How times have changed !!

My daughter's friend flew out of the country recently to begin her university education. This is a girl who has been friends with my daughter since their primary school days and though their respective paths had parted when they went to different high schools, they have remained fast friends over the years. She was accompanied by her mother on her trip in order to assist in admission formalities.

She was going to one of the universities in the UK and when I remarked to my daughter that she was lucky to be an integral part of the digital and information age where the world today is truly a global village given that you can connect with and contact someone virtually anywhere in the world with a computer or a mobile phone, it got me reminiscing about my own experiences flying off to far off lands to study in the university in the 1980's.

Those were the days when local university admission (at the University of Nairobi-UON) was a hit or miss affair since it was based on the number of available university places in a given year and therefore on the pass mark attained by that many number of people. This meant that in some years a mean grade of B- was adequate to get you into the hallowed precincts of the university while in others you were not guaranteed to get admission even with a mean grade approaching B+. This also meant that competition to get admission was fierce more so for the professional courses like engineering, medicine etc where without an A there were no guarantees of admission. Other universities-private or public-were practically non existent at the time.

Suffice is to say that many of us unlucky enough to attain the minimum pass mark for admission to UON found our way to foreign universities mainly in a country a scant 5 hours flying time from Jomo Kenyatta Airport in a famous sub-continent. I was lucky that my parents had some Indian friends in Nairobi and when it became evident that I was headed to India for my further studies, they established contact with them so that I could be met by their extended family members in Bombay. Neither of us having met the other and with no way of exchanging photos or correspondences then, it was decided that I would wear a suit with a white ribbon on the lapel in order to be identified by them. My parents could not accompany me to India to assist in my admission, so there I was at Sahar Airport in Bombay in a warm suit at 11.00 pm at night in tempratures of 34 degrees centigrade being met by total strangers after my first overseas flight whom I couldn't even call even if I wanted to!! Today you exchange pictures through email, Twitter, Facebook etc and the various other social media while you are still miles away and then contact the person meeting you at the airport on phone as you step out of the a plane if you are on international roaming.

Another incident that I recall vividly was the horrendous expense and unreliability of international calls. In my case I called home only once about a month after I landed in India for the whole time that I was there though others called their parents more frequently for their own reasons. You had to book the call through the international telephone operator often a good half an hour before you were sure that your folks would be at home and able to answer your call so that when the connection was made they would be at home and available to speak to you. 

You could barely hear or understand the person on the other end of the line, so bad was the connection, even if you raised you voice and there were ghostly noises and raised and lowered volumes as the call progressed, often cutting off altogether, and you could only hope that your plea for money had been heard and not lost in the garbled world of the nascent international communication space then. Often these calls were reverse or collect calls meaning that the person you were calling picked up the expensive tab of receiving that phone call. The mobile phone changed all that 10 years later with instant contact on a person to person basis.

The telegram was then the quickest means of communication but there was an unwritten rule that telegrams were only sent or received in cases of an extreme emergency involving a financial crisis, a fatality or something akin to that in its seriousness. Ordinary humdrum day to day issues were never conveyed on telegram lest the recipient of the missive misunderstood it to represent a tragedy and keeled over dead with a heart attack even before reading the same. Obviously the fax (now almost obsolete) and email were things we never dreamed would be invented to make our lives and communication easier a scant 10 years or so later.

Another bone of contention was foreign exchange approvals and international money transfer services. I can only guess at the agony my father had to go through to get my quarterly foreign exchange approval so that he could then apply for the bankers draft in Indian Rupees that he then sent to me by registered post which often took upto 10 days to be delivered to my doorstep. After the deposit to my bank account, it often took another 14 days to clear through the Indian banking system. Today from the comfort of your living room you are able to debit your account and send funds instantly through internet banking to virtually anywhere in the world in minutes or thorough Western Union and Moneygram and a host of other money transfer agents and services something unheard of during my days as a university student.

So there you have it, my daughter will be able to communicate to her friend daily if she so wishes on Facebook, Twitter and What's up. For more personal written messages she may send her an email or for the juiciest gossip a phone call will cost her 10 bob for 3 minutes, about the cost of two bananas. Her father can send her money directly to her bank account, or pay up her credit card bill so that she can access funds at the ATM, or even send her a birthday gift of some cash through Western Union.

With the human ingenuity at work and the absolute embracing of the modern technologies that we see today, it is obvious that times have changed.

I wonder what it will be like in another 30 years??

What kind of role models are we!!

In my formative days in post-independence Kenya I distinctly remember lessons on how to cross a road. It went something like ‘look right, look left, look right again and if clear cross’. Another was to always walk on the path alongside the road and not on the road and another still was to respect motorized traffic whether while on foot, riding a bicycle or whatever. Any deviation from any of these expected rules witnessed by your parents or any other responsible adult was met with harsh words or a clout across your head. I can’t recall if it was one of the lessons in urban schools or if one of the traffic policemen came in to give this sage advice to the young impressionable minds of the day….but it did happen!!

I am just wondering if these lessons are still instilled in the young Kenyans children of today and just what sort of role models we are as adults for our children. The reason that I ask this is because I am disturbed and perturbed by the number of adults (mainly men) walking and cycling on the roads competing for space with motorized vehicles doing their best to get run over even where the pedestrian paths exist and are free of pedestrian traffic. This phenomenon (or is it foolishness) is mainly seen in the urban and peri-urban areas of Kenya’s towns and cities.

