Transcendence

Sometimes what goes on in our minds makes the world seem like a convoluted maze, dark and filled with eerie sounds. It should be better, we think. It should be, except it isn't. Because life never follows a script. We do create scripts right inside our heads, consciously or subconsciously. And when it does not go to plan, the world turns dark soon after sunrise. And we long for ephemeral things that will transcend our deep-seated worries. We binge watch movies, binge eat, and for some, binge on alcohol. 

It could be better. But its so much worse than we envisioned. Yet somehow, it seems the situation is out of control. It seems that our guardian angels have taken a nap, or threw in the towel concerning our cherished dreams. We  want to blame someone for the decisions we made. The truth is that it is far much easier to blame someone or anything to make the sorry situation seem a little better. We are us. Things like this should not be happening to us. But the reality is that it is happening. And it seems that it is out of control. 

Mkubwa's Consignment

The consignment belonged to a ‘big man’

They said ‘mkubwa’ as though he is omnipresent

They called him with reverence only reserved for gods

And when the consignment was found to be contaminated –

Not just contaminated but was full of carcinogens

We protested vehemently, braced teargas and water canons

Because ‘mkubwa’ is our man – and saying anything bad about him

Makes us sufficiently threatened

When the big man was arrested the other day

We felt our idling days lacking flavour, and we hit the streets

How can they not see that is perfectly normal to steal money –

Neither your mothers – but belonging to sick mothers and children

How obtuse can the law be? Or the law enforcers

Who cares when mothers die delivering babies

Who gives a damn even when it takes several days to

The nearest hospital

They arrested us too, them morons

We went to keep ‘mkubwa’ company

They kept him in a self-contained cell

While we communed with our shit, and the stench from

'unbathed' bodies,

We ululated when we saw guards taking chicken to his cell

We ululated even more when we saw ladies –

Our wives, sisters and friends – line up to ‘know’ mkubwa

He is ours, we muttered while eating half-cooked meals

While he ate the best, including our hopes – yet we didn’t care

Things to do before 8 o’clock in the morning

It is saddening, that nowadays these socialites are not releasing nudes, or some wannabe socialites have theirs leaked. We the people, who do not have blue blood coursing through our veins have to contend with the frustrations, sometimes drinking cheap liquor when those bets go through, just to have better conversations with our demons.

Because we have surrendered to our fates, being just statistics every five years and sometimes ten years, we hold on to the hope that it may be so for the next fifty years, although it largely depends on people’s plans. Personally I plan to live right to the edge of life, all factors kept constant, and dying peacefully at state lodge in Mombasa, preferably at the gate.

For people like us, now that politics has cooled down, weekdays tend to be long drawn and extremely boring. So boring that we begin reading terms and conditions on websites and even manuals to things just in case our fates are hidden there. but the words written there are a bunch of unintelligible phrases which state things such as: the terms and conditions are subject to change, without any notice, as we deem fit. Of course they have to explain how ‘we’ is used and ‘user’ which in this case is the person who may not have time to read the instructions. That’s how we fill our weekdays.

You should be wondering how we use our mornings. As people rise and go to the various places of work, which we know beyond any reasonable doubt, that they hate with passion, we too have things we do before 8 o’clock every single day. We hate the boredom too, so we have to practice hating it even better than those who hold on to jobs they completely do not like. Just in case they wake up one day and decide to steal the printer, and in the process get summarily dismissed, we have to practice how to fill these positions through the following ways:

Hitting the snooze button

We have discovered, through relentless scientific research that the origin of the snooze button is in nature. It began with the cockerels. Depending on the cockerel’s health, and sometimes the availability of hens (the research established this) it crows endlessly after five am, at completely irregular intervals until the cockerel can spot at a hen to mount. What do we do now that we are in the city? We have phones that can act as cockerels. So we do set our alarms at 6 am in the morning and snooze until we doze off and wake up at midday. Thereby we proceed to get something to eat and continue with our research to establish how long someone can live if they sleep for approximately 19 hours.

Checking on what’s going on social media

On occasions that we feel sufficiently philanthropic, we log into social media platform where we contribute to likes and double taps on slay queens photos, as well as they clichéd philosophical musings when some sponsor somewhere drops dead due to heart failure. We condole them with messages such as ‘you deserve every bit of misfortune,’ although we are smart enough not to post them. We also know that people who have jobs, as part of their job descriptions, log into social media sites to check how the lives of those high school or campus classmates are faring. Often, it’s a girl, they’ll be posting pictures about their times in Diani, or some other exotic places especially where politicians are discussing matters of national concerns such as vetting nudes.

