Down town Nyeri the place to be:

Down town Nyeri is the place to be. A cacophonous place teeming with (confused) activity as pedestrians compete with delivery trucks, matatus, boda bodas and handcart pushers for right of way and where booming music coming from a myriad of speakers advertising the wares on sale deafens all but those with the keenest of hearing. This is epicenter of the matatu business, actually one of three, and affectionately known as ‘stage ya chini’, where matatus arriving from Nairobi, Muranga, Karatina, Othaya etc jostle for space as they pick up and disgorge their passengers like hungry beasts eating and vomiting at the same time creating an almost perpetual traffic gridlock and where the main parcel delivery pick up and drop off points for the various matatu Sacco’s are located. This must be how hell looks and sounds like on a normal day!

It is also where you have many micro and SME businesses located in a swathe awash with all manner of businesses from hardware, spares, used clothes, small supermarkets, wholesalers, green grocers, paper sellers, CD’s and VCD’s, hats, shoes, bananas and other fruits, assorted vegetables, restaurants, offices, cafes, hotels, opticians, drycleaners, mobile phones, airtime and so on. This is where the main Soko Mjinga market (no idea why it is named so) is located and where all manner of business is conducted by enterprising people who call this hodge podge, mish mash area their office or work place! In the evening this street becomes a large open air flea market where vegetables, shoes, clothes and all manner of goods are displayed on the pavements and on part of the road thanks to the largesse of the county government possible to appease the many disgruntled hawkers and other people who need to earn a living. God help you if you trample on someone’s wares so you have to look out where you step!

To add to this cacophony, Naivas Supermarket a national supermarket chain with stores across the country opened its doors recently (on 30th December 2014) to an almost tumultuous welcome from Nyeri residents – a New Year’s gift to them no doubt! This is the first building with escalators within the building and it looked like the grand stand at Immoler or Hockenheim what with the many residents wanting to experience the sensation of a first time ride on an escalator some even sitting down probably suffering from motion sickness. I am sure the other supermarkets did little business that day as a result of the excitement generated by Naivas because Nyeri residents now have a choice of supermarket to shop at between the existing ‘big’ three Kasturi, Samrat & Maathai and now Naivas so competition is bound to bring a lot of relief to the town residents and is bound to attract shoppers from other outlying areas in Nyeri County out to satisfy their curiosity and possibly get a good bargain in the process.

Welcome to Nyeri Naivas!!

The carcass count was high:

The carcass count was extremely high on my drive up one Monday morning. I counted at least 8 mangled and mashed remains of some unidentifiable animals on the 141 kilometer drive to Nyeri from my home in Nairobi. Usually it is only one or two unfortunate animals that have been dispatched to their maker on the same drive most days the question of whether animals go to heaven or hell notwithstanding!!

So could there be a logical explanation to this phenomenon? I have my theories.

Perhaps these unfortunate animals are in some form of torpor and in their frenzied state of mind find they are unable to resist the urge to jump into the path of a fast moving vehicle to a sure suicide. Many must be aware of the lemming effect where Lemmings, an arctic rodent, have become the subject of a widely popular misconception that they commit mass suicide when they migrate which is apparently not true. Or maybe our own animals here in Kenya just have the urge to see how adept they might be at dodging a speeding vehicle as they scamper across the road……a death wish so to speak. I wonder also how many more escaped unscathed or with some injuries in their macabre dance with death!

Now for those who are non-golfers stop reading right here since the rest of this post will make no sense to you because you have to experience golf to understand it fully!!

This insane lemming like behavior reminds me of that of a golfer because golf is one of those sports that is constantly looking to humiliate you, single handicap or being a professional golfer notwithstanding. From the time you pick up the sport and get started, it’s like you have been injected with a hormone or a drug that causes you to go into a state of torpor and lose all your sensibilities and makes you keep on coming back for more mistreatment, humiliation and punishment for I am yet to meet a golfer who at one time or another did not contemplate throwing their golf clubs into the nearest lake or water body after a particularly torrid round of golf!

The relationship of many amateur golfers to the sport is in a constant state of flux of love and hate because one day you can pull of a wonderful, flawless round of golf and make some good money from your betting friends in addition to being called up to the podium to receive your prize while congratulations and accolades come in from all those admiring your prowess. The very next day (and for two weeks to come) you are in golfing hell, struggling to stay out of the forest, the bunkers and the rough and hacking, shanking, topping and generally having a miserable time on the course. Your efforts after such a showing will be rewarded with a well boiled goat head or some other equally inane prize in front of all the guests & members as well as being forced to dig deep into your pocket to pay out on your bets with additional humiliation particularly today of your vain efforts being posted as a social media video a permanent record of your tribulations as you tried to get out of a bunker!

Golfers are therefore like the carcasses that I came across recently on the highway but this time victims of the golf course whose sole purpose it would seem is to place a fairway bunker at the nearest reaches of your driver, place the flag at the position most likely to attract your ball into the accompanying greenside bunker, create water hazards and out of bounds that magically attract golf balls, roughs that miraculously swallow golf balls, and other obstacles designed to frustrate the average amateur golfer into almost committing suicide as they attempt to navigate the gamut of any golf course around the world traversing whizzing golf balls, wayward hitters, difficult and wordy rules, bunkers, water hazards, the rough, out of bounds and etiquette rules that defines how one dresses, behaves, stands, marks their ball and generally ruining your well-ordered life as you struggle to make head or tail of it all.

Despite all the challenges, and like the proverbial suicidal lemming, you are bound to see the same golfer next week coming back for more punishment and humiliation, throwing themselves at the mercy of the golf course waiting to dodge another speeding vehicle in the name of the game of golf and hoping to come out unscathed on the other side for however badly you play you always want to come back to prove to yourself and the world that your golf isn’t really so bad or if you had an excellent round that it was not just a flash in the pan and you need to prove to yourself that you can repeat your excellent performance.

No golfer after all ever leaves home with the intention of playing a bad round of golf, but the reality is that the golf highway is plagued with numerous obstacles and speeding vehicles enough to make you throw a tantrum and forever heaping the blame on someone else…..anyone from your caddy, your fellow players, your boss, your spouse,your choice of club, your friends and your heavy head after a wild party the previous day…….anyone but your bad golf skills!!

But that is the essence of the game of golf and why golfers keep coming back for more as we are all gluttons for punishment like those trouble makers in school back in the day who, try as they may, always found themselves on the receiving end of a punishment. If this isn’t madness doing the same thing and hoping for a different result then I don’t know what is and all golfers should get their head examined every so often for their own sanity sake!

So remember to keep them straight and on the fairway lest you become part of the carcass count that I passed by enroute to Nyeri not too long ago…....……and for those non-golfers who have continued to read this post until the end, take on the fairways to understand what this post is all about!!

Adios!!

The Brits have failed........

I am not surprised at the emerging evidence that some people ate ‘chicken’ a few years ago through inflated pricing for the printing of ballot and examination papers. I am however surprised that the people called the British whose language we inherited alongside a slew of our own ‘native’ languages thanks to several years of their colonization in the early part of the 20th Century and who are supposed to be the defenders of proper diction, command and vocabulary required of the English language could fail so miserably when it comes to identifying someone to represent their business interests. ‘Willis the Wordsmith’ is probably furious they did not choose him!

It would be assumed that for an agent representing the business interests of a British company, the very basic requirement for such an executive appointment would be a suitable candidate identified after a well defined recruitment process who would be at the minimum someone with a good command of the English language in both its spoken and written form and well versed in the idiosyncrasies, grammatical requirements, sentence construction and rules required of being able to express oneself in the Queen’s English. After all, how would you be expected to converse with someone who cannot talk the same language as you?

But it looks like in their haste and probably without due care and regard to what would be considered proper employment practices, they have settled on a fellow whose command of the English language at least in its written form (since I have not heard him speak) could at best be described as wanting. This company is now a candidate for 'laughing stock of the year' in the British corporate world!

The diction and spelling of this agent can be best compared to that of a 6 year old just learning his alphabets. His keyboard continuously and shamelessly slashes, hacks and distorts what he is trying to say in his broken, grammatical style with no flair, no capitalizing of his proper nouns and no full stops and commas as required under the stringent rules of business English. It must have caused his employers to grimace now that every correspondence is being scrutinized in a court of law every time his emails and any other written correspondences that he may have penned are read out because with defiitely no secretary and no secretariat he must have been forced to write letters and emails himself.

This agent may have been brilliant in obtaining business for his employer in Kenya but the High Court in Britain should also bring charges of ‘assaulting’ the English language against both he and his employer to teach the British Corporate world a lesson in executive appointments!

Exams for 5 & 6 year olds?

The children of today are a hardened lot. My colleague recently informed me that she needed time off to take her 6 year old daughter for an early morning interview at one of the leading private schools in town. The trend in private schools in Kenya is for children to undergo an interview (written) to determine their suitability to join a particular school. Yes, even 5 & 6 year olds joining Standard 1 & 2 in these schools go through this interview process I learnt. I am not sure if my grown up daughters underwent the same interviews at the tender ages of 5 & 6 years old. It was too long ago for me to remember!

I began chatting with my colleague and she brought up an interesting issue that I had never thought about. While it is the right of every private school to prescribe entry level requirements to join their school, what happens to such a child who fails their interview process? Since the school is in all likelihood going to disclose the results of the interview to the parent and not the child, how does a parent break this news to the child that they have failed? Does a child of 5 or 6 years even understand the concept of failing at this tender age?

