somewhere between lovers and friends

I finally get to write a lamentations edition... I think I've met a girl. Actually met isn't the right word, coz I've known her for a while, maybe even five years on and off. We used to talk when I was in high school, then we stopped, then we started again when she was in high school, then stopped, then started again when I was in uni, then stopped, then started again when she was in uni. Then I got complimentaries to Nu Metro about four months ago and out of the blue I asked her to go with me and she said yes and we started hanging out after that ocassionally then her birthday came and went and I didn't know so she told me. That was now two months ago. After that it all seems like a blur, but right now I know she's away and it's the strangest thing - more than anything else I want to see her. I always used to look at my friends when they were here and laugh and think how weak they were, and that that stuff wasn't for me. Little did I know. This is all new to me, but I think I really like this girl, and I can't tell for sure if she feels the same way, but I know for a fact I want her to. She makes my heart race sometimes, I am physically unable to say no when she asks (but I try :), when we're together hours last only 10 minutes, I wanna hold her hand when we're walking (although I don't, dono why, maybe Im scared), and I can't seem to stop thinking about her lately. Why didn't all this happen to me the normal way - when I was still in kindergarten? Then I guess things would have been a lot easier to handle, and I'd now have a lot more experience. But no, it had to go and wait until I was old enough that I know what it is when someone's stomach is turning on the inside (which is what it does when she's not around and I want to see her - it is NOT fun!) I haven't told her yet, coz I keep thinking the feeling will go away somehow if I just leave it alone and my heartbeat will go back to normal, but it does not seem to be cooperating. In fact I think it gets stronger. That guy who said absence maketh the heart grow fonder was definitely onto something. But she hasn't the tiniest inkling what a blog is, let alone that I have one, so Im safe on this front :)

See now I have all these questions. I really don't think my problem with relationships is committment phobia the way the stereotype says. For me it's always been that I didn't feel the need to. I didn't seem to have that void people want to fill with love, and so everything was just peachy. I was single and I loved it. Now I don't know if that void has developed or I've just had a brain aneurism! How do I know it's not just a crush that will die down with time? Why didn't I feel this way the first time we met? She's still the same person I knew back then, I think Im still the same person I was, so what's changed? And why now, when all of us are going away for the holidays and will definitely not meet? Im not very big on phone conversations. For one thing, the other person can never seem to hear what Im saying, ati I speak too fast, mara Im not loud enough, plus I tend to run out of things to say very easily, so I only call to set up meetings or to find out specific things. Juzi when we met we were walking down memory lane, rehashing how we met, and I think it's remarkable that we both still remembered, given how long ago it was and that it wasn't like love at first sight or anything. I did like her even back then, but those were the days when I was like an island, entire unto myself, so going out never even came up. I just used to think it was nice having someone around to hang out with. But now do I want more? And what exactly is this "more"? And now that we've been friends this long won't it just ruin everything if I were to make a move and things went south. She's coming out of a long relationship and so there's that chance that I could just be the rebound guy and that never ends well, so I hear. There's all these things to consider. So much to think about. But then on the other hand there's the chance that it could all work out and I could end up the richest man in Babylon. If I'd been there before then I'd know if that chance was worth risking everything else. Now my problem is I've never been so Im at a loss here. Life would have been so much easier if we could hire people to make these decisions for us, or if we could just take a slight peek into the future to see how stuff turns out first, or maybe if I just had a Beamer(TM) :-D

The best song I've heard all this year I think is Broken by Lifehouse, and it's just now playing and I can't help but think how almost apt those lyrics are. Im not fully there yet, but Im finally starting to get a sense of what it is people mean when they say she's driving me crazy. It's a painful feeling, and beautiful at the same time. You have anxiety on the one hand and anticipation on the other. You can't decide whether to cry or to laugh. So maybe it wasn't meant to be love at first sight everytime. Maybe she just needed to walk by again, a coupla hundred times :), but regardless how I got here, Im here now and I just spent two hours writing this article and listening to Broken and Im really not comfortable on this sappy side. It's always been me empathising with those other people. I didn't ever think the day would come when I'd be in their shoes. Am I ready to do the boyfriend thing? I don't know. I don't even know what this "boyfriend thing" is, but I can already tell that if it means spending time with this girl I might want to give it a spin. I had always imagined I was going to be indomitable forever, and that I was never going to find myself just sitting down thinking about someone and wishing they were here. How wrong I was. But still, in the pain there is healing, and in her name, I find meaning. So Im holding on.

END

all tomorrow's parties

It's been four years since I joined uni, and the four years have been heaven! What! Ever since I decided to make the switch (I'd originally been called to go do building economics), I've always thought that B.Com is the best course in the world. Never mind that every half decent (and I do mean half decent) college now has their own flavor on offer (including, but not limited to, one Makere satellite college which Makerere insists have no affiliation with them whatsoever), plus really, I was at the best one of them all so that wasn't really a problem for us. When I was still in my old course, I had a classmate who'd actually done and passed those international baccalaureate exams and I used to wonder why would she go here when she could fly out, and her reason was that some friends of hers had told her "You haven't lived till you've been to the university of Nairobi". At the time of course I thought that was a pretty paltry reason for not wanting to go outside (and never come back). I still do, and turns out she does too, she was really just whiling away the time waiting for acceptances, coz once they came Uon was dropped like a hot stone. But having been through the machine myself, I can now say with a certain measure of authority that those friends of hers were onto something.

