Palaver

The spectacle of thousands of swallows weaving and dodging is mind boggling. Funny, though, there are no accidents mid-flight. Just happy chirping chatter as they snatch insects off the air. Can you compare this with drivers of two vehicles on a Kenyan road, recently refurbished and clearly marked, ramming head-on carrying several, innocent, fare-paying souls? Is it blinding headlights? Dodgy service? Unscrupulous cops (and bribe-giving driver/tout) with arms outstretched for kitu kidogo? Naked impunity to the Highway Code? Or would bird-brain be an insult to swallows and all birds in general?

Strange to relate as Third World leaders are in New York seeking help to end hunger and tackle famine. These are the same countries whose leaders zoom about in luxury, chauffeur-driven, fuel-guzzling cars, line pockets of arms dealers to buy weapons only seen at national day parades, grab forest land and water catchment areas, ensure loyalists and family streak from a life of penury to unexplained wealth and still visit the West (and now the East) with begging bowl. Get a life folks. Starvation is not a disease. It results from man-made errors of omission and commission. And they are preventable!

An Associated Press report placing long-haul truck driver at the murder scenes of three sex workers in North Carolina, Tennessee and South Carolina states in the US, reminds Palaver of the hit movie The Hitcher. Also, the revelation in Time magazine that astronomers have stumbled upon a planet with two suns, much like in Star Wars that showed movie star Luke Skywalker enjoying a double sunset on his home planet called Tatooine, shows the very thin and blurred line between fact and fiction, a cinema producer’s imagination and the actual existence of the object of the story line.

And finally...

Mr John Lifa Chipaka, chairman of the Tanzania Democratic Party Alliance has some deep insights. He says the "capitalist nature" of Kenyan traders is a real and immediate threat to his country. Hear him at the EAC political parties’ forum concluded in Nairobi last Friday: "We Tanzanians have uranium, gold and other minerals. All these people are running to grab these resources." Now you know.