am a marketing GO FOR boy

i finally began working somewhere, after four months of sitting home doing movies, long walks, swimming and much daydreaming. at the moment am too fascinated with everything around to really know what i feel. but to hell with that. am working and moving on with my life, but most of all am taking care of my puny ass so that it never diminishes in size.

some guys are really friendly while some have those impenetrable eyes, deadpan faces and mouth twitches that you can never quite judge to be a smile or a smirk, so i guess i will just stick to my habitat, look for cues and learn, instead of going all overboard by being overfriendly and overgreeting everyone (please readers, forgive my poor grammar for english is my third language)

at the moment, am feeling like a salmon swimming in the deep end of the ocean with the sharks or more appropriately like a sheep in a jungle. i guess everyone goes through that phase, you seem so unsure of who to trust, when to talk to someone, especially when he is a friend because he seems so busy and you do not want to interrupt him or a tiny part of you insists he will bark and you will shrivel. so i guess am kinda at the refugee phase but i bet it will be over soon and i will be my usual self, chatty and full of ready smiles

all i know is that i only have to do my best and not be the best, am not in competition with anyone, i have my life, my goals and my dreams, so i cannot compare myself to anyone. even though i feel a bit dense and obtuse i do not have to try so hard because everything will fall in place with time

A FRUIT OF UNRIPE WISDOM (OR THE REASON WHY I NEVER LIKED KAREN BLIXEN)

With all their pride and handsome noses, many ‘old school’ wazungus come to Africa with so much romance and fire burning in their hearts that one can only wish to pour bucketfuls of ice-water on their heads.

It all starts with the promises of an exotic hotel in a glitzy magazine that ‘provides the ideal getaway to the luxury traveller who is looking for a unique enchanting experience of serene beaches and traditional wildlife that Africa has to offer’

Or an ubiquitous nudge from a distant aunt who travelled before to Africa and fell for ‘the spell of the land and became instantly reborn’ after passing through ‘idyllic villages’ where ‘the men and women were eager to burst to song at her sight’ and she was able to learn a lesson about happiness from the way they ‘managed to laugh and sing despite their moderate means’.

It all ends in pleasant journeys through Africa where, like new shiny coins falling into a murky mine, they admire the primeval days of their iron ore; the seduction of the unsophisticated and the simplicity of the smiles of the mud-splattered, mucous-blocked children who will flock around and break into a rictus of joy when given a 250 ml can of yoghurt to fight over.

Words such as ‘corruption’, ‘Aids’ and ‘poverty’ will be avoided (apart from the militant kind that move about in herds called conferences reciting the same old tale till it is tedious listening to them) and replaced with spiels of how they were ‘awestruck by the majestic leaps of Maasai warriors’ and how their tears fell at the sight of the ‘tragic beauty of the wildebeest migration in the Maasai Mara’

Ultimately we will be reminded of the amazing world we live in and why we should never lose our customs, our dances and our music for it is a ‘rich heritage’ and that we should always ensure that this part of the world remains ‘wild and untouched’ for it offers so much ‘tranquillity and serenity that the rest of the planet could learn from’.

They will hold their passports safely nevertheless and despite the ‘enchantment and magic of the land’ grumble at any delays in their return flights for somehow they still need to rush back to their ‘boring, developed world’ where people are ‘cold and unfriendly’ and not like us ‘pleasant people’.

We will be left behind always, perpetual guardians of the African serenity and tranquillity. The beach boy to be in love with the Malindi sand and the erotic promise a beckon from another Italian tourist brings. The Maasai woman selling her trinkets to trot back to her house-fly infested manyatta and seek for no more pleasure than the promise of a new bore-hole to be dug in her village. The sweaty-faced tea-picker to trudge every morning through rain, shine and poor pay and be in love with the immense expanse of green tea and marvel at how lucky he is to be outdoors when everyone else is cocooned in concrete prisons in London, Sidney and New York.

Beneath this calm veneer painted over ‘untamed Africa’ is a loud discontent. I remember as a child the way it painfully agitated me and I would walk to the edge of the Kerio valley and stare at the horizon and pray for the vision to overpass that limit and stare at another busy world I had heard of but never seen. I desired more practical experience than I possessed. An acquaintance with a variety of character than was here within my reach. My heart would heave with exultant movement as I allowed my mind to dwell on that bright vision; to feel it swell, quicken and expand with life; but most of all to relive, if only for a moment, a greater existence of my being, before the relentless sun took me back to reality with its heat.