Life at that place is just out of this world. First by sheer numbers alone, you come to believe there's nothing you all can't do if you just agree on it. People are resourceful, as far as entertainment and events go, and if you know the right guys there's really never not anything to do. Stories abound - about both the students and the lecturers, but I was never a fan of the administration coz it never used to appear like they're doing me any favors. Or even like they even loved their jobs, so there's very few lecturers I even knew by name. I discovered I like gossip. ALOT! And that I don't care when Im gossiped about, although the way the system's been made you'll never know if it's about you, which I like. There was once this one bit about a guy who used to live with his girlfriend (the rooms were like 4 feet by 12 me I don't even know how you live two people inside there!!) and then killed her and hid her body under his bed, and no one discovered till about two weeks later when the body started smelling. Christ! The things we hear. No one ever talks about how he did it, but I think she probably suffocated to death - wasn't enough air for both of them in there. But as to why, stress is cited.

Then there was this band - The Journey. DAMN, I was a fan! They used to do these renditions of pop-rock hits both gospel and otherwise and it used to chuck so realistically. The first time I went as a first year I remember they played Breakfast at Tiffany's and at the time it had been forever since I'd heard it I was just blown away! I even went and looked for it just to relive old memories. Even after I moved to the upcountry campus I still used to find time and come attend their concerts, and they just got better with time. Although after leaving school I find it hard to go, bogged down with work and all. Then we used to do these road trips at the end of a semester where we hire cars and go out of the city for a day then come back late at night, and something always used to go wrong during them culminating in a major accident involving one of our cars and a matatu in which the matatu actually rolled and our car was wrecked. That was a scary one! Mercifully no one died - one matatu passenger just broke a leg, but naturally the idea of a road trip was not floated again following that incident. And then of course, who could forget, SIFE. In third and fourth years I discovered just how big a part of my life both in and out of campus SIFE was when one Sunday we'd decided not to meet coz nothing was happening and I couldn't remember what I used to do on Sundays. By 2PM me I was ready for the next day! I can truthfully say that if ever any single group of people outside of my parents have had an impact on my life it's my SIFE friends. And it doesn't hurt that we got to go to NYC and Paris. Doesn't hurt at all! :)

So the reason Im reminiscing like this is the graduation list recently came out (must say I'm impressed - we usually just graduate on expectations, they publish the list much later when we're all done with the masters!). And Im in it! With honors no less. I wish we also called it cum laude, like those other places, but for now who cares! Im graduating with honors! I love my life. I love the fact that I did not throw away my uni years just studying, and still came out on top. You know, maybe it's a good thing I didn't get taken for that elec engineering that i'd wanted coz it's possible id be speaking a very different story right now. For starters, I'd still be a student! Fate and its master, the Lord, seem to always be on my side when it counts, and that so far has been my saving grace. So on graduation I won't just be celebrating the closing of a chapter and the beginning of another one, I'll also be celebrating a life well lived. I did a lot of things in uni I'd never done before, I got a lot of exposure, I learned a lot of things, apparently I even came out with a degree, but most of all, in uni I met people who changed my life. And that is what all tomorrow's parties are going to be about.

END

to make my father proud

I've been self sufficient for a while now. Ok, not really, two months. But a glorious two months! Feels good putting food on the table (feels even better putting the table in the house first, hehe). But yesterday I had a row with the old man. I dint even know we were having it. We were discussing stuff about the future over phone then I started joking as usual, he got irritated and I couldn't tell so I went on then he swore he'd never talk to me about that future again, and hung up. And it still didn't click he was mad. So as it happens he told my mum who told me. I freaked out like even I didn't believe when I heard. Until I apologized I couldn't stop worrying about what I was going to say, you know, how he was going to react. We rarely kosana so it had been a while and I'd forgotten just how much influence they have over us. Or me, maybe it's just me. What's surprising is that they still do, even now after we've sort of stopped depending on them. I remember a time when everything I did I used to do so my father would notice. Before I was old enough to have dreams of my own his were mine. I used to say if it'll make him happy it's got to be good enough, and if he even so much as frowned I'd go back and change the whole thing. He balked at my handwriting once so I had to go and change it completely. I mentioned Starehe once and saw how his eyes lit up, so it became my goal (although it became a goal for real when later in class 8 I visited it and fell in love). I started ironing clothes because he strongly approved, and many other things. In fact I don't think there have been many major things during my growing up years I didn't do to get his approval.

I've been lucky, I guess, on two accounts: that I always managed to succeed at whatever I tried, and that the person I picked to be my beacon had a persona that could always find the true north. When with just one word a person can make or break you, it helps if that person's intention is purely to make you, and I'd say his has always been. And even after I was old enough to start having ambitions of my own I remember my father's opinion always counted. Like my first real love as a career was law. Actually I think it still is. I sit down and watch The Practice or A Few Good Men and I see people spit facts and argue law and convince juries and I can't help but think wistfully about what could have been. I know law isn't nearly as glamorous here as I see it on TV, but no one can contest the fact that enough of the great people of our times had a legal background - starting with the biggest one of them all - Barack Obama. I tell myself that could have been me (not the president, a lawyer!) But he didn't think it was a very good idea to go into law at the time. So I changed my dream to engineering. This one I held steadfast, coz I genuinely liked it and coz, of course, he seemed to like the thought. But JAB had other ideas. So when I finally settled on B.Com we both sat down and recharted my future, and so far it all seems to be going well. He's the kind of guy who seems to have something to say about like everything, so when Im in doubt about very many things it's never not come up to ask him. One of his favourite phrases when he was laying down the law and knew we weren't going to like it was "As long as you're living in my house, eating my food...", so there were times when all of us couldn't wait to go out on our own. Well, for me that time did come, and it came on good terms (which is abit more than I can say for my brother), but it still took me aback when I found out just how much Im still under the influence. I guess it never really ends, when you look up to someone as much as I did to him. The student never really becomes the master, especially when the master constantly keeps reinventing himself.

