Of death and tragedies!

I am a realist or so I believe a pragmatist that takes a practical approach to issues. I am the kind who when confronted with a problem will first look for a solution to resolve it and then immediately thereafter establish the cause and then seek solutions to resolve the initial problem in the long term.

I do not prescribe to the blame game theory, where instead of seeking a solution one tends to look for the cause and then heap blame on that hapless person or process all the while forgetting that there was a solution that needs to be sought to resolve a problem.  

That said, my response to an illness or tragedy may be considered pedestrian at best. I am a firm believer that if one is unwell, then they need to rest so that they recuperate fully so this business of continually visiting people in hospital and spending inordinately long periods of time there is not for me. A quick 5 minute visit to wish you well every third day is probably all you will get. After all, with a career to take care of, bills to pay and issues to resolve life must go on.

In the event of a death, my routine will be interrupted by an occasional deviation to the venue of the evening prayers and to give my financial contribution to the bereaved family. While respect for the dead is important, in Kenya I fear that death is given more prominence than it actually deserves more so if that person was a senior ranking government functionary in society.

The entire provincial administration, police force, business community and other interest groups will  mobilise towards arranging a befitting send off for the deceased to the detriment of everything else. The press will mobilise teams of reporters, cameramen, soundmen and technicians to cover the demise of the departed from all angles including dredging up long forgotten footage and pictures of the deceased. Acres of space in newspapers on radio and in the TV will be bought for dedicated messages of condolence to the deceased.

Politicians, not averse to a photo opportunity, will troop to the home of the deceased to offer their condolences to the family of the departed. Issues of national importance will be abandoned and sidelined in Parliament so that messages of condolences can be made on the floor of the house. What a waste of the Hansard! Close friends and other assorted hangers on will drop everything they are doing and give their time  to the family including joining the funeral committees tasked with making the burial arrangments their personal lives and priorities can 'go jump in the lake' in the process.

Millions of shillings will be spent on improving the road networks where the person will be laid to rest, on catering, transport, programmes, announcements, editorials and the casket  while school activities, government  functions and business issues will be relegated to the periphery on the day of the funeral, thousands of man hours lost that would have been utilised in nation building!

Death in Kenya is often talked about in whispers, in undertones and with exaggerated respect. A dead person takes on a larger than life persona even if he was a general pain in the neck to all his family and friends. The deceased are dressed up in a new outfit and a new pair of shoes even if this is the first time they are being adorned in this finery. No one wants to believe that they will die so they forget to make their wishes known while alive and do not write their wills or talk about how they will be interred when they are no more.

That is why for me, I choose to look east like Wangari Maathai, Joshua Okuthe and others and go the way of cremation as has been practised by Hindu and Muslim adherents for millenia preferably within 48 hours of my death if not sooner. It is all in my will!! This is the modern way to go clean, cheap and with little or no fanfare and befits everyone whether the high and mighty or the simplest of souls at the grass root. I tell my wife that the only debate after my demise is about who will press the switch that condemns my remains to ashes to be preserved in an urn !

This translates into less manhours and national productivity being wasted since the period between death and internment is relatively short and huge resources are not necessary. The Kenyan economy will therefore prosper accordingly.

In parting, I would want to imagine that this is why some of the most succesful economies in Asia thrive because their focus is on growing their economies as quickly as possible and not being sidelined by ceremonies that are a drain on the economy! 

This monster called tribalism must be smote!

The derogatory and stereotypical slurs by some people in Kenya really ticks me off particularly when they refer to people of other tribes in a condecending manner.

Where a certain community comes from that were once famously told to 'lie low like envelopes' by one Bill Ntimama, it is a known fact that  terms such as "mumera" & "nyangori" will be used to denote people from the lakeside and around Kisumu City while "murumbwa" refers to any other tribe in Kenya but in the recent past seems to have  most commonly been used to refer to the Kalenjin community.

