Religion takes on a new dimension

Back in the day when you dared someone to a school yard fight you drew a line in the sand and dared them to cross at the risk of a through beating while in actual fact you were lily livered cowards. It didn’t matter how many times that line was breached because you would draw another and another until light faded or your parents came to pick you up from school sparing you further blushes as the champion school yard coward of the day!

Sometimes I’m not sure whether to laugh at religious zealots who follow their religious leaders with puppy dog devotion lapping up all the content spewed at them or to weep at what I would consider their naïveté for signing up for something that they cannot now exit peacefully without being labeled a charlatan somewhat like the school yard bully who keeps drawing lines in the sand while awaiting a tactical time to retreat without losing face.

I recently wrote about religion and it seems that the excesses of that sensitive subject never quite disappear, they only fade away only to resurface at the most inopportune of times. This time we had unwittingly exposed a bishop of a church to ridicule in the eyes of his flock to the chagrin of the lay leadership of the church who couldn’t understand how we could fail to recognize the authority of a whole bishop of the church.

Let me digress a little with a narration of an incident that happened to me many years back. I was in Form 6 and the deputy head boy of a predominantly Asian school in Nairobi. The practice of having an Asian head boy/girl and an African deputy head boy/girl had been part of the tradition in the school to bring in some semblance of inclusivity of the African for a few years and seemed to be working well and this was my year.

One fine day we received an important guest in the school, the Begum Salima the wife to the spiritual head of the millions of Ismailia Muslims across the world his holiness the Aga Khan himself. This event had been preceded by a lot of excitement by the Ismailia students and staff at the school and the mood was palpable and the air pregnant with expectation. As was the tradition the visitor was introduced to the student leadership in the school and I got to solemnly shake her highnesses hand a gesture probably considered blasphemous given that the teachers were swooning all over themselves to bow their heads in supplication and get that all important touch on their heads!

“How could these upstart Africans get to hold hands with royalty” must have been on the thoughts of many because the immediate reaction after she left was for them to approach me to find out how it felt like! Other than being soft to the touch and quite cool her handshake didn’t feel any different from anyone else’s but of course they were having none of that. Didn’t I know that I had been blessed a million times more by that small hand shake than those whose heads had been touched? No I didn’t……..! Would I wash my hands anytime soon? Sure I would to disbelieving gasps from the assembled teachers and students alike who affirmed that they would never wash their hands for the rest of their lives if they were in the same situation that I found myself in. At that moment the fact that I had been blessed by the Aga Khan himself by the simple gesture of a handshake from his wife was lost on me.

Fast forward to today 35 years later! We open a church account for a specific church recently and get all necessary documents including a letter from the Chairman of the Church Central Committee confirming no objection. A few months later all hell breaks loose after an abortive and volatile election of the church where the outgoing committee who happen to be signatories to the account in our books dispute the outcome of the elections and inform the bank accordingly. The next day, another group of people come to the bank armed with a letter from the church and the bishop informing us that they are the new signatories to the account. By whatever definition this is a full blown dispute pitting different factions of a church that I have so far only ever read about in the press.

Now this is a delicate situation by any standards and we need to move fast to retain the banks reputation and more importantly safeguard the money in the account so we freeze the account. No money can be deposited or withdrawn from the account for the time being and then we write an official letter to the church as our client with a copy to the bishop asking that they resolve their issues and then advise us to change signatories with the full knowledge of all factions.

Our letter seemed to be the last straw as a fuming chairman then accuses us of undermining the name of the bishop by subjecting it to ridicule by the congregation of the church that had held the abortive elections with our letter to them asking them to resolve their disputes!

The questions that arise are these. How am I expected to understand the authority of a bishop of a church that I don’t follow? What gives a member of a congregation the right to accuse me of disrespecting the authority of the bishop? Why in the first place have disputes within your church that you cannot manage yet want to drag the name of a bank into internal disputes?
The hierarchical structures in place in any church are an internal matter and should not be confused with the acceptable practices employed in financial establishments where our motives are neither emotional nor dictated by the authority of the highest office in that organisation. Whether the Begum Salima, the Dalai Lama, the Syedna the bishop and so on I should not be expected to kow tow to the faith of the believers and blindly be expected to pay homage and practice reverence when I am in their exalted presence or to instruction in letters written in their exalted hands.

