Gacimi.com

The body of a Kenyan woman, Eunice Balcombe who was found strangled at her Pewsey home in Wiltshire, UK on December 21 is to be returned to her native Kenya for the funeral.

Mrs Balcombe, 40, was born in Kenya and her parents who are both in their Eighties live in Nairobi. She has seven bothers and sisters in Africa as well.

Her family has decided that once the authorities release the body it will be flown to Kenya for the funeral.

There will, be a thanksgiving service in St John the Baptist Church in Pewsey on a date to be arranged.

One of Mrs Balcombe's closest friends, Betty Sang, who lives in Marlborough said: "The thanksgiving service will be at the church where Eunice worshipped and where her children were Christened."

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Mrs Sang said Mrs Balcombe had many friends over a wide area who would want to be at the thanksgiving service to say their final goodbyes.

Source: ThisIsWiltshire 

If Africans will not die of HIV/AIDS, poverty or civil war, there is a new cause of death that seems to be affecting Africans.

The BBC reports that about 6,000 African migrants have died or gone missing on the sea journey to the Canary Islands in 2006, according to Spanish immigration officials.

The reports say more than 31,000 migrants reached the islands in the Atlantic - more than six times as many as in 2005 and that the coastguard intercepted fewer than 5,000 of them in small wooden - and often overcrowded - boats.

The Canaries is one of the most popular destinations for Africans trying to reach Europe to escape poverty.

"We're talking about a dramatic number of dead," Froilan Rodriguez, the Canary Islands' deputy director of immigration, told Spain's Cadena Ser radio station.

Mr Rodriguez said that about 600 bodies had been picked up on the shores of the Canaries and the African mainland in the past 12 months, but the total of migrants killed had been about 10 times higher.

But who cares anyway? It looks like the solution is to introduce more curbs to try and stem immigration from Africans. The chances of legally immigrating from Africa to Europe or indeed elsewhere in the world are slim and going even slimmer. Nearly all African countries have had visa requirements imposed and for one to get a visa, there are very strigent conditions. Little wonder that more than 50% of applications from Africa are not successful. We can thus understand why many would be willing to take the enormous risks of sailing the Atlantic in a makeshift boat. A lot of these people have the false notion they would be crossing the poverty line, which is normally the driving factor in undertaking such risks anyway. 

All this can perhaps be blamed on bad leadership on the good part of Africa, a continent of vast and under utilised natural resources. But punishing the subjects for the mistakes of the leaders is just a time bomb waiting to explode. 

It looks like the EU's goal is to lock up all possible avenues, keep the African's in Africa, see no evil, hear no evil and quietly forget.