The Kenyan Experiment : Episode 3

Will This Be A Problem Presents Episode 3:

Forms of Protest III : The Serpent God of Lake Victoria

In this episode, we will look at the religion of Mumbo, a serpent god who was believed to reside in Lake Victoria and in the sun. This religion would spread among the Luo and the Kisii and challenge the colonial structures and religion.

You can listen to it here, or on your favorite Podcast app.

The new episode of The Kenyan Experiment Podcast.

Available now on  most major podcast apps.

*if it's not populated on search on the apps below you can use one of the links under thus to open it in the app and subscribe:

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3. Forms of Protest III : The Serpent God of Lake Victoria

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In this episode, we will look at the religion of Mumbo, a serpent god who was believed to reside in Lake Victoria and in the sun. This religion would spread among the Luo and the Kisii and challenge the colonial structures and religion.

Sources

  1. Hackett, Rosalind I. J. “Millennial and Apocalyptic Movements in Africa.” Oxford Handbooks Online, 2011. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195301052.003.0020.
  2. Maxon, R. M. “The Thorny Road From Primary to Secondary Source: The Cult of Mumbo and the 1914 Sack of Kisii.” History in Africa, vol. 13, 1986, pp. 261–68. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.2307/3171545.
  3. Ogot, Bethwell A. “British Administration in The Central Nyanza District of Kenya, 1900–60.” The Journal of African History, vol. 4, no. 2, 1963, pp. 249–73. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0021853700004059.
  4. Ranger, T. O. “Connexions between ‘Primary Resistance’ Movements and Modern Mass Nationalism in East and Central Africa: II.” The Journal of African History, vol. 9, no. 4, 1968, pp. 631–41. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0021853700009087.
  5. Shadle, Brett L. “Patronage, Millennialism and the Serpent God Mumbo in South-West Kenya, 1912–34.” Africa, vol. 72, no. 1, 2002, pp. 29–54. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.3366/afr.2002.72.1.29.
  6. Maxon, R. M. “Gusii Oral Texts and the Gusii Experience under British Rule.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, Boston University African Studies Center, 1976, pp. 74–80, https://doi.org/10.2307/217392.
  7. Wangila, Mary Nyangweso. “The Cult of Mumbo in Central and South Kavirondo.” Journal of the East African and Uganda Natural History Society (Nairobi), no. 38–39, 1930, pp. 13–17, www.biodiversitylibrary.org/content/part/EANHS/Nos.%2038-39_13_1930_Nyangweso.pdf.

The Kenyan Experiment : Episode 2

Will This Be A Problem Presents Episode 2:

Forms of Protest II : Oaths & Stories

In this episode we contrast the Kikuyu and the Giriama, and how they both use the power of oaths as their weapon against the British empire. We will see how narratives and stories  are the foundation upon which the colonial project was built upon and sustained by.  In our second episode, The Kenyan Oath comes head to head, with the English fairy tale.

You can listen to it here, or on your favorite Podcast app.

The new episode of The Kenyan Experiment Podcast.

Available now on  most major podcast apps.

*if it's not populated on search on the apps below you can use one of the links under thus to open it in the app and subscribe:

a

2. Forms of Protest II : Oaths & Stories

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In this episode we contrast the Kikuyu and the Giriama, and how they both use the power of oaths as their weapon against the British empire. We will see how narratives and stories  are the foundation upon which the colonial project was built upon and sustained by.  In our second episode, The Kenyan Oath comes head to head, with the English fairy tale.

Sources

  1. Patterson, K. David. “The Giriama Risings of 1913-1914.” African Historical Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 1970, p. 89, 10.2307/216482. 
  2. Green, Maia. “Mau Mau Oathing Rituals and Political Ideology in Kenya: A Re-Analysis.” Africa, vol. 60, no. 1, Jan. 1990, pp. 69–87, 10.2307/1160427. 
  3. TEMU, A. J. “THE GIRIAMA WAR, 1914-1915.” Journal of Eastern African Research & Development, vol. 1, no. 2, 1971, pp. 167–186, www.jstor.org/stable/43658221. 
  4. Carrier, N. CM, and C. Nyamweru. “Reinventing Africa's National Heroes: The Case of Mekatilili, a Kenyan Popular Heroine.” African Affairs, vol. 115, no. 461, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 599–620.
  5. Anderson, David. Histories of the Hanged : Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005.
  6. Brantley, Cynthia. Giriama and Colonial Resistance in Kenya, 1800 -1920. 2018.
  7. Opolot Okia. Communal Labor in Colonial Kenya : The Legitimization of Coercion, 1912-1930. New York, Ny, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

The Kenyan Experiment : Episode 1

Will This Be A Problem Presents Episode 1:

Forms of Protest I : The Two Prophets

In this episode we explore the Maasai and the Nandi, the prophets who shaped their journey through the colonial march in Kenya and the varied and fascinating forms of protest the people adopted.

