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.

A Giant Vibrator, the Ultimate Elephant, and a Global Room

“Hey. I think I left my pencil at the office… *Sad* Any chance you kept it? X”

I received this text message yesterday evening by mistake. By which I mean that I was not the intended recipient. Happens every day, doesn’t it? I’m no expert, I don’t work at a Telecommunications company, but I’m pretty certain that unsolicited communiqués are an everyday occurrence.

They could be from over-eager marketers or from Caesar – in this case the Higher Education Loans Board. They could also be from conmen of the 419 kind, or just simply from honest Kenyans with no agenda behind sending the message.

This text message was of the last kind: an honest mistake. However, it did not come from any other Kenyan. It did not travel miles and miles to reach my phone. The extraordinary young Kenyan it came from was seated right next to me. She has been a good-turned-great friend to me since she up and quit her job as an intern in my department, 2 years ago, and 3 weeks into a job I had interviewed her for. I up and quit mine less than a fortnight later.

This remarkable young-mind-turned-globetrotter, I learnt yesterday, also now happens to work at Storymoja Africa.

For the entirety of this past month, I have been on a journey into the unknown; quite literally. It all began in May, sometime in the midriff of the month. Having worked with Storymoja briefly before, and interacted regularly with Storymoja and the people thus, I was asked if I could blog for the Hay Festival. I said yes, without hesitation.

Why? I love Storymoja. The people who have worked, still work, have interned or are interning there, are some of the warmest human beings I know. The projects they run have the altogether quite lacking combination of heart, ambition and realism necessary to achieve and blaze trails. So that’s why I said yes in a heartbeat, to work with them again.

How I ended up writing an article a week is an altogether different Storymoja. I mentioned earlier that I have worked briefly at Storymoja. Well, let’s make that very briefly, and make this the reason why I’m writing a piece every week. The most I will add to qualify that is this: moral debts, in my experience, are those of the absolute most compelling kind to repay.

I stumbled onto the first story I did for Storymoja about a fortnight before I got to write it, courtesy of a Rotary meeting. The second piece was not quite as lucky, having been discovered in the darnedest of fashions; and as for the third, it had been a long time cumming. The overall theme, as per Storymoja, is to Imagine Our World, to Waza Dunia, in preparation for the Storymoja Hay Festival in September.

My interpretation of the theme is ‘the challenge of perceptions’. It is an interpretation, here, of two meanings for the word challenge: the problem, and loosely, the seeking of a solution. Given that I chose literacy, sex and homosexuality as the themes for the first 3 pieces, I decided to further let them take a life of their own over the next 3 months, making my contribution to Storymoja essentially 4 drawn-out stories, when you add this one to the mix.

Back to the text message: how do we normally react to unsolicited communication when we know it to be precisely that?

If it’s a phone call, we will be curtly courteous, or courteously curt, depending on who we think it is, and what sort of intentions we have. Are we looking for a job? “Hello? … Yes this is he…” Are we bored and uninterested? “Boss, wrong number… Hapana… Nkt!”Or are we hangover and hardly there? “Eh? .. Hmm… Mmmhh…”

Written word, however, is very damning. It presents the information all in one complete relay, as per the intentions, ability and choices of the sender.

How we react to such communiqués, however, is very subjective. I personally know of a businessman of considerable repute and success, who started his motor sales company as a result of a misdirected text… from someone who wanted to buy a car.

This says a lot about our perceptions. He perceived opportunity where some would have found ennui. His business instinct kicked into gear, and for a man who has never been employed a day in his life, an entrepreneurial career so sprung. In this last statement, you will find the perception that one needs to have worked in the corporate scene to make it as a businessman. Let’s also call it my misconception.

That’s the funny thing, I have found: that perceptions and misconceptions are a couple, in love with themselves and each other, publicly displaying their affections as they walk and portraying biblically epic dramas every so often.