On a similar note I was once phoned by an all-powerful civil servant for daring to subject one of our highly connected clients with a letter of default on his loan facilities and threatening to auction his property. As calmly as my shaking voice could muster I told him that the party had defaulted on his obligations with the bank and I was not at liberty to disclose issues relating to a client of the bank against all my sinews urging me to reveal all and live with the consequences. Thankfully he disconnected the line before my sweaty hands had dropped the handset whereupon I contacted my superiors and informed them of the earth shattering phone call for them to handle.

A well-known and powerful public civil servant contacting a lowly me sitting in my modest office could get me all riled up and standing to attention almost saluting as I responded to his phone call but I still managed to convey the banks position on a sensitive issue so why would a person unknown to me cause me to suffer the same tremens delirium?

The long and the short is that issues relating to a church or congregation should not compel one to insist that others behave the same way to their chosen beholden mami and dadi because religion is a personal choice.

Religion is a touchy subject:

Earlier today a pastor whose church we have been wooing for a bank account for some time asked me in the course of our discussions if I was born again and seemed to be personally affronted when I told him that I was not! This did not faze me in the least but once again the topic I am about to tackle – religion - came to the fore.

Religion is a touchy subject so touchy that anyone commenting on it is likely to incur the wrath of those whose toes they seem to be treading on. Commenting on matters religious is akin to treading on thin ice or in our Kenyan context a mud hole where any wrong step may result in a messy pair of shoes and possibly worse.

I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when an innocent comment on a social media platform where I am a member sparked off indignant outrage. It started off, like such things, quite innocently when a member commented that he did not see the necessity of long winded sermons on matters religion being posted every morning onto our social media page – Whatsapp to be precise - yet the forum was supposed to be dedicated to matters and information affecting the neighborhood that we reside in.

In my opinion this was a personal statement that should have been met with measured comments on its pros or cons but not with the furious rebuttals and counter allegations by supporters of the said sermons (who probably get their dose of spiritual nourishment from those sermons) who came out guns ablaze in support.

My own opinion which I voiced was that the forum was set up to discuss and disseminate issues affecting our community and that we were a disparate and diverse (through the overwhelming majority practice the Christian faith) community who espoused different religious views and therefore it was unfair to those that did not espouse those views to be part of the audience. I further went on to opine that if I was a Muslim and decided to use that forum to spread the word of Allah I would be labeled as being unchristian and using the wrong forum for the simple reason that the majority are, as I’ve mentioned, of the Christian persuasion!

Suffice is to say that the original asker of the innocent question left the group a short while later and the religious sermons no longer populate our phones so something clearly must have been done or a decision taken elsewhere for the sake of fulfilling the objectives of the group.

One can argue that in those situations, you have the option of either reading, deleting or ignoring content that doesn’t interest you because everyone has different motives for their actions but I guess the point being made was that if you set us a Whatsapp forum for golfers as an example, should you then start posting issues relating to your failed marriage or your difficult boss at the office?

This brings me to the topical issue that is currently trending in the news and on social media about a pastor at one of the charismatic churches in Nairobi who was in a hurry to get to wherever he was going several days ago and in the process causing the death of an innocent person after a head on collision with an oncoming vehicle. This may be considered an accident which is likely to happen to any motorist at one time or other in their lives but the fact that he seemed to be breaking every rule in the book including carelessly speeding, overtaking and forcing drivers of the road while on an expired insurance sticker goes to show just what kind of deviant behavior he was exhibiting.

That he then took off from the scene of the accident in another vehicle even as people lay writhing in pain and dying and then proceeded to engineer a cover up of epic proportions with the help of rogue police officers from a nearby police station who ignored witness statements, erased call and SMS data as is emerging from investigations ordered by the Inspector General of Police, is the icing on the cake in this ignominious and contemptible saga that is now threatening the careers of several people including those that misadvised the IGP into making statements on his social media page in defending the hapless pastor.

