#FRONTROW: Why this obsession with the weddings of famous people?

Two Wambuis got married over the weekend in lovely ceremonies surrounded by friends and family. Farida Wambui wed gospel singer Daddy Owen while Wambui Kamiru tied the knot with Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore.

Both events were invite-only affairs overflowing with celebrities and prominent faces, which means there was massive interest in them among those who didn’t make the guest list.

Everyone likes a good celebrity wedding, even if lasts only 72 days, like one Kim Kardashian’s.

The weddings took place just a week after virtual pitchforks were raised under the banner of #ArrestNdii after the Saturday Nation economic columnist wrote a particularly explosive piece.

Many were scandalised that the good doctor had the audacity to suggest that Kenya be broken up into ethnic units because this experiment in nationhood had failed completely.

He was accused of fanning tribal tensions and the lynch mob demanded that he be arrested for whatever crime could be made up to keep him in detention. I’m sure they wished the Nyayo House torture chambers were still active so that Dr Ndii could be

“processed” there.

Exactly one weekend later, they had forgotten all the self-righteous patriotism and reverted to their default tribe-first thinking. Even though Farida Wambui is an accomplished woman in her own right, she was judged first by her last name.

In case you live under a rock, Wambui is a Kikuyu name for girls. It follows, therefore, that every stereotype of her people was assigned to her and projected against her husband.

All he did was wed the love of his life and invite a few friends and family to celebrate their love. Even worse for her because she has kept out of the public eye during their entire courtship.

If she had wanted to, she could have easily used her profile to boast about her impressive credentials as a scientist, academic and designer.

PATHETIC REACTIONS

The reactions to Wambui Kamiru’s wedding were even more pathetic as her new husband runs the region’s most profitable company and they have both been previously married.

Cue the dumb stereotypes about gold-digging Kikuyu women and older men who marry younger girls.

Never mind that the new Mrs Collymore is the founder a commercial art gallery in Nairobi called The Art Space. Some pathetic souls even jumped on their soapstones to rail against divorce, relying only on notoriously unreliable bloggers accounts to condemn

the couple.

All the best things about social media are also its worst qualities: ease of access, democratised opinion and instant analysis.

In the minds of the social media crowd, a woman is indistinct from her husband and will be considered based only on his standing in society.

It is inconceivable that she could be more successful than her man, especially if the area of her specialty does not attract much public attention. It is only intellectual dwarves that reduce the conversation to a bride’s complexion – team light skin for Mrs

Owen and team dark skin for Mrs Collymore.

Yeah, if you’re wondering why they were trending all day, it is because they were having such deep conversations in there. See, you didn’t miss anything at all.

Even more disturbing is this unhealthy, almost voyeuristic, interest in other people’s lives. Even if they have chosen a public life, it should be just enough to know that they got married and wish them well.

Scraping for the minutiae and commenting on them ad nauseum is beyond pitiable. Nobody should be that interested in someone else’s life, even if the subject is a prominent or public figure.

It is demeaning and downright sad that you’re wasting your bundles opining on the affairs of someone who doesn’t even know you.

The contradiction and irony of the same #ArrestNdii troops suddenly stereotyping the two Wambuis aside, the general attention paid to celebrity unions is baffling.

It is the same weekend that attention returned to TV reporters Betty Kyalo’s and Dennis Okari’s union, supposedly on its death bed.

The schadenfreude was among the worst I have seen for a group that has made happiness at someone else’s misfortune a national sport.

The speculation hit fever pitch even though the couple has not publicly commented on their union and still live together. In the brave new world of social media, a lie repeated enough times becomes a fact, however far from the truth it might be.

It is hard enough trying to have a normal life under constant scrutiny as people like Daddy Owen and Bob Collymore will testify. Few people are born ready for the all-round attention when everything you do is examined under a microscope by thousands of

people and almost always found wanting. It is a whole new level of torment when even a change of a Twitter handle is considered a break-up.

What a time to be alive!