It sad and narrow-minded for these more privileged fellow-creatures to think we ought to be satisfied and confine ourselves to our tranquillity. The African mind seeks for action and greater exercise of its faculty just like any other mind. Millions, however, of my dark-skinned brothers are condemned to a still doom; an absolute stagnation and restraint of the soul as if they were mangrove trees stuck in a dismal swamp.

There is another reality of Africa however, a more vivid kind and filled with so much goodness. It shows in the face of a graduate who steadfastly applies for jobs and believes he will eventually get one for deep down he knows he is intelligent and hard-working enough to add value to the corporate world. It shows in the hard, chiselled faces of hawkers in Gikomba who haggle and cackle their voices hoarse selling second-hand clothes to make enough money to buy land and build a brick house where there children will be able to sleep soundly. It shows in the speech of a woman dying of Aids who sits her children beside her bed and makes them promise that she be the last one in the family to die from the disease. It shows in the matatus that flood our towns in a riot colour, bringing men and women of all kind and tribe, to hustle and move about in our pot-holed roads and dusty shops in pursuit of their private hopes, dreams and happiness.

That is the kind of Africa I love, not the one Karen Blixen and her followers try to create.

a dik-dik's leap of faith (or when wild Africa tries to live)

there is a form of courage that comes from following the road less taken where popular thoughts do not matter much. whether that is true or not is for you to decide. but the story i want to tell you is true. i know. i was there.

it was special growing up in Iten. i was more of a butterfly than a real human. i felt more like a soul drifting through space and time without a body, and it was always so surprising when other people touched me. for then i realized that i was human. i had blood and flesh. i could feel and i could touch

doctors will obviously call that some sort of psychosomatic disorder but i call it the pleasures of childhood. i am better now of course. My feet firmly set on ground and my head out of the clouds by sobering subjects like Accounting for Equities, Macro-economics i learnt in university.and of course my elder bro was always there to thump me on the head when i drifted too much. God bless his thumping paws!

but my drifting mind actually led me to places so special and so mine. back then when your feet are small the world seemed so endless and large, and through books i had also visited kingdoms so magical that from then i only wished for the magical and the surreal

it was on a lazy sunday afternoon that i sneaked out of our farm. my mother was asleep or something otherwise she would have found something to criticize me for and ensure i do not get out. i found her too be to hard sometimes. but later on she told me her story and i understood.

there was a stretch of murram, two metres wide that led right from our gate and ended in a tangle of wood and overgrown weed a kilometre or less on. long before than i care to remember, caterpillars had come and dug out the earth around there for murram to build all those pathetic roads that kenya us, and after they fled with the earth and never came back, bush and weed reclaimed its own, but still if one was short enough, you could dive and the tangle of weed and slide down the hollow in the earth on a wooden board with other boys your age who simply wished for fun.

i still remember the sound and feel of us rushing down the incline. there were strange sounds and smells, voices of bored housewives filtering in through the weed, complaining of how we were putting ourselves in danger. the incline would end sharply at an artificial lake that had collected water over the years. it was no more than a hollow of sharply dug earth, probably dug by the caterpillars of yester years. but to us it was our lake. here we swum, here we taught ourselves to drift stones across the lake, attempting each time to make it cross to the other side but to no avail. There we made shouts of joy as we spotted river otters lifting their heads of water and around we also spied on lovestruck teenagers tasting forbidden fruits in queit bushes where they thought there were alone.

if one crossed the lake one went into a thin stretch of forest that back then completely covered the amazing Kerio valley from view. i still remember the colobus monkeys swaying across and the taste of the purple lamaek fruits that grew so high on trees that only the bravest of boys could climb and get them. i never did that because admittedly i was too much of a sissy.

then we discovered a faded path. there were no footsteps upon it so we thought it was made by deer. realizing it was too wide, my imaginative brain embellished my friends with a tale of the road being a path to an elephant graveyard. may be they believed me or may be they just did not wish to go home too soon to their grumbling mothers for we all nodded our heads and walked calmly downwards.

