Forest

FOREST

A forest is an extensive area of land covered with trees. Forest is faced with many problems which are, trees cut down for use in the timber industry which leads to over-exploitation. The other problem is where people are in need of land where they can do farming and stay they clear forest. There is also the major effect which is deforestation which means cutting down of trees in a forest without planting others to replace them. Defforestation leads to loss of rain fall, trees improve the climate of a place when trees loss water through their leaves they add moisture to the atmosphere which help in the formation of rain when trees are cut down there may be loss of rainfall or even no rainfall. Forest also are habitat for wild animal which attract tourism in Kenya where the country is able to earn foreign exchange from the tourist, when the forest are destroyed the animal lose their habitat making animal to migrate. All this problems can be overcome through the conservation of the forest in the following ways, the government and the non-governmental agencies should educate the people on the importance of forest and conservation of the environment it may be done through schools, media, people should also engage in public campaigns for the conservation of forest .The government and other environment groups should also give free seedlings to the public for the planting of trees.

BY; Alex Ndegwa,
MYSA Shootback

Political Violence

Political violence

For the first time Kenya has experienced one of the worst humanitarian crises in history soon after the presidential election outcome was announced everything went in chaos. Looking around me, I could see clouds of smoke in a distance. I couldn’t believe my eyes, this was not the peaceful Kenya that I grew up in.
Some people chose to let anger blind them and strike down the innocent,yet other chose to walk off with the property of other. so many families were forced out of there homes. The displaced families were packed to capacity in police station,churches,mosques and schools. Mostly women and children were facing serious shortage of food and water as all shops and supermarket remained closed. it also emerged that crime such as rape cases whereby both boys and girls were sexually molested.
Violence in the country has led to senseless loss of lives and massive looting and property. Politics should not divide us along tribal lines, lets not the so-called politics tear us apart because once that happens, it will be very difficult to put the pieces together again. Lets not go to the point of no return.
Kenya is a beautiful country; we are one nation, one country and let’s keep hope alive.
LET’S STIMULATE CHANGE AND IMPROVEMENT BEFORE THE EXTERNAL WORLD DEMAND IT.

Story by; Irene Waisonga
Photos by; Nicholas Mathenge, Peter Ndolo and James Njuguna

STREET CHILDREN

STREET CHILDREN
Some innocent children lack parental care either because they are orphaned , have single parents or both unable parents who can’t afford to cutter for their needs like shelter, food , clothing and even education. These types of children fall back to the streets to look for places to live or find food to feed.
It’s a pity seeing young children on the streets of the slums. The questions I ask myself are: What do they feed, sleep and how do they spend their time? The answers are…….
They spend most of their time at the dumping sites where they feed on the left over and food remains. They are also in search of scrap metals, plastics and other recycled materials in the purpose of selling them in order to get little amount to sustain them which normally is not easy.Since a one Kilogram of the scraps is only Kshs 7.

A bigger percentage of these street children sniff glue which they believe that its assists them forget their horrible past and also not to recognize that they are going through peoples discrimination.
After the hard work they don’t have homes to go to or places to call their homes. They do send their cold nights out on the streets or on unfinished houses even during rainy cold seasons throughout the night till the next day.

By Fredrick Ochieng, 16
Shootback