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Finance and Operations Director - Fahamu

Fahamu is seeking an experienced Finance and Operations Director to manage the organisation's finance and operations team.
This role will be based in Nairobi, Kenya but will have a remit covering the whole of Fahamu's pan-African programmes with offices in Kenya, Senegal, South Africa and UK.
The deadline for applications is February 10, 2012.

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African Writers’ Corner

Ode on a beat generation

To Kenyans born post-1969

J.K.S. Makokha

2010-03-11, Issue 473

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/62920

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There are 3 comments on this article.

we belong to a beat generation
not the american one between
the earthy 50s & heady 60s,
but our identity inspiration
in their own is seen,
we kenyans born
after the 60s,
after a-levels
after apollo
arty 8-4-4s,
but before
beat
it

we came of age via a rite of passage
familiar from town to town to village
when you will be caught out at night
in intoxication singing sedition
by cops of an earlier age
cops with a Kanu accent
beasting their beat
on lawless lanes
past midnight
pass without:
"minus pass?"
plus
pa!
pe!
pi!
po!
pu!

howling to the moon never helped
as one crouched in growing groups
at times naked under a starless sky
waiting for the black santa maria
to come and haul you to cells
filled with bed and jail bugs
because you were not fit
to join the parrot patrols
in their parody beats
each saturday night
across evil streets
full of an age-set
breaking the law
or remaking it
or beating it.

* J.K.S. Makokha is the Kenyan author of 'Reading M. G. Vassanji: A Contextual Approach to Asian African Fiction' (2009). He teaches courses in African and South Asian literatures at the Institut für Englische Philologie at Freie Universität Berlin in Germany.

* J.K.S. Makokha copyright © 2010


Readers' Comments

Let your voice be heard. Comment on this article.

Wow, thats an amazing piece. One of the rising local musicians should perharps compose a song out of it. it would be refreshing and educating to the post-69' generation. it's unfortunate that deserving kenyan authors like Makokha are not recognised for their art!

Terry Mutuku

Makokha's is a refreshing reading of the collapse of the 'dream of the beginnings in the Kenya postcolony'. And, how can the 'beat' generation re/claim the dream?

Lennox Odiemo-Munara

I love this poem. Like the writing style too :)

Barbra, UHAI




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