Monthly Archives: September 2012

Kenya’s Chief of Defence Forces Gen. Julius Karangi (in truck) consults senior officers on the front line as KDF troops marched on Kismayu on Friday morning

NAIROBI, Kenya Sep 28 – Kenya Defense Forces said Friday they had taken over Al Shabaab’s stronghold in Kismayu even as the Al Qaeda-linked group insisted they were incharge of the port city.

Read More: http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/2012/09/kdf-finally-sets-foot-i-kismayu/

Waititu had moved to the High Court saying that he was being condemned unheard and therefore the court should block his arrest/FILE

NAIROBI, Kenya, Sept 26 – Embakasi MP Ferdinand Waititu has failed to block his impending arrest after the High Court declined to grant him anticipatory bail.

NAIROBI, Kenya, Sept 25 – Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) jets finally hit the terrorist Al Shabaab stronghold of Kismayu in Somalia on Tuesday, destroying a warehouse and the armoury at the main airport.

Read More: http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/2012/09/kdf-finally-hits-kismayu-port/

 By FR Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ

Nairobi-Kenya

Wednesday Sept.26.2012

The first look at a new web series directed by Clara Benice, written by Nicole Amarteifio, and starring Nana Mensah, MaameYaa Boafo, Esosa Edosomwan, Edwina Adama Lebbie, and Miriam Chemmoss is a big challenge.

 The series’ creators describe it as follows: Think ‘Sex and the City’ meets Africa! Five beautiful, successful African females return to their home continent and confide about love and life in ‘An African City’! Episode 1 has debuted and you can watch it in its entirety below: Watch Episode 1 Of New Web Series ‘African City‘ (‘Sex … – indieWIRE

It is a big challenge because when we study sexuality, our own cultural concepts and expression of sexuality do not only influence who we study and what we find, our cultural lenses also influence which forms of sexual attitudes, behaviours, communication and expressions are true, real and acceptable to us.

For many people, other interpretations and expressions of sexuality that are not in accordance with their own views and beliefs of what sexuality should be are regarded as “dangerous,” are looked on with suspicious askance or are sternly disapproved.

That is why Africans don’t like talking about sex with people they barely know. Most African women will not ask for further clarification because Africans don’t talk directly about sex.

That is also why when Ylva-Maria Thompson opened the world’s first international sex school recently to teach its students how to be better lovers the school it was challenged by some conservative communities looking at it as a centre to promote promiscuity.

The Austrian International Sex School in Vienna offers ‘hands on’ lessons in seduction for £1,400 a term. The ‘headmistress’ says anyone over the age of 16 can enroll at ‘the world’s first college of applied sexuality’.

Students live in a mixed sex dormitory block where they’re expected to practise their homework. And at the end of the course, they are awarded a qualification. The new school head says: ‘Our core education is not theoretical, but very practical. The emphasis is on how to be a better lover.

Core curriculum includes sexual positions, caressing techniques, orgasm studies, anatomical features, oral sex, anal sex and creative sex. The school has already been controversial in Austria where raunchy adverts showing a couple making love have already been banned by Austrian TV. The school is already swamped with applicants.

Although the school has been condemned by some conservative communities, Swedish-born “headmistress” Ylva-Maria Thompson, who is also an artist, felt that there was a lack of applied sexuality classes around the world and wanted to start a school that specializes in this unique discipline.

According to Prof John Mbiti, for Africans sex cannot be discussed publicly because the ethics and morals of African religiosity are embedded in values, customs, traditional laws, and taboos. God is ultimately the Giver of morality and he is ultimately watching over the moral life of the community, society, and humankind.

That is why most of African communities from time to time believe that God may punish the wider society or give warnings through calamities, epidemics, drought, war, and famine, if moral order is severely broken.

That is also why for most Africans the home and the community instill moral teaching, generally from the older to the younger members, through word and example and not in class or public.

Initiation ceremonies (some of which may last several years) are the formal communal occasions for instilling moral values in young people and passing on to them important traditions. Stories, proverbs, wise sayings and taboos are employed in the teaching of morals as well as for entertainment.

Where the basic philosophy of life is “I am because we are,” it is extremely important that the two dimensions of “I am” and “We are” be carefully observed and maintained for the survival of all.

According to the Catholic Church’s traditional teaching about sex education, especially as formulated by Popes Pius XI and Pius XII, is that it should not be primarily a matter of giving explicit “information” at all, but rather it should be a matter of inculcating modesty, purity, chastity, and morality, a matter of teaching the sixth and ninth commandments.

Moreover, it should also be primarily a matter for the parents to impart privately in the home, not something to be purveyed and discussed in mixed classrooms of boys and girls at impressionable ages.

Catholic Church’s traditional teaching about sex education is opposed to formal classroom programs in sex education because it includes minute descriptions of every type of modern contraceptive.

Pope John Paul II himself, in his fine 1981 apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio on the Christian family, while re-affirming that “sex education . . . is a basic right and duty of parents,” had conceded that it could also be carried out in “educational centers chosen and controlled by them,” provided it was “carried out under their attentive guidance.”

These two Roman documents were very careful to re-affirm the Church’s traditional emphasis on parental rights and responsibilities, as well as her traditional strictures against classroom sex instruction; but they also recognized the difficulty for families today to carry out their responsibilities in today’s permissive society.

Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ

People for Peace in Africa

Tel +254-7350-14559/+254-722-623-578

E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com

Peaceful world is the greatest heritage

That this generation can give to the generations

To come- All of us have a role.