Where is this College of Idiocy located?

I am no psychologist but I have come to the rather cynical conclusion that matatu drivers and conductors in Kenya enrol, study and pass with flying colors from the same College of Idiocy and Infamy with a PHD in General Driving Indiscipline. It is very few who fail this course miserably but still manage to be employed as matatu drivers and conductors despite their unfailing good behavior displaying such alien traits in the industry that were not taught in college as the art of being well dressed, good road courtesy, general politeness, being well-spoken pays dividends and customer centricity leading them to forever being taunted by their more “educated” professional colleagues.

In this College of Idiocy & Infamy, they are taught how to generally behave as repulsively as possible and include subjects In GAB (generally annoying behavior) such as overtaking anywhere 101(brow of a hill/continuous yellow line/ corners etc), effective obstruction tactics, 1000 reasons why you should not bother with indicators and turn signals, rude gesturing perfection, the art of conning the vehicle owner, how NOT to maintain a vehicle, the art of blame shifting, ‘matusi’ 1-2-3, why body odor is a requirement of the job, how to run from the long arm of the law, bribery tactics, the dynamics of showing disinterest even if in the wrong, the arm dangle and what it means, being a road hog, bullying and blackmailing passengers, lying unashamedly and grasping money with three fingers.

It also includes advanced courses in total lane indiscipline, anywhere is a stage rules, how to overlap successfully as you annoy the most people at once, the scary rev to show you are in a hurry to leave, flashing headlights to oncoming traffic to show them who is boss even if you are in their lane, disabling speed governors, dealing with slow fare paying passengers, holding onto change as long as possible in the hope that it shall be forgotten, the ultimate gestures while driving at 100km/h to indicate trouble ahead and avoiding potholes is your right and to hell with everyone else.

More recently it has come to light that they are also undergoing night classes in consorting with criminal carjackers, how to bully (and if necessary beat up) a policeman, graffiti painting overnight, train evasion tactics and how to run away if things go wrong, the art of packing 12 passengers into the boot of a Probox, driving 12 hours straight without a break, the benefits of lewd and loud music and squad operations.

Now the syllabus is being taught to the piki piki (motor cycle) taxi guys who have also added topics such as speeding down the wrong side of the road against oncoming traffic at full speed, of what use is a safety helmet and the benefits of helmetless riding, maximum use of sidewalks to get to your destination, how to while away your time while in traction in a hospital and 76 ways to fall off a motor cycle.

But pray where exactly is this college located, because I have tried to locate its physical location not that I am interested in joining, but to burn it down and/or change the syllabus to something more relevant in this modern age where caveman like behavior is supposed to have become extinct with the dinosaurs and respect and dignity to your fellow countrymen is considered the basic indicator that we are human beings and not animals because frankly speaking some of the ‘tabias’ of these guys is so decidedly 19th Century!

Or am I jumping the gun here and blaming the blameless? Could it be that when one gets into a certain occupation/profession over time and despite your best efforts to retain your dignity and honor you are slowly and surely infected with the culture that controls and directs your thoughts and actions as you perform your duties? Is this perhaps also why a certain section of society while pleading for your votes will endear themselves to you then but become a total nuisance and uncontrollably greedy once elected and in office?

I must locate that college also and burn it down too!!

Being a public speaker:

One of my passions is public speaking which I got involved in quite by accident many years back. In the period since I took it up, I have had the opportunity to be the Master of Ceremonies (MC) at various functions both at family level, in my workplace as well as in a classroom environment. I have made power point presentations in a training and lecture room environment to hordes of people and taken questions to respond to many times as part of public speaking, something not for the feint hearted.

My most memorable occasion was being the MC in a fund raising walk function graced by a former Vice President of Kenya, but I have also been an MC at corporate functions involving captains of industry, at CSR events and at annual staff parties and customer cocktails. I have been a guest of honor at various bank functions including churches; school sports days and so on many of which required me to make a speech as a bank representative. It is something I love doing and while not exactly easy it is something that I have grown to be quite good at and which I enjoy immensely.

Public speaking is about reading the mood of the crowd, acknowledging the solemnity or light heartedness of the occasion and also veering off from the agreed script if necessary to inject some humor or to refocus the crowd towards the goings on or the purpose of the function. It takes patience and diplomacy and the ability to take decisions on the fly and sometimes to say ‘to hell with the consequences’.

It was not always easy because upto today, the sense of fear and dread that you shall make a mess of it always precedes any function. Butterflies fritter in your stomach, you break out into a cold sweat and fear that the equipment may malfunction. However once you commence the function, all jitters go away and I am in my element confident and ready to face anything thrown at me.

It is therefore no longer a surprise to me that some of those who are supremely confident when talking to the family, friends or peers fall apart when they are faced with a situation where they have to address a crowd because it takes tenacity, patience and a cool head. It also takes some practice particularly for training sessions and when making power point presentations to a crowd of people because you want the content to flow and for you to be within the agreed timelines that have been set for you.

So next time you have a function and are looking for an MC – look no further!!

Taming the monster of impunity on our roads:

I have read that the Government of Kenya (GOK) is in the processing of introducing a system that will require me to be retrained and retested to see if I am a competent driver before they issue me with a new smart driving license. This document will supposedly keep track of my incidents, accidents and transgressions with the information being shared by a host of interested parties the police, KRA and my insurance company amongst others as like the rest of officious Kenya they continue to make my life a living hell.

The plan also calls for the sending of a summons by email and SMS to appear in court if the traffic cameras catch your car jumping the traffic lights or committing any other traffic offence complete with a picture of the vehicle registration number and the facial snap shot of the offending driver. As the story is silent on how other road users shall be disciplined – pedestrians,cyclists and mkokoteni pushers – I wonder if the same measure of punishment shall be meted out to them also?

The plan also calls for the purchase of tablet computers to be used by the police officers when they catch up with you for them to swipe your license and get all the details of who you are, where you stay and other such information as well as all the muck on your erratic and undisciplined driving manners.If this initiative is all about reducing the carnage on our roads caused by drivers who bribed their way into getting their mug shots on a license document, or just bought the damn document then this is all very well. If this issue wasn’t so serious, this latest attempt by the GOK to force some semblance of discipline into the driving public in Kenya would be downright laughable.

Stay with me for a moment and get to understand the folly of this initiative honorable sounding as it may seem. First and foremost it pre-supposes that accidents are caused ONLY by undisciplined and careless vehicular drivers. The fact of the matter is that this statement is probably largely true. However a quick drive around any road in any part of the country today, including some of the new super highways and bypasses will tell a completely different story. Some of these roads were not meant to be driven on as dual carriage way roads being mostly too thin with no road shoulders, no cycling paths and no pedestrian footpaths.

This means that pedestrians, cyclists and the odd ‘mkokoteni’ are sharing the road with cars, matatus, trucks and buses dicing dangerously with death weaving and cutting in and out of traffic as all seek to get ahead of everyone else at the expense of the rest! The super highways and bypasses to my untrained eye are not well designed either, with dangerous intersections, overpasses and underpasses as well as blind exit lanes, no working street lights and for the most part filthy and unkempt road surfaces where again cyclists, pedestrians and the odd ‘mkokoteni’ criss cross the roads dangerously sometimes against the flow of traffic and at non-existent crossing points and oblivious to their own fate!

The GOK has said that they shall initially target the 25,000 PSV drivers who would surely put any motorist in any country in the world to shame with their dangerous and death defying antics which is all well save for the fact that these are also the most adept and brazen givers of bribes on our roads today so that a vehicle with tyres as smooth as a baby’s bottom will be deemed fit to continue plying on the roads in his death trap of a vehicle so long as the correct amount of bribe has been paid to the traffic policeman that had the audacity to stop that vehicle in the first place……and before anyone is unduly harsh on my judgement of the police department, I am not the one who ranks them consistently corrupt year in year out!!

So if these are the same people expected to reign in the trouble makers on our roads then what will have changed? What is to prevent the police officer from accepting a bribe in lieu of adding another transgression on a driving license when the offending driver is on the brink of losing his driving privileges for good? What is to stop the police officer from accepting a bribe so as not to swipe your card on the tablet reader which shall show that you are using your brothers license yours having been suspended months back?

The cost of bribery is going to go up, the rate of accidents shall remain at the same level so long as the same indiscipline targeting motorists is not extended to the pedestrians and cyclists with a death wish and who therefore walk anywhere they feel like safe in the knowledge that an accident is always caused by a motorist and never by a pedestrian.

So long as the state of the roads in the country remains the same – shambolic, dangerous and with ill-conceived interchanges and lacking the basic road infrastructure to make them safe then the rate of accidents shall remain the same.

It will take a multi-faceted approach involving disciplining of all road users and due care and diligence from the engineers that design our roads before an effective solution is found to end the carnage!!

