KENYAN APOLLO 11 TWIST

NO.001
THE EAGLE HAS LANDED.
Various claims have been made that the Apollo II moon landing was stage managed or faked. The skeptics are no more than opportunists who capitalized on anti government (GOP) syndrome or sentiment to mint money from illiterate anti-science audience especially Christian fundamentalists.
See the following pages for scientific explanations of the disputed facts.
http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/NOT_faked/ APOLLO HOAX DEFENCE

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NO. 002
KENYA'S OWN APOLLO 11 TWIST.
Kenya has its fair share of strange history. The landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon July 1969 coincided with the slaying of Kenya's best known Kennedyte, T.J.Mboya.

Buzz, Neil and Collins were all born same year 1930, a few months before Mboya. As they ascended to the 'heavens', T.J was 'descended' to the grave.
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See http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/astrobios.htm for Neil, Buzz and Aldrin's biographies. Alternatively, go directly to Nasa homepage.
http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.htm for Apollo 11 story from Nasa website. In the search area, enter 'Apollo 11'.
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No symmetry here you might think. But those who were old enough to suffer the political fall-out each have a story to tell.
Don't ask me: I was only 10 years old then. Better ask the born again revival Christians a.k.a 'Balokole'(i.e. the redeemed ones) or take my juvenile recall here below.
[Check/artistic license.] ============================================================


THE APOLLO 11 - T.J POLITICAL FALLOUT.
By Maina Hatchison
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One week to rocket launch, Kenyan cabinet Minister Thomas Joseph Mboya was assassinated in broad daylight on a Nairobi street. Some claim the killer was apprehended on the spot, others believe he was caught later. What followed thereafter was a virtual nightmare for Kenyan born again Christians.
I'll tell it my own way.
I have often heard tales of Kennedytes having been consumed by their own logistical Frankensteins. This talk revolves around political assassinations of the dark Sixties. Headlines and newswires were every other month inked in blood of slain activists be they political capitalists or social pacifist crusaders. There was death in America, slaying in Ireland, killing in South Africa, genocide in Vietnam not to forget the Soviet death mills of Siberia.
Newly independent African states were easily swept up in this game. Not only was it crossfire from the cold war, more likely post imperial turf wars being fought out by European colonists to tame emerging American liberalisms.
No doubt those who were assassinated were victims of covert boardroom adjustments. Others - and this is where the Kennedyte theory thrives - are said to have fallen to Uncle Sam's internal adjustment hiccups switching from the Democratic (Kennedy) era to the grand old party's Nixonian entry.
The story goes - albeit a very tall one - that known Kennedyte cronies, both in America and globally, had to be neutralized, or, silently silenced.
However, there is a claim that this culture of silent liquidation was just a continuation of a covert network perfected by Kennedy himself. It is this network that is suspected to have outgrown it’s detail to consume not only the itemised enemies of the Democratic regime, but the very architects of it's creation. Hence the Frankenstein quip.
Nobody can know for sure whether these were the motives behind the Sixties bloodbaths. What is not in dispute is that a tidy score of African Kennedytes were dealt and aced to their fate. One such was Kenya's cabinet Minister Thomas Joseph Mboya.
T.J. - as he was popularly known- was a pole positioned pro- Kennedy pretender to the high stakes of Kenyan politics. At only 39 years of age, the dashing prodigy was easily stalked down the streets of Kenya's capital Nairobi, in and out of a main-street pharmacy, and, in broad daylight, shot and critically wounded July ,1969.
He died on the spot or, on 'his way to hospital'.
Political assassins are commission artists. When a job is done, it no longer matters whether it is a clean strangle or a sprawled messy corpse. The essential part is that a target has been disposed.
Those killed are obliged to make two contributions. They ought to find it easy to make great international headlines helping spread the finality of their demise beyond speculative rumor. Second, victims are obliged to stay permanently killed.
