Myles Osborne

'The cat with nine lives': Paul Ngei and the making of modern Kenya

Abstract Every Kenyan knows a story about the Kamba politician Paul Ngei. Ngei fought for Kenyas freedom from British colonial rule during the 1950s, then remained at the pinnacle of the political system in independent Kenya for almost three decades. Yet despite Ngeis prominence, he is almost entirely absent from the large volume of academic scholarship on Kenya. Bringing together testimony from his remaining family and past political associates, as well as utilizing archival records, this article presents a portrait of Ngei. It demonstrates the important role he played in shaping the history of colonial and independent Kenya. As one of the greatest orators in Kenyas history, with an ability to rally rural support like none other, Ngei was a profound threat for Kenyas presidents, especially Jomo Kenyatta. Ngeis ability to hold on to power despite controversy and scandal led the press to nickname him “the cat with nine lives”.

Dedan Kimathi on Trial: Colonial Justice and Popular Memory in Kenya’s Mau Mau Rebellion

both caregivers and care seekers alike. One of her central questions is therefore what possibilities for care arise “in the meantime,” while diverse actors are working toward future visions of care in which NGOs may or may not continue to be necessary, depending on the state’s future capacities and priorities. This question is fundamental to any discussion of the current – and especially future – state of African public health. As others have argued, McKay notes that portrayals of nongovernmental and humanitarian interventions as temporary assistance obscure how these activities may circumvent and even erode public capacities. However, she also shows how these possibilities created in the meantime extend not only to clinical practices but also to the aspirations and career trajectories of health workers themselves, profoundly shaping professional practices, opportunities, and aspirations. In so doing, Medicine in the Meantime offers rich ethnographic insight into the ambitions, anxieties, and daily challenges of care providers working in a context of medical multiplicity. For its nuanced perspective on the entanglements of state health structures and transnational medical regimes, Medicine in the Meantime is essential reading for anyone interested in critical studies of global health. The book’s compelling insights into the care practices and possibilities that are enacted by a multiplicity of actors, objectives, and temporalities will also find it a much broader audience among historians and anthropologists of African medicine.

Religion and Politics in Kenya: essays in honor of a meddlesome priest (review)

were made. The failure is blamed on the fixation to produce Europeanized converts, which was subsequently overcome. By the 1930s, the British and the missionaries had learned to co-exist, with increasing converts made among traditionalists, earlier discounted by both competing groups. Hence, the zero sum game of the cross or the crescent did not prevail, as both made inroads. The earlier reluctance of both missionaries and the colonial administration in granting access to Western intellectual skills is shown to have been reversed between 1940 and 1945. The pace of acculturation was hastened, according to the author, by Protestant and Catholic competition, which became intense after 1945. The expanding colonial economy and the necessity for paying taxes created the need for Western education among the African population, which the missions and the colonial administration tried to provide. The latter established Katsina College, referred to by the author as the ‘Eton of the north’, which brought marked changes, moulding students who became ‘anglophiles’. Unprecedented progress is said to have taken place when European social and cultural values became more entrenched in the post-war period, accompanied by creeping individualism, despised by the missionaries. However, in the end both missionaries and the colonial administration succeeded in converting some Africans who ‘shared their dream’, although Barnes adds that the British were far more pleased than the missionaries with the products turned out by the cultural transfer. The book quite rightly makes the argument that Africans did not adopt ‘Western civilization’ readily or wholeheartedly. They indigenized it by forming ethnic and cultural associations, giving new cultural identity to the ‘modernized’. African churches also emerged to assert their distinct identities from European churches. In spite of its limitations, the book is indispensable because of its detailed exposition of the issues backed by abundant data obtained through library and archival research in Nigeria, Britain and the USA. I will not hesitate in recommending it to my graduate students because of the additional familiarity with the area of research it provides thanks to the author’s extensive fieldwork.