that is an understatement. we were not calm. we feared for leopards and all sorts of creatures, real and imagined, that we were only too eager to rush back if a twig cracked too loud. but it was beautiful, especially when we realized that the path led to a small natural waterfall, ensconced in a tiny escarpment just near the valley. Sasurwa trees (A kind of a banana-like plant) rambled all about with juicy pride and fanned the waterfall with their wide motherly leaves. i can still see the light filtering through the giant podo trees that completely blocked out the sun and playing like liquid jade on the sasurwa leaves. we drank of the waterfall and found the water sweet. then sat on the soft moss and glared at the colobus monkeys and squirrels playing about on the trees and completely oblivious or otherwise not caring so much about our presence.

it was kipchirchir who farted fast, we were used to it because his mother cooked too much beans and nothing else and the boy was always glad to come and play at one of our homes so that he could end up eating a more 'flatulentless' lunch. usually we scolded him or made such fun of him that he would shower on us tiny stones that we would have to run because they stinged like poisonous flies. but beside the gentle waterfall, we only laughed and each one of us tried to outdo him. my attempt was pitiful and for the first time in my life i envied kipchirchir for having a mother who cooked too much bean.

may be it was the farts that aroused the dik-dik or not but we only saw it spring out and shoot through the bush like an arrow and everyone was in hot pursuit. i was a bit of a sissy then who cared so much about animal rights and all but was too scared to defend them against energy-filled youth who only saw the death of them.

i stood still for a while, just staring as everyone scaled up the escarpment. then i searched for the place where it hid and heard a little bawl. there was that sweet tingle in my ear that only a small cry of nature could bring. i looked and saw him, the tenderest of fawn, hobbling about. His foot had been broken or something for it waved in the wind like a flap of skin and the poor child could only grow around in circles hoping its mother would not fall prey to the hunters and come back to him.

i took him and hid him under my shirt. i had to act fast. if the others came back they were sure to demand that i give the creature to them and they would surreptitiously tear him to pieces and make less of my animal right campaign attempts. i walked up the hill. the poor creature bawling as i tripped against a huge root exposed by erosion or if i became too worried and held him too tightly. the path up seemed so different, and when i rose out of the escarpment i found myself in much thicker wood so dark and unfamiliar. i would have trembled and remembered the terrible stories of the nandi bear but the little dik-dik tucked in my shirt made me rational and i groppled through.

i guess i was too much excited for i do not remember see the lake or the murram incline. i only found myself home, wondering what i would tell my parents to whom the word conservation never came to mind. i took him out and placed him near the sheep pen. he had a muzzle that were more sharp and curious that one could mistake him for an odd rat. but i was worried because he was already flecking at the mouth.

i wondered how i would feed him. i wondered how i would tell mum. i was worried that the sheep would kill him. i was sure i he was dying ... he stood up and bawled again. i rushed home and took out a baby bottle feeder, poured some warm water in i, added a little milk and after a little consideration, some glucose. i hurtled back faster hoping against hope that no stray dog had come around and gobbled him up. he was safe, ensconsing himself against a corner like it was natural for a dik-dik to do. he never opened his mouth but when i sprayed the solution on his lips or whatever those flaps of skin around the mouth in dik-diks are called, he would lick it up.

mother had seen me rushing and came to investigate, and when she saw the dik-dik she just smiled and shook her head this way and that and did not quarrel with me. one of the sheep had given birth that day, and she told me that if i wiped the dik-dik with the discarded umbilical cord, the ewe would take it as another lamb and suckle it. i said that the dik-dik looked different. she said that sheep had no eyes.

he was accepted and grew with the sheep, his foot healed as he suckled and became strong, but still he kept his pride and refused to be as idle, woolly and lazy like the dorpers. i guess he had eyes. time flew past and he became a buck, refused to be penned, became nocturnal and ate rows of bean or maize just springing fresh from the ground. mother said that i chase him away or she kills it. i wondered how i would do that. i lied that i could not find him. i knew he loved sleeping in the tall rhode grass in on of the many paddocks we had. i wished him to live there, close to me and silent, even if nothing would grow in our farm.

father and mother were sterner. they called a local gang, i shrivelled and became smaller as i saw them walking to the rhode grass paddock with pangas and sticks and completely surrounded it. the rhode grass rustled like silk, unpeturbed as the men moved close. i closed my eyes and saw tiny flashed of light playing about in the darkness. i looked again and hoped that the dik-dik was not around, that he had not come to sleep there but had gone back to its shrinking habitat.

