Crazy Crap

Morning Run

2012-01-05T12:28:00.001+03:00

The hill before me looked rather threatening in the morning haze. The orange glow of the Mau sunrise seemed like a rising balloon in the horizon, peppering the tree line of the Mau Forest in the horizon with a warm feel, like curry powder on a spicy dish. The frost on my feet crackled against the grass as my feet became numb and my running shoes grew heavier with each step. With cow dung, dirt and sticks stuck in the treads, they had seen a difficult life.

I had woken up an hour earlier at twenty past five in the morning, with a makeshift Al-Shabaab mortar bomb in my gut, one that I had accidentally armed a few hours earlier with two doubles of vodka and beer before retiring to bed. But now, it was heating up in my tummy together with the previous evening’s dinner. Brown ugali, mutton stew and traditional herbs washed down with the mildest mursik. I jogged about 100 metres before I literally boarded the Al-Shabaab ‘technical’, replete with my mortar bomb.

Alone, none of these foodstuffs are that harmful, except maybe the beer and vodka. However, I had no time for weakness, a man I was, after all. I surged up the hill, brushing aside shrubs and bushes as I cleared radar distance off the morning mist with each ascending step. The incline was about a kilometre uphill and I struggled to gain altitude. After a yearlong hiatus, it was the most gruelling kilometre I’d endured in recent memory. Once atop the hill, I eased for the downward two kilometre drift into Bararget forest section of the Mau. I espied a number of people ridging potatoes on a farm about half a kilometre downhill. They paused with a start when I appeared atop the hill before resuming their duties, busy in the morning chill before sunshine arrived. They probably thought I was a forest guard, out to stop them from encroaching on the fertile forest land. After a brief pause, I eased forward for the descent towards the forest. It was then that the fire in my abdomen got worse.

Loose stomach.

Every runner’s enemy. The dividing line between pride and shame, victory and defeat as well as youth and advancing age. They’d started, and it was about half past six in the morning on the edges of one of the biggest and darkest forests in Kenya. Another lurch in my tummy and a rip through my shorts and I knew the end was nigh. I spot a secluded bush on the side of the mud track and I skip off the path into the knee length grass. If only I can make it to the bush on time.

Fire in my tummy. Ice on my feet.

Ignoring the farmhands on the potato farm, I hid behind the bush and ripped my off tracksuit with my left hand, clutching the saplings of the bush with my right hand as nature took its course.

Mid-air release.

An explosion never heard before in the Mau like an Iranian missile test exploding in Strait of Hormuz. Grass was flattened, early worms scampered for safety, chirping in the process. An expectant silence fell in the bush, a silence that was suddenly broken by a few giggles from the females among the farmhands. I turned partway around to look if anyone was coming towards me when another round of mortar fire went off below me. My lungs had all but shut down, and the edges of my sight were getting blurry and teary when the laughter started rolling towards me in the breeze of the Mau sunrise.

It eventually subsided after a few minutes, the events in between probably not fit content for this rusted blog. Leaves and shrub substituted tissue paper and I emerged from behind the bush a limp, broken man. Sweat soaked jumper, soiled running shoes and spirit broken, like a runaway logging tractor on the edge of the Mau forest. The women in the distant potato farm stood there looking towards me laughing, the men kept busy ridging the potatoes with understanding.

I guess some things are better left unsaid.

I had hardly stepped back onto the mud track to resume my shameful jog did I hear they yelp of a male dog and the hiss of a couple of bitches. Turning, I see about four dogs running towards me from the direction of the farm. Wasting no time I turned and ran back where I came from. Down, down the gradient towards home as all the people working the potato farm burst into loud, mirthless laughter that made the dogs turn back.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is how I ended my relationship with running.

NSE Stockbrokers on the run

2009-04-09T12:31:00.002+03:00

Handful of Stockbrokers Spotted Miles from Somali Border

Garissa, Thursday In light of the impending crackdown by the Micah Cheserem led Capital Markets Authority (CMA) and the declining index, owners, managers and staff of the remaining Nairobi Stack Exchange (NSE) stockbrokerage firms disappeared from the city bourse on Monday. Reports indicate that they are headed for the Somali border. They robbed motorists, pedestrians and hapless farmers along the way, and asked them to seek compensation from the Discount Securities receiver managers, Francis Thuo and Nyaga compensation fund.

Calling themselves the Stock Market Defence Force (SMDF), the stockbrokers were first spotted Monday night crossing Chania River in Thika, after they traded each of the towns 1,000 plus kiosks by borrowing from the kiosk owners and selling their stock. By late Tuesday morning, the SMDF had arbitrarily inflated each of the kiosks’ accounts, and declared a good return on the sale of the kiosk stock.

By afternoon, the financial militiamen had reached Meru town, transferred its miraa trade to a unit trust and sent a bill to the Ministry of Agriculture for KShs 89 million. Police officers on patrol and ‘high’ miraa traders watched helplessly as the SMDF went about its business.

"The police would like to reassure the general public that we are looking for the SMDF financial militiamen and they will face the law once we catch them,” said police spokesman Eric Kiraithe, “they even hide in commercial banks, we’ve been searching for them all morning. If we don’t catch them by late evening, we will have to issue a shoot to kill order against them and send in the military.”

Reached on phone for comment, Jimnah Mbaru, the self-styled commander of the SMDF laughed off the threat by the police. “We have far more sophisticated weapons than the police,” said Jimnah. “We have share certificates and registers, CDS accounts and even a semi-automatic NSE Wide Area Network.”

The police however intimated that they expected to have some level of success in the coming days by preying on a common stockbroker weakness. "We will disguise a policewoman as a KTN or NTV news host, or another local celebrity and see," said Mr. Kiraithe. "She will be irresistible to the SMDF and its leadership."

In addition to the police manhunt that has crippled business and normal life in Central, Eastern and parts of North Eastern Provinces, teams of CID officers have been using high-powered listening devices to scan the plains around Mount Kenya for telltale sounds of the SMDF. "Most of the time we just hear leaves rustling or someone munching miraa," said Kiraithe, "but occasionally we'll pick up someone saying, 'I was very lucky to get out of Nairobi on time, the CMA were coming.'"

While some SMDF stragglers are believed to have successfully crossed into Somalia, Kiraithe said the bulk of the SMDF militiamen and its leadership are currently holed up in guest houses in Garissa town.

To my speeding pals...

2008-06-17T15:39:00.003+03:00

Speeding in a car down the highway is probably the most fun you could ever have. I love doing it. I speed in neighbourhoods, schools, parking lots and even at the office basement... basically, wherever I can. I love showing off the power of my 1993 Toyota Corolla. (I'm pretty sure that means 1,993 horsepower!)

So anyway, I'm doing my usual weekend trip to Nakuru along Waiyaki Way, scooting along at 130 kph to 140 kph, a good 20-30 kph above the legal speed limit. I'm feeling good. I crack my passenger window ever so slightly just to get a tiny listen of that sweet, sweet whiffing noise as I pass the idiotic slow laners.

I pass this one car, a sweet 90's Toyota Tercel, white with custom rust marks and scratches. I fail to get a good look at the driver as I go by, and I feel sad about that, because I usually like to get a glimpse of people's shame as I pass them. But I snap out of it and continue flying along. I casually pick my rear-view mirror up from the passenger seat and lift it up to eye level so I can see out the back window. (My car still has a manual rear-view mirror. OLD SCHOOL!) There is that Tercel again, inching its way back up to my rear bumper. I'm thinking, "IT'S ON!"

But no, it was clearly not on. The Tercel was keeping its distance, and it was now going the exact same speed as me.

Now I'm confused, but also intrigued. I'm slowed down slightly by a Range Rover in the fast lane. The driver's ignoring my rapid honks and head light flashes, which of course mean "get out of the way you damn old person/principled idiot/woman". The Range finally rolls into the left lane. I slam the accelerator hard to show them that I am upset, and roar past them at 120 kph. In the meantime, the Tercel had gone all the way into the far left lane where there was a joining lane in a daring manoeuvre and had passed the Range on the right. Now it's just us with a half a kilometre of road ahead of us before more traffic. Neck and neck, I finally get a good look at the driver. Male, professional speeder, not slowing anybody else down, knows the tricks of the trade. A real man's man. Like me. I look at him and he looks at me. And it was at that moment that we knew we were... Speeding Friends!

The next fifty minutes of the drive were amazing. We cut and wove through traffic like surgeons performing an appendectomy. Forcing others aside, team honking, synchronized middle fingers and more. I can't express how great it was having someone watching my back for the police while I do what I love to do. But soon enough, that became a problem.

After passing one particularly slow pack of cars downhill near Kinungi, my new friend in the Tercel sped ahead, hitting somewhere in the 170 kph range. Amused, but not impressed, I begin to accelerate as well. In my peripheral vision, I see a blue and white Nissan X-Trail parked somewhere down hill along the highway near Karai, just as my Speeding Friend turned the corner to approach the roadblock. . I immediately drop to 110 kph as the policeman with a speed gun zeroes in on my speeding friend who still doesn't see the policeman. I flash my lights and hazards, press the water to turn on my wipers multiple times and even point with my finger over the roof of my car at the policeman, but to no avail. Sure enough: the cop raises his hand and my newfound friend is pulled over and his DL confiscated.

After what seems like forever, I get to the scene where the cop stopped my speeding friend. With his window down, I can finally get a good look at the guy's face. I slow down to 80 kph and pass with an expression of deepest respect and concern. He's been through this a million times, right? He knows the drill. He'll say he had his music on too loud and the kapuka pumped him up and he lost track of his speed. Or that his wife just had a baby in Naivasha. Or that he is going to the hospital to have something removed from his stomach. Or that he thought the car was actually dong 100 kph, how slow is this jalopy? (All of these excuses work equally well.) But no-- he shouts to me as I pass, "Weweee!!! I'll catch you before Gilgil Daddy!" He just blew his cover; he admitted guilt. He's doomed.

Another lost speeder.

These words had such an effect on me, I felt compelled to do this post. I had once considered myself an unmatchable solo-speeder. I have since learned the folly of such selfish thoughts. So strong was the bond between us, I would have paid HALF of that guy's bribe money. OK, not half, maybe less. But that's not the point. Now, whenever I go driving, I pick up as many speeding buddies as I can. I had assembled a speeding posse from Narok to Kericho once, composed of complete strangers. It was amazing. You can immediately tell who is a worthwhile speeding buddy, because they won't get too far ahead or behind, and they use the signals to warn you of cops, when they want to pass you or if your wheel is coming off.

I encourage you other speeders out there in to seek this bond with others. Don't be competitive; work as a team and your speeding experience will grow more enjoyable by threefold, just like a threesome.

Double trouble in my head

2007-07-05T06:59:00.000+03:00

Surprise, it's already morning, and you've probably been wondering why you are still on blogsphere, knowing that it is likely some IT police are watching your actions in virtual hell. Well, wonder no more, your update is here. Sorry I'm late, but I'm in a bit of a hurry, so try to keep up. Ready. Set.

Go.

The butterflies in my stomach are flapping their wings, ready for flight, massaging the walls of my empty stomach, making me slither in silent and painless pain and sink further into my seat and wish I could slither across the floor. The new guy seated across the room from me pays no attention as my boss shouts at me, and why should he? Deadlines aren’t his problem, they probably never have been. The deadlines are my problem. The world is coming to a probable end. Rabid killers invading colleges in the USA, Mungiki and other bandits killing Kenyans at will. The children are hungry in Darfur, South Africans are losing their pay TV monopoly in Africa, politicians are flipping on their beds restlessly as they wait for nothing, and Harambee Stars are being torn apart in the soccer pitch. Women bitching about their rights and the pro-lifers and the pro-abortionists are killing each other at mock tribunals and the only purpose a belt serves these days is to keep your pants from falling down around your ankles, which is where the trouble started in the first place.

This is Nairobi in its own winter. Nairobi, the city where the money goes away before you even call the barman and you sleep on opposite sides of the bed. What happened to the breeze of Nairobi fascination, when a well dressed babe was still intriguing and a cold beer didn't hurt so bad? Listless in the doldrums, awaiting the breeze of Easter or another national day weekend to fill our sails, to push us toward the coast where the fat old foreigners are swimming and seducing young school-going-age-girls. Bruises and scrapes and wet bandages at Bob’s bar later, we return to our hotel rooms, wait for the sun to fall, and stumble around in the consequent darkness, having forgotten our way around the coastal city.

Stretch me on the rack of Nairobi’s fake fad that is the so-called hip hop culture, pop my shoulders and hips from their sockets, let me scream and die the glorious death. Babe and friends watch from afar and wince with understanding. We tread the streets in a storm of humanity in a fake dress code and fake stock prices, dynamically generated websites and repetitive news clippings. The long and the short shall suffice, the fact that we are all dying, as our fathers died before us and their fathers died before them, tending to the shallow dry field of relationships in which only a few sprouts take root and start to crawl. These are our children, our crop and harvest, the blankets we need as we grow old and cold at night.

