TREES IN HARMONY:

TREES FIRST, BUILDINGS LATER

By Maritim Kipngetich

Although the University of Nairobi‘s Main Campus is situated at the heart of Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi, it has tried its best to make sure that its environment is up to the standard.

Getting a place to grow trees is a tedious activity in every city, but this is not the case at this prestigious university in the country build within the city.

It has made sure that the area under trees is approximately 30 percent of the total area covered by the university.  This percentage is large considering the fact that the campus is situated just within the city centre.

Well, for people who do not know the importance of trees, they see the move taken by the university as silly. This is because the area covered by trees in this institution is enough to accommodate a lot of buildings. For investors, trees are never important. Cutting them down in order to pave way for construction of rental houses is the most tremendous thing.

However, the institution has a big reason why it left a large area for trees.

Meet Dr George Nyabuga, a senior lecturer and environmentalist at the institution, to tell you the reason why the university decided to spare a lot of space for trees.

“Growing trees in a large area inside an institution is never a waste of space. First, trees provide a serene environment. They make buildings look beautiful when they are built sandwiched them.

“The University of Nairobi has been supporting environmental programmes for many years. So growing trees in most part of the institution serves as an example to other institutions who look at buildings to better than trees. Those institutions that install buildings everywhere within their compound and leave no space for even a single tree,” Dr Nyabuga said.

When one visits the University of Nairobi student’s hostels one is welcomed by students sitting under trees. This happens not only during weekends when students are not attending their lectures but also during the days of the week when students are attending their lectures.

Beside every hostel, there must be a large space covered by trees and clotheslines. This has made the student’s residence look awesome. In fact, many students prefer spending their time within their hostel compound to visiting public places like Nairobi Arboretum and Uhuru Park where people within the city like visiting to spend their leisure time.

Indeed, environment is almost in the top list of priorities at the institution. General clean up happens nearly every week at the institution. Watering flowers and cleaning pathways is a thing that has been embraced at the institution.

Students enjoy the university’s environment and they said, seeing dust within the school is a legend. Most of them attest that they cannot polish their shoes throughout the week: they only shine them since there is no dust from their hostels to their lecture halls situated across the famous Uhuru Highway.

University’s administration considers cleanness of the environment as a paramount thing and it promised to continue conserving it. The university’s tree conservation initiative serves as an example to other institutions of learning.

SERVAL CAT:

DO NOT CONFUSE SERVAL CAT WITH CHEETAH, READ THIS TO KNOW SERVAL CAT BETTER

By Maritim kipngetich

A number of people can easily mistake serval cat, cheetah and a leopard. This is not surprising since many

A photo of serval cat taken at Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. (Photo courtesy)

people identify different types of animals using the colour of their skin. Well, for the people who do not know what the serval cat is, then you must read this article so that you may distinguish the animal from other animals that are closely similar in body size and skin colour with it.

As the name suggests, serval “cat”, the animal is a medium-sized cat with long legs and relatively short tail. The head is small in relation to the body, and the tall, oval ears are set close together. The pattern of the fur is variable. Usually, the serval is boldly spotted black on tawny, with two or four stripes from the top of the head down the neck and back, transitioning into spots.

The toes are elongated and they are mobile and this assists the serval cat while hunting. Its ears are large and they possess high sense of hearing.

Servals are commonly found in Africa and especially at the South Saharan region. They used to exist in Tunisia and Algeria but they got extinct. They are currently found in some parks in East African countries but in less number. For instance according to Dr George Nyabuga, an environmentalist and lecturer at the University of Nairobi, serval cat was once found in Mt Longonot and people killed it.

“People could not differentiate the animal (serval cat) with leopard and they killed it. They thought it was harmful; the animal is just like cat and can be kept as a pet,” Dr Nyabuga said.

It is said that people kill the animal in order to use its skin to make pelts. Pelts from the animal’s skin have a longer lifespan.

The animal was mainly eliminated by hunters and leopards also feed on them.

Dr Nyabuga said there are only two serval cats at the Nairobi Animal Orphanage.

The animal can give birth once in a year and it suckles its kitten for four months before they leave it to be independent. More often than not the animal gives birth to two kittens and sometimes it can give birth to four kittens but in rare cases.

The animal has a high-pitched voice that they use as a contact call. They hiss and spit when angry or frightened.

The animal mainly looks for food in grasses and they climb trees when they realize it is in danger. It uses its ears to locate the prey. It feeds on birds, frogs, rats and waterfowl; it is carnivore, mainly feeds on flesh. They normally come out of their hiding places at night to hunt for food.

When one looks at the behaviours, habitat, skin colour and the feeding style of the serval cat, it is more less the same as that of normal cats. However, the difference is that the serval cat is a wild cat.

