As I am in the US for the first time in many years, I find myself longing for the simplicity of Maua, Kenya, during Easter time. There Easter has none of the commercial trappings we find here. As I enter grocery stores, discount stores, and department stores I am shocked at the amount of space taken by the Easter candy, bunnies and stuffed animals, baskets, decorations, and new spring clothing. These items take more space than any grocery store has for all their goods in Maua.

I recently read that an estimated $2 billion will be spent on Easter candy this year in the US. Two billion dollars to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who asked us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give water to the thirsty, house the homeless, care for the sick and imprisoned, and welcome the stranger.

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Happy #Easter! One of the most important Christian holidays, Easter commemorates the Resurrection of Christ – shown in this Rubens drawing pic.twitter.com/fTtmhTl0yv

— British Museum (@britishmuseum) April 16, 2017

Two people were killed on Wednesday in clashes between police and protesters in the Kenyan city of Kisimu.

Tear gas has also been fired in the capital, Nairobi, and the coastal city of Mombasa at those protesting over the high cost of living.

Several people were injured after being shot as police battled protesters.

Kenya has closed schools in the country’s two main cities as a three-day opposition protest kicked off with demonstrators confronting police.

Many businesses have remained shut over fears of looting, with people scared of getting caught in violent clashes.

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Kenya Azimio demonstrations: Two dead in Kenya anti-government protests https://t.co/801HrjOGTz

— Kamal Mustafa ✪ (@MeKamalMustafa) July 19, 2023

Opposition figure Raila Odinga said Tuesday that he would challenge the results of Kenya’s close presidential election with “all constitutional and legal options” after Deputy President William Ruto was declared the winner, bringing new uncertainty to East Africa’s most stable democracy.

Now the country faces weeks of disputes and the possibility that the Supreme Court will order another election. Religious and other leaders have pleaded for calm to continue in a nation with a history of deadly post-election violence.

“Let no one take the law into their own hands,” Odinga said to his often-passionate supporters. In Kisumu, a city in his western Kenya stronghold, some residents said they were tired of going into the street and being tear-gassed.

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https://t.co/BIijVI9R7q

— ARTIDÔNIO (@TVARTOURICURI) August 16, 2022

Kenya’s vote counting system has not been hacked amid a tense wait for results of Tuesday’s presidential election, a top poll official has said.

“Nothing like that has happened. It is misinformation,” said the electoral commission’s CEO Marjan Hussein Marjan.

Social media has been awash with allegations that fake results have been uploaded as the count is verified.

Media tallies show the two leading candidates – Raila Odinga and William Ruto – are neck and neck.

But it is only the electoral commission that can declare the winner – and it has seven days to do so.

“We anticipated that people would try to hack our systems… we assure the whole country that our systems are actually secure,” Mr Marjan told reporters on Friday afternoon.

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Kenya elections: Long wait for Raila Odinga and William Ruto in poll count

Kenya's vote counting system has not been hacked amid a tense wait for results of Tuesday's presidential election, a top poll official has said. ⁦@DickensOlewe⁩ https://t.co/Gghsnr5mAd

— Ashis Basu (@BasuAshis) August 12, 2022

Kenya’s Wildlife and Tourism ministry says that climate change is now a bigger threat to elephant conservation than poaching.

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Climate change killing elephants, says Kenya https://t.co/ncUhsuRzxb

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) July 28, 2022

“I have just seen my brother’s face. Our faces are alike, even the mouth. I have also seen the legs, those are my brother’s. I have no doubt it’s him.”

A distressed Irene Waheto has just stepped out of the hospital mortuary in Yala, western Kenya.

At least 19 unclaimed bodies have been waiting for identification. They were retrieved over the past two years from the nearby River Yala in different stages of decomposition.

Ms Waheto is making frantic calls to her family in Nyeri, a town nearly 300km (185 miles) to the east.

“It is Ndirangu, I am sure it is him,” she cries down the phone.

But how his body ended up in a river so far from home is not clear.

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The BBC’s ⁦@FerdyOmondi⁩ reports from Yala in western where over a dozen bodies have been retrieved from a river. Their deaths so far unexplained. Security forces deny they are behind the deaths. https://t.co/Lzui9vdnuZ

— Catherine Byaruhanga (@cathkemi) January 22, 2022

With U.S. retailers willing to pay almost any price to get their goods to American shores in time for the holidays, ocean carriers have redeployed container ships from the developing world to the more lucrative Asia-to-United States trade lanes, where rates for some shipments this fall were 15 times pre-pandemic levels, according to the Freightos index.

