Blog post 1: Posted on 26th September 2017

During my summer break, I managed to go back to Kenya on a global volunteering. There I wanted to re-experience the history of my country. I visited the capital city, Nairobi where they have samples of the country’s rich heritage; from the cradle of man to various memorial parks. I managed to visit a couple of historical and tourist attractions like the Wilder beast movement at the Maasai Mara, the Ruins of Gedi at the coastal area. By the time I was heading back home I was pretty in touch with my roots.

Throughout the entire trip, I took not one but numerous pictures and selfies for memory and it didn’t matter if it was in a memorial park or out on the streets and so was the case with other youth.

Autobiography Scholar, Kate Douglas article on Youth, Trauma and Memorialization she introduces a new version of witness called selfie unlike the traditional mode. She expounds how traditional mode of witness was morally acceptable unlike the new type where principles and morals of a certain society are to be questioned or is it the influential hand of technology to the millennial.

In this article she highlights the genre of selfie which includes the situation in which it is used and where plus the audience that it is addressing. Millennial’s use selfie to show friends what is going on in their life. The way a selfie is taken determines which audience will view it.

The current generation have disregarded the respect on history by taking selfies. The Nairobi War Memorial park which is a burial site for unidentified soldiers from United Kingdom, South African, and East Africa who died during the Second World War. Thus when the new form of witness is used in such a place it is considered as offensive and thus ethics and morals are put into question.

Work Citation

“Youth, trauma and memorialisation , Douglas Kate: The selfie as witnessing”                            Memory Studies, 2017: 1-16

” Nairobi War Memorial Cemetery.” Commonwealth War Graves Commission

https://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/2021200/nairobi-memorial/