Foreign Correspondent Margot Kiser
Letters to Annie from Kaftanistan
Write from experience, and experience only… Try to be one of those on whom nothing is lost – Henry James, American-born writer (1843-1916)
The Journalist and the Jihadist March 31, 2014 – On a flight from Dubai to Casablanca the 1956 Hitchcock film, The Man Who Knew Too Much, had been playing on the Emirate’s In-flight entertainment. In the film Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day play a young American couple who get caught up in political intrigue […]
Mombasa Mosque story MOMBASA – Husni Mburak, X years old, strides into the Driftwood club, one of the last young clean cut Swahili of Yemeni descent. once a sleepy port town is now a hectic spared of skyscrapers but now synonymous with drugs and but spared the excesses of skyscrapers. It is laid back representing […]
NAIROBI, Kenya – A ruling is expected tomorrow in the case of a suspected ivory smuggler who today pleaded guilty to ivory-related charges. According to the Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) Tang Yong Jian was arrested on January 18 at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for attempting to smuggle 3.4 kg of raw ivory that officials […]
The greatest challenge for the stoned teen at a Grateful Dead concert – and what I loved about going – was trying to figure out when their tuning up stopped and the actual song-playing began. But I had a great mentor back then. He took me to Dead concerts all over California and he eventually […]
1. If you want to inspect a scene in the minutes, hours or days following a major crisis – especially one involving national security – never, ever tell members of the government or armed forces you’re a journalist, even or especially if you’re staffer or freelancer with a major media outlet. Lie, lie, lie. That’s […]
Fazal Virani, the owner of Sir Henry’s tailor shop on the mall’s ground floor, was one of the lucky ones. So was “David Kivoi”, a 25-year old father working at telecommunications shop on the first floor. David was on the escalator heading down to Nakumatt around noon to grab a soda when he heard the […]
While researching Inside the Zanzibar Attack story for Daily Beast I spent a lot of time in Stone Town at Baboo cafe, near the scene of the attack, where two men on a Vespa threw acid at two 18-year old British girls. The cafe, decorated with Zanzibar beds, pillows, and safari camp chairs, was filled […]
Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations. ~ George Orwell, British author (1903-1950) It’s a rare sunshiny day in June when I pop by Harrods the famous department store in Knightsbridge to stockpile my favorite brand of knickers before heading back to Kenya. Large families – mostly […]
Kenya received a birthday present yesterday – the long awaited settlement between the UK to 5,200 claimants allegedly tortured at the hands of the British colonial administration during Kenya’s eight-year struggle for Independence, aka the Mau Mau Emergency. Fifty years after Kenya gained its independence, Foreign Secretary William Hague announced that Her Majesty’s government had reached a full and final settlement with […]
I took refuge from today’s downpour in the lobby of The 680 Hotel. Seems the 680 has been around forever, but, according to Trip Advisor, it’s only been 30 years. Last July, I interviewed Dedan Kimathi‘s widow, Mukami, in the lobby restaurant for a Newsweek article I was writing about the pending Mau Mau lawsuit […]