MO IBRAHIM AWARD 2014:

KIBAKI DO NOT DESERVE MO IBRAHIM AWARD, SOME KENYANS SAY

By Maritim Kipngetich

After rumors spread all over mainstream and social media platforms that the retired President Mwai Kibaki was a frontrunner for Sh450 million Mo Ibrahim Prize 2014, people criticized the rumors by blaming the

retired President of many scandals that happened during his tenure.

Mo Ibrahim Award 2014 panelists at Serena Hotel. Retired President Mwai Kibaki missed the award.

When the story  was published in the Standard Online News, people begun to comment and most of them would not recommend the prize to be awarded to the retired president.

Sifu Msafiri said: “Indeed it would have been a big surprise if Kibaki was even considered remotely for the prize. Kibaki did nothing to forge national cohesion and reconciliation, and did not command the confidence and the trust of Kenyans across the ethnic divide. His quiet demeanor gave the appearance of humility, but this was just a facade, while his lack of commitment to good governance was evidenced by the escalation in corruption cases, like Anglo Leasing. While he did better than Moi in human rights and freedom of the Press, and the economy, Kibaki did very little to lift Kenyans out of poverty. In other words an award to Mr. Kibaki would have been an award for mediocrity, ethnicity and corruption.”

Owino said: “I would have been shocked if Kibaki was even remotely considered for the award. We elected him on a national platform where all tribes gave him the mandate, then he reduced his presidency to service to GEMA only. He should have taken the opportunity given to him to foster Kenya nationalism instead of resorting to tribal cocoons. Not even our current president H.E. Uhuru had the privileged of being given support by 66% of Kenyans and a good will when he was in a hospital bed.”

Retired President Mwai Kibaki

The prize, that was awarded to the outgoing Namibian President, Hifikepunye Pomamba, ceremony was held yesterday at Serena Hotel, Nairobi.

Eunuch said: “What a smart summary: "Pomamba won the prize due to his focus in forging national cohesion and reconciliation and his ability to command the confidence and the trust of his people."
Kenyans have been fooling themselves with lofty expectations and big bereft of substance. The so called-regional hub with every facility being the biggest in East and Central Africa cannot fool objective panelists.
Kibaki doesn't make the list because of CIVIL COUP, period. He was like Abacha with all the buthcher except missing the General title. All else is pretence.”
However, some people were of different opinion. Edward Githinji said: “I do not think Kibaki need such heinous in-dignifying awards. Do not belittle nor humiliate our greatly beloved and AWESOME Ex-President. God of all creation's awards of good health, long life and peace are enough for him now.”

GOOGLE BAN ON SEXUALLY EXPLICIT CONTENT:

GOOGLE’S DIRECTIVE TO BAN SEXUALLY EXPLICIT CONTENT FROM BLOGGERS GENERATED HEATED DEBATE

By Maritim Kipngetich

Google logo (Courtesy)

The recent directive by the Google search engine to blog users to stop posting sexually explicit content in their platforms has rekindled a heated debate among people.

The directive attracted support and criticism in almost equal measure after the story was published in the Kenyan newspaper, Daily Nation, on 25^th February 2015.

IzraLiz Simon commented by saying internet is accessible to anyone nowadays regardless of the age and this may have negative impact on the minor.

“I second the idea. Now that Web has become accessible to under aged,” he says.

The company gave one month to bloggers to comply with the directive. Failure to do so, their blogs will only be made private and it will be viewed by the people that were given link by the owner to access the blog.

To some people, one month is too long. Odongomofu, one of those who reacted to the directive, sees one month to be too long and the Google Company would have implemented the directive immediately without warning.

“This is a WELCOME note; I've tried to block such contents with no success. Congrats Google. Do it like yesterday no need for extra 1 month,” Odongomofu says.

DB Kazi criticized the directive by saying it is an assault on freedom of expression.

Google+ logo (courtesy of Google+ web)

Zoroh Patoh seconded the directive and he wished that other search engines could emulate the same so that the website could be more family friendly.

“Great news from Google, I hope yahoo will follow the same footsteps to stop this pornography issue in children, because this days children are dragged to dirty world while they are still too young,” he says.

However, not all people could just support the directive. Some compared the issuance of the directive to directives that have been issued by Kenyan Government. Pelekmekt says Kenyans would have interpreted the directive by saying it is a violation of media freedom.

“In kenya, this could have been interpreted to mean an aggression on media freedom had the directive been issued by GoK. But now it is western-oriented hence welcome to "patriots",” Pelekmekt says.

The search giant also bans all sexually explicit videos from its video hosting service, YouTube. It also does not allow pornographic material on its social network, Google Plus.