"Ang' nyi wee! Otekteken!" one of the men cried in Keiyo and i knew it was over. they moved this way and moved back, swayed a bit and shook their sticks angrily, then moved this way and that again and moved back, and they were ready to kill the dik-dik.

i only saw the dik-dik leap, i saw him leap so high over the gang of men and their outstreched pangas, over the hunting cries that spelled of bodies itching for blood and over the rustling grass. He leapt over the fence and over the bean and the maize, knowing his way that he did not stumble on anything. i looked at the hunters who struggled to reach him, clumsily forcing their way through the rhode grass, leaving wide swathes of flattened grass and carefully squeezing their way through the barbed wire fences where am sure one or two pricked buttocks farted, and i looked back at the dik-dik who was almost near the edge of the horizon where the valley stood and i could only smile

i never that dik-dik again

the equal ripper

my cousin died yesterday at 32 ... my mother said that there was a look of serenity about him ... he had been a fighter all his life ... he had tried to resist the cancer that searched for his brain ... he had resisted his parents' choices for him and ran away from home ... he had fought with the soil to make a living and finished his education like any other ... but when death was nigh, he did not resist ... but lay in calm like a conqueror ... there was never a true hero such as he as he lay there in wait for the next life ... a true testament to what the book of corinthians says in the bible,

"O death, where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory?"

32 ... am only 22 .. and i have not thought of death for a long time ... i used to think about it when i was young ... i fancied myself being garbed in black and shedding lots of tears coz i thought it was cute ... i did not fear death so much as the coffin ... i hated seeing a coffin and a cross ... i wondered why people were not just thrown away so that we did not have see all those crosses on the ground ... have you ever walked into one of those african homes with so many graves that you wonder where you could sit down?

nways, my mother supported the innocence of my young mind ... she told me that in the old days corpses were dragged to be eaten by hyenas in the wild ... no one was supposed to see the body apart from the immediate family and the pall bearers ... the latter would walk out of the village at night, stark naked, to lay the body in the forest ... if a body was not eaten they would slaughter a goat over it to encourage the ravenous hyenas to gobble it up ... just like Tartarus of the greeks, hyenas were guardians of the gates of Hades

my great-grandmother i hear had caught a severe case of cold that had left her for the dead ... the family thinking her expired took her out to the forest to be devoured ... but the next morn she was banging at the door asking for porridge to the astonishment of the village and another notch to our family tree on death conguerors


the bible assures us of an after-life ... of a city in paradise with gold houses and streams of living water ... but all we see is the stink of a dead man, the coffin and the tears, and the family is left behind ... and in our hearts we such for immortality ... somehow ... through success, power, art ... we seek to be seen ... to be heard .... to feel alive at every moment so as to console ourselves that we will be alive in the next second

and in all this desperation, our churches proudly display symbols of death everywhere ... that of a dying man in a cross ... i wonder why the cross provides so much assurance ... so much hope ... it should have been a macabre sight but instead we long to gaze at it ... may be it is because the death of another man sobers us up and makes us appreciate how alive we are ... may be i will understand one day ... all i know now is that my cousin is dead AT 32

when the heart rests

i feel sad ... but i feel happy too ... i feel so warm and closeted ... like all the scares i had of the big world were all my creation ... that all the evil in the world could be found in me ... and that all i had to be afraid of ... was me or not

i always had this thoughts ... that everyone i came across was just a figment of my imagination ... that someone was just carrying out a farce to please or to annoy me ... may be africa and all its problems did not exist ... may be america was not that powerful that it could invade our living room with its images of a better life that we could only pant for

there was no africa or europe or america or asia or australia in Iten where i grew up ... the rest of the world was far away ... or may be it was just too close only that i did not care ... but with the trees my mother had planted ... the orchard ... the fog ... the field hand who went on with his duties as glum as Uncle Tom would have been ... it was just me and my thoughts ... dream i did dream .