If I were the parent of a child who failed in such an interview, I would lie to my child that the school was full and could not take any more children, which means that my conscience is also pricked by that lie since I cannot tell my child the truth that they have failed a simple interview where numbers, alphabets, drawing and coloring were their undoing (how mistaken I was. see footnote herebelow!). What psychological trauma would my child suffer on account of the truth that they have failed in an interview at such an early age? Would the truth as told to them be then ingrained in their sub-conscious minds that they cannot possibly succeed in later life? Would it make them feel later on in life that they are good for nothing failures?

I honestly don’t know but this business of interview tests for very young children is just another money making scheme for the private schools similar to the practice of sale of tender documents in the corporate world supposedly to discourage time wasters and it should be discontinued because it is a source of worry to the parents should the child fail and a possible contributor of long term psychological trauma for the failed child and their lying parents!! Kids should be left to be kids at tender ages and subjecting them to tests that last throughout the day is surely taking things too far.

I am not an educationist and would like to understand the rationale behind these things because surely this must have the approval of some body within the government seeing that it has been happening for a very long time. Since all schools issue report forms to their students in whichever class they are in why aren’t these results taken as a record of the performance of a child and their ability therefore to proceed to the next class in a new school? Call me naïve if you wish but as a social commentator I need to know if this is right, just and fair!

Footnote: By the way, my colleague later disclosed to me that the interview tests are real and involve papers in English, Mathematics, Kiswahili & Social Sciences. Social Sciences!! No wonder these kids lug around those heavy school bags loaded with tomes of school books with many suffering from back problems at tender ages. And yes my colleague’s daughter passed the interview tests and shall be admitted to Standard 2 in the school in question.

For Men Only: Do you drill a hole in the ice?

This is a post that ladies shall not be able to understand because it relates to a closely guarded secret relating to a room frequented by men. So ladies stop right here……you have been warned!!

Now guys, I am sure you have all visited those high end hotels and restaurants that have sprouted across the country in the last few years. I am talking about those posh places where you are either invited as a guest for a cocktail party or a corporate event and where the price of a beer would afford you two beers at your local pub. I am specifically referring to those that now have the practice of conspicuously consuming huge quantities of ice……………………………..in their urinals which only happens in the men’s bathroom!

Before I continue, ladies………..…especially you over there in the corner (no names mentioned but you know yourself), yes you, stop reading now for this post is directed at the men!

I wondered for a long time why the waste of perfectly good ice in the men’s urinal. The secret can now be revealed. The main reason from my online research (yep…even such questions can be answered on google!) is that the melting ice acts as a slow, continuous flush washing away the warm piss as it melts the ice and more importantly leaves hardly any residual smell. It is also cheaper than those urinal balls that we are all used to. Inane as it may sound, many men also forget to flush away their piss even when the flush is provided at the urinal and in my opinion also prevents back splatter when your aim is off for reasons of trembling hands or being in drunken stagger mode or any other reasons. It also discourages flies from swarming since they cannot stand the cold air generated by the ice cube filled urinal.

Since I know that the ladies have heeded my warning and stopped reading this post after my initial warnings, I hope the guys can forgive me for revealing this secret of the men’s washrooms!!

But it doesn’t end there! I feel that there is a nefarious reason for the use of ice and it is also a plot to punish those who are getting on in age and are therefore unable to maintain a stream of piss strong enough to melt a substantial quantity of ice that a younger bloke would easily decimate in no time. The older you are the lesser the power of the stream so the possibility of drilling a hole clean through to the bottom of the ice should not be attempted lest you sprain one of the muscles that powers the piss stream!

I was reminded of this over the weekend when a visit to the urinal in one of those posh hotels revealed that the occupant prior to my visit had drilled a perfect hole right through to the bottom of the ice. My own lame attempt to emulate that fellow hardly seemed to shift any significant numbers of ice cubes much as a summoned all my reserves leading me to the logical conclusion that I was clearly in the over the hill league when it comes to powering my stream which is hardly solace to someone trying hard to pretend that he is still very much in the picture when it comes to macho matters!!.

So, if you are no longer able to drill a hole in the ice you are not alone but have joined a growing list of dribblers whose abilities have taken a pounding in many fronts over the years. As for the ladies who could not follow simple instructions contained in the beginning of this post, you can be the ambassadors of the little secret that men have been hiding all these years.

More insurance at my age. No thank you!

“Good morning Sir. I hope the Lord has been merciful and kind to you thus far!” the guy mumbled! At first I didn’t hear what he said so I asked him to repeat himself. This young man was probably in his early 20’s fresh out of college and raring to go out to make an impression in this big bad world selling life insurance. Why does everyone think that Bank Managers are always in need of life insurance and are therefore the first port of call for any aspiring insurance salesman?

Back to the young man! I stopped him dead in his tracks after he repeated his initial greeting unsure of what I had just heard and then proceeded to lecture him about his sales technique. You see, in sales and unless you are very sure of the affiliation of the party you are selling your products to never, ever invoke religion as a tactic to get empathy or whatever from your potential client more so now after Pastor Kanyari has been exposed for what he is though I digress!!

Invoking the name of the Lord to help you sell your product is unnecessary and unprofessional simply because you are telling the person you are selling to that you do not respect their religious beliefs. They could be atheists, agnostics, pagans, Hindus, Zoroastrians or Hare Krishna’s for all you know meaning that reference to the Lord could inevitably create a barrier with them. The fact that you have pre-judged a person as being of a Christian persuasion simply because of an assumption based on predominance, name and vocation is wrong and unacceptable and is like assuming that all those people that you meet in a bar are there to partake of an alcoholic drink!

I continued with my lecture to him that at the age of many Bank Managers it would be very expensive to purchase a life insurance product on account of our relatively advanced age and having been in the financial services sector for a considerable length of time then they would have long realized that the employers pension was never going to be enough on retirement and would have therefore already taken out a long term investment linked life policy as they plan for their retirement. In any case, I went on, I already had employer group linked policies for personal accident, medical and life and in addition I had three separate investment policies (one of them with his employer), a personal accident policy, a Domestic package policy, a motor policy, a separate medical policy and a golfer’s policy! All I now need is an insurance policy guaranteeing a reduction in my handicap in future!

The fact of the matter is that anyone over the age of 45 years is probably already in a relationship with one or more insurance companies on a long term investment policy to mature when they are in their 60’s. The focus therefore for the young aspiring insurance salesman should be on their age mates fresh out of college with hardly any commitments and get them to buy into a term life investment linked policy however small the initial premium. It looks like they believe that only the Bank Managers who can afford higher premium policies are the quickest way to riches! No wonder insurance penetration has been hovering around the 3% mark in Kenya for such a long time!

But this young guy was persistent I must admit and he must have been in the front row of his insurance sales class because after I was done, unfazed he asked me for references………………….. after offering to sell me WIBA! What, hadn’t he heard a thing I had said about age? I was now tempted to boot him out of my office because my friends are my age mates and the same argument as above holds true with many of them already having investment plans in place and sending them a fresh faced insurance salesman to sell them another policy would just piss them off royally!

What I told him in resignation at his persistence was that he was better off looking for people his own age that he could engage with and fascinate with the insurance products that he had to offer and forget about the guys who were already through with education policies and school fees policies because this is where many of my age mates are since they in all likelihood were already investing considerable amounts in investment linked life policies.

So my friends, you are safe because I decided a long time ago that I would not provide insurance references of my friend to salespeople to come and bother you in your offices. This is out of empathy since I know you feel the same way that I do when confronted by them yet you feel you are upto your ears in premium payments already.

Do however take out inpatient medical insurance for your aging parents since there are still some insurance underwriters that accept to have someone on cover so long as they have not surpassed a certain age. If my memory serves me right the one with the maximum age limit allows those upto the age of 75 to continue on cover so long as they signed up before that age but subject to certain restrictions on the scope of cover.

It would be appreciated if the same spirit of not referring me to any insurance salespeople would also be observed as a quid quo pro and with all due respect to the hard working people in insurance sales out there!

Is this the side of Nyeri that I have never seen?

Is this the side of Nyeri County that I always hear about but have never really seen first-hand, of young men too drunk most of the time to do anything meaningful with their lives? This story shall have to end rather abruptly because I have no conclusions and I am at a loss because an inheritance of the amount that he received would indicate that this is not your normal story of someone from a poor family being jobless and therefore unable to fend for himself and thus being reduced to a life of perennial drinking and partying.

Recently a man hobbling on crutches walks into my office. He looks to be in pain and do I detect a whiff of alcohol? You see I operate an open door policy (even if the physical door remains closed) where anyone, client or colleague, can walk in without an appointment and so long as I am not busy on something else.

As is my custom I welcome him into my office and he sits down. Now the smell of alcohol is undeniable and hangs heavily in the air. I suspect that this is another sob story to the Bank Manager and I can bet a million bob I will not be disappointed. So he starts off rather hesitantly about how he has recently had an accident with his vehicle and now the car requires to be fixed so that he may sell it, the quotation for which is a princely sum of Kshs. 125,000.00. He is expecting some money from another bank being his share of his late father’s estate and does not have the money in his account at present but would like a loan that we can then recover when the estate proceeds come in ‘soon’!