You know, the quagmire of daily existence can become too much for a mere man to endure. Finding your ideal job and abode in Nairobi does not necessarily mean you've found peace, especially when an entourage of weary-eyed vampires has taken roost in your suicide tree and their only remaining glee is to see how much of your blood they can draw. Bad news finds its way in from every direction. Knock on the door. Letters arriving from the post office or an e-mail tirade or even a text message blitz. And if, on any given day of the week, more than two of the following parties have already called and left a message or you have a missed call, you should probably leave town, change cell numbers, or both:

Your ex-girlfriend, some of your relatives, your ex-girlfriend’s best friend, a lawyer, a debt collector an insurance assessor and your local barman.

So what do you do when all of these people demand your attention, answers, time, money, and otherwise at once? Leave. You run like the building is on fire. And with all the romance and subtlety of a rock flying through a glass window, I am absconding the city for the cold homely sanctuary of the jungle that is the Mau forest in the Rift Valley this coming weekend.

After all, sometimes the frying pan is cooler than the fire.

Lemme reintroduce myself……

2007-06-25T19:55:00.000+03:00

It's been a few months - did you miss me? What? No?

Frankly speaking, it’s been a while since I’ve graced blogsphere with my stupid musings. My colleagues and fellow drunkards have had a hard time bearing the brunt of the listening to my idle ranting and maybe I should thank them publicly for their time.

You’ll have to bear with me; I have to admit that I am totally rusted. Since the last time I wrote here, I have been locked in a virtual cage, engaged in a mortal kombat with my addiction to alcohol. Not having access to the liquid in brown bottles in the name of detoxing my system, I started debating the jurisprudence of starting other bad habits such as going to the gym, eating healthy and walking up the stairs to my office.

After twitching through more than thirty days and four torturous weekends of withdrawal, I awoke one Saturday morning to birds chirping outside my window. An unusual occurrence, being used to noisy car alarms and noisy children, I sat up, took a deep breath, and, lo-and-behold, I didn’t belch, my head was as clear as a bottle of Smirnoff Vodka (pun intended, of course) and I could remember what I did on Christmas day last year. Amazingly regenerative, the human body is. Four solid years of binge drinking every other weekend, and I was already feeling a difference after only five weeks detoxification. I spent the entire day jogging my memory and running errands for the house.

Truly, I hadn’t felt so clean in years, and I will go on record saying that alcohol does affect the health of the body, despite my prior assertions that the responsible drinking movement is just a conspiracy by the social rejects at Nacada, jealous of how cool, sexy, and mature sitting in a bar having a beer makes me appear. Apparently, those guys are on to something. Too bad they lost another convert when a long lost friend of mine rolled into town from North Eastern with a bottle Three Barrels under his arm. I didn’t ask where he got it, I just unlush two glasses and some ice and were we in business. The neighbours, who’d started being nice to me, offering me friendly smiles and saying hi occasionally, have now gone back to their old ways. It must have been the loud music/laughter of that day (and night!) and subsequent days (and nights!).

I’ve taken quite kindly to a new watering hole here in Nairobi. Mind you, it takes quite a bit of atmosphere, a very large babe-quotient and really cold beer for yours truly to belly up at a new establishment and feel at home. This new place, called Taidy’s, has it all. They’ve got good music, better than average bar food, it happens to be owned by a jamaa from the Rift Valley like me and of course it has got its share of fellow jerks with stories to tell and also willing to listen to my rants and look forward to random bitching from babes. Not to say it beats The Ale House but that is a story for another day. One of them came up with a new term the other day – flirtilicious – to describe a lady he found attractive. He often uses this term to compliment babes he’s trying to seduce. Sample this...

"Hey gal, you look flirtilicious tonight. Can I buy you a drink?"

One night, when I was moments from falling out of my chair, drunk as a weasel, a really drunk guy ambled into the bar and screamed. A long harrowing-high-pitched scream. When the bar fell silent and every one stared at him, he asked (loose translation):

What are you guys staring at? Our country is run by a drunkard!

The guy was a total mess I tell you. So one of the guys in our table starts talking about Kenya's inane politics. He says oh bla bla we are forced to bear with all the appointments and policies that the big man throws our way every now and then sijui nini. Like I cared. But in my drunken stupor, I agreed with him. I know, I know, if I don't like my country and the current economic growth, tribal wars, Mungiki beheadings and all the dirty horse-donkey (okay, mule) politics, I should just pack up and go. Well, just know that I can’t. First, I am too lazy to look for another job abroad. Secondly, well, I'm too lazy to think of anything else!

But I digress.

So this drunken guy looks around then walks to some chicks at a table and bursts into tears and all but one scramble to leave hastily. The waiter comes for payment and a bouncer follows, restrains the chicks who wanted to leave and asks them to pay up. Apparently, they had been drinking with the noisy guy at a nearby pub and they ran off when he got so drunk and out of hand. When means of going home got tricky, one of the ladies (apparently his cousin!) sent him a text telling him to come pick her. One of the others was his arranged date for the night and she actually had to intervene and save the situation from turning sour after all the patrons and bouncers started laughing when the drunk guy started recounting how he had been ‘used’ and his money ‘eaten’ by his cousin who had earlier arranged a date for him etc etc…

The good news is that they eventually settled down and started talking animatedly and the drunk guy cuddled with his date, obviously after the ringleader of the chicks left in a huff after her protestations at the jamaa’z ‘invasion’ of their table fell on deaf ears, her friends’ and bouncers included. The things that don’t happen in bars!

Stay drunk.….

Prison break, Kenyan style

2007-03-05T18:35:00.000+03:00

First, it may be appropriate and courteous of me to apologize for being off air for such a long time. Secondly, I want to clarify that contrary to your belief over the subject of this post, I had not been incarcerated and neither am I being pursued by the Kenya Police! There are reasons as to why I have been MIA since January and within the next couple of weeks; I will bring you up to speed on some of my tribulations.

There comes a time (not my words, so don’t read my lips!), sometimes many, in life, where your common sense and intellect, are at odds with each other as you battle your demons. That is acceptable. However, when the same happens to an organisation, it surely leaves a lot to be desired. The following post tells of such a time in the life of the Prisons Department and the Kenyan security and justice system in general.

The punishment of criminals should be of use; when a man is hanged he is good for nothing.
- Voltaire

Life imprisonment. Death penalty. Serving time in a Kenyan jail. Eternity far away from the vagaries of Kenyan life, and in the real sense of the word, ridiculous. Many Kenyans have never been very good at counting time, let alone keeping it. People wear watches because they have to, pay attention to the calendar because their jobs, banks, schools and mistresses make them do so. Now imagine yourself behind bars for life or awaiting the hangman’s noose. It’s either you will not take your eyes off the non-existent clock or make yourself lose track of time by counting time backwards. The days will definitely get longer if you are serving a life term, and the reverse is true for the death penalty.

Hon. Moody Awori, you had it coming.

There are certain things that happen at the intersection of certain events: upon "stepping on to the highway" and "speeding trailer coming down the same," we find the subject being run over. Ditto the intersection of "jumping forward" and "standing on the rooftop of a tall building" - there are certain expectations of result. Is it fair that someone who jumps off a tall building should plummet hundreds of feet to their death?

You are probably wondering why I am asking this question. Fairness has nothing to do with most elements of life - such as throwing yourself off a tall building. There you're engaging gravity, under the direct guidance of Darwinian evolution - you're naturally deselecting yourself from the gene pool. The question of "fairness" is one for intellectuals to debate over in lecture hall in one of Kenya’s universities; the question of what will happen in certain obvious situations, though, is more a matter of basic science and logic.

Take the case of the Prisons department case in Nakuru for example: Five convicts escaped from tight custody at 2 AM, scaled a fence using a blanket and disappeared into the night. There is a certain expectation that when convicts escape from custody, a manhunt should ensue right away, all roads sealed off and cars searched. Other should mount foot pursuit with sniffer dogs to trace the convicts. Are the Kenya Police and the prison’s department running an experiment on the justice system?

The security personnel were still searching houses late Sunday close to the prisons after a car sped off from the scene at 2 AM, suspected to be carrying the escapees. There was no roadblock into and out of Nakuru all day Sunday. I know this because I was there. The police were looking in the traditional places for the suspects. We all know that the police chase running things like dogs chase fleeing cats - dogs have no inherent interest in cats, but if they run away, something snaps in their brains. So the police are looking for fleeing inmates dressed in the new look uniform because something has snapped in their minds. Nobody else is a suspect. This has nothing to do with the efficiency or fairness of the Kenyan security apparatus, no; it has to do with the evolution of men into Kenyan police.

Why did the Commissioner of Prisons and other senior officers to rush to Nakuru, hold a four hour meeting debating on who let the convicts escape, suspend six officers, and then address the press rather direct and lead the search operation, call in the rest of the security teams like CID and NSIS to gather intelligence around the area? Isn’t that how a search for escaped dangerous convicts is supposed to be carried out? Not from a boardroom. Not by deploying more officers to search and subdue prisoners under incarceration than those searching for the dangerous escapees. Not by leaving all routes out of Nakuru unmanned and then searching houses, starting from the prison’s neighbourhood at a slow pace, expecting the escapees are moving at your pace as well. Oh, I almost forgot, and after a car sped off from the scene!

Everyone suspects that there was assistance from some of the wardens, and probably the gunfire was ‘friendly fire’. And why shouldn’t the wardens help them escape at the right price? When you earn little money for in a difficult job, and look forward to very little pension as well, you may need to consider your options at making it, moneywise at least, in life. That is why the Kenyan security forces have so many rotten apples. While Hon. Moody Awori was busy trying to turn the Kenyan prisons into a chain of resort hotels funded entirely by taxpaying citizens in an effort to keep undesirables off of our lives, he forgot the officers who are supposed to make the system work. The prisoners now watch telly, and most of the officers who watch over of them can’t. Prisoners eat three meals a day and while this is an entitlement, most of the officers cannot afford to. The prisoners have a better life than the wardens in certain instances. No wonder some of the wardens pointed an accusing finger at the Kenya Human Rights Commission fo fighting for the rights and welfare of the prisoners only.

You do not lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.
--Dwight D. Eisenhower

Hon. Moody Awori tried to force the warders to do a good job on the terms they have always had. He refined the system so that there was no opportunity for the officers to make an extra cent on the side. Did Moody Awori get what he deserved? Is it fair that six prison wardens are suspended? [Out of context alert] was Matheri Ikere’s shooting fair to him and his family? I'm not touching those issues, even with a stick; mainly because I don't have sufficient information to comment. But, I’ll tell you this: it wasn't fair, 'cause fairness has nothing to do with cause and effect. You jump off a tall building, and you fall down to a certain death. You let prisoners escape, you face the axe, you kill Kenyans at will and you get shot. Anybody can solve that equation.

Another argument here is that by suspending the warders and eventually sacking them, and yet they are suspected of having links with the criminal underworld, isn’t the prisons department releasing another contingent of gun trained and dangerous people to the Kenyan public? They will most likely hook up with their pals in the underworld and form a formidable gang to terrorise Kenyans.

Or what do you think is going to happen?

Please visit ValerieKimani.com

2007-01-19T18:35:00.000+03:00

I was going to post a real interesting post for you guys to enjoy today... you know, those ones where I engage readers in insightful literary discourse, offer interesting and captivating intellectual banter, or at least make a few remarks that may contribute to the country’s economic growth. But an emergency has come up, and as StackOfStiffys, the lewd one, I know it's my duty to take care of business. So I'm putting the interesting post off for a day or two and we're going to deal with this situation.

Someone's named Valerie Kimani is trying to become an internet celebrity. This is unacceptable. Go KBW, go! Click here to go to ValeriKimani.com and tell her how you feel and stop her from embarking on an unofficial and irrelevant exercise in shame of the Kenyan nation and the East African spirit. She already has it on her mind that she is famous all over East Africa and now she wants cyberspace. First we'll stop blogging on KBW, African Path and Nchi Yetu to start rubbing our G-spots (as Aegeus & Ichiena look for theirs in vain of course) in the forums at ValerieKimani.com and the next thing you know, KBW, African Path and Nchi Yetu is going to join the likes of Africa Online in the big bound and dusty book of Internet obscurity. You’ll probably think that I am going over the top but I don't mean to be an alarmist, but you'll agree that blogging is somewhere on the top 10 in my ~~Stack~~ListOfAddictions, one spot after beer and about one thousand spots ahead of the church and politics.

Everyone knows that in order to be a superb performing artist, you need, among other things, to be confident and talented. However, what people might not understand is how one directly leads to the other. Using a bit more logic than Valerie logic, you can probably guess having the same amount of confidence and even an ounce more in talent than Valerie Kimani every time she stepped on stage during the recently concluded Tusker Project Fame (more like a Protected Flame, a candle in the wind) isn't going to do anything to make your fan base believe that you are talented.

