Do you really know what hatred is?

I must confess at the outset that this is not intended to be a political commentary but my own perspective, right or wrong, about what I percieve to be happening.

The internet and social media is currently awash with a lot of hate speech and hate filled comments from one or the other side of the political supporters of the leading lights of the just concluded general election in Kenya. It is getting vicious and nasty and is now degenerating into tribal vitriol complete with disgusting posts in particularly bad taste regarding dogs mauling people from one side of the political divide though the analogy is certainly lost on me in terms of its relevance to what is happening on the ground. The relevant agency that is responsible for controlling this sudden outpouring of juvenile and puerile venom has its work cut out for it.

Recently, I came across some very emotional comments by one Facebook blogger (who I hope has been given the almighty ‘unlike’ boot by many of his followers and friends) who very vehemently went on and on about hating passionately people from a certain tribe in Kenya and how he would not wish to associate himself with them. It got me wondering whether that person is indeed living in Kenya or somewhere in the diaspora. The reason I ask this is how would he fail to associate with the people he so claims to hate if he lived in Kenya?

It matters not whether you are in school, university, working or in self-employment because you must inevitably associate with one or the other of those that you claim to hate whether as a teacher, a lecturer, your boss, your fellow colleague, your customer, your supplier, your plumber, the person you are standing next to in the queue to pay your bills or even that chap you stand next to as you take a leak in the toilet.

It is also very likely that you will interact with those that you claim to passionately detest simply because they are the ones to take your matatu fare, drive you on the bus or train, serve you a cup of tea or a beer at a bar, ring up your shopping at the local store or supermarket, sell you your favorite cut of meat or vegetables, give you a haircut or shave at your local barber shop, polish your shoes, service your vehicle, make you a sofa set, serve you at the bank counter, wait on you as you purchase uniform for your child and so one.

It could also be that man or woman who guards your belongings at the supermarket or that complete stranger who guides you to your chair in the darkened movie theatre or even that policeman who directs traffic at the roundabout so that you get home as quickly as possible. It could also be that very helpful call centre person that you talk to when your credit has been 'swallowed' by the phone and you are at your wits end or even that zumba or gym instructor that you so admire. Dare I say that that musician that you so adore belting out your favorite tune or the producer responsible for ensuring that the lyrics come out just right could be from that tribe you so abhor!

What about that award winning columnist or photo journalist that wrote a great article about you or your company or the praises from a myriad of people that you received about an achievement that you have accomplished? Is it possible that he (or they) is from that tribe that you have so virulently distanced yourself from? Is it likely that you ask of the tribal identity of the pilot of the Kenya Airways flight that you are boarding for that long flight to Europe or do you just trustingly board the flight believing that the airline has hired the best qualified person for the job?

I am yet to come across anyone with a (small or) huge label on his or her forehead or some other prominent part of their anatomy proudly announcing to all and sundry which ‘kabila’ they belong to since this would make it much easier to identify those that you want to avoid.  I would also like to imagine that while we all have our stereotypes of how people from a certain tribe should look like or behave; this is usually a juvenile game of hit or miss game that should be shunned by responsible people.

So, to those who profess unbridled hatred for those from certain tribes, do you really know what you are talking about or is this just an act you put on to conform to a certain illogical mindset? How do you ensure that you avoid those that you feel could murder you in your sleep, slip a vial of poison into your drink or slit your throat as they shave your beard in the absence of any unique identifying mark making them out to be what they are? Aren’t you being a mere hypocrite pretending that you hate that fellow from another tribe passionately while at the same time ignoring those that offer you services and belong to that same group that you hate.

In closing, I came across an article on the internet entitled ‘You are what you hate’ and that can be accessed vide the link http://www.lollydaskal.com/leadership/you-are-what-you-hate/ This article will provide some insights into the meaning of hate as well as some deeper understanding of it!

Spread the word that those who profess hate may be enlightened.

Its a scam dummy!!

I wonder how many $tarry eyed Kenyans we have out there mesmerized by stories from total strangers promising them untold wealth and million$ enough to keep them happy and contented for many years to come while their sole intention is to make your life a living hell as they fleece every last shilling from you while at the same time skillfully manipulating you to make one extra final payment to secure the deal of a lifetime. I have a story to tell that could be just one such of many Kenyans!