Appreciation of others is necessary

I have been busy recently and have not had a chance to write a blog article for some time. The last few weeks have been an exciting time on the work front for me. It has been an intense period with a difficult one day at work, one day off work kind of schedule.

The day off work has not been spent idly, but meaningfully in a conference room somewhere with a team of other staff members carrying out an exercise that has been a long time coming thanks to the rapid growth of my employers business and the attendant growth in staff numbers that has seen the influx of new staff over the past few years many with special skills and perspectives necessary to drive business growth either directly or in a support role in the rapidly evolving and extremely competitive financial services industry.

Often in employment we take the contribution of our fellow employees towards the overall objective of the business for granted many a time not understanding what a particular role brings to the bottom line of the profit and loss account or even what someone in a certain role does on a daily basis. The exercise that I am engaged in has been an important eye opener to understanding the role that my colleagues play in making the business the successful enterprise that it has become over the years.

Over the years many roles and positions have come about at work on a need basis and many times I have wondered why some role was necessary given that the business has still been profitable and no appreciable bumps in the road had been evident. The difficult jobs that some of my colleagues do and the delicate decisions that arise in the course of their work impacting on business systems, outcomes and future planning have shown me that a business is an evolving, living thing that is constantly morphing and changing its identity due to emerging and changing factors that arise on a day to day basis. Each small cog in the wheel is connected to another cog in the wheel in a random and not so obvious way but which all ultimately results in continued success on the business front.

Now I appreciate the individual efforts of my many colleagues where I work and I have new found respect for the expertise that they bring to the table towards the bottom line of the business. On the family front too, everyone has a role to play in making the family a successful and harmonious unit much as each individual has their own character, nature and disposition.

Looting has been going on before your very eyes for ever so why the anger?

You wonder how a grown man (or woman) can wake up in the morning with nothing else on his mind but reaping where he has not sown. This is the image that many no doubt have when we see poor villagers on our TV’s looting from an overturned vehicle with no care of the consequences to life or limb should the cargo being looted be a consignment of highly flammable fuel. It is probably the same thought we have when we see people armed with machetes and knives hacking away at the dead carcass of a hippo or any other wild animal unfortunate enough to have been killed in a populated area.

So KDF soldiers have supposedly been caught on camera and CCTV looting Westgate Mall as the operation to free the mall from the (innumerable) terrorists and to locate any surviving hostages continued into the fourth day in September 2103. What’s the big deal about that? If the recent report of the unaccounted for billions of Kenya Shillings by the Auditor General in the last financial year is anything to go by why aren’t we as incensed with this looting of public funds (about a quarter of the annual budget) as we are with what happened at Westgate? Is it because the theft of the Kshs. 300 Billion was not captured on camera and on CCTV and therefore remains just a dubious report by the Auditor General?

Without seeming to sound callous about those business people whose livelihoods have now been lost forever forcing many to start from scratch, what is so different between the looting at the Westgate Mall and the systemic and systematic looting of public funds that has taken place in Kenya over the last 50 years?

The history of Kenya is replete with incidences of public looting at a scale that would put the Westgate looting to shame and even more callously by those entrusted as custodians of the public wealth, some of whom still hold public office as well as some whose presence is no longer evident in the public eye but who still continue to flout their ill-gotten wealth from the proceeds of the public purse.

It is just scandalous how people who were struggling to make a living before entering politics and public service are suddenly awash with cash and unaccounted for billions in assets in their portfolios while the ‘hoi polloi’ continue to suffer the indignity of lack of schools and hospitals and other indicators of economic well-being that should have been paid for with their taxes but which have been diverted to someone’s pocket. Many of the past scandals have had a severe knock on effect on the economy of the country as it is today and to date no one has been punished for their gluttony and unbridled looting of public funds. In China lesser scandals would have resulted in public executions!!

It is my view that the alleged looting that happened at Westgate (that has so vehemently been denied by the army top brass) is nothing but a microcosm of what we as Kenyans have been witness to in the last 50 years. Those at the top, who have benefitted from the largesse of the public, have always no doubt considered themselves a sophisticated lot, plotting to steal from the public coffers through dubious scandals and inflated allowances but all along believing that they are not thieves as they have not been caught with their fingers in the cookie jar. When such criminal deeds go unpunished for such a long time why wouldn’t the same attitude trickle down to the masses to loot something every now and then when the opportunity presents itself secure in the knowledge that you will not be caught?

I am with the army top brass on this one, their soldiers did not loot and that CCTV footage is just a photo shopped video being circulated by Al Shabbab to discredit the KDF further……….or I just need my eyes examined!! But seriously though we should be more outraged at the blatant looting of the public purse that has been going on for the past half century then with an isolated and unverified incident that happened at Westgate because we have been consigned to the unenviable tag of a third world country when we should have long ago been a BRIC(K)S country if only we had not hired looters and plunderers to manage and control our public coffers.

Suspicious characters lurk everywhere I look:

I have recently read a leaked report prepared by the National Security Intelligence Services (NSIS) which amongst others warned of an imminent terrorist attack on diverse dates between 5th – 21st September, that eventually panned out with the Westgate attack. The leak coming so soon after Westgate and the hammering that the intelligence community in Kenya has taken for seeming laxity on the job, it is rather obvious who the source of the leak was but that is the subject for another day. The report concluded that Kenyans were not aware of and did not report anything suspicious and hence it occurs to me that we need some education on what constitutes suspicious characters, behaviors and so on.

Ever since the Westgate attack, I am seeing suspicious characters lurking at every corner. Or is it just my over fertile imagination working overtime with a previously unknown zealousness to spot anything suspicious? I am seeing them as they drive past me in their heavily tinted cars, leaf and coil springs sagging under the weight of something unseen but obviously heavy. I am seeing them as they carry their backpacks and rucksacks contents hidden from prying eyes and I am also seeing them as they push heavily laden ‘mkokotenis’ and bicycles along our roads.

I am also seeing suspicious characters as they drive their pickups and trucks past me the mysterious cargo in their truck beds covered in a tarpaulin or protected by a closed container. Could it be that under that load of whatever they are carrying there could be a cache of arms or explosives? I see them in their sand carrying trucks under which sand could be a lethal dose of RDX, TNT or any other explosive or chemical weapon ready to blow up innocent Kenyans at its next stop.I also see them idly standing at street corners waiting for God knows what, as well as at the entrances to construction sites. But hang on could they just be job seekers waiting for that all-important masonry job or even plain clothes policemen keeping an eye out for security reasons?

I see them as they leave their bulging bags at the left luggage counters of the supermarket and I see them as they go about the business of nation building striding from one side of the city to the other surely on a surveillance mission and I also see them at the Mpesa agent and at the ATM points withdrawing or depositing money for their nefarious purposes. I see them in that primary school boy who looks older than an ordinary 13 year old should look school bag slung over his shoulder trying to look innocuous and I see them with a sling around their arm or a bandage across their skulls for surely they must have received those injuries as they threw their grenades and shot at those battle hardened women and children at Westgate.

I see them with a bulge somewhere in the region of their armpit for surely that is a holstered firearm ready to dispatch me to my maker. Or surely that person in the hardware store purchasing nails and fertilizer can only be doing it to construct a fertilizer bomb as effective as any explosive when mixed in the correct ratio of ingredients.

Or what of those ‘burkha’ and ‘buibui’ clad ladies? Surely that one walks like a man masquerading as a woman so as to escape my eagle eye as he surveys where next to strike. What about that car left by the roadside so close to that petrol station? It can only mean one thing, a possible carload of explosives about to be blown up and the proximity to the petrol station will add fuel to the fire and the subsequent havoc.

I see suspicious characters everywhere just waiting to unleash mayhem and terror on me and the rest of the Kenyans for we have been promised fire and brimstone and a bloody war by Al-Shabab if the Kenya Defence Forces do not exit Somalia immediately so that they can continue with their reign of terror and continue to collect illegal taxes from a ravaged people to finance their heinous campaigns of horror as they enforce their own brand of sharia law.

But what can I do since I am ill trained to know what is or is not suspicious as I have been told countless times by the police officers and now by the NSIS. Should I report all my suspicions to them? What if we all report our suspicions to the police? Are they equipped to handle all such reports that we make to them? If they dedicate the entire police force to handle suspicious reports will they really get anything else done and will they really manage to sieve facts from fiction and from personal vendetta and pure biases among people?

I agree that we all need to be aware of what constitutes a suspicious ………………….....anything but do we have the resources to manage the whole process?

Of a careless government and social corruption:

Introduction:

I wrote this article in January 2010 out of a anger and a sense of outrage that a wanted terrorist could find his way into Kenya through one of our official border posts all because of a 'technical hitch' in the equipment supposed to detect such unwanted people. The security operation targeting aliens around that time swiftly turned into a exercise that seemed to persecute and target the Somali community living in Kenya. I had not started my blog by then so the article had lost its relevance to some extent by the time I commenced blogging in November 2011.