Obviously, and more sadly though, God, Ngai Allah, Jehovah, Shiva, Buddha, Mungu, Musambwa, Krishna, The Great Architect of the Universe, The Grand Artificer, Great Geometer, or The Grand Master of the Grand Lodge Above (emphases mine), Vishnu, Yahweh or whatever deity you'd like to pin Valerie Kimani’s misfortunes on, gave her (and indeed only a select few of us!) the talent and confidence required to be a superb artist. She sound more like she is a tented bar in Eastlands flapping against the wind to make some music so that bar patrons can spend more. However, she shouldn't worry... she has plenty of options.

Considering that her fan base, as far I am concerned and have experienced so far, is with the little rich kids across the corner from your neighbourhood, she should just go and serve them at The Splash Water World. I can picture her roasting sausages in the area next to the playground or better still poising an aiding archery target (in no regalia hopefully, although there is nothing to look forward in that ominous forehead and almost non existent boobies) in the archery range (Archer are you listening Mzeeiyas?). She can also be a cashier at the main bar.

For those who have never experienced what goes on with those rich kids and tired ols farts and hags at Splash, lemme break it down for you. People usually just carry an extra bag to store all of their stuff as they surf n’ ride the imaginary waves in the Nairobi Beach at Splash and only take money with them. That said, when a human being approaches the main bar to buy a drink wearing either a bikini for the ladies or some assorted mitumba micro-apparel for the man and they aren’t holding any money in their hands and he/she wants a beer, there are only two places where the woman can remove the money from. The first one is slightly less disturbing than the second, and the second, which is the only place the men can keep their money, is more horrifying and disturbing. What would Valerie do when a hairy-chested man extends his hands to the second spot and extracts some notes from his genital region and asks for a Tusker (pun intended!)? Or one of the many fat Nairobi women extracts from her crotch a folded and dripping wet glob of coloured paper that makes the situation it look more like a Kenyan politician has been nabbed by KACC and dropped a load of shit in their pants rather than some currency notes on the counter.

So go to ValeriKimani.com and do your worst, ladies and gentlemen. I don't for the love of Tusker care if you tell her the truth or a pack of lies, it is all the same. And be sure to go to the ‘Talk About Valerie’ forum and verbally beat the daylights out of Valerie, the administrator and the moderator and all her finger licking fans. Once you are done, go to the empty (or ‘empte’ as Marcus would put it) Wikipedia entry on Valerie Kimani and do your worst also. As far as I'm concerned, an entry for Valerie Kimani on Wikipedia should be as shallow as possible on her talent, intellect and confidence and be as detailed as possible on how a slutilicious, bootyless and flat chested wannabe won an internationally acclaimed show in the Star Academy series, much to the chagrin and shame of the respectable residents of East Africa.

Boys - We don't have money

2007-01-04T18:56:00.000+03:00

So we cannot marry any of Kenya’s single women

We are back with the second instalment of our assessment of the sheer immensity of the number of Kenyan women without potential marriage partners. If you'd like to fully enjoy this post, I suggest you at least browse through the results of the Daily Nation survey here and my previous post here. Besides, you're probably one of the people it affects, either as a single lady who cannot find a guy to marry her, ot a jamaa who is not ready to get married.

Let us delve straight to responses to the views of the guys.

WILLIAM MIRUGI, 26

I’m not ready for marriage yet. I have to plan my life before l make a lifetime commitment. Marriage is a very serious thing.

STIFF RESPONSE:

And you call yourself an Honourable Member of Parliament? Surely you can do better than saying you are not ready for marriage yet. Although your reasons are quite valid, you are an MP who won based on sympathy votes and a strong election machinery led by Hon Mwangi Kiunjuri (the K-street pussy snorter himself, although he bonds well with the masses). I would also say that marriage is a serious thing if I was facing a plethora of women (63% of all single Kenyan women to be precise) that have you on their sharp focus suddenly. As for planning your life, I hope that binge drinking, state orgies and such other social ills do not feature as you are now a role model in society.

Were I not a peace-loving, pleasure-seeking Kenyan, and were I not slightly under the influence when the Honourable Member of Parliament for Nakuru Town (you!)chose to interrupt my daily ritual of newspaper-surfing and internet-browsing with his comments on marriage, then there would have been little urgency to ruin my evening trying to end the dialogue no one asked you to start. Contrary to your assertion, you do not really intend to plan you life, after all your life is well cut-out as a politician. Neither are you inclined toward good, as you extend a helping hand to the Nakuru Municipal Council and the police in their mission to ensure that bread seeking boda boda operators and hawkers (most of who voted for you btw) are swept away from Nakuru town. You claim "I have to plan my life before l make a lifetime commitment" but I think you've forgotten that time during your campaigns when you said you were not married because you were still a student and now that you are back home to work for your people, you’ll make it priority to get married as soon as you were elected so that your partner can have ideas on projects to help the womenfolk in Nakuru Town. How fast politicians and voters forget! Anyway, lemme not be too hard on you as you are one of the well-educated legislators we have, and you have a bright future ahead of you.

OMAR BASHE, 30

I am not married because it is cheaper to be single. I would like to get married when l have achieved the goals l have set.

STIFF RESPONSE:

It is cheaper to be single? With all those unplanned expenses and surging relatives? What goals have you set to attain before you get married? Fathering a handful of babies out of wedlock? Contracting many incurable diseases to transmit to your lifelong partner? Or you are not willing to leave your sorry right hand alone, even at age 30! You've probably been addicted to masturbation since you were 15 years old when you realized what you could do to that thing between your legs by yourself. And it is also likely that you’ve been apoplectic at times when you wanted to beat the pig between your legs and someone came over and kept you from doing the said pig beating, hence your fears on marriage. However, I would like to assure you, Mr. Bashie, on behalf of all those happily married men that the pig beating can continue if you want (with assistance if need be) but there are far more happier moments to look forward to in a marriage. Please attain those goals quickly and get married, Mr. Bashie.

DAVID MAINA, 30,

Fear of HIV/Aids has discouraged me from getting married. Some of the girls l have thought of marrying decline.

STIFF RESPONSE:

It is shocking to imagine that you’ll expect a girl (one of 2.5 million!) to agree to marry you by just exercising a mere thought in that direction! Your fear of HIV is also unfounded. The entire populace with virus, unless I am wrong, is less than the total number of single women in Kenya. So stop worrying and get yourself a wife. The next thing you’ll tell us is that there is a search engine out there that does exactly the same thing as Google but we have to pay to use its services..…

DAVID KIPROTICH, 25

I am not married because I earn very little and you know maintaining a woman is expensive. It is not a joke.

STIFF RESPONSE:

Did Missy Elliot actually say "Supa Dupa Fly"?. Maybe it’s just me but I think its stupid although it probably needed to be said. And did David Kiprotich say……..

EMMANUEL BUREMI, 26

I do not want to marry because I am financially stable. I expect that when I am in my late 30s I will be better off than now.

STIFF RESPONSE:

Probably a typo, but I maintain that you do not need to be well-off to marry. You’ll probably prosper more if you have a partner that can help you make informed decisions. I am not going to try and cut you or your ego with words. I know you have a thick skin and a thin brain (pun intended) however, how can you plan to get married in your late thirties? Considering your age, that is more than a decade from today! I really don’t have much to say to you but you surely put George W. Bush and his ilk higher on a knowledge pedestal. I am convinced that you must be the luckiest jamaa in the world as you probably have a permanent orgasm as only a career and all day wanker would.

EDWARD FWESA, 27

I am not yet married because l have not found the right woman. I have yet to meet someone who is serious and interested.

STIFF RESPONSE:

How do you tell if they are serious and interested? Didn’t your interviewer tell you that this is a survey on why 63% of Kenya’s 2.5 million women are single and looking for a good man to marry them hence the majority are SERIOUS? The unfortunate part of all this is that idiots like you will one day find a way of going at each other with one of those single ladies.

WAMBUA MALING’U, 30

The insincerity upon which most modern marriages are based simply discourages me to consider marriage. It is complex.

STIFF RESPONSE:

What insincerity? I appreciate you aren't trying to be arrogant about getting married, but come on you guy, I recall reading somewhere that opinions are like assholes: everybody has one and most of them stink. If you don't like the way marriage smells then get your nose out of its ass crack. No one is forcing you to sniff it, so stop commenting on the complexities of marriage if you do not intend to play a role.

DAN MUINDI, 24

I am not married because I am young, haven’t made enough money to even consider the idea.

STIFF RESPONSE:

Sawa, at least you are frank. However, I suspect that the reporter probably caught you in one of you sincere moments Dan. I think guys like you needed to get their backsides whooped when you were growing up, although, come to think of it, it might not be too late for you. You'd have a lot more sense to de-link marriage from making money. Hopefully, one day when you have grown up, made enough money, considered the idea and got married and have a son or daughter they will get their backsides whooped for saying some outrageous things because in turn it will make them remember that sometimes you have to deal with the consequences of what you say.

You on the other hand, it seems, have not had the chance. Let me give you that chance. I presume you hang around a small and pretty closed group of friends and you are probably a pretty quiet person out in public because ….. You know better. Such a person is called a coward by the way. I have always thought that one could be too old to fight but the older I get the more I see people like you who should've learnt a few lessons earlier, coz you'd have a bit more sense and reservation. So tell you what...The next time somebody young and ignorant says something out of character to me I’ll probably punch them straight in the face for your sake. At least that way I will be preventing a joker like you from saying the same stupid things. You are not going to meet me anytime soon but I hope that one day when you’re drunk enough you'll slip up and say some stupid things around the wrong person or people. But then again you'd only go telling the Daily Nation how ignorant those people are for beating you up bla bla bla. The things people don't do to reconcile the fact that they are stupid! You're stupid. Anyway don't take me seriously... am joking LOL....

63% of Kenya’s 2.5 million single women might stay single forever

2007-01-01T22:03:00.000+03:00

Why? Because they can’t find someone suitable to marry.

This is not a nice post. In fact, it’s kinda cruel. On 24 December 2006, the Daily Nation published results of a poll that indicated that 63% of Kenya's single women are frustrated marriage-wise because, yeah, you guessed it; there is no man to marry them! To all the ladies who fall in the above category, this is a post on behalf of all the men around who got ticked off by that report on the Nation. I have put down three reasons I think have contributed to this huge percentage, and all I can say is that this won’t make you very happy. Especially if you are a single woman.

First of all, Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are all set to embark on another gruelling year. I also hope that all if not most the 63% of Kenyan women who cannot find the right man to marry them still got laid (and paid) this Christmas. Here’s to 2007!

I know most of you will agree that what I will put down here is the truth, although you’ll still abuse me for it. However, I am doing my bit for the Kenyan woman. In the next 200 years or so, the very last weeping, half-naked thirty-something-year-old Kenyan spinster might stumble upon the ruins of the this stupid blog, and I would like her to know just where her ancestors and predecessors went wrong. Here goes:

1. Sex

I've seen far too many women in Kenya today who waste time chasing down some hot jamaa (as her gals describe him), get to know him, date him, but hold off on sex for weeks or even months, and when it finally happens, one of them ends up a complete disappointment to the other in bed.

I've heard it over and over in church that sex, unlike size, shouldn't matter. I suppose it shouldn't, in theory though. For me, I blame my libido. It wouldn’t allow me to retain interest for a woman who disappoints me sexually. The same applies for women. They listen to all that gibberish that the Frank Njengas, Oprahs and Tyras spew forth daily about getting to know each other and establishing a connection. It's overrated and we all know a relationship at its dating stages boils down to one thing and one thing only: sex. How many of you boys and girls have broken up with someone because the sex was so bad? All that song and dance leading up to sex didn't matter much anymore, did it? Most of the time, when a boy wants to date you it's because of three very simple reasons: 1) He wants to sleep with you; 2) He wants to sleep with you; and
3) He likes your "personality, character and good cheer" (aka... he likes the tilt of you bust and bum in retro and wants to sleep with you).

Those women that have wasted precious time dating and fantasizing about romance and life-time torment (i.e., marriage) will keep doing just that - fantasizing. Every day, women face situations that hold a lot of promise of happiness. Men pretend to be nice in order to get laid, while women think that these men are godsend. Either the man disappoints the woman in bed or he shows his true colours i.e. callous self and the relationship ends. This leaves the woman with a sour taste in her mouth and the next guy who comes along is scrutinised and given a lecture on how mean are dogs. This clearly leaves 63% of Kenya's single women without a marriage partner.

To those women who are reluctant to sleep with a date, I say let your inner self out to play. She has her needs and she's bound to come out sooner or later. Better now than when you're in your fifties, traumatizing your mboches, nieces and nephews while thinking that you're successfully keeping your sexual frustration under wraps. Enjoy the tight body you have now, while you still can. It's not going to last forever. And you’ll probably get married in the process, and not end up being a mere whining statistic in the Nation.

