Eti How Now Does Love Run the World? Into the Ground, Perhaps

There's a reason love gets called all kindsa names. Love is a game of life, after all, with a biological imperative that serves itself: without at least tolerating each other, we'd likely be an endangered species by now.

 

What love does is ruin, not run, the world. The world entire, not our littu cosmoses and osmatic asthmatic mosaics what know no collages.

 

Which is why all the brouha about the world ending feels more than just a tad endothermic. We do it to ourselves. Heat ourselves up, long before we encounter others we may choose to collide with, propagating our species. Moto bin kumoto, and boom. 9 months of penance, percentiles more of suffering until our young leave the yard upon attaining the suffrage of the universe. Presuming the chickens don' come home to roost, and our nests weren't so comfortable as to have taught the chicks a failure to launch.

 

In protecting these external limbs whose natures we have grown so accustomed to as to wonder what would happen to them if we weren't there to give guidance, we may wilt, and wilt, and wilt...and nurture them into suckers who know little but how to drain the very life force outta everything that comes within nuclear fallout radius of their spherical influences. 

 

Why?

 

Because we loved them ever so much as to have shown them that they weren't only number one, but the one thing – and one thing only – what mattered to their gods: and by God, Moms and Pops would strike all other false pretend totems outta their very expensive horizons – let alone closeted exo-very-skeletal armor – if they even once chose to look them askance. These littu monsters then watch, amused, as Moms and Pops laugh at how their Lord's love is too much ooo, and better than all other lords, so help them not blaspheme God; and fight over how their God's rules specify convenient supremacy for whosoever the apparent winner is at any given time of day.

 

Smitten?
 
You're it.
 
You've been had.

 

You will do as you were told, Bathsheba, and await your Man Solo to reign over you and the legacies of what pains it took to get him there. The lands of Sheba had no baths, you see, and the bounties of Egypt had long since taken a rain check, flowing to the West Bank where even their smallest accurate boys could bake and sing and bite those who kaa Naan; all target-practicing and comfort-living, the better to launch deadpooling-pebbles a-sling at Giants.

 

We did that.

 

No National interests did that.

 

Love is called a drug.

 

Love is called sugar. Love is called giving a fuck. Love is warm enough to have no chills about ending other loves. Yet since everything worth its weight in salt knows to seek moderation, too much love becomes an idealist stockade of potions that make poisons cower in dark corners, afraid to show their faces.  It dehydrates what it once vivified. Anhydrous love, like salty peepu? Sheds insulation: it becomes insular, a live wire to the touch, electrifying to look at.

 

Deadly on contact. It has charted some pathways so oft, and so hard, it needs feel only warm to seek heat like a missile, and ravage it till everything of its own cold metallic exterior is lodged into everything that boiled and charred the fuck out when - inevitably - it combusted, incinerating everything fortunate enough to find itself within its explosive radius.

 

Incendiaries have nothing on love gone sour. We did that to ourselves. We will do it to ourselves. I bet you when the world-ending event finally gets here from outta Space and Time and all their continuums, those mohines so fortunate as to perish together will remember nothing of what mattered so much that they forgot to enjoy, more than destroy, life as we know it.

 

Love is only sugar because given to one man at the right time it will reboot receptors and cool down capacitors long enough to keep the ticker marching: to the other man? It may well be the difference between the kicker kicking on, and the last kicks of a diabetic horse. It is only ours because we may well be the only species that knows how to - and thus in true human fashion has learned to excel at - hating what we can't have. Ending what we can't be. Unaliving (Good God I hate that bullshit notion of a word) what has more life in its pinky than ever flowed through us as we sat tainting all we touched with our giant heads.

 

Si basi tuendelee kuingizwa kichwa tu? Kichwa ngumu ya jitu itapasua msamba vile ndovu inge ku tu! Forget supra-additive toxicities of drug abuse and ethics, moralities and Acts of godly judgment: love and how it interacts with our lifestyles?

 

Is how the world ends.

