Foreign Correspondent Margot Kiser
Letters to Annie from Kaftanistan
Sailing dhows made of garbage, crusaders, flying low over a baobab-packed forest, guerrilla warfare, Maulidi festival, tattooed and “bearded badasses”. This year I seemed to be at a loss for words. For most of last year I stayed in Lamu. I wanted to keep a close eye on a military operation.
A Kenyan man was shot dead last week outside the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi after he stabbed a GSU police officer guarding the compound. Police identified the knife-wielder as Abdimahat Ibrahim Hassan, a 22 year-old from Wajir, in northern Kenya. Much of northern Kenya has been inhabited by ethnic Somalis before and since the nation’s […]
Coffee table books and novels about Africa with ‘Africa’ in their titles seem to stand a better chance of becoming best sellers, or so I hear. “Out of Africa”, “Nowhere in Africa”, “I Dream of Africa” would seem to suggest so. By that formula nothing would sell Africa better than a DVD cover featuring Brad […]
On October 9, 1967, Cuban revolutionary, Che Guevara, was executed by US Special Forces-trained Bolivian Army. A few months previously “El Che” had traveled to Africa to offer his guidance as a guerrilla to the ongoing conflict in the Congo. To get back to his support base in Bolivia, the Marxist diplomat disguised himself as a […]
More Headline Than Content At the ivory burn activists and politicians were loud and clear – we’re burning ivory to protect the elephants. The message is that ivory should not have any intrinsic value other than on the elephant. The message itself however remains unclear to Kenyans and foreigners alike. Yet Kenyans I spoke with […]
Meet my friend Bill. I’ve known Bill since the 90s when I moved to Montana. He’s a Wall St. banker with a manse in Greenwich, Connecticut and a sprawling ranch near the Missouri Breaks, a remote area the American artist Charlie Russell made famous through his Old West cowboy and indian paintings. Bill belongs to […]
On Sunday, April 3rd, Al-Shabaab’s media wing released a recruitment video showing the militant group’s January 15th raid at a Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) camp at el-Adde, Somalia. It was the deadliest attack on an AMISOM mission to date, killing 100-200, 12 were reportedly taken hostage. KDF has yet to release any casualty figures to […]
Colonel: Marine, what is that button on your body armor?Sergeant Joker: A peace symbol, sir. Pogue Colonel: Where’d you get it? Sergeant Joker: I don’t remember, sir. Pogue Colonel: What is that you’ve got written on your helmet? Sergeant Joker: “Born to Kill”, sir. Pogue Colonel: You write “Born to Kill” on […]
A source close to the Kenya Defense Forces said that DNA samples had been taken from 143 bodies (found at the scene), adding that 58 had survived.