However recent events relating to the Westgate terror attack have infused some relevance to the article and I reproduce it herebelow with no changes whatsoever to the earlier article. I have no doubt in my mind that corruption, ineptitude and deriliction of duty has played a key role in the events leading up to the massacre of innocent civilians on Saturday 21st September 2013.

The relevance of the article to the current government is not the issue, but this is merely an angry social commentary on what in my view ailed and continues to ail Kenya. Read on..................

____________________________________________________________________

If I were Minister for Immigration, Otieno Kajwang, I would be having sleepless nights wondering how I dug myself and my country into such a deep hole in this saga involving persona non grata Mr. Abdullah al-Faisal. I would be wondering if I really have dedicated officers manning our border posts into the country or if I should just open up all the border posts to allow all and sundry into the country without so much as a cursory glance at them.

I would also wonder whether all the recent hullabaloo about illegal immigrants in the country is merely a smoke screen because since time immemorial, all manner of Somali, Ugandan, Tanzanian, Ethiopian and Sudanese have been waltzing in and out of Kenya through the very porous borders we have with our neighbors without the courtesy of announcing their arrival into Kenya whenever they have an overwhelming urge for the taste of Tusker, Blue Band, miraa and other assorted Kenyan goodies which may or may not be contraband in their countries. But off course this is Kenya which, as the Tanzanians say is a dog eat dog society, and Minister Kajwang probably lulls himself to sleep blissfully unaware of his role in this whole saga as he hums to himself the last few stanzas of his favorite ‘mapambano’ song!

The casual manner in which al-Faisal a person known to have terrorist links crossed over into Kenya from Tanzania because “the computer system that would have identified him as a terrorist was not working” points to a careless government. The online Encarta Dictionary defines careless as ‘not giving enough careful attention to the details of something’ and ‘disregarding or showing no concern about something.’

A government intent on protecting its people and its sovereignty should be a government that pays attention to detail and shows concern about issues that could be a threat to its security. It should be a government that is bent on ensuring that its mandate as a protector of its citizenry is not mortgaged to the highest bidder and one that genuinely strives to protect itself and its people from international opprobrium and ridicule. I would expect that such a government would have invested in the highest levels of IT and communication software so that in the event of a failed computer system it would have a back up contingency plan to continue the very necessary and expensive business of vetting visitors into our country. Therefore this business of a failed computer system indicates a careless government! In any case what was to stop Mr. al-Faisal from bribing an over zealous immigration official at Lunga Lunga who noticed that he was persona non grata so as to be allowed entry into Kenya?

This careless government has exposed us to the H1N1 virus after a very public announcement by Minister Beth Mugo assured Kenyans that no visitor would be allowed into our country if they so much as sneezed while on their way into Kenya only for tens of students from the UK to land at our very own JKIA and find their way to Kisumu where it was discovered that several of them were exposed to the virus. The ensuing circus was a study in how not to (re)act in such circumstances. Over the years this careless government has exposed us to the Artur brothers, the General Mathenge joke, the Anglo Leasing scandal, hiding of Felicien Kabuga, theft of funds from donors meant for free primary education, Triton petroleum scandal, Kenya pipeline scandals, gagging of the press though the recently gazetted Media bill and a myriad other scandals all in the last 8 years. I recall the words of Kiraitu Murungi in a moment of bravado telling retired President Moi to go back to his farm and look after his ‘ngoats’ and watch how a government is run and now we can see what he meant, a government ran at the whims and the foibles of a few to put the majority at risk!!

Which brings me to the issue of social corruption!!? In the last few days, there has been a concerted effort to arrest illegal immigrants in Kenya. The target of this exercise seems to be focused on the people of Somali origin across all major towns in Kenya………including the wife and daughter of former MP Billow Kerrow (by mistake)! I would like to think that this sudden energetic activity has been after a carefully planned and coordinated (co)operation between the Police and the Immigration departments that had already identified who was illegally in Kenya and therefore would be arrested and deported back to wherever they came from. Coming so shortly after the mass protests in downtown Nairobi that left several dead and scores injured and whose blame appears to have been laid squarely on the shoulders of the Al Shabbab militia whose origins are in Somalia then I am persuaded otherwise. It is generally known that Kenya is a Mecca that attracts illegal immigrants from as far as Asia, the DRC, Eritrea, Djibouti, Rwanda, Burundi and many other countries that have no common border with Kenya. Of the immediate neighboring countries that share a common border with Kenya I will not comment since our borders are so porous as to give a ‘kichungi’ a good name. Common sense therefore tells me that a well planned operation would be geared towards arresting ALL illegal immigrants and not merely those of Somali origin. This careless action by the government targeting people of Somali origins only exposes the rest of us to the risk of retaliatory attacks and continued protests. Or is it just recently that our careless government has woken up to the realization that persons of Somali origin pose a threat to the security of this country by their sheer numbers and combined economic acumen?

It is also suspected that much of the ill gotten wealth in the form of ransoms paid to pirates who hijack ships in the Gulf of Aden and the wider Indian Ocean finds its way into Kenya though one way or another and is one of the factors that has raised property prices across the country to astronomical proportions as these ill gotten funds are laundered through purchase of land and property at whatever price. I am convinced that the people who have been buying up prime chunks of land at exorbitant prices have not escaped the eagle eye of the Kenyan intelligence and security services and are therefore very well known and perhaps have godfathers who ensure that their investments are protected at all costs probably with handsome profits shared in the process.

I also believe that many of these people have paid handsomely for the privilege of acquiring Kenyan citizenship since it is widely known that in Kenya so long as you can pay the going price or facilitation fee then becoming a citizen of this great country is the easiest thing in the world as is acquiring a valid work/business permit to work as a supervisor on a construction site while thousands of well educated Kenyan have no jobs. This explains why we have so many people strutting around arrogantly holding Kenyan work permits, Kenyan ID’s and Kenyan passports who cannot construct a coherent sentence in English and/or Kiswahili because they can always fall back on their masters when they need to…………at a price off course! We have mortgaged our country to all kinds of bidders and we are paying the price for this!

This payment of a facilitation fee for acquisition of Kenyan work/business permits, Kenyan ID’s and Kenyan passports is what I refer to as social corruption since both the corrupter and the corrupted get a benefit and neither has the motivation to report such corruption since they would be stripped of the benefit that one has gained from the other. Often the fee is paid over a cup of coffee or a beer after office hours at an agreed social venue, hence the term social corruption. Often this fee is shared out in a certain proportion to a cabal of willing officials at a preset agreed percentage making it a very difficult cartel to infiltrate and break up. Since the final decision on Immigration matters rests with the Minister for Immigration, it is safe to assume that over the years consecutive Ministers have been aware of these shenanigans and perhaps directly benefits from it though I hope I am wrong and that they have been duped over the years by their underlings.

This is endemic corruption at its best and some of the wealthiest and most well connected individuals in this country have very definitely profited handsomely from such facilitation fees either directly or as go betweens to whisper in the ear of the relevant official in the relevant Ministry for special exceptional consideration for a well connected so and so foreigner to have their citizenship/work/business permit issues fast tracked through the system another feature of a careless government. The level of corruption under this social corruption could easily reduce the Police Dept, that bastion of corruption year in year out, into position No. 2 in the Kenya corruption index if only those paying such fees would talk!

It is high time that the government shows us that it is a caring government by putting in place systems and processes to protect its borders and its people as well as properly vet those who aspire to live work and do business in Kenya. It is incumbent on the relevant investigative and intelligence organs of government to audit the activities of the Immigration Ministry in order to establish who over the years has not met the minimum criteria for living, working and doing business in Kenya and who should then be stripped of their ill gotten citizenship and work/business permits and then shipped back from wherever they came from.

Let us not have another al-Faisal debacle so that we stop being the clown, cartoon and laughing stock of the international community due to the sheer ineptness and carelessness of those who have sworn to defend our country in the handling of small matters that have the potential to spiral out of control due to careless and ill coordinated statements and press conferences.



W Mwangi - A concerned & patriotic Kenyan

21st January 2010

Is it time to allow civilians the right to bear firearms?

I am angry at what happened at Westgate Mall in Nairobi on the morning of Saturday the 21st September 2013 and it is as shocking to me as much as it is to the rest of Kenya and the world at large. I add my condolences message to the families of those who have needlessly lost their lives in that siege and continue to pray for the speedy recovery of those injured by the callous terrorists who opened fire indiscriminately on innocent men, women and children collateral targets in a war they have little knowledge and understanding off. Even though I was not directly affected by the events, I was very traumatized over that weekend and a stiff uncharacteristic drink late on Saturday night is what enabled me to get some semblance of sleep with the disturbing nightmares coming back to haunt me on Sunday night as we waited to see what would come out of the standoff that thanfully now as I finalise this article seems all but over.