Killers on their part make no apologies or regrets. However, they should be crafty enough to create mysteries as to whether they acted alone or were recruited by third parties. T.J's killer - a tribesman of the President's central Kenya stable - was even said to have smiled off cross-examination and final conviction to hang.
To enlightened citizens, whether the killer was hanged or not made little difference. The fact remained that Mboya had been permanently deleted from Kenya's political scene. (Today's generation might say there is no recycle bin to political assassination). T.J simply ceased to exit. He had made his date with destiny.
Citizens, as political animals, could not be expected to have swallowed hook, line and sinker such sleight of hand hoodwink. There had to be fallout; an outcry of foul play.
Hundreds upon thousands stood up to mourn Mboya. The westside quarter of Kenya's Luo enclaves went abuzz with agitation for settling scores in lieu of their fallen hero. For President Kenyatta's 6 year young government, reality was turned upside down. Talk of Cain and Abel started doing the rounds.
At only 10 years of age - a primary five grader - I couldn't claim to have mourned the minister. I didn't even know who he was. I was the typical native molded on a plastic bag of European myth, fable and legend; Horatio, Alexander-the-Great, the brave 'seven at one blow' tailor, the Spartan boy and the fox, not forgetting the biblical narratives.
It would only have been a black day for me if our noon-time heroes - Olympian athlete Kipchoge or East African safari rally driver Joginder Singh - had as much as been reported glazed in a freak accident. These were the village heroes who captured our imagination. In any case, our curiosity was held to a new kind of appeal. Our teachers were always reminding us that Americans were going to the moon.
At least I couldn't doubt this because that is what our big hi-fi Grundig radio kept talking about. News briefs had become all too predictable. Local clips were typically cantered with presidential briefs; party disclaimers, Mboya updates; then Dar-es-salam, Lagos, Pretoria with Cairo rounding off the African slot. International clips would quote London, Moscow, New York, then Saigon and, of course, Washington: Apollo 11.
Apollo 11 was launched July 16, 1969. World attention would henceforth be riveted skyward. Mother would even call us late evenings to listen to crackling 'live' feeds of astronauts talking from space. As the trio of Buzz, Neil and Collins floated in zero G, we were too young to grasp the gravity of their scientific achievements. If the killers had phased this euphoric trance as an opportune window to fade out T.J backlash, they were mistaken. In fact it helped fuel it.
In our particular village a lorry appeared. It started picking up men and women taking them to undisclosed destinations. Those who wished to go along rode the lorry by day; those that dithered were given a discreet option to ride by night.
The difference was the same. To be counted as 'having gone' was the end in itself. And lest tribesmen mistake what lorry was taking people where, a bright white sign was painted aft-top the driver's windscreen against a black background. It read; APOLLO 11!
Anyone could thus climb up the back of the lorry without uttering a single word to those one found there but with the knowledge that Apollo 11 would take you wherever it was that tribesmen were being taken.
The tempo later turned nasty. People started being jacked out of their houses at night. Men and women were walked to neighborhood rendezvous with local stand-in moguls.
We, the children, were spared the hustle but our fear grew that should our parents be targeted we might perish with them. As good Christians, we were supposed to die gallantly more so like those who had braved the Nero purge - if not buoyed by Spartan courage - whichever was the greater. I was not so sure about that. Neither were the other kids. Hence every other day almost every child had a story to tell. I had none; I simply listened.
One thing baffled us though; whereto were people being taken?
Some children said their Aunts claimed they had been 'taken' to drink 'tea'. Uncles punctuated it better saying 'they had gone' to collect 'tea leaves'. Yet others claimed there was a massive land demarcation program where every tribesman and loyal tribeswoman was to get a free title deed provided it was collected individually.
But we had to contend with that village lorry and it's rowdy choir. Theirs was a different song of improvised lyrics. With fists banging on the lorry's woodworks, they proclaimed in loud voices;
We have gone to the moon,
Have you gone to the moon,
Come brother, Come sister,
Apollo 11 will take you to the moon,
And bring you safely back home.