The guys is obviously inebriated, actually plastered would be a more apt description, despite it being only 1.00 pm in the afternoon and is repeating the same story in a different version trying to get me to see his side of the story. I tell him that I require to see evidence relating to the purported transfer of money to his account with us which after some fumbling and mumbling he claims to have understood. I then ask him in Kiswahili if he has understood me, “Umenielewa” to which he belligerently responds “Sijalewa” (I am not drunk)!! It takes a lot of my considerable will power for me not to burst out laughing because he is either hard of hearing or is hearing his own things but like the serious sot that he clearly is, he is denying his drunkenness even when he has not been asked the question!

Before I continue, let me retract a little and put this story into perspective as I found out after he had left the office on his merry way Kshs. 500.00 bob richer thanks to a loan to him.

The father passed away recently and was a businessman of considerable repute in town owning various businesses and properties. His assets were distributed by the administrators of his estate and the visitor to my office had inherited some good money in cash as well as the accident prone vehicle which he now needed to repair. It was probably just sheer luck that had kept him alive after the accidents as shall become clear shortly. God after all supposedly takes care of drunkards and children!

Immediately the inheritance was transferred to his recently opened account with the bank he started on a spree of heavy drinking and partying and wasteful spending if his current state was anything to go by. This ensured that a small fortune of over Kshs. 2 Million in cash was no more a few short months later. Daily cash withdrawals either at the ATM or at the bank counters while accompanied by a group of 2 or 3 henchmen no doubt out to share in the spoils was the order of the day and with no credits to the account this tap had to eventually run dry. Probably abandoned by his friends now that he is penniless he appears desperate to resume some semblance of a respectable life style and with no apparent income sources had visited the bank on a mission to spin me a yarn and convince me about some money coming to him as a further inheritance that I suspect is just a tale as tall as Aesop’s fables!

I was having none of his story which was disjointed and clumsy in any case and interspersed with tirades against other family members in successful businesses nearby and bitter denunciations about them all pointing to a rather troubled man. As I had figured out all along he changed tact and cut to the chase and openly asked me to lend him some money with promises of repaying me ‘soon’ which I parted with glad to get rid of him from my office which was now literally foggy with alcoholic fumes!!

As I sent him on his way with a Kshs. 500.00 loan (which I am sure I shall never see) and profuse expressions of gratitude from him I couldn’t help but feel sorry and wonder what had led to this troubled man being where he was. Was it a lack of financial discipline as he was growing up? Did he have a very disadvantaged upbringing? Or was he just a careless person?

Tafakari hayo!!

Pastor, Conman or Genius?

I am not surprised at the story that aired over a recent weekend on a leading TV station and that has caused a tumult and uproar across the length and breadth of Kenya. I am not surprised because I have come to the realization that the human being is capable of anything under the sun, moon and the entire solar system. As we fume, gallivant and curse this fellow let us take a moment to reflect on what he has done.

Wikipedia definition: “Potassium permanganate is an inorganic chemical compound with the chemical formula KMnO4. It is a salt consisting of K+ and MnO−4 ions. Formerly known as permanganate of potash or Condy's crystals, it is a strong oxidizing agent. It dissolves in water to give intensely pink or purple solutions, the evaporation of which leaves prismatic purplish-black glistening crystals”.

Forget all those long confusing words at the beginning of the definition and concentrate on the last sentence”………… dissolves in water to give intensely pink or purple solutions ………….” and that folks is how a Form 2 dropout conned masses of people into believing that when their feet were bathed in holy water they would bleed and have their sins expunged/illness dissolved and all for the princely sum of Kshs. 310.00.

Now rather than calling this guy a conman and at the risk of upsetting some already very upset folks out there, this guy is a genius Form 2 drop out or not! How could he have zeroed in on that one fact from a confusing scientific definition of a chemical substance and used it to his advantage to get people to believe in his bloody (pun intended) powers? What is different with the ignorant shuka clad ‘Maasai’ who goes around with a vial of fool’s gold dust and sells it to unsuspecting clueless but greedy people at a throwaway price who only realise that they have been conned at the assayers office when they go to have the ‘gold’ tested.

The problem with many of us is that we are all human beings in our approach to get rich/get well schemes and scams. It is such a revelation to know that only you have the magic key that shall open the door to unbelievable fortunes that given the right circumstances the “Maasai” with the fool's gold dust vial who does not seem to know the true value of what he is holding, ignorant and primitive as he may appear shall have you eating out of his hands for a piece of the action the minute his sob story touches your heart while he knows full well that the promise of a quick buck to you is enough motivation to ignore your better judgement! While at it you shall keep the information to yourself lest another spoilsport comes along to ruin your payday. What a genius………..!

There was a man who was exposed some years ago with a supposedly life threatening ailment which was in fact a well-made up liver that looked like a festering wound that he used to elicit donations from sympathetic passersby as he lay pitifully on the streets his ‘wound’ exposed for all to see. That fellow would have put any Hollywood makeup artist to shame with his creation which was so realistic that people were horrified just looking at his ‘wound’. He was a bloody genius if you ask me.

If these are not examples of gifted, talented geniuses then I think we have got it all wrong in terms of the definition of genius which is:
1. Exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability. 2. An exceptionally intelligent person or one with exceptional skill in a particular area of activity. 3. A person regarded as exerting a powerful influence over another for good or evil.

So, if I may pose a question, why the outrage, shock and anger? Is it because our own inadequacies have been exposed while we secretly admire and marvel at the guts that are shown by these guys in using their creativity to make a livelihood for themselves? Is it because we are embarrassed that a Form 2 dropout got the drop (pun intended) on us and has conned our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters while making a fortune along the way? Would we be reacting the same way if this was a professor of chemistry or would be applauding his genius obtained after too many hours bent over petri dishes, Bunsen burners, beakers and flasks while combining various chemicals of the reactivity tables?

For good measure, this conman pastor business is now one of the most trending topics on social media at present and he is revelling in the attention and free publicity that he is getting knowing full well he shall still have a packed house come Sunday. What a genius!!

I must hastily add that I am not an advocate of religious conmanship or any conmanship for that matter but a mere student of human nature who is making the point that we should try and look at the sheer inventiveness that goes into some of these scams and only hope that if this creative energy was harnessed in a more positive manner how far we would be as a country!

What is this leadership we have been saddled with?

Some stories sound stranger than fiction. When a whole senator is mentioned on social media as having misbehaved at an international airport and causing a security breach simply because he refuses to follow procedure of producing correct identification documents because he is a big shot yet such demands should be made on the hoi polloi ‘watu’ then we need to get really scared.

When an MP in obvious disregard of firearms handling protocols discharges his gun accidentally at an airport then we must ask ourselves some questions regarding his competence to carry a dagger let alone a loaded firearm. When another MP is accidentally shot by his own trained body guard who should be last person to shoot his charge then we must ask ourselves some searching questions about whether there was more to this saga than meets the eye!

When a senators wife is sensationally on national TV complaining to the world how her husband has made her life a living hell by removing all the furniture in the house, cutting off the water and electricity and even carting away the gas cylinder from the house just so that she can be forced to vacate a property where she resides courtesy of a court order, then brethren we need to ask ourselves what kind of leadership we have while running for the hills at full tilt!

When other elected leaders blatantly and in the full view of the world are named as beneficiaries of grabbed parcels of land worth billions of Kenya shillings from Lamu, Kisii, Makueni, Nairobi and other parts of the country then surely we must all be dreaming and shall soon wake up to find that it was indeed all just a bad nightmare!

I could go on and on with various examples of a leadership run amok but these examples should suffice being the most recent ones that come to mind because all this is happening while we are wide awake, sober, of sound mind and in a state of righteous indignation! Whether the stories are true or false is neither here nor there because as responsible leaders, like Ceaser’s wife, our leaders should be above suspicion and reproach. However, the regularity and continued mentions of scandalous behavior among one or other of our leadership gives rise to a probable likelihood of some truth in the tales to be believed even by their most diehard supporters!

Wikipedia describes leadership as "a process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task". For example, some understand a leader simply as somebody whom people follow or as somebody who guides or directs others, while others define leadership as "organizing a group of people to achieve a common goal". But, do our leaders really fit into this description of leadership based on the few examples portrayed above?

Looked at another way, and going by the popular adage that the people choose the leaders they deserve, does it mean that we are really no better than those that we elect from the hundreds of leaders that try to convince us that they are our best bet to get us from Sodom & Gomorrah to the Promised Land be it at the county or national level? Are we so narrow minded and parochial that we cannot elect any other leaders other than the same ones guaranteed to embarrass us one more time as their last hurray?

Many of the antics of the leaders (that we have collectively chosen) are nothing short of criminal and a blatant disregard for the rights under the constitution of those that have elected them and for which they have taken an oath to defend since they continue to trample us underfoot, ride roughshod on us and generally get away with literally murder.

Many of their antics would result in an immediate arrest for those less connected in the hallowed precincts of the corridors of power as has been demonstrated time and time again from as far back as any of us can remember and many of our retired politicians must be surely gnashing their teeth and tearing off their hair (where it exists) when they see these excesses whether they be still alive and (barely) kicking or somewhere in heaven, hell or that in between place called purgatory!! There must surely be two sets of criminal laws in existence in Kenya today, for the leaders and then for the rest of us hoi polloi ‘watu’ otherwise how else do you explain the apparent disconnect in the application of the law?

In the Kenyan context, we need to redefine leadership to include some of the antics and excesses portrayed by our leaders because why should be keep making the same mistakes year in year out of electing people with similar characteristics if they do not fit into the mold of responsible leaders and as per the universally accepted description from Wikipedia unless we are the perfect example of doing the same thing day in day out and hoping for different results!! It is likely that other countries out there also suffer from a dearth of good leadership but as good Africans we must firstly be intent on cleaning up our own leaders within our homestead before venturing out to correct the leadership in the next homestead!