I have decided to write this piece in my anger because some anger makes one say things that they would not ordinarily say. A great many opinions have come out of this incident and will continue to come through in the days and weeks to come and one of them was narrated to me over the weekend by a close friend whose wife and daughter were caught up in the action but thankfully were unscathed in the ensuing commotion. This person says that he shall no longer take his personal security as well as that of his family for granted and he is getting himself a firearm and before you are all up in arms (pun intended) about it, he will follow the due process of getting a permit and follow all the requirements of the law and not get one of those bootleg guns you get in some border areas, or so I hear, in this country.

Why his sudden interest in owning a firearm? Why the sudden conclusion that the police force does not offer adequate protection to you, your family and your property? His argument is based on the logic that an incident such as the one that happened at Westgate Mall could not have happened in the neighboring countries of Uganda and Tanzania simply because a large number of civilians in those countries are licensed firearm holders. Many of the security guards in those countries are also armed with a variety of small arms and would have immediately have subjected the armed assailants to a barrage of small arms fire sufficient to kill or wound a few or all the attackers and force the rest to back off. I suppose this is the reason why Al Shabab terrorists chose to detonate an explosive device that killed scores of people in Kampala a few years ago rather than go in guns blazing with all the risks of being shot at by those you are targeting!!

Here in Kenya, with all due respect the guards armed with their ‘rungus’ and walkie talkies as well as the civilian population going about their daily business were sitting ducks literally at Westgate. When heavily armed gunmen alight from vehicles and begin shooting randomly and indiscriminately into crowds of people with little or no return fire you can be sure they shall overwhelm whatever little resistance there shall be. His argument therefore is to allow civilians and security guards to bear arms so that the battle lines are not skewed so awkwardly in favor of those with the guns against the majority without.

He further goes on to say that the reason we have such brazen armed criminals in Kenya is because they know that they will get away with threatening you even with an unloaded firearm simply because the possibility that you are armed is quite remote. Unless trained in the art of handling a firearm, many people cannot distinguish between a real gun and a toy one something that thugs have taken full advantage off. Arming civilians means that an armed criminal will have to think twice before attacking someone.

While on a visit to Kampala about a year ago, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that one can walk in all areas of the city at any time of the day or night without fear of being harassed or molested simply because no one will dare risk attacking you lest he gets shot dead so the crime rate is generally much lower than in Nairobi. In Nairobi, you stand to get "ngetad", knifed or smeared with excrement by the common hoodlum between the hours of 7.00 pm and 6.00 am as you get your phone, handbag and wallet stolen because the only resistance you are likely to offer is almost non existant!

I am not saying that I necessarily agree or disagree with the argument that many guns in the hands of civilians shall result in many more incidences of accidental shootings and an escalation in the crime rate, but how many have felt completely helpless when confronted by a gun toting gangster who robs you, beats you up, rapes your wife and children and probably sodomises you also and casually walks away probably never to be apprehended. Don’t you wish that if you had a gun you would have attempted to use it to injure or kill this thug who has invaded your personal space and has violated your family? Would you rather have had a better chance of protecting your family if armed with a firearm in such an instant and giving yourself a slim chance of salvaging your pride rather than no chance at all? This is the overwhelming reaction that those that have been caught up in these situations invariably feel or so I have been told countless times because the vulnerability of being unable to defend yourself or your family simply because someone has a gun while you don’t is the most frightening thing that can happen to someone!!

This particular issue is mired in controversy the world over with those arguing for and those arguing against such a case of civilians holding legal firearms. The reality on the ground as has been admitted countless times by our law enforcers is that there are too many illegal guns in the hands of the wrong people and this drives a thriving criminal underworld with guns for hire at a relatively cheap cost. Secondly, what came out of the Westgate attack is that Kenya is actually at war with Al Shabab and Al Qaeda types who will not hesitate to mow down deadly soldiers including toddlers, children and women in furtherance of their twisted political agendas. Why then should I not also be able to protect myself as a soldier in this war that will be brought to my doorstep?

The powers that be need to come to the realization that while we have a police force that is supposed to protect us, the force is severely constrained in terms of numbers and therefore in their abilities to respond to my calls for assistance as well as in access to reliable vehicles and other resources needed to ensure that I get their help when I need it. It is up to the policy makers to grapple with the delicate issue of enabling laws and how to control and manage a process where the owning of a firearm is a basic citizens right but it has happened in other countries and there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

So, with the recent incident in mind and me still being mad as hell, is it time to consider arming civilians willing to follow due process of the law in obtaining a firearm, with full training of handling and using of a firearm more so now that the Al Shabab and Al Qaeda militia have shown that they are hell bent on creating havoc in our midst since they know that there shall be little or no resistance from the general civilian population in Kenya if they attack us? My friends argument seems to suggest that it is.

The road to riches is paved by those with evil intentions:

I am constantly bemused by the barrage of people wanting to interest me in one form of therapy or another, or in one cure all or another, or in one weight loss program or another, or one magic portion bullet or another to fight a variety of conditions from obesity, to AIDS, to TB, to Cholera, to being poor and to guarantee future riches.

This bemusement also extends to those intending to sell to me pieces of glass orbs that supposedly purify and deionize water, to necklaces that you wear to ward off bad karma, to foot baths that rid the body of toxins to gadgets with beams that you direct at certain parts of your body for instant healing. Those selling all sorts of poultices, herbal creams, mineral and vitamin supplements, ointments and balms are also in their hundreds every one proclaiming that their product is better than the next or has health benefits unheard of before and can be yours for the low, low price of Kshs. 50,000.00, Kshs. 100,000.00 or such other large amounts of money. The pricing is the key because while what you purchase is never intrinsically worth what you pay for it, the pricing ensures that only those with that kind of money can afford it thus giving the whole show some semblance of exclusivity.

But call me a skeptic or whatever else you wish to call me, but all that is balderdash, hogwash and a load of bull and is most likely just some get rich quick scheme like that hoax hatched some years ago by a company based in the UK that manufactured a gadget that they claimed could detect, explosives, guns and other contraband items from a great distance.

Now for a fair warning. For those who feel slighted by the direction of this blog article, stop reading NOW because it is likely that some of my comments will hit below the belt. If you do choose to continue reading it is with the tacit acceptance that you will not hold me accountable for any ill feelings you may harbor against me now or in the future so you continue at your own risk.

Many governments have over the years been convinced to buy that useless detection gadget for use by their police and military forces while there is no conclusive evidence that it even does what it is claimed to do. Our very own Kenya Police purchased these expensive devices and have defended their effectiveness over the years perhaps to avoid looking foolish in the eyes of the tax paying public. The gadget was described as "a useless quack device which cannot perform any other function than separating naive persons from their money. It's a fake, a scam, a swindle, and a blatant fraud”………which would pretty much be my definition of many of these devices and gadgets said to be magical cures to a host of ailments by directing a ray here, a beaded necklace here and a glass orb there and so on.

But the story doesn’t end there because these merchants and masters of chicanery having sold you some worthless but expensive piece of junk then encourage you to establish a down line of other people willing to purchase the product or the benefits of the product where you stand to earn a commission on the sale thereby recovering your initial investment.

These multilevel scams have invaded churches, clubs, colleges, homes and offices with people actively holding meetings and selling junk to others naive enough to be separated from their money with the initiators of the scam laughing all the way to the bank while spinning fantastic stories of sudden great wealth and access to all the good things that money can buy once your down line is 5 or 10 strong only for the game to reach its logical conclusion and collapse on itself when the saturation point and life cycle of the scam reaches often in a very short time.

As the cycle of the never ending quest for instant riches continues the next day as yet another charlatan opens up shop with another fantastic story to tell of a magical gadget that is guaranteed to put money in your pocket just going to prove how fickle and shallow minded the human mind real is. The cacophony surrounding this phenomenon would see our country hurtling towards becoming a very wealthy country within the next 10 years if only half the energy in the multilevel business was directed toward more meaningful pursuits.

So you have been warned, the road to riches is paved with the evil intentions of the crafty and fed by the insatiable greed of the naïve and at the end of the day, only one will make his money..............the crafty !! Ask the government of Kenya.

What happened to the English language?

Mrs. Jill Davies was my English teacher in Form One and for most of my high school years. She was a quintessential English school ma’am, insisting on being addressed in correct English and with all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed in the essays that you handed over to her. English under her tutelage was fascinating because she had the clipped British accent that was so enthralling to the young boys that we were.

Those of us who had completed our primary level education in Nairobi or any of the other large towns in Kenya or at any of the few private primary schools back then were lucky in that our English was by and large quite refined. It was quite another story for those who had attended primary school in the more rural areas tongues heavy with the dialect of the part of Kenya they came from and English as a second language taught only in classrooms and with no real reason to put what you were taught into regular practice.