That last line would have made Kennedy proud. But he, like T.J, had bit the dust long before Eagle's engines started burning.
We began to see the lorry in new light. We learnt to dive under road culverts whenever we heard any engine that snarled like the dreaded 'Thames Trader' truck.
Then our english teacher, a lanky man in his late twenties, took us a step closer to defining the mystery of the moon rakers.
'Anyone ever heard of the Khu Klax Klan?', he asked one late morning after the class had watched Apollo 11 rabble itself up a distant ridge.
Primary school buffs are amazing lads. Not only did someone know about the Klan but chose to digress about Martin Luther King Jnr . King had been killed a year earlier February of '68.
'People who don't like other people start civil wars'. He said to no one in particular but with a tinge of contempt.
He'd said this looking out the window in the direction of Apollo 11. Most of us wrote down 'civilwar'. It was a new english word or words or double-word.
'Civil wars kill people needlessly' he added. There was a sad tone to his voice. I jotted down 'needlessly'. I would sure use it later in a composition.
He then asked us to write down the longest english word we knew. The bright fellows wrote 'Mediterranean' while I thought of 'Mississippian'.
He shook his head, picked up his chalk and wrote on the board in block capitals; ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTALIANISM! He read it out loud, flawlessly.
We clapped and applauded. By the time we were through with our attempts to pronounce it, he had picked up his books, duster and chalks and hurriedly left for the staff room.
I looked at my notes; Elizabeth Fremont, Khu Klux Klan, civilwar?, needlessly and antidisestablishmentarianism. He had even demanded that we learn to pronounce 'Fremont' with a french accent; 'fghe-moh..'.
I understand it was British Prime Minister William Gladstone who coined the 28 letter word. What he meant I know not. I don't even know who the Queen's prime minister was at the time Mboya got killed. But newspapers were now filing stories that made Britain's former colony look as if it was headed for a post-independence Belgian Congo encore. Some legislators thought this a national fiasco and raised the question in parliament; was the government abetting a crisis that could send the country into civil war?
Africans, that is, black Africans, for all their brotherhood, rhetoric and Diaspora solidarity, have a very low integrative quotient. Tribe, ritual and custom are what define value in many of our communities.
A 'born-to-rule' complex pervades most tribal-centric politicians who define independence within a herrenvolkist subordination of other communities: that to 'rule' and 'wisdom' can only be inherent within their tribe's values.
This could be said to be the original sin of African ruler clans, tribes and, without exception, of Kenya's central Bantu tribes. Parliament knew this. It decried the clandestine nature of these underground campaigns. Government denied these claims. But on the ground, 'tea drinking' and 'moon journeying' continued unabated.
Someone had to act, and did.
Kenya's chapter of East Africa's famed revival believers - otherwise called by their Ugandan acronym 'Balokole'- protested. These born-again evangelicals (near puritan) who preached redemption and public confession, boldly described the underground heist as not only unchristian but clandestinely evil.
Balokole insisted that a young country like Kenya could not afford to go back to the days of 'night' diplomacy. They were people of the light not darkness. They were always called upon to walk in heavenly light not chase shadows of earthly ethno chauvinism.
Rumors started circulating that prominent clergy had 'gone' to get their 'title deeds'. Slander even claimed that top balokole on the convention circuit had gone to the 'moon' and were safely back preaching salvation without intimidation.
This brought balokole into direct conflict with the ethnic merchants. Considering that a top Anglican cleric had been so visible as translator in Billy Graham's early 60's crusade in Kisumu, Kenya, the very tenet of administrator commitment to the revival spirit was being challenged.
Then newspapers reported that a prominent proponent of the evangelicals had been fatally assaulted for refusing to accompany the night monguls. His wife was critically wounded but survived to testify.
Her photograph was carried in the local dailies. Mother said we ought to know her since she was a regular visitor to one of our Aunties. I remember looking at the picture but couldn't recognise her. But again, how do you identify a face mourning a killed husband?