I know we have some hard working and genuine leaders out there who are as unhappy with the state of affairs in our country as the majority of us voters are to whom I apologize to in advance. I am miffed and feeling utterly helpless about our predicament and a ‘ventfest’ was long overdue. If it is not one drama, it is another and twice on weekends just to piss us off more by Monday.

I shall not blame the devil for our predicament nor ask God for his intercession for that matter because we are where we are because we chose those that now lead us today - dirty socks, torn undies and all!!

The inexorable march of progress along Mombasa Road:

I drove down to the Coast recently where I was a guest in a friend’s family villa for 3 days at Vipingo Ridge in Kilifi. The villa was my wife’s idea to celebrate my birthday and also get in a few days of golf and R&R. The villa is a modern 5 bedroom all en-suite place with a swimming pool and Jacuzzi and set in a well landscaped garden all fit for a king and his queen! We were well taken care of by the resident cook, housekeeper and gardener during our stay clearly more than eager to have visitors whom they could take care of. That’s a story for another day though!!

We always prefer to drive to the coast otherwise you are forced to hire a car for the duration of your stay so as to get around or worse still use a taxi cab at horrendous rates since taxis in Mombasa are so expensive. The drive down is an exercise in infinite patience and driving skill as you navigate the 500 odd kilometers or so of Mombasa Road from Nairobi competing with the heavy commercial vehicles transporting goods and commodities to and from various East African countries like DRC, Uganda, South Sudan, Rwanda & Burundi along with the long distance passenger buses racing to their destinations to pick up yet more passengers for the return journey from whence they set off.

Unlike other times we have driven to and from the Coast, this time there were few personal vehicles on the road and no tourist vans suggesting that Mombasa has taken a beating from the terrorism activities witnessed there over the past few months where hotels are struggling in terms of business…………..or most tourists are choosing to fly!

What struck me the most as we travelled down (and back) was the amount of ongoing projects along the route all seemingly geared towards the standard gauge rail project whose first phase is scheduled for completion in 2017 and whose construction was touted to commence in October 2014. Well folks I am happy to say that there is indeed some action happening on the ground in this regard.

I am sure that any project of such magnitude would have serious logistics in place to ensure that the tight timelines are met from land compensation issues, materials supplies, human resource needs, heavy equipment sourcing, security and so forth. This is evident wherever they have set up some camp or another along the entire route as they also create access roads and construct prefabricated structures and other necessities for the comfort and safety of their assets. A lot of heavy construction equipment is evident in many of the camps, possibly the main central supply camps to other smaller camps/work sites within a specified area. So as others choose to play politics with this very important project, stuff is definitely going on!!

We could also not help noticing the sheer volume of flatbed trucks laden with all sorts of heavy construction equipment as we drove to the Coast. Whether these are solely for the standard gauge rail project or for other projects across the country is not certain, but one thing is clear, the levels of investment in heavy construction equipment is impressive, as well as being a pointer to intense construction projects happening in the country. We also came across several convoys of extra-long trucks carrying wind generator towers and rotor blades (for probably Turkana Wind Farm). The sheer size of this equipment is mind boggling and a sight to behold with each blade being all of 50-70 feet or more in length. You can imagine the length of the truck transporting such equipment. Somewhere along the way, a convoy of trucks carrying boilers (or silos) slowed us down to a veritable crawl no doubt destined for one of the factories in the region

No doubt all this activity shall translate into business opportunities for a large number of people either directly involved in the actual projects as skilled laborers and suppliers or indirectly as beneficiaries of economic activity associated with large scale projects from accommodation facilities, hotels and restaurants, retail shops, mobile money, phone repairs, watch repairs etc along the planned routes. These kinds of projects have the potential to turn around whole communities that are located in the immediate neighborhood of the ongoing projects and any right thinking citizen should be as anxious to see that these projects are a success simply because of the physical changes that follow in their wake. India as an example, with its 60,000 kilometers of rail tracks has probably grown into an economic giant partly because of the ease of transporting, goods, services and people cheaply and over long distances thanks to the Indian Railways the largest public sector employer in that country.

Ironically, this project to some extent also spells doom to the main purveyors of the tonnes of equipment, supplies and materials required by the standard gauge project, the thousands of long haul trucks that have been the main transporter of goods and commodities from Mombasa to hundreds of industrial, commercial and institutional companies across East Africa once the cheaper and faster option of rail transport becomes a reality. But for now, the truck rules supreme as it cargoes its precious commodities and machinery to drive the economies of the East African Community member countries.

I am glad I drove down to the Coast and back notwithstanding the slow 7 hours journey thanks to the hundreds of trucks on the road because it gave me an opportunity to see the progress made in this mega project costing billions of shillings, probably the largest one in Kenya since independence as well as observe first-hand the movement of vast quantities of machinery, industrial goods and other commodities. Brace yourselves for emerging business opportunities when the Nairobi to Mombasa phase of the standard gauge rail project is completed because with journey times estimated at 4 hours one way to Mombasa, it shall be possible to live in Nairobi and run a comfortable and profitable business venture somewhere in Mtito Andei and yet commute daily back to Nairobi.

14/10/14

I have been on leave:

I have just completed my leave and it was a well-deserved two weeks of rest and recreation – R&R. as my family is based in Nairobi, the Nairobi traffic was my biggest irritant and I now even more than ever before wonder how I was able to survive all that time in the big city. I also found out that we are now a nation of tortoises and sloths driving around at zero speed and clogging up the roads in the process.

On one memorable drive along the Nairobi-Limuru Road while on leave, there was a solid line of traffic on both outbound lanes as private vehicles tried to keep up with the long distance trucks just below the 50 kilometers per hour speed limit. How ridiculous you might think until you are the one facing a roadside magistrate and being slapped with an over speeding fine!! Nowadays people are so scared of being caught over speeding that they would rather err on the side of caution and therefore crawl through life at a speed of 50 kilometers per hour or less……..only in Nairobi!!

The issue of speeding is now one of the conversational topics you are likely to have when you meet up with friends as well as warning anyone new into the country to be aware of the speed rules and therefore they should drive sloooowly!! Alcoblow comes a close second in favorite topics for discussion.

But I am now back to Nyeri and what a difference two weeks has made. The main road into town is now being re-carpeted and in some sections being completely redone. The abandoned section of the road just after Gatitu at Wambugu Farm has also been completed. Traffic flows have been seriously affected as they have closed off parts of the road and diverted traffic to use alternate (almost none existent) roads as the asphalt laying machine does its thing. It almost feels like a mini Nairobi what with the resultant traffic jams.

I am not sure if road closure notices are a legal requirement as I have not seen any notice of intention to close the roads to vehicular traffic in Nyeri but all seem to be taking it in their stride though I would like to bash someone over the head for increasing my commute time to work by a factor of almost 4 – from 4 minutes to 15 minutes!!

All in all I am well refreshed and raring to go through this rat race called life even as we hurtle to a crescendo in this final quarter of the year 2014. Before we know it we shall be celebrating Christmas and the New Year!!

How government services have evolved:

It was dog-eared; its spine broken and separating and it looked pitiful. The almost two decades of poor handling had definitely taken its toll and it showed. Years of being neglected and confined to a small space with the occasional break to be scrutinized as necessary were showing and it was at the breaking point and almost giving up the ghost. It was just a matter of time and the inevitable would happen and it would be rejected as undeserving of being considered of any positive use any more.

It was my national ID card that vital document that all Kenyans over the age of 18 are expected to acquire so as to give them access to jobs, services and recognition as bona fide citizens of the Republic of Kenya. It had spent the last 18 years in one wallet or another, constrained to spend more time than necessary in a cramped compartment a victim of circumstances that demanded that I have it on me and in its original form at all times to enable me identify myself at the MPesa agent, when entering a building or government establishment, cashing a cheque or when required to identify myself by a competent authority.

On its occasional forays out of its compartment squeezed in between ATM card, NSSF Card, Club membership card, business cards and other assorted flotsam unfortunate enough to find their way into my wallet, it had lain in countless pigeon holes in one building reception or another no doubt enjoying the fresh air it had been denied while in the wallet, had been photocopied countless times for one reason or another warming itself on the photocopier’s afterglow and its time was surely up. I had to get a replacement.

So it was with some trepidation that I visited the Huduma Centre in Nyeri when I saw the sign had been put up announcing its arrival intent on obtaining a replacement ID as soon as possible. I was however first time unlucky as they were just setting up shop and not yet ready to serve the public as I was informed. I was however taken aback by the friendliness of the staff with one particular guy engaging me with promises of WOW! services devoid of the usual sloth and delays within the government bureaucracy that we had all come to accept as the hallmark of service in government.

The set up was also warm, inviting, pleasant and welcoming with the usual government issue furniture replaced by decor and color schemes more suited to a busy commercial office of a successful mobile service provider, with the staff resplendent in smart uniforms. I was told that the centre would be ready to serve customers in another two weeks and was requested to go back then.

I gave it three weeks and I was back. Would they now be ready to serve me or was it just the usual long on promises and short on commitment business? After being given a numbered token from the token machine which even lets you know how long you may be expected to wait based on others ahead of you in the queue, I was ushered in and ask to wait the inevitable newspaper reading material under my armpit as I did not know how long my stay would be but had enough experience to know that it could be a long wait.