i made images of kingdoms and giant thick forests where the strangest of animals lived ... i saw brave, heroic lasses wielding magic swords running away through the thick forests ... running away from evil lords/wicked witches/ugly trolls who sought to capture them ... and from then on ... the tales of my people and the tales of the outside world merged in me

they say the voice that sings from outside africa is louder than the voice that sings from africa ... every day as i trudged to school we were taught concepts that were too far divorced from the lives we led around ... but that was ok ... science is never different ... it might have found others earlier and the ones who are a tad behind had better learn from those who can call themselves the masters ... still if only a teacher would have made me see the valley that lay to the west of our home ... if someone would have told me to take a keener look at the wood, stone and leaf around

western education made me a dreamer ... i dreamt of a world far beyond ... and the people around me became little ... i too became little ... and so did Kabon .... the old grandma who trudged barefoot to thatch her house

the world used to come to iten once in a while ... the International Safari Rally ... helicopters buzzed around and blew up blouses ... opening up sneak previews for the voyeurs ... and then the colors ... it is so strange to see a mix of color ... it brings life into a sharper reality ... people of all colors moving around ... and the cars and the helicopters

i have read far and wide ... the tutors at school have always thought of me as clever ... i just find myself odd ... in one way or another ... knowing and being interested in things no one else cares about ... who wants to hear about Tenochtilan or Genghis Khan ... who needs the past when you have a whole future fresh and unexplored ... who cares about Bugganes and Guanacos, or whether mammoths could be cloned or that the cross between a lion and a tiger is a liger and that the latter grows so much larger than the parents

may be i should forget the big, wide world for a while ... and focus on me ... improve on me ...create a rock, solid self-image with a pure fountain inside ... may be others would love to drink from that ... others that make my world

with a crock of gold, they wait for us, at rainbow's end

a long time ago, when the earth was still new, many feet shuffled up a valley ... may be it was the words of a powerful shaman that made them go... may be it was a volcano that erupted that chased them away... may be it was their changing spirit ... or the curiosity in their heart ... the important thing is that they moved ... and through them the whole world was filled and explored

the valley was the famous Rift Valley ... and they were our ancestors, so they say, the homo erectus ... i found the tracks of one of them ... so i believed ... firmly embedded in a piece of volcanic rock ... happened when we were digging a well, was a small child then, playing around as the strong workmen dug ... when one of the workers handed me a small rock ... and told me look

it was their clear as day ... the small foot of a small child immortalized in rock ... did he make it to his people's intended destination,what was his name,was he beloved by his mother, was his father a famous hunter, did he see the mammoth and the mastodon ... was he going to be a cave painter ... i was excited ... it is always exciting to connect with the past ... events like wine, tastes much better with time ... time makes even the most small-time act, a great feat for mankind

probably, 10,000 years from now,a scientist might discover your discarded shopping list and spend the rest of his life researching on who you are ... because we are all important ... one away or another ... and everything we do so precious

as a child i listened a lot to my mother, she is a natural tusitala (teller of tales )... i learnt about my grand parents and my grand parent's grandparents ... i just felt important to know about them for once they lived ...breathed ... ate ... loved ... just like me ... their footsteps might never have been immortalized in volcanic rock, but they were forever printed in my heart, mortal though it may be ..

it is sad that one time our laughter is born by the wind ... and the next day the wind bears no recollection of our voice ... and it is the turn of our children and grandchildren to laugh ...i wonder if my ancestors ever dreamt of me ... i wonder if they knew that one day one of their children would try to write about them but have no tale ... but just a heart for them

i met my maternal grandmother only briefly ... my mother was the last born and my grandma gave birth to her at a very late age when the former already had grandchildren ... i was the second last born in a family of 7 so by the time i was just a toddler grandma was already advanced in age ... but i remember visiting her, when she was sick and ailing ... she was already blind and as i reached the doorstep she called out with joy ... who is that with the voice of my father? ... i was to shy to answer and my mother said it was me

it was creepy being there, in her dark hut, seeing her in her gaunt, 'old-age-scented' wrap blankets ... yes old age has a smell for your information ... she struggled to sit ... i could not see very well ... the hut was dimly-lit and her children came in and out, hovering over her like vultures ... but she had so much joy, she did ... she laughed all the time and just wanted to be with me ... interrupting her conversation with mama so as to call me to her side ... i could not speak Keiyo then and she kept referring to me as her 'little Swahili boy'

i remember her holding my hand and muttering something in keiyo ... my mother would translate her words into swahili ... she wanted me to spit on her white head, there was a clash of culture for a mini sec, but i obliged ... and she began her blessings ... she wished that i live till my head was whiter than the clouds, that i be happy and have all my heart desired, that i become a good warrior to my people just as was expected of men at her time ... then she spoke of her oncoming death, that i should not cry when she was gone ... that she was old and needed to meet her husband on the other side ... so that they could sit together by the warm fires in the sky and tale tales of old