You can listen to it here, or on your favorite Podcast app.

It’s finally here. The debut episode of The Kenyan Experiment Podcast.

Available now on  most major podcast apps.

*if it's not populated on search on the apps below you can use one of the links under thus to open it in the app and subscribe:

1. Forms of Protest I : The Two Prophets

In this episode of The Kenyan Experiment we explore the Maasai and the Nandi, the prophets who shaped their journey through the colonial march in Kenya and the varied and fascinating forms of protest the people adopted.

Sources

  1. Greenstein, Lewis J.The Impact of Military Service in World War I on Africans: The Nandi of Kenya.” The Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 16, no. 3, 1978, pp. 495–507. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/160040.
  2. Anderson, David.Stock Theft and Moral Economy in Colonial Kenya.” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, vol. 56, no. 4, 1986, pp. 399–416. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1159997
  3. Tignor, Robert L. “The Maasai Warriors: Pattern Maintenance and Violence in Colonial Kenya.” The Journal of African History, vol. 13, no. 2, 1972, pp. 271–290. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/180856. 
  4. Anderson, David M.Black Mischief: Crime, Protest and Resistance in Colonial Kenya.” The Historical Journal, vol. 36, no. 4, 1993, pp. 851–877. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2640035. Accessed 3 Aug. 2021.
  5. Githuku, Nicholas. “‘Collaborators’ or ‘Resistors,’ ‘Loyalists’ versus ‘Rebels’: Problematizing Colonial Binary Nomenclatures through the Prism of Dedan Kimathi's Career.” Groundings: Development, Pan-Africanism and Critical Theory, vol. 3, no. 1, 2018, pp. 50–67. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/groudevepanacrit.3.1.0050.
  6. Mungeam, G. H.Masai and Kikuyu Responses to the Establishment of British Administration in the East Africa Protectorate.” The Journal of African History, vol. 11, no. 1, 1970, pp. 127–143., doi:10.1017/s0021853700037476.
  7. Waller, Richard. “The Maasai and the British 1895–1905 the Origins of an Alliance.” The Journal of African History, vol. 17, no. 4, 1976, pp. 529–553., doi:10.1017/s002185370001505x.
  8. Eby, Carl.‘In the Year of the Maji Maji’: Settler Colonialism, the Nandi Resistance, and Race in The Garden of Eden.” The Hemingway Review, vol. 39, no. 1, 2019, pp. 9–39., doi:10.1353/hem.2019.0015.
  9. Meinertzhagen, Richard. Kenya Diary, 1902-1906. 1957.
  10. Matson, A. T. Nandi Resistance to British Rule, 1890-1906. East African Publishing House, 1972.
  11. Bishop, Dennis. Warriors in the Heart of Darkness: The Nandi Resistance 1850-1897. Geocities, 2000

The Kenyan Experiment

The last two years have been an unpredictable and difficult period all around the world. Everyone has had to adjust and acclimatize to a new paradigm, and many are still finding their footing. We’ve been doing the same thing. 

Over the last year, Will This Be A Problem has been largely silent — but not dormant. We started this site what seems like a lifetime ago (has it really been 7 years?), and we’ve been wondering where this project is going and what we would like it to be. We think we’ve finally figured it out. Throughout the rest of the year, starting today, we will be announcing our new initiatives. 

Our first project is our Podcast Initiative. We’ve been toying with this idea for some time and we finally pulled the trigger on it. A Will This Be A Problem family of podcasts covering a range of topics and genres. The very first of these is debuting this very October.

We present, The Kenyan Experiment. A Podcast covering Kenyan History. 

We’re really excited about this and we can’t wait for you to hear it and everything else we have in store. 

The Kenyan Experiment, Coming Soon. But for now, here’s a snippet you can listen to.

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Will This Be A Problem Anthology 4: Announcement

Will This Be A Problem is proud to announce that issue 4 of the Will This Be A Problem Anthology will be released  in April 2020. Eight new stories from writers across the African continent. There will be singular dystopian worlds, chilling horror landscapes, sprawling urban fantasy and mind bending science fiction concepts.

We’ve put together some wonderful anthologies in the past but this one is certainly our finest and we can’t wait for you all to read it.

For now, we will be sharing the stunning cover art from Peter Marco and the table of contents — Including our winning story, Nonchalant by Cheryl S. Ntumy.

