For these are the top 10 masterpieces in the architectural future of Nairobi

10. Panari Sky Center, off Mombasa Road. Grand architecture with squat, imposing glass-work when viewing the facade from a close angle. Linear, cube shaped, tall structure when viewing the cone of the building from the South Eastern bend of the highway. Silver, neutral hue of the all-pane building highlighting the colonnades of same color and , seemingly material, with flying angels that give it a 'sky' identity.

09. KICC on Harambee Avenue. Barely missed the list but for the round curves, inter-planetary curves that give it a futuristic epithet not seen in many other buildings. Furthermore it has some stunning open attic at the top for revelers at the top of a skyscraper under the sun.Wonder how it could have looked like if the Founding Father had kept his word to make it 60 stories.

08. Times Tower, off Haile Selassie Avenue. The intricate hexagonal, block nature of the tallest building in the city makes it inaccessible. It is insignificant in its grayish silver from afar, but becomes overwhelming from a proximate vantage point due to its solid, grounded foundation. Novel in the sense that it contains some alluring paintings (Gothic?) embossed on its ground floor entrance.

07. Yalah Tower, Biashara Street. Contains some flying buttresses that make it quite airy , almost a gem in the midst of other laid-down buildings in its surrounding. It brings that slice of the Abu Dhabi to Nairobi, making you feel for the first time to be in an oriental locale, by the sea. For as you know, the building , I was told in an interview, was made to resemble a ship, a dhow by its owner. Made by the Chinese by the way.

06.  Nation Center, Kimathi Street. The bottle-like aspect of this masterpiece at the center of the mass media in Kenya is always intriguing, with the horizontal silver-and-white lines effervescing with friendliness. It is a tall office building that appears like a plaything for a child showing just how the globe keeps turning daily bringing news events to the world without caring a whit about commentary.

05. The Rahimtullah, Upper Hill. Seems like all gray, silverly things win the appeal of the neutral bibliographer. This tall building with a spike pointing to the heavens in Upperhill in its  bright  silver color and an imposing barricade of mammoth blocks, as if to tilt it from its off-the-cliff position in Upperhill gives an illusion of direction to the Nairobian. It appears to be in Westlands sometimes, others at the city center, while yet other times, where it should be. Do not trust to its triangular linear projection just like you should not treat its protruding scaly bars kindly too. Pass it in awe only for its beauty.

04. Teleposta, off Kenyatta Avenue. If an award were to go to any piece of architecture with these merits, then they would go to the tower of the GPO: Elegant, cone-like., two towers side by side, inviting yellow-gold color, slim and modernistic. It is the only building in the city that can be seen from almost every direction despite being in the extreme end rather than the heart and despite being in the shadow of its tall, squat neighbor, Nyayo House. If any of the tower is unseen, then its robotic, perpendicular mast is.

03. Victoria Towers, Upper Hill. Elusive, phantasmagoria of blue illusions. All glass and almost a statement that the theory of relativity was after all right in that inverted and normally standing shapes can co-exist. The building is not so tall but it has immaculate curves that seem to be wrapping around each other in bottle and wing fashion.

02. Delta Center, Westlands. In its finishing touches, Delta Center is by far the closest replication of how the Twin Towers in New York could have looked like in this city. In fact the 18 story twin towers are about to be possessed by the leading banker in the globe. It is a double-barreled masterpiece in the offing.

01. The Citadel, Westlands. Built in a hidden corner of the city, the Citadel deserves acclaim as the  most futuristic of all Nairobi buildings for it overcomes the theories of Roman-Greco architecture of adhering to form. It simply lacks form especially in its upper portion. Though solid and even linear, its color interplay overshadows any notion of solidity. Perhaps the car park underneath also gives the concept of a floating structure. It deserves the name citadel for its lack of grasp, being almost church-like, which makes it invincible. It is like a piece of graphic rendered solid in the air.

The Anti-Cousin Continuation

Timothy Wahome Thuita

Towards the end of The previous novel, now labeled the Anti-Couisin....................                                                                                                                                

PART II:

THERE IS A WILL

CHAPTER 14

 It was not a mistake in any way! Finally, they had come for us. Their timely and sudden appearance at the curtain of the movie was surely computer-timed.