That’s helped fill American store shelves — and carriers’ coffers — but it has battered many African shippers, according to interviews with more than 30 maritime analysts, shippers, freight forwarders and cargo carriers in the United States, Africa and elsewhere.

Already lagging in coronavirus vaccinations, Africa risks becoming collateral damage in the supply wars. The International Monetary Fund says the 45 nations of sub-Saharan Africa are mired in the slowest economic recovery of any region, with supply chain disruptions helping fuel inflation at roughly twice its pre-pandemic level.

“Africa, sadly, I can’t think of any other continent that is last on the rung. Africa will be the last to come out of this,” [Aditya] Awtani said.

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Africa is left with the fallout of the US supply chain crisis

Ships have been diverted to the US/Europe, leaving many developing nations w/out basic supplies.

More great supply chain reporting from @davidjlynch https://t.co/flCTdUUODa

— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) December 17, 2021

An estimated 2.1 million Kenyans face starvation due to a drought in half the country, which is affecting harvests.

The National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) said people living in 23 counties across the arid north, northeastern and coastal parts of the country will be in “urgent need” of food aid over the next six months, after poor rains between March and May this year.

The crisis has been compounded by Covid-19 and previous poor rains, it said, predicting the situation will get worse by the end of the year, as October to December rains are expected to be below normal levels.

The affected regions are usually the most food-insecure in Kenya due to high levels of poverty.

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Production of maize, Kenya’s staple food, is projected to decline by 50% in the affected regions

Drought puts 2.1 million Kenyans at risk of starvation https://t.co/co1YMwVcjI

— Teresa Anderson (@1TeresaAnderson) September 15, 2021

Somewhere, Rebecca’s son is 10. He could be in Nairobi, where she lives, or he could be somewhere else. He could, she knows in her heart, be dead. The last time she saw him, Lawrence Josiah, her firstborn son, he was one. She was 16. It was about 2am one night in March 2011 and Rebecca was drowsy from sniffing a handkerchief doused in jet fuel — a cheap high on the city’s streets.

She sniffed jet fuel because it gave her the confidence to go up to strangers and beg. By the time she was 15, Rebecca’s mother could no longer support her or pay her school fees, and she dropped out and slid into life on the street. She met an older man who promised to marry her but instead made her pregnant and left. The following year Lawrence Josiah was born, and Rebecca raised him for a year and a few months until she closed her eyes that night and never saw him again.

“Even though I have other kids, he was my firstborn, he made me a mother,” she said, fighting back tears. “I have searched in every children’s centre, in Kiambu, Kayole, and I have never found him.”

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Kenya's state officials held an emergency meeting into the matter on Monday and by Tuesday, the government ordered an investigation into the theft and sale of babies. https://t.co/MCkjfKtg1E

— BBC News Africa (@BBCAfrica) November 19, 2020

The Somalia-based al-Qaeda-linked group al-Shabaab has “ordered” Christians to leave three counties in northeastern Kenya to allow local Muslims to get all local jobs, according to the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern.

“Muslim teachers, doctors, engineers, and young graduates from the northeastern province are unemployed. Isn’t it better to give them a chance? There is no need for the presence of disbelievers,” al-Shabaab’s spokesman, Sheikh Ali Dhere, said in an audio clip posted online, referring to the counties of Garissa, Wajir and Mandera.

In the 20-minute clip, the spokesman urged Somali-Kenyans to drive all non-Muslims out if they do not leave on their own.

The majority of the people living in the three counties are Somalis, who fled to Kenya due to war and violence in Somalia.

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Al-Shabaab warns all Christians to leave northeastern Kenya https://t.co/meYMfwuxWq

— The Christian Post (@ChristianPost) March 2, 2020

DP Ruto on Saturday said the move will ensure a peaceful and united country where Kenyans will concentrate on development.

Speaking at the Anglican Church of Kenya diocese of Eldoret in Kipkaren, Ruto said the church has a role to play in ensuring the lives of Kenyans is transformed.

He said: “We will partner with the religious institution in dealing with hatred, tribalism and division so that we can unite in building the nation.”

The Deputy President said political leaders had taken the first step towards uniting Kenyans by ensuring citizens are no longer divided along political party lines.

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In Africa, the world’s poorest continent, malnutrition is stubbornly widespread and millions of people are desperately hungry, with famine conditions looming in some war-torn countries.