Anyway, I did apologize and now we're good so all's well that ends well. They keep telling us there's no teacher better than experience, but I think if you look really carefully and are willing to learn, you can find a few. And I think in him I found mine. There must be a reason why they say things like "like father like son". Or "the apple does not fall far from the tree". Fortune [the magazine] keeps running these features on the most successful people in business and asks them who the most influential person in their lives has been, and 9 times out of 10 they say their father. I know Iacocca did, Al Gore did, Trump did, Bill Gates did, and Welch did (Obama probably won't, coz he didn't really grow up with his dad :). But you get my point. I look up to very many people. I read about very many people. And when I grown up I have dreams about being very many people. But at the end of the day the one voice I want to hear sanctioning my hopes and dreams is still that same one I listened to when I was still a child - my father's. And this time I actually know for a fact it's not just me. There are very many of us. The title of this post is the name of a song by Michael Jackson. This is the guy who bleached his entire skin and put tonnes of product in his hair and almost lost his nose trying to make himself white just so he could look more like his idol [Diana Ross], and even he thinks about stuff like what kinds of things would make his father proud! Imagine that.

END

madness, and a little bit of hope

Im pretty sure this has been said like a million times by now already, and I know I pretend to be original and all but deep down inside Im really just a shallow flag-follower. (nah, Im not, but I still wanna add my voice to the mix). There's a black man in the white house. For the first time ever! I was looking at his story and I can't seem to be able to stop marvelling. I mean this guy is like 47, he's never been to Washington before, he was born by a Kenyan father (although I really do maintain, there is not a single drop of Kenyanness in the guy, why we're insisting he's a "son of the soil" is a bit beyond me!), this was his first time running for high office, he was also a first-time senator, and he didn't just win, he won by a landslide. He stands up to speak and everyone shuts up and listens. Back in '04 when he was delivering the DNC keynote address by the way me I think he even overshadowed Kerry himself. How does one man manage to do that?? These are some of the things you just can't explain, but you know you want to be a part of. Early on in the campaign the Obama effect became pretty clear, when he started to catch up with Hillary. He didn't bring an imposing larger-than-life presence to the table, he didn't bring experience, he wasn't as well known going in as was everyone else, and basically the odds were all stacked against him. All he brought was that one word: hope. The promise of a better tomorrow. And it soon became apparent that he had a gift - he could galvanise and excite people like no one else could. He was all about the future. And the longer the campaigns lasted, the more people, yours truly included, crossed over to his side. Turns out no one really stood a chance against the force that was Obama.

And then I was thinking about his kids. Im moved by the guy and Im all the way across the Atlantic. So how must it be for them, right there in the same house as him. I mean, how do you not excel? How do you not turn out phenomenal having grown up in such an environment? With a father like that, and a mother like that? In a country like that? I saw the sixth season of The Apprentice and on there Trump brought his daughter Ivanka to be his eyes and ears, the thing George used to do, and she's a bit of a story herself, having gone to the Wharton School of Business. Same as Bill and Hillary's Chelsea. Hillary wrote a book, about her life, and she called it Living History. And I find the title so apt, coz basically as the president of the United States you have a say in like everything that happens of significance on the world stage. How beautiful is that? To be able to say you've lived history, you know, that you were right there in the center of it all when it happened. It's a many-facetted thing, history. So much so that even Fidel Castro knew it had a place for him when he told the court after being arrested for leading a rebellion against the government of the time:
"I know that imprisonment will be harder for me than it has ever been for anyone, filled with cowardly threats and hideous cruelty. But I do not fear prison, as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who took the lives of 70 of my comrades. Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me."

Anyway, Obama. The stories about people who get inspired aren't false. I know, I've felt it too. Having read about him and Welch and Iacocca, Im starting to think that maybe I do want to be in public arena. Im still sure it's not politics, but Id really like if one day someone walked up to me and told that they're who they've become because of me. Id be overcome! I wanna find out some time that parents tell their kids to go study if they want to be like me. And I'd like to know that all those people who used to see me as an underdog now wish they were me. One day. We get these instances every so often in our lives, that arouse feelings within us. They stay with us. As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered. And remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped. And movement stopped. For much, much more than a moment. And then all of a sudden, the moment's gone. But at the end of it all, I like Barack, still believe in a place called hope.