Ghururi Ya Mutula Verdict: It’s ok NOT to mourn him - Pt 1

Nairobi. 30th April, 2013 |

I wrote this post in the dead of the night, perhaps hoping that I could publish it in said ungodly hours. Partly because my significant other, aka consort, disclosed to me how she thought my blog was becoming rather “sudden” lately. Translation: it has gone Ghafla. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that mheshimiwa Senior Counsel (SC) Mutula Kilonzo’s hardly gone cold yet, which in Kenyan and African circles decrees that thou shalt not speak ill of him. Let alone suggest that he not be mourned. 

It also might explain why I opted out of entitling this piece “How to write about fallen heroes”  [though scumbags would be the actual term I circumvent in this case, depending on whose story you’re reading.] 

Which is precisely what I want to get into today: the scumbag/ hero that was Mutula Kilonzo, a concept otherwise referred to in political discourse as an “if-by-whiskey.” This is the subjectivist fallacy – meaning a claim that something is true for one person but not the other – supposing that a response to an inquiry is contingent on how it is made; is it made using strong negative connotations, or using strong positive undertones? That is to say, ‘was Mutula Kilonzo a scumbag?’ or ‘was Mutula Kilonzo a hero/saint?’ This is the same ideology that would have you pointed at the MAUMAU* or South Africa’s ANC (African National Congress) as terrorists on the one hand, and freedom fighters on the other. Ditto the Taliban, the Afghan Mujahedeen, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia…oh, sod it! the Middle East.

The same creed can be applied in doublespeak, thereby seeming to assert both faces of the matter at hand, and acting on the listener’s subjectivity to concur with whichever part he or she supports. In essence, when well-executed, the if-by-whiskey allows skilled politicians to take a position without taking it. Listen to Obama often and you’ll pick up on this nifty little trick.

In its original context, the if-by-whiskey draws this name from a speech delivered during a trial in 50s America, as to whether alcoholic beverages should continue to be forbidden or legalized. In essence, it was a reversal of Kenya’s Mututho Laws, seeing as liquor was illegal, and the lawyer who made the speech was looking to have it authorized:

“My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, here is how I feel about whiskey:

If when you say whiskey you mean the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, then certainly I am against it.

But, if when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman’s step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life’s great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools; then I am certainly for it.

This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.”

-         Noah “Soggy” Sweat, Jr., lawyer, State of Mississippi

Now, let’s ignore the obvious political incorrectness of some bits and pieces of the speech – it was, after all, 1952; blacks and women still had no tangible rights in the good old US of A. The 19^th Amendment to the US constitution, establishing women’s suffrage in 1920, was still in its youth, and it would be another 13 years before the Voting Rights Act outlawed the prejudiced practices accountable for the pervasive disenfranchisement of ‘niggers.’ All that overlooked, was that a great speech or what? It had everything so well orchestrated and maneuvered that I could picture the jury nodding in agreement. As were you, possibly, and I, certainly.

Remember how I mentioned the listener’s subjectivity, though? Well it would seem that “when [the jury] said whiskey [they meant] the devil’s brew . . . that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous[ness]” and not “the ale that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on [good fellows’] lips.” It would be a long 14 year wait before this legislation came to pass.

I hear you want to think, “Why the extended analogy?” Well, here’s why:

i.                    It’s an analogy from the legal canons, for one, one that fits SC Mutula’s first love, one that he so thrived in.

ii.                  It allows me to make use of my “if-by-Mutula” relativist fallacy.

Now if-by-Mutula you mean ‘the dead object that does not agree with my living spirits,’ the University of Nairobi lawyer who persecuted innocent ‘student leaders who served a decade or so ago at the height of Moi's KANU rule,’ arguing that they should be suspended for 55 years; if-by-Mutula you mean the scumbag who ‘spent the better part of his illustrious career entrenching the skunk that today pervades so many sectors in the Governance of Kenya,’ minting his firm billions while at it, or the ‘late newcomer in the reform process who was part of the brains that negotiated a heavily imbalanced power-sharing accord leading to a rancorous Grand Coalition Government in which he was rewarded with a ministerial position;’ if-by-Mutula you mean the man who ‘was very much a pro-establishment intellectual care-giver,’ the man who, had he ‘chosen to advance the rule of law and positive jurisprudence on certain cases in this country’s history, Kenya would have made massive leaps in the manner those in government handle public properties and human rights,’ then ‘in all fairness, let those who mourn him wipe their tears in somber ululations, but let those of us denied the luxury of shedding crocodile tears by knowledge and appreciation of the checkered past of the fallen legislator toss champagne (if you can afford it) and breathe a sigh of democratic relief, knowing so well that nature has rebalanced the earth.’ 

