Please stop me and correct me when my stupid is showing.

That is what good friends do for each other.

Thank you.

Counting my blessings

It is very easy to feel down on most days this year especially in my beloved country Kenya. There are lots of things to be grateful for but the bigger influencing factors provide temptation to mope around and feel terribly sorry for myself.

One can have very grateful heart but that gratitude will not get you anywhere if the ground beneath your feet shifts constantly leaving you in pieces.

Digression: One of the things that I have always wanted to see and experience firsthand is quicksand as vividly described in novels I have been reading. The variety that swallows a horse as you watch in horror, knowing there is not much you can do lest you suffer the same fate. It must be out of this world to have the earth literally move beneath your feet!

I must have more than ten reasons to be miserable today but I choose to take the opposite path and count my many blessings.

• The gift of company. Mrembo’s post touched me to the core. I do know how it feels to be lonely. I am thankful that the environment I live in, makes it so that being alone and lonely is rather an exception than the rule. If I ever need human company all I need to do is walk into the house next door. I am glad that it is still acceptable behavior to just drop into your neighbor’s place and a cup of tea will be on the table ten or twenty minutes later we will have shared our frustrations and joys and most likely I will be smiling for the rest of the day. Even a trip to the market offers an opportunity to get to know how the traders are doing and their opinion on everything under the sun.

• The gift of kindness by total strangers. Kenyans are known the world over for their friendliness and helpfulness. I am still to meet a single person whom I asked for help and refused to do so if they were able to. Of course there are exception to this like the con men, con women and con children that abound in the streets of the city in the sun. A strange incident comes to mind. One sunny afternoon I was in town with my little one. I had a small bag on one side, the sleeping baby in my arms and was trying to balance an umbrella as well to ward away the scorching sun. It was extremely hot and there was a horrid traffic jam. That was before the City Council of Nairobi came to the realization that pedestrians who need to cross the street in peace exist and motorists need to give them space. I stood for around 15 minutes on waiting for a chance to cross to the other side and be on my way. Every time I stepped on to the road a vehicle swung wildly on my path and I had to retreat. A man who looked totally crazy to me had been watching my predicament. He calmly stood up from where he had been lying on the opposite side of the road and started walking towards me. I wanted to run off but I reasoned that a man no matter how mad would not beat a woman carrying a child. He came very close to where I was, dodging cars who reluctantly gave way. Then he stopped in front of the first car on my side of the road and motioned for me to cross; the driver of the car gestured impatiently for me to cross too, I did. The mad man stopped all the three lanes of cars and I crossed safely to the other side. He then proceeded to his place by the roadside where he had been before. I hurriedly mumbled my thanks and went my way. To this day I wonder what made him do that.

• The gift of friends. Yesterday for some reason all my close friends some whom I have not talked to in a while decided to call me. For two hours non-stop in the afternoon I was on “my private line” [said in the right tone and accentuation] (apologies to my employer who is paying me for this time). Normally my cell is silent during working hours lakini yesterday the gods conspired to send me a message. I am eternally grateful to have friends like these though by the end of those 2 hours my left ear was burning.

• The gift of faith. Faith is belief in things unseen... My faith has been tested very seriously this year. I have asked the man upstairs several politically incorrect questions. He has listened as a parent would, indulgently, to a very spoilt child. The answers have come in various forms through different channels.

• The first answer has been ““Life is difficult” get used to it.” The Road Less Traveled By Scott Peck
• The second has been “You prou are no better than anyone else, you are unique yes but do not think the afflictions that have befallen others have done so because they are less than you on any scale. That includes your country, your nation, yourself. But by My Grace you could have been born in any of those ‘other nations’ you look down upon. So get over yourself already.
• The third response has been “Just bl**dy do it!!” In those words exactly. I have learnt that there is no right time to do some things. The conditions are always less that optimal. So after several false tries I dragged my weary self back to school. Did I ever mention that I love it? Studying, learning, immersing myself in knowledge. Never mind that the day I went to register for classes I had to wade through clouds of teargas, how less than optimal can conditions be. I was not even sure of someday completing my studies, the outlook at that time and even presently is grim. But I do believe in those things that are yet unseen.