Someday I will look back and sigh at this attempt to introduce Mental Health Awareness, and possibly find it too subtle. I should probably have started the Alcoholics Anonymous way, saying:

‘Hi, my name is Freddy, and I’m an epileptic.’

But that would only be true if I really was an epileptic. I am not. I do, however, have epilepsy.

I can almost hear a coupla gob-smacks, and a collective “Big difference!”

To answer the perceived interjection, yes. Very. Big. Difference.

The mind is a powerful place; a place where stories become, lives are made and broken. A place where imagination rules the day, subjects the night. If you believe it enough, you can allow it to become you. This is precisely what I have come to learn, living for the past 10 years with Epilepsy. He has been a good crutch to lean on to get out of trouble, yet She has also been wily enough to draw me into trouble. Notice the perception that when my Epilepsy is male he’s a support system, albeit misguided, but when female, she’s a fox dragging me down to the loins of danger: and possible oblivion.

Saying that I am epileptic makes me the problem, makes me the disease. Saying that I have epilepsy, means that I own the problem, I’m its solution; but only in my mind. With some medication and guidance from a qualified neurologist, the first part is what got me back to persistent levels of sanity.

For the next three months, every fourth week, I intend to talk about Mental Health. How I have noticed certain trends, and with a little research, can make a case as to why ‘creative’ people are ‘crazy’. How I have met a lady who has all her life lived with Epilepsy, a man who has all his life lived with Polio, and what effect, if any, this has had on their Mental Health.

What is the giant vibrator? An epileptic, of course. The ultimate elephant is in your mind.

**********

Animals and children tell the truth. They never lie. Which one is more human? There’s a thought, now you decide. Compassion in the jungle, compassion in your hands, would you like to make a run for it? Would you like to take my hand?

I want to live, like animal, careless and free, like animal, I want to live, I want to run through the jungle the wind in my head and the sand at my feet.

- The Animal Song, by Savage Garden.

                                                                                            

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 owns of a hard-hitting anything-goes blog, the Diary of a Serial Schizo, 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’? 

The Diss Missive: A Rebuke of Dance Masquerades in #Kenya

 ~ by Anon E., Mass of Wandrous Wonder.


My immediate reaction, upon receiving a response from my good friend Anon E., to my publishing her thoughts recently, were:

"Chicca has a brilliant mind; but does she know that?"

When I told her this, she responded ever so, erm, shall we call it subtly proud? 

"Brilliant mind - so I've been told. I choose to NEVER compliment myself. Especially after too many people have been telling me about my big dendai."

Then she proceeded to make my morning. As I hope she may yours:

The Diss Missive

Hey Freddy,

This is one of those moments where I'm sending an e-mail using my
phone, crossing my fingers, hoping it'll go through.

Random thought this evening - it's been ages since I danced. 

In
public, with other people, up there, on a dance floor.

Only problem is, I DON'T miss that type of dancing that takes place on
Kenyan floors. 

You know, coitus erectus - damn; that pun.

I miss the 'innocent' dance moves where little touch was required;

 like the dance-offs, amongst Michael Jackson aficionados. 

Plus the
tension accompanied by the transition from upbeat to mellow; 

the
summons to the slow dance.

Now it's all bump-and-grind; come-hither then cum at your-place-or-mine.

Art by l'Artista Kenita

As a
courtship ritual it's too easy; just as are the subsequent hook-ups. 

And...
too plain... too;

 boring.

I miss the intricacies of the dance, the kind that starts first;

fast

 with a
meeting of the eyes. 

Then a mutual appreciation of a beat, leading to
a set of gyrations 

whose dialectics portray the individuality of the
persons involved. 

Unlike now where the dance floor is nothing more
than a place for the id to let loose.

...okay I can't seem to find an appropriate ending to this set of
words. Probably because it's past 10 pm, and my body is wired to shut
down after this hour.

Over and out!

Anon E. Mass of Wandrous Wonder.