2. Religion

Couple A are very God-fearing and date for sometime before marrying and they even go for marriage classes. When they have problems, they endure months of counselling, therapy and jackassery at the church and they save their marriage. Couple B are the ideal drunks and do not bother to go to church apart for the fancy wedding. When they have problems, they do not bother to talk to anyone about them and they just go ahead get a divorce. Couple A will live happily ever-after, in that life-long torment called marriage. Man B will probably date some fresh graduate who’s more attractive and tolerating than Ex-Wife B. Man B leaves the bachelor club again and starts beautiful family with Fresh Graduate B, Ex-Wife B becomes one of the 63% tormented single Kenyan women and the cycle of life continues.

Thank you, Religion, Couple A, Fresh Graduate B and Man B.

3. Tolerance

Kenyans have become more tolerant to homosexuality and this has become a big disaster on the marriage-seekers. A few years back, in fact as recent as 5 to 10 years ago, the typical gay jamaa was getting married and having a family for appearances’ sake. Even if he didn’t enjoy a second of it, he’d sire children and maintain one of the happiest families around. Nowadays, the typical gay Kenyan man can go an entire lifetime without ejaculating inside a female, and no one will give it a second thought. There go a substantial number of men who can marry the single ladies and keep them happy as their jealousy will be focussed elsewhere.

There are many more, so feel free to add your own. I can’t go on lest I be seen to be one sided against the ladies. However, let us have a one-on-one session with the female respondents to the Nation survey:

AGNES NGUNA, 28

I haven’t found the right man and most potential suitors are not serious. They do not want to commit themselves. At the same time, l want to grow in my career first.

STIFF RESPONSE:

For starters, how do you judge a man’s seriousness? Whether he asks for sex or not? I have heard this commitment crap before, and you’ll clearly agree with me that a man will not commit to you if, from the word go you make it clear that you are after getting married kwigily. So you want to grow in your career first before getting married? Good luck! But think about your age first. Kenyan men will not want to get married to some thirty something career woman who claims to be independent and financial stable.

LUCY WAMALWA, 28

I have many friends but I am not in any long term relationship with any of them because they are not serious about marriage. I’d however like to get married someday.

STIFF RESPONSE:

Age Lucy, age. Your age is advancing and your hairline is probably receding too. You therefore cannot afford to use terms like ‘someday’ and ‘I have many friends’. Just narrow down on one or two guys (the crème de la crème of your male friends) and work on them. You are probably not dedicating sufficient time to any of them hence you are the one that is not serious and they also lose interest. To put it loosely, you are loose, Lucy.

LINNET MINAGE, 26

I must be very careful because I do not want to make a mistake I’ll live to regret. I don’t want a man who may turn out to be a monster. I am looking for an understanding man.

STIFF RESPONSE:

You probably watch a lot of Nigerian movies, hence your fears about getting married to gentlemonster. We all know that love is overrated, so you don’t have to be very idealistic about getting married. All men are understanding, depending on what you are talking about and in what language. No man understands that gibberish dialect called girl-speak where no means yes and every pause is pregnant.

MERCY WANJIKO 26,

I am yet to find a suitable partner – someone who is a little older than me and financially stable. Getting a God fearing man is not easy. I do not think it’s too late.

STIFF RESPONSE:

Good girl, at least you are frank and keep looking. Your surname homes in well with the phrase you used: ‘financially stable’.

EVELYN KURIA, 25

I don’t want to get married because the tradition is for men to marginalise women. Most modern women do not agree with this attitude and men are feeling threatened. AM a modern woman.

STIFF RESPONSE:

Modern? So because you are modern you do not want to perform your Darwinian duties? How are women marginalized by men anyway? Because there are no seats are set aside for women in parliament yet they have more votes amongst the electorate? Or because most men are the dominant partner in a marriage? Modern women are too bright to bother trying to change a man; they just accept them and let them be. You were probably disappointed by your high school boyfriend. I say shrug it off and be grateful that you're not wasting each other's time anymore. Get it out of your system until you find that one guy who’s not traditional and his conversation doesn't make you think he wants to ‘marginalise women’.

JUNE MUTONYE, 28

Men aren’t trustworthy. They aren’t willing to take responsibility. Nowadays women are not willing to be harassed. I’d love to get married but there aren’t any candidates.

STIFF RESPONSE:

Yeah, nobody is trustworthy. By men refusing to take responsibility (read to baby-sit a 28-year old lady named June), they are harassing women? Look for a candidate to interview before it is too late. Men refuse to take responsibility (again read to baby-sit elderly women) because women let them burrow into them like pigs in a trough in the hope that the men will do as they please and bide. When this fails…. jijazie. If a man really likes a woman then you'll find him hanging around more thus ‘taking responsibility’. At the very least, he'll come back to sleep with you again. Eventually, you'll get to know each other while having fun together and not do the same tired conformity stuff to impress because you're trying to make the man take responsibility and commit to you.

NANCY WONTITA, 25

I don’t want to get married because men are opportunists – they want to take advantage of you. Many will marry for convenience but have a sugar mummy.

STIFF RESPONSE:

Jesus! This a new one, I haven’t heard this one before, many happily married men having sugar mummies, or do you mean mistresses? I agree that most men think it is alright to fool around and women shouldn't because "he's a man and has his needs". Men like this tend to think it's okay for them to satisfy their needs "occasionally" because he has to, and it's the woman's job to stay at home. As if women don't have needs. Steer clear of such cheating men.

MILLICENT ATIENO, 30

There are no good men left. I have observed most marriages and I am forever grateful that I am single. I’d rather be single and happy. I don’t want to.

STIFF RESPONSE:

30. 30 years is the right age to belief in being single after you realize that nobody wants to marry you anyway.

ZAHRA IMAN, 28

In the past six months I’ve met five men who wouldn’t take HIV tests, so whom can you trust? That’s my worst fear so it’s a lot better to be single. I have no reason to.

STIFF RESPONSE:

Yenyewe you’ve been busy. Do you ask them on the first date to take these HIV tests? You should have learnt a few lessons and changed tact by the third man. No need to confine yourself to the life of a miserable spinster over your own stupidity. There is a rule known as ‘the on-not-in rule’ that some women I know observe. It goes: always practice safe sex, spit rather than swallow and let him spray on you rather than inside of you. You sound like you believe in love at first sight. You should expand your vision and believe in at first..... It happens. Most married couples around had sex within the first week after meeting each other. The bonus of tapping into each other with the one you're going out with is that you'll know firsthand whether or not you two are sexually compatible. Dating is just another form of prostitution; except it is legal and you don't always get what you pay for.

CATHERINE WANGUI, 24,

I have yet to find a man I can trust. Most men pretend to be good but end up wasting your time and abandon you when you become pregnant. I will only get married when I become financially independent.

STIFF RESPONSE:

Read the response to June Mutonye above coz it seems you two suffer from the same affliction despite the age difference.

MARY CHAURA, 23

Marriage is no guarantee of happiness. There are so many marriages breaking up and l am afraid that l might become another victim. In the meantime, I want to be able to make enough money.

STIFF RESPONSE:

To say the truth, you sound frank and a kinda nice lady. At your age, I say work hard and learn the ropes and you’ll probably get a good man to make you happy and spend your money.

DORCAS WANJIKU, 24

People should not get married before they are 30 years old and over. By then, the couple is more mature and can be able to resolve various problems that arise in marriage.

I do not wish to get married.

STIFF RESPONSE:

To prescribe the rules of marriage to all and sundry and round it off by saying that you do not wish to get married is just plain lame. Are you a feminist?

MARGARET CHESARO, 25

I do not want to be stigmatised. The society despises single women. I am still single because I have to settle down first and achieve my goals. I also believe I am still young but soon, I have to make my life complete.

STIFF RESPONSE:

Good, at least you sound sober. But don’t fear society and live the life you want, after all life is short and you only live once.

CECILIA MWENDE, 26

I am not the type to rush into marriage which might end up in separation. Marriage is the last thing on my mind. But it is a necessity now because as a way of reducing chances of contracting the HIV/Aids virus.

STIFF RESPONSE:

Another sober lady. I hope you get a good and faithful man to make you happy.

TERESIA WAIRIMU, 26

I first want to enjoy my life before I commit my life to somebody who will not guarantee total freedom to do as I want, when l want! I am not in a hurry to settle down.

STIFF RESPONSE:

You should be, even if it means settling down solo.

FLORA NAITORE, 22

I am not married because I am still very young. I am also discouraged by what I see round me, relationships are taken for granted. My worst fear is to get married and then be left alone to raise children.

STIFF RESPONSE:

No need to get paranoid (esp at your tender age) about getting divorced and left alone to raise children. Kenyan courts have become empowered and transparent and we even have a family court division headed by Martha Koome formerly the feminist-in-chief at FIDA and Martha Karua’s sidekick. You’ll squeeze the poor guy dry, trust me.

ELIZABETH SUMBA

I am single because I haven’t met anybody who I find suitable and worth my lifelong commitment. Most of the men are just jokers. I would like to get married but even if l remain single, it will not bother me.

STIFF RESPONSE:

‘…if l remain single, it will not bother me.’ And yet here you are commenting on it so it bothers you. No wonder you haven’t revealed your age, or Nation held it back in public interest, coz your picture in the print edition makes you look like you are past 35 and you’ve lost appeal and probably all your vitality and virility too.

CONSOLATA RIMBERIA, 26

Marriage is not something to just rush into haphazardly. The reason am not married is because I like to take my time to get to know somebody. I want to be sure that there are no surprises for me.

STIFF RESPONSE:

Read a lot of Mills and Boon back in the day, didn’t you? Love, as we all know is overrated. I read on wikipedia that a molecule known as the Nerve Growth Factor is at its highest levels when two people fall in love; and it lasts about a year. It's a chemical reaction and it's all in our heads. If it's meant to be, love will happen regardless of whether you get to know each other before having sex and getting married. Having sex before wasting time getting to know each other will only bring you closer together - literally if not emotionally - in a more relaxed state, and therefore you're more likely to be yourselves, know each other and get married without any pretence involved.

PS: Next, we’ll tackle these men who responded to Nation survey one-by-one. Happy 2007 once again, and don’t stay single!

Escape report and Holidays chatter

2006-12-13T15:25:00.000+03:00

Today I am in the mood for a little sharing and caring. And since many nice people, you included, have so cordially welcomed me into their lives, some even revealing their deepest, darkest secrets, I think it's time I give back to a community that's already given me so much. So with that said, let’s get started with a short brief on my escape from Nairobi.

As most of you must surely expect, as soon as I landed in Nakuru, I skipped directly to my travelling commandment number 3: “Thou shalt proceed immediately to a quiet part of town, find the bar where you’re most likely to contract nasal rashes, and drink yourself into a stupor”. I sure did, but Jomo Kenyatta’s favourite town disappointed me yet again, this time because it got all rainy and the pub I was in had a leaking roof and the drainage in the area was flooded and I hade to wade to my car as I left, driving off into the dark of the night in soaked shoes. What a sight.

The next day, I learned from my mistakes and checked into to the town a little earlier, grabbing a quick bite of Ethiopian food at some fancy restaurant before moving to a somewhat seedy pub within the town. Taidy’s. It is the kind of pub that hurts your feelings when you see it in the light of day, when you suddenly realize that some of the tiles on the floor are missing. You know some of the people there – most of them would ask you to buy them a drink as soon as look at you, and you are gladly bound to ask them first as soon as they say hi, to just return the favour and keep them at bay. Smoke hangs thick in the air and low to the ground. It gets into everything you own, and stays with you like a hangover. It's was not a classy place. One of my friends always remarks that Nakuru has superb bars, but girls it lacks. Get the picture? It is really not much of a club, but I cared less and I’ve had a good time in worse places anyway.

As the night progressed, being all too familiar with my lack of mental aggregation in a drunk en state I disposed all my valuables in my car since I had once lost my favourite phone in a bar run or a cop (citizens on patrol) night in Nairobi as some would call it . This was several hours before I disposed my Ethiopian meal in the main bar, then subsequently myself in that order. For all my ludicrous efforts, I earned a personal lecture a few days later from one of the managers, explaining how that sort of inebriated behaviour was inappropriate and would not be tolerated. What cheek!

Moving on, it’s that time of the year again. Can't you just smell it in the air? You can't escape it. It's coming extremely soon to a place near you, and nothing we do or say can prevent its thunderous march of consumeristic and pleasurable destruction. Christmas is coming! That time of year when the road accident rate in Kenya goes way over the top, and the money in my wallet and bank account drops to arid levels. This is the time of year that everyone loses their minds. Completely lost in an appalling maze of shoppers and overwhelmed by a barrage of marketing gibberish, one can barely pause and realize that this neither the season nor time to be jolly.

