A POEM FOR ALL OF YOU

THE TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS

Rain comes down
in flash floods
and in torrents
and we look in fear
as what was meant
to be a kiss of life
that makes dead grass grow again
becomes a touch of death
as our lives
are swept away by the water

diseases
spread their ugly frog-like tentacles
stealing away
our lives and our joys

laughter fades away
in Turkana
and only the sound of weeping is heard
as worn-out bellies
groan and ache for food

in Nairobi
our lives collide
minds frustrated by the corporate world
collide with lives
frustrated by selling mitumba on Tom Mboya street

women enter into matatus
and men grab their breasts
as if they are picking mangoes in a basket

oh the same matatus
how they rush and run
quickly, more quickly than the wind
squashing Moi Avenue beggars
into permanent blood-stains
on the pot-holed tarmac

and in all this desperation
we sit back and ask in anguish
God, where are you?
are you really there?
do you really exist?
why have you stopped caring?

then,
Christmas comes along
like the sound of a distant bell
and lifts up our hearts
to make us smile
it rides softly on the shoulders of the old
till they too walk faster
on this day when the saviour was born

Christmas trees and lights
decorate our homes
in Kakamega
kilos and kilos of chicken
roasted and fried
in Kibera
a father buys chocolate
for his children
in Lower Kabete Campus
a girl gets a card
from her boyfriend
oh for the first time
since Valentine's day

yes,
miracles do happen on Christmas
for the almighty does comes down
to sit with us and to give us peace
not peace that comes
from a lot of gomba-drinking and boza-smoking
but the true kind of peace
the one that blossoms in our hearts
like a thousand roses
making the angels so envious
that they look upon us
and start gossipping

the wind stands still
on that day
as peace works its way
into our homes
peace for the believer
and the one who does not believe
peace for the Hindu, the Muslim
and the Sikh
peace for the Straight, the Gay,
the Lesbian and the Masturbators
peace for the saved
and peace for the yet to be saved
peace to all of you
as i wish you a Merry Christmas
and a Happy New Year 2007

yours lovingly,
mdkims

africa resource bank conference, simba lodge

from sunday to wednesday i have been at simba lodge naivasha discussing with all these cool peeps on how to turn africa people into a resource ... i attended the conference courtesy of SIFE (students in free enterprise) and i immensely thank James Shikwati, the country director and a dear friend for that

it was more like a think tank kind of thingy and oh, i was like the youngest and the like the least educated because almost everyone carried scents of Phds and Masters ... i learnt a lot about the african situation ... and that africa is the only continent that is going to note an increase in its population by the year 2025 therefore the eager need that these people be turned into an asset or risk them proving a major liability ... if you consider that 50% of the population is under the age of 17 with many of them facing an uncertain future in regard to poor governance, disease, poverty and unemployment some serious considerations have to take place ... our workshop was such an attempt

let me go back to less serious issues ... simba lodge was the bomb ... i would wake up in the morning and run towards the lake so that i could view hippopotamuses grazing ... there were beautiful waterbucks also that held no fear or awe for the humanity surrounding them ... a friend had a digital camera and we took some major snaps ... i tried downloading them but there was a hitch so i will try to do that some other time ... the lake ... there is something incredibly fantastic about standing close to a lake ... it reminded me of the time i was in high school and we went for a major hike down kerio valley to touch the waters of lake kamnarok ... lake naivasha is just the same ... only grander ... and with all these beautiful birds standing and wading around ... and in the distance where the sun rays shimmered over the lake, one could spot a fisherman or two trying their trade

the hospitality from the lodge staff was great, the only tragedy is that most of them seem averse to smiling ... which is not necessarily bad but a smile does not seem to cost that much, does it? ... i met all these peeps from south africa and tanzania ... shared a lot about our cultures ... learnt some afrikaans and plied it on a south african lady who laughed her socks off when i told her that she was a beautiful girl in Afrikaans

the best part was the mbuzi choma we had ... never tasted roasted goat that was half that good ... i was rather full from an excellent dinner so i missed somewhat on that delicacy but there were other rewards like in being around all these interesting peeps doing all these interesting things that you had no idea that they could possibly be done

most folks there were exceptional in that each person seemed to have in a certain way chosen the road less travelled ... they all took exception to conventional wisdom and followed what was in their own hearts ... and i was like caramba! that must have demanded a lot of courage

there were poets, writers, businessmen, social workers,researchers, proffessors, idlers who did not like working but had saved money to attend all manner of conference ... and each person was very confident about their position in life and were not attracted in any manner to what any other participant might have had on their side of the fence

i met this lady who scored straight As in highschool ... her father had insisted on choosing the most complicated degrees for her so as to effectively utilize her load of brains ... you could imagine the list ... doctor, lawyer, rocket scientist, astronaut ... or something that would involve her shutting herself in a lab for good watching a paramecium reproduce in the hope that such an observation would earn her a nobel prize

instead, this girl did philosophy and theology in the states and came back immediately afterwards ... there was some form of career assurance in america but the country sucked culture-wise and she hopped on plane back to africa ... she is like very jobless right now ... oh, she did a stint in strath but thought that a teaching job sucked so she is just at home travelling around the world with the money she saved ... she is thinking of working for a cruise ship, hmmmm ... my mind could not adequately correlate her decisions but then she told be a beautiful thing ...ALL WE WANT IN THIS LIFE IS TO LOVE AND TO BE LOVED ...period ... she has already achieved that and sees not why we should have much hullabaloo about life

this is critical if we a too look at the education system in africa ... there are those who say that a developing nation needs more scientists than it does guys in the so called liberal artistes ... do we force children to become doctors, engineers and accountants or do we give them the free will to explore their God-given talents ... are the students who fail pro-science examination necessarily weak or are they just victims of an unfair system ... the whole talk challenged me to really look at myself in the mirror and see what i really am and what i really want ... which of course is a difficult task for any human ... but i guess that at the end of it all we have to make choices about our lives and we have to be ready to live by those choices and not blame anyone if anything goes awry ...

TO BE CONTINUED

through books, many kingdoms i have seen

GOD OF SMALL THINGS ...
it is a rather small book with an attractive cover depicting lilies sunken in a pool of water ... the main protagonist is a woman named rahel and his twin estha ... they are said to be twins from the same egg but fertilized by a different sperm ... this i guess serves as the main plot for the story with rahel being able to telepathically know whatever estha goes through including an incident in which the latter is abused by an orange juice seller ... my most comical scene is where they go with their aunt to the local police station to report a crime and the policemen keeps hitting their aunt's breasts with a pen like fruit buyer picking mangoes in the market ... ok, that is rather uncouth but arundhati roy has a way with words ... the book won the precious Man Booker Prize and it is the only book that the author has written so far since it was launched in 1997 ... i guess it deserves a consideration or two ...

ANGELA'S ASHES ...
The true story of frank mccourt childhood when his family emigrated from america to settle in ireland ... it is one of the most painful books you could ever read ... the author completely detaches himself from unearned emotion and sentimentalism when he delves you into the silent anguish and pain that the poor go through ... watching his siblings die one after the other, caring from his sick mother, having to assume fatherly roles after his alcoholic father abandoned the nest and the singular pressures of having to be an american outcaste in an irish slum really takes a toll on young frank as the book depicts ... but at the end of it all he is able to save enough money (some of it he stole from the house of the moneylender after the latter died of a heart attack) to go to america where his life is depicted in the novel 'TIS ... i have not read 'Tis though ... oh, the book did win a pulitzer

THE MAMMOTH HUNTERS ...
I bought this book thinking it was really going to sink me into the challenges that the stone-agers went through hunting bison, mammoth and mastodon ... i thought it was going to take me into this otherworld with sabre-toothed tigers and six foot tall wart-hogs ... indeed, it is no more than a misguided soap opera that would not have earned much at the ratings ... Jean Auel (the author) seems not able to free herself from the entrapments and the endearments of the modern world when she takes her mind back to over 30,000 years ago .. the main protagonist Ayla, is a stereotypical testerone-driven femme fatale whose amazing skills at anything including lighting a fire, are supposedly so ingenious that the whole race of humanity and neandertals are almost ready to worship her ... i found that rather pitiful

HARRY POTTER ...
fascinating book ... exceptional ... deserving all the billions that j.k. rowling, the author, made ... it is not escapist fantasy as many might think ... it does not avoid death or pain and harry potter is not insulated from calamity as many other protagonists are ... he is also just an average kid ... he is not a sports hunk neither is he a pock-marked wizkid poring through manuscripts with glasses or writing impressive software programmes ... he is just a normal boy who happens to be a wizard and is supposed to attend the hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry despite having to live with his muggle relatives who are just nothing but a pain in the ass ... an evil snaky-looking evil lord called voldermort is also after the life of this poor boy ... any teen will identify with the book ... and they do identify for they are the ones who have bought so many copies of the book that if they were laid on the ground in three layers they would cover the whole of brazil ... and if they were to form a trail they would go round the world thrice! .. j.k. is one storywriter!