END

uptown downtown (misery's all the same)

It's official. If I never count stock again it'll be too soon! I was out on one all this
weekend, and it was apparently an exotic place - flower farm in naivasha. But as im
finding out, the exquisiteness (is that a word? hmm) of a place massively depends on the
reason you're visiting that place. Naivasha to Crayfish - rocking place. Rocking
weekend. Naivasha to count flowers - not so much! I swear we were doing that stuff all
night. They wait till 12AM to start the process (who does that?!?) and so as to preserve
freshness and all the rooms are temperature-controlled - 2 DEGREES!! You put on like all
the sheepskin in the world but still when you just go in like this it's windy so when
tears start chucking from your eyes its ice droplets. I kid you not!! Ok, I do, but it
was REALLY cold. That coupled with the fact that there was about a million flowers
distributed all over the country and did I mention it was one in the morning? OMG! Have
you ever gone back home and just wanted to collapse on your couch and realised you don't
have one yet coz this is your first month living on your own so you're still working on
the whole furniture thing? Yep, that was me. :( Then Monday morning I get a new email
from our office admin with an attachment - new schedule for stock counts in Dec. No
prizes for guessing who's on that list. Thrice! Altho in all fairness so is everyone
else. I guess misery really does love company. But either way, Murphy must have been a
very wise person.

Anyway, do you find it odd the way everyone is all US elections and how they won't go to
school/work/the bar on Wednesday if McCain wins (actually the sisters have remained
strangely silent on the subject of bars on Wednesday - turns out ladies' night [read
free entry] is quite addictive.. :) ). It's been happening every four years for two
hundred years, but apparently this year there's a twist - the boy we want to win comes
from here. I mean, seriously, who're we kidding?? HIS FATHER came from here. The boy
himself was once here for two weeks trynna trace his genealogy (I hear for his MBA
project) and all of a sudden Kogello is now being renamed Obamaville. That road has been
tarmacked all the way from the airport to the grandmother's house. Can you believe!??!
Anyway, Im not complaining about that one coz apparently it was done by the British
government(!) I just want all us people to get our heads out of the clouds, and realize
that that boy is an American citizen running at a time when his country is tumbling down to
the doldrums and there are american-grade problems for him to think about and so all
this camaraderie and warm feelings of kinship coming from us will probably remain very
one-sided. The way I see it, when he keeps talking about a father from Kenya, the point
is usually not supposed to be the "from Kenya" part, the way we'd like to believe, coz
he never misses to also mention "a mother from Kansas". The point he's usually trynna
make is parents from two different worlds. His father could have been from The Gambia,
and he'd still be telling the same story. I know victories are pretty hard to come by thisides and
we need to celebrate the few we get, but seriously, they need to be clear and present.
And REAL. But hey, that's just me.

END

la vita è bella

Sidebar: For a while now I've been using song and album names as titles for my posts. Today I found myself at a fork - to use life is beautiful which as actually a song by Vega 4, or its Italian counterpart la vita è bella, which is the name of a movie. As you probably already know, the movie won out. Italian sounds so exotic....

A friend of mine's grandmother was killed recently. The worst possible way - she was first stabbed, then when she failed to bleed to death she was strangled. Here's the kicker - by her son, now the friend's uncle. And what's worse, this friend's mum got to the scene before the grandmother died, so she saw it all. The trauma is real in their house. Real!! It surprises me at times, how fleeting life can get. One moment you're here, the next you're not. I find it a little ironic, that life is God's most precious gift, bar none, and yet of all of them, it's the one gift we're sure is going to be taken back someday.Regardless of religion, creed, belief, culture, upbringing, we all converge on this one point - we're gonna die someday. The English even coined a phrase around it: as sure as death and taxes (turns out the government is pretty efficient when it comes to collecting those...:). But the sad part, is that for those who remain life has to go on. The hardest part of saying goodbye is having to do it all over again, every day for the rest of one's life. Having to face the same truth each new day, that life will never be the same again. Our time here is short. It feels like a part of us has been ripped off. And I guess it usually has. I've so far had the good fortune of never having lost someone close to me. I can't even begin to imagine what it feels like. It's been 4000 years and we as a civilization still haven't grasped the mystery that is death. The closest we've come is to call it the Grim Reaper.

That said, it's not so hard to tell how bad death is from the effects it has on the people it surrounds. No matter how bad someone was alive, there will always be nice things to say about them at their funerals. It's a twisted stroke of fate, that people should find the heart to share all these great things about someone when he's no longer around to hear them. They say the one thing worse than having loved and lost is to never have loved at all. But I would like to contend, the worst thing that could happen to someone, is to die before their time. Before they get the chance to realize all their dreams. Before they get to show the world just what it is they're made of. Life owes it to us to last until such time as our potential is fulfilled. Preachers preach and a lot of them call the grave yard the richest place in the world. They say it's coz it's full of people who died with dreams untold. People who didn't live long enough to see their ambitions through. That, I think, is the worst thing that could happen to someone.

And as terrible as death is, life is that much better. It's under the cover of life that we can, well, live. And love. Learn guitar. And play the music in our hearts. Travel. Meet new people. Climb the Everest (or maybe just the Nandi Hills, but still). Win an Olympic medal. Get an autograph from Snow Patrol. Exercise. Eat fast food. Listen to indie rock and rebel against the law. Fantasize about Jessica Alba. Run a blog. Fly. Freaking anything we wanna do!! And then turn right around and do it all over again. Ever wondered what it would be like if you weren't there? If you were suddenly gone, how would your world react? Well, whatever you thought you were wrong. There can be nothing glamarous about death. Grief is like the ocean. It's deep, it's dark and it's bigger than all of us.

So, does life really end at death? For most of us, yes. But Mary Elizabeth Frye wrote the euology of eulogies, and I'd like to to be mine:

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain
I am the gentle autumn's rain.