But in many places, growing economies have led to growing waistlines. Obesity rates in sub-Saharan Africa are shooting up faster than in just about anywhere else in the world, causing a public health crisis that is catching Africa, and the world, by surprise.

In Burkina Faso, the prevalence of adult obesity in the past 36 years has jumped nearly 1,400 percent. In Ghana, Togo, Ethiopia and Benin, it has increased by more than 500 percent. Eight of the 20 nations in the world with the fastest-rising rates of adult obesity are in Africa, according to a recent study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

It is part of a seismic shift in Africa as rapid economic growth transforms every aspect of life, including the very shape of its people.

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Church leaders in Kenya are proposing a national dialogue conference to help find ways of the resolving the current political and social crises facing the East African nation.

Apart from discussing the stand-off over fresh presidential elections, it would also help resolve a longstanding nurses and clinical officers’ strike.

On 10 October, the political crisis appeared to deepen after National Super Alliance leader Raila Odinga announced that his coalition would boycott the polls set for 26 October.

Odinga had cited the failure by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to institute some reforms he had demanded as an “irreducible minimum” before another election is held. High on the list of demands is the removal of officials in the commission who he believes caused him to lose the 8 August polls. One of the officials is the chief executive Ezra Chiloba.

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Ordinary Kenyans feel pinch of political crisis https://t.co/Njj0F0NURK

— Daily Nation (@dailynation) October 11, 2017

During the summer of 2017, election season put all eyes on Kenya. Although a decade ago, the unprecedented violence of the 2007 elections that left an estimated 1,400 people dead remains in the memory of the Kenyan people. Given this tragic recollection, apprehension was high going into this election season. The two main rivals, Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of the first post-independence leader, Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, and Raila Odinga, son of Odinga Odinga, a Luo, are no strangers to conflict. Their tribal identities were divided long ago by colonialists and their families are long-standing political rivals furthering divisions among some of the largest tribes in Kenya.

The two politicians went head to head this election cycle and the results shocked the nation. While violence did not erupt amongst the public prior to the release of poll results, an Independent Election and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) official Chris Msando was discovered tortured and killed a little over a week before the election. Despite this shocking event, the Kenyan people voted peacefully and on time. Kenyatta won 54% of the vote to Odinga’s 44% in a tight race.

However, violence broke out the day after the results were released, leaving 24 dead. Odinga’s team claimed that the online tallying system “lacked integrity” and therefore did not properly count the votes. The death of Chris Msando further compounded a lack of faith in the legitimacy of the election results. Odinga’s team then petitioned the supreme court for a recount. In 2013, Odinga’s team made a similar petition to the court based on claims of voter fraud, which was rejected. This time, however, the court decided that the basis of the petition was legitimate enough to warrant a complete nullification of the election results on September 1st.

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Kenya’s supreme court on Friday annulled the country’s presidential election results and called for a new poll to be held within 60 days, a surprise ruling that plunged one of Africa’s top economies into a new period of uncertainty.

The bench ruled in favor of the petition filed by opposition candidate Raila Odinga, who claimed the electoral commission’s IT system had been hacked to manipulate the results. Kenya’s election commission had declared incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta the winner of the poll, which was held peacefully and lauded by international observers.

The court judgment, which said the Aug. 8 election contained irregularities and wasn’t conducted in accordance with the constitution, marks the first presidential election to be annulled in Kenya’s history.

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Kenya is rapidly becoming one of the major destinations for child sex tourism.

According to ECPAT UK, an organisation that campaigns against child trafficking, at least 30,000 Kenyan children are being exploited in the sex industry. Their report goes on to describe some of the reasons for the endemic nature of the crime:

“It is well recognised that local men and those from neighbouring countries sexually exploit Kenyan children, but sex tourists, both men and women, are also active in the country. Activists believe the rise in the sex tourism industry is the result of the weak application of the law and the corruption of some officials, which allows offenders to commit abuses against children with impunity….”

Faith-based projects with strong values predicated on the dignity of all human beings and with concern for the protection of the most vulnerable from exploitation are best placed to succeed where overall funding is limited, and governmental and local community motivation is low due to apathy, corruption, and public taboos about discussing issues of sex.

The Centre for Compassion, Rehabilitation and Development in Athi River, near Nairobi, is an encouraging example of such a project. It is part of the youth ministry programme of the Anglican Diocese of Machakos, whose Bishop, Joseph Mutungi, is concerned about pervasive indoctrination and sexual exploitation of young people in Kenya, and wants to offer an opportunity for transformation through Christ and a return to Bible-based values.

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