WUTHERING HEIGHTS ...
completely ancient book of the 19th something ... written by emile bronte whose personal life was just as interesting as the novel ... it is a rather dreary tale about a certain dubious character healthcliff who roosts in one of those dreary castle where the sun never shines brightly enough on anything ... the story is so creepy and gloomy that after reading it i felt something eerie and wierd about the atmosphere that i could not put my finger on ... reading it is more like listening to one of those far-off death-themed soundtracks as found in the lord of the rings ... you might not necessarily understand the words but something very haunting about it keeps captivating you ... yea, i am not a really got plot outliner but this is just a blog and not an advertizing campaign

RICH DAD, POOR DAD ...
Fascinating book ... some very financially sound tips when it comes to investing your money ... loved the way he defined assets as things that bring money in and liabilities as things that expend your money ... this robert dude is really suave ... this reminds me that i have to get my copy back from a friend who has kept mum after borrowing it like many moons ago

THE ALCHEMIST ...
it starts as a rather simple tale about a shepherd boy looking for treasure buried beneath the pyramids ... it becomes a tale about the incredible possibilities of the human mind, the power of positive thinking and above all why we should all believe in our dreams ... loved the quote 'Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.' ... powerful book!

i will try to more to this list of my favourite books

if i could write a letter about iten

i wrote a letter to my brother yesterday ... it was raining and i thought that would be cool for inspiration ... i did jumble and jot many words down i remember ... but today in the morning i was too afraid to send it ... instead i just folded it sharply and placed it inside a novel

he is lucky that he gets written letters ... i only got three letters in high school ... perhaps that is not such a shame for an extreme introvert ... the first one was from my elder sister ... she wrote when i was in form one ... a lovely letter that ended with a cool catch-phrase, cheerio, that was the thingy for those heydays ... she demanded that i write back and just like yesterday i did scribble something down but it only ended between the pages of my exercise book ... she never wrote again!

the next one i received in fourth form ... it was a rather saucy letter from a girl i had no idea about ... i was more stupefied than impressed, and it came to my realization letter that all the 'let my love come flying like a jumbo jet to the airport of your heart' stuff was meant for another 'downstairs' guy in the next class ... one was referred to as a 'downstairs bloke' if their transcripts were one of the usuals that were decorated with capital Ds ... he stole my identity cause i was bright and quite unknown ... and the way my name was plastered proudly on the noticeboard for excellent results was a sure way of having the chick think of him as one solid brainiac ... it worked ... i idly returned the letter to the fella and did not even raise an issue ... all my energies were committed elsewhere

the last one i got in the midst of the fervent fires of the kcse exams ... it was from my sister who lives in swaziland ... it came with a delightful card and i proudly showcased it on top of my desk during moments of absurd vanity ... it was the first letter she wrote to me after moving there ... it appeared that she was rather happy and content ... the swaziland she described seemed remarkably different from kenya both in features and in culture that one could always be occupied with the satiation of their own curiosity ... she said that she was rather shy of displaying our photos for we were rather skinny as compared to those bootylicious swazis ... surprisingly, those 'reed dance' crazy folks down there have been feeding on mutated cows that take only three months to mature! ... better to remain a leaner but healthier-eating kenyan

it is not so hard to fall in love with letters especially if you come from iten ... a close friend told me frankly that to grow up in such a beautiful place ... close to the howling valley with its creamy fog ... meant that one could either go mad or become a poet ... the latter description better suits me thank you though much of my poetry i only read myself

i guess the valley will always be a part of my life ... it howls within me from time to time like a lover calling his man to her bosom ... i was always scared and i still am of looking down at it ... of course their was the profit of the panoramic view that opened before you ... a closer brown valley dotted with huts and lines of grevellia trees and a much more distant second one ... the second valley is always purple but with binoculars one can have a closer look at where the kerio river feeds the lake kamnarok and probably spot elephants taking a sip of water during a hot day

i have walked all the way down to that 'hell' ... for hell it is, burning and scalding hotter than anything i can ever imagine ... it was part of a hike we took while we were in high school ... and it firmly implanted the adage 'life is beautiful but cruel' into our young minds

descending down the first valley is not hard ... there are people mingling all over and cars flashing past on its way to either eldoret or kabarnet ...and since we left at dusk we were howling like dogs all the way probably scaring sleeping little children that a pack of jackals or T-9s had been let loose ... then we slipped down a narrow road that opened slowly like a ribbon to lead us down to the desolate second valley ... the trip down is beautiful ... brownish-green grass, virgin and untouched by human hand or a cow's mouth wave rustle softly in the wind reminding you of a beautiful woman ... and the path bear no sign of human feet ... you feel like adam or eve taking the first steps in a brand new planet

the experience was also very carthartic for long ago, the people of my tribe 'the keiyo' had stuck to the stiff sides of this escarpment to seek protection from the violent nandi, tugen and maasai tribes ... my mother has endowed me with many memories of my people and walking down the escarpment i could almost see them herding their goats, tending their streams of water, making mursik, giving their warcries when nandi warriors were spotted ... it was a war cry that even the goats knew very well and they would follow their owners into hiding ... leaving behind a deserted village

the torture begins once you are down the second valley ... it is not as flat as it is normally viewed as from iten ... it is just a chaos of hill and valley ... you struggle up the sharp incline of a hill, thinking that it is the last one and that you can finally be rewarded with the majestic view of the green lake kamnarok only to find out that there is another hill -and probably five others as well after that

but with a spirit that only high school students could have we struggled and leapt with young joy as we spotted the lake, it did not even matter that we could no longer touch it with the proliferation of weed around it ... it did not not even come to mind that there was another torturous back trip ... one in which many would have their legs fail them, one in which a student would be severely dehydrated that he would have to be hospitalized for a week, one in which a close friend would wonder of on his own and almost end up trampled by elephants ... we just celebrated the fact that our hard work had come to fruition and we could at least gaze close upon the lake ... it looked distant and inviting, almost hypnotic and all of us were mesmerized by a sensation almost alien ... i do not know whether our headmaster and literature felt the same for they had taken an easier hour drive to the lake with a weatherbeaten landrover ...

i will write my brother a letter another time!

am listening to James Blunt's 'you are beautiful' while writing this

i have been discovered ... not that i have committed any crime but it is just that my blog was my own private secret for my own private thoughts ... it was a way of getting lost from the world, for a moment at least and trying to be this mdkims being ... yea, my siblings finally came to realize that i was the guy behind mdkims after i left a flashdisk hanging around somewhere with my writing ... nways that is all water under the bridge

i have not blogged for a while ... i kinda decided to go for some soul-searching and to find inspirations in the small things of life that people do not usually see in the scurry and scramble that is their wake ... actually i think am a loser when it comes to that ... not that i do not find inspiration just that i find it hard to effectively describe such situations with words ... i expect people to feel what i am feeling without me saying anything ... this has often resulted in odd and unfriendly stares from friends and acquaintances alike

keeping that odd and unfriendly stares in mind, i am reminded of high school and being in form one specifically ... we were coming with this friend of mine, fresh and friendly from laden with good tidingsof chapatis, mahamris, mkarangos, drinking chocolate to be mixed with blueband, cocoa for cold power and a lot of other boola boola that we happened to possess at the time ... then we noticed this strange stares we got from our mono peers ... they hovered like desperate bats in the windows around the administration block waving their arms about at us ... we were like what ... but they only kept rounding their mouths into silent Qs and Os keeping on bloodshot eyes ..we amua to lenga and kept walking proudly like kings ... then as suddenly as the day had been clear and bright it became dark and ominous as a scroungel of form twos appeared from a corridor and passed gently around us ... so gently did they filch from us that it happened right under the noses of the teachers who tried so hard but rather very daftly to protect us ... i still have not figured out what exactly happened but what i do know is that many of the mahamris and chapatis were gone ... and as we went for consolations from our mono peers we realized that their arm-waving and odd-stres thing had been secret morse codes telling us that the form twos were rather dangerous that day ... of course, like hapless baboons they were soon begging us the few remaining pieces of chapos and mahamris and out of our big hearts or lack of otherwise we rather half-heartedly surrendered everything

one of the biggest scares we had as monos was a terryifying word GRADUATION DAY ... we were told that on that day form-fours would beat the chicken out of us all toddlers so that only real men could go and become form twos ... and there were the horrible statistics that on average three boys died every year ... form twos who loved revenging on us for sufferings they felt in their first year told us that even the headmaster dared not stop anyone on that day and locked himself in his house leaving everyone to his own fate ... of course, it was all balderdash ... there was nothing like graduation day but when you are young, callow and craven you can believe any crap around ...

so every evening around third term as the fourth years pressed on towards kcse we began eyeing each other with terrified looks any time we heard a commotion around prep time ... the worst day came when power went out and we were left in the dark ... there was something in the air rather sinister that day and looking back through my memories i cannot quite put my finger on what it was ... all i know is that another guy called isaac and i began firmly assuring everyone that whatever happened we should not scramble off and that if we stuck together we could make a formidable army ... i doubt if anyone was really listening to us for even in the darkness you could feel their eyes dancing around ... then a branch brushed against the window, then another and soon there was such a rush of branches being hit against the windows that it was almost like the sound of the rain ... isaac and i were the first to jump off a corner window ... he was more agile than i and was on the window ledge faster ... i felt as if he was taking such a long while so i pushed him and his trousers got caught on a hook and was all ripped up ... i did not care ... all i knew was that i was going to run to a nearby catholic church and seek for clemency and safety in its sacred altars ... somehow we all had that idea for everyone was following me ... i saw that that was not good and made a point to run faster ... it became nothing more than a point for my limbs did not agree and to see the numbers of teens who rushed past me one would have thought i was actually running backwards ....