If-by-Mutula you refer to this despicable man, then ‘as to whether he deserves to be remembered as a reformist, I leave such niceties to his pack of irrational mourners, and people who lack the core to put his past in the political context it belongs,’ because ‘this is a sad week with spasms of celebration by true revolutionaries, and as they say at the University, "a comrade is always right"!’ If this be your Mutula, then like my Alma mater comrade and Facebook friend Dikembe Disembe, quoted extensively in the last two paragraphs, ‘I will not mourn Mutula Kilonzo. Period.’ I acknowledge that ‘it is indeed shocking that I remain indifferent even as the "country as a whole" is engaged in mourning,’ and I will accept the insults ensuing from the partisanship inspired by my labeling him thus

Continue to part II

* MAUMAU - Mzungu Aende Ulaya, Mwafrika Apate Uhuru, literally translates from Swahili to White Man Goes [back] Abroad, African Gains Independence. Note how MAUMAU sounds waaaay cooler than WMGAAGI. It was the freedom fighter/terrorist organization that fiercely opposed British rule in Kenya.

Uongozi: Same Script, Different Words... Pt I

UONGOZI: The Essence of True, Pure, and Good Leadership |

An Essay's first draft...

“Numerous areas in rural Kenya are over three hours’ walking distance from the nearest  watering hole, leaving many Kenyan countryside residents without proper access to clean  water. Water Mobile Cart, WMC, is a weekly service delivery initiative that distributes fresh,  clean water directly to your home for a monthly subscription fee.”

The above are sample problem and solution statements that would feature in a leader’s thought processes. This is because, in my view, leadership means possessing the ability to not only perceive actual problems in a society, but to go beyond them and find suitable solutions. 

In the example above, the leader would seem to have gone further than the simplistic phase of stating a problem and its solution; he considers the fact that for any community to appreciate  and own a solution, they should – ideally – buy into it. 

Numerous practical examples exist to demonstrate the fact that the handout culture is as much a part of the problem, in Kenya particularly and Africa in general, as it has tried to be a solution. 

One of the most widely read and visited urban cases in point would be Kibera slum, in Nairobi. Ironically, many residents of the new Kibra constituency in Kenya may never read a book, or visit any place beyond their own microcosm of life in the slum. 

Whereas the hardware is important to any solution, it is essential to remember that the software is just as crucial, if not critical, to its sustainability. This is to say that any leader who throws money and assets at a problem, without putting in the necessary man-hours in thought, is heading blindingly fast on a crash course towards failure.

Further, the thought process, should it not be inclusive of the people whose lives are affected by the problem, will usually end in disappointment. Leading is as much about listening as it is about thinking, showing and telling. It is also instructive to note that said inclusion would need to come in the planning, execution, and maintenance stages of problem solving. This is what true leadership is about: finding effective ways to involve the community being led, in the journey to their desired destination.

The kind of leadership that is pure, good and true is important because if left to our own devices, we – as Kenyans, as Africans, as citizens of the world – have far too often been the architects of our own destruction. Leadership is about showing, through consistent action, thought and speech, a path towards the betterment of society. Take the following instance, as my second example, into consideration:

“As of 2013, there are 39 states in the world recognized as the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries, HIPCs. They have been identified by a Joint Initiative designed by the International Monetary Fund, IMF, and the World Bank, so as ‘to ensure that no poor country faces a debt burden it cannot manage.’

Of the 36 HIPCs whose debt reduction package has been approved, 30 are in Africa. By many accounts, there are between 195 and 205 countries in the world. Including the newest country – the Republic of South Sudan – Africa, both continental and islanded, has 54 of these countries.” 

Are we, as Africans, satisfied with having 30 of our own classified as both ‘heavily indebted’ and ‘poor’ countries, in a worldwide list that features less than 40 countries? Should the PanAfrican agenda be proud of this damning statistic? Should we, as Kenyans, be happy that we do not feature in this list? Must we forget that over 50% of Kenya still lives below the poverty line, a line that is as physical in class separatism as it is real in the pain of watching a child go hungry?