The Cousin stepped in at the head of the short and tiny computeligents and told us to give ourselves in together with a copy of the movie we had just made. Things began to go awry. The director turned very red and told them off. They had no right to ask for a copy of a film whose copyright was his alone.

‘’Go to the producers and ask them the same questions. I have no right to do what they can’t do. The day to day business of the professional world stipulates that and I guess you know it too.’’

M disappeared behind the set. M was in the act of searching for a knife, either to use for self-felony or otherwise, you never know. The Cousin stepped up to the back of the studio and lifted the cyclorama. He stood while hoisting the cumbersome backdrop in his hand and addressed M alone.

“You have a right to access a lawyer. Mark you whatever you say here the police will use it as evidence in court. We are going to record it in this device.” He shoved it irritatingly under his nose. “You have a right to refuse to answer our questions.” The hawk eyed policeman beside the Cousin said the same words to both of us and stepped fully to our heights and shackled us. His repeated words seemed particularly vain to me at that moment just like the stacks of cash in my pocket. He waited his superiors to give a directive. He did not mishandle us in any way since modern police rely more on machines to do the work for them than on personal violence. The rest of the adorable movie crew waived us unrequited adieus. I saw none at that moment in time; they might as well have been all impersonating Mwamwenza of whom I had fleeting thoughts. She stalked on my heels all that time. She almost worshiped me with her tears to see how important I was to be even a bittersweet friend of the computeligents.

The computeligents never chirruped anything even when they went side by side with the rest of the men to the Simba Yetu police jeep waiting outside the studios. However, once inside the vehicle, the human-machines came and leaned against the wireless metal studs that the Cousin had already inserted on our heads. This was my first and closest brush with the computeligents who had a radioactive odor. Strangely, I could not help but feel proud when their steely fingers explored my skull. We might be the only humans to have experienced their caresses. They reacted gently to every twitch or slight movement I made as if they were intelligent creatures with bone marrow, enzymes, proteins, hormones and other vital visceral tissue in them. They nodded their heads to every inference and command, while one of the forensic officers read the data on display in the LCD screens behind one of the computeligent's heads. I guess they were transmitting our thoughts from close range to reveal whether we were the real culprits or not. We shuddered at the thought that they would pick up the wrong information or even force us to think what they wanted us to think about.

If God helped us and they found nothing to instigate us with the crimes, then we would have the luck to access the human trial at the courts of law. Though that meant that we would make a rendezvous with the infamous selfchastice, it was better because it gave us a voluntary right to defend ourselves. On the other hand if these robots managed to poison our brains and force us to confess what we did not do in the first place, then we were as good as dead. Our only hope lay in the assumption that machines also fail when their systems experience errors. That small inkling was our barest hope.

However, I had faith in the humane Cousin who would have liked to hear our sides despite government pressure to give us away to mechanical forces. Furthermore, the recent public outcry against the robots would come to our aid now that our unprecedented case was coming to a close with maximum press coverage.

We began the long journey to our trial. They put us in separate jails and presented each one of us (or at least me) with an electronic present for the time being.

It was while on remand that I managed to watch the General Elections campaign in its entirety on the electronic present: television. The watching itself was sheer force in a way for I could neither turn on nor turn off the monitor, which they remotely powered from the central control room of the jail. Though they never told us, they did not want to have our trial held prior to the elections. I had some irritating notion that by leaving us the comfort and luxury to savor the whole election campaign and even the outcome itself, they wanted to subtly prove to us that the system we had tried to criticize-if it were us, that is-could be relied upon on the question of purity without our criticism. I almost banged the steel bars at the crazy and despicable thought. In a way I also turned my back on the television set. But after a little while I understood that loneliness would overcome me if I did not watch the channels that they had fixed for me: one a comedy channel and the other two, a state owned broadcaster that aired nothing all day but election news, and an independent station, that aired news all day but at least had some splattering of international content. But within days it revealed its true colors: it was a Politicians Group channel in disguise that from then on campaigned in front of my eyes for its chosen candidates.