Jill Davies’s accent was to these guys (and with all due respect to anyone who was similarly afflicted) a real challenge to keep up with and many would stare mesmerized at Mrs. Davies as she prattled along, not understanding a word she said but nodding their heads whenever those who could make out what she was saying did so, and then being caught off guard as she would fire off a question directed at one of the head nodding boys who would then nod back to her unable to comprehend that a question was being directed at him. The fumbling, mumbling and obvious confusion would send the rest of the class into a paroxysm of laughter often resulting in someone being punished to kneel at a corner or a quick rap with a ruler on their knuckles.

The experience with Mrs. Davies however by and large ensured that we would all become fairly conversant in our spoken and written English once done with high school something that I am eternally grateful for today. I am able to construct a semblance of a sentence and string together several sentences to make a paragraph and I still enjoy reading and have a stock of novels both bound and online that I treasure immensely.

However, in this digital age of the internet, auto correct, online dictionaries, websites dedicated to helping people communicate better and social media I get quite disappointed at the quality of the written word. Hasty contractions and abbreviations, poor sentence construction, no due regard to capitalization of proper nouns, no pagination, apostrophes and exclamation marks taken for granted and used anyhowly!!!! Question marks where none is required? Silly speling errors……..the list is endless and Jill Davies would be beetroot red hopping mad if she discovered who was responsible for this massacre of the queen’s language.

Truly the language of English has been stretched, pulled, pulverized and convoluted so badly over the years that in the process we have been reduced to being poor communicators both in our personal and business lives content with struggling to read incomprehensible gibberish, shortened for convenience sake and to save a few shillings on an SMS and in a combination of English, Swahili, sheng and our mother tongue. It’s no wonder that the comic relief provided by the poor English speaker is one of the most hilarious things one is likely to encounter anywhere in Kenya today including in our hallowed precincts of Parliament and in positions of responsibility and power!!

I do not claim to be the best in this English thing or anything else but do take the trouble to check what you have typed before hitting that send, print or share button because now more than ever before spell prompt and predictive text has also added new unseen and hidden dangers to the typing of a letter, email message or SMS because it predicts what you want to write and populates (or is it pollutes) it even before you have had a chance to figure out what you wanted to say!!

NB - Read also my earlier blog on this link on a similar subject http://www.joe-wonderingallowed.blogspot.com/2012/01/and-you-wonder-why-they-speak-funny.html

Extinct animals back to life?

I have just finished reading a novel entitled ’Sector C’ by Phoenix Sullivan. It is one among a collection of 7 novels that I recently purchased on Amazon.com at a ridiculous price of $0.99…..for all 7 novels!!

Being a voracious and avid reader of novels Amazon.com has proved to be a revelation to me and with a Kindle app that I downloaded on my tablet sometime back this has got to be the best thing that happened in the digitization of books.

But this is not about Amazon.com or the many books that I have purchased online at a fraction of what it would cost at a bookshop, but about ‘Sector C’ a novel unlike any that I have ever read since it is in a genre that I usually would not be interested in since it is set in the future (sci-fi), contains a hint of romance and on a subject matter that I have the least interest in generally - genetics! I guess when you buy a collection of books together like in this case for $0.99; you inevitably also purchase something you may not necessary have an interest in.

But of the novels that I have so far read in the 7, ‘Sector C’ is the most intriguing. It is a story set in the indeterminable future where a bioengineering company sets up a laboratory and facilities somewhere in rural USA where they have somehow managed to extract the DNA of long extinct wooly mammoths, sabre toothed tigers, short faced bears, wolves and other creatures that have been extinct for many hundreds of years and through a genetic process have been able to extract the cells of these creatures and then through in vitro fertilization have formed a zygote which they have then implanted into surrogate mother animals who have then delivered after full term pregnancies living mammoths, sabre toothed tigers, wolves etc that now roam in large enclosures within the company’s land. Fascinating stuff you will agree.

But to me that is not the exciting bit because in the process, they have also replicated a protein embedded in the genes and DNA of the animals being ‘reborn’ that was (in the novel) the probable cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs millions of years ago and this protein is now able to jump across species very quickly (unlike most viruses and bacteria that do not jump between species) and is now manifesting itself in cows, pigs, sheep, dogs, cats and humans infecting and killing all as there is no cure to this protein which is likened to ‘mad cow’ disease and the ‘avian flu’ that a few years ago wreaked havoc in the beef and poultry industry across the world.

The unfolding scenario where a state of emergency is declared in the affected states, a quarantine is imposed on travel to and from the affected places, people are urged to destroy all meat and poultry products and the National Guard is called out to keep the peace as well as to destroy and ensure the burial of all livestock, dogs, cats, rats, deer etc – millions and millions of animals - and the ensuing panic as people scramble to look out for their lives and those of their loved ones in this pandemic makes for a mesmerizing read!!

The interesting and scary thing to me, is this beyond the realms of possibility? Is it possible for extinct animals to be brought back to life through extracting their DNA and then through in vitro fertilization giving life to living breathing dinosaurs and other creatures? Would such a feat also give rise to possible revival of long dormant strains of diseases now awakened through the DNA of these long extinct creatures for which no known cure exists?

In September 2012 a specimen of a wooly mammoth baby was discovered perfectly preserved in the permafrost somewhere in the Siberian tundra. Scientists and paleontologists have heralded this as a breakthrough in their quest to discover the genetic make-up of the now extinct animals and possible clues as to how they became extinct amongst other things and then clone it into a living breathing animal ‘Jurassic Park’ style. With improved scientific methodologies and technologies available now this should be possible, given that Dolly the sheep cloned in 1996 lived a hale and hearty life as did many other different animals cloned in the last 50 years or so.

Shall I live to see a living breathing wooly mammoth, dinosaur or sabre toothed tiger in my lifetime? Possibly given the advances in science that I mention and the very real scenario painted in the novel “Sector C”.

Cloning has been successfully done many times with varying degrees of success so why not this time around with the wooly mammoth though fooling around with nature would not necessarily be a very wise thing to do!

I wonder if this was a mistake or intentional theft:

I was stuck behind a slow moving private garbage compactor truck recently along Mbagathi Way on its way to collect yet more garbage somewhere else. In the business end of the truck, which is all I could see from my vantage point directly behind it, there were three people lounging there among remnants of uncompacted garbage presumably the garbage carriers/loaders. If they had a uniform so as to identify them as being genuine employees of the garbage company it was not apparent since they all had differing attire two of them clearly possibly ‘chokoras’ filthy clothes, bedraggled shoes that had seen better days and no overalls, gumboots, gloves, face masks or any of the other safety equipment you would expect of people dealing in garbage collection.

As the truck passed the Forces Memorial Hospital still trundling along at a snails pace, one of the ‘chokoras’ sighted a handbag and a plastic ‘juala’ paper bag lying by the wall parallel to the road seemingly abandoned or thrown away earlier. On instruction one of them deftly jumped out of the slow moving truck and retrieved the items throwing them into the truck to his colleagues before also jumping in and then they began searching through the bags. It was only after moving several metres past that it dawned on me who the bags belonged to.

Two women were busy sweeping the road side identified as Nairobi City County workers by their yellow coats and the bags apparently belonged to them as was soon to become obvious. It was likely that they had been left neatly by the fence as they swept their allotted length of space to be retrieved when they had completed the day’s work. Women have a keen sense of something not being right, and it seemed to kick in because as soon as the truck passed them one of them looked up, possibly saw her shawl being extricated from her bag, looked back and did not see her possessions and promptly took off running after the truck now gathering speed as the traffic opened up. The ‘chokoras’ having noticed (or probably heard) the shouts from the women seemed to exchange some words among themselves before seeming to agree that they had made a mistake and promptly threw the ransacked handbag out of the still moving truck while still retaining the ‘juala’ which they proceeded to methodically pillage before similarly throwing it out of the truck.

The truck having now gained speed sped off towards the City Mortuary as the hapless women proceeded to retrieve their possessions from the roadside possibly minus any money and valuables that may have been inside the bags. I will never know what transpired or where the truck went as I veered off towards Ngummo Estate on my way to back to work. But was this an honest mistake or intentional theft?? Do normal people go about retrieving handbags and ‘jualas’ that they find along the way?

Sample this second incident that happened many years ago.

“Mum” was the office secretary and had earned the affectionate title since she was a mother figure to many of us. She lived somewhere in Ngara and walked to work every morning and back home in the evening. She however had a peculiar habit of putting her personal effects in a filthy ‘juala’ plastic paper bag on her walk to and from work which ‘juala’ she would then place next to her desk retrieving whatever she needed from it as necessary. Her explanation was that no one would accost her carrying a filthy, tired looking ‘juala’ which had little appeal as opposed to if she carried a handbag or purse however bedraggled it was, the unspoken reason being she had probably been mugged and her handbag or purse snatched from her forcibly sometime in her life. All the cleaners knew enough not to touch that ‘juala’ either from having been told off from her acerbic tongue or by common sense.