Granted, the poor and the hungry, usually one and the same, have made certain choices that have brought them to the point where they are passengers in their own lives. Or have they? 

It is debatable as to whether slums exist more in their inhabitants’ minds than they do in the [1] murky drainage systems, and systemic hygiene cancers that are standard to slums. Even more debatable is whether the slum inhabitant considers his or her surroundings as ‘poor’. But perhaps most debatable is this question: whether in the mind, or in the environs, who has put the man in the slum? 

Only by responding to this question can we possibly claim to have a basis for progression to any desired objective.

The answer to this question, while considering the fact that the slum in question is not only physical but mental, is the most important test of any leader’s capacity to lead. The most important quality a leader should possess is the ability to place himself in the shoes of his people, without forgetting that he has a role that transcends anyone’s personal gratification. This is to say that while the ideal leader must be conscious of his community’s woes, he must also remember that his own personal interests, and those of his people, are compliant to outside forces. 

Bringing together the first and second examples given above, allow me to demonstrate why I believe my statement on the best quality of a leader to be true. 

The initial problem, as stated, is that there are ‘numerous areas in rural Kenya’ which are more than ‘three hours’ walking distance from the nearest watering hole’, and therefore ‘many Kenyans in the countryside’ reside ‘without proper access to clean water.’ A true, pure and good leader will also be cognizant of the fact that his community’s world is influenced by its environment, be it national, regional or international. They will remember this, even as they feel the pain their people live – if not merely exist and survive – within. 

While Emotional Intelligence, defined as ‘the ability to identify, assess and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups’, is a necessary a facet of leadership, it must be complimented by a realistic and perspective view of the factors that prevail on any community, for the community to be prepared to coexist with other communities within its nation, region, continent or the world. When Emotional Intelligence is guided by a realistic and holistic perspective on an all-inclusive path, pathological altruism can arguably be avoided.

Pathological altruism is defined as ‘behaviour in which attempts to promote the welfare of another, or others, results instead in harm that an external observer would conclude was reasonably foreseeable.’ 

Instances of misguided altruism would include tribalism, nepotism, racism, classism, and the culture of giving handouts in the name of social responsibility. This, mind you, is to name but a few. Real value, however, can only be judged on an equitable exchange of significance, where both parties – the leadership and the people led – emerge satisfied.

Good leadership is conscious of this balance in the exchange of value. Therefore, the Water Mobile Cart in the first example would have the vision to enable the community’s self-supplyof water in the long-term; the leadership of WMC would possibly be conscious of the UnitedNations Millennium Development Goals, MDGs; it would also know that water provision to poor communities cuts across MDGs 1 and 7 – that is, first, eradicating extreme hunger and poverty; and seventh, ensuring environmental sustainability. Such knowledge, plus the fact that MDG 8 envisions ‘developing a global partnership for development’ would be vital towards empowering this hypothetical community beyond reliance on the leadership of WMC.

A lasting legacy; that is what leadership means to me. That when you, as a leader are gone, those who are left behind are better for your having been, and have learnt to be as they were when you were, even when you are no longer present.

Should the leadership’s intentions be true to the people’s needs, the choices made based on these intentions purely good, the consequences would be the right legacy; and one that can stand the test of time.

Enough with the propaganda already, Jubilee! An Opinion Piece by @BettyWaitherero. #KenyaniKwetu?

The following is a piece by a good friend and colleague, that on Tuesday Annoyed Powerful People [perhaps the same Dark Forces our beloved president once talked of], who proceeded to Force her To Pull It down [as they did with his hand on the Accord he signed with Mudavadi]. 

These words are her own, and have become part of her pain lately, with bile, vitriol and threats sent her own, and her parents way, ever since:

By Betty Waitherero Njoroge 

I think parents should do more than just pay for their teenagers school fees; they should go out of their way to forge a sound relationship with them, one that is not based on arrogance and violence but on mutual respect and love. Teach your kids how to be honest and clear minded adults, because the result of just ignoring your teenage miscreants is one Muthui Kariuki. (ed: same guy now coordinating the threats...) 