that day was quite long but for the school gates were firmly locked and the and the watchman felt nothing for our plight ... slowly we came to realize that it was all in vain ... there was never a graduation day and never was there to be ... in fact, those same fourth years were the same ones who came to commiserate with us thinking we had all gone bonkers ... it finally dawned on us that the whole branches-against-the-windows thing was all the work of a cheeky fellow mono called Leila and his petty gang! we all fell splat into their mudtrap! they had to make themselves very scarce that day and the next for many hands itched to strangle them

one of the worst situations that could have happened to a mono in our time was the hanging-in-the-closet thingy ... form fours shared rooms in twos and the two would connive so that one of them would pretend to be friendly to a mono ... take the mono to their room ... give him cold power, hot power, biscuits, bread (twas the high school delight and most relished), quencher and stuff ... he would even give one a trendy blazer to put on as a point of honour ... then he would excuse himself to go out for something and guess who comes strolling in ... the other roommate and mad as a thousand hells he would be

"form one unafanya nini hapa ... umeanza kumea pembe na kuanza kuniibia eeeee .... ngoja utajua mimi ni nani leo"

between the mouthfuls of bread and hot power the mono would have in his mouth, the mono would scarcely be able to breathe, let alone speak ... the form four would promptly take a hangar, put it inside the trendy blazer with the mono still wearing it and placing him as if he was a piece of cloth in his closet ... the mono would have paid with his blood to be released ... wow, that was one cruel prank!

the thing i remember about the form fours of our time was their determination to bend all rules ... tv and movies had to be off by 10:30 but one time while watching a rather sleazy movie they decided to extend time from 11 ... 12 ... the watchman came in ... put the lights on and demanded that the tv be put off ... he was promptly lifted up like a feather, put inside a drum, a lid was placed on top, someone sat on it to threaten him with kicks if he dared shout, the lights were put on and everyone continued watching the movie calmly as if nothing happened! ....

what a life highschool was!

putting the devil in hell, angel gabriel and other sex stories

decameron was a lovely character ... i met him in a voluminous literature book that me daddy got from the USA ... he was taking something very anti-literature for his first degree and second but trust my father to read any book that falls within his sight

nways, it was a literature book that highlighted all the major epic tales cultivated in the western hemisphere through history ... it is the kind of book that you read in hiding lest people think you are a mad proffessor

decameron ... he lived when everyone in europe was dying because of rats ... though everyone at the time thought that they were being cursed by witches ... so as his friends and probably family kick their life buckets and succumb to death through bubonic plague, decameron writes stories about sex ... wonderful fellow!

the first tale is about a silly girl who wonders to a desert where a monk lived naked, depriving himself of every material item so as to be closer to the provedence ... now silly girls do not think to much ... so they do not get wrinkles and therefore are more beautiful ... the monk, naked as he was, reacted as every virile, red-blooded, straight man would react ... the girl, stupid as she was, did not fail to notice

"monk, what is that ugly thing protruding from that thick black forest betwixt your legs?"
monk:it is the devil my dear
stupid girl: wow, he must be very mad ... will you look at the size of he! saw my
uncle theoderic with a piece like that .... thought he was hiding a
piece of my aunt's famous long bread-
Monk: he wants to be put in hell!
stupid girl: and where should hell be now!
Monk: you brought hell without knowing it!

so the monk demonstrated to the stupid girl how he was going to put his devil in her hell ... he put the devil in six times and the girl complained that the devil was really causing a lot of pain in hell ... afterwards, the girl got so used to having the devil put in her hell that she demanded the monk do so all the time ... now the monk with his deprivation and all was not the best man for the job ... and with time the girl felt like a lion being fed a peanut a day ... the monk said that the devil was already chastened and did not wish to be put in hell but the girl insisted that the fires of hell were still burning brighter and clearer waiting for the devil ... at last, the monk was saved when the girl's father found her and took her away to be given in marriage to another guy ... the girl asked if he would find the devil there and his father promised her so ... and as for the monk ... well, he had memories to live for!

SECOND TALE ... a priest sits in a confession and a dashingly beautiful but extravagantly stupid woman named madonna walks in (this decameron dude must have been sexist ... how come every woman in his tale is taken to be stupid) .... so madonna prattles on about her beauty and goes on and on till it is tedious to listen to her ... the priest however ravishes her beauty and works up a line like the monk did

Priest: madonna ... angel gabriel is so much fascinated with your beauty that he
wants to visit you tonight and admire you himself
Madonna: oh really! ok like when can he come!
Priest: there is a hitch ... he cannot come from heaven in his true form ... he has
to chose the form of a man ... he wants to assume my body ... do you agree!
Madonna: wololoyaye! like why not ... wait till my friends hear i spent a night with
an angel-
Priest: ahem! mums the word ... he prefers discretion
Madonna: bhhhs! alright ... let me not upset him

so at night the priest and madonna do their thing and in the morrow madonna comes back again for the confessional

Madonna: angel gabriel came last night ... i tell you he had so much energy and
passion ... i had to give him such a bite on his left breast that the mark
should remain there forever
Priest: i have no memories of last night whatsoever ... my soul had been taken to
paradise so that angel gabriel could assume my form ... tonight i shall do
something i have never done ... i shall remove my clothes and check that
mark that you speak about ... i have not yet noticed it!

there were about eight other tales ... but these two were the cheekiest ... i never knew that medieval writers could sound so 21st century!

now the worst sex story i have ever heard was about this doctor's wife who used to have aha moments with the milk man (why is it always the milk man) ... so the husband who catches wind of the affair steals in one early evening finds the two asleep, very much exhausted after a very silky dalliance ... the doctor injects the milkman with sedative and proceeds with surgery ... completely removing his testicles and stitching the skin back together ... the milk man woke up much later TO FIND OUT TTHHHHAAAAAAATT ... do not even try to picture how he felt like

Moral of the story: if you sleep with a doctor's wife, you will lose your
testicles

where angels fear to tread

every day when i wake up, in campus especially, i always have a hard-on ... i know that this is a pretty ridiculous thing to say but if you do not let out some things in a blog where will you ever let them out ... this has made me seek for very ingenious solutions when it comes to walking to the bathroom ... my friend/neighbour caught me the other day and after laughing at me (it was more of a rib-cracking guffaw) said that i had to much 'passion' in my blood and that it was time i got laid

now,there was this former neighbour who used to get his freak-on almost every hour or so ... it comes as a hard surprise that he could still walk after all that ... may be he was on 'kukumanga' or something (if you do not know what that is then you never went to a kenyan high school) ... nways, it was pretty disgusting to hear their moans and all especially when the rest of the 'wingers' were trying to do something more sensible like holding a prayer meeting and a bible study ... and then there was the 'exile' thing that had his roommate locked out every evening ... his roommate was another freak who never minded where he was so long as it was not in his own dig ... he loved hovering around sniffing for free things ... inviting himself whenever there was tea or coffee and taking the cups with which he was served the drinks as mementoes ... he freaked out my roommate one time ... my roomie had gone to the loo and came back to find the dude dead asleep in his bed ... yes, inside his sheets and all ... my roomie was a nice fella, who prayed his rosary daily, in fact he seemed so much holier-than-thou that i used to wonder if his beloved rosary was carved straight from the thigh bones of St. Mary Magdalene ... but that day he dropped that 'good lad' facade and let out a darker of his character that i never wish to see-again!

in campus, people always have problems with their roommates ... there is this girl-buddy of mine(excuse the kenyan english) who had a 'mlokole' roommie in first year ... she too suffered from a different type of 'exile' ... the one in which peeps would be praying hard for the delivery of souls in your room till 4 the next day that you would have to fall asleep elsewhere ... the girl-buddy (let us call her Susan and let the 'savedy' roomie be Angela, so Susan got so disgusted that she wrote a note to angela to stop being ludicrous and being the good christian that she was, be concerned that she susan should get a good nine hours of sleep in her own bed as is required ... the situation was quickly remedied

then(i have to shift to a different paragraph for it is a long story) came second year ... angela who had been to saved for her own good decided to beat the devil at his own game ... now susan again began to hold onto the small end of the stick when it came to finding the comfort of her own bed and this time it was no longer because of prayers or anything but because of endless shagging sessions that angela began to dutifully host ... susan had too look for a single room and angela was left to her own affairs ... angela is a campus nut-case now ... the girl that you do not want to be spotted with in your own room at odd hours

at least for moi i have my own private room after all that drama ... it gives me time to do my own crazy stuff although i miss my former roomie's cups of masala tea that he used to surprise me with every afternoon ... i have started exercizing in my own room ... stretching my limit of push-ups by the day ... i can now manage 30 without breathing to hard and i want to go all the way upto 100 ... my leg raises are also coming good ... i just want to build on my upper body mass because i believe it is healthy and am always eager to try out new exercise routines that i discover on the net, tv etc ... and as for the hard-ons, well i do not believe getting laid is the answer ... am a good lad remember!