I've always been a big fan of Christmas, despite learning about Santa Claus at the age of sixteen (am from shaggz remember?), way after many Western kids realized he didn't exist at age 8 or so… and I always stare in awe when I see red and green together in harmony either online or on TV. However, with the passage of time, I do not look forward to Christmas as much anymore, and I guess it is because I can get all the little pleasures that used to come with Christmas at will any time of year, or I am just plain old fashioned and grown up now.

But aside from all the nonsense and grief that this time of year brings to our doors and households, the one thing about this Christmas that just may very well be worthwhile is the Kwani Litfest. This according to the official Kwani Litfest blog, is ‘a celebration of the word and the world of literature opens in Nairobi in December.....ends in Lamu with a Sort-of-Half-Moon reading fest on a fire-lit beach’. I personally cannot see a better way to spice up your Christmas activities, other than drinking and ogling at the neighbourhood idlers.

You may also want to take a trip to one of Nairobi’s shopping malls during Christmas and witness the Consumer wastage there. You’ll probably be seeking to replenish your stock of holiday supplies: booze, crisps and popcorn for the couch lovers and other laconic items I am not at will to mention now. I can bet a whole month’s pay that as you walk in to the mall, you’ll be appalled at the sight of urban consumer wastage in progress.

As you drive in your blood pressure will probably rise to frightening echelons as you jostle for a parking space amongst the countless overweight and lightly dressed suburbanite Nairobi women, and overbearing and impatient looking men: driving at a snail's pace because the mall is all they have left in their sad and pathetic lives; all of you vying for that prized shopping mall possession: the closed parking spot nearest to the food court. Finally, after like 20 minutes of driving in circles you get a parking space.

The crowds in the malls are appallingly shameless. Half naked bimbos, both male and female, all line up ‘to have a good time’. Your senses will probably shatter. Everywhere you turn, wave upon wave of shoppers will flood your vision. Nakumatts, Uchumis, and Chandaranas all packed to the brim with hungry shoppers. You will just wish you could get out of that place in a hurry, but the thought of looking for parking elsewhere puts you off. Believe it or not, this is the true meaning of Christmas: Wallowing in an alcohol-fuelled depression, falling asleep on the couch and elbowing through rabid shoppers to get what you want.

Merry Christmas and er... have fun!

Escape from Nairobi

2006-11-23T15:32:00.000+03:00

It will probably be nearly two o'clock in the morning when I go to sleep tonight, with a hope of waking up at six-thirty when the car-alarms set off by the night-watchmen washing the resident’s cars and the sun wake me up; that will just be over four hours of sleep, probably just enough time for two dreams: probably one about how broke I am and that usual one where I rampage through a Nakumatt with a Caterpillar earthmover. And then I shall awake, bolt-upright in bed surrounded by the vagaries of my wasted urban life.

I will pack my car and strike out westward, leaving the rainy, wet and misty Nairobi behind me like a restaurant with an unpaid tab - except I'll be back! The stench of consumer activity in Nairobi is just too much. It'll probably tone down when the City Council have fixed the drainage, the rains stop and the kids get past their first few weeks of madness and caffeine and settle into the boring December vacation and Christmas routine. The city is already crowded without displacing thousands of hawkers and the various workers, televisions are choked with commercials for shit we don't need, and the beer gets warm before it reaches me from the main bar at Hooters these days. It's time to head to the Rift Valley for a week of fresh air.

I'm sick of waiting for a dream to come true; the time is nigh to get real, grab my tools and build something. Farm. Most of the Asians I know sleep the afternoons away, and I envy them - I haven't had a nap since I joined primary school. There is too much to do. There are too many websites to visit, too much work to be done in the office. I think Kenya is a country full of people who sleep too much and those who haven't slept in years. The middle ground is balanced on the tip of a politician’s walking stick, and just when I get comfortable the alarm clock goes off and poof! I run screaming (literally!) back into another day at work. So it's time to build and farm; it's time to tear my eyes away from my inbox and take an active role once again.

I will leave Nairobi tomorrow.

I will drive through the fog in Limuru into the valleys, gorges and tiny mountains of the Rift Valley. I will look longingly into those hills that call my name when the temperature is high, drive along those long strings of isolated villages where the names haven't changed since the we arrived from the Congo/Sudan many years ago... I will drive straight through the morning, stop for fuel, water, yoghurt and maybe a fruit at Delamere’s, probably in the middle of a falling rain. The odometer will probably get busy after that. I just hope that my car heater and air conditioner do not go out. I hope I do not fall asleep at the wheel on the highway and actually travel backwards through time - the numbers and letters on signs along the road get smaller, there will be more water in the bottle, more packets of strawberry yoghurt in the back seat then wake up thinking I had hallucinated the whole trip!

The road sometimes plays tricks on me.

Maybe there will be no strawberry yoghurt; or maybe they will be poisoned. Many hours on a bad road do strange things to your mind, strange, vile things that are downright funny with someone else…but I will be alone listening to music with no heater and a dead air conditioner, a few hundred kilometres behind me and more packets of strawberry yoghurt than I remembered were there an hour earlier. It will be disconcerting.

But the heavy commercial tractor trailers speeding westbound for Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the DRC with huge containers loaded with cargo while the drivers battle with the brakes and steering wheels amidst the high speed and animal fear will be real.

The police stake out the highways a lot nowadays, especially after Naivasha. I will be just a speeding driver, not a criminal mastermind on the run, but after Naivasha I am sure there will be a roadblock every fifty kilometres with another squad with white helmets and a speed gun. They have Nissan X-Trails that can weave through the traffic and hills like sharks if you try to run, and they can hunt down the fastest and the meanest drivers on the road.

After a long day in Nakuru, the night will set in and wear on and the other drivers will fall asleep, most in their beds and some in cars. Truckers will keep on the left lanes lanes, their glowing headlamps moving like galaxies through the darkness, rushing for a rest and a night of fun in Salgaa. The universe is expanding (regardless of Pluto’s demotion), they say, expanding into something, into itself, always moving like the planets and moons and people are sick of empty space, like it's searching for something more; searching, like those of us still awake in those hundred-kilometre stretches between towns on the bumpy highways that unravel towards Western Kenya. The other drivers will move with the same hurried desperation that I will feel in my numb urban soul, that reckless lust to run full speed through the night and cut dramatic figures across the lanes on a one-way ride to nowhere.

I had not planned this trip, no direction in life for many people right now anyway, feeling guided along a crooked path with big potholes cutting through the Mau forest, wandering across the Njoro plains, somewhere, anywhere but back; any direction, so long as it's into the dark. Maybe I'll find something out there; maybe I'll build something that'll last through the next night and the next hundred years, a dream come to life in my hands as real as my steering wheel.

Time will tell. I will be 400 kilometres in, and there will be a few hundred more before I return to Nairobi. I'll find something. Somewhere. And have one helluvan adventure on the way.

etc etc

2006-11-19T16:07:00.000+03:00

Not much to report to you fine readers.

The last few weeks have been the type of dull, unmemorable ones that don’t even merit any drinking or special mention. So slow and worthless were they that one of the top news headlines this week was to do with an election battle many months to come and some childish assassination claims.

Please Lord, make something interesting happen – and I don’t mean another invasion in Mathare or Kuresoi. Tribal clashes are just pathetic, what with people being used to perpetuate other people’s ideologies?

In other news, I have been generally groped up the backside by tons of work these past few weeks, despite being a slow time. Why is that as Christmas fast approaches, someone is busy giving me a lot to do?

Before I forget, I went to the bank for the first time in a long time; after all I slowed down on the drinking and reduced my ATM limit. I was shocked to see a security camera peering at the customers queuing for cash like some sort of stupid watchie. Was someone on the other end watching us? Many people have probably been busted by the Ass-Scratch Police, the Counter Nose-Picking Squad. There was also a possibility that there was a crack unit in the backrooms in charge of Inappropriate Groping for those who can perform one-man orgies as they line up for cash.

I thought these security cameras were meant to help the police track down robbers and not to entertain some bleary eyed official in the bank’s backrooms? Or they intend to raise the alarm on suspicious looking characters like me as we may have concealed some weapons? There is no way having a camera glaring at the queue would help, have one at the counters or somewhere where they can have a good glimpse of the robbers, not almost 50 customers at one go.

Open Letter to the £@%”$ Who Hit My Car

2006-10-30T21:25:00.000+03:00

And then ran off like a scared wet chicken.

Dear Sir or Madam,

I hope you get to read this letter and it finds you in the greatest of health, because when I find you, your slow, torturous descent into the depths of physical and mental suffering at my hands will be all the more dramatic.

By scoogling my car in the parking, and leaving the scene and the office area without so much as an unsigned note apologizing for your apparent and disgusting cowardice, you have accomplished what years of reading and drafting all these reports, drinking out of smoky and dreary pubs, and kissing my bosses’ asses had yet to succeed at: My last flicker of faith in the inherent goodness of personkind (not mankind, coz you could be a woman for all we know) has been extinguished. Congratulations.

You must be well aware that a man's car is his chariot, his freedom and his initial projection of the self to the world, and, for me, one of the few things aside from my family and this computer that is of any importance to me. You might as well have walked up to me on the street, a total stranger, kicked me square in the crotch and ran.

So, how does one properly return such a noble deed? I have a plan. It would be foolish and far too easy to simply sue your sorry ass or ask you to repair my car then exchange a few smiles and niceties then move on. No, in this case, Lady Justice will be satisfied with nothing less than the slow torturing and battering of your spirit and self esteem.

I shall work on you till you curse all the evil forces that collaborated to bring you into my life. Since you are apparently my colleague as our parking is reserved, I will hunt down your car, look for the corresponding scratch marks or fresh paint and all hell will break loose then. I shall spam your e-mail from my old computer turned schematic server, hack your IP and then slowly disable then crash your computer, all with simple clicks of a mouse. I shall create out of office agents to constantly respond to all e-mails on your behalf, along the lines of:

I will be out of the office for the next 2 weeks for medical reasons. When I return, please refer to me as 'Njeri' instead of 'Njoroge'.

You know the drill. I could even impersonate you and play a few games with that special someone, or sign you up on about a thousand or so newsletters from a cross section of websites.

You will hate your work, or the little bit you’ll get done over the next few weeks, and hate yourself, and dread coming to work everyday because of the small ‘accidents’ you’ll be involved in, starting with the conveniently placed banana peels to sweep you away or the pins (ouch!) or slime on your seat. Your car will receive a new coat of glue and splashed paint, and you'll get constant puctures as a bonus. Damn, come to think of it, I could even get you a free carton trailer with tins and beer bottles to rattle you home late one evening!

The beauty of it is that you will not know why. I will probably forget it after a week, and then someone will mention your name and poof!!! I shall start all over again. Perhaps for good measure, I should look up the civil servants who deemed you fit for Kenyan roads and play a few games with them on the phone and top it up with a few crybaby letters from you as well.

As for your sorry self, please take good care of yourself, as your imminent suffering will be made all the more pleasurable for me if you're the pinnacle of good health when I begin. Indemnifying me is almost too good for you jackass.

Vengefully yours,

StackOfStiffys

My measly sins

2006-10-26T13:29:00.000+03:00

My Deadly Sins

Lust: 80%

Envy: 40%

Greed: 20%

Pride: 20%

Wrath: 20%

Sloth: 20%

Gluttony: 0%

Chance I'll Go to Hell: 34%

You'll die from overexertion. *wink*

How Sinful Are You?

Real Madrid 2, Barcelona 0

2006-10-23T00:04:00.000+03:00

Now how's that? Seems my good old vintage Real is ebbing back into shape, if tonight's display in Barcelona's demolition in the 'El Clasico' is anything to go by.

Today was a big day for soccer, and some TV channels, sponsors and other interested parties probably made millions. The top 2 club soccer matches in terms of TV audience and competitive edge are, yeah, you guessed right: Real Madrid vs. Barcelona and Manchester United vs. Liverpool. They were both played today. I think Arsenal has over the years become more of Man U's rival more than Liverpool, even Chelsea, but this is what the pundits say.

The third, just in case you wanna know, is River Plate vs. Boca Juniors all the way down in Argentina. You may argue that the English duels attract more crowds, but you just underestimate the size of the Latino fan base. The English league makes more money coz of adept channeling strategies, but La Liga is watched by more.

It is even only in recent years that there have been more talented players accepting to play for clubs in in England.

October holiday galore

2006-10-22T17:52:00.003+03:00

At the rate at which we are going, you’d probably be forgiven if you thought it is January 2007. After all, we have had quite a number of holidays so far this October, and there are more on the way.