it was the most powerful moment in my life ... she died soon after that ... my mother did not take me to the funeral ... grandma, i realized later, had forbade that i attend ... she knew i was too young and would be afraid of seeing her casket ... but mama took me there much later and pointed at the ground where she had been lain ... i shook though i was not afraid ... and reached for mama's hand

the dead have no use for the living, grandma would have said ... i had to reach to my life ... to let my laughter ride in the wind ... and to reach to the blessings my ancestors had left for me and make rich my stay on earth, for fellow mankind and I ... we are not here to stay my people say, but only to prepare the road for those who will follow us

one day when it is all over

i have never loved the word SUCCESS ... it came in the form of a girl i never met ... it was in high school and my sister brought home a copy of the KCSE results ... it fell their on my lap and i read into a list of straight As that girls from her school scored ... big deal my sister says ... there is another one she adds ... so bright that teachers at school marvel at her genius ... i spent an hour or a half listening intensely at this girl at whose form figures of straight As seemed to dance around

we lived in a farm ... every sunday mother forced us to go to the catholic church ... not so bad considering that my head was always elsewhere and i hardly ever listened to the priest's sermons ... never will for he died some years back ... i never really loved my life ... somehow i wish there could be more ... my folks did so much travelling before i was born ... all over kenya and also had the privilege of spending quite a bit of time abroad ... i was just the boy who was born in iten ... i shut my eyes on it ... it was too small for me ... i had to move ... somewhere

but it was always good when it was raining ... the roof would trap the rain into little streams that would wash down and tear at the grass and the earth ... it was exciting to watch the rain ... it was even more exciting when the rain would stop and all you would hear was the sound of the frogs and the toads that came out ... and the termites ... to me they were like fairies ... silverish angels that flocked the sky in a ridiculous rain dance ... we used to catch them, tie them stiffly in a paper bag so that their wings would fall and they would form tight couples ...

then would come the roasting ... my mother had a black pan hidden somewhere and after dinner was made we would pour all the termites on and roast them over a low heat ...a wierd oily scent would feel the room and by the end of it all many of my sisters would be too scared to eat it

but luel was brave ... luel, my elder sister who used to be a prefect in school ..... luel who said she had eaten termites raw several times before ... luel, who taught me how to castrate a bull ... luel, who tore my favourite t-shirt while i was wearing it and laughed at the look on my face ... luel, who i once threw a pliers at ... luel who was now sitting with me telling me about a girl who scored straight As in school

i do not know why i was so much fascinated with the STRAIGHT A GIRLS STORY ... and why it was always so boring to everyone else ... i must have talked about it too much that people must have thought i was a loon with a fetish for grades ... still, i think to me grades was the only way of showing my 'it' to the world ... i felt dreary alone many times with friends whom i felt were only nice to me coz i was a sorry kid ... i felt weak, small, unassertive ... this strange kid who never played football, who always read, who always knew the meaning of every word someone failed to understand in a newspaper, novel or magazine

still i wanted life ... more fulfillment ... and i needed a future ... and grades to me was the only way of breathing out ... i followed her like a dream ... i knew her habit, i imagined her like a person i knew for long ... i despised her somehow ... but i loved her ... she was success

whenever i felt down from then on i would only think of her ... her name was Flora ... and somehow her dream became my dream ... i dreamt of making straight As ... i read hard i did, ... followed all the rules and listened strictly to the teachers ... i made it somehow ... for now am in campus ... flora went far ... she made it to Harvard ... the school our headmaster drummed constantly in our heads ... i made her my e-pal ... we talked for long ... followed her school life and examination tables as if they were my own ... and at a point i thought my life would simply mesh into hers ... but when she closed off my heart felt relief ... it was time to search for what i truly wanted