However to my surprise and in less than a minute my number was rang up to be served at the appropriate counter and after stating my case and getting sage nods that indeed my ID required replacement after proffering the offending document, I was taken through the process that required copying my details from the system (thank God my identity was intact) and signing on the dotted line, taking messy finger prints (electronic finger print capture not yet available) and then having a digital photo taken all of which took less than 5 minutes. I was then offered the acknowledgement slip from the application form and asked to wait two weeks after which I would receive a text message advising me that the document was ready for collection and requesting me to go with the dilapidated excuse of an ID that I had to be surrendered to its rightful owners the government of the Republic of Kenya in exchange for the new one!

On the 14th day I received a text message requesting that I go and collect my ID Card at the Huduma Centre which I promptly did not believing that they were actually able to deliver on their promise and true to their word it was ready and waiting, a brand spanking new ID card with a color digital photo and in laminated plastic much like the debit card issued by my bank. It really was possible for the service charter of the government despite the thousands of bureaucrats that serve in this colossus employer to be met in regards to a simple thing as getting a replacement ID card. Would this also be possible in the myriad other requests that we make at government offices daily but that then take an inordinately long period of time to process frustrating budding businessmen, potential investors and others?

I think the Huduma Centre concept where all government departments are represented under one roof is a brilliant idea as you can be served at specific counters handling issues relating to a service managed by a particular government ministry rather than going office hopping from one to another. The beauty of the whole concept also is that the centres appear networked either to their parent ministry data base or through a portal where all relevant records are retrievable as necessary. If the level of service that I witnessed can be sustained and the levels of comfort, cleanliness and decorum maintained then we are surely on the right track for government to compete effectively in service provision with the private sector.

If this is the way that things shall be done then surely the backbone of poor customer service in government has been broken and corporates better watch out. It is hats off from me and should the need ever arise for me to seek the services of a government ministry or department in future then the Huduma Centre it shall be.

Kudos and well done!!

Those bleating goats were a real nuisance!!

I and my four siblings grew up in a peri -urban area of Nairobi. The family home was on a 5 acre parcel of land as were many of the neighboring properties. The surrounding area also had coffee farms and dams so it was a paradise for adventurous children to walk, fish, ride bicycles and so on. Wild dik diks, rabbits, squirrels, snakes, chameleons, tortoises and monkeys were all over the place including occasional rumors of leopard sightings. In view of the size of the property, my parents kept the occasional domestic animals more specifically cows and goats. Some neighbors even had chickens, pigs, sheep and horses. Like most of the other neighbors, my folks also cultivated maize, beans, carrots, potatoes, bananas, sukuma wiki, spinach etc for home consumption with part of the land left for the cows and goats to graze on the luxuriant grass.

While the cows had an attendant to look after them and to milk them when needed, the goats were another story altogether. During the school holidays and when it was particularly dry the duty of taking the goats out to look for grazing pasture fell on me and my brother and there was nothing as frustrating as this chore which we absolutely hated with a passion!

Much as people say that a sheep could easily be one of the most stupid and stubborn animal alive, I think the goat is a close second if not the outright champion of stupidity. You see these animals would take the slightest opportunity to raid the maize or beans planted in the shamba (usually someone else’s shamba) at the expense of the grass they were supposed to feed on so that we spent a frustrating afternoon shooing them out of the shamba only for others to make their way back the moment our backs were turned.

At the end of a tedious day we would herd the animals back into their shed for the night, single out the most notorious maize grabbing ones and then cane them mercilessly as a punishment for taking us round and round in circles as the others watched in shocked discomfort their pitiful bleating notwithstanding. This apparently did little to change the thieving ways of the diehard goats that would the very next day stray back into someone else’s shamba to run riot on their crops. Day in day out caning did nothing to stop the goats from raiding yet another shamba and we soon saw the futility of it all and just shooed them out of the shamba when the strayed there. We wished death on all of them so that we would be freed from the misery and tedium of herding those damned animals.

Now fast forward 35 years and the same goats are now wandering into people’s shambas and making a beeline for the choicest crops, the low hanging fruit so to speak. Not even the caning that the shepherds are inflicting on them and the uproar that has arisen will get them to see their wayward behavior. Every attempt to tame them has been a miserable failure and they continue to pillage and roam unfettered in the people’s shamba unfazed and unapologetic. We wish them a thousand painful deaths because we are tired of looking after them in their wayward ways and we have been reduced to shooing them out of the shamba but knowing that tomorrow they shall be back to eat to their hearts content.

Who are these goats you may wonder? Off course it is our top heavy political class both elected and rejected who see nothing wrong in taking us round and round in circles blaming each other for their political failures while seeking our attention as they demand more and more from us by way of meeting their expensive habits as they demand recognition, status and more and more bells and whistles to boost their already bloated egos. On top of it all some are beating the drums of a referendum the cost of which shall be met from the public coffers as if we do not have other more pressing issues to deal with such as drought ravaging some in the country, illnesses and disease affecting many, the threats to our tourism industry due to the terrorism threats by Al Shabab and other disgruntled elements of society, good schools infrastructure for our children etc etc.

These goats have even raised uproar in other foreign shambas where they have been declared persona non grata for their cheap theatrics and notoriety as they eat their way through those shambas devouring the best bits as they have been doing while at home and collectively shaming us all.

I wish these goats would all go to hell while the rest of us go on with our lives for surely we cannot be eating, sleeping and drinking politics day in day out as if we have nothing better to do much to the chagrin of many Kenyans who are fed up with the political din and sabre rattling by all these bleating goats!!

The positive side of being old:

An 89 year old man just the other day told me that he shall live for another 11 years and go to be with his maker at 100 years of age. He challenged me to note this in my diary so that I could be a witness to this remarkable feat that a doctor (as he told me) guaranteed him shall happen at his last medical checkup a year ago!

Now this man has a very active lifestyle despite his failing eyesight and memory. He is proud that he has no serious physical ailments at this ripe old age despite a hip injury a while back that forced him to use a cane while walking. He is also proud to have lived to see his grandchildren and was recently made a great grandfather by one of them. He is still involved in commodity trading and purchases commodities on wholesale basis four times a month from importers in Mombasa which he sells to traders and other business men making a small profit in the process. His truck driver makes the long journey to Mombasa on his behalf in case you wonder how he does it!!

He is also actively involved in shares trading and has a healthy portfolio of investments in some of the best blue chip companies in Kenya. He told me that he is not motivated by huge profits but by the desire to stay active, sharp and focused though he wants to add fertilizer trading to the commodities that he trades in as it has better profit margins! I am sure his sons have tried to get him to relax but he seems to want none of that!!

He has endured a chequered life and business career spanning the past 70 years and has seen and done it all. His day commences at 7.00 am with a cup of tea with three……yes three heaped spoons of sugar (no heightened blood sugar levels for this guy I tell you). He then goes to visit his clients to collect what they owe him as well as to sell them his commodities. I bet few people will tell an 89 year old man that they can’t pay him his money so I guess this is a good strategy on his part. Once done with his rounds he goes back home by 1.00 pm, has his lunch and rests. He was very categorical that he does not sleep but rests until 4.00 pm after which he watches television until dinner time and sleeps thereafter.

He also very often accompanies his son and daughter in law, whom he lives with, to social functions at the Club and other places where they have been invited something that I have been witness to at some of the bank functions that we have organized. They leaves early though on his account no doubt!

A few years back he was attacked by robbers who wanted to shoot him dead for God knows what reason. He prayed to God that they would spare him and they instead shot at one of the security guards responding to the alarm and then they ran off. Who would be so callous as to shoot an 80 something mzee and again I guess his age was his good fortune!

What I have learnt from this remarkable mzee is that positive thinking, a healthy life style and frequent medical checkups are vital to longevity as is continual activity in something you enjoy doing as in his case commodity and shares trading. There is also nothing wrong with sugar so long as your body can handle it or so he seemed to suggest.

I shall be around when the whistle blows for this mzee in 11 years’ time for I too plan on being around for a long time till the ripe old age of 100. At his age few people will want to embarrass themselves by refusing to pay you or shooting you dead so there is a positive side to age as well!!

The theory of speed:

“Hiyo gari ilikuwa inaenda kasi sana”! (that vehicle was moving very fast!) is a statement you very often hear every time there is an eye witness describing a road accident to a television news crew.

Having talked about ‘speeding’ trucks on Mombasa Road recently it got me thinking that speed is one of the most misunderstood concepts probably universally. Without going into the tedious descriptions of speed in physics that many of us have long forgotten, speed is a relative concept and it is always relative to something else. That means that where an object is stationery, then something moving past it is moving at speed. On the opposite end, two objects moving towards each other will have a closing speed of the combined speed of both of them (perhaps double speed would be an apt descriptor of such a scenario).

A tortoise plodding along would therefore consider a rabbit running past it to be moving very fast while a rabbit would consider a cheetah to be moving at great speed if the cheetah were to hypothetically be running in a race alongside the rabbit or even come to think of it the rabbit was running for its life from a cheetah out to make a meal of it! Similarly, a cyclist would be moving at speed when passing a walking pedestrian while a car would be at speed when passing a cyclist at top speed on his bicycle traveling along the same road. Ergo, a policeman waving down a truck that refuses to stop would consider the truck to be ‘speeding’ in relation to his relative position in regards to the truck!

