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Each and every one of Kenya's MPs will soon be sitting on one of these red chairs in the newly refurbished parliament. Each chair costs 200,000 Kenyan shillings, or almost $2,500. They have been made by prisoners at the Kamiti maximum security jail. 352 chairs have been ordered, so the total cost for MPs to rest their behinds during parliamentary sessions will be 70 million Kenyan shillings, close to $880,000. I don't know how much, if any, of this fee will go to the prisoners. Kenya's speaker of parliament, Kenneth Marende, has defended the cost of the red chairs. He says Kenyan MPs need what he describes as "quality seats".

These are some photos I took on a recent visit to the Dadaab refugee camps in northern Kenya, and to some places further up towards the border with Somalia called Biyomadow and Dahabley. I told the story in From Our Own Correspondent broadcast on BBC Radio Four. You can listen to it via this link (I have also copied my script below): Dadaab and beyond The Dadaab refugee settlement in northern Kenya is the biggest in the world. Its population of more than half a million continues to grow as people flee conflict a nd hunger in neighbouring Somalia. Divided into four huge camps, it has been there for more than twenty years. Recent attacks on the camps, and the kidnapping of foreign aid workers, mean humanitarian agencies have dramatically scaled down their work. Mar y  Harper reports from Dadaab: The first thing I noticed was the smell. It hung trapped over the camps, stale and miserable. A mixture of smoke and old clothes. Of bodies in need of a good wash, in a place where water, soa...

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http://mg.co.za/article/2012-04-05-found-a-somalia-we-do-not-know/