Theologists will opine that in the course of history, different racial groups have been given all kinds of names as they are being discussed by others including 'spics' and 'hispanics' to denote the latin speaking, 'niggers' to refer to the black americans, 'honky' or 'jungu' to denote a white person etc.

In Kenya some of these tags go way overboard with silly, demeaning and foolish utterances often referring to certain bits of the male anatomy as being intact and therefore these persons not being worthy of ruling the rest of the Kenyans!!

A recent incident comes to mind where a well known ex-politician wondered aloud how a foreigner who had come to live and work in Kenya could come so far marry a Luo. In his opinion, this person needed to have his head examined since there were 41 other tribes in Kenya tha he could have chosen a bride from!!

If these are the kinds of leaders and the kind of leadership that they will offer then I want nothing to do with them for the simple reason that this is tribalism being practised and condoned at the highest levels in this country. This same chap that I refer to has loads of money earned not through the sweat of his brow but from the high level political patronage he enjoyed as a powerful figure in the Moi government and now even wants to stand as a governor in his area.

If these are the things that he will preach to his people, then I shudder to think what kind of example he will be to our kids!!

My ruined breakfast!!

My office is located in one of those locations where after 7.00 am traffic builds up very quickly because of many side roads onto the main road, non-existent bus stops where matatus and buses inevitably stop creating a traffic jam and where all shapes and sizes of cars, trucks, buses and matatus pass meaning that by 7.05 am there is a major gridlock building up that often clears after 9.00 am.

I was at the office bright and early one morning at 6.45 am  parked outside my office and as usual was reading one of the dailies. Sometimes its a book, sometimes catching up on my emails but usually its reading one of the dailies but if after a long sleepless night catching forty winks in the car. This particular morning, I decided that I needed an early breakfast snack so I got into the coffee shop/supermarket/fast food outlet in the same building as my work place.

This was a routine that I had done many times as I would order a cup of coffee and a snack, eat at the adjacent food court, outside if it was warm and inside if cold. Many times in view of the early morning, the supplies of cakes, pastries, pies etc are just being loaded into the display case by the service attendants and this is so routine that I hardly notice what they are doing.

For some reason that I cannot explain I was unsure of the girl that was on duty that morning. She was not new to me, but she had a furtiveness about her that was not usual. I tend to notice behaviors of people and if I have interacted with you I will realise if something is not quite the same. My breakfast was served and I began munching away happily on my snack only for something to make me look up towards the display cases where the snacks were being arranged.........and my breakfast was ruined!!

This girl believe you me was busy placing the snacks in the display case with her BARE hands!! That's right, her bare hands, no glove, no tweezers (or whatever those long handled things are called), no serviette..............nothing but fingers to snack!! I could not believe my eyes!

Did this place that prides itself on being a high end fast food joint serving all kinds of foods and snacks to hungry Kenyans from 7.00am in the morning to late at night not have a policy on food handling?? I lost my appetite there and then in disgust. It is not that the girl was dirty, she could have scrubbed her hands clean with dettol a few minutes before she started her handling of the snacks for all I cared, but did she have to touch my food with her bear hands? Had she handled my very appetising pie similarly before serving it to me?

Seeing one of the other staff of the place who looked suitably managerial (which I later learnt was not the case) I called her and explained that my breakfast had been ruined and explained what I had seen. As is won't to happen she was suitably apologetic and told me that action would be taken against the individual. There and then I swore never to eat another snack in that place ever again and true to my word I have not.

I was so upset that when I got to the office a few minutes later, I sent an email to the company that runs the restaurant complaining about this carelessness, but I have neither received a response nor an acknowledgement concerning this incident. I also no longer see that infamous girl though for all I know she may have been transferred to another outlet!!

This incident reminds me of the often repeated stories of how you would lose your appetite if your ever ventured into any of the kitchens of our high end hotels and restaurants because of the way the food is handled in there and it occurred to me that often what you see will indeed kill you..........or your appetite.