Balokole deaths can never be anonymous. Death is either celebrated as 'passing to glory' or condemned as damnation for those who have died without committing their lives to Christ. Matters religious and matters redemption were not synonymous.
Worse, the assailed couple hailed from the president's district. If brother could kill brother and the president's men stay aloof, (sandwiched between a distant truth that the president had a family affiliation to the Roman Catholic Church) and that the slain believer was a mainstream protestant, theorems of betrayal became most appropriate within an Irish internecine frame.
Villagers even floated that charge that if the Anglican head of the central Kenya diocese did not speak to condemn the slaying of a Presbyterian brother, then it could only imply that he had 'Nicodemusly' gone to the moon.
Others defended him stating that since he was related to the president by marriage, he could not be expected to stoop so low as to partake so petty a pledge of loyalty to a in-law kinsman.
The church however needed to talk with one voice to ally fear and slander. Since balokole operated within the protestant mainstream - unlike their pentecostal and independent secessionists - something had to give lest a new Irish twist develope to overshadow the real issue.
But what was the real issue?
The real issue was that with T.J's killing, sectionalist animosity between western and central Kenya tribes threatened civil war. This had become the moonrakers item; should war break out, every loyal central Kenya tribesperson would be called upon to selflessly defend the land against aggression.
It was this loyalty that every 'tea' partaker had to define by pledge at the risk of being counted a traitor. That reference to 'land' was also a cryptic call to protecting of perceived 'right to rule' of the land called 'Kenya' not necessarily enclave interests.
However, land politics or its defense was not Balokole priorities. They had a clear line defining secular obligation and matters heavenly. Born-agains had no room for security in worldly returns. They coined enough vernacular translations of the western classic 'This world is not my home' as popularized by the late Jim Reeves who had died three years earlier in an airplane crash.
There was no room for tea in balokole anthems. Indeed, the East African revival movement is said to have originated in Rwanda, strengthened eastward through Uganda before taking firm hold in Kenya's and Tanzania's Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist protestant communities.
By 1957, the protestant churches had witnessed so much killing worst of all the 1948 Rwanda-Urundi bloodbath between Hutu and Tutsi tribes.
Kenya had also just gone through an independence war where British soldiers decimated over 13,000 Africans with 37 whites butchered in cold blood.
Hence the balokole decried any move that would send East Africa back memory lane to more hatred, mistrust and political mischief. Singing their powerful Luganda adaptation 'Tukutenderesa' (we praise you Lord) - off the song ‘Glory to the Lamb' - they left no doubt where their loyalties lay. (They sing it, in Luganda, to this present day, 2004.)

'Oh the precious blood has washed me,
Glory glory to the Lamb.'
They went around preaching deliverance though operating within ambit of their mainstream mother churches. They did not dwell on the conflicts so common among born-again puritans or pentecostals nor decry church catechisms, doctrines, nor invoke wasteful doctrinal arguments as to the role of nominal affiliation of proselytes.
Every soul on the pew was deemed a soul to be claimed to the fold. Redemption was for each and every that so willed through forgiveness. Debates over use of church administrative symbolisms were not prime to this message of redemption.
Rather, they opted to use every open avenue to proclaim Christ the redeemer while involving themselves with the humanitarian commission of social appraisal of their localities especially school building projects. They used every opportunity given them by the administrative pulpit, home vigils and open air crusades to proclaim Christ.
Their hallmark signature became the Sunday afternoon - and mid-week Wednesday - exclusive born again meetings where they met to appraise each others' burdens through sharing of testimonies, public confessions, fellowship, sharing the 'light' and prayers. Thus they came to be known variously as the Balokole, Tukutenderesa or 'People of Burdens'.
The death of their Presbyterian brethren was one such burden. It sent their resolve to new heights.
Administrative and revival bind; nominal and committed faithful interests merged in a need to extricate the church - especially the protestant mainstream - from rumors of having been compromised by the evil hand. Unholy schemes had to be condemned and exorcised publicly by unanimous ecumenical and catholic affront. A christian rally was called.