One of the clients at the bank where I work walked into my office recently and asked for a loan of $ 2,000.00 to repay back a loan that he had borrowed from someone for some unidentified transaction. It was obvious he was not being truthful as he could not look me in the eye and was shifting in his chair. Years of working in a bank has honed my instincts as to when someone is telling the truth or otherwise and I usually try to make the person relax so that he can open up by engaging in small talk, enquiring about his family and profession and assuring them that whatever they say shall be held in total confidence.

Having never dealt with this client before, I made small talk asking him what he did for a living and how business was. To my surprise, he is a trained engineer in one of those engineering lines that are few and far between. He runs his own business and has some good names on his client list, as he told me, many being among the big corporates in Kenya and therefore he has the potential to have a very successful business if well managed.  Having somewhat relaxed him by getting him to talk about what he was familiar with, I then sought to know the reason for his strange request but he was still not willing to disclose all continuing to squirm in his chair.

Then out of the blue he blurted out that he needed the money to pay some fee to Scotland Yard in London so that a substantial amount would be paid out to him from an investment that had matured in the UK. My antenna was up! Why would a police department involve itself in a commercial transaction between a bank and its client? Surely assuming that it was money laundering or terrorism related, the responsibility of finding out  rested with the transacting bank who if suspicious would then report the matter through the correct channels to the relevant authorities? I could tell that this was only half the story but decided to act as if it made a lot of sense to me and requested for supporting documents to back up his story so that I could see where this was going and whether i would be in a position to loan him the money.

Two hours later, the chap was back with some email correspondences from a firm in the Kent in the United Kingdom called Fidelity xxxxxxxxxx UK. The correspondences contained a copy of a document that was under a very official looking logo of “Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters, New Scotland Yard, LONDON” marked “Completed form to be submitted with 3,745GBP”. The client had completed all the requested details on the form and also attached a remittance slip from Natwest Bank for an amount of GBP 34,500.00 which I presumed that he had already paid. When I asked what relevance the $ 2,000.00 that he needed to borrow had on this transaction, he told me it was a final stamp duty that needed to be paid for the princely sum of GBP 45,745,000.00 (Kshs. 5.9 Billion) to be transferred to his account in Kenya! I was aghast.

I asked him to leave the papers with me for internal consultation in the bank and I would revert to him in due course. He prepared to leave and helpfully informed me that the name of his legal consultant in Kent was on the exchanges of emails and I was free to contact her if I so wished.

My internal consultant, the famous Mr. Google was summoned and after some instructions went to work. This was obviously a very sophisticated or a very recent advance payment scam, reported Mr. Google, since none of the principal actors by personal name or company referenced showed up anywhere on his data base.

There are several websites that report on international scams and if per chance you should receive an unsolicited email that is suspicious, googling any of the names on the email will invariably direct you to a site that reveals that you are about to be scammed. In this case none of the names appeared meaning the scam was still very much in its infancy and had not yet been widely circulated.

It was only by chance that after typing out the address appearing on the email exchanges (an address in Kent) that I knew for sure it was a scam. The address was genuine and was a commercial office complex occupied by many businesses including Fidelity xxxxxxxxxxx and Fidelity UK xxxxxxxx obviously the front companies that had been targettted and were being used in this scam. A further search of the phone number listed on the email by Mr. Google confirmed that we were dealing with someone using a cellphone so no fixed office for this group of scammers’ thank you.

I was shocked! Here was a 70 something old man, an engineer by profession being scammed in an advance payment scam where he had already potentially lost almost Kshs. 5 million in the pursuit of billions. Could he not see it was all a scam? Did he not have sons and daughters or a wife to confide in and get affirmation that the transaction was genuine? Had he been manipulated by the scammers who rely on the information being kept confidential by the person being scammed as they proceed to milk you out of your life savings while promising millions that are being dangled tantalizingly close to be paid out after you made another payment to another department, another tax office, another handling company, another security company and another and another always sure in the belief that so long as you don’t tell anyone else, you will reap the riches yourself?