So stay secure in the ignorance that what you don't see won't hurt you if you see my point particularly in culinary matters!! As for me and my custom to this chain of fast food stores.....we have parted ways!!

Lost and Found!!

I tend to be a bit of an intrepid traveller and not averse to a spot of adventure whenever I travel alone. I have been known to take a turning at a whim secure in the knowledge that my sense of direction is quite good and that with virtual maps and compasses at my finger tips thanks to Google Maps, Bing Maps and their brother Maplandia that even if I got lost on one of my adventures I would be able to find my way back to whence I commenced my journey.

Recently, it only took one wrong right turn and I almost disappeared into the mists of the Abedare Mountains. This was Mucharage on the slopes of this mountain range that stretches for 160 kilometers in Central Kenya a place of immense beauty, with verdant tea plantations, neat homesteads and incredible natural vistas as far as the eye can see. It started off as most such adventures do, rather innocently with a desire to pass through Othaya town the birthplace of the current president of Kenya Mwai Kibaki.

I was on the way back to Nairobi from an official engagement and decided to use the Nyeri-Othaya-Kiriaini-Kangema-Muranga route to connect with Thika Road where the dual carriage ways starts at Kenol. For those who may not have used this route from Nyeri, this is a spectacular route through lower Nyeri County and upper Muranga County where the fast flowing rivers whose origins are in Mount Kenya and the Abedares have cut deep valleys over thousands of years meaning that the road winds and darts in and out of tight corners, sheer drops, hair pin bends and steep inclines. In the early mornings the high peaks and valleys are shrouded in a thick mist increasing the driving challanges along this well maintained road all of 65 kilometers from Nyeri to Muranga.

Having used this route as a route of choice several times in the past since it has less traffic.....infact no traffic when compared with the main Nyeri-Nairobi highway.....I was looking forward to the challenges and tough drive and breathtaking beauty that it affords. I have passed on the road through Othaya many times but have never driven into the town which is surprisingly busy and clean and so decided why not, I may even get to see the president's rural residence. So there I was taking a route that passed outside Othaya stadium where a good crowd was watching a soccer match, past various shops and businesses and into the tea farms and kitchen gardens that dot rural Kenya. It was just a few kilometers past Othaya that I happened onto what must have been the president's rural home, behind an impressive stone wall covered in bouganvillea and therefore obscuring any view of the massive home that I assumed stood in there.......what an anti-climax!

Just past the president's rural home, you get to the Rurugiti/Mucharage Road junction and you are supposed to turn left to get back to the road linking Nyeri and Muranga but I instead turned right thinking that I was on the road to Muranga already. After about 5 minutes I realised that nothing on this road looked familiar, since it was not marked and was wider than the one that I was familiar with and in the distance I could see the great expanse of part of the Abedare mountain range and it was getting closer with every passing minute, onwards I ploughed past a market centre, several schools, a sign post to a tea factory onwards yet until the road took a steep incline of almost 35 degrees and the forest kept getting closer and closer until I saw it..........the fence that surrounds the Abedare forest thus reducing the human wildlife conflict that  had plagued the area.

So the fence is not a myth but a reality, I saw it with my own eyes. The road continued on into the forest but wise counsel took over, sanity prevailed and I stopped and reversed the car to go back the way that I had come back to civilisation but not before drinking in the vista of God's kingdom below me, peaceful in the afternoon sunlight a cool breeze filtering into the car through the open windows and me lapping it all up unsure whether I was safe up here king of the mountain and with no one to share this superb view with!!

I wondered whether the locals appreciated this vista, from way up here, seperated from heaven by a light cloud cover, I wondered if KWS has any accomodation facilities here because I must surely go back, if for nothing else to wallow in the sheer exhilaration of that view surrounded by mountains, stream and forests. The road appears to have been recently completed to bitumen standards, is in excellent shape and is a fun drive. I ma glad I got lost that day because I found the perfect retreat and the perfect view from God's own command post!