At least I showed some interest in relevant clips that showed familiar figures. For example, there was that hullabaloo about my current senator. It was Sunday afternoon at 2 pm. Professor Kizito rose to the platform, contemplated the works on the University dais and then approached the men. He exchanged a few words with them supplementing the words with gestures of an old hand in the game. His brawny statuesque physique combined with his local persuasiveness hinted to his having been a typical night shift worker in his early years. Now he taught Natural Science at the University.

He then delivered a wayside speech to the grocery women in their roadside stalls and patiently heard their pleas before delivering a keynote speech on consumerism versus economies of scale. He used as his model the upshot middle class economy of the EA Nation against the protracted growth of small scale enterprises. He demonstrated on the way forward for business enterprises as well as the rehabilitation of some cosmopolitan hawkers in a small area of Kariorkor. The keynote speech appeared in the headlines of a few low-key papers whose reviews appeared on the state owned channel before my eyes. I noted with some resigned interest, which revealed how they had managed to braindrain me into worshiping materialism, how Prof. Kizito departed from the venue, a newly assured man, in his new Simba Yetu manufactured by Thika Motors. It was almost a hint to me of how I could be a millionaire by now like him, if I had started early on life on a productive line like politics, rather than writing useless stuff. Another super hit by my tormentors! I pounded my fist over the TV bracket that tilted the device from just above my head.

His opponent and incumbent, Hon. Kazungu Wasibuchire, the EA Minister for Local Government and Community Development was answering questions on his new directive in parliament that afternoon. He was saying that the demolition of kiosks back in 2009 was then under the Council and did not fall under his portfolio, which implied that he could not tell who were those building high-rise structures along streets and highways where the shackles used to be. Hon. Wachira King’ori, the nominated Stima party MP, claimed that the Politicians Group was doing this dirty work of ‘encroaching on our streets with skyscrapers.’

Bildad Simasi, the veteran opposition MP from Western, said at a point of order, “We know that, we know that too well. There is no need Honorable Member to fill our heads with your manifestos, which as I see in good faith, is full of holes large enough to drive a bulldozer through. Thanks to the chair.”

The Members then rushed through an order paper of early 2039 on the state of impunity in which they slyly investigated themselves under the guise of doing approbation to a Minister whom they would soon promote by rejecting a vote of no confidence against him. This was per the court nullifying the case against the Minister for IT Development, Juma Mghaila for disclosing the secret data on the optic electric sensors that they had imported from Russia to upgrade the computeligents. The television footage showed the jubilant House forage for the day after that infamous win against the human mind. They would leave the easily influenced senate to decide our fate.

No sooner did they leave than many MPs from diverse ethnic backgrounds deliberated in a closed door meeting. They wanted to settle on a single presidential candidate irrespective of the region he hailed from. Tribal politics was a thing of the past and though wananchi were still tribal it was only in their hearts and not minds. At that nameless hotel retreat the sixty sat with their heads bent and pressed close together. What they did not know was that the Politicians Group's cameras were there with them in the same room.

I remember that on this day to have been flipping from channel to channel.  Gradually I had become greatly interested in following the news events behind the dark walls of my jail. I was hoping that they would at least keep their promise as was the case so far not to show any footage of the computeligent's recent exploits since this would only make me suffer a mental breakdown. Thus I was not afraid to flip through all the three TV stations. Well, today I laughed for the first time. The Politicians had secretly filmed this meeting in real time and without knowing the personal consequences for it. Here are the details:

People inverted commas in their heads when they read the headlines in the dailies, especially the privately owned, Evening MOB. Nobody had hope nor had a clue about such a strange choice. It was too saintly to be believed! Many rejoiced but there were those staunch conservatives whose hearts still throbbed for the old order of things. Killscrew Polls Group published its results showing that right wingers, those who supported popular politics of competition like those witnessed in the bloody 2007 elections, were disappointed and earned themselves two percent. They had always expected the thrill of politics every four years. The left-wingers, those whose hearts echoed with a belief that only a politician and none other should have the highest job in the land, were disappointed and were a mere nine percent.

At this point the state-owned television began showing footages of jubilation across the country. The force and colorful nature of the people in the State of Kenya for finally making a breakthrough in the EA parliament in Arusha with the first proletarian leader-candidate (different from what Rwanda had offered us earlier) outside the political class was too much for me to bear. I reveled with joy despite my bondage. But darkness all at once overwhelmed me when the suspicion that they were using the television to show me how wrong and confounded I had been to criticize such a clean system as ours. This made me really angry.