He also seems to command police protection and have high level connections with his vehicle being released with uncustomary speed from the police yard where it was towed to and was even able to pay a likely scapegoat to act as the alleged driver of the vehicle arraigned in court neck brace and all is the stuff of a riveting action movie. I wonder how many other such cases abound where innocent chaps for a few shillings happily languish in jail knowing that the loot they have been paid will be theirs to enjoy once released from gaol!!

The question on everyone’s mind now is how did he with his cloak of religious piety even think to come up with this cloak and dagger scheme? Is this not the thinking of a dangerous and nefarious criminal? If this is the role model to his congregation and society at large then surely the world is coming to an end as was foretold in the bible!

Continuing with matters religious, I came across a post by a member of parliament again on social media who was asking for views from his constituents on going after 2nd generation churches now that 2nd generation alcohol had been consigned to various streams, rivers and sewers across the country. It was not clear who his intended victim was supposed to be but it seems that he is similarly fed up with the goings on and shenanigans by some of the pastors, bishops, ministers, anointed and so on who have made religion a get rich quick scheme where they extort money from their congregations through various nefarious schemes whose only result is to impoverish their flock even more.

The general feeling from the responses to his question was a furious barrage of self-righteous indignation that such a thought could even cross his mind if he wished to see the inside of parliament ever again with the more rabid and vacuous defending religion as their right and no one should direct them who to follow and when. No wonder that religion is probably one of the biggest causes of broken families in our country today.

So with pastors thinking like hardened criminals and the faithful (victims) defending their pastors as being as clean as the driven snow we are in for a showdown of epic proportions if ‘mheshimiwa’ makes good his threats to sweep away 2nd generation churches from our midst because clearly there are those faithful who are ready to take a bullet for their thieving and immoral pastors while at the same time defending them against their crimes as the work of the devil the eye witness accounts notwithstanding!

As for my brave neighbor who took on the wrath of God’s defenders I salute your right to defend your space when it is being taken over by others. May the good Lord also punish those of his servants who mock him through their actions and may the judge who is assigned this case not be swayed by the prayers of those who believe their pastor cannot possibly have done what he is being accused of.

Finally may that imbecile of a man who agreed to stand in for his pastor as a scapegoat driver also suffer the wrath of the judicial system for perjury and misrepresenting the truth while under oath.

You need to finally tame corruption Sir!!

Mr. President it is time to whip out the big stick because someone no doubt faceless and part of a gluttonous cartel has just stolen my money. Correction, sir…………..someone has been stealing my money for a very long time.

Going by the report from the auditor general in the dailies recently that shocked me into a stunned silence, I have calculated that my share of the stolen billions is Kshs. 1,675.00. This may not sound like much but multiply that by 40 Million Kenyans and suddenly it becomes an obscene number, Kshs. 67 Billion to be precise! Collectively my immediate family has lost a whopping Kshs. 6,700.00 and your family an even larger amount of Kshs. 8,375.00 enough to take care of supermarket shopping for a week. If I rope in my extended family on both sides, this figure is exponentially raised by the number of people in my extended family and becomes a significant amount.

I am not sure that those that manage the public resources of this country know the irreparable damage they cause when they dip their grubby fingers into the public pot because in the private sector where I work this would be a sure recipe to spill your ‘unga’ with no equivocation. You would be out of the door long before the word sorry has had a chance to form in your mind which is no doubt how your family businesses are managed with honesty and transparency!

Some of those whose dockets have been mentioned have even said that their dockets are clean and the auditor general doesn’t have a clue what he is talking about but pray what benefit would he get from falsifying a report of such momentous proportions, and while at it increase his personal security detail because corruption is about to fight back.

So how shall you smite this demon of corruption that has transformed itself over the years to consign the public sector to a veritable den of crooks at a feeding trough? Will your solemn oath to protect this nation and fight corruption be mere rhetoric? Will you leave us a legacy of continuing corruption during your term in office? We need to hear you on this serious matter and most importantly see solid and incontrovertible action against these enemies of this country.