Hope you had a happy Kenyatta Day, and are now enjoying the fruits of independence dear readers. What a glorious day of remembrance it was, perched on my favourite seat in the pub, debating the virtues and vices of a Narc administration gone wrong, of a country’s hopes and dreams bungled over the years. Sometimes, I sit here and wonder where those 43 years have gone, watching this fledgling nation’s fortunes wane over the years and we are now international beggars of repute. Who would have thought, all those years ago, that a promising band of new leaders would have started this sorry state of affairs and misrule? How much more ironic could it be, that a batch of mau mau "rebels" who fought for independence, could have probably charted a better path for Kenya had they not been pushed aside by the educated politicians we call the ‘founding fathers’? Oops, I almost forgot, Kenyatta day is a holiday for patriots who appreciate their independence heroes, and as we all know, patriots never question the motives nor the decisions of those in charge.

So with a bottle of Tusker on my fist, fresh from Ruaraka the home of the top taxpayers in Kenya: Exactly from whom are we celebrating this independence? I mean, as a Kenyan in this dark day and age, I've found myself anything but independent. Sure, I sit in the safe boundaries of this country, getting paid real Kenyan money to offer my services to an employer who appreciates my input, but Kenyan politicians have recently demonstrated to all and sundry that they are out of touch with the reality in the country. Fuck, I drove an imported (and used) Japanese vehicle to the bar, fuelled by Saudi Arabian oil, and I'm wearing a used American shirt sewn together by young Third World Asian hands. My used shoes were stitched together in the Philippines, the glass I'm drinking from was wrought in France, and the musicians prancing across the television screen have American names. Believe it or not, the very streets you walk on in Nairobi have been designed abroad for colossal amounts of money. Could it be possible, in all this vanity and self-worship, that a day dedicated to an event that took place many years ago is just a sham? Perhaps in the same manner that a King depends upon the taxes of his rulers to live his life of luxury, that we sit on this throne funded not by our own taxes but by the efforts of seemingly trivial loans from several foreign coffers? Consider this tonight; when you sit in front of your TV and watch the news (without Swaleh Mdoe to tickle your funny bone) to find out what Kibaki was up to, we depend upon:

The World Bank and the Interfering Mother Fuckers (IMF) for loans to fund our spending;
The Western world for our used clothing;
The Internet for cracked computer software;
Europe for our cell phones;
Japan and Germany for automotive engineering;
South Africa for eggs;
Pakistan for rice;
Tanzania for electricity poles;
The USA and the UK for approvals;
The Middle East for our petroleum (and those masochistic oil company cartels to boot);
Scandinavia for premium liquors; and
Uganda and Tanzania for bullshit political support and general jackassery.

Once upon a time, a mob of pissed-off patriots had had enough shit from their oppressors and packed up for the bush to fight for a better way. A new way. And a New Kenya. On this Kenyatta Day weekend, you should remember exactly what that New Kenya has become: a charade of political clowns and executive pimps, whoring your patriotic asses out for the fat shilling in the offshore bank account. The government tells you the lies, the media relays the lies, and you, the gullible Kenyan, lives the lies. The Narc dream, the vision, the role of our leaders to spur exponential economic growth and the elimination of poverty and tribalism is a vast illusion. No, Central province, the motorcade finally crossed River Chania, there was no Mumbi nor Gikuyu, and your President is a lying bastard. No, Western Kenya, there will probably never be a Luhya president. No Kalenjinland, William Ruto does not think about you even once, he just needs power to enrich himself, and he’ll never be president anyway. No, Maasailand, 'your' land will never be returned, so stop bitching and move on with life.

So I beg you, on this weekend commemorating the imprisonment and deaths of our independence heroes, to look up from your feet and the newspapers, and pay attention to what is actually happening. You're not celebrating independence from anything, not your past of letting Kenyans die of Malaria as drugs rotted away in Nairobi godowns and Ministers drove multimillion limousines, your legacy of igniting and ignoring tribal genocides as we approach elections, the reputation of your leaders for exploiting the voters. You're not celebrating your right to sniff pussy in K-Street, your ability masturbate in the sovereign abodes of your household and to own your own land. You're not celebrating your freedom from international oil pricing, the effect the Central Bank’s controls have had on the fate of our agricultural exports, or what the KRA is going to do to your economy. And you're certainly not celebrating what those mau mau fighters had in mind when they armed themselves and went into the bush to push out the mbeberu.

You're celebrating their ignorance.

Ignorance of what Kenya would become, ignorance of all those dead Kenyans across the Rift Valley, ignorance of where your tax money is going or what those MPs are doing or who's raping who as the police watched. Ignorance of exactly what that flag you squirm to attention when it is hoisted and lowered signifies.

And your own ignorance that right now, that in your own country, a Kenyan is dying from a curable disease, another child goes without an education and a homestead is burning.

An elected official probably lit the match. A highly paid appointed spokesperson briefed the gathered press. A police officer held you back from the side of the road. A cameraman was robbed of his film. An editor, a total stranger, warped the words you read. An unfamiliar face on the TV read them to you in that assuring voice, with Swaleh Mdoe chained and en route to a probable deportation. And you believed them.

You believed every word they told you.

So why don't you believe me?

Ponder this: The Asian community controls about 70% of the Kenyan economy, their vote does not count in elections (except in some wards in Westlands and Kisumu!) and yet yesterday they were celebrating Diwali, their new year and yet this was not a Public Holiday. Our Muslim brethren on the other hand, control a smaller portion of the economy, mainly at the coast and the vast nothingness that is the North Eastern Province, and when they break their fast, it is a Public Holiday (as shall be on Tuesday 24 October). Christians on the other hand, make up the masses, their politicians double up as their tribal chieftains and the richest people on the land (coincidence? Nah), their vote counts, they control the smallest portion of the economy, mainly through the chieftains and yet you and me engage in a lot of chest thumping over freeing the land from the colonialists, while the benefits are clearly ending up elsewhere!

The only entity of which you're operating independently is the truth.

Celebrate that, fellow brainwashed Kenyans.

The 24 sexiest Kenyans……

2006-10-03T19:31:00.000+03:00

I happened to overhear a discussion in a cybercafé over the weekend between two trendy, sublimal and urbane ladies who were chatting with some guy online. The gist of the conversation was to the effect that the October 2006 issue of True Love magazine carried photos of 24 sexy Kenyans, and wow wasn’t it great, at least they could now pursue Tom Mboya. Naturally, curiosity got the better of me and I got itchy. I could not even settle down anymore and had to shoot off an e-mail off to some lady to please bring her copy to the office on Monday! So yesterday I rushed to the office and read it all, and to say the least I felt let down. All my excitement waned and I felt belittled to say the least.

The general dictionary definition of the word sexy is ‘arousing or tending to arouse sexual desire or interest’. Off the cuff, this term is generically concerned with sex, although there could be the meaning of being excitingly appealing like ‘a sexy new plasma TV’. However, I understand that this magazine is targeted at the ladies and this list appears to have created some murmurs judging by my colleagues here, mostly of approval although, as usual there are a few naysayers, yours truly included.

To the publishers of True Love: Nice crusade you've got going on in your latest issue. You know, I never say anything about someone until I've had the balls to say it: Now this listing probably creates additional revenue for you, but it also takes up my valuable time as I have to write messages like this, and your readers probably get ticked off over wasted money and effort, unless they live in the same hallway of yesteryear like you.

Here is my take on some individuals on the list, and I welcome your views as well. I have mentioned some of the 24 (not Jack Bauer’s 24, sorry to disappoint you) and proceed to give my take on the individual and you can correct me if I am wrong (please) or share all the juicy details you have stashed up s’where, or just tell me what a scoundrel I am!

Tedd Josiah: He who of the Blue Framez Cinema fame and brought Vipi to our visual tubes, and the same guy who awarded himself Kisima Awards when he was the organizer, is now one of the sexiest Kenyans around. Putting Tedd Josiah at the beginning of a list of sexy Kenyans is a symptom of the start of another useless listing. Reality shows us on a daily basis that schemes designed to fool Kenyans out of their hard earned cash are on the rise and will only increase, so am surprised that the publishers of True Love have resorted to this. This is not the serious work of an entertainment writer. Tedd Josiah may be one of Kenya’s most successful music producers (remember Audiovault, Sync Sound and now Blue Framez??) But I have my doubts whether he is one of the sexiest. I’ll let the ladies point me in the right direction, coz am probably headed in the opposite, well groomed he is, but is he sexy?

Emma Too: I know most of you are probably giving yourselves the thumbs up that at least she is here. Well, please check your calendar and you’ll notice that this is the year 2006, and she has been around for a lot longer than you believe. When she first appeared on the scene, she was one helluva looker alright, and downright sexay, but in 2006? Please. They’ve listed her as a Landscape Surveyor, and I must admit I do not know what profession that is, star counting? Recording cloud speeds? You tell me.

Waweru Njoroge: No comment. OK one line: Dear Waweru: Don’t feel proud mister, you are supposed to have a job, go to work, go home, spank your pet cat, then go to bed, not tell us you are self-employed and a consultant whilst you got sacked.

Misiko Andere: This is that chubby faced lady who presents Art Scene on KTN. Looking at her picture on True Love, I noticed that she has a tattoo of a dolphin on her …wait for this…left leg! On the shin to be exact. I know you are saying that being sexy is one thing, and being good looking is another, well I agree, but there is no way you are to be labelled sexy if you are ugly and chubby, unless you give everyone a demo. Nuff said.

Angela Angwenyi: This is probably her payoff for winning the Kenya Night series ( I hear she never got her cash prize), but they also tricked her to wear a black and red turban and she’ll look like India Arie. Big mistake.

Tom Mboya: Wipe of the smile from you face young man, and understand that in order to be relevant to all viewers, you need to be consistent with the pronunciation of English consonants. Financials are pronounced [/fɪˈnænʃəl, faɪ-/ Pronunciation Keyfi-nan-shuhls] and not [fee-nan-shuhls] man, and stop relaxing your hair; it has a bad effect on the otherwise superb studio lighting at prime time. One evening I watched you seated next to Sophie Ikenye and you seemed more petite than her!

Lorna Irungu: I have to ask you to forgive my language on this one, or you stop reading. In my 28 years on this earth I have never felt such true emotion being expressed in any form like the time there was a detailed discussion on some lurid pictures that were doing the rounds on the net. Some guys were very convinced it was her, and were like why did she go to some white guy's place if she had a good idea what men are about and what they like. She’s probably mastered the art of sleeping with her eyes open by now. She looks downright ugly and fat in the magazine, and although she still retains that killer smile that got many guys talking in the early 90s, she has no business being on a list of sexy people in 2006. Sure Lorna, we’ve all seen young ladies like you in Nairobi that got their way in everything but you are no longer good enough to get into anybody’s A-list, least of all bed, but it still seems you still think you got game.

Esther Arunga: That’s DJ CK’s newest teen &^%$£, and she sounds good and sexy on radio alright, but she looks a whole lot different, like something out of kids array of toys. In shaggz.

Ojay Hakim: That’s a fashion designer in Nairobi according to the caption. He looks too fatherly, and I guess this is a feeble attempt to appeal to elderly readers. Well, that’s all good, but for your information, elderly readers would probably want to see the likes of a fresh form four leaver with freshness all over him, not some measly moustachioed jackaroo being called sexy.

Debbie Asila: Now this is one I don’t understand. Here is a Beyonce wannabe, complete with a grumpy weave (that covers her forehead and has some braids at the back, yuck,) being masqueraded as sexy.

Regina Re: Now this is one woman who has a commanding presence, and I do not really know if she’s got sex appeal guys. I think she just has those magnetic effects on an audience that cannot necessarily be interpreted to be sexy. If she’s on this list, then Cathrine Kasavuli should be on it as well.

Others on the list are: Caroline Wainaina, John Alan Namu, Thaddeus Jude, Lillian Muli, Morris Odumbe, Doris Anjalo, Ian Ochuka, Florence Machio, Marcus, Michael Oyier, Nameless, Hussein Mohammed and Susan Kaittany.

Notable Absentees: DJ CK(!), Julie Gichuru Butt, Swaleh Mdoe, Leo Faya, and please add your own!

Some of the individuals named above deserve it, but my point here is that a publication risks a lot in engaging in rating how sexy Kenyans are. Rate the musicians, politicians, sportsmen and women and call it that, but saying Kenyans? No way. All the people we meet on the streets are Kenyans and sexy in their own way. I am sure you’ve all seen someone who’s sexy, and you still see them everyday, and they are not on that list.

Some of you bloggers and avid readers (who’ve waited for this lame post, sorry Unyc, Pekiro Princess, Quintessence for the disappointment, I’ll share my September travels shortly) are probably wondering what business I have reading a women’s magazine, but that is all good, sometimes junk gets to you in one way or another just like spam (I spammed those ladies conversation anyhow) . This post is not intended to ridicule or belittle anyone. Instead, it should be a timely reminder to the publishers on how lame they are and those on the list who, in my own personal opinion are not sexy and have no business being on the list, and accepted to be.

A new post coming up....