Church history records that this meeting was held at the Anglican St. James-and-all-Martyrs cathedral situated in the sleepy town of Fort Hall - now Murang'a - 100 kilometers north of Nairobi.
This was in itself a political statement in that this was the ancestral home of the great Kikuyu tribe from whence the epicenter of oathing had spread. Over 30,000 believers attended, a crowd not even the president could command in his rare off-beat visits to the district.
What at first looked like a random revival convention or out-air meeting sent shock-waves round the country. Not only did the mainstream clergy deny all claims of compromise, they fearlessly condemned any system that could 'substitute faith in God for security in man'.
There were bitter testimonies of intimidation of believers. Brethren exchanged hushed testimonies of personal experiences. No doubt consensus had to prevail that christians have but one enemy; the evil one.
This accuser, the devil, was not short of agents. The christian part was to pray such be convicted unto repentance and forgiveness, and, eternal life.
"Stand firm rooted in the faith of your calling; suffer trials and contempt from worldly rebuff but in all things give thanks to God and claim your victory. Why. count it joy when you fall into diverse temptations....."
Tukutenderesa.....
'These are our people invoking conflict; Brothers, Sisters, these are our children at risk; our church, our fellowship, our nation. Was that what Christ pledged to us on the cross?'
John 14:27.
'My peace I give unto you'; and wasn't he called the prince of peace? We have thus but one pledge to make in return. We must heed his voice calling this land to healing and repentance.
'No more shall it be said of this land that man has substituted himself for God demanding burnt offering by day and killing brethren at night. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth we rebuke the evil that seeks to destroy our tranquil land. God be our witness here today that we proclaim victory in Christ Jesus; there is no more King , or slave; Jew or Gentile. We are all one; in Christ Jesus'.
Tukutendereza...
My mother attended the meeting. She came back home to witness to those who had not made the trip. It was now clear that the movers and shakers of the political center had no choice but to concede their project vain and untenable. Going against a vocal and defiant church was no longer a political option.
Local radio started giving more prominence to the far abroad items from the ever volatile Saigon - Washington quagmire. It must be at this time that the names Henry Kissinger and Gromyko gained prominence.
Moon talk fizzled.
And so 'Apollo 11' disappeared for a new coat of paint. Young as I was, I knew that the storm had passed. But I could not lie to my self; the fear had been real.
And with it's passing , I had to rediscover my former soul of introvert solitude. In everyone's word of honour, consensus had decreed that bygones be bygones; in Jesus' name.
I went back to my East African Safari rally fair.
Traditionally, Kenya's easter weekend is - was - rally time. The FIA calendar had put paid to sentimental local timing. Joginder Singh let me down. One Edgar Hermann navigated by Hans Schuller made it two in a row before Hannu Mikola and Gunna Palm made history in 1972 giving overseas drivers a first win in a Ford Escort RS. No more TJ headlines. In it's place were bold headlines heralding a rhetorical question; 'What will the Ford men say?'
I don't know what they told the world. All I recall is that somehow nobody was telling anyone anything meaningful. Village life amazingly went back on cue to the rhythms of God's wonderful sunset and sunrise.
Night times, I would still look up the sky and remember the real Apollo sojourns. Sadly, on 7th December 1972, Americans sent up Apollo 17 and proclaimed to the world there'd be no Apollo 18. Astronauts Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt returned safely to an epoch ender splash-down 19th December 1972.
That same year I sat my seventh grade, passed to gain that most coveted high school status where I later joined the astronomy club.
And likewise it came to pass that three years on from the day TJ's fatal bullet was fired, the field simply went mute!
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P.S 1: There is a famous girls school from the Mount Kenya region which has the Apollo 11 painted on its port lower front in bold text aka AL 27 3U.
P.S 2: There are some caves excavations in Namibia which were discouvered around the same time Apollo 11 landed on the moon. They were aptly named for that particular ’lunatic’ feat. The paintings found therein were brought in from somewhere else but are said to have been etched around 25,000BC - 23,000BC.