Your recent action to ask those named in corruption allegations to step aside was a step in the right direction and all of us thought that finally heads would roll. We still wait with bated breath but alas the wheels of justice turn ever so slowly or is it corruption fighting back? With only 26 cases out of the hundreds of names in the list of shame seeing the light of day it looks like corruption is winning and those initially named in the list of shame are still parading around shamelessly broadcasting to all and sundry of their innocence as they continue to flaunt their ill-gotten wealth.

But what is stepping aside a term invented by disgraced public servants & politicians who don’t want to admit that they are guilty of the allegations leveled against them? I say fire these jokers, freeze their bank accounts and have their names, careers and reputations put under intense scrutiny to make them as miserable as the poor people that they are stealing from including their own grandmothers, mothers and daughters. When investigations are done and incontrovertible guilt proven which shall no doubt happen, set up a special court to prosecute these traitors as quickly as possible because resolve alone without action will not result in the much desired changes to the endemic culture of corruption in the public service.......with all due respect to the majority of the hard working civil servants who are free of graft!

Let your big stick whip equally those close to you, those from your community and those of your trusted advisors and lieutenants that may have failed the test of public accountability because ‘kikulacho ki nguoni mwako’! Let there be no sacred cows and let the investigations be conducted openly and transparently and cover a minimum of 20 years because there is no statute of limitations on treason and a majority of those who stole and continue to steal my money are no doubt still around.

Corruption is bound to fight back big time because it is backed by a bottomless war chest of stolen public funds by a few individuals but the majority of Kenyans will be routing for your success and the bright future of this country because truly we are all fed up!!

You need to finally tame this beast before it gobbles us all up!

Austerity or a stroke of genius:

I am not going to say that I was not impressed by the frugality of the new Central Bank of Kenya governor who has refused to accept the perks that go along with the high office that he occupies.

That he has refused the offer of three top of the line executive vehicles, a palatial residence in one of the most sought after suburbs of Nairobi, a plethora of servants at his beck and call, a security detail comprising bodyguards and drivers and a smart phone befitting his position can only mean one thing.......good grief what was the man thinking?

It was bad enough, they said, that the man had no wife, no children and no worldly possessions of any value other than the simple clothes on his back and those in his tin trunk back at his shared accommodation facilities with other like-minded individuals somewhere in Nairobi. Someone even had the gall to offer him a wife as if that would guarantee him to do the job at hand better!

Looking at this issue critically, I can’t help but think that this man is miserly and does not want others to progress at his expense. He is about to commit 20-30 people to the unemployment queue and their immediate and extended families to a life of penury and for what, to save a few million shillings in tax payers’ money! Or is he just a pragmatist now that the Kenya shilling has touched the Kshs. 100.00 mark last seen 4 years ago?

I wonder whether he shall be driving himself to work in his personal vehicle possibly a nondescript 2005 Toyota Corolla even as he mulls over the decline in the value of the Kenya Shilling and agonizes on how to make banks bring down interest rates since they don’t seem to comprehend that there is a direct correlation between interest rates and inflation.

He also risks being stopped and fined by overzealous traffic police officers ever vigilant to arrest those with the serious offence of talking on the phone while driving because being the busy man that he is he is bound to receive important phone calls that he cannot ignore (even if he doesn’t make any) on his latest mobile phone, a Nokia 3310 gifted to him by a grateful South Korean business mogul after the governors predictions in the movement of the Won against the US dollar 15 years ago made the business mogul a handsome return on his investment. After all he is the CBK governor!

But really what is so difficult about travelling in economy class instead of first class? What is so difficult about living a life free from the demands of a wife and kids as many men shall attest to today while quoting the hackneyed saying that the wedding ring is a strong and lifelong handcuff and so you’d better choose your warden wisely? What is so important about being seen in the biggest and longest car on the block or living on a two acre manicured compound surrounded by servants and bodyguards? Aren’t these just ego trips and expensive unnecessary expenses because they are certainly not necessities in my humble opinion. I think the culture we have all eschewed is looking for the jobs with the greatest perks and benefits even when clearly those perks and benefits may not necessarily add value to your life.