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What’s wrong with a memorial for a lion?

Several dozen people came out on Saturday to pay their last respects to the two lions that met their tragic end in the last fortnight, Mohawk and Lemek. They were not allowed inside the Kenya Wildlife Service headquarters, so they held it outside their Lang’ata Road offices, just a stone’s throw from the only national park inside a city.

 “All those attending (a) memorial service for a lion in the name of saving our pride,” wrote Charity Kagendo on Facebook.

“I have never seen even a single person do that for KWS rangers who are killed by those animals while doing conservation. Stop the irony and spare me from this nonsense.”

There was some evident anger and mockery when NTV shared pictures of the memorial online. “Would they have attended the memorial if the guy who was attacked died? wondered Moses Musa. “Stupid.”

Some of the attendees shed tears and someone brought a guitar and did a song. They brought flowers and carried placards with “Save Our Pride” written on them. It was a moving ceremony, a fitting farewell for two iconic lions. In 80 comments on the

story, only two were supportive of the memorial. Most were either dismissive or disgusted that it happened at all.

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Booking frenzy for anticipated electric car

By Monday afternoon, 276,000 people had pre-ordered the much-anticipated Tesla Model 3 electric car. Even before the company’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, officially launched it, there was a long queue outside the company’s California headquarters.

They weren’t there to buy it, just to leave about Sh100,000 to reserve their vehicles. The firm’s Twitter handle posted a video showing people lining up for several blocks just to do that.

The first car won’t even be delivered until late 2017 but clearly, people can’t wait. The basic model will cost Sh3.5 million and will have at least 346km per charge, according to the BBC.

Musk plans to produce about 500,000 vehicles per year at full capacity. He’s already got orders for half of that just by announcing a new car. Not bad at all. Maybe someday it will be feasible to drive an electric car once the charging infrastructure is put in place. For now, just dream.

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FEEDBACK: on our inappropriate teaching methods

I concur with Larry and would like to add by asking, are we also going to change the current curriculum developers? If not, why can’t they just develop the relevant curriculum within the 8.4.4 system?

In Kenya, agriculture is the number one economic activity, yet agriculture is not taught in primary school and is optional in secondary school.

What is the point of teaching  primary school children how the Buganda Kingdom was structured while  leaving out practical subjects like agriculture, home science, art and craft, and music, which have  a

direct impact in their lives? Apart from  the teaching methods, our curriculum developers have also failed our education system. 

Nicholas Adala

Indeed, the 8-4-4 System is not to blame; it is the system of teaching that leaves a lot to be desired. Most of us have barely applied the concepts that that gave us sleepless nights when we were in school. Practicability in teaching should be enhanced to avoid building a theoretical generation of academic graduates.

Caroline Naneu 

There was some truth in your article. However, you also contradicted yourself: The way 8-4-4 is taught defines the same system since that is how it is delivered. It is an exam-driven system and, therefore,

taught with the aim of passing exams. The bottom line is that we need a different system that focuses on building the person, not beating the exam.

Richard Nyalita

As a primary school teacher in ‘70s, I taught in the 7-4-2-3 system. Teaching was fun and so was learning because there were no other apps to distract either the teachers or the students! Learning was

conducted through play.

Some of my former pupils are very successful professionals. Times have changed and the way I taught is not practical  today because then, finding jobs as professionals was not difficult.

Today the focus should be on vocational training and producing skilled personnel who can find employment as tailors, carpenters, ironmongers, and so on! Teachers have to instill ethical and moral values in

their students and the belief that there is dignity and self-respect in labour. The problem is not how we teach but what we teach!

Usha Shah

I am a teacher and what I have seen i is that school administirations and parents expect teachers to “manufacture” pupils who score above 400 marks in KCPE. We do this by drilling and making sure the

learners memorise the regularly tested areas. I went to a public primary school. I did not score the now highy valued 400 marks but I was happy in school and played more.

Unless stakeholders change the approach, teachers,  will teach the way the management wants just to keep their jobs.

Keter