It’s my second VE project, my first foray into the wild and woolly world of Flash Media Server.
Big learning curve, learned a ton. I think it has potential to be a good portfolio piece, but it’s gonna need some serious retooling.
So, for the time being, to finish up my last winter quarter at RIT:
GRAVmarbler || case study
Well, we’re in rapid development mode here… finally have turn handling working here. It’s very blackbox right now, skinning and prettying up will be coming in the next few days.
It’s my birthday, and I woke up this morning to a CNN headline, “Kenyan death toll reaches 1,000.”
Great news to start out my day, but in perspective, it’s worse news for the people who live there.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that folks reading this (if there is, after all, anyone reading this) don’t have a real good grip on the situation, or, you know, what’s going on at all. I’ve been following it, so I’ll do my best to write about it briefly.
The Kenyan election was held in December. Sitting President Mwai Kibaki was up for reelection, running against opposition leader Raila Odinga. Kibaki took over 5 years ago from President Daniel Arap Moi, an unquestionably corrupt leader who ruled the country for 24 years thanks to a lack of term limits (a deficiency that was remedied in 1992). Kibaki previously campaigned as a reformer, but some argue that he hasn’t done enough (it’s been estimated that $1 billion was lost to graft between 2002 and 2005 [source]). Seems to me that he’s playing with a pretty big handicap, and everyone I talked to about politics there were Kibaki supporters, but I was only there for three weeks – I can’t claim to have anything close to expertise here.
Anyway, Kibaki was announced as the winner, but it appears that the vote was rigged – there may have even been rigging on both sides. What started as protests, and then rioting, over the election results took on ethnic overtones – Kibaki is Kikuyu, the most populous ethnic group, Odinga is Luo, and support often runs along ethnic divides. It seems that it began with incidents of Luo targeting Kikuyu, and then Kikuyu mobs started to form in reprisal… feeding the ethnic divides is a historic sense of disenfranchisement – valuable land taken from other ethnic groups by British colonists was given predmoninatly to Kikuyus upon independence. Some have posed the point: “Wasn’t this, you know, a while ago? Why can’t they just get along?” While I don’t deny the logic there – land, political power, business connections – these things can be and probably are the difference between success and poverty. Working your way up or struggling/failing to feed your family. So it’s kind of a big deal.
Anyway, death toll just reached 1,000. Truth is, in terms of past and current conflicts, this is (and it kills me to say this) pretty small. Civil war in Chad, humanitarian violations in Sudan going on for years… this still pales in comparison. For me, it’s because I’ve been there – fallen in love with the country, and I’m worried sick about the people that I met there. On a larger scale, Kenya has been an oasis of peace and an economic leader in the area. It’s a trade hub for the area and a strong U.S. ally [source]. This conflict threatens business, internally and for the region, and it will likely have catastrophic effects on tourism, which is a huge part of the country’s economy.
So I’m just waiting and watching. Hoping this was informative.
Further reading:
Country profile: Kenya
Kenya: In Diplomatic Intensive Care
Kenyan death toll reaches 1,000
‘Hard’ Kenya crisis talks resume
Gang rape spirals in violent Kenya
Fragile path of Kenya peacemaking