The wonders of Christmas

So its that time of the year again, when all sense and sensibility and caution is thrown to the wind. When all decency, decorum and diplomacy is thrown out of the window and is replaced with carousing, bingeing and uncontrolled consumption all because 2,012 years ago a baby called Jesus was born in a manger in Bethlehem. 

I will not pretend that I am well versed in the biblical story of the virgin birth for I am what one may call a believing but not a practicing Christian one of those who prefers to nurse a stubborn hangover on a Sunday morning borne out of an irresponsible and probably intentional late night out then go to church to cleanse my sins of the week. I do believe however in a supreme and all powerful being looking out for me and I do say a prayer and call for divine intervention every now and then!

However Christmas Day is a must go church day for me, if on no other day of the year, borne out of many years of indoctrination from god fearing parents who drummed it in us that while going to church on Sunday was not optional, on Christmas Day it was compulsory............if that oxymoron makes sense!!

Let me explain myself. In a Catholic family back in the day, the doctrine from the church was that good Catholic boys and girls went through the cycle of baptism, holy communion and confession while still in their formative years. This involved a continuous cycle of church attendance including some Saturdays for catechism and all Sundays to attend mass. The fear of going to hell in the hereafter was enough motivation then to ensure a flawless 100% record of attending mass every Sunday. It was expected that you would be so indoctrinated by all these important milestones in the Catholic faith that you would forever be sucked into the cycle of Sunday church attendance without fail until your dying day. 

What this meant to my parents is that so long as you lived in their house, you had to go to church every Sunday morning even if you had got home in the wee hours of the morning as so many teenagers past the age of 18 years were wont to do. So there you were at mass on Sunday morning, bleary eyed from lack of sleep no doubt reeking of the last few hurriedly consumed drinks to the discomfort of the rest of the congregation and with a bongo band playing an uneven and unsolicited concerto in your head and all the while trying to stay focused on the goings on in church. 

Need I say more! The first opportunity that I got to avoid going to church every Sunday morning could not present itself soon enough and the minute I moved out of my parents home was the time that I decided to have a choice in whether I attended mass every Sunday or not a decision that leaned towards rebellion and the risk of eternal damnation and that flew in the face of all that had been drummed into me in my days of compulsory Sunday mass attendance.

And that is why wonders never cease because, Christmas Day church attendance is a must for me so that I seek forgiveness for my many sins and transgressions of the past year and be at peace with my creator. The wonders of Christmas never cease to amaze because mine is probably a story told and retold many times across the world of those who make it a point of going to church on Christmas Day if on no other day of the year!!

Traffic jam wonders

I got caught up in one of those crazy Nairobi traffic jams yesterday evening. The ones that you hear others talking about, sympathize and walk away not really comprehending what they are on about. For crying out loud, this should not have happened on a public holiday.....on Monday 12th December 2011 in the evening but it did!

It was on the new Thika Road at about 6.15 pm on our way home accompanied by my daughter. Knowing that it was a public holiday and certain that Kenyans were either enroute home from wherever, or going to wherever I thought it would be a good idea to use this road which means that at moderate speed we would be home in 10 minutes flat!! After all the road is all of 6 lanes wide on the out bound traffic from the city and the only place we would possibly encounter a minor traffic jam was just after the Pangani roundabout, or what is left of it.

The problem with the Thika Road approach at the Pangani roundabout area is that you are blind till you crest the brow of the hill and then you are inside madness or heaven depending on what side of the road the local road hogs woke up on because, like it or not, that is the point of no return on this road.

Cresting the point of no return revealed an ugly, depressing picture of vehicular traffic standing still, 8 lanes across from the extreme left, across the road divide and through to the other inside left lane. Looking up towards the Muthaiga roundabout area across the valley was chock-a-block with cars, trucks, buses and off course the ubiquitous matatu all competing for crawling space one painful inch by painful inch at a time. The funny thing was that the outbound vehicles across the valley were on what I thought was the diversion for inbound traffic from Thika into the city and there was no traffic flowing in the opposite direction towards the city!!

Having flown though the point of no return and with few options available other than keeping left on the side road to Mobil Plaza then on to Limuru Road, Runda and home or go with the flow and join the crush of cars on the wrong side of the road.......decisions, decisions and in that moment of indecision I was swallowed up in a crush of moving vehicles and deposited on the side of the road where inbound traffic was required to inch rightfully and painfully against a crush of mental basket case drivers gung ho on getting home one way or the other!!