But I had just to change the station only to meet with overwhelming disbelief. Powers that be surely must have a hand in this discouraging show that I was seeing. The Politicians Group channel was now featuring news on the computeligents maybe as a refuge against the group’s shameful loss. They were taking what appeared like an objective stance at what they referred to as the mechanically incorrect robotic technology that they had helped to fund themselves. It might be political agenda for their diminishing future, or camouflage that they had nothing to do with the computeligents in case the day of reckoning came. The thing is, they could get away easily with this for they were not registered and worked like a legal cartel which was not nominally what one can call politicians namely, senators, governors, MPs and councilors. They were senators, MPs and councilors only in parliament but assumed the Politicians Group veil once outside Arusha.

I used my remote and changed the station fast to election content. Killscrew showed that the majority of the masses went for the mildly unknown lawyer and human rights campaigner, Elius Kombole. He was just thirty-seven and many predicted that he would surely win the ballot.

When I saw Prof. Kizito again on the state television, the tempers of elections had already flared up. Whenever I saw my favorite Prof. Kizito a cloud of doubt befell me for I associated him with the Cousin who, when on that train ride to Ruiru, had invited me to discuss, 'our senator from our University Constituency.' In his campaign I noted that for some strange reason, real politicians no longer cried after journalists to represent their views to the masses as in former years. The tag line was, “we don’t talk to journalists.”

Killscrew attributed this behavior to be a populist rebuff and more precisely as a counter attack for the media support for other people other than politicians to rule the country.

I switched the channels again to the comedy channel that had also been hijacked with federal content.

No difference. The comedy station had already followed the lead set by the state television. Once again I saw Prof. Kizito receive a correspondent of this comedy local channel very happily at his posh home. Afterward he enumerated his election manifesto word for word. He was standing as an independent candidate with no party affiliation. His family was as homely as him too. His wife invited one of the hordes of journalists for a cup of tea in the winning future. Other newsmen, whom I envied while behind bars, left the scene with ‘kill’ stories for their papers. I had my own reasons to be happy when I noticed with a gloomy smile that most of the news media in the house was prejudicial and supported those aspirants who rallied behind Mr. Kombole.

I turned on the Politicians Group TV channel for a change at least. I was dumbfounded at their reports. There was this issue of computeligents pinpointing the wrong people for murder. One of those had pointed two innocent men whom the robot thing took for terrorists and they faced terminal selfchastice. However, to redress the wrong two other computeligents had accurately traced and aided in the arrest of two runaway criminals known simply as M & Patrick whom they caught redhanded after being monitored throughout while in the backwoods of Wundanyi shooting a movie. Computeligents only featured in action when there was a national emergency and there was no emergency now, which showed that policemen were too idle and lazy not to try a new means of entertainment: theirs was just to sit back in their lofty chairs and watch the progress of the computeligents just like a movie. They would madly fall in love with each other congratulating themselves, when the movie came to a favorable climax, meaning that they had ‘caught’ a criminal. The government set up a committee to investigate the claims of computeligents shooting innocent men. Its recommendations, the news read, had gone up like a puff of smoke.  Nobody implemented them. “Me I personally hold the outcome of this commission with some suspicion.’’ That was the say at the time, the report read. The amount of money the committee used to ‘implement’ the report alone totaled 21.23 million EA. This was tongue in cheek news surely; the TV channel could not blaspheme robots of their own creation.

With such disillusionment at hand attended by fall of the political content in the news, the beginning of the end for politico-investigative journalists was drawing to a close while dawning that of social-political ones.

 People were very eager to vote for a new man on the day of the polls. Most of them stayed at home to vote on the Internet. In the prelude hours angry party affiliate supporters lynched an independent candidate. This was just an instance since the elections were generally quiet.

