Daughter of Pastoralists

Techie. Author. Herder. Dirt is my Prozac. Living life intentionally.

[Daughter of Pastoralists @Rarin]

My children’s book is now available on Amazon.

https://t.co/DBGrpLBTma

[Lou ProVoques @LouSteinbeck]

Consumptive Wildlife Utilization (CWU) conversation re-opened in Kenya, 50 years after Sessional Paper No. 3 of 1975 flopped.

From an African perspective, consumptive wildlife utilisation refers to the responsible, culturally-embedded, and ecologically attuned ways in which communities harvest wildlife for food, livelihood, ritual, or ecosystem balance - grounded in the understanding that humans are part of the same land-family (umhlaba, ũtũ, botho, Ubuntu), and that use is governed by respect, restraint, and ancestral knowledge.

In this view:
*️⃣ The emphasis is not on extraction, but on continuity.
*️⃣ The relationship is not exploitative, but reciprocal.
*️⃣ Wildlife is not a resource in isolation, but a member of the ecological community.

What CWU has traditionally meant in African societies:
*️⃣ Subsistence harvesting guided by seasons, migration cycles, and clan taboos
*️⃣ Selective hunting by skilled community members entrusted with knowledge
*️⃣ Use for ceremony, medicine, and rites of passage
*️⃣ Community-regulated quotas long before the word “quota” existed
*️⃣ Taking only what is needed, and only when needed
*️⃣ Ensuring the species' regeneration through indigenous ecological rules

This is fundamentally different from the Western conservation narrative, whereby CWU is often framed as:
❌ a “management tool,”
❌ a monetised activity, or
❌ a regulated licence system.

African cultures understood for centuries that the land is not owned - it is borrowed from descendants, and therefore use must always leave abundance behind.
https://t.co/pBo0Uge1Py

[Leah Goodridge @leahfrombklyn]

In case you haven’t heard:

Women are suing Pfizer in a class action lawsuit because the birth control shots (Depo-Provera) have been found to cause brain tumors.

1 in 4 women use this birth control. And Black women are prescribed it at double the national rate.

[Daughter of Pastoralists @Rarin]

@gathara So we’re leaning into thufu na gwache

[Daughter of Pastoralists @Rarin]

You know the world’s gone bonkers when people are buying rocks from #anthropologie ROCKS 🪨 I can’t 😩

[Daughter of Pastoralists @Rarin]

@MikeSonko Speaking of football I need 3 tickets to the Zambia vs kenya game on Sunday. I heard they have all been bought by politicians. @MikeSonko niuzie tu tatu, please.

[Daughter of Pastoralists @Rarin]

@teenytinysuz I needed this today 🤣🤣🤣

[Muhanuuzi @dorah_muhanuuzi]

If polygamy is permitted in a legal system, then fairness and equality demand that polyandry (where one woman marries multiple men) should also be legal. We cannot claim to respect freedom of choice or cultural diversity if those freedoms are only extended to men.

[Daughter of Pastoralists @Rarin]

@lenna_kibet Some people should not be allowed to keep even a cat. What kind of no common sense is this? Jinga sana! & folks need to stop tethering cows all day everyday! Normalize untethering cows

[Daughter of Pastoralists @Rarin]

@koin_memusi 😢

[Daughter of Pastoralists @Rarin]

@RudoManyere I buy 3 local books before my us trips, just for this purpose. I hope I’ve literally enriched a few people in the Midwest 😅

[Daughter of Pastoralists @Rarin]

@DefiantLs 9/10 maybe even 11. Any sign of red, I start to gag

[Daughter of Pastoralists @Rarin]

@iamkathambi Putin has that orange buffoon by the balls.

[Daughter of Pastoralists @Rarin]

@UjuAnya 🤣🤣 is that baby powder? I’m cackling..

[Daughter of Pastoralists @Rarin]

@Joe__Bassey Nope. AI got it wrong

[Daughter of Pastoralists @Rarin]

@nodealfornature This doesn’t mean they don’t care or empathize

[Daughter of Pastoralists @Rarin]

@nodealfornature To each his/her own. We can’t generalize though. I know for a fact that someone deep in the village will probably not even know where Palestine is, leave alone have an opinion. They have their own every day struggle & likely a challenge to know what’s happening elsewhere

[Daughter of Pastoralists @Rarin]

@nodealfornature This looks staged. Having a bunch of minors hold signs for Israel is far from the message that Maasai are for Israel. Total BS!

[Daughter of Pastoralists @Rarin]

@josephejir0 @UjuAnya Aunty Unju no tire oh 🤣

[Daughter of Pastoralists @Rarin]

@AnganaKeith As nomad, this has me cackling so hard 🤣🤣🤣

[Farida Bemba Nabourema @Farida_N]

The Untold Chaos of Organizing the Africa Bitcoin Conference
@AfroBitcoinOrg

Now that the celebration of this conference is behind us, I would like to share one of the most unpleasing experiences of curating this event for three consecutive years on a continent where Bitcoin had, at first, one of the worst reputations due to people getting scammed through so many other cryptos and then blaming it on Bitcoin.

For three years, I have kept quiet publicly about the challenges and difficulties we’ve faced, but I think I’ve reached the limit of my capacity to keep things to myself. In this thread, I will share the behind-the-scenes experience of organizing this conference year by year, one of the most difficult and draining things I’ve ever done.

Year 1
We started this conference in 2022 when Bitcoin prices had dipped, and people were making jokes about Bitcoiners. Our journey began in Ghana. Out of respect for the government, we decided to approach their officials and extend an invitation. We were told that one minister was interested in delivering the opening remarks, so we included him in the program.

On Day 1, they didn’t show up. We were later told that he and his cabinet were in Qatar watching the World Cup, and were still there two weeks after their team had already been eliminated.

The only government agency that showed up at the first conference was the Cybercrime Unit. Yes, because when they heard “Bitcoin,” they thought “scammers.” This was a conference that brought some of the best tech entrepreneurs from across the world to discuss a technology capable of fixing our broken, antediluvian financial systems, but hey, it is what it is.

The first person we approached with the idea of holding the African Bitcoin Conference was another African developer known in the Bitcoin space. He said he was 100% in, and we trusted him with registering a company. The first grant we received for the conference was sent to him, and he vanished. He stopped attending team meetings and refused to return the funds.

The event company we engaged to handle everything, production, stage, venue, vendors, etc., took their first advance payment, kept delaying service, made endless promises, and delivered absolutely nothing.

One company we approached offered to be the top sponsor. We decided instead to go with another African company that wanted to be the lead sponsor. For months, we sat in meetings with them. They complained about everything. We hired a media firm and began spending funds we didn’t have. They claimed our ads weren’t enough, then they insisted on insurance to protect them in case COVID canceled the event.

We approached every insurance company with policies covering Ghana, and none offered such a policy. They audited everything, from our expenditures to our planned costs, and told us we didn’t need to feed attendees at the conference, which is unthinkable in this region.

Then, two months before the conference, exactly two months, they told us they didn’t have the money.

I pulled together a team to organize the conference, made up of young people I had worked with in other spaces, people I knew had a great work ethic. They had zero knowledge of Bitcoin and zero understanding of what we were doing, but I knew I could teach them about Bitcoin in days or weeks. What I couldn’t teach people was integrity, work ethic, and values.