However, this fascination with speed makes one think that all drivers in Kenya cause accidents by perennially speeding the concept of a speed limit not withstanding! Is it correct to state that an accident was caused by a ‘speeding’ vehicle (as would be reported by a watching bystander) which was travelling at 50 km/h while the maximum speed on that section of the road is 80 km/h? If the reaction by our overzealous police officers is anything to go by then they too believe that speed is the root cause of all road accidents and hence the recent crackdown on over speeding in various parts of the country.

They forget that decrepit and poorly serviced vehicles, poor road surfaces, careless pedestrians, slow moving trucks, foggy weather, tired drivers etc all contribute to the accidents on our road. If speed were the defining factor then those German autobahns with no speed limits would be a veritable disaster zone though access is restricted to motor vehicles with a top speed of more than 60 km/h meaning that many of our ‘speeding’ behemoth trucks would not be allowed on these roads.

Recent statistics sourced from Wikipedia indicates that the autobahn fatality rate in Germany is 1.7 deaths per billion-travel-kilometers and is much better when compared with the 5.1 rate on urban streets and 7.6 rate on rural roads in that country. On autobahns 22 people died per 1000 injury crashes; a lower rate than the 29 deaths per 1,000 injury accidents on conventional rural roads. I am sure these numbers are much higher in our speed deprived nation of Kenya.

So don’t believe any eye witness reports that an accident was caused by an over speeding vehicle in the absence of facts to back this up and to the detriment of other contributing factors. Similarly don’t believe any policeman who says that speed is the main cause of accidents on our roads because the well-built autobahns in Germany would be veritable killing fields if this were the case.

My take is that if the governement were to build us better roads, get those ‘speeding’ trucks of those roads and then leave us free to get to our destinations as fast as possible they would see the accident rate plummet!!

Trucks speeding off, go tell that to the birds!

A recent story where the newspapers reported that some policemen in Mombasa are having a hard time arresting truck drivers on account of technology that enables the trucks tires to remain intact even after rolling over the police road block spikes in the middle of the road thanks to self-sealing properties injected into the tyres piqued my interest. This was a fable if ever I have heard one but that probably explains why most police road block spikes look like something akin to well run over road kill, but that’s a story for another day.

The excuse by the police officer (who comes up with these stories anyway?) that their vehicles were rammed into by over loaded trucks and then the trucks sped off is the stuff of Aesop’s Fables which however difficult to rationalize have kept children enthralled for generations! No self-respecting Kenyan should believe such utter nonsense when clearly the intention is to deflect our attention from some nefarious goings on along our highways.

But, let’s analyse this issue logically.

Firstly you have a contingent of police officers manning a road block at a weigh bridge along with assorted other officers from the Ministry of Transport and the SGS at two sections along the 500 kilometer Mombasa to Nairobi highway. Each of them is responsible for something or the other within the weighbridge station while the policemen are presumably there to ensure law and order is maintained and that there is adequate protection for the other personnel carrying out their lawful duties. In between the two weighbridge locations at Mariakani & Athi River you have innumerable police checks of one form or another some equipped with police vehicles at the more remote sections of the highway some even equipped with speed guns to catch unwary over speeding drivers. How come they were unable to catch the ‘speeding’ trucks either through the speed guns use or the tried and tested method of just giving chase!!

Secondly, the trucks in question are behemoths and what are popularly referred to as trailers with 18 or 22 wheels with most carrying heavy loads of commodities and machinery to destinations upcountry and even beyond our borders. Many carry the 20 or 40 foot closed containers and as someone told me you just have to look at the way the tires are in contact with the road surface to known if the contents of the trailer are heavy or light. If you have ever had the misfortune of being stuck behind these trailers while on Mombasa Road, then to say that they are capable of ‘speeding’ off is to mangle the usage of the term speeding if you know what I mean.

Thirdly, these trailers crawl along at a mind numbing 50 kmp/h………on a downhill slope when fully laden and at a slothful crawl when going up even the smallest hill. At certain places on this highway, they even have special climbing lanes for the trailers so that other traffic may at least overtake at these sections and flow comfortably and where many of the trailers, huffing and puffing and belching obnoxious clouds of diesel exhaust come to a juddering halt unable to complete the climb clear signs of being over loaded. Then some joker claims that these trailers ‘sped’ off!

Finally, my experience of Mombasa Road is that there are few if any alternative routes that one may take along the highway to get to Nairobi & beyond. Something as big as a trailer cannot possibly hide or be hidden anywhere along the highway without being spotted by anyone with 20/20 vision and if the shambolic recent police recruitment exercise is anything to go by, a great premium is kept on the physical attributes of those keen to join the force including presumably eyesight. So how can we entrust our security to people who can’t ‘see’ a large trailer on a 500 kilometer highway which is the gateway to East Africa that has almost run over other fellow officers along the way? Even if we extend the journey by any of these ‘speeding’ trailers all the way to any of the border crossings with our neighbors, that gives the authorities a 1,000 kilometer and at least a 3 day window in which to locate and arrest the offending drivers!!!

Some of the comments (excuses is more like it) attributed to our men and women of the police force are just comedic in their dead pan delivery and this one clearly takes the cake. It belittles the intelligence of the Kenyan populace and becomes yet another joke focused on the extent of the (in)abilities of those in charge of keeping us all safe. Who is responsible for disciplining and keeping such dim officers who can’t even be trusted to communicate propaganda statements right?

Come on man, we Kenyans are not as daft as you think so go tell that to the birds!!

So what’s wrong with slaughtering a dog?

Another guy has been arrested slaughtering a dog in Naivasha hardly a week after another guy (who I can bet was probably not the first to do so, nor was it his first dog to slaughter) was arrested doing the same dastardly deed. Haven’t these guy heard of something called in the privacy of your own home, where you can do all you want including dancing nude and slaughtering dogs without a nosy neighbor pointing the cops in your direction? Whether the meat was for sale or for personal consumption is not the issue here because no one will admit to offering dog meat for sale in Kenya.

Why I ask, as an aside, would someone one to chow down on man’s best friend? I however think that we may be making a mountain out of a mole hill (as usual) because one man’s meat is another man’s poison or so the old adage pontificates! If you recall the recent loud protests when one enterprising Kenyan decided to set up a donkey slaughter house in Naivasha (not Naivasha again!) for export (so he said) to places where they are not so full of pretenses about what they eat and after obtaining all the licenses from the authorities including building and NEMA approvals only for the same authorities to turn around and sabotage the project “in the public interest”. Was theirs a knee jerk reaction or a well calculated and well thought out reaction to an issue that had hurt the sensibilities of a populace who have probably partaken of the same donkey meat under the mistaken belief that it was beef all the while smacking their lips at the deliciousness of the punda nyama choma!

For thousands of years the Chinese have been eating all sorts of creatures including dog meat with no apparent ill effects. I hear that so long as it walks, crawls, flies or swims it is fair game for the cooking pot in China! The Chinese are also considered to be one of the longest living human beings on Earth no doubt as a result of their not too choosy life style when it comes to culinary matters! Dog probably makes a delicious meat stew as well as a tasty kebab or samosa and by the same token you would never hear of someone in China dying of hunger thanks to their keen noses for something tasty irrespective of the wrapping around it!!

Closer home when the Chinese arrived to construct ( the soon to be stripped bare of all metal) Thika Super Highway several years ago there was a hue and cry that all of a sudden there were no stray dogs in the vicinity of the area where many of the Chinese engineers and foremen lived. I don’t recall if it were Zimmerman or Kamiti or both. Was it a mere happenstance that the arrival of the Chinese and the demise of the stray dogs in that general area were a coincidence? Why in any case would anyone care for the welfare of a stray dog in their neighborhood a creature which is more famous for scaring children and women as they go about their business and fighting for scraps of food while howling loudly in the dead of night while all along these same people had been calling upon the City Council to remove the strays from their midst unless of course it was their timid and half-starved Jimmy, Simba and Tiger watchdogs, for lack of a better word that were finding their way to the Chinese wok to be garnished with some dhania, onion and soy sauce.

Was this magnanimity towards the strays as a result of competition for the dogs from local Zimmerman and Kamiti dog meat aficionados now starved of their favorite delicacy since the masters of dog delicacies had finally arrived and pitched camp in their hood and knew how (thanks to a long tradition) to entice these animals so as to turn them into a tasty dish they probably craved after the novelty of goat meat, chicken and beef had worn off? We will never know!!

Stories abound of a thriving bush meat trade in West Africa where beef, goat and chicken meat are considered expensive delicacies and where the choice available even in many upscale hotels is bush rat stew or fish stew whereas in the seedier parts of many towns your culinary fare shall probably comprise a wide variety of ape, bat, snail, porcupine, warthog, wild boar, any unidentified rodent and so on. In many parts of South & Central America, Central Africa and South East Asia, I would like to believe that no one is too squeamish about what lands on the table because let’s face it, when you have a choice between starvation and a nicely roasted vampire bat, the bat would land on a grill faster that you can think….eehww and the bigger the bat the more people it can feed.

So even as you make disgusted noises at these folk from Naivasha slaughtering and eating dog meat, rest assured that something you eat is anathema to someone else and vice versa. What you crave as a delicacy may make someone else puke at the mere thought of how it has landed on the table. It is likely that you have partaken of dog meat or donkey meat sometime or other in this great land called Kenya because after all my own brother partook of ‘agouti’ (look it up) while on a visit to Senegal under the mistaken belief that it was goat meat!!

Why not have similar medical facilities here as in India?