Why feminism is a big farce

If you take a brisk walk into the distant past, you will meet your great grandfather obliviously enjoying the setting sun outside a newly built hut. It is crisp. In mint condition. It belongs to his third wife, or fourth, or fifth. Does it matter? Absolutely not. He has on a leopard skin, covering just his loins. Children play around naked, as the older boys drive the animals in their respective shades. The day is breaking.

During those days, there was order and everybody had their distinct roles. The women bore children and reared them; the men protected and provided food for the family. The children on the other hand concentrated on being children, until they came out of age, where the boys got circumcised and became men, and the girls got married off. Occasionally, sacrifices would be offered to appease the gods when a villager commits a serious offence. Other than that, nobody lacked anything.

Then the white man comes, inspired by the conquests of Alexander the Great back in time. He declares that Africa and Africans are indeed backward. The industrial revolution had depleted their resources and they were out and about shopping for them. They took lands which were available in abundance, owned them and later sold them to Africans. Isn’t that one big cruel joke?

As they grabbed lands, they preached of a new god, who was more powerful than the rest; a god that towered above the African gods who had guided and protected Africans through bouts of diseases. Generations and generations came through various calamities, scathed but undeterred because the gods wouldn’t let them. But this was the hallmark of primitivity, as if Africa and Africans just came into being. Schools came up to teach Africans new ways of life, and make them like the whites, so that they could homogenize the world and create a market for their goods in the long run. Like darkness gradually disappears with dawn, and eventual rising of the sun, Africans abandoned their gods, their ways of life and adopted the new one, that would see them fight and gain independence.

The white man realizes that he made a mistake in bringing education to Africa. It would be nice if they just remained primitive. Then they brought AIDS to make Africa close to permanently subservient to the west. When we fight, they turn a blind eye, take out oil if there’s any or just leave us fighting to our ends as with Somalia. They don’t need charcoal, which apparently is the leading export of Somalia.

Because of the dwindling resources, and white man’s knowledge, things got tilted. Women began demanding more and more things. They were no longer content staying in the kitchen, and ruling it. Just like Alexander the Great, they were also keen on expanding their territories. And so they began using fancy terms such as ‘equality’ and ‘empowerment,’ aided by another term ‘marginalized groups.’ Men deliberated and came up with insightful conclusion which was ‘why not?’ FGM came tumbling down, although not completely. Women now wear suits and high heels, to attend meetings in Geneva and new York,  where they discuss at length the effects of FGM, whereby they are given some funds by donors. As a matter of principle these women come to purchase houses in high end neighborhoods and roll out in luxury SUVs, while some girls still get mutilated in Marsabit and Pokot.

More and more women are breaking the proverbial glass ceiling. Even with this kind of empowerment, women are still stuck with the traditional role of the man, that he is the sole provider. He pays the rent, educates the kids, and pays the house help even if he earns less than the wife (in case she chooses to remain a wife). When calamity strikes, as it sometimes does, and the man loses his job or is struck by a disease, the next thing you hear is the woman complaining about how he has suddenly become a burden just a month into the situation. The man, mind you, has been footing bills unflinchingly for the last decade, but then one month it becomes burdensome. She wants out. She reaches the media, just in case a couple of anonymous people will support her decision. A month later she is out leaving us with the question: what’s the need of women empowerment if they can’t raise a man to his feet when defeat is on repeat?

Enter the constitution. A two third gender majority. It is not achievable in polls, so they create an extra seat for the women, just for women to compete against each other just in case we end up with a man. The crafters of the constitution did not think this through. They were obsessed with gender rule, not knowing that the common voter doesn’t have a clue what that means. For that, we may have to pay by nominating a whopping close to fifty women to the house, just to attain the constitutional threshold. As far as I am concerned, the women want to remain marginalized forever, where they will speak forever about empowerment and equality, and in the process earn a few free seats to parliament, and of course not take any share of responsibility whatsoever in an union.

A picture of Kenya in twenty years

It’s an assignment. One of those you will wait until it is due the next day then you hurriedly type down your thoughts, save and head to the printer, a normal day of someone yearning to get the paper and get done with school. But not this one, however. It requires you to picture yourself in the next twenty years, assuming you plan to live right into the edge of life (old age) and die peacefully in your sleep. Also, you will have to picture how to change the world as an intellectual too assuming that there are things around you that need change too.

It is easier to picture about one’s life in the next twenty years. For me, I intend to have completed at least two PhDs, should have had a family housed in a home that no one checks in every month to demand rent, a car to ferry my family around as well as myself. Nothing much, but a simple life devoid of wars with the ecosystem.