sheng' debate, 9th International Nairobi Book Fair

now for something real ... i have been at the expo centre Sarit since wednesday, taking statistics of peeps who have come to attend the book fair ... a very boring job i should say but somehow i felt i had the resolve to push it through till saturday ... so there i was trying to look all smiley and friendly ( folks thought i was with the customer care or something when i was only supposed to keep statistics, so they kept asking me a repetitive list of tedious questions) ... after awhile, i got so bored that it showed on my face, wrote a note threatening to bite anyone who dared to as much mumble a hello ( of course i was too craven to display it), but i did everything with my gestures to show that i was a likely black mamba

so a lot of familiar faces ... marjorie, maillu, a pretty former Uonian known as Kingwa Kamencu(she had a lovely smile) ... oh, and i finally put the face to the name Potash ... he looked every part of his blog, a typical artist ... i liked him immediately ... through Potash i learnt a lot about blog-writing and activities at Kwani ... then there was the sheng' debate ... it took place today between 2-4 ... a lot of familiar peeps were there ... Oyunga Pala, Clay Muganda, Caroline The Poetess-can't recall her last name , guys from Ukoo Fulani and so many dudes and chicks from the world of writing and art.

nways, the debate began ... i perched myself on a seat and listened ... Oyunga Pala said that sheng' is a language of the future, his grandkids would have it as their only language and probably his great-grandkid would be a sheng' lecturer, he also added that it was a unifying language, one that had effectively cut across the famous battle-lines of the 42 tribes in Kenya and probably for anyone below the age of 25, the only language they loved ... Clay Muganda was of a different opinion ... he doubted whether sheng' had garnered enough aces to qualify as a fully-fledged language ... he was also refuting the idea that sheng' belongs to a particular generation ... President Kibaki himself says kujienjoy ... another dude further reiterated that too lock a language in culture is to arrest its development ... sheng' has to shift from the 'hood' paradigm if it is to survive, and he pointed out various examples of the indo-eurasian languages that could not be traced to a particular race or group of people ... i totally agreed ... i suck in sheng' and the only reason i suck in it is that i do not feel that i possess it ... it is a language of the 'street' and i did not grow up in the 'street' ... i grew up in a farm with wheat and maize and tractors and cows and sheep ... my parents emphasized on 'correct' languages so i never bothered to learn sheng' in school (i was a good lad-i listened)

the Ukoo Fulani dudes were obviously so much in defense of their precious language ... and it was beautiful to hear their mastery of the poetic flow of sheng' ... they even told us that what they were speaking was not even sheng' ... that if they were to switch to the real 'mtaa' one ... the one that evolves every 24 hours, all of us would simply float ... it appeared somewhat that the language was more or less meant to be a certain form of code ... mike from the ukoo group said that sheng' can be traced back to the colonial days when people had to find ways to communicate so that they could hoodwink the keen hard taskmasters that made the government of the day ... and from that it grew to what it is today

but it was carol who really moved me ... she spoke about her fluency in kikuyu and how english is still so foreign that she keeps discovering new things about it every day ... she teaches kids and was simply wondering how amazing would it be if they could be allowed to express themselves in sheng', their first language of expression

her sentiments made me remember my childhood ... those halcyon days when i puttered around like a lame tractor mumbling Keiyo to everyone ... there are words in Keiyo that have no English equivalent ... and there are activities that Keiyo people do that cannot be explained in the same-said English ... 'kesute sotet'is the act of taking a burnt piece of a dried twig of the 'nerkwo' tree(don't think the Queen can say that in her language) and smearing the charcoal on the insides of a guord within which milk would be stored to ferment and make 'mursik' ... see how long it took me to explain that, and when i speak Keiyo i simply say 'kesute sotet'

in school i read english books about 'fair-skinned lasses' with long 'locks of golden hair' who went about 'moors' picking 'daffodils' in the 'spring' ... i still cannot picture that adequately but i still had to read those books and force myself to believe that i actually understood what was going on ... but what about the world i grew in ... what about the trees and the insects, the relations and names of the different types of rock ... those could and still can only be explained in Kikale ... i know various species of ant but one can only know i do if i speak about them in 'keiyo' for those dudus were in 'keiyo' land and so my people had names for them while the British who grew up in the islands of the UK can only say one word - 'ant' if they arrive in my homeland

definitely, we cannot start undermining the importance of English, it is so much necessary as a global language and it would be impossible to conduct corporate affairs and meetings in sheng' or any other 'vernacular'(i hate the word but i have to use it) languages ... but still to inculcate a child with other languages when one could simply be instructed in the one he or she is really familiar with is too cripple him or her ... it is not healthy to force kids to speak a certain language at home or at school ... as is the scenario nowadays ... let them speak the language that is in the environ ... through that they would be able to appreciate the world much better ... otherwise they would just be floating somewhere in the clouds, completely unaware of what is going on around them ... children from the rural areas fail national exams not because they are stupid but because they do not have an adequate command of english-what a waste of brain?

at the end of it all i believe any effort made to curtail on the development or the speaking of a language will and should be resisted ... sheng' is a very beautiful child born out of our very beautiful african languages ... anyone who looks down on it is clearly missing out on the big picture i should say ... but that is just my thought!

rumours from the sacred canopy

i have punished myself many times in my life ... i punished myself when i loped off a flowerhead of a pretty little dahlia ... it grew alone on a dry patch of my pero's flower garden ... nothing else that had life was around it at least if one could choose to ignore the ants that scurried about ... all the other flowers kept their distance and grew bright and strong ... and those that tried to give close comfort to the dahlia simply died ... i never came to understand why that dahlia managed to sprout all alone where others had failed ... it reminded me of Robert Frost's The Road Less Travelled ... but flowers do not travel ... they get stuck in the same spot till they wither and die ... but that dahlia did not wither ... i uprooted it all and flushed it down the toilet ... it had to die because i had cut off its flowerhead ... it had to die because it was not perfect as before ... and its presence in the dry patch of earth ... its stubborn persistence where others had not tried to grow... suddenly became irritating ... and i killed it!

i cried when it was gone ... i cried because i had lost a friend ... a pretty little flower friend ... i never knew her name ... she just went away nameless ... and i knew that in that dry patch of earth, there was nothing i could stare at again ... was i envious of the dahlia ... i do not have the slightest idea ... may be one day ... when i finally climb the hill which everyone is supposed to climb ... at one time or another ... i will look back and feel pity for what i did

but i cannot look back now ... i cannot afford to turn back my head and be all teary-eyed about my past ... i have to fix my legs to the present ... that dreadful split second where everything takes place ... but every time i try to do that i simply float ... my head does not just want to see what i want to see ... it wants me to have a look at the dark patches ... the dark patches that i have been trying to avoid ... may be they are not real ... but what else in this world is real ... dream? hope? Love? ... may be we all are demigods with the ability to create what is real for our existence and to dismiss the rest as fantasy ... i will simply reach out then, to my inner demigod, and fill the world with pretty little dahlias ... THEN I WILL KILL THEM ALL!!!

what my cats taught me about visiting people

IN OUR FAMILY WE HAVE HAD CATS FOR AS LONG AS I CARE TO REMEMBER. THE FOLLOWING ARE TIPS I HAVE GATHERED FROM THOSE FELINE COMPANIONS. THEY HAVE REALLY INSISTED THAT I ACT ON THEM BUT I HAVE ALWAYS LACKED THE COURAGE. MAY BE YOU, DEAR READER, ARE INTREPID ENOUGH TO ACT LIKE A CAT WHEN VISITING FRIENDS.

gently push their door without knocking. proceed to the windowsill without greeting anyone and sit on it. stare absent-mindedly outside. suddenly spring on a sofa two metres away and fall dead asleep. wake up after an hour and demand for food. if no food, act frightened, jump out of the window and run away. otherwise enjoy.

if someone else is using the toilet, simply go outside and find a spot with soft earth. scoop away the soil with your hands to create a small hole. defecate on it. rake back the earth to cover your treasure. sniff it a bit. if still smelly, prop up more earth. walk away as if nothing happened.

before entering the house, pee around it to mark it as your territory. if host gets out, pee on him also and shout 'you are mine'

as host goes to the kitchen to prepare a snack, proceed to hang on the curtains or to sit on the tv. once spotted dive under the table and purr.

sit on your host's lap while watching tv even if you are of the same sex. rub yourself lovingly and lick their hands. demand to be stroked.

jump from their laps once you see an ant moving on the floor. start playing with the insect and make sure your eyes are as wide as saucers.

grab all the drumsticks once lunch is prepared and dive under the dining table with it. groan and scratch if someone dares to peer at you.