When you wake in the morning hush
I am the sweet uplifting rush.
Of quiet birds in circling flight
I am the soft starlight at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there, I did not die.

END

a rush of blood to the head

So it's been a pretty long week. Actually a long month, coz this is the first month I've spent working. Like ever! I never did any of that internship thing when I was in uni, I just used to bum all holiday long. It's a new experience, like being thrown into the deep end (that would actually also be a new one for me literally - don't know how to swim :). But yesterday I did something good. I bought something big for my new house. It's not new really, I've kinda been living there for about a month already, but I haven't gotten anything at all, except for the bed which I really did need. Anyway, the big thing. It's not really big, it's just a coffee maker. I decided on that one coz Im an absolute lover of coffee, I think they're really cool and convenient, and it's something I've always wanted. But mostly it was that I could afford it at the time -:). Im a guy who likes symbolism to some extent, and so to break it in and mark the day all I had was coffee. Breakfast, lunch and supper. Ok, not lunch coz I was out for that one, but definitely the other two. And its been great. Now I want a TV and a Playstation. (What's that? Im too old? No Im not. Leave me alone!)

The first time I paid rent was depressing. I can totally see now how it is our parents got so old so fast! Growing up the way I did, one never realises this day is going to come. I was a pretty sheltered kid, add that to the fact that I grew up upcountry and you have yourself naivette at its best. We weren't really rich, but we comfortable, Id say, and I got most of what I wanted (except for a certain mountain bike that has eluded me to this day..:( ). And so you tend to learn to not care where stuff comes from. All you know is if you want it it can be found. The stories about hungry kids in Sudan don't really impact us the way they do white people coz we're so close to it all. It's that case of familiarity breeding contempt, I guess. Of course as a kid you don't really think like that anyway, these are things that just cross my mind in hindsight. When I try and think about how different I probably would be if I'd grown up having to hustle for myself. Or if I'd ever been in the middle of a live strike (can you believe I've still never seen one??!) and had to escape the scene.

Im not complaining by the way. I loved my childhood. And I think my parents did make me who I am today, together with Starch of course, no one goes to that school and chucks without being changed in some way! It's just that now that I have to get all my own stuff and pay all my own bills it's a little new. There's no lifeline at the other end of the phone to bail me out. (ok, there is, but who're we kidding?) But there's a sense of achievement, I find, that comes with being able to call something mine. It's refreshing, like a breath of fresh air, knowing deep down inside that my life is now my own. Coz it is. I answer to no one but myself. If you don't count my boss that is - all 60 of them [and they say it's a flat structure. What!!]. Ok, not really 60, but still.

Coz of this new-found freedom Im learning all the fundamentals. How to be fiscally responsible. Savings. Investing. Budgeting. Even the word "mortgage" keeps coming up. It gets overwhelming at times, but truth be told I've never had so much cash in my life, and so I really do need to learn these things, at the very least to keep me from bouncing off the walls after payday. Everytime I get a chance now that I live close to a megastore I go window shopping and there is ALOT of stuff to buy out there. You can never not find something, even things you weren't looking for. Or things you have no idea when you'll ever need to use. Discipline is hard. But necessary. And it starts now, with me admonishing myself over that skateboard I bought. Oh, wait, had I not mentioned that? Ya. The coffee maker Im proud of. The skateboard, maybe not so much...

END

love in the time of science

When the Time Magazine decided to do a Person of the Century edition back in '99, it was
to award the person who they thought had had the most impact through the entire century.
Now Time does a lot of cover spreads, and they're almost always who's who. So who better to pick the best out of the best than them! As you can imagine the list had like all the big names. FDR, JFK, Mahatma Gandhi, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs (ya, he of the ipod fame), Elvis Presley, and even (SHOCKING!!!) Adolf Hitler. But among them, a little known scientist was crowned king. Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity won out. He wasn't the loudest, or most eloquent, or most influential, and by no means even the smartest, person on the list. But see according to the guys over at Time, the one thing for which the 20th Century will be remembered for the most will be its scientific developments. Apparently science was a really big part of the last hundred years. So in a world full of scientists, what does it mean to be in love?

Is it the ancient mythic asian folk tale handed across generations depicting a conversation between two drunk people:
Drunk #1: "I love you!"
Drunk #2: "No you don't."
Drunk #1: "Yes, yes, I do. I love you with all my heart."
Drunk #2: "No you don't. If you love me, why don't you know what hurts me?"

Is it the whole romanticized idea of a guy bringing a girl the moon (or a red rose) and crossing the ocean for her? Does it necessarily mean sacrificing, to the point of giving up your life for another? Is it blind? When belabored with conditions, does it cease to be "true"? Does it take you breathe away, and does it never end? Is everyone of us really meant to end up with just the one person? Is it written in the stars? And if it's destiny, then is this just God's experiment in which we have no say? O ya, and what if the earth doesn't move?

Or is it the Hollywood interpretation, what Julia Roberts meant when she stood before Hugh Grant in his bookstore telling him "The fame thing isn't really real you know. And don't forget, Im also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her." Or what Anne Hathaway meant when in answer to Jason's question "Why me?" she said, "Because you saw me when I was still a nobody." Or what Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio shared when deep in the Atlantic she held his hand telling him, "I'll never let go!" Or what Chad Michael Murray was feeling looking deep into Hilarie Burton's eyes and telling her "It's you. When all my dreams come true, the one I want next to me. It's you,
Peyton." Or the connection Sanaa Lathan had with hip hop, all the way from her childhood, in the form of an apparently strapping young fellow by the name Taye Diggs. (BTW I think I now need to get a life coz these examples just keep flowing. What!!)