I wonder how previous CBK governors manage their lives now that the bodyguards, drivers, servants and big cars paid for by the tax payers are no longer at their disposal? Does it mean that they now have to foot the bill to enjoy all these benefits and perks that they had taken for granted while in their high office?

There is one good example of austerity in one Jose Mujica aka Pepe a former president of Uruguay until early 2015. Mujica, had foregone a state palace in favor of a farmhouse owned by his wife where they grew flowers for sale, he donated 90% of his modest $12,000.00 monthly salary to social projects, flew economy class when required and drove himself in an old Volkswagen Beetle. He was and still is one of the most popular leaders in that country to date partly because of his austerity but I would want to believe more for being a role model to his subjects. It is likely there are also hundreds or even thousands more such cases around the world where leaders deny themselves the perqusities that come with their job roles simply because they may not fit into their chosen lifestyles.

One of my brothers was the Group CEO’s of a public listed company until a year ago and he was in constant fights with his managers about cutting down on costs. He was entitled to 1st class tickets as the CEO and 5 star accommodation whenever he travelled (which was quite frequently) and a new official vehicle complete with a driver but chose instead to fly economy and stay at 2 & 3 star hotels. He often jogged home in the evening telling his driver to take the car home and many times he actually got home way before his driver thanks to the endemic traffic jams in Nairobi.

So it is possible to live a humble life and forego some of the perks and benefits that come with a high paying job and lead by example because which of your juniors shall expect fat perks and 1st class tickets when travelling with the head honcho of the company.

Kudos to governor Njoroge for leading from the front and all the success as he takes on his new responsibilities at the helm of the Kenyan monetary system more so now that the local currency is under immense pressure and has touched an all-time low against all other major international currencies!

Is there any distinction between matatus and excrement?

I look at ‘matatus’ on our roads and get the feeling that they are not dissimilar to human (s*#t) excrement.

They come in all shapes and sizes like you know what! Some are large, some are small and many are medium sized. Others are long, while others are short and of an unidentified pedigree. Still others are well formed while others are misshapen and almost beyond identification.

They are like the proverbial loose stool on our roads, sliding in and out of traffic leaving a trail of havoc, destruction and chaos in their wake and a stink in the air and without caring to clean up after themselves.

Sometimes they just squat there waiting to be cleared by the cops especially after a “teeny weeny” fender bender with an innocent motorist, while at other times they diarrhea all over the place like an infant without diapers or a drunk after a potentially lethal dose of ‘kari kari’ in their haste to fill any nook and cranny on the roads as they overlook all the rules of the road to get to their destination.

At other times it is as if they have constipation, unable to go anywhere and blocking the flow of traffic while just sitting there stone faced acting as if they are invisible and immortal.

Other times they are just all talk and no action like a person with an upset stomach because of the wrong dose of fuel or oil, farting and making a hell of a lot of noise with no corresponding positive motion in any direction.

And what about the confusion wrought in the bus stage similar to an unflushed loo at one of the local pubs as each tries to outdo the other all shapes, colors and sizes intertwined as they release their innards of disembarking passengers while they fill up with those wishing to get home stinking up the whole place and all with the same desire to flow out of there as quickly as possible when done to add to the mess that they found.

Surely the analogy between these guys and what comes out of an anus is no different!

My counting obsession

Mathematics was never my favorite subject in school and neither did I perform very well in that subject but over the years mental arithmetics, I have discovered, keeps me sharp and in a good frame of mind. In my vocation as a banker numbers shall inevitably come up whether it be cash, interest rates, foreign exchange rates, fixed deposit rates, business targets etc. Because our lives have now become completely automation driven from cash counting, to calculations, to system posting to deposit and loan conversion tables, to foreign exchange monitoring, to shares trading etc fewer and fewer people now calculate their figures manually.In golf also you are always counting something from the number of strokes you have made to tallying up the final score for yourself and the person you are marking and how can I forget the bet money with the various permutations of computing bets!