In recent years, India has taken on a larger than life persona among the middle class in Kenya as a preferred medical tourism destination. As one who studied in that country many years ago when it was a perfect education destination for those who required university admission but missed the minimum floating entry points required for admission into the only university in Kenya then, it was the logical place to go as it had hundreds of universities to choose from, a myriad of courses to suit any number of individuals, a mere 5 hours flying time from Nairobi, a multicultural student population depending on the university college that you were admitted to and more importantly was easy on the pocket.

Today with tens of universities across Kenya to choose from and access to distance and correspondence studies from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide, I think India is one of the destinations that has lost out as a favorite education destination for Kenyan students. However, it has more than replaced what it lost in student enrolments with medical tourists from Kenya and indeed across the world seeking to visit the hundreds of medical facilities, many of them specialist facilities for advanced medical care and treatment at a fraction of the cost of similar treatment here at home.

India as a country with a population exceeding a billion strong (I heard 2.1 billion on radio recently but it was probably a dyslexic radio announcer that meant to say 1.2 billion) the doctors there have surely seen it all and by the same token have become experts in their chosen fields of specialization if the success rate of the many people that I know that have been treated in that country is anything to go by.

By and large the same conditions that saw many of us flock to India for studies many years ago are the same ones driving the medical tourism business today, to wit hundreds of hospitals to choose from, a myriad of specialists to suit any number of individuals, a mere 5 hours flying time from Nairobi, a multicultural patient population and more importantly is easy on the pocket.

My understanding is that the medical field in India is so competitive that to get to the top of the profession requires a commitment to providing medical care and not necessarily enriching yourself in the process. Pre-eminent and wealthy doctors are also found in India, but their journey to the apex of their careers has been a slow slog after years of success and positive contribution to their chosen speciality that then gains them a glowing professional reputation. This is a country where if your condition is diagnosed as being at an advanced stage and therefore inoperable or untreatable, this information is conveyed to you early enough without expensive surgical interventions, whereas the practice at home might be most likely for a doctor to see an opportunity to make some money and to therefore immediately recommend an elaborate surgical procedure to be carried out exploiting the desperation many families face and they are ready to cling to any possibility of a cure and that shall cost a fortune and with no hope of recovery to the patient therefore ensuring that families spend the last few resources they had paying for a treatment regimen that is doomed to fail from the word go!

But why can’t this medical tourism business practice be replicated right here in Kenya? Has any county government thought of partnering with those hospitals in India to set up facilities and laboratories similar to those in India in their backyards? Has any county government thought of partnering with those same hospitals and utilizing existing medical facilities in their counties for setting up of specialized medical units/branches of those Indian hospitals?

At the risk of possibly aggravating those in the medical profession, would any government refuse duty and tax concessions for life saving medical equipment and drugs so as to push the costs of seeking treatment here at par with what one pays in India? Imagine the consequences of such actions such as outsourced residential accommodation close to the medical facility, a possible reduction in the cost of treatment at competing private hospitals in the country, a reduction in health insurance premiums because now health care is now more competitively priced and the cost of repatriation to India to seek cheaper treatment is no longer an insurance rider option, additional jobs for Kenyan nurses and doctors in the facilities, improvement in general healthcare practices as competition intensifies etc etc.

A well thought out strategy to increase the accessibility of quality healthcare through such strategic partnerships formulated by the Central government, the licensing board for doctors, dentists and other medical practitioners, the KRA, Immigration Department and other interested bodies would see the destination of choice for medical tourism shifting to Kenya (or specifically one or several counties) and by the same token improving on the accessibility of quality medical care to more Kenyans who may not have the resources to seek treatment in foreign countries.

Brr………it’s freezing:

It’s the cold season in Nyeri but longtime residents are telling me ‘ngoja July’!

But if this is a ‘kionjo’ of July, then do I really want to be around when July comes calling? It’s just round the corner so it won’t be long now. In anticipation, and based on the fact that it is just me and my lonesome self, freezing my butt and every other appendage off………no wife, no housemate, no one but me (reminds me of a Mexican soap on TV some years back), I decided to find a companion to give me some warmth in the cold of the night.

So I went out and bought a room heater at the second of the local supermarkets (the first one having exhausted its stocks already) that I visited and not a moment too soon as I was told by the very friendly attendant serving me because once July and her arctic conditions kick in, the heaters literally fly off the shelves and become scarcer than a politician visiting their rural villages after an election. I think I shall call her Malina goddess of the sun in Inuit mythology. Even the locals are grumbling that this is the coldest it has got this early in the year so are we about to experience a snow fall in Nyeri??

As they say, this is the kind of cold that comes to claim old men and as I am now rapidly approaching the shorter side of life………shorter as in the journey of life that I have travelled so far is longer than the one I am expected to travel from here on biblically speaking………….I do not wish to be claimed prematurely so Malina was a necessity. She will see to my needs to keep warm without a grumble!

This is the kind of cold that permeates every nook and cranny of the house and the office and causes ones toes to feel as if they are frost bitten and the tiled floor to feel like a skating rink. This is the season when mugs of steaming tea are quaffed in huge quantities to try and maintain a stable metabolism and you can be sure that hotels, cafes and restaurants are doing a roaring business in this regard.

Even when outdoors and the sun is shining, it feels as if it is titillating you with its promise of warmth because despite its shine, little warmth passes through to warm the air so it feels like a sun unable to penetrate a bubble wrap of cold frigid air. Grey skies are the order of the day with short intervals of sunshine without warmth and therefore clothes take forever to dry despite the sun shining and Mount Kenya’s peaks have not been seen for more than a month now. I feel sorry for those with many kids and therefore heavy loads of washing. Maybe the mountain has moved a few miles closer to town hence the unrelenting cold.

The guys who sell used woolen ‘kabutis’ the type that you see people in Europe & North America wearing at the peak of winter are doing a roaring business. These items are flying off the hangers and come to think of it, I must also get myself one before they become expensive since my new found companion Malina cannot possibly accompany me wherever I go to keep me warm. Hers is strictly to do so in the house.

I see gloves have also begun showing up on roadside displays and shops as have balaclavas a.k.a ‘bochori’ and these will soon be acceptable dressing accessories. Anything to keep the cold at bay! I’ll have to ask Malina if the gloves are necessary though before committing to them.

So there you have it, my first winter experience on the slopes of the great mountain “na mambo bado” so I am told! I am not sure I am looking forward to it but again beggars can't be choosers.

Where is justice for the victims of terror?

Clearly we are on our own! We are under siege and have nowhere to run because our government has seemingly abdicated its responsibility in ensuring security and safety of its people.
How can heavily armed raiders waltz into the country without so much as a blip showing on the intelligence radar? How in this day and age of the internet, heightened awareness, shared intelligence and other clearly failed initiatives like ‘Nyumba Kumi’ can what seems like a well-planned, coordinated and financed mission have gone on unnoticed ? When the British government chose to close down its Consulate offices in Mombasa last week probably as a result of resourceful intelligence gathering pointing at an impending attack somewhere in the Coast what did the security organs do with that information or is it still sitting on someone’s in tray unread and gathering dust?

As we mourn the 48 people that have now been confirmed dead in Mpeketoni, Lamu County though eye witness accounts put the deaths at many more, hard questions need to be asked. God knows how many other lie dead somewhere in the bush while many more are injured. Perhaps in the fullness of time we shall get the correct numbers of death and injured Kenyans if the government statements are to be believed which is becoming increasingly difficult given the confusing and conflicting information issued through government statements during the Westgate siege 9 short months ago.

Boko Haram tactics of wanton and callous massacre of innocents and destruction of property seems to be the modus operandi in this instance and probably portends to bloodier attacks in other areas where Kenyans live with no security sooner rather than later if the apathy and ineptitude of those supposed to ensure the lives and properties of Kenyans are safeguarded is anything to go by. What is to prevent these terrorists from raiding bigger towns and settlements in Kenya with more loss of life and property for they can only be emboldened by their past successes?

But surely, we can’t keep on saying that we have competent security in place in Kenya while heavily armed raiders, looters, poachers, bandits, militants…….or whatever other name you want to call them come into the country with impunity, carry out their dastardly raids and attacks on our animals, innocent people and our police stations and then just vanish into the night after an orgy of violence lasting several hours. Is there no rapid response machinery in place to respond to just such situations? Don’t we have any military bases close to our borders with our neighbors that should respond to external threats from our warlike northern neighbors close to Mpeketoni, Lamu and other towns lying along the access route into Kenya from Somalia?

And why are those tasked with ensuring the safety and security of Kenyan still in office promising fire and brimstone to those responsible for the continuing terror attacks but doing nothing that seems to remove the threats from our midst? They should have been relieved of their duties through summary dismissal a long time ago and charged for dereliction of duty for they have the blood of almost 150 people that have been killed in terrorism related attacks since that fateful day in September 2013 when 67 people lost their lives at Westgate.

A nation under attack needs to be more responsive and better able to respond to well publicized threats to the security of its people and their property and it appears that they are clearly off the mark on this. We have been promised swift and tough action by the responsible government functionary, but this is not the first time that this tough talk has happened and nothing concrete can be seen.

Kenyans are crying out for justice for those who have lost their lives and been physically scarred by terrorism and the government must be unrelenting in the quest for the perpetrators and financiers of these terror activities before they close our country down.

Of Brutal Husbands and Cuckquean wives:

Someone came to see me at my work place recently. It was a lady accompanied by her brother. The reason that she came to my office was to narrate a rather incredible story that she had been turning around in her mind in a state of indecision whether to visit or not for a few weeks or so she said.