To cut a long story short, it was an hour and a half of agonizing vehicular acrobatics, where no one yielded or gave an inch, where every inch was hard fought for with other equally determined drivers in the various vehicles. It was also the theater of the absurd where matatu touts were the self appointed traffic marshalls, determined to outdo the opposing matatus from the oncoming traffic so as to see their respective matatus crawl along a few more feet even at the risk of blocking all other traffic. One tout even pointed out a gap that should be left open to oncoming vehicles for us to fill so as to give his driver the opportunity to advance 15 feet more.

At one point a decidedly foolhardy, possibly suicidal matatu driver performed a stunt I though extremely risky driving over an iron sheet of some type over a deep chasm put there by the road crew with the iron sheet protesting and groaning as if under siege by the sheer weight of the matatu which thankfully managed to overcome the obstacle with the usual bravado of these matatu drivers and touts, perhaps a story to regale his pals later over a bottle of beer!!

The sheer stupidity of the traffic jam was as a result of one of Kenya's idiotic exports to the literary world overlapping. Overlapping is the trick whereby one extremely bright driver, usually of the matatu tribe of drivers decides that he is in more of a hurry than anyone else, brakes away from the following pack of drivers and forms his own lane where free from the shackles of a legitimate traffic jam streaks out in front of the rest of the traffic but is miraculously able to rejoin the queue of frustrated drivers 20 cars ahead against the face of oncoming traffic. However, the 20 following drivers too timid to be chairmen of such foolish behavior now find it perfectly acceptable to play 'follow the leader' but now find it impossible to get back into their own queues because the drivers in their correct lane will hear none of it so as they sit wallowing in a pool of their own stupidity they now cause other equally desperate and clueless drivers behind them to resort to similar tricks thereby slowing the pace of oncoming traffic by reducing the gap available to them until eventually the king of idiots seeing the last space available to him against the face of oncoming traffic rushes in to fill it and inevitably the worst happens, a gridlock of gargantuan proportions develops with the same scenario being replicated on the other side of the traffic jam by the relatives, brothers and sisters of the morons who started the whole 'overlapping' business on this side of the traffic jam. Meanwhile the initial perpetrator is long gone probably unaware of his contribution to the death of civilized behavior on our Kenya roads!!

If we would only stick to our side of the road all of us would get to our destinations in a better frame of mind!!

Rest in peace and wonder no more!!

I recently lost my father-in-law who succumbed to cancer which he struggled with for 10 long years losing a kidney to this scourge in 2001, a lung in 2010 and finally his life in November 2011.

This man, my father-in-law, was a stickler for orderliness and timekeeping. His dress sense was impeccable from his dress shoes, his farm shoes - often name brand sneakers - his suits, ties etc. He was after all a retired military man bearing his retired status like a medal on his chest, never tiring of reminding anyone that cared to listen to him that he was Retired Major 'so and so'. 

He was well informed, articulate, charming, hardworking, fair and honest.........a true man of honor. He lived a full life serving his country for 35 years and having the privilege of training in the USA, Pakistan & India as well as doing time in a peace keeping mission in North Africa.

Time to him was very important and he would berate anyone without fear or favor that was tardy and I will eternally be grateful to him for instilling in me an already highly attuned sense of time. His influence on his children, my wife included, also followed him to his grave with all processes as orderly as a military parade from the polished coffin, to the time keeping and lack of politicians whom he could not tolerate. After all if he were to arise from the dead his first words would be to criticize what he saw as shoddy arrangements.

He passed on with his affairs all in order as we came to learn later on with all details of his various properties, the locations of the title deeds and log books, the status of his tenants including those who had paid up and those in arrears, the whereabouts of his will and his various insurance policies. All the properties and bank accounts owned were in the joint names of him and my mother in law.

In his last few months on this earth, he was very cranky and obviously in plenty of pain and had lost several kilos as a result of the cancer and the associated radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatments. He walked all hunched and bent over like an old man while he was only 67 years old and supported himself with a cane which he detested greatly. From the fully upright proud man that I had known over the course of 20 odd years to this hunched up figure was a real revelation that cancer can level even the staunchest and strongest of personalities. 