Talk about a juvenile delinquent; Muthui Kariuki is the epitome of a childish deviant. As government spokesman for the backside of the Jubilee government, Muthui is really good at his job. In between issuing threats while claiming to be accommodative, this character has the audacity to claim that Raila Odinga’s politics are “chest thumping, hateful, arrogant and toxic.”  

The pot calls the kettle black. For someone who has a record ZERO accomplishments as a civic leader this hot head sure brings a mouthful of trash to the table. By the way, he is a perfect representative for the Jubilee government which, despite having several stalwarts with over 20 years experience in government, have also a record of ZERO accomplishments.  

Or as one colleague expressed recently, within the first 100 days of the Kibaki administration 1 million children went to school under the free primary education program; within the first 100 days under the Jubilee administration all children were out of school.  

Of course, when you are busy doing nothing and yet being paid 76 times the average GDP, you need a mouthy person to sidetrack the people by saying all sorts of ridiculous things about perceived enemies.  

We are now to believe that despite Jubilee forming the government, and despite Jubilee dominating Parliament, the Senate and the County administrations, Raila Odinga is still the bane of Kenya and is somehow behind the many problems Jubilee is actually not dealing with.  

The propaganda machinery in this government needs to improve by the way. Couldn’t they try something more intelligent than filling the daily news with stories of men shagging livestock? Or repeatedly insulting a man you claim is insignificant. When it comes to stupid utterances, none can out do Muthui Kariuki.  

I don’t know what’s worse, some wannabe loud mouth or a president who is busy posting his latest status update in a rugby shirt. Each time I see his photos of how he was where laughing with who I feel so nauseated. Meanwhile his deputy is busy reinventing reality by calling himself a hustler. Is it the pain of the lie that makes him cry so much or what?  

A man who made a fortune through corrupt means turns around and calls it hustling, another one who spends his time goofing off turns around and complains to teachers about the high wage bill meanwhile he does nothing for the economy and in fact sanctions ridiculous expenditure.  

Now look here – why were our children out of school while you decreed that 250 million kshs will be spent on giving a retired 80 plus year old an office? Then you say the wage bill is high. It looks like it’s only high when you have to do the right thing and pay the service providers their dues.  

Meanwhile, I expect that the next thing the government will say out its backside AKA Muthui Kariuki is that there is no money to pay for the free maternity despite it being a Jubilee campaign promise. That won’t surprise me at all, because there is money for luxury planes to Congo Brazzaville and money for retired old fogeys to have an office but no money to pay teachers and of course no money for hospitals.  

I don’t even know how Uhuru Kenyatta finds the temerity to attend social functions. Wait. I get it now. He isn’t president, he is a celebrity! That’s why if he wears a rugby t-shirt, automatically he supports the rugby team with funds right? Where is that money coming from, if there is no money to pay the teachers?  

This government is beyond redemption really. Rather than attempt to be functional we are going to be submitted to 5 whole years of propaganda and hogwash. Pictures of matching ties and laughing buffoons coupled with lurid tales of political bogeymen meanwhile the entire system is incapable of any form of decent service delivery. All of this will be conducted via the dumbest outlets no less.  

This post was published on Kenya Today, with the understanding that we all have right to freedom of expression.

Mad Men: A Flight of Stairs in the Dark

#Np Theory Of A Deadman – Hate My Life  

A boy updates his Facebook status. His Facebook status updates his Twitter, and his Twitter sends word to his Linkedin. All it takes is one hit, and one message — through these intricate interconnections — becomes public; becomes, for solicited prostitutions of view.  

A girl far-far away in South Africa to his Kenya, who is the boy’s boss – and incidentally tapped into his networks – sees his update. A girl calls a boy and asks him why he has not responded to her email from 6 hours ago.  

We live in a world where technology is making public figures of anyone with a key -board or -pad. The World, Thomas L. Friedman remarks, is Flat. 

What this flattening does not take into account is just how much technology complicates life. If a fire breaks out in a traditional village deep in the heart of Kenya’s not-so-Silicon-Savannah valley, chances are that one hue and cry gets the neighbours out. I witnessed a couple of instances deep in Laikipia county, where one scream was all it took to marshal a fire brigading troop of young men, women, elders, living dead and ancestors to the scene of a fire; to putt it out collectively. 