I think love is one of those things that doesn't have an absolute definition, it's purely subjective. You could ask a hundred people in love what it means to them and you'd end up with a hundred different answers. Much unlike the Theory of Relativity above, love is one subject that remains as fluid as the air. You can never really put your finger on it. To some it could be complete trust. To others it could be putting someone else's dreams and ambitions above one's own. And to yet others it could be
accepting the other person exactly as they are, warts and all. And I think all these people would be right. It seems to be the kind of thing that's really easy to confuse with want or desire (spelt l-u-s-t ;). See my thinking is one is fleeting, and the other lasts for a while (forever if the romantics are to be believed). One is superficial and the other runs deep. In hindsight it's usually pretty easy to describe love - after all, if after 27 years you still make each other's hearts skip beats then it sounds like love. But on that first day, can you usually see the next 27 years? Herein lies the problem with
defining love. It's one of those things that is until it's not. And when it stops being then you'll know it wasn't true, if it doesn't (stop being) then you'll know it was. (Eh, am I in danger of becoming a philosopher here?...)

We spend our whole lives searching for true love, which is why our lifetimes are divided into two - there's that first part where we're still searching, and then the second part called "the rest of our lives" when we've found it. And don't take my word for it: just turn on the radio. Depeche Mode - The Meaning of Love; Air Supply - All Out Of Love; Angels and Airwaves - Love Like Rockets; Ashlee Simpson - Love Makes The World Go Round; BarlowGirl - I Need You To Love Me; and that's even before I go into the R&B songs! Turn on the TV: One life to live; One Tree Hill; Felicity; Dawson's Creek; Tell Me You Love Me; Melrose Place... again, I haven't even broached the subject of Mexican soaps! Or go to the cinema: The Other Boleyn Girl, Titanic, Casablanca, If Only, The Notebook, Love In The Time of Cholera, The English Patient... I could really go on. And yet love
remains the most misunderstood concept of all time (although a pretty strong case can also be made for E=mc2 :)

I found this paragraph on the net some time and I think it sums it up pretty well: As an abstract concept, love usually refers to a deep, ineffable feeling of tenderly caring for another person. Even this limited conception of love, however, encompasses a wealth of different feelings, from the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love to the nonsexual emotional closeness of familial and Platonic love to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love. As in even they admit it's impossible to explain (ineffable). And of course, no discussion on love would be truly complete without The Bard adding his voice to the mix:

Love is not love which alters when it alteration
finds. It is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempis and is never shaken. Love
alters not with time's brief hours and weeks, but bears it out, even to edge of
doom.

END

we might as well be strangers

Last Sunday's sermon was very awe-inspiring. It was about us being ourselves. Being the Africans we are meant to be. Unapologetically, so the preacher said. It really provoked me. Most of the stuff he said is actually true about us. We walk around wearing those loud t-shirts that scream Kenya in glow-in-the-dark colors and paint our faces red green and white, so that we show we're patriots. We make a loud hash every time we buy Kenya, so we can show we support our local industry. We try so hard to tell our friends where it is we come from, and we tell ourselves twenty times every day, "I'm proud to be Kenyan." So the question was: when has it ever been in contention that we're proud? Who asked? Who challenged the status? Why do we feel that need to outwardly go out of our way to prove our love for the motherland? It all sounds a little fake sometimes if you ask me. If it was real, if it was genuine, it would just come through. It's almost as though we're trying to convince ourselves that we love the motherland!

The things, according to him, that people who don't come from here love about our country and us: we're all family, you don't need to call ahead to show up at someone's door step, we own things communally, we place a greater premium on people and relationships than we do on time and systems, our mother-tongue interferes with other languages, like english, we cook a mountain of food every meal - just in case guests show up unannounced, cousing is not even a Kenyan concept - here we're really all brothers and sisters. If you look carefully, you'll find that these, the things others admire in us, are the things we're ashamed of. Someone is speaking and they shrub and we laugh at them. Someone shows up an hour late for a meeting and we call that "Kenyan timing." and that's enough to explain everything. We don't even trust ourselves to lead ourselves. We think we'll run our own institutions to the ground if left in our hands [and of this Im actually guilty. When Geoffrey Griffin of Starehe died, I was strongly of the opinion that if a black person were put at the helm of the school that was going to be the beginning of its downfall. Imagine. That's not even an outsider talking about a local, it's we ourselves talking about us! I stand corrected, btw. They put a Kenyan in charge and he took the school back to the top] You go to that Java at Adams and there's a ka-waiter looking askance at you like "Now this one, what does he want here?" A Kenyan. One of our own, not a foreigner!