It was sad and disheartening because I had seen this in a relative several years earlier who had been scammed in the same way over almost 4 months and had squandered his savings and had finally out of desperation approached me to lend him some Kshs. 200,000.00 with the promise of paying me Kshs. 1,000,000.00 after a month or once he was paid. Having immediately smelt a scam I had bought time by telling him that a fixed deposit that I had was going to mature in a week and that I would be able to give him the money then. I then approached his elder brother and told him the story that his younger brother had been scammed off close to Kshs. 750,000.00 (as he had told me) and was sinking deeper into debt as a result of continuing to borrow to fund the scammers. I have no idea how that particular saga ended but I was saddened that one so young and presumably with the ‘smarts’ to know when he was being scammed could get pulled in so quickly and easily.

You should know that no one is philanthropic enough to just throw money at you for nothing other than that they liked your name. In this day and age of the internet, there are scammer’s working day and night to relieve you of your hard earned money and they are ruthless, shameless and faceless individuals willing to do anything to separate you from your cash. They prey on the inherent greed of the human being and come out as confidants wishing to make your life better to the exclusion of everyone else. They get you into their confidence by telling you how your family will be pleasantly surprised when you suddenly reveal the fortune that you have managed to get and they convince you not to reveal to others what is happening lest they get greedy and attempt to harm you.

They do not have a care in the world about you or whether you are rich or poor because they know that once you are sold on their scam you will beg, borrow or steal from friends, relatives and  your workplace to fuel their insatiable greed and you will never come out on top. The best defense is to delete any suspicious emails unread lest you be taken in by the sob story of someone on their death bed and wishing to share their millions with you for a 15% stake so long as your account is used as the conduit for such funds.

So, beware the tyranny of ‘scam’ numbers, you have been warned!

Open Letter to Vice President of the Republic of Kenya:

Mr. Vice President,

Your comments at a press conference earlier today (7^th March 2013) have made me a very angry man and I am ashamed that they are coming from you my current Vice President and also that you hope to continue to be my Vice President in the next government if, and only if, Raila Odinga wins these elections.

I am tired of your cheap attempts to show yourself as being more sinned against then sinning. Were you not the same one calling for the ODM alliance in the last elections to go to court if they were dissatisfied with the outcome of the last elections? Were you not the same one that went on a shuttle diplomacy mission to save the skins of Uhuru and Ruto now your political rivals in the Jubilee Alliance from the clutches of the ICC? Were you not the same one who vilified Raila Odinga when you were on opposite sides of the political divide only to rush under his coattails when no one else wanted you? Why the sudden about turn if you are not happy with the way the IEBC is conducting its business? Why make a public statement that is likely to stir up emotions and lead to avoidable confrontations when you could very well have gone straight to court if you felt so aggrieved?

Additionally your alliance has signed a code of conduct willingly accepting that you would respect the outcome of the election results and that the IEBC would be the one to conduct the elections and that you would not interfere. Your friend the Chief Justice of Kenya has also made it abundantly clear that his courts would be available to you or anyone else to hear election petitions when called upon to do so. Why make a mockery of that piece of paper? Or were you merely signing it to go through the motions? What else will you sign when in power and then conveniently disown it when necessary? Don’t you trust your friend the Chief Justice to deliver swift and speedy justice through the courts if you feel so aggrieved?

Why then do you want to endanger my life and that of my family and fellow Kenyans with your incendiary comments which are a thinly veiled attempt to incite the ordinary Kenya going about his business and trying as best as possible to put food on the table? When will this impunity that the political class displays with alarming alacrity end? Why do you accept to be used to issue such statements when you are a sitting Vice President and not any other jua-kali politician who boasts of many years of experience including in the highest levels of diplomatic service as Foreign Affairs Minister and therefore should know better on the ramifications of his actions?

Could it be this is just panic setting in from a group of politicians that are realizing they are losing the election when they had all along convinced themselves they would win?  Whenever you go for elections, it is important to factor in the possibility that you may actually lose since that will save you a lot of anxiety and grief. It is also very likely that your presence in CORD and your recorded watermelon past could be the iceberg that sank the CORD juggernaut if indeed CORD loses and if you cannot bear to lose concede to the opposition and move on but stop this instigation that could land you in the Hague if all hell were to break lose on account of your utterances and lives were to be lost and property damaged.