There are no electric lines in the village, you see, to add insult to the incendiary injury. There are no gas cylinders, you will find, to hinder prospects of getting too close to a flame. There are no worries, moreover, that a call to put out fire at 6 O’clock – be it am or pm – will stop you from getting home, or to work. There is no traffic jam or one-for-the-road to consider. No all-nighters either, no trans-nighting...unless of course it's the kind that goes "ooh, aah..."

In the communes, the people live together, work together, fight together. Sure they will disagree. But – so I found during my 6 month stay in Sipili Ng’arua – they have a lot more that unites them than divides them.  

How? If ‘your fire’ spreads out onto ‘our grass fields’, then ‘my cows and goats’ will starve before the next rains come; two months from now, I could lose my source of milk, source of income. If ‘your trouble’ spills over past ‘our grass’ and levels ‘our children’s school’, then ‘my money’ – spent in piecemeal building up the school’s infrastructure – will be lost. If, heavens forbid, ‘your flames’ fan through all that and burn down ‘my forest, my crop, my hut’, then I have no firewood, no home, no clothes, no food…

I’ll be damned if I let your fire burn me!  

Just because I update my Facebook and Twitter doesn’t mean I’m ignoring your Inbox or Direct Message. Social Media is about being social. Being social is about expressing yourself. Express … your SELF. Talk, that is. 

Do you stop talking every single time you receive an email or text message? Do you stop eating or walking? Does your digestive tract halt, or your 'Last Enzyme Standing' lift up a placard hailing ‘ye majesty the Royal Baby Mail’? Do you park your car to the curb and pay a parking fee just to respond to that glorious seed of corporate communication?  

Inboxes and Direct Messages are simply over-glorified text messages and emails. They are personal, should remain in that realm.  

Who says life revolves around that email, so much so that you sit around waning and waxing, twiddling your thumbs, awaiting a response? When did communication become the equivalent of actual tasks?  

Unless I am absolutely in love with you, absolutely available or do not need to think about my response, then where you come off expecting immediate responses absolutely beats me. Let me rephrase: I work offline. I don't work online. I cum online...and vent. Occasionally say something sensible, but mostly, I work offline. So deal with it...your little Inbox or DM will be got to if and when it is got to. 

Yet urban life does seem to revolve around emails: that email a client is waiting for; that email your boss sent that pissed the silently flowing shit out of you; that email your Badoo layover sent you with a NSFW attachment; that degrading email copied to everyone and their dog’s flea’s sister’s mother, sent to you by that little mind, with its little car, and a fancy little dress laced with fancy little ‘imported airs’ of self-importantly caffeinated weaves in a dainty little furnished apartment. We have become such narcissists in our own little worlds that nobody seems to think through what their actions do to others’ state of mind.  

Further, John Perkins – an Economic Hitman – released Confessions thereof in 2004. This self-confessed former pecuniary mercenary, helps kill off democratically elected presidencies – with a bullet, a polity or a policy. He then turns around and tells you about it. In a book; a book that is for sale. 

In other words, I was once a thief, rapist and murderer, and have severally crushed little babies under the soles of my feet, but now I’m saved; praise Jesus!  

Perkins' book, while affirming Graham Hancock’s The Lords of Poverty – a book as relevant in the late 80s as it is now – also plays on the same layers that both books attempt to expose. I get that passion does not pay the bills, but if at all he was really interested in doing his pretty little Sacrament of Penance, Self -Mortification and a bit of -Flagellation, how about not selling the books, Lil' Johnny?

Reading either book – or both, I would recommend – opens your eyes to the frailties of our system, and why it is that we are consistently asked to fanya kazi kwa bidii, utalipwa nothing’-i. Why we are now being told that the country Africa is such a hopeful one, riddled with opportunity as it rises. Why every other speech by the ‘criminal president invited to the UK’ begins and ends with youth and women, and is laced with chants of go ye for the and multiply Enterprise.  

The lines between which, dear sheeple, you do not read, are these:      

• That guy in Diaspora was told the same story when he left Kenya on a Green card to The Land of Opportunity, of Stars, of Stripes. They assessed his strengths, profiled him, saw how he fit in and would benefit their system, and told him to pack his bags; he had won. He could come back 5 or 10 years later, he decided, before the checks and balances designed to keep him there, benefiting their system, tightened their noose around him.     