Her story starts with seeing an email sent to her husband supposedly originating from Nyeri branch where I am based in regards to obtaining a loan to purchase a truck. Now the business of banking is all about confidentiality and there was no way I was going to reveal whether this person was a client of the bank or not or even if he had applied for the loan. In any case she had received such information from his private email which meant that she had breached the privacy that personal email entails.

So she starts on her spiel telling me about how she was the party behind the success of their businesses because when he married her he had nothing and then goes on to reveal the husbands lack of financial discipline and how their joint property was now the subject of court cases and auctioneers because he had not been servicing his personal debts including loans taken from other financiers for purchase of trucks. I let it go on for some time…..nothing like a good vent every now and then bofore I asked her if they still lived together and Part 2 of her saga began.

He had taken up with another woman after the successes she had brought him in life and in business even owning a residential / commercial building in one of the towns close to Nyeri jointly with him. He had then abandoned her for the bosom of another woman and was a brute of a man ready to pummel her at a moment’s notice. She in fact did look a little dented possibly from previous encounters with this man and even this visit to my office she revealed would get her killed by him if I was to say a word to this mysterious man.

With little else to say other than to give her assurances that the notes that I was writing would be of immense help to me were he to come calling for a loan, I wished her well and she went off her brother in tow.

I didn’t know what to think! If I had known the man, would I have alerted him to the fact that his wife had visited and I wanted assurances that he would service his loans? What if he went straight to where she was and killed her? Would I not be an accomplice to murder because she had mentioned in the presence of her brother that he was capable of killing her?

Could I rely on the testimony of a clearly bitter woman who had neither taken the trouble to identify herself nor brought any evidence to suggest that theirs was a legally binding marriage? What if this was just a jealous busy body intent on spoiling the reputation and goodwill of an innocent hard working man?

Today in banking we have various tools to confirm the credit worthiness or otherwise of anyone with a borrowing record so any red flag would surely pop up should I make an enquiry as I was required to do for any new loans. In addition we request for bank statements going back for the past 6 months to see someone’s financial history at whichever bank he has an account at to see that his financial dealings have been above board and then require that an account is opened with the bank thereafter. Were all these tools available to me in vain and should I therefore rely on the narrative of a total stranger for my appraisal should the man surface? What if she was telling the truth and the man was indeed a scoundrel?

Let’s wait and see if he turns up then I shall decide what to do!

My KBL moment

I have just finished reading a novel called KBL. Before you start wondering what our very own Kenya Breweries Ltd is doing in a novel, hear me out.

This is one of those spy thrillers that is based on an incident that happened in 2011 that changed the face of terrorism globally and the narrative is liberally sprinkled with various acronyms (some quite colorful) as used by various agencies and the army in the USA the main agencies behind the plan that was hatched to track down and kill one of the most hated people in the world responsible for thousands of deaths across the world for many years. In this case, KBL is an acronym for 'Kill Bin Laden'.

I live in an apartment complex and my KBL moments are coming thick and fast these days. When I moved into this complex of 12 apartments a few months ago one of the things that struck me was that there were only 4 parking slots available. On enquiry I was told that a majority of the tenants did not own their own vehicles so it was going to be OK. Little did I know however that we had some county and university bosses living in the complex who were picked up and dropped off every morning and evening by their official drivers who had to find somewhere to park while they waited for their charges in the morning. The resultant back and forth as they gave way for we regular tenants to leave in the morning as the bosses were being waited for must have caused SMEANG -'serious mental anguish' to those drivers.

A few months down the line and the chickens have come home to roost because we now have close to 9 tenants with thier own vehicles who come home every evening and must park somewhere meaning that someone was clearly ASOTJ or 'asleep on the job' when he was approving the building plans for the complex! As a result there has been a casualty in the compound because a bottle brush tree was shown the axe literally (pun intended) to try and create a way to accomodate some of the bulkier vehicles parked against one of the property walls and the poor tree was in the way!

How can an approval be given for residential units with inadequate parking arrangements surely? Was someone even thinking while they performed this VIAT -'very important assignment'? Mark you these are not cheap residential units by Nyeri standards but would be considered pricey units in an upmarket location meaning that those able to afford the rent would almost certainly be owning vehicles as well to boot so this fact should have informed the developer and the approver accordingly!!

Now we are forced to play a game of who gets home first so as to get the BPS -'best parking spot' and also try not to block too many people while at it. Clearly someone is responsible for this SNAFU - 'situation normal all fouled (fu%$ed) up!

Incidentally the novel KBL makes for great reading with a fast paced plot that gives some good insights on some of the public secrets on how the clandestine take down of UBL -'Usama Bin Laden' happened and while the author acknowledges that it is a work of fiction but based on actual events, the plot line is entirely believable and credible right up to UBL's body being incarcerated at sea.

There is an inventive streak in young Kenyans that I admire

I watched a story on television the other day about a young Kenyan ICT student who has been dreaming of being a pilot ever since the age of 5 years old. The long and the short of his ambition is that he has finally come up with a prototype aircraft that was scheduled to commence its trial flight somewhere in Naivasha recently.

It was obvious that his parents are extremely proud of their son who rode to the venue in a convoy of boda boda motorcycles while the aircraft was majestically perched atop a lorry as a frenzied and exited crowd of onlookers followed his every move with a keen eye for surely history was in the making. Not a single policeman or any other person representative of officialdom such as those from the Department of Civil Aviation or the Aerodromes Department (if it still exists) appeared to be on site to ensure proper crowd control and that safety measures were in place.

The kinetic energy for the aircraft was to be provided by a Toyota salon vehicle to which the craft was attached with a tow rope and then dragged behind it presumably until it attained take off speed when the tow rope would be uncoupled ready for flight. For some unknown but seemingly technical reasons that us mechanically challenged individuals will never fathom, the aircraft with its inventor firmly perched on his pilot seat, motor cycle safety helmet providing the required safety to his cranium was unable to take off notwithstanding the impassioned prayers by the father prior to the pre-flight event for journey mercies and such like issues usually reserved for those about to embark on a safari as well as the concerted efforts of helpers to push the craft towards attaining take-off speed since it appeared that the Toyota was unable to accomplish this!

Much as I am a confessed ignoramus in matters mechanical, my own assessment of the situation is that the aircraft was probably aerodynamically challenged and was not streamlined enough and probably did not adhere to the general principles of aero dynamic flight which was surely a monumental disaster in the making had it miraculously attained lift off not only to the pilot but also to the excited bystanders and helpers in dangerous and close proximity to spinning rotors and hot engine parts. The attempt to attain some semblance of flight capability was probably more of a public relations exercise designed more to to get recognition and probably attract some funding from a donor or donors so as to see the project through to its logical conclusion rather than achieve actual flight time.

The inventors' mother who was interviewed on TV had mentioned that she had parted with a princely sum of money (close to 40K shillings) to make this dream a reality but you can bet that the project probably requires millions of shillings before the rudimentary aircraft powered by an underpowered Chinese motor cycle engine could ever take to the skies!!

Now don’t get me wrong, I am all for innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit exhibited by a lot of young Kenyans today who embark on their projects with gusto and enthusiasm sometimes making it big but more often than not burning their fingers and meager savings badly.

What concerns me more is if there is any official body within the Kenyan system that provides guidance and an enabling environment for our young inventors to successfully achieve their dreams given that many often come from relatively poor backgrounds and are technically gifted but lack the resources to even acquire the necessary tools, jigs and molds or suitable workshop premises to manage the whole process of inventing and pioneering a Kenyan made prototype of anything? Do we have technical people who can provide advice and mentor these young inventors & innovators so that their dreams become a reality or even people who can assist them get sponsors to fund their dreams to fruition?

I recall a series that aired on Discovery Channel sometime back where inventors in the US are given the opportunity to showcase their prototype inventions to a panel of potential seed investors who look at the practicality of the prototypes on display and then after a rigorous round of elimination challenges, they pick on one prototype which in their own assessment has a possible future practical use and therefore qualifies for seed funding to enable additional research and development of that prototype to full production including pre and post-production marketing and advertisement.

Why not for example set aside part of our very own Youth Enterprise Fund for such a purpose so that with close supervision and management and administrative structures to ensure that the funds are not diverted to other uses by the beneficiaries we could have our own pool of avid inventors in the not too distant future. The fund could hire advisors and mentors would also be responsible to ensure that all the issues regarding design options, safety considerations, patent applications, copyright violations, statutory approvals and all other related issues are taken care of so that we do not have situations as I observed in Naivasha where the runway somewhere in Naivasha was awash with human beings eager to assist and with no regards to their own safety and where no one in authority was there to police and provide guidance for the whole exercise! It is actually a miracle that no one was injured or killed.

I came to learn at a recent seminar that some of the most innovative companies in the world today devote millions of dollars of their annual profits towards encouraging their employees to be inventors and innovators and even pay substantial amounts of money towards these efforts by providing grants to individual staff members to develop their ideas with no strings attached.

Somehow this earth shattering event is nowhere on the internet though other earlier attempts to build an aircraft by a Kenyan innovator are well documented online. Perhaps in time the heroics of this young man shall appear online but in the meanwhile the young inventor is gearing up for another attempt at attaining take of speed but this time within the confines of a prison (I didn’t know that prisons have runways) perhaps in view of the safety issues that I have already mentioned.

I wish him all the best and journey mercies because surely the sky is the limit for this chap!!