While admittedly square roots, sine, cosine and tangents are all alien things that are irrelevant to the ordinary mortal I know that these are an important part of someone's day to day job but not for me!! Why someone had to force us to learn these equations is beyond me upto today but I am sure a good living is made by those with the predisposition for these things. I am however now mentally able to calculate the acres in a hectare, the square feet in square metres, the litres in a cubic foot, the yards in a metre, kilometers per hour in miles per hour, the miles per hour in kilometers per hour, the amount of dollars/pounds/euro in Kenya shillings and vice versa etc.

I have counted bumps on the Thika Highway between Nairobi & Nyeri and a bit of useless triva for whatever it is worth is that believe it or not there are over 100 bumps including those annoying rumble strips along that 141 kilometer road from Naivas on Thika Road to Nyeri Town. 24 of these bumps are between Skuta as you approach Nyeri town and my house on Baden Powell Road a distance of probably 6 kilometers. Whether these bumps add any longevity in years to the people of Nyeri or are just an inconvenient drag and fuel expense to motorists may never be know because no one is sure why they had to be so many bumps in the first place.

To keep myself awake as well as to ease off on the gas pedal on some of my journeys usually while alone, I often count the number of Toyota vehicles folowing each other in a single file (excluding trucks,buses and motor cycles) be they Prados, Proboxes, Hiluxes, Hiaces, Mark X's, Corolla's, Allexes, Allion's, Surf's, Caribs, Crowns, Mark II's etc. The most at any one count have been a staggering 35 proving that Kenya is indeed Toyota country followed a distant second by Nissan! In the heavy commercial category, Mercedes Actros seems to be the clear runaway leader based on my experiences along Mombasa Road where these behemoths rule the highways while in the delivery van category Mitsubishi takes the prize!!

So there you have it, a little useless trivia to use as you please for whatever it is worth from the number of bumps along the highway to Nyeri to the dominant numbers of vehicles in different categories on our roads!

This beautiful country called Kenya – A golfers perspective (Part 2):

We left for Nandi Bears later that evening after the presentation and dinner at Kitale Club. It is a distance of 130 kms through Eldoret and Kapsabet through tea country. It was night time so we didn’t see much though we went on partaking of our drinks along the way trading general insults and dirty stories that only men can do all through the journey until one by one we dozed off fitfully to awake on arrival in Nandi Bears Club at midnight greeted by cold highland weather and a bar full of members finalising their golfing event of the day at the 19th hole on conclusion of a big tournament earlier. The club has limited and quite rudimentary accommodation facilities so only 5 of us were to spend the night at the club with the majority spending the night at a hotel in the nearby Nandi Hills town.

The next morning we arose bright and early from a somewhat fitful sleep with accusations of some getting lost among the tea plantations when answering the call of nature and calling their wives to rescue them from the Nandi Bear when they couldn’t find their way back to the room while others clutching onto their roommates in a bid to ward off the cold thanks to the generous whiskey and beer bought by the appreciative members of the club who were aware of our arrival and had scheduled a casino game the next day. Breakfast behind us and our colleagues’ arrival at the club from the hotel another day of golf beckoned.

Nandi Bears Club is one of those clubs that is beyond description because one cannot do justice by describing it because seeing is truly believing! It is a beautiful club set atop a hill with the 9 hole golf course spread out around you and below you. The view across the Nandi Escarpment is breathtakingly beautiful across the green tea plantations as far as the eye can see. The golf course and surroundings are perpetually green on account of regular rain that falls in any tea growing region around the world. The designers of the course seem to have got it right first time and due to the hilly terrain you are mostly playing your ball above or below your feet which can be quite daunting if you are not used to it. The course has a lot of indigenous trees and bushes resplendent in their majestic canopies that sometimes overhang the golf course making a shot tricky but nonetheless the thick spongy grass makes it a joy to play on.

All the tee positions for the 1st and 2nd nines are placed differently giving you a different perspective to the course with the 5th and 16th holes leaving little margin for error on your tee shot because of the impossibly small window to thread your ball through. Despite the daily rain storm that last upto 30 minutes for which play was delayed as people took shelter in the little bandas scattered around the course, the majority managed to finish play on this delightful course. Presentation over, a late lunch partaken off and winnings shared out among the predominantly Nandi Bears winners and a drink from the captain we were on our way for the last lap of our four course golf weekend to Kericho Club via Kibos a predominantly sugar cane growing region in Kisumu County.