• That guy who has a cozy job, with a picket fence in Suburbia, nice big-breasted female to warm his loins, and a sports car as large as his cajones, is paying out loans to his employer, and mortgages and insurances and assurances to his Shylock, that keep him mark-timing in his own mediocrity, so sio eti hakupendi, but appearances must be kept up boo-boo.     

• This president you call Tyranny, Prince of the Arable Buyers of Souls, is not a rebel to the World-System-against-Kenya cause. Dear NSIS, you can sit here.     

• And finally, who do you think these businesses Tyranny is telling you to launch – with not one clue how to run it, and where to but the ground – are supposed to benefit? In a system as officially inept and prohibitive, unofficially corrupt as ours? Boo-boo, your ass is in someone’s pocket. So think before you do shit that will feed itself back to you in spadefuls the size of Mongolia.  

All this faux feminism belching around, giving women a sense of propriety and men a sense of importance for allowing women to be, simply works into a larger system of oppressive mindsets that boil down to little else but money. You want her; she looks good, doesn’t she? She’s independent, isn’t she? She can buy her own shit, and she buys it in ships of shit-loads. So you buy it in jet-fueled plane-fulls of it for her. Win-win, you think to yourself, aye?  

You tell her that you are pro-choice. She can have an abortion any time she feels like. She can pop as many pills as she wants, can’t she Ms. Pro-prevention? Meanwhile, the Pharmaceutical giants and baby-skinning doctors are laughing all the way to the bank.  

The same goes for the faux Green Revolution, faux Social Business, faux Micro-financing, fashion faux pas, KENYAN MEDIA, some foreign media, a lot of SOCIAL MEDIA, Holly’s wood… Basically, Imagine your World, then try see what is not infiltrated by greed and bids of insanity. Especially, try see what box you’ve fit yourself in, and what other boxes are just dying to add your massive shep'herd-ity into them.  

 

Question: between you, dear sheepish thinker, and the intellectually challenged/ mentally disabled/ mind-numbingly crippled/ mentally fucked up/ crazy stupid/ foolish asylum dwellers, who is more mental?  

Who is the mad man? 

We’re 7 Seconds away…  

and there’s a million voices,  

to tell you what you should be thinking  

so you better sober up for just a second…  

And when a child is born,  

Into this world  

It has no concept,  

Of the tone, 

the skin  it’s living in…  

#Np Neneh Cherry  & Youssou N’Dour 

 _______________________________________________________________________________

—  Fred Wambugu, preferably known as Freddy, is a writer/ entrepreneur with a liking for agro ways. Both the loud-mouthed, angry “for no reason” and the arable kinds.  

When not farming or talking, Freddy imagines his world with Storymoja Africa, is an Industry and Market Researcher with Eronia Inc Ltd. and is the founder of inThync Kenya.   For more details on the writer, he has suggested that we tell you to scream at him on @french_freddy or Yule Mbois Mndialala.  

Disclaimer: He will holler right back. Loudly. Or lovably.  In other News, does a bio need to have an ‘I’?

Miss Sexy: The Miseducation of Sex Education ~

 #WhyPoverty?

My name is Kelina, and I'm 11 years old. 

What goes through my mind is I'm scared to walk alone

because they raped a woman in the street.

We saw the blood she left in the streets afterwards.

You have no choice but to see these things.

You must not walk alone.

Over 50,000 crimes against children are reported every year in South Africa. So I learnt a while back, watching a short documentary - Miseducation - directed by Nadine Cloete, and shot in Cape Town. It is just one of the over 38 short and feature films themed 'Why Poverty'? You can follow @askwhypoverty for details on the same.       

Miseducation. Original Title: Growing up in a still-wounded South Africa

This short film by Miss Cloete, has stuck with me the longest, since I watched it in late May. There's something almost surreal about how casually Kelina's singsong voice talks about sex, and violence, and death. How she walks alone through the streets, in between gangsters and women being roughed up, then proceeds to say this:

It's better to walk in a group of children

because if they kidnap you while you're walking alone

and you disappear, who would know where you are?

