Women and Burdens, The Day Turkish Women Beat Gîkûyû Women

Oh come on!!! I just had to bring this to my blog. I found this picture of Turkish women struggling with burdens on their backs and i said to myself, atumia! (women in Gîkûyû), we have been beaten here.

Turkish women struggle with heavy burdens as they walk to their homes in Sirnak province near the border with Iraq. >>

A while back i came across this page; Freeloading African Women, read Gîkûyû women and i thought we were on top of things when it came to burdens.

¨The burden might be wood, corn kernels, corn meal, vegetables, live animals, water, or cooking oil, but it is bound to be heavy, and it is usually suspended behind their backs, supported by a strap which runs across their foreheads The Gîkûyû females are known to carry up to 70% of body mass with their head bindings: if this does not impress you, feel free to place a barbell or large stone equal to 70% of your weight on top of your head - and then attempt to walk in a relaxed and carefree manner for 10 kilometres or so, as the Gîkûyû women often do!
¨
Away from localization, i found this pic and thought, Waooooh, you mean we have stronger backs out there!

Considering desert margins occupy about 54.4% of the land area of Turkey, the women must be quite ¨freeloading¨

Gîkûyû Locale

I want to start a small project on a Gîkûyû locale. Would be glad to here if anyone has created this before or can refer me to one.

A Locale is a set of parameters that defines the user's language, country and any special variant preferences that the user wants to see in their user interface.

Related links:

1. Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages
2. Internationalization and localization
3. IETF language tag
4. Language Subtag Registry
5. Common Locale Data Repository
   

We Are Loosing Our Local Languages

You will agree with me that most youth have dilute versions of their mother tongue languages. Our local languages are even more threatened today with digitization as almost all information gets recorded or stored in English. Further, while i was taught Gîkûyû at home, i have not taught anyone this language and i am not very confident that i can do this very well.

Of course languages keep developing and this is carried on from generation to generation. So what is happening is that we are loosing our local languages because instead of enriching them, the languages are getting diluted. Its is very common today to find young children learning French through the parent´s efforts than it is to find them learning Gîkûyû for that matter. I associate oneś mother tongue with identity and thats one reason i would like to support my language.

I was searching for a comprehensive Gîkûyû dictionary through the net but i did not come across any. For this i am almost certain that i cannot find a English-Gîkûyû dictionary, Gîkûyû-English dictonary or a Gîkûyû technology glossary.

I just read that i can find a English-Gîkûyû dictionary in local book stores, i will endeavor to check. I hope to start a small project towards ensuring that the rich Gîkûyû is not lost as generations pass. I urge others to support all other local languages.

Keep checking..

Innovation

Innovation stirs me. Innovation can take many forms, review this page.

This morning i woke up to some interesting news. I love technology business news. M$ buys 1.6% stake in Facebook

The stake price of $240 million, should be more than enough to pay for Facebook's ambitious expansion plans until the privately held company goes public.

Facebook is an innovative online social networking site born in a university dorm room by Mark Zuckerberg.

I grapple with many ideas and i think its the high time i analyzed the success stories of some of these technological concepts of innovation. Its only fair to learn from those who have succeeded. One point though is that there are lots of chances for this in Africa.

I personally feel that this will best happen with respect to the widespread use of mobile devices especially the phone. Anyone thinking about services on the mobile platform should probably pay keen attention to the OpenMoko GNU / Linux based open software development platform.

Innovations round the web and mobile platforms are a sure bet for success. Of course two questions that any innovation will need to answer is relevance and adaptability and you are sure to win. That is where great challenges will emanate at the same time great success stories depending.

Lets explore and see how our ideas qualify... happy innovation

As I Started Out

Today is 10th October 2007 and in Kenya this is a public holiday. I was just going through my mails and i get this email that said ´Using Blogs To Attract Attention (Without Having Your Own)´.

I was recently chatting with my lawyer and he said to me, come on, ¨get yourself a blog¨. I gave it a thought and concluded there was no good reason not to start one.

Now these two incidents led me to blogspot.com and immediately started creating one. I spend at least 15 hours daily on the Internet and kept postponing this action but i guess i will have a great way to remember this public holiday.

Getting a name for my blog was not easy. I tried a few English names that i liked but were not available. Then i rushed to one of my shelves and retrieved a title ¨1000 Kikuyu Proverbs¨, got a few ideas but only Google could sort me out. I looked up for a Gîkûyû glossary and found one that worked.

So what is rugongo, rugongo is a Gîkûyû term meaning ¨A ridge lying between two rivers in Gîkûyû country. Ridges were often formally recognized territorial units sharing similar social obligations.¨

I feel a bit odd at this point, i am a Gîkûyû/Kikuyu and had lots of trouble getting an id for my blog in my mother tongue. Now i hope to use this blog to discuss my thoughts and promote this language which is extremely rich. Only through this can i better my now very diluted Gîkûyû..

Time to break now as i find out over the days how well i can keep up on this journey.. I have heard

¨Having your own blog is hard work. Not only do you have to create it, but you also have to market it. People won't read it otherwise. And that's partially why 60% of bloggers have not updated their blogs in the last 60 days. They often don't properly market their blog and they end up talking to themselves. T.... BY: Elge Premeau¨