Rest in peace, Kenyan Villager
When I give talks about blogging in the developing world, I’m always careful to remind people that the phenomenon is largely limited to large cities and “elite” populations - people who have the money, time and knowledge to connect to the Internet.
But this isn’t always true. For most of this year, Kachumbari has been writing a blog called “Kenyan Villager” from his home in rural central Kenya, the village of Nyahururu. His first post, on January 13, 2006 began:
I have just put away my farm tools so that I can tell you how my day has been. It has been a long tiring day, like many other days before, and many more to come.
Today, I didnt go to work, or rather, I didnt secure any job in town. So I went back home - to dig in the dusty piece of land (shamba) that my father left to me when he passed on in the year 2001. I hope to plant some vegetables in the next two weeks or so…
And for several months, he provided a perspective we rarely see in the African blogosphere - a vilage perspective.
I just found out from Ndesanjo that Kachumbari was killed in a car accident several weeks ago. His cousin Samuel offered an obituary and explanation of his death on the blog - Kachumbari had travelled to Nairobi to buy goods for a store he was setting up in Nyahururu, and went to visit a friend who lives in the downtown. He was hit by a hit and run driver and died while enroute to Kenyatta hospital.
In a haunting, but fortunate, irony, Kachumbari had been involved in a road accident a few months earlier and had taken out an insurance policy, so his wife and two children are not left destitute. There’s been an outpouring of support from the Kenyan and African blogging community on the site - I hope Samuel will let us know if it would be appropriate to raise a fund for Kachumbari’s family.
Thanks for sharing a corner of your world with us for a little while, Kachumbari. Rest in peace.
October 19th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Sadly, by coincidence, the Washington Post ran a stroy today about the dangers of driving in Kenya.
October 19th, 2006 at 3:11 pm
Sorry, this is the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/18/AR2006101801566.html
More related research here:
http://pienso.typepad.com/pienso/2006/10/transportation_.html
October 20th, 2006 at 12:13 am
[...] The Kenyan blogger, Kachumbari, who wrote from a village in Central Kenya has passed away: “I just found out from Ndesanjo that Kachumbari was killed in a car accident several weeks ago. His cousin Samuel offered an obituary and explanation of his death on the blog - Kachumbari had travelled to Nairobi to buy goods for a store he was setting up in Nyahururu, and went to visit a friend who lives in the downtown. He was hit by a hit and run driver and died while enroute to Kenyatta hospital.” [...]
January 24th, 2007 at 10:45 am
[...] This is probably the second time the African blogosphere loses one of its own. Last August, Kachumbari, a Kenyan village blogger, was killed in a car accident in Nairobi, Kenya. Kachumbari started to blog in January 2006 and quickly added a rare voice in the African blogosphere, that of an African villager. According to a post in his memory on Kenya Unlimited site, his work did not go unnoticed. His blog was featured in the Daily Nation of Kenya in March, 2006 and on BBC in June, 2006: Kachumbari joined KBW in February 2006 but his blog had been in existence for at least a month before. His entry of January 13, 2006 entitled Karibuni Shaggs (trans. Welcome to the Village) aside from giving some insight into the man behind the blog, established Kachumbari as one of the few bloggers blogging from a Kenyan village. His unique perspective did not go unnoticed and in March 2006 his blog was featured in a Daily Nation article on Kenyan Bloggers. In his inimitable style, Kachumbari cited the frequent use of newspapers ‘to wrap meat at the butchers’ and the fact that ‘some villages see only the Sunday paper, the Kiswahili one- Taifa Jumapili’ as part of the reason why it took him almost two months to obtain a copy of the article. steve sharra [...]
March 31st, 2007 at 3:35 pm
[...] Kachumbari, who started to blog in January 2006, was killed in a car accident in Nairobi, Kenya. Samuel explains further: It is true that Kachumbari, the kenyan villager, has passed on -he is dead. He was killed by a ‘hit and run’ motorist while on a visit to Nairobi City. As you may have read in one of his previous posts, he had recently set up a shop in Nyahururu town. The shop is selling a large variety of goods, mostly small fast moving items from China, like nail files, toys, cards, key holders, watches, sun glasses, e.t.c. Such shops are commonly called ‘mali mali’ shops. His wife has already decided to relocate the shop to Nyeri, Kachumbari’s ancestral home where most of his relatives live, after some time. [...]