No one will know.

If you walk in a group they'll see who took you.

Everyone will know where you are.

If you walk with people, you shouldn't have an attitude

because then people won't like you

and if you die, nobody will come to your funeral.

No 11 year old should have to think about sex beyond the birds and the bees, or whatever insects 'we' Africans used in our stories about sex. Whether it's the 'we bought you at a market' story, or 'we picked you up at the supermarket,' any of that would do; but not what this child speaks about. Not what children near Kenya's Naks Vegas go through every two seconds, it would seem, going by Kenyan Dailies.

Not what vitriol a man who chose to be a woman has to imbibe, if she so chooses, because losing a dick is such a big deal that the airwaves and media-spaces have to be filled with dicks pointing it out. Or pussies taking it in, and going one step further to protect their own by screaming bloody murder at every other Tom, Dick and Harry.

I always found it intensely ironic that this phrase, one that lumps together three dicks but calls them different names, could possibly mean the same as 'all and sundry.' But we do live in a world where man is right, and woman is left. Left behind. Where man is right, and woman is wrong. Wronged by everyone, and left to her own devices, if she has any.

I am scared to walk, because

a bullet doesn't have an address.

It doesn't say where it's going.

The people who shoot are gangsters

and the gangsters' names are HLs, Americans, Naughty Boys

the Stupas and others. 

It's better if they dies, then they won't come back

I don't like to wake up so early but you have to because there's school.

My name is Kelina, and I'm 11 years old.

Little boys are just about as vulnerable as Kelina is. And I have long felt that they, too, should - in fact MUST - be protected from the world about as much - if not MORE - than the girl child.

Because, when it's all said and done, women are the breast of our society. They suckle it, nurture it, grow it into the responsible collective of individually upright citizens they themselves are. Only IF they themselves are, and IF they choose to do the nurturing. Ignoring the boy child, or saying that as women, (Keguro alert) alert) we:they cannot focus on the boy child as much as the girl because the boy is the man's responsibility is not only moronic but insanely fucked up.

Take a girl to school and you build a community. Take a boy to school and you build an individual. Ignore a girl's education and? What happens? Worst case scenario, anyone? Now, ignore a boy's education, and by education I talk of real education not classrooms; what happens? 25 years down the line, the girls you took to school start bitching, crying 'where are the men?' Your mothers ignored nurturing them. 

25 years down the line, your daughter is raped. Raped by? A girl, was it? How many women did you see in the [K]ICC's Hague-6? 

5, maybe 10 years down the line, your Member needs to be re-elected. Show me one girl-child, on the day, who picks up a panga and slits another girl-child's throat because the MP said so. Show me one girl-child who force feeds herself a dick because the leader said so. 

The system we coexist in is rough. Rough for the woman; who wants to grow in her career only to be Hudd-winked? Rough for the man, who wants to 'hustle' every day without being hooded; thrown into a boot and shot in the middle of a forest? Rough for the man; who wants to help a woman only to be thought of as a bigoted narcissistic chauvinist? Rough for the woman who wants to have a child in her 20s, but is afraid that she will stall in her career and have to play catch-up with the men. 

Utumishi kwa Wote.

We exist, as one Keguro Macharia said recently, in an epidemic of quotidian violence in Kenya; by the police against young men; by young men against women; by everyone against everyone else. And while, as Boniface Mwangi said at a Kwani? forum recently, the police are out there waiting to pop your ass full of lead if you dare defy them, we all do the same thing, if only with less weighty bullets. 

I am convinced that we know precisely what is wrong with our system. Every. Single. One of us. We are not immune to sense. We are only immune to the implications of our role in this sense...or lack thereof it.

Talk about sex, and talk about it like sane, grown human beings. Talk about sex like it's a good thing, because it is. Treat it as a disease, and disease springs from it. The real, the fetishist; the literal, the literary and the figurative.

***

I am currently about to stop putting off reading Queer Africa: New and Collected Fiction, compiled and edited by Karen Martin and Makhosazana Xaba. The first story, Pelican Driver, is written by my favorite wenchy wench from last month's piece, Davina Owombre. It begins thus:

AJ got off his knees, licking his lips.