But how about the society? Of course every right thinking member knows that the crucial element of the society, which is politics, is wrong and needs to be fixed as soon as possible. In the next twenty years it is more likely that we will still be voting against tribal lines as opposed to ideologies, still battling corruption as opposed to hunger and diseases…..so much. Even then, it is more likely that a high number of Kenyans shall have at least attained college education.

It is quite sad that learned people are lauding blatant abuse of the rule of law, even when they are lawyers who should know better. Having a conversation with a university student comes with great risk such as brain hemorrhage when it comes to important matters such as the direction of our country. Personally, an ideal country should be one that feeds its people, provide adequate and quality healthcare services to its people, equal and adequate opportunities for everyone, fidelity to the rule of law, justice and fairness, education and infrastructure. None of these things ever come out of a university student.

The country has slowly entrenched a system where laziness is glorified, theft cheered upon, lack common sense enshrined in peoples DNA. The leaders have been active proponents of these backward ideals. Once in power, it is almost certain that their IQ rapidly races to a single digit. Their utterances make one cringe with shame, questioning if one should actually be proud of their country or not.

The youth are the ones who should be at the forefront in changing the ideals, just as others before them did when championing for democracy. It’s a wonder that one studies critical thinking as a core unit, studying the arguments of Socrates without examining their own lives. Instead, they bury their heads in gambling websites and scream about ‘mtu wetu.’ Such a shame.

In the next twenty years, Kenya should not be grappling with the same issues that it has  since independence. The youth should be at the forefront in ensuring that it is better than they found it.  If you are twenty years old now, in the next twenty years you will be forty and probably with a kid, a teenager perhaps, and you may be wondering where to take them next. If you don’t prepare the world for them today by demanding the best from yourself, then your neighbor, then the government, then of course you will find yourself swimming in the murky waters that you prepared yourself. 

Horrible Bosses

A while back, we hear about auditions for a radio host at Capital FM. People who were hopeful streamed in to try their luck. Then after everything has been done, hopefools sweated out, the winner was announced. And it was one of the judges. Or something they called a coach. It is humiliating that you wasted your precious time which you could have used to do meaningful things such as watch porn, or more importantly lying around for no reason except because oxygen is free and that plants need a constant supply of carbon dioxide.

This very despicable, extremely diabolic act brings me to a movie I watched way back. One dude was made to work from 6 am in the morning for a promotion. For six months. The boss would give him shit for being two minutes late. On the day of promotion, the boss sauntered into the meeting room fifteen minutes late. He gives him fresh shit, which he of course attributes to his drinking problem.

 “I have finally decided who is going to be our new senior VP of sales.” The boss begins. “He is right here in this room,” he dude who had been working his ass off adjusts his coat and winks. “It’s me.” The bombshell drops. “I am going to break down the office that would have been the VPS and create one huge enormous office. However, I am going to be entitled to only 85% of the additional salary. And that is self-sacrifice people,” the boss concludes.

This brings me to the question of jobs, especially for the jobless people out there who are overly qualified. One day a job advert will be posted on the numerous Whatsapp groups you belong. The qualifications fit you perfectly well. You go about assembling all the papers that are needed, travelling up and down, and agonizing over the cover letter. But all this is a mere formality. The company in question already has a new employee, even though he or she may have studied plumbing or better yet nature interpretation.

I may not be a staunch religious person but this people make me wish that all the things they talk about hell are true so that these people can be punished forever. I mean why subject people to a meaningless process? Why even short list them and ask them to go for an interview which already has a preselected candidate? Fill that position without bothering people. 

I WON’T CALL AGAIN BUT IN CASE YOU DO.......

It has withered, the flower that once bloomed at the thought of you, or your name. The scent that worshipped at your feet, that flapped its wings upon your subtle orders,  no longer lingers and the stench of its decay hangs in the air like a fresh coat of paint. I am no longer charmed by your smile, the one I thought the sun vainly tried to ape. Your laughter that echoed ever so beautifully in the hollow innards of my brain won’t even inspire my poetry, not anymore.

I am tired conjuring up excuses to meet you, following up on my own promises and shit like that. I do not have the energy anymore. I don’t want to think one day I have the courage to tell you how you kept my nights alight and how, listening to your voice, gave me a sensation, a churning in my stomach. I wanted to love you. I wanted to have every piece of you, every strand of your hair. I wanted to protect you from the world, but I am no hero-I can’t even save myself.

