cartoons, but the 21-year-old journalist in Nairobi, who didn’t want her real name to be used, also writes about personal experiences: the death of a close relative or a traumatic experience of witnessing sexual harassment at the Coast.
“I guess this is just a way to teach people about myself,” said Nakeel at Java House in the city. She said she was shy at first about putting personal posts online, but soon came to appreciate the comments and support of her blogging friends.
“Sometimes you go and read somebody’s post and then you feel this person with some attachment there...like a sister or a brother. You feel like it’s someone you know even though you don’t know them physically.” Some of Kenya’s bloggers know each other in person. There has already been one official KBW “meet-up” and another is planned for this month.
But not everything about the blogosphere is about love and support. Ms Mwangi, of Mad Kenyan Woman, recounted a run-in with an on-line “blog stalker”, who left nasty comments on her site, and even pursued her to other blogs insulting the comments she made.
Village bloggers
But that negative experience ended on a positive note. “I stopped responding to him and then all of these supporters I didn’t know I had jumped in to say, ‘Shut up! We don’t like you! Go away!’” she said. “And that was very exciting.”
While Nairobi is home to most bloggers in Kenya, up-country areas have their fair share. The Kenyan Villager (kenyanvillager.blogspot.com) writes from a rural perspective in Nyeri, while Mombasa-based Maitha (http://bangaiza.kylix.co.ke) may be the only consistent Kiswahili blogger in the country.
“The choice of language was mainly because I saw a lack of the Kiswahili language on the Internet,” said the IT worker who only gave his first name, in an instant message interview. He added the language situation is better, “over in Tanzania,” where, “there are a lot of Swa’ (slang for Swahili) bloggers who I interact with.”
But seriously, this is exciting, no? It's good to see the Kenyan blogosphere getting the recognition that it deserves, and kudos to my double double WM! and thinker'sroom. How funny that right after I change the blog's name, it gets into the papers under the old name!
For anyone visiting for the first time, welcome! Look around, check out the archives, and leave me a comment! None of this going to hell stuff, I've heard it all before and don't believe a word of it :-)
posted by WM @ 11:35
5 Comments:
You are sponging off other people's fame, in my name. Just kidding but kudos on you. You are now famous, and dont you dare knock the fact that they dont recognise you as gay - fame is fame, irrespective.
Enjoy it :)
Hmm..so maybe I will live forever..at least on the internets.. :-)
The gay thing was a sidebar, I was just curious to see if they'd read any of the blog...
It's exciting to see Kenyan bloggers like you being recognized. I think your original blog name is rather memorable (do you actually do kung fu?) It takes courage to state that you are gay coz it's one of those issues people try to avoid--I just read Mad Kenyan Woman's post on the issue today. I'll enjoy reading through your archives!
Thanks girlnextdoor! I actually only do kung fu in my head, usually after watching an old chinese flick and feeling like I can take on an army :-)
I guess the blog is my feeble attempt to take on my opponents in devastating Shaolin style...in cyberspace, as it were.
lol so hilarious!!
"None of this going to hell stuff, I've heard it all before and don't believe a word of it :-)"
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