be garbed in one garment every time you visit. it is a method cats employ for identification and can work well with humans ... grey-turtleneck-john, purple-jumper-laura

if spending the night and host directs you to the shower, freak at the mention of water. remove your clothes and lick away dirt spots. beam with a smile and say that you are clean. you will need to have practised yoga beforehand to reach all parts of your anatomy

old wives' tales from kenya

you will not grow if someone leaps across your legs while you are lying down

people who can draw perfect circles are insane

carrots are good for your sight ... apparently avocadoes are the thing

you have worms if your eyes are a clear white

you will get ringworms if someone stares at you long and hard

if you develop stye, you've watched porn

if you cross your eyes at someone, they might stay that way

chewing gum if swallowed, stays in your body for seven years

you will die soon if you do not attend your relative's funeral

you will also die soon if you get in the bad books of a dude or a chick who belongs to a certain tribe in kenya which am so afraid to mention

you will almost definitely die soon if you abuse an old lady and she undresses before you

pig fat will protect you from the three above

if someone asks for your photo he wants to use it for black magic against you

you should not take milk and meat together ... you are torturing the cow ... but it is already dead anyway? jeez

good girls make circles with their feet when talking to men

rotten girls where tight hipsters, minis and laugh too much

every neighbour of yours is wicked and has nothing else to do with his or her time but to make plans to destroy you and your family

never share your secrets with anyone because you have such a good name which will get spoilt when your confidante who invariably turns out to be worse than your wicked neighbour shouts the secret at the rooftop with a loudspeaker for all the world to hear

there are no good men in this world left to marry

there are no good women in this world left to marry

you should however not remain single in any case or people will say you are bewitched

someone who does not belong to your tribe is planning to kill you soon ... so you better finish him off with a machete

all children in this era are spoilt and disrespectful

children fifty years ago were respectful and with all the proper manners and decorum

having sex before marriage is a western concept that was not there during your grandmother's teenagehood

children who grew up in urban areas are devils while those from shaggs are nothing short of angels

if you lie you will get pimples on your tongue

if you sleep with someone's wife your 'cheeky friend' will get stuck in his favourite 'abode' and you will be left with no option but to call for the ambulance and when the latter comes you will be publicly embarrassed because all of your wicked neighbours will get out of their houses with cameras,film,boola boola ... to record your humiliating experience for eternity

if you whistle at night you will attract spirits

if girls whom you do not know ask for a lift on your car and you comply they will lift up their skirts/trousers to reveal their donkey hooves ... otherwise they will turn into black cats and start talking to you

cremation is a sin

a deceased has to be buried at his or her father's home

you should always view a body before it is buried otherwise you will never have peace

for a lighter note ... you should always marry someone from your tribe ... otherwise divorce is knocking at your matrimonial door

mother-in-laws always hate their daughter-in-laws and you should never trust them if you happen to be the latter

a girl with big breasts had so much sex while she was young that the sperms got stored up in her jugs

if you wank very often you will grow weak

if a girl interrupts you during a shagging session so that you do not ejaculate the sperms will sink back into your stomach and spoil your kidneys

a boy who is not shagging girls is a softie

if a chameleone gets hold of your hair it will never let go

no bleach in this world can get rid of a banana stain

the length of a girl's lips is the same as the length of the lips under her pants

thin, bean-pole men have big members while men who are built have things small as peanuts ... in essence, men who body build do so to compensate for the lack of the trouser bulge

men always sleep with their housemaids

if you go away from your wife for more than three days she will sleep with someone


there is no such thing as being gay

if you stay out when it is cold you will get pneumonia or catch your death of cold ... apparently not true according to medical reports


If a pregnant woman does not eat whatever food she craves at the time she craves it, the baby's face will resemble said food's shape

if you where a red clad on a rainy day, lightening will strike you

usiogope

there are many things that one is privileged to fear in this life ... and i have had my share ... though in the sea of fear ... am yet to add a drop of the craven ... but now to things that have really given me the creeps in my young life

• the Christmas Tree... don't get me wrong ... have nothing against that ice-cream shaped little cute tree with a misplaced star on top ... its just that at my paros place there is this huge tree ... i think it is a podo ... and it is really scary ... especially when i was much shorter than i am right now ... it is enormous and so tightly-meshed with dark green leaf and if you ever perch beneath it for shadow ... you will be welcomed with an eerie din ... and a constant pecking sound that my sister claims must be a python ... my mum wanted to 'trim' (her idea of the word is to lop the tree into a measly half) another time ... but i damnedestly clung to the fact that mr and mrs.stork had nested there recently and were expecting to have babies and it would be very inhuman to cut it down ... so at last the xmas tree was saved thanks to me ... keep green mr. christmas tree!
• coffins ... i have always been disgusted by the shape, size , features, boola boola ... i have this loonish superstition that if a coffin is the last thing i see before i go to bed, something very sinister will happen ... though i have never had the courage to discover what the sinister thing is ... but i always ensure that i gaze at something more enlightening before i catch my share of forty winks
• turning twenty ... am now 21 but that does not mean am in a constant state of panic ... though it took a while to adjust to the fact that i was no longer a teen when i hit 2 decades ... i just realized that age was just a number and i could keep on doing the things i love doing till my limbs give away with age and tear
• lizards ... i really hate those reptilians ... once saw one in highschool that had two tails ... like at the same time ... shock of my system ... it probably saw that i was afraid of it because it literally jumped and am not kidding, and landed on my shoulder ... hate to remember how i got it off ... but somehow i believe that reptiles all over the world have started a campaign to scare me in similar fashion because the other day i sat down on a comfy chair only to find out that i had squashed a pair of mating frog ... but the worst was when i was young and was walking back home after walking miles into the wilderness to search for some wild fruits courtesy of a friend who told me how sweet they are ... as i walk i felt something cold against my leg ... but i dismissed it to be the wind ... then i enter the living room and my mum screams ... a full-sized(1.5M) snake had wrapped itself round my leg for warmth!
• teachers ... this is a fear that i have been able to outgrow ... but i was always ready to jump at my skin when i met my teachers on the road ... one day in my primo days ... i was carrying a particularly heavy piece of luggage with my sisters ... and were glad about the progress we had made with our small feet ... then all these teachers appear ahead of us coming from some TSC meeting ... we skittered back home with luggage ... hid in a corner to let them pass without noticing us ... only when the coast was clear did we realize what a task it had been to trudge uphill with the load.
• tintin ... he was a large, overfriendly dog that we kept ... though he kept marauders and waylayers at bay with his steel-shod fangs and eerie bark, he also succesfully locked me within when he was out ... he used to jump at me till i fell down then like a lion protecting its kill would proceed to lick me all over ... gross! nways RIP tintin
• mamsap ... there was this old lady who lived alone in a little hilltop ... rumors said she spent the night as a black cat ... and once i walk up at midnight and cast a glance outside only to find a black cat sitting on the window sill ... its form immensely 'creepefied' by the moonshine ... i nearly got a heart attack ... which is not a good thing at such an early age ... nways mamsap was said to be a witch who cut up the ears of kids who misbehaved and cooked it for her dinner so that she could turn into a black cat ... the thought was enough to keep me squeaky clean...
• the nandi bear fur coat ... my mum had a purple fake fur coat ... quite beautiful it was when i look back at it in retrospect ... but she embellished her purchase by saying that her brother had knitted it for her from the very coat he had skinned of from a nandi bear (read my previous article) which she said her brother had bravely killed ... any mention of the nandi bear always increased my heart palpitations ... which goes without saying that i could never be left in a room where that nandi bear fur coat was hanging.
• mr. J.E.B Williams ... my highschool headmaster ... no one ever got to know what names his first three initials stood for ... he was a tall man, white, very british and with dry wit ... when i think of him i remember a man with an overwhelming personality ... who never minded walking to a meeting with gumboots direct from the muddy school farm much to the shame/disgust of the BOD who must have spent the entire morning trying out the appropriate attire... he was always keen to catch anyone committing a goofy mistake (which could have been anything like laughing out louder than the rest of the crowd when he made a joke) ... down to the farm with a heavy jembe for you it would be ... or probably you would be told to go and feed and wash the pigs ... now that would not have been very necessarily bad were it not for the fact that those hogs were enormous, canniballistic, stinky malformations of a genetic engineering experiment with pigs that had backfired
• KCSE ... i always waited with trepidation for this big day which was going to culminate everything we had done in high school ... i was not like in the top ten or anything ... but i always wished to pass ... when i saw that i had gotten an A-(minus) grade i was on top of the moon
• kapenguria 59 ... it was the dreary room i got when i was in second-year ... am in lower kabete campus UON where am taking a BCOMM degree and we kind of shift rooms every year ... all my friends got these nice, freshly-painted rooms and laughed with mocking glee when they came to visit me in my dreary hovel ... it looked so gloomy when i first stepped in ... some shadows never lifting in spite of all the electric bulbs you could put on ... but thanks to a friend who is a wiz in interior design ... i was able to refurbish the room with cheap stuff i got from secret spots in town ... and when i was going to third-year ... it was like the most marvelous room in kapenguria ( a second-year hall in lower kabete)
• now for something i would love to fear ... if you have happened to read through my list, please be kind enough to tell me some of your worst fears in life ... yeah, i love that hair-raising, pulsating feel i get when reading through such nasty renditions

the nandi bear (chebakerit)

my ancestors have always talked with dread about this creature ... and when they talked about it ... especially my mum, and my aunt, and my grandma ... and even my great-grandma whom i had the chance to meet with very briefly ... they all had their encounters
one time in the distant past when the plains of uasin gishu were wild ... they spoke of a creature that came to village ... especially when men were away on a battle ... or wherever men went when they left women alone ... they remember well the devilish cry ... they sound of a tortured demon ... they remember the dark moonless night ... they remember the goat lying headless on the field ... they remember the sinister smell ... so strong that it could make one collapse ... they remember wearing pots on their heads when they wanted to go outside to take a leak outside ... for the creature so much desired to lop your head off that it keshad on your rooftop

my mother was among the last to spy upon it ... she believes the creature is now extinct ... she tells me that it loved living amongst bamboo trees... and that one leg was shorter than the other ... so that it limped when it walked ... my priest back in iten spoke about it too ... and you could have heard a pin drop as the horror of his tale stupefied his congregation ... and yes, i believe that the nandi bear once terrorised peeps ... call me a romantic but that is what explorers were dismissed as when they went to africa and spoke about gorillas .... a mere hundred years ago giant pandas were also dismissed as a chinese myth

and all in all, would it not be nice to know that there was or is a loneful creature out there that scientific description has not appreciated ... many cryptozoologists have tried to adequately describe it ... the kalenjins, luos and bagandas who lived alongside it say it looks like a giant baboon ... early colonialists in uasin gishu say it is more of a bear ... some say it is an undiscovered species of hyena ... though it has been discovered that africans, who have never seen a bear, will describe it as a giant baboon... so may be the chebakerit is truly a bear, an african bear ... a bear that could climb trees and spring away very fast with your head in its mouth ... your beheaded corpse waiting to be discovered by your terrified village folk...