2006-10-02T08:43:00.000+03:00

Hey! After a two week hiatus I am working on a new posting that will probably knock you out... it is killing me as I draft it, God help me.

In the meantime, please boggle your mind with this article, then check out this clock and sign off by saluting my cellular service provider for this notable achievement and then wait for the the post.

Cupping Java House Coffee. Enter Woman.

2006-09-14T12:53:00.000+03:00

I just love coffee. Plain old fashioned coffee made from ground coffee beans with no milk and a dash of sugar.

One day soon after I started working, I decided to try Java House coffee. A number of friends were full of the coffee on offer there. This was after having to imbibe in weak coffee in campus, made from boiling water passed through a sieve with coffee beans. I will not bore you to death with remarks on the taste here, but I took it for a number of years, and I actually still miss it.

This being a big day for me, I brushed my teeth and rinsed my mouth overly, no need to pass ill judgement on celebrated coffee, whilst you actually had toothpaste in your taste buds. I took a shower, used no shower gel, dried myself and oiled myself with no-perfumed Vaseline and sauntered out of the house without wearing any cologne, feeling light spirited and headed for the Java House on Mama Ngina Street. I used to stay deep inside Ruaraka, and had to walk about two kilometres to Thika Road to catch a mathree to town, so I set-off on my grand mission.

The day had bloomed like a lofty flowery plant from Mount Kenya, petals of hours torn free by the wind to seek cool water and shadow within which they might be forgotten. As I walked along the asphalt track, memories of days gone by shimmered with the slight heat peppered by a cool breeze, blurring details of the long walk and picturesque view of the GSU Headquarters into an impressionistic canvas upon which everything else was distorted when one looked too closely.

The black pieces of garbage disposal bags stuck on growth along the banks of Ruai River, the balustrade of the narrow bridge bound together by bolts and nuts, arrhythmic strands of birds chirping along the way, a few Colobus monkeys jumped from one tree to another, as some tinier genres of monkeys streaked along the GSU headquarters wire fence, dancing rhythmically as they did so. I passed the gate of the mysterious building, rumoured to be an NSIS officers’ mess, but was soon after opened as Hotel La Mada. I could imagine myself drinking weak coffee in campus, as I savoured the taste, eyes closed, just for a few moment of caffeine bliss to sink in, then back to books. The limbo between voluminous Finance books and coffee drinks shifted with the sun, sometimes noticed, sometimes eternal, as the rays pieced through the leaves of the trees outside my room in the hall of residence. The difference was inconsequential.

It was approaching 4 PM, and I got to the highway, had an uneventful ride to the city centre in the boom twaff No. 44 superide mathree and alighted at Tom Mboya street, near the post office. I had the urge to stroll into one of the noisy exhibitions and buy a few pirated movies look at some clothes on offer, but the urge to taste the famed coffee urged me on. I walked to Mama Ngina street, and paused briefly at the entrance to Java House. Will I be thrown out? Is there a dress code? Is it expensive? The thoughts flew through my mind, and I decided to just take the risk and get in, not go home as I had done before when I developed cold feet outside a club, I was too shy to walk in there.

Choosing the coffee was one difficult task once the friendly lady thrust the menu at my chubby scared face. She must have known instantly that it was my first time, and I was lucky that this was a coffee shop, not a pub or a brothel. I told her I wanted plain coffee, and she suggested the house coffee, without milk. “Any accompaniments?” she asked, and I declined, as I wanted to cup this coffee without prejudice and pass judgement fairly. As I waited for the coffee to be brought, I looked around and some people were reading newspapers, some were chatting while some were in serious discussion, probably a business deal and someone was reading a book.

I noticed the woman once my coffee was brought and I looked up to acknowledge the waiter. Buxom. Large eyes. More flesh than she needed. And the sort of smile that derailed conversations, wrecking trains of thought. Starting of on my coffee, I gave her no more thought than she deserved. Her eyes sought my own. Fragments of the road I walked on half an hour ago were coming back, and they had grown sharp. Faces without names. Backs gleaming. Ecstatic grimaces. Dark liquid waiting in my cup. Focus recedes. My mind starts drifting.

Flash and blindness. Evening sets in. Shadows have probably stopped moving outside. Stitching the night closed with the thread of explanation, two silhouettes mapping the path from pillowcase to comforter, the eternity separating me from solace.

Strange girl arises, her face discerning a contentment of sorts, reminds one of a faded moon in the night of memory. I hear the rabbit scream of the cappuccino machine. Cream mist hides the alchemist as I turn over to look at the counter. Probably.

Throat relaxed, smooth Kisii soapstone, a statue leaning on sharp elbows, claws extended. Passionate kisses, sweaty bodies in the dark of the night. Frosted windows and the lights keep flashing, spectrum keeping time with a slowing pulse. Vodka expands upon contact, forming a pool beside the bed. She has no such luck. Leaning over the side, she can see everything. Hair covered in beaded Maasai headdress, dreadlocks emerge from the side like dark twines of wild climbers in Mau forest. Iris the color of old bruises. Reaching down toward herself, a finger breaks the surface. The image ripples, distorts before she has the chance to recognize the face.

"Excuse me."

I looked away from the past to the present, chasing the voice. The woman was standing beside my table, tucking her golden necklace back into her inviting bosom. I look back at my untouched coffee, then back at her. I feel sixteen again. Her smile was hesitant, hopeful.

Like that of a nurse with a patient regaining consciousness.

"I'm sorry, but I'm supposed to be meeting somebody here, somebody I haven't met before. Are you James?"

Seconds fractured and broke apart, the smallest pieces of which I took to consider my response.

Could I be another man? For an hour? For a night?

Possibilities unfurled, paths carved by words and careful sentences.

I could start over here, pick up where another man never had the opportunity to leave off. I could pretend I knew things I had yet to learn. Middle names. Nairobi suburbs and neighbourhoods. Small countryside towns and the ages of siblings. I could pretend I did not know the things I have learned, speaking without fear of seduction or offence, acting a part unrehearsed. Long walks in Uhuru Park. Courtship. Gold and diamonds. Bells. Children.

Peering back into her eyes, I saw a hope independent of my face. The dream of a romantic, seeking the first star, dropping small leaves as she stripped bare a sapling on some dusty countryside path.

No matter how the story might be written, the ending is always the same.

"No," I replied with a wicked thought otherwise. Orgasms and despondency flitted across my vision, translucent spots after glimpsing bright light. "Should he fail to meet your appointment, however, I should be flattered to assume his place.", I added. The light behind her gaze dimmed somewhat, falling with the corners of her mouth.

"That's okay," she murmured. "Thanks." And away she went, returning to the chair from which she had risen.

I stared at the table, gulped the contents of my cup, my coffee cupping mission all but forgotten. The taste of the coffee was just plain, slouched in regret, lost opportunities. “I shall come back another day to cup the Java House Coffee….” I told myself. Occasional glances went unnoticed. Waitresses went about their business, serving coffee, eggs, Mexican beans and more. Gathering my courage in resignation, I asked for my bill, I saw the woman sitting by the window, watching. Waiting. I slipped the waitress a hundred shilling note and left.

This is romance, I thought as I walked out the door, the unwrapped gift of a promise, empty in expectant hands.

An unremarkable lady alone, hoping otherwise. This is the wound that always bleeds, the truth we look away from, stumbling about in the dark room. Why is it we only identify knives by touch?

Suppressing every instinct, I did not turn back.

An encounter with a House of Yahweh adherent

2006-09-12T18:56:00.000+03:00

The world has just ended. Or it is just about to.

This is not another of those sour predictions of the world ending that you hear about every now and then. No. This is just a short review of the recent happenings in the Rift Valley. Nakuru to be precise. Why would somebody predict that the world will end on 12 September 2006? That there will be a nuclear war and that is not the end. This is the post Yahweh.com:

“You need to put this date on your bathroom mirror. You also need to make preparations for the dark days ahead, which will affect every person on earth.... ”

I got to do a bit of an online background check after I read in the paper and in the news that there is a sect, very busy in Njoro, Mauche and Molo areas in Nakuru asking its members to sell their property and prepare for end times.

End times my God.

Members of the sect are right now holed up in some chamber in Njoro, praying away and waiting for the apocalypse to strike. Some have probably shat on their pants; some are grovelling and gnawing in fear, waiting for the final obliteration of our planet. From my frequent online sojourns, the last time this earth was under any sort of obliteration threat was from an asteroid that was 250,000 kilometres away, and that from the same people who downgraded Pluto from planetary status. Never mind.

So why would a sect leader announce that end times are here and throw a region into a panic?

Like Albert Einstein said, science without religion is lame, but religion without science is blind. These religious types just bore me to the core. What would somebody run their mouths on other people’s bizness? So and so is not very nice, watch out. Doing this is wrong in God’s eyes, it is wrong for you to desire what is not yours, oh, please donate and help build God’s ministry we need to grow this church bla bla bra (pun intended).

There was this joke I once read and thought it was a sheer mimicry of religion and a silent neigh in the sunrise of Christianity, but it cracked my sick mind nevertheless. Some kids were apparently asked by their teacher what the stretchiest (is that an English word?) substance in the world was. To her utter amazement, one of the kids raised his hand and answered ‘human skin’. Now, ladies and gentlemen, you are probably as astounded as I am. What? Some of you are probably feeling pain or some sort of itchiness just because some kid said the stretchiest substance on earth is the human skin. “Why?” asked the teacher. “Because I read in the Bible that Jesus tied his ass to a tree and walked five kilometres to Jerusalem.” was the kid's answer. Whew!

Well, I took it that the kid was innocent in a dirty way, but still thought some sick minded guy wrote it just to poke fun at Christiaity. I am a Catholic myself, although I have not seen the inside of a Catholic since my high school chapel in March 1996, before I got suspended for a whole term and chased from the school like I was a rabid rodent. But that is a story for another time. Now, I want to recount one of my religious dig-ins in the past. I didn't understand church very much in my childhood, and I don't really understand it much now, not just church but pretty much religion in general but before anyone start trying to go overboard and blow some crap up around me because their religion said to, let it be known that I probably know two cents more than what anyone knows about religion and history, bows down to or who they are giving ten percent of their earnings to. I was raised Catholic and any time some Bible thumper asks, I say I'm Catholic but, I'm currently in a mild state of confusion when it comes to religion and I presently find myself in between religions, especially with all the negative energy that comes from all of the new churches mushrooming all over Kenya.

There was this time when I was busy with some farming assignment back home (I come from Molo by the way, so this sect has touched a raw nerve), and was looking for some guy to plough my land. As I waited for this guy and his tractor at the roadside in my one-muddy-run-down-street home town in shaggz, a former classmate from old days walked up to me and we started chatting. He told me he’d been okay and was travelling to Nairobi and was waiting for a lift. He asked me to keep him company near the stage with him as he shone his shoes and I obliged, and we walked to a shoe shiner’s stand and he sat down.

All went quiet and we realised we had interrupted some debate, so I asked these guys what was happening? Apparently some old man (let’s call him S) who repaired padlocks next to the shoe shiner had been taking them on, you guessed right, why the House of Yahweh was the church to be, and all other churches were nought in the name of Yahweh. There is no God, only Yahweh, and his son Jesus Christ! I told them to leave him alone; he’d probably taken some busaa that day on his way to work.

The old man belligerently asked me what church I belonged to, and I said I was a Catholic. One of the guys standing around chuckled, he probably sensed trouble. I asked the old man what church he belonged to. He responded that he was a Christian, which is rather like being asked where you live, and you respond Africa, and you are right here! So I decided to narrow it down. I figured I'd start with the largest branch, so I asked him if he was Catholic or Protestant.

That set off his short fuse right there, and he wiggled in his seat, that old and wiry old man. He scolded me stammeringly for using the label "Protestant" (in his words an unholy phrase uttered by the Pope to demean innocent people) and told me that Catholics worshiped of the Virgin Mary, not Jesus Christ or Yahweh. I tried to keep from smiling as I pointed out the giant crucifixes that adorn virtually every Catholic Church, as well as the image of Jesus Christ that hangs over most alters in said churches. And the references to God in the Bible and scriptures, sermons and other writings of the Catholic Church.

S enlightened me, informing me that they were all part of an elaborate cover up to turn people from the one true faith, and trick them into being thrown into the boiling lake of fire to burn for eternity. How about that? Here I was just trying to defend my church, despite all those child abuse accusations cropping up around the world when it turns out that we apparently have some kind of hellish fetish too. This communal barbeque would be achieved, S claimed, through worship of the false idol, the Virgin Mary.