It pains me that though he is now free from pain he will not see the results of the elections in 2012 because though he hated politicians for the lies that they told, he followed politics astutely and would be well prepared for any debate on matters political with insightful wisdom, razor sharp wit and dry humor. He is past wondering now and in a place free from pain and suffering. 

May the good Lord rest his soul in eternal peace!

I wonder - car or bicycle!!

You have it on authority that there are those who consider Japanese cars a waste of time and probably equate them to bicycles...............and this is how it all happened!!


A funny thing happened to me & my wife recently that reminded me about the insensitivity of the human being when we were invited for a wedding planning meeting of a sister to a friend.


The sister is a Kenyan living and working in the diaspora and was back in the country to finalize and solemnize her wedding to her beau. The meeting was at the food court of an upmarket mall in Nairobi and was slated to commence from 6.00 pm but as usual by the time all those invited had appeared, sat down and ordered either a drink or a meal it was approaching 6.45 pm. Other family members and friends many from the diaspora were also in attendance having arrived a few days before the meeting/wedding and had been busy and involved in planning and the running around characteristic of arranging a wedding in Kenya. The mother to the groom as well as the groom were also present.


The chairman commenced the meeting with..........you guessed it............. a word of prayer and then got into the meat of the matter at hand. The usual wedding issues revolving around the church, the clothes, the reception venue, the maids of honor, the hairdressing, presiding pastor, wedding rehearsal, flowers, rings etc, etc were swiftly dispensed with and duties suitably allocated and then insensitivity knocked on the door innocently and innocuously and was ushered in!!


The issue of the available cars to make the entourage for the bridal party was one of the agenda items and when the party who had invited us was asked about the availability of cars, she quickly went into a spiel of names of friends who had volunteered their cars all of which turned out to be 4 wheel drive European models.


Now, I consider myself driving a fairly decent car that I have had for the last two months which is in fairly decent shape and is a 4 wheel drive albeit of a Japanese model so imagine me for a moment sitting there hearing all these names of people who were not even present at the meeting all the while assuming that I would be called upon to volunteer my car...........and then BLAM, the issue of cars is over, kaput, finished...............and not a glance in my direction!!


To say that I was flabbagasted would be to put it mildly because it felt like a low blow somewhere around the V of my thighs, a soft, squishy bit of male anatomy usually not mentioned out loud in polite company. "How dare she not expect me to assist with my vehicle" I thought to myself, then it hit me even harder that she did not consider my car worthy of purveying the bottoms of a bridal party.


To consider someone's pride and joy 4 wheel drive car as not a car worthy of carrying a bridal party is surely the height of insensitivity. I might as well have been riding a bicycle since it would have probably elicited some comment or the other.

Musings of a wonderer!!

I knew that I liked to express myself in writing several years ago. Whenever, I thought that something didn't sit well with me, I quickly got onto my computer and typed away, sometimes for a couple of hours, sometimes for a couple of minutes and then I would feel the tranquility of spilling the beans wash over me and a sense of peace prevailing.

But, no one read my pieces because I hid them away in my 'C': drive read and appreciated only by myself. Then the inevitable happened and we started an online magazine with my colleagues at work (where I am a pencil pusher in the financial services industry) targeting the staff members of the organisation and my creative juices were piqued for I could now write opinion pieces, reviews, fables and stories collected from deep within the recesses of my medulae on company time, on company pay and get away with it!!

Often times I would find myself wide awake at night thinking up interesting anecdotes, theories, snippets the usual flotsam and jetsam of ideas flowing through my brain unaided, unassisted and in a randomness that begged, nay, pleaded for a semblance of orderliness in my thoughts.

The creative juices flowed with wanton abandon and I quickly found that I had a following among my colleagues who looked forward to reading my pieces when the online magazine was due.

In an organisation where 75% of the staff members are in generation 'X' and 'Y' and where baby boomers like myself and a few seniors that occupy the corner offices are in the significant minority, stories of days gone by were sought after like the baseball 'collectible' cards so treasured in North America.

I like to think (pat on the back) that some even printed out these articles and hold them dear to them hoping to one day regale their children and grandchildren with them. Sometimes the source of history may be the most unlikely in years to come.

So that is my introduction and I hope to say more and reveal more as I continue to wonder allowed!!