there are many tales of encounters that my family shared with me ... tales calculated to make you jump right out of your skin ... i will share them with you one time ... as for now ... why don't you pay a visit to http://www.cryptozoology.com

times are wasting

went to my sister's in Naks the last weekend ... and like always it felt thrilling to travel in a car full of strange peeps ... it sort of felt like we were this big wierd family and i was this little kid hunched up like a camel on a small corner while the rest were having fun ... actually i suffered a lot because i was sitting next to this lady who gorged up piles and piles of food from her kiondo mpaka i was like men ... nways, the only sad thing is that the driver ran over a hapless baby baboon... i pity those baboons in Naivasha ... someone should relocate them to some safe place

Nakuru was cool as always ... we had so much fun there last december with guys from campo ... we rented a kismall place and literally painted the town red ... but last weekend it was all about seeing my lovely sister again ... let us just call her Susan ... it was lovely seeing her house again ... she is a brainiac when it comes to interior design and the whole place had been transformed into yellows and browns ... from the plates to the spoons, the sofas and the curtains, and all those fluffy fluffy stuffs with strange names were all in those sweet colours ... the place felt kinda hallowed

Yes, she fixed me tea, served it on a yellow cup and stirred the sugar with a brown spoon ... and with those mysterious scents that always linger in a lady's apartment, our conversations were lent an air of enchantment ... she told me about mama and papa back at home ... about how mama is to make a pilgrimage to Israel and how all these hizballah-lebanon thing might affect it ... about workers at the farm ... and my favourite Dan, who has always fascinated me with endless tales about night-runners ... incidentally Dan was doing more than just tell me tales because he is now the proud father of a bouncing baby boy dutifully delivered by a local girl whom I never realized had fallen for Dan's sweet charms

Then another elder sister arrived ... the youngest girl in the family and the one whom i immediately follow ... let us call her Roxa shall we ... Roxa the true raconteur and the life-of-the-party kind of girl further embellished our talk with such hilarious anecdotes that sent our bellies bursting with laughter ... but soon we somehow drifted too much more sober talks ... it seems somehow that in shaggz peeps are starting to lead such messy lives ... a neighbour burnt up her husband with petrol and is now langushing in Lang'ata ... another finally let out that her children were not fathered by her husband, was beaten up by the enraged spouse and is now lying comatose in hospital ... another, a decent man actually, living a modest life and all, cut up the wife with a panga and drove with the corpse to chebloch, a gorge in the iten-kabarnet road to feed the remains to crocodiles ... and this are just the nitty-gritties ... i was like shuck-a-ducky and jizz-the-whizz, wondering why all this was happening..

Iten has always borne a romantic enchatment about it ... mostly because of the scenic valley and the way thick fog would rise from the valley during the rainy season and pour like heavy cream over the land ... may be it only takes a child to see these things and since i spent my entire childhood there, i noticed them all ... we have a farm and a kitchen garden, and an orchard where my mum strove hard to plant all the kinds of fruit available in Kenya and the world ... my sister whose in Swaziland brought her some strange-looking seeds recently and we are waiting with bated breath to see what kind of plant would sprout from them ... nways, about the orchard ... yes... i loved staying there when i was a young lamb, eating unripe apple fruits because they would never mature with all the birds that came to eat them up anytime they produced any form of sweetness ... and when the fog came i would imagine i was in a strange land ... or i had been whisked away to the ice ages and the fog was a snow blizzard hiding away mammoths and mastodons and sabre-toothed tigers ... may be because my folks worked hard to ensure me a comfortable living made me blind to the fact that there was a much more uglier side to Iten ... now that I am old enough i am beginning to see...

but still when i go back there ... and see old gogos shuffling about with grass to thatch there roofs ... and see farmers move about with puttering old tractors ... and see them greet me so warmly in kikale and with so much admiration because am like from kampo and all ... the scent of beauty flows back to my nose

but i could not reminisce for long ... for another sister walked in ... let us call her Shifrah ... Roxa follows Shifrah in the order of birth sequence ... and the two have been arguing and fighting for longer than i care to remember ... i hear it stemmed from the day mama brought me home from hospital... freshly born somewhere around the year 1985 ...and that i was so pretty with cheeks begging to be gobbled and the two sisters would fight over who was to look after me ... the altercation matured over the years into even more bizarre forms ... they would fight when one left a scarf on the other's bed and other wierd feminine battles and the whole house would be full of noise, the two female matadors not minding that there were other folks in the house who needed some peace and queit....

so a pleasant surprise it was to see them hugging and admiring the other one's hairstyle ... and for the rest of the evening ... to hear them talk and chat like bosom buddies brought so much joy to my heart ... every war in the world can end ... it is all a matter of being patient

you know you are in Nairobi university when ...

• 
  
• you do not believe in full-stops when your brain has hit a permanent hiatus but insist on keeping on with a sentence like " ok ... you know ... it is like in ... like ok ... as in we can't really ... you know ... i mean ... ok" wishing that somehow, with all the grace of the lord and of your mother, that your brain will jumpstart itself again
  
• you are so broke that you owe yourself money, your pupils have changed into dollar signs and you are having this crazy look when you are staring at your roommate because to you he has turned into a giant grilled chicken wearing snickers
• you are facing any of the following calamities:

you don't have a girlfriend
you have a boyfriend
you have a girlfriend
you don't have a boyfriend

• you have an impressive CV filled with all flamboyant pages and colourful fonts but with little information therein hoping against hope that your prospective employer will be so much awe-struck by your creative design talent that he will be blind to every other setbacks very apparently clear to you
• you can buy a kshs. 20 000 phone but still believe that getting hold of a kshs. 250 phone credit from the tuck-shop is being extravagant
• your meals have the same colour assortment: white and green ... you can scatter a little bit of red once in a while but that is entirely optional and depends on the heaviness of your wallet ... if you are in the same university as I am you will know what am talking about
• you have completely manipulated all the electricity gadgets in your room with wires criss-crossing all over the place like laser beams guarding the Star of Africa ( the largest diamond in the world) that it will not be too soon before you blow up with the rest of your property like a missile in the deserts of Lebanon ... (forgive me, but i was trying to employ some literary talent here)
• you keep claiming you are fluent in French when all you can manage is 'joie de vivre' and "je ne sais quoi' which you keep employing in the most inappropriate places just to show off like " i am going to buy mangoes ... voila! joie de vivre et je ne sais quoi" ... of course your roommate will never know how much of a buffoon your are because lucky for you he does not know francais
• you speak with an American accent but believe 'allude' is a Spanish word
• you pass examinations when you do not read and fail when you try to
• everyone including your mother is beginning to notice that you are sounding less intelligent than you did when you were in high school
• you believe that whoever said that slippers solely belong to the bathroom was in serious need of seeing a psychologist
• you only have one suit and you can easily commit murder if someone spills broth on it
• you suffer from a severe psychosomatic paranoia that makes you desperate to do all the proffesional courses in town ... ACCA, CPA, Free Japanese Lessons at the Japan embassy (you wanted either german or french but the fees at Alliance Francaise and the Goethe Institute was too expensive), CIMA, CISA, CMA, CASA ... and any other possible acronyms starting with the letter C ... please do not ask me what all those initials stand for!
• you are taking Economics and believe that the degree is so dynamic that it is going to land you a lead role in a movie with Halle Berry
• you never go home during holidays, violently occupying the bedspace of a fellow comrade in session, claiming loudly that you are looking for an attachement while all you wish for is the free DSTV channel in campus
• your lips bleed every time you smile because of severe malnutrition
• you do not know with whom you had sex last night
• you have no problem with sober people so long as they act drunk in public
• you make a list titled you know you are in Nairobi university when ...
  