We could perhaps blame this inferiority complex we have on colonialism. It's the kind of thing that cuts deep into people's psyche and damages sometimes irreparably their self esteem. Slavery is the worst form of oppression. It teaches us that we're not good enough. That we're somehow insufficient, and we need someone else to validate us before we can present ourselves to the rest of the world. From the gospel according to Willy Lynch, [a guy who was called in by slave owners in the south when they feared they were losing control of their slaves]: Keep the slaves physically strong, but psychologically weak and dependent on their master. Keep the body, but take the mind. But be that as it may, really, are African countries the only countries that were colonised? Wasn't the United States of America a British Colony in the 18th century? They fought for their freedom, and when they got it they set about creating their own identity. Never mind that the country has actually surpassed their colonisers. Let's just focus on the basics: today there is nothing American that reflects british influences. Nothing whatsoever! The britons have an unwritten consitution, Americans wrote down theirs. Britons are a monarchy, the American system is presidential. The Britons keep left when driving, Americans keep right. They even speak different flavors of English, and spell things differently. It's like the Brits were never in the States. Look now at our dear Kenya. The roads are still the same. The language is still the queen's. Infrastructure is still the same. We even used to have Kenyan Pounds as part of our currency. Our very legal system is like 60% English Common Law! Look at precedent, and you'll see names like Lord Demming, Lord Erroll, Oliver Wendell Holmes jr. et al. Surely, is anything we are that is a creation of our own?

I guess there comes a time when we have to ask ourselves: is patriotism a task or a life philosophy? Is there like a 21-point plan for being Kenyan? Are there things you have to do to show it? Is it in the dress? Is it in the fact that we speak our mother tongue fluently plus that of our next-door neighbor's? Can we quantify the amount of Kenyanness in someone? Langston Hughes wrote the poem I, too, sing America as a harbinger for the coming of the day of the black. Back then, before Rosa Parks and before Martin Luther King, when beaches were still segregated, here was a black person saying "Besides, they'll see how beautiful I am/And be ashamed--/I, too, am America." This should be testament to the fact: Things don't affect you psychologically unless you let them. Nothing external to you has any power over you, says John C. Maxwell. JD from Scrubs was once having one of his usual waking dreams, about being Robin to Turk's Batman, and he asked himself something interesting: "How low is my self esteem that Im the sidekick in my own fantasy?" At the time I lauged - it was a funny joke. But it's starting to seem more and more reality about us Kenyans, and Africans in general. It's our land, they're our minerals, the lakes and mountains were ours first, for crying out loud this is the cradle of mankind. Where it all began. And yet before the rest of the world we bow and ask, "How may I serve you today master?" 

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill/Of things unknown but longed for still.

END

sometimes you can't make it on your own

Friendships are hard. Relationships are even harder. Marriages should actually come with the NIH sign [Not Invented Here]. I've always wondered why. It should be one of life's great paradoxes - that man was actually created with fellowship in mind, and yet finds it the hardest to relate with his own kind. Of course if you believe in evolution then understanding this shouldn't really be a problem for you, you know, coz of the whole natural selection thing... But that aside, there seems to be a plethora of explanations out there for why interaction is so hard between people. Out of sight, out of mind. People always leave. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. You never miss the water till the well runs dry. In fact, Allan Pease (is that his name? I forget) has a whole series on the two genders: Why men don't listen and women women can't read maps, Why men don't have a clue and women always need more shoes, Why men lie and women cry, Why men can only do one thing at a time and women don't stop talking, or Why he's so last minute and she's got it all wrapped up. The list is long. It's like everywhere you turn in this arduous journey of life you find a shaded resting place with a couch, a cool drink and a pamphlet listing 27 reasons why you're better off on your own.

Are we really? I was privileged to go to Starehe for high school. Now as far as associations and disparities go, it doesn't get bigger than Starehe. That school has like a thousand students. Literally. The whole brotherhood theme is so hammered it's like it's up there on the list [of priorities] and academic success comes a close second. We all live in the same rooms - prefects, captains, high schoolers and collegers. There is no such thing as bullying. We eat at the same tables (most of us anyway). We live by the same rules (although here I should probably add seemingly). We don't put on the same uniform, but the times when it needs to be on are the same for everyone. We are taught to share, to depend on one another, morally, mentally and physically. We are taught that the differences we see are only superficial, and that deep down inside, we're all the same. That when the game ends the king and the pawn all go back to the same square. That we're all the same color once you turn out the light. But best of all, after all this education is done, the final decision to relate is left up to the individual. No one gets forced or otherwise compelled. Those who want to be snobs can actually be snobs, and the social bees can do their thing. So if you leave the school having learnt anything, it will be because you chose to, and those are the lessons that stay with us for a lifetime. It was in Starehe that I first heard the long version of no man is an island: No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...Therefore send not to find out for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. (or something like that)

I think mostly the thing we're afraid of in relationships, is the possibility of getting hurt. Apparently if you don't expect anything you don't get disappointed. While they last, judging by consensus, relationships and friendships are the isht. But when they end, there are few feelings that are worse. I guess they called it a heartbreak for a reason. It would seem then that every song's gotta end some time, but is that reason not to enjoy the music? It could also be a question of misplaced priorities. In today's world, money seems to be that answer to all of life's problems. Get enough of it and there's really nothing, or no one, else you need. That those who say money cannot buy you happiness don't know where to shop. The American actor Groucho Marx once implored the Good Lord, "All I want, God, is a chance to find out for myself if money really doesn't buy happiness." Modern society even has a skewed view of family - father, mother and children. Strictly. These days we don't so much live together as simply coexist. We're all just victims of circumstance in where we find ourselves. Is it us? Are we our own worst enemy? George Bernard Shaw may have been right:

As we strain to grasp the things we desire, the things we think will make our lives better - money, popularity, fame - we ignore what truly matters. The simple things. Like friendship, family, and love. The things we probably already had.