As fate would have it and without anyone’s prior knowledge, a new cleaner was assigned to Mum’s section on morning and as usual Mum showed up with her ‘juala’ and left it in her usual spot next to her desk and went off on her own errands. On her return, she couldn’t trace her beloved ‘juala’ where she had left it despite her frantic search everywhere and promptly panicked asking everyone whether they had seen it anywhere! No one had seen it as she got to the office long before most people and often even before the cleaners had begun their work.

So what next! The distraught woman was asking everyone and was clearly in a state of panic about her ‘juala’. It was at this point and in her panic that she let on that the ‘juala’ also contained her purse something unbeknown to any of us in the office, and having lost the ‘juala’ her purse was also gone!! This brought a renewed state of anxiety as she would now probably accuse one of us as having been the culprit until someone thought to ask the new cleaner when all was revealed.

Mum’s habit was to leave the ‘juala’ next to her desk and near her wastepaper bin. On his cleaning rounds, the new cleaner had naturally cleaned the area around the desk and as per instructions also emptied the waste paper bin into his giant trash sack. On noticing a dirty ‘juala’ next to the bin, he had assumed that someone had missed the bin altogether when trashing it and had added the ‘juala’ and its contents to his sack of trash and had disposed of everything. Mystery solved!!

But the challenge now was where was the handbag? At this point in time I do not recall if this story had a happy ending or not, probably not given that if the ending was positive I would still recall this fact but since I do not, it is likely that the purse was never retrieved. I do recall that she followed the garbage collection truck all the way to the garbage dump somewhere in the vicinity of Kijabe Street and despite eliciting the assistance of the ‘chokoras’ there was no sign of the ‘juala’ and its contents.

Suffice is to say that Mum was more careful with her next ‘juala’ which she would keep well hidden in her drawers when she was not around lest she loses it and its contents afresh. No one in the office could dare mention the incident in her presence as she clearly did not see anything funny, but it was the reason for many a stifled guffaw whenever she was seen stuffing her new ‘juala’ into her desk drawer.

The question is this,given the direction of the recent incident I witnessed and that I narrated earlier is it possible that the ‘chokoras’ could have helped themselves to the contents of Mum’s ‘juala’ and thrown the rest of the stuff away? Was the initial error by the cleaner in Mum’s case an honest mistake or something more sinister? Were the ‘chokoras’ in the incident involving the County cleaners innocent or was their intention dishonest?

The verdict is yours!!

Of freshly caught fish and nature at its best:

I went fishing recently on a weekend thanks to my brother who had invited all of us including my parents to a weekend stay at Mugumo House at Mweiga Farm in Nyeri. The fishing was at a dam in a neighboring coffee farm that is owned by his employer and where he is a senior management staff member.

The dam is stocked with Tilapia and occupies perhaps one acre or so. A trip around the dam at a natural walking pace takes maybe 15 minutes…..20 minutes tops! I was accompanied by my brothers and some of my brother’s children for this afternoon of fishing. Our fishing rods were rather rudimentary being a fishing line with a hook attached to the end and then tied to a bamboo rod. For the floatation a piece of slipper placed about a foot from the hook and our bait, those earthworms that are dug out and are found in any moist soil anywhere in the world and which you had to thread expertly head first (or ass first who knows) through the bend in the hook to make a tempting bait for the fish!

For those not aware, fishing is one of those activities that requires copious amounts of patience and on this afternoon unlike an earlier trip to the same dam 9 months prior, the fish were not biting. One by one my nephews and brothers who had enthusiastically caught many fish the previous visit, lost interest and wandered off and it was left to me to stoically soldier on the prospects of returning home with no fish too terrible to comprehend promises of plenty of fish for those waiting at Mugumo House looking as good as broken! As the afternoon wore on so did the tedium of walking up and down the banks of the dam tossing my rod into the water and looking for a place where the fish would bite. This was now getting embarrassing, three veterans (I and two farm workers) and not a single fish between us??

The tranquility and beauty of this dam and a cool calming breeze was however more than enough compensation for the disappointing fishing. The ducks lazily swimming on the water, the incessant hum of the cicadas and other creatures a sonorous background to my own thoughts weaved a tapestry of adventure and folklore. After all this place is adjacent to the Abedare National Park home to some very rare species of wildlife in Kenya and where a bitter war was waged against the colonial government in the 1950’s leading up to independence in 1963 fifty years ago. Is this how the dam had been all those years ago? What had changed in the intervening half century? Had any Mau Mau been fed from this dam and had it seen any action in those dark days?

It’s funny how ones thoughts causes them to lose focus on what is around them because I had been standing at one place lost in my reflections my line in the water when the bobbing piece of slipper indicated that there might be something at the end of my hook. A quick yank and voila, I had caught my first fish of the afternoon and the jinx was broken!! Now the action would start.

As the afternoon wore on the pile of freshly caught fish steadily grew in our bucket as the three of us continued to fish even as the number of worms reduced drastically for it seemed that the fish this afternoon were adept at nibbling on the bait without latching onto the hook. The final tally was a miserable 13 fish down from a record 45 fish nine months earlier but still enough for all of us to have a well-deserved meal of freshly caught and grilled fish for dinner that evening.

After dinner it was time to play some family games involving all the children, parents and grandparents. It was interesting to watch the children get the better of their parents and grandparents, a natural reaction given that they are in the digital age and the information age. It was definitely time well spent with family and bonding came easily despite the scarcity of fish at the end of our line in a beautiful setting overlooking the Abedare Mountains on one side and Mount Kenya Forest on the other.

We were truly in God’s playground that afternoon and even if I had not caught any fish, it was still time well spent.

Is it me or are our brother and sisters in ‘pwani’ a fascinating lot!

While on leave I had the opportunity to go on a short holiday to Mombasa with my family for some rest and relaxation but also to attend a wedding. For me the best way to travel to the Coast is to drive down so that you get the freedom of having your own set of wheels to see the sights and sounds along the way as well as to commute at the Coast. Admittedly, the drive down can be rather stressful given the large volume of long distance trucks and trailers on the road as they lumber and crawl across East Africa delivering their varied commodities that oil the economies of countries as far away as Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. The numerous rest stops and weighbridge stations obviously don’t help particularly on heavy traffic days when delays to the truckers are inevitable leading to impatience and queue jumping which results in almighty gridlocks.

But I digress because a gridlock is what we found ourselves in at 8.30 pm as we completed the Miritini section of the Nairobi-Mombasa highway a few kilometers to Mombasa Island caused by a road crew obviously struggling to complete an allotted road section before they called it a night. Frenetic activity with the heavy machinery had led them to partially close off the road and traffic was now forced to use one section of the road at a time for east bound and west bound traffic alternatingly. Clearly frustration had been mounting among the drivers of the various vehicles this evening because once our side was opened up we were struck after barely 100 meters or so possibly due to an errant driver from the opposite side blocking us from moving. So there we were in a gridlock 30 cars deep unable to make head or tail of what was causing the tailback. Suddenly from out of the blue one of those reflective jacketed fellows carrying red and green flags began beckoning me to squeeze myself in through the smallest of spaces between two behemoths presumably guiding me towards freedom and a chance to unlock the gridlock no doubt caused by his poor management of the situation.

So born of the foolhardiness of the impatient and with the prospect of freeing myself from this entanglement before anyone else, I obeyed the animated instructions of this overzealous individual unaware that I was but a pawn in his dastardly plot! Inch by agonizing inch I maneuvered my way between the trucks only to find that once clear, I was confronted by a mess of impatient drivers in a long line of oncoming traffic angrily hooting at me. With a “haya mzee, sasa jipange!” (Now old man, sort yourself out!) he disappeared from sight the tailback in the section where he had extricated me from now miraculously moving.

What to do now? A steep slope on the left and traffic on the right and a mob of impatient, angry drivers facing me……..and a carload full of a laughing wife and children, clearly the joke was on me! Within a short time I was able to extricate myself marveling at the evil genius who had landed me squarely into the face of oncoming traffic and out foxed me in the process!!

Many years earlier I was caught up in similar mischief on another trip to Mombasa after arriving at the Mwembe Tayari bus stage at the ungodly hour of 5.00 am. Still too dark to trust going anywhere on foot (as many of us mistrusting Nairobians are wont to be) I stepped into a nearby restaurant with my luggage for an early breakfast. This is one of those restaurants which being located close to the main bus terminal in Mombasa is open 24 hours a day to cater to the hungry arriving and departing passengers to and from destinations across East Africa thus guaranteeing freshness and a fair price. The restaurant was not busy and hence the waiter quickly took my breakfast order and went off to have it prepared. The only other people in the restaurant were a sleepy cashier nodding off at his counter and a cleaner who was busy mopping the floor.