Fair and lovely

I was fascinated by this ad in the Sunday Standard dated 30.03.2008.
First I thought it was an early April fools prank. Mr Google informed that indeed it does exist.

I am speechless.

29th to 30th December 2007

As one of the pumbavus severally referred to by the Member of Parliament for Othaya, I faithfully forfeited all activities that usually accompany a Kenyan year end concentrating on one thing and one thing only.

The election.

I did believe. That we have come a long way. Democratically. Financially. Socially. That Kenya is my country, najivunia kuwa mkenya says the government spokesperson. Daima mimi mkenya. Croons Eric Wainaina. I do love that song by the way. Not only for the patriotic part of it, it is a great Kenyan composition. Origino kabisa!

So I voted. I cannot forget the thrill that went through my entire body when I checked those boxes. All three of them. My work was done. Now ECK would take over. And boy did they!

No it was not the first time I voted. I did in 2002 and discovered it could be done. I could have a hand in how my country is governed. Any other election before this am reliably informed was a charade.

I am afraid that even this one IS/WAS a charade. Like many others I still ask what the point of voting is if it does not matter anyway. An exercise in futility. But. I will still be voting if we will still have a country to speak of in the near future.

I stayed up on 27^th night awaiting the results just like I did in 2002. Then, by 5 am in the morning the ECK had done its work after mine and splattered the figures all over the TV screen. It was doable. It was done. I can change my country’s destiny.

The alarm bells started ringing when by 28^th Dec 2007 there was nothing forthcoming from KICC. Then the rumors began. 29^th morning I decided to do other things apart from sit glued to the TV screen. As soon as I left the house sinister whispers were heard. Horrible things are going to happen today. I was told by a man I barely knew as I boarded the bus.

“This is not the time to travel there is going to be war this evening.” War? In Nairobi, Kenya? I wondered. I had heard the stories long before elections. But then I had heard the same things in 2005. Then, we were told to take the children to safer places.

I did believe in the power of the ballot, I am rather skeptical right now.

I was amazed to find a seat very easily on the bus. In fact I had three comfortable seats to myself. I was grateful for this when later in the evening we were forced to sleep in the bus as the roads were all blocked and it was late in the night. At Nakuru the bus management decided to put us at the police station for our own safety for a few hours while we waited for the situation to normalize. While we were there we got to know each other. Kenyans are wonderful people. Especially on long distance journeys. In spite of the horrible roads on the neglected side of Kenya it is fun traveling. I remember how once a lady boarded the wrong bus and threw another who was supposedly sitting on her seat out. She was terribly bossy about it only for us to learn that she was supposed to get onto another bus to Kampala. The rightful occupant had already started crying by the time the confusion was sorted out. Even in those tense times drama galore.

The bus management we discovered was more concerned about the safety of their brand new bus a KBA-H or something, than that of their beloved passengers that they strive to serve. So they offered to refund us our money and take us back to the city. No, that would not be possible as more rumors came in that the city was ablaze too. You see what happens when citizens do not have the correct information? Rumors then become facts until proven otherwise.

Finally after 38 hours on the road, getting intimately acquainted with several police stations that faithfully provided escort to stranded passengers, who by the way were more than helpful, we got to our destinations. But not before having stones, arrows and rubber bullets -some which were not intended for us -thrown in the general direction of our bus. I still get edgy when I see a group of young men on the road; it will take a while for that to go away.

Kenya has always been an island of peace? I do not think so.

Recent history shows the contrary.

EDIT Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (b.1928)

A level headed look at things.

Kenyans are fighting inequality, not ethnicity

By: Rasna Warah
As every middle and upper class Nairobian will tell you, one of the most irritating things about the violence that rocked Kenya in the week after the elections was the fact that many maids, guards and nannies did not show up at work for a whole week.

This was not because they were protesting over their inhuman working conditions or low salaries; it was because many of their shacks had been burned and some were actually living as refugees in various government facilities within the city. Others lived in notoriously dangerous slum areas that had been cordoned off by militia or police.