SUCCESS must be a greek word ... it was the greeks who complicated the world with such issues ... before people simply lived, no one strove to be better than the other ... there was very little competition if any ... only love and wars on love, and shepherds taking care of their flock ... simple, rustic lives that seek to be coveted

am finishing school ... finally, i have to look at myself in the mirror and take myself for what i truly am and to make choices to lead my life towards the path i have chosen ... it is scary ... i feel so young, so unprepared ... i have never loved surprises ... but am strong as any other that came ... i will pull it through ... i will find my essence and shine through it ... am not just a cog in the wheel ... a pebble flowing with the mass of humanity to a destructive end ... am alive, i feel, am sexy, i have dreams, i have a heart, i have something to offer to the world and i have the right to pursue happiness and SUCCESS

dread the road the devil spat on

i have always felt like a puppy ... reaching out for people for love and appreciation ... but i guess it is time i become a full-fledged wolf ... am getting out of campus soon in quest for my own life and destiny ... i kinda feel like frodo in middle-earth ... all so short and small with all this gaunt orcs hovering around me ... but i have spirit in me so i guess things will not turn out as bad as they did to another

am reminded intensely of home ... we had a garden i said ... no, it was an orchard ... a fruit orchard and i used to sit there whiling away time when i was a kid ... my parents would get scared ... what is wrong with our child ... why doesn't he find friends to play with ... yea, i was mostly a sulky kid who looked so sad for those who do not understand me ... but i was happy ... in one way or another i was ... even though i could stay still under the lemon shade for long no one would know i was having conversations with the tree

the most amazing thing is that trees can talk ... this does not mean i have descended into any form of celtic paganisms but i can sure understand where they came from ... christianity as described by the first missionaries and many of the so -called charismatic churchmen has really done its best to distance us from certain truths about mother earth

and one of those truths is that trees have souls ... they feel, breathe and gossip as the rest of us ... they also have dreams to and appreciate those who come close to them to take shelter under their shade ... the trees that grew up in my parents farm remain fondly in my heart ... i have saved their lives countless of times when my folks threatened to cut them down ... and them in their part welcomed me to their most tender secrets ... on their branches, i dreamt of a time when the world was a great jungle and the whole human race was squeezed into little pockets that the trees left us with ... for a long time i did hope that the trees would come and reclaim their own

but here i am and the only world before me is the corporate jungle ... full of fancy gentlemen and fancy ladies in fancy attires, driving fancy cars, speaking fancy English and being all fancy formal ... may be that works ... but for me the only real freedom i ever hard was when i was in my garden

who knows may be the present world system will collapse like the ancient maya kingdom and we could all safely go back to our own farms and talk to the trees ... that would be theraupetic ... but still we would not have aspirin on an aching day ... there would be no dvds to watch desperate housewives ... the honest truth about the world will be cut out from us and we will sink back to fantasy and imagination ... or would people be what they are and seek the truth as it is ... i do not know

well, am just a tired student ... tired of all the competition and all the dreams ... all the goals and all the ambitions ... as you slowly get older and await to die ... i want my garden back ... somehow ... i want to reach to it and shut the rest of the world away from me

CHARLES THE SERIOUS

Charles was a serious Kenyan
he was not intentionally bad
neither was he necessarily good
of course he loved his beer at Rhoda's place
but he would never turn away a beggar at his door
he never bothered with friendships
so he made no enemies
ten shoes he had
strenously collected from the markets of Gikomba
to suit the styles of Milan's spring collections
one of them he called a camper
though it had been nibbled by a mouse
another he called a loafer
though it closely resembled a small shovel
his head he scratched
to keep plans awake
his eyes visions they bore
to make him blind to all around
that he crossed Haile Selassie without looking
and a matatu slammed into him
leaving behind a Charles The Serious Kenyan stain on the road

Love as Long as You Can

Oh love, as long as day may dawn,
The hour will come,
You will stand beside a grave , and mourn
Whoever gives his heart to you
Oh, show him all the love you own,
And fill his waking hours with joy,
And never make him feel alone.
And watch your tongue as best you can -
A wicked word is quickly spoken.
"Oh, god, I didn't mean it so!"
The other goes away, Heart-broken,
Then you kneel down beside the grave
And say: 'Look at the woman who
Is weeping here to see you go!
Forgive me, please, for hurting you!
Oh, god, I didn't mean it so!'
But he can't see and he can't hear you,
He can't be welcomed back, somehow.
The mouth that kissed you oft before
Can't say that all's forgiven now...
He did forgive you, long ago,
But many hot tears fell, my friend.
About you and your bitter word...
Oh, he's at rest, he's reached the end!

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