Anyone who has travelled on the night bus knows that the first thing you look for when you disembark is a loo for a welcome toilet break. Not wanting to disturb the cashier from his torpor, I approached the cleaner to ask him where the loo was. For a moment he went about his business ignoring me altogether before he retorted in rapid fire Kiswahili “Huoni mimi ni na kazi? Hiyo siyo kazi yangu. Nenda kamulize yule!” (Can’t you see I am busy? That is not my work. Go and ask that guy!) as he pointed at the still drowsy cashier with his mouth and resumed his mopping. Somewhat taken aback and unable to formulate a response quickly enough, I sheepishly went to the cashier as I noisily cleared my throat to wake him up which he gratefully did to enquire where the ablution facility was. Would you believe it, the door to the toilet happened to be just behind where the cleaner was mopping?

A friend of mine also narrated to me a story of how on a visit to Mombasa’s Mama Ngina Drive one evening a few years ago he stopped to buy madafu for his family from one of the numerous sellers that line up along that stretch at dusk. He intentionally chose a seller who appeared as if he was the most hard up so as to ensure his money would be well appreciated. As he chose his coconuts and waited for them to be split open, he casually began chatting with the seller, after all the process was going to take a few minutes to complete. The madafu seller was obviously reluctant to talk more so as he realized my friend was obviously not from Mombasa due to his Kiswahili accent, but he had little choice given that my friend had probably uplifted his sales that evening substantially. They made casual chit chat and then my friend asked him the question of how much money he had made selling his coconuts, to which after a short silence he replied “ Milioni si kitu” (“A million is nothing”). My friend almost died of laughter as he remembered the look of complete seriousness on the madafu sellers face as he proclaimed that he was a rich man!

So while at the coast expect anything from our ‘pwani’ brothers and sisters and don’t take it to heart! It seems that they have this uncanny ability to recognize a person from ‘bara’ from miles away and want to make a complete fool of them.

You may be wondering why my blog posts have petered out!

I have been on leave for the last three weeks. On leave from having to wake up at the crack of dawn to get to the office, on leave from an 8.00 am to 5.00 pm job, on leave to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to and on leave from writing my regular posts.

Leave is supposed to be a time to recoup, recover and recharge ones batteries but many are the times when one gets back to their daily routine from leave and still feel like they require a few extra days to recover! Hands up anyone who feels the same way…!!

I hope to soon get back into my regular routine of writing my blog articles when the chaos at work as I catch up with stuff subsides so for now hold that thought!!

You, I we are all corrupt !

I am disturbed today! In fact I am extremely disturbed and disgusted with myself because I am corrupt so says Transparency International (TI) in the Global Corruption Barometer report released recently. Kenya is at number four globally on the list, with only Sierra Leoneans, Liberians and Yemenis more corrupt than us!

The report says that I bribe the cops, I bribe my way at the Lands office, I bribe my parliamentarians, I bribe the headmaster to get my kids into schools as well as bribe the judges and magistrates who dispense justice. But is this really the case?

A recent case of a local MP in Nairobi nabbed red-handed topping up his Kshs. 1,000,000.00 plus salary with a bribe of Kshs. 100,000.00 is probably an indicator that the report is not too far off the mark as are cases of petty bribery that cause our rotund and portly police officers to assume the ‘Usain Bolt’ position when caught as they flee unsuccessfully, distended midriffs dancing a discombobulated jig, from the clutches of the anti-graft officers composed of swift, slim and trim graduands as hundreds of Kenyans become yet another damning statistic as they fall victim to yet another avoidable road accident as unwitting victims of corruption.

Who can forget the sad scenes of palatial mansions costing millions of shillings being demolished a couple of years ago and the hysterical wailing of those who were affected as they watched their life savings brought down by a bulldozer and who knew all along that they had cast iron title deeds in their hands victims of scheming and bribing of Lands Office staff or those languishing in prison in perpetual misery having been found guilty of non-existent offences their only crime being tried by corrupted judges and magistrates willing to sell justice to the highest bidders!

But why is there no hue and cry? Why is there no national uprising if we feel that we have been slandered? Is it because TI is right? Is it true that we are actually corrupt? You, I and all Kenyans have been branded with the branding iron of corruption and we should hang our heads in shame as we once again become the laughing stock of our neighbors!

Shame on us!!

The thanksgiving function:

I had the privilege to attend a function recently in rural Muranga the land of my ancestors. Muranga is a beautiful, verdant and bountiful place that starts 40 kilometers from Nairobi though the place where the function was held is about 85 kilometers from the capital city of Kenya in Kigumo Constituency of Muranga County.

The occasion was a thanksgiving function for Mr. James Macharia who also happens to be my relative and who was the immediate former CEO of NIC Bank Ltd and who had recently been appointed as a Cabinet Secretary for Health by his Excellency the President of Kenya after a rigorous vetting process.

After an uneventful drive broken only by a stop at Blue Post Hotel in Thika where those invited had congregated so as to leave together in a convoy, we arrived at Kamunganga ACK Church the venue of the function to find a huge tent packed with a multitude of probably 2000 strong all expectant and eagerly awaiting the forthcoming festivities. In attendance was a strong contingent of Muranga politicians led by the County Governor, The Senator, the local MP, MP’s from other constituencies in Muranga and elsewhere, the Muranga women’s representative, members of the local county assembly, the area deputy county commissioner, ward representatives and local chiefs. Also present was an 11 strong clergy led by the ACK Bishop of Mount Kenya Central as well as captains of business and industry, representatives of the banking fraternity, friends, family and well-wishers. The local administration was in full swing backed up by armed uniformed and plain clothes police officers to ensure that security prevailed.

I have known James for a very long time as a close family member and he has come across as a genuinely caring and down to earth person notwithstanding his high status in society. He attends family functions without much prompting even on relatively short notice and is always quick to offer a word of encouragement and advise when needed. The multitude that had gathered were here to celebrate the recognition of the hard work and determination of an individual who had chosen to exit the relative safety and security of the private sector for the rough and tumble of the public service for the greater good of his country!

The ceremony started with a church service with much singing and powerful spiritual messages being delivered by the Bishop and his team with a famous Kikuyu gospel musician adding spice to the service by belting out some favorite and well known gospel hits that many sang along to. The local administration, family members, friends, banking fraternity representatives and politicians were then invited to give their brief comments  by the presiding MC’s who all extolled the virtues of James and his appointment to this high office as well as the expectations (by the politicians) as one of their own.

The most memorable of these speeches was from the obviously overjoyed father who talked about his joy and happiness that his son was now in the Health docket and since he and his wife suffered from Diabetes they were now almost cured knowing that their son was in charge of not only their health but that of millions of Kenyans across the country! It was priceless!!

Then it was the turn of the guest of honor to make his speech and a moving and memorable one it was as he recalled his days while growing up and studying in rural Kenya and having never dreamt of being in the position he is at today and explaining the process of how he had been requested to submit his CV (which he did though he was out of the country), how he had then been called personally by the president, how his interview went, how the vetting process went……………..there was pin drop silence as the audience lapped up this first hand narration up and raucous applause as he introduced those present who had made this possible.  

To me the most poignant part of James’s speech was in extolling the virtues of getting an education and the fact that whatever seed that one sowed would eventually bear fruit and that hard work and determination were key in developing a successful career and this from a person who reported to the office at 6.15 am a message directed at those in schools and colleges as well as those just starting off in their professional careers!! But the icing on the cake was that this was not just idle talk. His hard work had paid off because, he went on, NIC Bank his former employer in recognition of the hard work he had put in over the 8 years he had led the institution in the process growing the assets of the bank more than 10 times over had written off a substantial amount outstanding on his mortgage loan and had also given him a parting gift of a brand new BMW 4x4. He was quick to point out that this was not bragging but a true reflection and statement of what had transpired.

In retrospect, I guess the message that he was conveying was that in life, what appears to be on the surface was not always what was on the ground. He had no reason to tell the congregation that his home loan had been paid off nor that his brand new car was a gift from a grateful employer and could have left such matters unsaid for all to believe that he had purchased these items from his own resources content and basking in the glory of owning them free of any encumbrances title and all. But no, not James full of humility to the end willing to bare all so that those present could understand what a person of integrity was all about. It will not surprise me if many of our fellow brothers and sisters out there have similarly been gifted items of a substantial worth by their employers in recognition of their unparalleled contributions to the success of their organisations but who choose to hide this information from the world for their own reasons!!

That show of utmost humility flanked by his wife, son and daughter was I am sure an emotional prick on the conscience of many since it was delivered without any fawning, bragging or overly justifying the reasons behind such ostentatious gifts and I have no doubt in my mind that James will make a significant impact on the provision of health services in this country that will continue for many years to come.

That was one thanksgiving that I was glad I attended that finished with a delicious lunch served at 5.00 pm to all those present hungry as we all were after a marathon 6 hours and I wish him and his team at the Ministry of Health all the success as they embark on this difficult journey of ensuring good health care to Kenyans now and in the future.