I feel exposed and threatened by your very actions and at present would not care less who wins and who loses these elections since all I want is to be left in peace to carry on with my life as whoever becomes our next president will have little direct impact on my pay slip, my job evaluation and my bank balance. I will hold you personally responsible should anything happen to me, my family or my property since you cannot hide behind a cloak of collective responsibility when you were the mouthpiece for the CORD coalition.

My last piece of advice to you is lose those self-seeking election losers who do little to add to your legitimacy if your alliance forms the next government.

Yours faithfully,

An angry concerned Kenyan

Watch how you use your words and the assumptions people make!!

“We lost my brother…” appeared as a text message on my phone from a close friend recently.

In utter shock, my immediate response was “Which brother and what has happened??” since I had spoken to him the previous day and he had not hinted about anyone of his brothers and brothers-in-law, who I also know quite well, as ailing in any way. I quickly followed up with a phone call to my wife to break the sad news to her because this was terrible and as she was quite close to the wife of the sender of the message, she could perhaps get more information about this tragedy.

A few minutes later I got a call from my friend the sender of the bad news, with my first instinct being to ignore it since I am not very good at condoling with people more so if the tragedy (my assumption was that it had to have been an accident) had just happened. My better judgement took over and I accepted the call braced for a sad and solemn telephone call from one recently bereaved, and all was revealed!

The previous day, I had sent a text message to my friend with an innocent “How is Liz doing?”

To put everything into perspective, my friend with whom I am quite close to and call each other 'brother' has a sister called Liz who was vying as a women’s representative in a county on the slopes of Mount Kenya. My friend had been actively involved in campaigns for the sister and had virtually camped there for the previous two weeks doing whatever needed doing to get people to vote for her.

The day I sent the text message to him enquiring about Liz was the day after the recent general elections (presidential results still awaited - a story for another day) and he had commenced his journey back to Nairobi. We had also coincidentally spoken  soon after my text to him and I had assumed that he had decided to talk to me rather than texting back. We spoke about the sister’s fortunes and he told me he was not sure how she was doing as it was tough fight and some votes had not yet been tallied in her strongholds and as he could not wait for the final tallying had decided to return to Nairobi to catch up on other pressing matters.

My friend eventually saw my message enquiring about Liz the next day after a tiring 300 km journey where he never checked his messages and responded with the famous “We lost my brother…” message and I killed one of his brothers just like that!!

Now think about this for a moment at the comedy of errors here. I send a text, he calls me back and I assume it was as a result of my text. He sees my message the next day and responds to his 'brother' that his sister has lost but since we had spoken my original text is already long forgotten by me and I assume the worst.

We were both victims of assumptions, me assuming that the phone call the previous day was due to my text and hence the matter of the sisters fate having been concluded and him assuming that my enquiry about his sister had been sent the same day that he responded.

If you were in my shoes how would you have reacted?

D-Day Beckons:

Today is Friday 1^st March and it is the first Friday of the month of March and the last Friday before we go to the polls on Monday 4^th March 2013.

We have just a few days to decide (for those not yet decided) on whom we shall vote for as our elected representatives right from the President of Kenya to the county representative, a total of 6 people in all. This is the first time under the new constitution that we shall be electing such a huge number of people at a go and it will definitely take longer than we have been used to in the past.

All the candidates have held their political campaign rallies where they have promised, begged, cajoled, pleaded and requested you to vote for them and the endearing message from all those that are clamoring for our votes is that they shall be the real change agents that we have never had, never mind that some of the more experienced ones have also served in the government over the years in one role or another some with minimal impact on the efficiency of the government of the day when they were in service.

The destiny of this country now and for the future is in the hands of the citizens of this great country who must choose wisely because they must then live with the people that they have chosen to lead them for the next 5 years.

We are all praying that whatever the outcome of the elections to be held in a few days, peace shall prevail in Kenya and we shall conduct ourselves with decorum and respect because once again the eyes of the world are focused on Kenya as we go to the polls.

My message is vote early, vote peacefully and most importantly vote wisely!!

GOD BLESS KENYA!