And one, I am tempted to think,….one day you might call, it could be ten years from now or probably even never. In case it never comes, I’ll flip through these words and imagine like it happened, like I did tell them to you one bright day. Should you call and be tempted to ask me why I am so quiet not even a word of hi, here’s what I’ll tell you or might tell for I’ll probably lie I was busy. For ten years. Yes. Ten even years. It’s possible.  

I’ll tell you that I tried to pluck courage from the depths of my soul, the untainted parts but it was too dark in there. I’ll tell you that I hoped your smile, would be enough to light it up but it just wasn’t. I’ll tell you how I couldn’t bring myself to tell you I wanted you, how my heart yearned for you. I’ll tell you I was a coward. I’ll tell I was my mother’s favourite coward.

I’ll tell you that I have done a bit of soul searching. And I realized I hate myself too much to ever love anyone deeply. I’ll tell you that I have never really trusted people completely and I believe deep down them they are self-absorbed individuals who have no regard to how others feel about them.  I’ll tell you I found out that there’s too much compromise in a relationship and you give up too much. Trouble is I didn’t have anything to give up, I don’t have anything to compromise on yet. May be never, I can’t rule out that fact. I had poetry, and I’ll tell you how I couldn’t stand the staleness of the words that stared at me if they were meant for you.

**

Its everyone’s sacred longing to belong somewhere, to belong to a people who appreciate you and who make the world more appealing, like an orchard, bustling with bees and blossoming flowers, where you seek temporary refuge upon hitting a turbulence. Everybody has that place but I have never accepted mine. I live in denial. I live like I don’t belong anywhere. Where would I take you when I don’t belong anywhere?

I am in a prison of some sorts, a self-created prison. It’s here that I engage in bouts of self-loathe. It’s here that my confidence waned and I have tried several times to recapture it. It’s here that plenty of times my dreams have flickered brightly but often oscillate between brightness and pitch black darkness. I love the darkness more, no one can see my obsessions.

Lastly, it’s my prayer the paths you take on this world will cross with someone you are compatible with. I pray that you have the wisdom to distinguish between good people and bad people. I pray that your paths avoid people that will bring you misery. I pray that you will find happiness wherever you go.

And I do pray that I touched your life in some way as small as it might have been. I pray too, that I didn’t touch you as significantly to warrant mourning upon my demise. 

Open letter to the proponents of Uthamaki

I trust that you are enterprisingly well, in health and business. I am fine too, except that I am heavy with thoughts as we approach the election year. I know you are gathering your number, even from unspeakable places (we’ve heard of your ancestors coming back to vote), as mass voter registration kicks off. That’s not a big deal, for you know the value of numbers.

What bothers me the most is the fact that you are overzealous about the presidency. Why are you are so apprehensive that a leader from another tribe, especially the lake region, may usurp to the presidency? A self-righteous man, of upright moral character doesn’t have a reason to be worried. Kenya belongs to all of us. The recent attempt by the president to alter history of our heroes worries the crap out of me. Tell me, what is it that you are sacredly scared of? Tell me in a language a toddler in your region so understands, that they spew hatred to others.

In all honesty, we love your enterprising spirit. And you, in the numbers scattered all over Kenya, speaks volumes on your role in uplifting and promoting the economy of our beloved country. Your unity as well is what the Luhyas should readily emulate.

Born out of the need to fend off political scavengers, UhuRuto bromance blossomed and strolled to the house on the hill, with their youthful digital swagger and vigour. The duo boisterously claimed that ‘they’ were aiming at locking them out, or rather sought to benefit from their downfall, which brought two fiercely antagonistic tribes together, The Kalenjins and The Kikuyus. Will you stand by this friendship up to 2022 assuming that UhuRuto rides through the NASA storm? Or will your prove that this was just but a friendship of convenience?

As your leaders marshal you to register in mass, does it ever occur to you that, by trying to keep ‘the other’ from ascending to power, you support plunder of public resources? Your leaders exercise blatant disregard for you as lowly, poverty stricken people, brainwashed by Uthamaki bullshit. What do you gain from it? I can bet my ass its nothing, except willfully watching your people die from the biting doctor’s strike, as you proudly exclaim “wacha mtu wetu akule!!” 

I know it’s futile to attempt to make you see beyond your narrow tribal prism. Be glad though that you are not alone in this. You have Kalenjins, the Luos, the Kambas….pretty much everyone is tribal, so much so that Aden Duale can claim that the results of the presidential elections will have been concluded once IEBC releases the voter register in March. But there’s something beyond power that grips you, that blinds you. You need protection from what? Does the constitution favour other tribes that you so crave and need protection from your own?