Mr. Writer's wishes

• I wish the sky would have a different colour for each day of the week ... blue is kinda gloomy and saddening ... and in any case, it would be interesting to watch people trying to find clad that matches with the particular sky colour
• wish people did not have to squat to defecate ... it is so demeaning
• wish someone would be a darling and whisk me around the campus ground on a comfy wheel-barrow ... for around two weeks or so
• wish I could fly like a bird and swim and breathe underwater like a fish
• wish to head to the Appalachian mountains and capture a baby bigfoot ... then I will emerge triumphantly out of the pine forest and find photojournalists clicking away endless films of camera; all eager to force my image and that of my new-found pet into your TV screen ... you do not have to mind for I am cute ... don't know about the baby ape though
• wish we could switch from the tedious Gregorian calendar into an Aztec one ... it has much more holidays and goes around in a cycle ... which means you can always go back and correct the mistakes of your past ... and the best part is that you have the option of sacrificing your enemy every lunar month or so ... ha ha ha (diabolical laughter)
• wish I could be Santa Claus's assistant this Christmas, then I could send someone a really nasty gift ... like a king cobra inside a shoe-box
• wish to say something really mean one day that will shock the entire universe and send many to a state of near cardiac arrest
• wish I could master all the other tongues in Kenya apart from my own ... I hear it comes in handy if you are caught in a tight corner during a tribal clash ... come to think of it, I should just update my running skills to a much faster version
• wish I will wake up one day from a beautiful dream only to find out that am actually living under that beautiful dream
• wish that all the dramatic scenes in life ... such as rescuing a baby from the mouth of a lion ... would happen in slow-motion just like they do in the movies ... so that we could have a few more minutes to portray our selfless courage
• wish I attended a more cute highschool ... like Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry ... where I could have learnt to be an animagus ( if you do not know what this means, then you are not a Harry Potter fan)
• wish it would snow one day in Kenya and we could all rush out to make a snowmen and ski
• wish I could read people's minds
• wish I could produce a sound pitched voice ... enough to break glass and the ear-drum of a wildly-opinionated loudmouth who is unfortunate enough to become my boss
• wish the tectonic plates of the earth would shift ... so that we could have a change of background scenery ... I want a swan-filled lake ... in any case, I would want Europe to be implanted right in the middle of Congo so that they would know how harsh it is to live in that basin
• wish to escape the human world and go and live with the fairies for a life ... it is sweeter to have a career where all you have to do is to deliver a ring that can make you invisible to a lake of fire and have all these gallant warriors protecting you along the way ( inspired by the Lord of the Rings) ... so if any of you orcs happen to capture a pixie, a brownie or an elf, give me a secret e-mail
• wish I could be a pirate ... with a wicked wicked name like Blackbeard or Red Rackham or Captain Kidd ... with all these undiscoverable treasure hidden in Tortuga and a life condemned to sailing the seven seas for all eternity
• wish I could build a time-machine ... then I could go back in time and confirm if dad was as really hardworking in his younger days as he vigorously claims to be ... after that, I could visit Pharaoh Tutankhamen for a cuppa and ask him to spare me some of the gold he decided to buried with
• wish I was an ice-cream connoiseur then I could work my way through piles and piles of this delicious invention while claiming to judge its flavour ... I will make it my career of course
• wish to take a reindeer sleigh-ride across Antartica ... cross from Cape Town to Cairo and all the way to Timbuktu on a camel ... and sail around the world on an Arabian dhow driven by the monsoon winds
• wish all forests would claim their own and turn the earth into one huge, green rain-forest ... am with Wangari Maathai in this
• wish there were no poor people on earth ... but only people with insufficient funds ... for just like Gabrielle Solis of Desperate Housewives and Dolly Parton in Coat of Many Colours said ... poverty is just a state of mind ... and I wish everyone would have sufficient funds soon enough and live the kind of lifestyle they so much desire
• wish I was as organized as my sister ******** ... she takes neatness to a completely new level
• wish you do not make bizarre conclusions about my state of mind after reading through my wish list
• wish you would tell me all your wishes

you do not till a land by turning it over inside your head

the title is an irish proverb, am never good at giving advice so i will let you dear reader mull over it yourself.....come to think of it the irish have a delightful way of expressing themselves...like this classic...

May the enemies of Ireland never eat bread nor drink whiskey,
but be afflicted with itching without the benefit of scratching

or better still..

Here's to our wives and girlfriends:
May they never meet!

and if i ever met an irish man who could bless me like this...well..

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields and,
Until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

this one now is a real comforter...

May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night,
and the road downhill all the way to your door.

inasmuch as they say English is from Britain, the Irish are truly the ones who possess its mastery....i attended a high school headed by an irish master and irish teachers....and from them i learnt interesting facts like...

• there are 30 million irish people in America and only 3 million in Ireland, so if you want to see Ireland you better head to the USA
• The Irish have always hated Britons and thereby encourage each other to procreate so that they can overpopulate Britain and conquer it....my logic was lost somewhere amidst all that Irishness
• it rains constantly ....almost 24 hours..in Ireland...so it is such a relief to be in Kenya
• there are no snakes nor serpents...Saint Patrick..their patron saint chased them away by thumping a stick on top of a hill and they all decided to drown themselves in the sea. ..please try this noble solution if you have snakes in your backyard..just make sure there is a puddle nearby for them to suffocate in
• The is a nasty term known as an irish temper..and irish women have a thing for beating up their husbands if they come home drunk
• there is nothing more miserable than a miserable irish childhood..an irish man wrote that and earned a pulitzer..incidentally, he is american...

all in all, i miss my former irish teachers...bro Ambrose...who emigrated to Papua New Guinea..talk about irish intrepidness...colm o'connell...who mastered the kalenjin language better than me ....and of course Mark Lawler.......who told us to pack our underwears whenever going for a school trip...

and if you love a little pint of history, there was an irish lady in colonial kenya who used to whip railway workers because all the other guys were to shy to do it..thank goodness colonialism is over..

if i was immortal

no one ever attends the funerals of their kindergarten teachers, or even their weddings or birthdays...they are people we meet when our lives are small.....as we grow we aspire to greater potentialities that we believe those fat mamas cannot hold to...we start thinking of Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey....yes, our worlds become big and we forget the people who once overshadowed our lives with their bulk (they are usually stereotyped as being obese) and their might...

but i did attend my kindergarten teacher's funeral....but do not get me wrong...it is not like i so much liked her.....any sympathy i felt must have been a great consolation for most of the folks were just there to ensure she was buried before she could resurrect and interfere with all the niceties present....now you will wonder why people had cause to hate her like that...but fionina korus was no ordinary lady....first of all she was all modelly and long-leggedly.....come to think of it her legs must have been 12-feet long......

naturally a kindergarten proffession would hardly have suited her and being more than well awre of this she decided to engage herself in other trades......one of them being the world's oldest...and among her first clients....as rudely discovered by a classmate of mine when she opened her office door to show fionina her pencil drawing ....was none other than the local parish priest....two lessons to be learnt from this

1. never open doors without knocking, the results can be traumatizing
2. inasmuch as we confess our sins to parish priests they mostly more worse than us-offencewise

anyway, she must have plied on well with her trade because by the time she died she lived in an elegant mansion complete with an electric fence and an ice-cream-shaped swimming pool....

and that is how i ended up in kitale (her final resting place) after receiving a lacy card signed by none other than fionina (her death wish was that all her kindergarten kids attend her burial)......yep, she did it before she kicked the bucket....so as the priest (the same one caught en flagrante delicto) went on boola boola about her supposed virtues i decided to spend my time admiring her coffin.....it looked very palatable and choc lately-inspite of the decomposing corpse inside..yer, i know..what a nasty thought!

shaped like a boat so as to represent fionina's childhood wish of sailing around the seven seas like Vasco da Gama or Bonny Anne, that famous Carribean pirate woman, it reminded me of Pharaohs who preferred being buried in ornate coffins shaped like papyrus boats so that they could all go sailing down the river Nile to meet the sun-god...the vikings too thought it a noble idea to perish in the harsh Nordic seas....and apparently the neanderthals as well.....i don't know whether fionina achieved that dream...

guess what am trying to say is that death is a reality that we have to face one time or another...people eventually die.....friends, family, you and I.....it is a handicap we wish we could overcome....some philosophers argue that civilization is all a part of man's futile attempt to conquer death...Christians say that they do not die but are only promoted to a higher glory....i do not know but higher glory or not may death stay far from bay on our swell ride on planet earth

the devil that danced on the water

shoes tell a lot about someone's character, especially my character...here goes a wild tale.....i was walking down moi avenue today after a particularly nasty paper.....and suddenly my image flashed brightly and madly before me in one of those glass windows of a fancy, gisty shoe shop with a name that is difficult to remember...my eyes went all the way down to my sport shoes, they were torn around the edges as if a mouse nibbled them and the laces were too long that i could trip over them if i walked too fast....yet, when my sister gave them to me some time back they were so fresh and new and untortured, but after a time spent with dear old mr.writer they are telling a tale so different to the mind of the visualizer.....i felt this pang in my soul like i have been neglecting a part of my life, letting it waste away unnoticed....wish i knew which part that were.....for if anything else, crisp and new, is going the way of my shoe then boy do i need to see a psychiatrist...

speaking about shoes, my mum has this old time keepsake, brown sandals made out of a strange material ( it is hard to tell whether they were khaki or leather), she got them when she was about five years old and living in colonial kenya..... a state of emergency had been declared and no one was allowed to move about freely, but her elder sister, who worked in a pyrethrum board in eldoret, sneaked her out of the reserve one day on the back of a rattling truck that suffered from heavy bouts of whooping cough..... after many resuscitations along the way, the truck finally arrived in eldoret and my mother for the first time viewed this strange world of white people moving about with elegant hats and shoes, yes shoes, because my mother finally realized that what she was wearing could not be justifiably called shoes when placed next to what those white ladies were wearing.......

colonialism came and went, and those fine, dandy, high-nosed, aristocratic British ladies finally packed away from the sweet kenyan sunshine to wild destinations to the Isle of Mann or wherever colonialists go, but my mum still kept on to her old shoes, she never wore them again but time to time she glances at them, now especially that her sister died of ovarian cancer, perhaps she holds on to them because they remind her of dear sister's love.......

imelda marcos had 2000 pairs of shoes, 2000 pair....my foot, no wonder she looked so vain, i mean what do you need all those pairs for when you are only going to wear them once in 3 years....now this brings me to favourite topic-shoes.....no, don't get me wrong....am not a shoe freak and have little idea about the latest fashion in the same.....i only love shoes because they tell me something about the wearer......i assumed that the late queen mother was a strong determined spirit because she could wear high heels all the way upto her hundreds......i also wonder what kind of shoes Adolf Hitler wore when he committed suicide because that might save a lot of historians trouble when it comes to making up what was going up his mind...