Yet all I heard from my well-to-do friends, relatives and neighbours in my neck of the woods was how awful it was to do the housework without help, what with all the children in the house during the holidays, and the piles of clothes that needed washing.

NEITHER THEY NOR I BORE THE brunt of the violence that rocked all of Nairobi's slums and some parts of the country last week. We all live in areas where killing your neighbours is not only considered bad manners but bad for business.

We don't look at each other through ethnic eyes, though we do sometimes wonder if the muhindi in Block C bought a new Mercedes through corruption money or if the Luo woman down the road believes in witchcraft.

We decried the inhumanity of Nairobi's wretched slum dwellers, who we concluded were tribalists who could not see the big picture. Why, we wondered, couldn't they remove their ethnic blinkers and see how their activities were affecting tourism and the Nairobi Stock Exchange? And why, for God's sake, were they not reporting for work?

Foreign correspondents, who transmitted the violence in Nairobi's slums for all the world to see, were quick to describe what was happening in Kenya as ethnic cleansing. Like my friends, relatives and neighbours, they totally ignored the social, economic and political forces that were plunging Kenya into mayhem.

They failed to see that the main reason for the violence and protests around the country was not because one ethnic group wanted to forcibly take over the presidency from another ethnic group, but because Kenyans perceived the elections to be unfair.

More importantly, they failed to realise that the root causes of the violence had more to do with the economic and political reality of Kenya than it had to do with ethnic chauvinism (although all three are linked in the Kenyan context, as I will explain).

Kenya is one of the most unequal societies in the world. Ten per cent of the country's 35 million people control 42 per cent of the nation's wealth, leaving nearly half of the country's population to subsist below the poverty line.

Inequalities within cities such as Nairobi are stark; Nairobi's ethnically diverse slums, rated as the biggest and most deprived slums in the world, service some of the wealthiest homes and neighbourhoods in Africa.

Inequality tends to manifest itself ethnically and regionally, with some ethnic groups and regions benefiting more from public resources than others.

Because the current constitution bestows enormous powers on the executive and because there are no constitutional provisions to ensure equitable distribution of the country's resources, various presidents have used their powers to accumulate ill-gotten wealth for themselves and their cronies (usually from their own ethnic group), and to allocate disproportionate public resources to projects and regions of their choice (usually to regions where their ethnic base is strongest).

Kenya's struggle is, therefore, more fundamentally linked to inequity than to ethnicity, although wealth and poverty have developed distinctly ethnic tones.

MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, THIS election was seen by the poor and the marginalised as the one that would address past injustices and regional inequalities. In essence, the violence that erupted after the elections was a class war — one in which the impoverished masses took up arms against all those they thought represented the interests of the ruling class, in this case, some of their neighbours, regardless of their political affiliation and despite the fact that some of these neighbours were as dirt poor as they were.

It is no wonder then that the most impoverished parts of the country witnessed some of the most violent clashes. What was most tragic about the violence was that Kenya's dispossessed, instead of uniting to demand justice and equity, turned on each other.

But as the country counts its human and economic losses, there are glimmers of hope and solidarity emerging. As one woman who lives in Nairobi's Kawangware slum told me: “I know that when my child gets sick, I can't call my MP to take him to hospital. I have to call my neighbours. In the end, I have to rely on them to save my child.”

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

The mood in Kenya

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does the truth become error because nobody will see it. -Mohandas K. Gandhi(1869-1948)


The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. -Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)

Happy Holidays

May this Christmas be the first of many,

Each more joyous in our growing love,

Revealing more of happiness than any

Riches might provide or pain remove.

Years flow like an unrepentant river,

Carrying the soil of life away,

Holding far more than they can deliver,

Rushing past the certitudes that stay.

In love there is an instance of forever

So shy and lovely it eludes the eye,

The sense of being home when we're together,

More enduring than a reason why.

As love is born of passion, borne by will,

So may for many years we choose love still.


By Giovanni Bassano.