As a parting shot, we want a Kenya that has equal opportunities for everyone regardless of their ethnic and social backgrounds. We want a Kenya where everyone is united by their unique differences. We want a Kenya where no one is scared if they are doing the right things.

Of Silly Women Who Think They Are A Gift To The Men

Ladies, picture this. You have brains but you’ve found it irrevocably stressfully to use it. As you walk around town you spot a woman in a sleek German ride or the famous Range Rover (Sports or Vogue). You want to be her. You discard reason (the little you had) and write a silly post about how Kenyan men are silly, thinking they are the sort of gifts to you. The truth is we are, some of us aren’t. The ilk you get attracted to doesn’t give you the right to bash the many us that are ideal, the epitome of manly perfection, who understand the position the society bequeaths to them.

Hey lady, don’t blame every other male for your ability to attract semi-men, the men who realized they have dicks like, ‘look here mate, I got a dick! What am I supposed to do with it?’ and his mate as dickly as he is replies, ‘women. Use it on women, they like it.’ Bingo! Off he goes thinking it’s the gift to you, brainless woman. He learns what you love the most, easy life. He gives it to you. Sooner you are complaining of how he treats you when you are the one who did set the standard. And of course he doesn’t recognize you in the morning and he surprised just as you permanently are. Don’t blame us.

The modern woman. God apparently created you when in high spirits. And most importantly when in mood for modification. What an arse!!! The modern woman goes about mocking God in every conceivable way. If God was in high spirits, He would have conjured up that, in the near future you might be in need of red lips, large behind, flawless eye brows and very good Brazilian hair (you love your hair so much because you aren’t smart enough to love something interesting)

Truth, the modern times do not favour a woman suckling a clan of babies. She doesn’t belong to the kitchen anymore. But that doesn’t mean that as a man you have to depend on Kenchic or Pizza Inn for a living. Real men eat real food cooked straight from the farm. In deed times are modern. The measure of man is in his ability to provide for his family. The greatest of them needs is financial. The rest is almost miscellaneous. What can true love from a poor man do? It can’t feed you. It can’t clothe you. Neither can it educate the children. The modern woman wants a loaded guy, who will foot the bills when need arises. The modern woman is jealous of her hard work but she wants to be treated equally to men. What a mirage!!

The downside of these modern women is, she so used to board room wars that she transfers that to her home, to her husband. Truth is, for her success, there is another woman who takes over her wifely duties, sometimes to the extreme. May be these kind of women don’t need men, but would surely want them from time to time.

Unsolicited Advice

When we were growing up, we were told all manner of do’s and don’ts. I bet most of them curtailed our freedom but nevertheless we adhered to those which we could and endured the flogging from those we never mastered the art of living by them. We grew up anyway.

Many years down the line we are still advised. Everybody older than seems to be so generous with advice, even our friends with their handful experience unashamedly tell us what we should or not. The one bunch of people whom I can fathom their advice is a stranger. You meet one along the street and he feels he should tell you that you are not dressed well, or that hair needs to be trimmed. If you dish out some dollars I would mind visiting a barber shop.

The urge to snarl at them gets the better of me, almost always. It has never sounded appealing at all, no matter how wrong I am. I am not at home and this is the only chance to act weird, be wild and exclusively from the reptilian watch of my parents. He should just understand from the look on my face that I am not hearing a damn thing he is saying.

There are some types of warning or advice that only fuel the urge to find out what is being denied over the other side. The lesson is never learned from mere hearsay, it must be experienced in order to be regarded lesson. The only shield is the hope that it won’t be too late to learn, as things may at times turn out be.

I always laughed when our high school teachers claimed that we were having the last free advice as we neared the end of our stay there. Who loved their advice anyway? I quizzed my friends and were all glad that those boring pieces of advice would finally trickle down the gutter. Those morning assemblies were a source of worry to some chaps whose concern was never near cleanness. Every day they were dirty from Monday to Friday, week in week out, for four good years. And they knew about it. Does that person need to be advised, really?    

Enter the real world. Folks went to display their prowess in leaking pieces of useless words in the name of advice. The respect for their age stifles a barrage of expletives. I hear pointing out weaknesses and dismiss them at the instant their lips stop moving.

I have never needed advice. i might need when my atm card fails but for the moment am content with what I have accumulated in the years that I have lived through observation. If you come with your advice, I might listen and even nod in approval but deep down me am saying ‘HOLY SHIT.’