Nonchalant by  Cheryl S. Ntumy

The Sacrifice by Lauri Kubuitsile 

Counting Heads by James Kariuki

Nyembezi’s Funeral by Jerà

Where The Gods Go by  Kevin Rigathi

Asylum by  Olivia Kidula

Pieces of Wood by Peter Nena

Manes & Dandelions by Kevin Rigathi

Antholgy Call Out 2019

The Will This Be A Problem Anthology is back this year and we are looking for works of speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy and horror by authors from the African continent.

While we tend to gravitate toward the weirder and darker side of things, our aesthetic is always in flux. We value risks, surprises, rude shocks, and voices that haunt us long after the story is done. Be brave. Send us the stuff you never thought would get published anywhere else. Send us the thing you have to take a deep breath over before submitting or running by your critique group. We strongly encourage submissions from women, members of the LGBTQIA community, and members from other underrepresented and marginalized communities.

Here are the submission guidelines.

  1. Your story can be speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy, horror or an unholy mash of any them.

  2. Our target length is between 2000-5000 words. However this is just a baseline, if the story is strong enough it can be longer or shorter.

  3. We are open to receiving stories around many themes, but we will immediately reject stories that feature any of the following:

  •  Graphic depictions of rape or sexual assault
  •  Needless brutalization of women and children
  • Depictions of brutalization or abuse of people with (physical and mental) disabilities
  • Graphic abuse of animals
  1.  Send your work to willthisbeaproblem@gmail.com in doc, docx, odt or rtf formats. Do not send it in the body of the email.

  2. Send a small bio about yourself, what country you’re from and what name you would like the work to be published under.

  3. We only consider unpublished work, and we do not consider reprints (work that has been published in another magazine or on your blog or other social media) or fan fiction.

  4. By submitting a story the author allows Will This Be A Problem to include it in the WTBAP Anthology should it be selected.

  5.  Submissions should primarily be in English though pieces of dialogue and the text may contain other languages.

  6. If your work is published somewhere else after the Anthology is released we request that you mention Will This Be A Problem as the first place of publication.

  7. Submissions close on the 22nd of November, 2019

The WTBAP anthology is provided for free. We do not make any money off it and thus we do not (as of yet) pay for submissions. However, this year, there will be prizes for our favourite story.

  1. If the winner is from Kenya, the prize will be:  Ksh 3,000

  2. If the winner is from any other country: 30$ paid via paypal or other viable money transfer platforms.

We look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Ethical Sex : Part III – Difficult Questions

Consent can be a complicated topic. Even to me, that sounds like a controversial statement, but it is complicated, and that should inform how we approach it.

When the conversation of consent went mainstream, it was initially very binary. It did not always aim for nuance. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a criticism, it was a necessary measure at the time. When an idea like “no means no” was widely controversial and incited debate among large swathes of the population, where else would you start but the bare bones basics? The conversation has grown since then, and it’s echoes are being felt in institutions around the world. Even so, I feel like the full potential of this discussion has not been realized. The conversation is still largely one of condemnation, or to put it another way, centred around the clearer boundaries of consent. This is important, but it is not the only subject.

I want to address the difficult questions about consent that we don’t normally ask. You may have thought of them, but felt inclined to say nothing. Part of this hesitation no doubt comes from how a number of the conversations are framed; that there are no questions to be asked, that you should already innately know these things. But I think the larger part is a fear of the answer. The fear that asking that question will lead to a conclusion that you would rather not be true. Or if it is, you might prefer not to know. It might say something about you, or it might shine a new light on someone else. Either way, sometimes it seems easier to just stick to what is already clear. What is already known.

Unfortunately, while the big, clear cut categories might be safer ground, they are only part of the story. For those of us who consider consent important, which should be all of us, we would like to have ethical sex lives. And for us to do that, it requires a deeper inspection of consent. We have to delve into areas that may make us uncomfortable because of our past conduct. We have to take a look at behaviour from people close to us that is simpler to just leave alone. We need to go to where it is complicated and messy and through our combined effort, find answers. Perhaps these conversations are going on somewhere, but we need them out front — where everyone can learn.

For a while now, I have been asking people who speak on this subject a question. When both parties are drunk, what are the dynamics of consent? The most common reaction is a hesitation and usually, there is no answer. That seems like a pretty big gap in the conversation because for many people, that is not a hypothetical scenario. Drunk sex is incredibly common. Odds are, you’ve had it. Is this a question you’ve asked yourself? Do you have an answer? I know I don’t have a clear one. And I think, if we are to have ethical sex, it is a question we should be asking and trying to answer.