I kept alternating the stations at this juncture. There was nothing else in the news. Even the Politicians Group channel had managed to save face by covering the news that was working against its owners. There was one television family that had become mine too in my sojourn inside the cell. They had continuously featured in a documentary that showed how they had successfully integrated tribal elements and green technology to nurture a healthy family and develop their community. The last time I had visited them via the agency of the screen in their home village in Western Kenya, the Luo-Kikuyu family had seemed to grow from strength to strength. They had built a few kiosks on their roadside and employed several workers. Jane Wanjiru was now just like a lady. She operated a salon in one of the kiosks to shun idleness. Oliech was still darkly handsome and brawny at forty. His farming tenure was mechanized and the natural foods he had grown were really green. I also found that the weather in the west was becoming alternately as cold and very hot as the one in Nairobi. Global warming was affecting all regions.

“Tom, join the line behind us and don’t look stupid with your village ways!” She joked as her husband joined the short queue of voters in front of the LO’s office.

The voting had ended by five in the evening. The results were announced on all radio and TV stations simultaneously detailing how Elius Kombole won an overwhelming ninety percent of the vote. The turnout was not the highest in our history, which was recorded back in 2022. 2007, that violent year, was in ratio better in turnout compared to this.

                                                                                                                                   

And at the VERY TAIL OF THE TALE....

Thirma kissed me again and again for the last time that night, as a light appeared in the east.

…a familiar light, only that this was redder, the light of the militia computeligents…

Brief Introduction To East Africa

East Africa is made up of countries on the horn of Africa that comprises of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Kenya and Tanzania have ports on the Indian Ocean whereas Uganda is landlocked. The three countries also share a common interior water mass, Lake Victoria, whose largest portion is on the Ugandan side. Economically, the region is an agricultural society whose main exports include, tea, coffee and livestock products. It  also enjoys industrial growth in areas like telecommunications, fines arts and manufacturing.

The political structure of the three countries follows the Commonwealth form of Constitutional Republics. The latest exception to this system occurred in Kenya, which promulgated a new constitution on 27th August 2010 setting up a county system of government. Other countries in the region including, Rwanda and Burundi are categorised as East African states through the shared EAC bloc, which is on its way to becoming a Common Market.

Tourism is a multimillion industry in the region due to the many national parks and diverse wildlife and the sandy beaches of Mombasa. The Kilindini harbor is the entry port for much of the foreign trade. Uganda has traditionally received imports via the port on the Mombasa-Uganda railway.

On the Common Market Of the EAC

For any outsider to the East African Community (EAC), the fast rate in which the Common Market Protocol has been effected would seem incredible at first. A key prop to this assumption is that for an economic bloc to cross the barriers of the Customs Union, which is usually the precursor to a single market that embraces all states, within a record time, would require inexorable joint stamina.

The European Union, whose economic integration took several decades to implement is a measure of how long the process can take to implement. This is exactly what the five states that currently make up the EAC (Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda) are set to achieve beginning the first of July 2010.

One can attribute these positive steps to the mutual cooperation between the five border states of East Africa. Unlike Europe, which is a heterogeneous society with disparate geographical barriers like the sea, and different political structures, the East African countries share common values like heritage and have a similar political system derived from the British. However, in order to realize a Single Market in this region, there are several milestones, the EAC  needs to cover by the by. These challenges include the ratification of the four freedoms and the show of political will to give security of tenure to already existing freedoms among the states. This will pave way for the formation of a common currency.

 These cross border freedoms that need ratification and implementation include convenient and cheap air transport, making the securities markets regional, enforcing free broadcasting rights across the region, customizing educational requirements, and modernizing travel and work documents.

Explanation on this Novel

Title: The Wronged Future
Synopsis: It is the year 2037 in postmodern EA Nation, a federal state
formed by East African countries. Against a background of a rotten court
system, two individuals are on the run after writing treasonable content.
Now the question is, who between them has done the capital wrong? Or is it
the state that is to blame? A forensic officer and robotic agents are out to
find out. The judgment on these two individuals, if caught, will resort in
the subtle salvation of a nation or the indictment of a whole society.
Finally, will the first person narrator,who is also the protagonist be finally
saved whereas the real culprit is brought to book?

The 63000 plus word novel is written in a
pseudo-surrealistic style that is deemed best to highlight in an undertone
the evils of impunity. The message is targeted at the here and now: the
future state, though realistic, is just a technical cap to drive the point
home.

The work is under copyright