It seemed that we always left for our next destination in the late afternoon meaning that we never got to view the scenery of our beautiful country during the day and it was on this leg that it was suggested that on our next tour we would be leaving for our next destination in the early morning so as to get to see our country, get to the next club in the late morning and then play golf before going to bed and then leaving the next morning for our next club destination an idea that was supported by the majority on this tour.

We got to Kericho town at 10.00 pm after an uneventful drive and checked into our hotel rooms whereupon those wishing to do so were free to go to bed while the adventurous ones went out on the town for some night time sightseeing. The hotel where we were to spend the night is a family themed hotel on bed and breakfast basis and serves no alcoholic beverages. The management however has no objection to you partaking of the stuff in your room so long as you do not disturb the rest of the guests. It’s called Sunshine Hotel and is located along the main road and 3 minutes’ drive from Kericho Club our venue for our final day of golf. It has a great ambience, good rooms and reasonable prices and the food is also good.

The next morning having partaken of a hearty breakfast and our bags packed and loaded onto the bus we set off for Kericho Club with some choosing to walk the short distance to the club. Kericho Club is a beautiful 9 hole golf course and like all the clubs we had visited thus far is perennially green and located in two sections where you cross a busy tarmac road to get to the other side. It also has room facilities next to the main club house. A casino inclusive of lunch was on the cards and in progress on the day that we arrived and we decided to enter it in addition of our own bet.

Being right in the centre of Kericho town, the golf course abuts residential and commercial areas of town and can be quite noisy when compared to Eldoret, Kitale and Nandi Bears relative tranquility. In addition the out of bounds on the golf course is a distinct reality given the proximity to the adjacent tarmac road and the commercial and residential areas surrounding the course as mentioned.

The golf course itself is more or less of a flat topography but with some serious roughs and tree groves that can be hazardous to those unable to stay on the fairways. It is cleverly built with hidden greens and bunkers that you cannot see on your approach until you literally fall into one. During our visit they were in the process of changing their greens to bent grass greens and hence some of the holes were played on temporary greens.

The last hole – No.9 or No.18 – is the signature hole for the course and features a water hazard that must have been designed by a comic at heart because it faces the club house and therefore all shots onto the green if too crisp have the potential to send members scampering for cover. Naturally this means that many approach shots onto the green are played with caution inevitably ending up in the drink. A total of 7 balls from those in the tour found their way into this hazard with at least four being from the drop zone alongside the water hazard. So near yet so far was a euphemism that was to ring loud and true for some who dropped valuable shots on this hole!!

Kericho also rains a lot at about 3.00 pm and as the clock struck this hour it came down in buckets and this time for a good hour continuously and furiously with accompanying winds and thunder but luckily we had all finished our round of golf. We are told that they tend to start competitions early to avoid the daily dose of rain in the late afternoon though the well-drained soil tends to clear the puddles quite quickly. So having partaken of the late chemsha meal, showered, changed and with a drink in the system it was time to leave only to discover that there were some amongst us who had played a good round and were amongst the casino winners forcing up to wait for the cash to be dished out and delaying our departure to 5.00 pm or so.

Our weekend of golf was over just like that. It had been a huge success and had accomplished our objectives of playing at 4 different courses, getting to know one another, cementing lasting bonds of friendship and knowing hitherto unknown things about people. We tried to accomplish this by getting people within the group to play golf with others within the group, sharing accommodation facilities where necessary and with different people each night and having meals and a drink together. The laughter, the jibes, the swearing, cursing and insults were on the way back to Nairobi less restrained then on the way to Eldoret so comfortable had people become with one another and the writing was on the wall that (not if but when) we should do the trip again in future.

Our drivers on the trip were part of the group and had been excellent in the execution of the duties choosing to remain sober when it was their turn to drive the next day while the rest made utter fools of ourselves in the bus. The return trip though Sotik and Narok took us the better part of 5 hours to Limuru Club where elated we disembarked packed our stuff away in out cars, had dinner and then left for our respective homes exhausted but elated to have been part of the first Western Tour.