Can a drunk person give consent? For most people, this is an easy question when only one party is drunk. But when both are intoxicated, there’s a lot less debate or, really, any kind of conversation. What are the rules and boundaries here? What accountability can there even be? With the memory loss and impaired judgement that some experience, is this an environment that ethical sex can even occur in? I’m going to go out on a limb and say, probably not.

Of course, many of us have had drunk sex in numerous circumstances where all the parties involved enjoyed it, where it was consensual. The problem here, is the doubt. The uncertainty of whether knowing consent was given or not.

Drunk sex offers a good entry point into this kind of conversation because it highlights the kind of situation where there is no clear villain. Where it’s not really that simple, or if it is, it certainly doesn’t feel that way. How many people prefer to drink for a confidence boost, for lowered inhibitions, for that adventurous push that make social interactions easier? How much of the prevailing sexual culture is learned and practised around such interactions?  How many people just enjoy drunk sex in and of itself?

I don’t think I have dug enough into this topic to unequivocally say that drunk sex is always wrong. What I can say is that it certainly is not the easier option it is often portrayed to be. It is dangerous. It opens doors of where consent is blurred. It might not have been given, it might be given and forgotten, it might be given and remembered but compromised because it would never have been done sober. It creates an environment where you may violate a person’s boundaries and more than that, leave them feeling that they were the ones at fault. In the end, it comes down to one simple question. Is the risk that your partner(s) is not actually consenting ever worth taking?

At a minimum, it requires more introspection, more communication between parties and more boundaries set when sober than it gets now. If you are going to engage in drunk sex, it is imperative to know beforehand how to hold yourself accountable and how to ensure you are always within your partner’s boundaries.

But having ethical sex is not entirely based on your own attitudes because sex is not an individual activity. It is important to know what views other people bring and how they affect your sexual relationship.

The other day, I was among a group of men talking about how to avoid having sex with a woman. I’ve listened and been part of these discussions often, I’ve just never given them the level of inspection they deserved. There was a dynamic of sex that I had never truly questioned and so some things that should have never set off alarms in my mind.

The entire premise of the discussion was that when a woman initiates a sexual encounter, she is unlikely to take no for an answer. A question that seemed to resonate with almost everyone was what to do when you turned her down, and she said “what’s wrong, don’t you find me attractive?” Another was how to proceed after you said no, and she refused to accept it (“I know you want to”) and went straight for your pants. The offered solutions were “you just have to physically run away” which was met with the kind of laughs that said, I find that funny but only because of how true it is. The other was, “sometimes you just have to go along with it, what else can you do?”

We saw the matter of women and consent dealt with last week and so I won’t go into again. What is important here is the attitude many men carry about how to handle this. It is a common misconception that men should always be ready for sex, that they can’t and don’t say no. Many women receive a “no” with hurt or anger or as a challenge. As a result, it is often easier to just accept and “go along with it”. When you, as a woman, receive consent, it might be important to be sure that it is actual consent, not resignation. Not damage control.

I have read about and heard from women who have sex when they do not want to. They are not forced, there is no coercion, but prevailing attitudes say that this is what is supposed to happen especially in relationships. Verbal consent is given, sometimes with the performance of enthusiasm, and all the apparent forms are observed. Still, there is something wrong with that. Something unhealthy about someone having sex with you because they believe they would be a bad girlfriend, or a bad partner if they did not.

In these cases, it is not your fault, but that is not the same thing as saying you are completely free of responsibility. And what is your responsibility? There’s no easy answer to that. Sexual relationships are varied and how you interact, and what you are willing to share, is not a constant. People bring a lot of thoughts and beliefs with them, some completely uninspected, and it is not always possible to dig into that. What you can always do, is make sure that your partners understand that it is okay and consequenceless to say no. That they can always change their minds. That what they want is important.

And so, while consent can be a complicated topic, the answers are what they’ve always been — you only have to think about them deeper. Receive consent, yes, but with what society is, that is not always just a simple yes or a seemingly enthusiastic response. Communicate, yes, but the depth and breadth of that communication must encompass a wider range. Consent is not a matter of limiting your liability, it is about engaging ethically and honestly with someone else. The effort must extend beyond your needs and wants and what is easy.


As we roll out the Ethical Sex series, we would like to receive your contributions and thoughts, which we may post, add on or talk about in our final article. We do not claim to be experts by any means, we are simply willing to undertake this journey, learn something and be better. Join us and hopefully we can help each other find the right path.

Email us at: submissions@34.193.184.231