I am Back!

It has been several months since my last blog post, 7 months to be precise almost to the day.

I had thought to take a break from blogging and come up with a theme that I could adopt as my “raison de etre” going forward. When I shared these thoughts with some of my friends recently, they urged me to continue blogging as I had done before putting my thoughts to paper in the whimsical fashion that had come to define me! So here I am……..

Over the last 7 months, a lot has happened. I became a grandfather, we have had a national election which was won and lost at pretty much the same time, and we are back to the ruckus of another election albeit only at the presidential level. As I predicted, many legislators have been shown the door for not delivering to their respective constituents and many are now busy realigning themselves with one side of the political divide or the other now that they have a chance to show their allegiances to their respective party head honchos in this season of defections and re-defections.

I wonder what would happen if those that are abusing the president and his deputy in all manner of colorful insults were to be called by State House and be offered a plum job in a government parastatal? Would they refuse? Knowing the greed exhibited by many of the leading political lights hardly likely!!

It was also a rather sad time as some close friends have passed away. These were men in the prime of their lives plucked away by the cruel hand of death leaving their families wondering why it had to be that way. The irony of death is that life pretty much continues on its way for the rest of the living even as we mourn the departed, whose memories slowly fade away over time and being pragmatic about the finality and fallibility of life is something that I don’t take for granted knowing that my near and dear ones will one day depart from this world.

Sometime late last year something happened among a group that I am a member of. We took out a group personal accident policy. Many in the group of 17 were reluctant to cough up the very affordable premium of roughly Kshs. 12,000.00 per person but common sense and a lot of threats from one amongst us who had seen the value of this policy in another group prevailed and the policy that only pays out in the event of death through an accident has been in place ever since. One of the friends who passed on through a road accident was a member of this group and so his family shall soon be the beneficiary of a handsome lump sum from the insurance company, an amount that should comfortably see the younger children through the rest of their schooling. This pay out shall be in addition to any other life policies that the deceased may have taken out on his own.

Many times we take insurance policies for granted and moan and complain that we continue paying premiums year upon year with no benefit only for the unforeseen to happen and the policy to crystallize. All members of this group which was not even a registered entity have pulled out all the stops to formally register it since payment from the insurance company is made to the group and not to an individual members next of kin and we are now convinced that this is a worthy policy to have. It also pays out Kshs. 200,000.00 as the last expense as a benefit towards the funeral expenses of the individual.

So those of you in formally registered chamas, associations or groups please look at the option of a group personal accident policy which is very affordable and assists the family greatly when one of the group members passes on due to an accident……no questions asked! You need to go out with a bang showing those that you leave behind that you cared enough to think about them should you be the victim of an unfortunate accident while going about your manenos.

As we also head towards another fresh presidential election remember that the time of honey coated promises is once again upon us and vote with your conscience.