i read an interesting article recently..... about a 3000-year old corpse that was found on the Alpine ridge between Austria and Italy and aptly named Otzi the Ice man.....i hear that his shoes were made with such remarkable industry that all this major shoe companies are trying to learn on his style.....there must be a long tale behind those shoes....were they made by his mother knowing that his son would be away for so long..or was his secret lover who fashioned it, a young lady's sweet present for the passion and intimacy they shared....who killed the bear from which those fine shoes were made....did they set out to hunt it or did it invade their village one moonlit night.....was otzi a scientist who wished to invent shoes that could keep the human feet free from frost-bite in the harsh Alpine coldness....may be one day someone will answer these questions for me, or may be they should not, for they may tamper with its magic, by explaining it away in dry, didacting tones....

anyway, the world's most expensive shoes, the cinderella slippers cost a whooping 2 million bucks and is made out of 565 platinum-set kwiat diamonds ( don't ask me what kwiat is), and were worn by an obscure star, Alicia Krauss to the oscar awards.....i hope that at the end of the day she still felt that her life was still a bazillion more diamonds as compared to that inanimate, soulless slipper, i hope she did not feel small, doing her best to protect that shiny, shodding material that she forgot to shine herself out to others, and make them not look down at the glitter of her feet but on the dazzle of her smile.....

but at the end of the day, shoes are there to stay, and they are much part and parcel of humanity, and if in doubt ask Otzi or the herdsmen of the dusty plains of 3000 BC mesopotamia who designed sandals.....and for a last opinion i believe that my mother's first shoes hold much more treasure than those cinderella slippers......

the devil that danced on the water

shoes tell a lot about someone's character, especially my character...here goes a wild tale.....i was walking down moi avenue today after a particularly nasty paper.....and suddenly my image flashed brightly and madly before me in one of those glass windows of a fancy, gisty shoe shop with a name that is difficult to remember...my eyes went all the way down to my sport shoes, they were torn around the edges as if a mouse nibbled them and the laces were too long that i could trip over them if i walked too fast....yet, when my sister gave them to me some time back they were so fresh and new and untortured, but after a time spent with dear old mr.writer they are telling a tale so different to the mind of the visualizer.....i felt this pang in my soul like i have been neglecting a part of my life, letting it waste away unnoticed....wish i knew which part that were.....for if anything else, crisp and new, is going the way of my shoe then boy do i need to see a psychiatrist...

speaking about shoes, my mum has this old time keepsake, brown sandals made out of a strange material ( it is hard to tell whether they were khaki or leather), she got them when she was about five years old and living in colonial kenya..... a state of emergency had been declared and no one was allowed to move about freely, but her elder sister, who worked in a pyrethrum board in eldoret, sneaked her out of the reserve one day on the back of a rattling truck that suffered from heavy bouts of whooping cough..... after many resuscitations along the way, the truck finally arrived in eldoret and my mother for the first time viewed this strange world of white people moving about with elegant hats and shoes, yes shoes, because my mother finally realized that what she was wearing could not be justifiably called shoes when placed next to what those white ladies were wearing.......

colonialism came and went, and those fine, dandy, high-nosed, aristocratic British ladies finally packed away from the sweet kenyan sunshine to wild destinations to the Isle of Mann or wherever colonialists go, but my mum still kept on to her old shoes, she never wore them again but time to time she glances at them, now especially that her sister died of ovarian cancer, perhaps she holds on to them because they remind her of dear sister's love.......

imelda marcos had 2000 pairs of shoes, 2000 pair....my foot, no wonder she looked so vain, i mean what do you need all those pairs for when you are only going to wear them once in 3 years....now this brings me to favourite topic-shoes.....no, don't get me wrong....am not a shoe freak and have little idea about the latest fashion in the same.....i only love shoes because they tell me something about the wearer......i assumed that the late queen mother was a strong determined spirit because she could wear high heels all the way upto her hundreds......i also wonder what kind of shoes Adolf Hitler wore when he committed suicide because that might save a lot of historians trouble when it comes to making up what was going up his mind...

i read an interesting article recently..... about a 3000-year old corpse that was found on the Alpine ridge between Austria and Italy and aptly named Otzi the Ice man.....i hear that his shoes were made with such remarkable industry that all this major shoe companies are trying to learn on his style.....there must be a long tale behind those shoes....were they made by his mother knowing that his son would be away for so long..or was his secret lover who fashioned it, a young lady's sweet present for the passion and intimacy they shared....who killed the bear from which those fine shoes were made....did they set out to hunt it or did it invade their village one moonlit night.....was otzi a scientist who wished to invent shoes that could keep the human feet free from frost-bite in the harsh Alpine coldness....may be one day someone will answer these questions for me, or may be they should not, for they may tamper with its magic, by explaining it away in dry, didacting tones....

anyway, the world's most expensive shoes, the cinderella slippers cost a whooping 2 million bucks and is made out of 565 platinum-set kwiat diamonds ( don't ask me what kwiat is), and were worn by an obscure star, Alicia Krauss to the oscar awards.....i hope that at the end of the day she still felt that her life was still a bazillion more diamonds as compared to that inanimate, soulless slipper, i hope she did not feel small, doing her best to protect that shiny, shodding material that she forgot to shine herself out to others, and make them not look down at the glitter of her feet but on the dazzle of her smile.....

but at the end of the day, shoes are there to stay, and they are much part and parcel of humanity, and if in doubt ask Otzi or the herdsmen of the dusty plains of 3000 BC mesopotamia who designed sandals.....and for a last opinion i believe that my mother's first shoes hold much more treasure than those cinderella slippers......

a rumour called agatha

was it the time or was it the smile, i don't know, all i know is that she danced away with a certain part of my fancy. she was neither bright nor beautiful, and she had giant, water-melon-sized breasts. she must have admired them and i hope she still does for she had a way of squashing your shoulders with it if you flattered her, but she did it in such a mundane fashion that it could not be termed as erotic, pitiful at most..............

and she used to zubaa ( there is no english equivalent for that verb), to zubaa is too try crossing a highway, eager to get to the other side , a lot of thoughts in your mind and have it suddenly poof away, as if some angel flew away with your brain and you are left standing in the middle of the road wondering why that heavy truck is coming to crash you.....oops nasty thought
anyway agatha was one of my poorer attempts at dating ( it was not really dating, more of a muddled desperation of a zubaad girl to a lad whose eagerness to dating could only be matched by the bankruptness of her beauty)..............

nways, i do not know whether i should date. my brother says that if you do not get a better half in campus then you are as good as a zubaad agatha, he has in his proud possession ( pliz excuse the insensitivity) a caramel complexioned cameo who has bestowed upon him a caramel complexioned baby, seeing the three together is like witnessing a nativity scene........

an acquaintance ( i differentiate them from friends in that the former are close enough that i could borrow money from them but not that close that they should borrow money from me), anyway the acquaintance accused me of having no real feelings for ladies.....this has some serious intimations....and i looked at him with those what-do-you-mean-eyes......

i think i hate the whole game of lads running after lasses...why can't love just happen.....e.g.....you walk into a lady's hall of residence....and you see this butter-skinned butterfly sashaying in a bath-robe in the corridor... a total stranger....and a gust of wind tears furiously into the room, bearing with it the bathrobe....the same furious wind also bears you off the ground and hurls your mighty frame at her nubile form and you end up tumbled and interlocked on the floor ( welcome to the fantasies of the masculine mind)....from there it is so easy to declare your love.... i don't think that in such a privileged position any of you can afford to play with the usual beating-around-the-bush nuances of this ancient game......

wouldn't it be so nice if men could just be honest with women
"look here, i really don't want to watch Oprah with you, i came here to have sex and if you are humane enough you will appreciate the urgency of my carnal desires and be compliant to my swiftest caresses..you see i usually sleep with your sister susan on thursday but she is not in town today....you could substitute her well...i am willing to overlook the cellulite and the multiple chin...hop off your clothes now"

nways, my mind is not that twisted, i was an altar boy remember ( read through my blog if you can't).....it is just that this relationship making-breaking stuff bore me.....and campus chicks bore me as much as i bore them of course...they don't care about you, they only care for your card-your sound stereo and your snoop-doggy-dog style......please don't think that this is a materially-deprived student's consolation.....i mean....actually.....i just don't know ( oops losing my connection).....all in all it is not fair out and out, for girls to behave that way in an institution of higher learning... i thought we had come so far in education to remove blinders from our eyes and see material possessions for what they are.....worldy decorations that have little value compared to the person....ladies should be deep for they are naturally abundantly endowed with that aspect.....well, this is just my opinion, not a fact, may be i am the one with the wrong attitude, if anyone has his/her opinion i will be more than delighted to read your comment..

speaking of deep ladies, i really pray that whitney houston gets better soon if she is not better already ( i really don't trust the media when it comes too reporting celebrity details-it seems the dirtier the better...am sure with such an incentive i would not be too wrong to say that they might have cooked something up about this fiery alto)....and yep, i believe she is a deep lady....just listen to her songs for confirmation.....

otherwise, the sem is coming to an end, trying hard to chop early enough and not to procrastinate like we usually do......wish me luck peeps..