What gets into the minds of our men folk to risk life and limb to appear invincible and macho walking on the road while courting death or permanent disability often talking on their phones, listening to thier phone radios and many times walking two or three abreast? Do they think that a vehicle has a mind of its own and will automatically swerve or stop if it ‘sees’ a human being in front of it? Don’t they realize that a brush with a car doing 30 kilometers per hour will almost certainly result in injury if not death? Don’t they also know that the impact of a vehicle doing 40 km/h destroys a human body far more gruesomely then a bullet from a gun? Almost certainly they do not because those who have been victims of road accidents are either six feet under or maimed and paralyzed by their ordeal and unable to narrate their story to those dicing with death.

I am sure that one of the leading causes of vehicular accidents involving pedestrians is as a result of this foolishness probably borne out of ignorance or a sense that vehicle owners and drivers owe some form of compensation to those that do not drive. Well they certainly owe no one an apology if they drive and this kind of risqué behavior is irresponsible and foolish and should stop!! Drivers more often then not are a mix of careless, drunk, half blind, catatonic, upset, deranged, stressed and harrased people who probably devote 50% of their time driving and the other 50% dealing with other personal issues and many a time may not be able to avoid a pedestrian walking on the road shoulder resulting in an accident.

I am even more disturbed to see that school children in full uniform are now cavorting with death and disaster by walking carelessly and haphazardly on our roads probably in the mistaken belief that society owes them a favor by slowing down whenever they are spotted walking home from school and vice versa. I wonder who taught them that this is how it is done, or is it the ‘monkey see, monkey do’ syndrome that they have inherited from their fathers?

The stupidity gene is no longer recessive and seems to have become a very aggressive one judging from the antics we see on our roads today. I believe many motorists have been forced to apply full emergency brakes when a child dashes across the road as victims of this backward behavior. Worse still is the instinct to blame the driver of the vehicle for the resulting accident and any injuries or fatalities sometimes leading to a severe beating or mobbing of the driver of the vehicle by the congregating mob.

I would beseech our menfolk, if for nothing else, to stop this risky behavior so as to safeguard the lives of our children. Learn to use the pedestrian crossing where available or use the more than ample walking lanes and cycling lanes on the newer roads which have been designed with pedestrians and cyclists in mind.

Disability is not Inability

Sometimes you are shocked out of your comfort zone by something you always took for granted. Something so usual as to be almost unusual!!

You marvel at how able men and women are able to produce all kinds of exhilarating performances, hurl a javelin, a discus or a shot put so far seemingly without effort or concort their bodies and extremities to produce world record breaking dives, gymnastic floor exercises, balance beam performances, asymetrical bars and ring tumble displays of raw talent. Run so long and so fast almost at the limit of human endurance and still manage an interview and a smile when your whole body is fighting to recover and gulping air greedily in response to that super human effort to cross the finishing line a hair's breadth before your opponent. You also wonder at those chaps who seemingly without thinking are able to time and again aim and hit the bulls eye in the archery contest or shatter the clay pigeons in the air pistol and air rifle competitions.

This is the human being at his peak performance, the world beater, the Olympic and world champion forever remembered for the remarkable feats of accomplishments and national heroes in their own countries.

But what about the not so able bodied, those confined to wheel chairs, the unsighted and those who have lost their hearing, or those with varying degrees of disabilities more often then not too deformed and grotesque to the eye. Those who have lost a limb or an arm and who are partially or fully paralysed due to one dibilitating illness or another or through the cruel hand of fate of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, those that we automatically feel sorry for and whisper a prayer to oneself  "there goes me but for the mercy of God".

Having kept awake late at night to watch the Paralympics currently going on in London, I have come to appreciate and respect the men and women who I describe here in above because unlike their able bodied relatives some of their achievements and accomplishments go beyond what you would think was humanly possible given their physical and sometimes mental disabilities.

Men and women on wheelchairs suddenly transformed into agile swimmers once in the water some without even the benefit of arms to propel themselves as they swim seemingly pushed along by sheer determination alone, or the long jumpers who gauge their jumps by a series of calls and noises made by their guides and which calls for pin drop silence in the stadium so that they can hear their guides give the necessary commands, or the blind swimmers whose guides have to pat their heads with a long paddle so that they do not smash their heads against the finishing rails while doing the free style, or the armless back stroke swimmers who have to grip a towel with their teeth at the start so as not to drown, or the archer gripping and aiming his bow with his feet and mouth and with uneering accuracy at the target, or the blind runners and sprinters who have to have an accompanying guide shadowing their every move lest they stumble and hurt themselves on the hard surface of the tartan track........I could go on and on at the level a human being without the benefit of the arms, legs and mental faculties that those of us who are able bodied take for granted can go through to to show that surely disability is not inability.

I celebrate their sheer determination and applaud each one of them unequivocally whenever they climb upon the rostrum to receive their medals because their challenges and stories are what many would consider insurmountable but which they have taken in their stride and decided to live as normal a life as they can, breaking records and pushing themselves to their limits like their able bodied counterparts.