Upon hearing those words, I felt as though I had been awakened from a sound slumber in the deepest darkness and suddenly thrust wide awake into shining bright light. Yes, I felt tired, annoyed, and I wanted to go back to bed, not even to wait for the ploughing guy and his tractor. I asked S why Jesus Christ would be so pissed off about us being nice to his mother. He muttered something about idolatry, and then went back to bashing Catholics. He explained to me how Catholics had written their own Bible which was based solely on lies. S taught me that the Catholics had used that false power gathered with their unholy Bible to scare people into obedience. Using this power, Catholics had been behind every atrocity and major war for the last thousand years. With a cry of cynic passion, S informed me that the Catholic Church was the sole cause of the Nazi holocaust.

I was a little confused by this statement. I suggested that maybe S was thinking of something else, surely not the Holocaust! S assured me he meant the Holocaust. According to him, the Catholic Church paid Hitler to begin the war, while they (the Catholic Church) secretly seized Jews and killed them. Now the reason I was confused here, is because there appeared to be a few holes in this story. It can be argued that in the past the Catholic Church may have been responsible for some of the anti-Semitism that built up before the 2^nd World War, but the actions of Catholics during the war itself seemed to be pretty reasonable. I told S that the Pope in power at the time maintained a stance of neutrality mostly to avoid military retaliation from Italy and Germany. Other high ranking members of the Catholic clergy did openly protest, however. It's also a well known fact that Catholics hid Jews during the holocaust period. Fortunately, S was able to denounce these apparent falsehoods. The Catholic Church got control of every single history book on the face of the planet, and rewrote them all.

At this point my head was starting to hurt (it being filled anew with words of divine truth and all) so I decided to go back to my original question. What religion did he belong to? S once again insisted that he was Christian. I pointed out that there were many different branches: Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Anglicans, and Jehovah's Witnesses, to name a few. S interrupted me with a hearty "Those stupid Lutherans". Apparently they worship the Virgin Mary, too. Calming down a little bit, S told me that since I was a Catholic, I was a liar, claiming I was defending the cruellest, most bloodthirsty, most sadistic cult on the face of the planet. I asked him what church he attended then, if he was a Christian. He responded that he was a member of the House of Yahweh sect, and did not attend any church though, they went to a shrine. I asked him where exactly it was; I was from around there and did not know where it was. He said that for now, they worshipped at an open field about five kilometres away, but that was for a short while, they will build a better shrine (he avoided the use of the word Church by the way) for Yahweh.

My friends’ shoes were done and they glittered like the back of a dung-beetle. Seeing no point in pushing further with that elderly lunatic and his sordid religious beliefs, I told him we were enlightened, and took our leave and went forth to spread the word.

Do you have a Nakumatt Smart Card?

2006-08-31T17:16:00.000+03:00

It sometimes gets very cold in Nairobi at around this time of year.

I mean it, the kind of bone slicing cold that jams your feelings so far up into your spine that at times it would be absolutely reasonable to believe that as a man, you have become the benefactor of a free gender reassignment procedure.

So, when one finds themselves on their own and on the outside of society at the spry age of nineteen, working as a tout in a dingy matatu can fairly beat out being the master of your own destiny, half frozen to death inside the mat, asking the passengers for their fare and haggling with them over change, constantly looking over your shoulder at the street ahead , expecting the cops to swoop on you, or incidentally looking out for other cars that ply the same route as your ‘squad’ lest they overtake you. You also have to look out for passengers on the wayside, and keep shouting ‘beba!’ whenever the driver slows down or hoots, to the irritation of some of the passengers.

That's right readers; I did my time in the matatu industry as a tout! Three long days, doting over passengers with young kids, ogling at some hot chicks (and I carried a number of them for free), to the disgust of the tall bearded driver who never brushed his teeth! I bribed almost all the policemen on the way, got arrested twice (to and fro!) in one day for giving out a 50 bob at a 2 sock police roadblock, and almost got slapped once (but got kicked instead after I ducked) by a policeman. I refused to wash the matatu, much to the chagrin of the driver who said that is the conductor’s job. We used to do a long haul, from Nakuru to Kisumu and we carried all sorts of stuff and different genres of people.

There were no Michuki rules then, as this was they year of our lord 1997 and the matatu was a 33-seater minibus and we once carried close to 70 (I lost count along the way). I fought with fellow touts at the various stops on the way over ‘tips’ for swinging us passengers, shouted at fuel pump attendants at times when we were in hurry (either fast approaching darkness or rain) and did some not so honourable things to the passengers. -- "just drop us here, tumefika, wewe unatupitisha!!! " – That time the dere is cruising downhill at 100 kph and someone wants to alight. If it was some young guy, you shout at him to walk back a kilometre to his stop, the elderly and respectable or some young ‘fly’ mamas, you give them 10 bob to catch a ride back and say sorry and then force a smile.

I hate to break it to you, but when your beloved Chirau Mwakwere and ole Kamwaro etc orders a crackdown on public service vehicles like the one that is currently on, I feel the pinch. I feel pain. After all I was part of this litany of sorts after high school when a friend of mine had the misfortune of having the driver and tout run away with his cash and the matatu keys, leaving the matatu stranded in Kisumu City at the mercy of vandals for two days. Luckily, the police towed it to Kondele on time to save the tyres and a few seats, but the windscreen and batteries were not so lucky. We had to find our way there and luckily, he got another driver after fixing the matatu but no ‘trustworthy’ tout as he put it. He blamed the previous tout for inciting the former dere to run away, and called him a ‘hothead’ (if that’s what he meant as he spoke in vernacular). So while awaiting the arrival of his cousin’s son to come and take charge I jumped aboard for an agonising three days on the cross. (RIP, Wahome ‘Whispers’ Mutahi)

Now that you are certainty wondering what the purpose of this long-winded digression is, which is to state I understand the importance of upselling, using skill and product knowledge to maximize the shilling amount of a consumers purchase. It seems that in the past few years, supermarkets and other retail outlets have turned to so called "rewards schemes", offering savings to those who are willing to burden their wallets with special propriety cards, in effect making them eligible for deals that are restricted like literacy in caste-era India, or political leadership in Kenya today. Now this practice has grown until it became an affliction, and the rear right pocket of every suburbanite male will soon (if not already) bulge like an inflated lymph node, and the purses of every female shall became a support to more petroleum-based material than a small middle eastern oil state, as a proof of a world in which all the doors in all the world are opened by way of a branded plastic card.

There are those among you who may be asking yourselves at this point something to the effect of, “but this has been going on for years, why has this issue become instantaneously so pertinent? Why at this time is StackOfStiffys’ hatred at its apex? Well, I'll tell you.

For my part in all this... I have fought. I have rebelled against this ridiculous commercial fad, I have been on the front line, breaking through enemy barrages of "but if you sign up now, you'll get a free gift when you have 200 points, or redeem each point for 2 shillings" and mortar rounds of "but you can earn 10% discount at AA, on your insurance premiums at Lion, a drink or meal at Kengeles or even accommodation at Safari Park", and in this chaos I never made it out of the damned Nakumatt store on time on my way to where I was going when I was just trying to get an energy drink and some water, or some groceries for the house. And I humbly admit my falterings, the pitched battle of the declined smart card when buying tyres and rims the other day, missed opportunity to earn thousands of points {that could be converted to school fees (read drinking money)} when I was buying furniture the other day, this computer desk included. I am not a perfect man, but I am a man of conviction, and I fought as hard and long as I could, and am still fighting.

The other day, I went to Tamasha for drink and some good tunes with a few friends after being away for close to a whole year and had to part with a cool 2 sock, while they got in free. Why? I did not have a membership card like them, and the hefty bouncer would have none of my pleading for free entrance. The same happened to me at Kengeles Lavington on one of those c.o.p. (citizens on patrol, euphemism for an all night out where you tour bars from Dagoretti corner to Thika Road and round of at Jam Rescue in Eastlands on your way back home, (I did 12 bars once, with 2 or 3 drinks at each)} nights.

But what, what among all things became the straw that broke the proverbial rhino's back? Dear readers, I would not lead you astray, nor bear to you false witness; and so, believe me when I speak these words: Yesterday, as I went to Nakumatt Ngong road to buy a heater to warm the house in this colds season, and as I walked into the cool and air-conditioned ‘superstore’ , crawling over the assortment of goods on display to ask for a heater, the kind lady who happened to be the store or floor attendant kindly asked me to follow her and said "Don't worry about it, I'll show you where it is" And I turned and followed with a small forgotten feeling of compassion for mankind creeping back into the creases of my wrinkled fat face, and started climbing the stairs, and then it happened: the lady had began speaking again, this time in a musical voice and her words floated toward my ears melting the air as they came, reached me, and began the explosive chemical reaction in my problematic brain…

"By the way sir, do you have our Smart Card?"

What could I do... for air... for the most abundant resource in our world alongside water, which all the water bottlers have so commercialized and poisoned long ago…they would defile even our breathing essence... all for 2 shillings in exchange for a point or ten percent off your next purchase at a member outlet like Safari Park Hotel (who sleeps there anyway?).

I don't know now if this is the beginning or the end of this, I only know the right thing to do.

Burn them.

Burn them all.

Burn all the Nakumatt smart cards you have. All the Uchumi R&Rs, all the Tamasha membership cards, Sohos VIP cards (these shall be painful I bet!), Kengeles bonus-you-pay-less-when-you-drink-more cards, you name it. For these loyalty, membership and reward schemes are just ploys to make us buy goods at inflated prices.

And if we are lucky (hope am not being blasphemous in the eyes of the religious types amongst the readers) and ascend to the holy place called Heaven, we will stand at the pearly gates, covered in the black ash of the Smart or otherwise Cards we shall have burned, and we will look upon the grand visage of St. Peter and he will look down onto us and as our gazes lock, he will nod, and we will produce the last charred plastic idol, and as it crumbles into nothingness, his left hand will find a shoulder, while his right hand waves open the gates with a motion so slight, not a molecule of compressed air will be displaced.

Sleazy attack on Capital FM breakfast show

2006-08-29T09:08:00.000+03:00

A bunch guys on an idle banter on a blog think they have a say on the quality of Kenyan breakfast shows, some of which they do not even listen to? See: this and this one also and tell them what you all think. I have told them what I think of them and my 2 cents worth.......!

Like I told them, I feel sorry for Seanice and her capital in the morning crew. A handful of guys doing a good job earning their bread within all legal means yet they still have to deal with the unpleasantries of people who don’t like their show and yet they don’t even listen? It seems so simple: if you don’t like it don’t listen, be smart. Capital FM has been around long enough for some of us to say it’s not a passing fad. Seanice and Leo shouldn’t bother trying to explain themselves to people who just don’t get it (nor listen!). Maybe Capital FM isn’t for everybody, but it’s for me.

Drunk driving, Kenyan MPs, and our laws....

2006-07-06T19:09:00.000+03:00

The problem with having sex with a cow is that you have to have to jump down from your stool to run around the front to give it a kiss.

I came across this line the other day and I naturally laughed my head off. However, I pondered it and I guessed our MPs right here in Kenya could do just that!

Look at it this way, those guys earn sleazy amount to idle and beat the pig in the Chamber in National Assembly! National affairs are reduced to idle matters by our petulant legislators right here in Nairobi.

With all the problems the country is facing and the troublesome things happening around the world, Israel raping Lebanon as the US claps it hands in glee and refers to it as 'shit', George W Bush expressing his profanities and the German Chancellor, Ken Lay faking his own death and people still not accepting Jesus into their hearts, we are close to facing another bleaky future at the hands of the Kenya goverment.

I'm an easy going kind of guy and I care less about the majority of things, situations and people around me. The only thing I care about is my family, friends, making a few guys laugh occasionally and alcohol.

Yeah, that's right, I said it, alcohol.

People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim - Ann Landers.

Which takes me to my point, drunk driving.

A horrible, deadly criminal action of which I am guilty as charged. You see, I am incredibly lucky, and have survived some amazing predicaments, not the least of which was circumcision in the deep of the Mau Forest on a rainy night, more than a couple vicious fights, and who knows how many incurable diseases. I have a job to be envied, a kind patient and loving woman, and a resilient mother.

What's my point? Instead of enacting laws to weed out social wimps like me and outlaw drink driving, our legislators fall asleep in parliament! We do not even have a road to take us to the Rift Valley in time nor in comfort anymore. But because these crazy numskull douches feel that they know what's best for the rest of us, they've decided to approve bills that will not only pretty much send shivers down everyones spines at the mention oth word 'sex' but also another to deny us our retirement savings until we are wheezing incoherently.

I'm sure Osama is in his cave, chasing a squirrel, thinking how well his money is being laundered at Charterhouse Bank because of all the naive people who run the GoK. I have put my alcohol in check but what about others? And the roads budget? And the perennial drought? But what do they do? The run around politicking and massaging their egos all day with nothing to show for it.

This is the greatest country in the world and I wouldn't want to live any other place but what these geezers are trying to do to us as an entire population, as Kenyans, as free thinking human beings, while crazy militia are in the Middle East and Somalia living in the sand without enough armor on their Uzi's is just Crazy Crap!

I ask you to log on mzalendo.com and shame these guys away!