Just kidding. I wouldn't write a post about military spending. You can find those everywhere if you want to read about that. I just wanted to write about the power of the media to evoke a response in us. If that headline elicited any kind of response from you, you know what I'm talking about. My headline should really read:
Can bloggers in Kenya help us go beyond headlines and tell a story that evokes possibilities?
Lately, as Liz and I have been writing about people and initiatives to renew the parts of Africa that are struggling, I have realized how little of the whole picture we get about anything that happens more than a few feet from our doorsteps. While headlines can be stirring and evocative, they do little to provide the kind of information that can open possibilities, or as Martin Luther King said, "Make a way out of no way."
As we were finishing up pieces this week on the renewal of Rwanda we couldn't help but wonder about Kenya. What will we learn in retrospect about Kenya that we didn't know while it was happening, as was the case in Rwanda? The bad news is that the people in Kenya are suffering right now because of a turn in politics that was unfortunate, heartbreaking, and difficult. The good news is that Kenyan citizens have a voice in online media, a tool that wasn't available during the Rwandan crisis. Citizen media, social networking, connection among Kenyans in Kenya and around the globe is happening. And dialogue in any form, as difficult as it can be in political turmoil, is a continuous search for possibility.
If you're reading the headlines or watching the images on TV, I hope you're not assuming that we know what things are really like in Kenya. It would be as though some Middle Eastern or African journalists came over during 9/11 and the only pictures they took were of isolated, violent reactions against Muslims, of angry signs and protests, or of the looting in New York, without mentioning how people were coming together. It would be overlooking the heroic and the compassionate acts of people to ease the great suffering of those whose lives were so deeply affected, and to ignore how leaders and citizens stepped up. The trouble, violence, and anger were elements of what happened during 9/11, but not the whole story. I'm thinking it's really impossible to tell whole stories in soundbites and one or two pictures. We can only really know the whole story through many stories.
Let me show you what I mean. Yesterday, I decided I would read about Kenya in a new way. I decided to read blogs. If you remember some of the blogging stats from the video in Shift Happens, you might agree with my idea that blogging is the future of journalism. I've found some amazing people and read stories about what they see happening in Kenya. If you would like to step beyond the headlines, you can read what's happening, too, in the words of the people who are living it. Here's a small sampling of what I found:
On GlobalVoices, which we will be writing more about in the future, I found Rebecca Wanjiku, a Kenyan journalist who writes about international coverage of the Kenyan election and aftermath here.
On Mashada, an African community of bloggers, the Mashada chat forums were shut down due to the proliferation of hate messages. Since spreading hate was the opposite of what creator David Kobia intended (read a great post from White African about this), he created this new site for people to express their solidarity.
Bloggers also created Ushahidi, a place to report incidents, inform Kenyan citizens, and chronicle not only the violence but the initiatives against the violence, such as this incident report (a peace initiative), with as much detail and logistical information as possible. It's where I found this quote, "We can call, we can talk, we can give, we can donate. We can accept the challenge to encourage the Kalenjins and Lous and others to free the roads as well and celebrate the calm. We can reestablish Nakuru as a haven for dialogue."
I love the writings on Kenyan Pundit, the blog of Ory Okollah (you can read about her talk at TED Africa here), and read a moving rally to her Kenyan readership here and here. Also posted in her blog last week is this beautiful piece by Kenyan writer Simiyu Barasa.
These few are just the tip of the iceberg on Mashada alone. And the more you read, the more you see that bloggers are working together to make things happen and to communicate what's happening. Best of all, you will find ways you can connect to Kenya, donate money for food and goods for displaced families, contribute a comment on a blog, or post a message of support on ihavenotribe.com.
Now that I'm reading these blogs, it no longer feels correct to say this is all happening "there." I feel as if something is happening to all of us, and the word just hasn't gotten around yet: something terrible, along with something possibly wonderful.
In 1994 we didn't get past or underneath the headlines; there was no way to get this kind of information. Today, we have a way. We can get the stories from the people who are in it. Here's to citizen journalism and the rise of global citizenship. Here's to Kenya and hope for the possibility of a safe, free future for all Kenyans, our fellows in humankind.
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