Men are hopeless at multitasking:

The fact that men are hopeless at multitasking came to me literally with a thud and rather painfully at that recently. I had attended a meeting at one of the offices where I work and unbeknownst to me the venue had changed from one floor to another. The new meeting venue was just four short flights down, so I chose to take the stairs rather than the lifts.

So there I was walking down the stairs and decided in the interest of time to also send a text message on my phone, while clutching onto my tablet an important business tool to me. One careful step at a time I made steady progress down the first flight of stairs and then I rounded the corner to the next level of stairs still texting away when disaster struck!

Up until now I have no idea what happened, I am not sure if I missed a step or miscalculated the distance to the next step or what because one minute I was busy texting away and a Nano second later, I was on my butt and bumpity, bumpity, bumpiting down the stairs. Instinct kicked in and I reached out to get a hold of the bannister to stop my rapid decent and possible serious injury forgetting for an instant that I was holding onto my tablet, which naturally flew out of my hand and fell two levels down to the next landing where it fell flat on its back the impact thankfully absorbed by the protective case that I had bought along with the tablet.

By this time my rapid gravity aided descent had been halted by my grabbing onto the bannister but not before sliding down four, possibly five stairs thankfully not witnessed by anyone the sound of the tablet slapping down on the landing below the only noisy interlude to a fairly action packed but quiet and tense few seconds.

I gingerly stood up unsure if there was any physical injury on myself, but thank God all seemed fine as I was able to curl my fingers and flex my joints and appendages without any serious pain save for the soft tissue bruising in my nether regions and possibly a mild sprain in my wrist where I had grabbed onto the bannister that is expected in such a situation! I made my way slowly to the meeting having collected my still functional tablet on the landing below, now suitably mollified and chastised having escaped with what could have been a nasty injury, my text message now forgotten and phone in the pocket holding onto the bannister for dear life lest a similar fate or worse befalls me before I got to the meeting.

It was only several days later the lingering pain on my backside now a distant memory and the embarrassment of falling down the stairs almost forgotten, that I retold the incident to my rather bemused wife. Nowadays I avoid multitasking as much as possible particulary when doing something physical lest I find myself in similar and painful situations.

So truly if something so mundane and everyday and as simple as walking down a flight of stairs while texting on the phone can go so awry, what hope is there for us men in a world that will soon be dominated by our multitasking sisters!!

It’s winter in Kenya:

It’s winter in the +254……..…..at least from where I sit (stand, squat, sleep) in the Nairobi Metropolitan area and toes, ears and fingers are freezing. Temperatures have plunged and are now hovering around 13 degrees Celsius at night. This is cold by Nairobi standards though I am told 30 minutes out of Nairobi around Limuru the mercury has been reported at 9 degrees Celsius and we are not yet into July the traditionally coldest month of the year!

I have had a heater in the house that has not been working for a few years thanks to a blown fuse that caused the plug to fuse with the extension cable. A few days ago I decided that this cold was the type to consign me to an early grave and I broke the extension cable and liberated the heater’s plug from its imprisonment by the extension cable. Then to add insult to injury on the unfortunate extension cable, I used its plug to connect to the heater and threw away the now useless cable and voila, I now have a working heater and a nice toasty bedroom. It’s the only place I want to be in these days after work where I can lie down in relative comfort, socks off, half sweater off the only tough decision being when to venture out of the room for one reason or another. Thank God that I have the essentials in my bedroom, a TV and a loo, so those forays are few and far between!

In this weather, those long forgotten heavy jackets, vests, scarves and (yes) gloves have been dusted off and now seem to have become ‘nom de plume’ with majority of Nairobians dressed up warmly to shield themselves from the elements. I see gloves being sold along the highways nowadays and wonder who had the foresight to import them in advance, or are they a product of some sweat shop in Kariobangi running full throttle 24 hours a day to meet the insatiable demand for them?

 I wonder how the young school going kids in those traditionally cold climes in Kenya like Limuru, Meru, Nyeri, Burnt Forest, Kinangop, Eldoret and Nyahururu (in no particular order) are faring since I noted a few years ago that a balaclava a.k.a ‘boshori’ was a necessary item of school clothing and that was in the summer (do we have such a thing in Kenya?) months. Now that it is winter which additional items of clothing to ward off the freezing temperatures will their parent be saddled with? Thermal underwear, full body woollen suits, blankets or hot water bottles perhaps!!! Essential items of clothing considering that many of the public schools require more than a coat of paint to make them spick and span – like windows, doors and roofs.

This is despite the fact that if the current government has its way future public primary school kids will be the proud owners of solar laptops to be used in drafty cold classrooms bereft of windows, doors and roofs!! Maybe they should have a heater app developed for those laptops as an added bonus for the children in the colder parts of this country and to give them an incentive to attend school so as to keep warm or a fan app to keep them cool when in the ravages of a heat wave.

But some Kenyans (and most tourists) in our capital city still don’t get it. They still walk around half dressed in tee shirts and shorts, tank tops and boob tubes as if they are in sweltering Mombasa not realizing that this is our winter season. It makes one wonder who is mad, them or us well draped people or if God, in his haste to create some of us, omitted to add the mandatory thermostat that the others seem to have been given a 2^nd dosage of in his infinite wisdom……….or to mock the rest of us!

Come on people you are making the majority of us look bad and what would your mother say, you going out half dressed when more sensible people are warmly wrapped up! You will catch your death of cold and will have no one to blame but yourself.

But ‘ngai baba’, what shall we do when July rolls in?

Are we there yet!

I have come to the rather sad conclusion that we are not yet ready as a nation to use the Thika Super highway, that expensive piece of real estate that cost us a pretty sum and lots of aggravation for the four years that it was under construction, or any other really great piece of architectural road project for that matter!! The Thika Road project including pedestrian bridges, service roads, vehicle overpasses and underpasses, pedestrian and cycling lanes, road furniture works and street lighting etc while a sight to behold seems to have brought out some of our most primitive and Stone Age tendencies amongst us!

Why have I come to this conclusion? Picture this if you may.

It is rush hour and you are finally and comfortably out of the maddening Nairobi city centre traffic jam and on your way home. At the Globe Cinema section, the nightmare begins with a traffic gridlock caused by impatient drivers not wanting to yield at the Kipande Road junction and drivers using the wrong outside lane and then forcing their way back into the lane intended for traffic proceeding to Ngara.

At Ngara you encounter a hoard of people jostling for position to cross the road on foot a scant 50 yards from the pedestrian overpass doing their best to block traffic and get run over by a vehicle in the process. To add to this confusion,’mkokoteni’ pushers are struggling to maneuver their carts piled high with assorted merchandise through the vehicular traffic oblivious to the danger to themselves and the other roads users while the cacophony is stepped up by  ‘matatus’ picking and dropping off passengers willy nilly on the road ignoring the bus stage a few yards away.

As you proceed towards Pangani, the same foolhardiness continues to manifest itself on that stretch of road with pedestrians casually crossing the road where cars are speeding past, while cyclists nonchalantly cycle their way along the road competing with the buses and trucks speeding dangerously close to them while studiously ignoring the cycling lanes intended for their use.  As you approach Pangani, matatus have converted part of the road into a bus stage and impeding the flow of traffic seems normal to them.  Further down the road, someone’s car has broken down or most likely run out of fuel and the hazard lights are blinking to warn other road users to be aware. There are no warning triangles as required by law, placed some distance before the vehicle. Traffic is flowing but with no formula because the slow traffic is on the fast lane, while the faster traffic is forced to bob and weave between lanes to maintain the speed required.

The speed limit is a fallacy as any casual glance will tell you because that bus just charged by at a speed way in excess of 100 kms/hr while the speed limit is 80 kms/hr for those monolithic public service vehicles while that decrepit pick up that has no business being on the road in teh first place is struggling to maintain a speed of 50 kms/hr and it is in the fast lane, the wrong lane for it!

All along the highway, all the rules and regulations of safe motoring are being ignored by all and sundry motorists, cyclists, pedestrians…………ALL! From the pedestrians walking on the roads and vehicle overpasses and underpasses, to the motorcyclist riding on the pedestrian walkway against the flow of traffic, to the cyclists and 'mkokoteni' guys oblivious to the dangers of using the vehicle overpasses as convenient shortcuts to where they are going, to the myriad of public service vehicles and private motorists who stop on the highway to drop off and collect god knows what and then speed off at a mad cap pace to catch up with lost time............ perhaps!

Let me also not forget the pedestrians jumping over safety barriers to make a mad dash across the road dicing and dueling with death in the process and inconveniencing the driving motorist. All of us have a role to play in terms of safe usage of these infrastructural masterpieces however harried and busy we are and we should take the trouble to understand and use them responsibly lest the usual refrain ‘serekali ingilie’ starts once the death toll escalates due to the carelessness exhibited by all of us.