END

boulevard of broken dreams

I got turned down recently at a job interview. I assume so coz they didn't get back to me like they said they would. But that wasn't my last hope so I'm still ploughing on as I know best. This is about the third time that's happened to me so far, and it's really been eye opening, I like to think. I'd like to believe that I'm learning new things every day from all these missteps. Coz otherwise then it will all have been for nothing, and that is not a particularly awe-inspiring prospect. We learn from failure I guess that the world doesn't begin and end with us. We learn that life doesn't stop. We learn that when one door closes, if we look carefully we'll find that another one opened. And most importantly we learn to believe in a higher power, coz it would appear that we did everything we could and somehow still didn't make it. That our best wasn't good enough. It's supposed to teach us perseverance. If it doesn't kill us it's supposed to make us stronger. It's supposed to stretch our limits, and make us discover heights we can reach we didn't think possible. And when we finally do succeed, and find that the success is even greater coming at the time it did rather than earlier on, it's supposed to show us in hindsight that all things really do work together for good for those that love Him.

Failure tests our faith. Our resolve. How badly do you want something? You never really realise that until fate tells you you can't have it. Then you get to find out just how far you'll go to get it. You also get to find out that it's never all going to be in your hands. You'll always have to leave something - however small - to chance. I was watching Prison Break way back when, and Scoffield said something I found interesting - preparation can only get you so far, then you have to take some leaps of faith. And this was a guy who didn't even empty the trash without it being some part of a grand plan! If because we failed once we become afraid to try again, to take a chance on life, then we shall truly have failed. Otherwise it's all education, not failure per se. I find that success isn't about never falling. It's about rising up one time more than however many times you fall. It's starting from scratch and keeping on scratching. "...If you can make a heap of all your winnings/And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss/And lose, and start again at your beginnings/And never breathe a word about your loss/..." goes that Rudyard Kipling poem.

The older I get, the more I realize that dreams don't always come true. Occasionally dreams get replaced by even greater ones. And at other times they just die. And it's all ok. That is as it should be. One does not always become less of a person for letting go. One isn't less worthy for changing course. If we always got everything we asked for when we asked for it, I think we'd become ungrateful. We'd start to take things for granted. Sometimes loss teaches us to value things more. You try and you fail and you try and you fail so that when you finally do succeed, you can truly appreciate the grandeur of it all. You can take a step back and take stock of all your efforts and treasure your achievements.

Sometimes when you're young you think nothing can touch you. It's like being invincible. Your whole life is ahead of you, and you have all these plans. Big plans. To become this successful person. To find your perfect match, the one that completes you. To write the great novel. To invent something new. But as you get older you realise it's not always that easy. It's not until the end of your life that you realise the plans you made were simply plans. At the end, when you're looking back instead of forward, you simply wanna believe that you made the most of what life gave you. You wanna believe that you're leaving something good behind. A legacy. You want it all to have mattered.

END

deep enough to dream

Over the weekend, I was out house-hunting. The reality that I need to learn to stand on my own hit me, and it hit me hard. See I cleared uni. Four years seems like a really short time in retrospect, even counting that one class that never really used to end [or in my case 6 - Im a difficult guy to enthrall :) ], and I know that sounds cliche, but it's true. I cannot believe it's all over. No more waking up at ten to bask in the sun. No more fast food lunches every day. No more 'borrowing' stuff from the friend next door. No more skyving classes - something liberating about that, never quite known what. No more paying half-fee at concerts coz I have a student ID. No more people to make fun of. No fences around me offering the promise of security from the vagaries of the world. No more staying up all night staring at the stars just talking (Ok, I never did that. That would be completely cheesy!). Anyway, it appears I will be unable to do very many things I used to be able to coz I was still just a student, what did I know? Now I know. And soon Im going to be given the power to read (that's what they tell us when we graduate, like what have we been doing these last four years?? duh!), and with great power comes great responsibility... teren teren!!!

So the agent at the house quoted a pretty insane figure which they demand upfront as deposit for the houses, and I was hit with another reality - I NEED A JOB, FAST!!! It's like the rat race never ends. You work hard at primary so you can go to a good high school, you work hard there so you can get a good course in uni, which you do well so you can get a nice job. You'd think it was all over, but apparently you still need to work hard, perhaps now more than ever. When I was a kid I used to envy my parents, coz they used to have all the fun at work and I had to spend the day in school. It seemed they didn't have teachers hiding in the eaves with sticks waiting to pounce for even the smallest reason, or a boring monotonous timetable that never stops, or constant examinations. But mostly it was that school ran from 6AM to 6PM and work only seemed to run from 8 to 4 :). Now that I've gone through all that and Im on the verge of entering the working world, those days are starting to seem pretty idyllic. No landlords asking for rent, no pesky kids wanting to go to the park, no bosses breathing down your neck about deadlines, no insurbodinate juniors making you look bad, no needing to budget with fewer resources than requirements, and three school holidays every year to look forward to. Perhaps the grass really is always greener on the other side, even if you've been there and back.

On the job front the competition is pretty cutthroat. It's more than just survival for the fittest. Everyone wants a piece of the action, and it doesnt seem to be enough to go round. Natural selection is supposed to sharpen the edges, to ensure we are constantly getting better and better, and that every subsequent generation advances one step further than the previous one. But no matter how thin you slice things, there are always going to be two sides to them. The other side of natural selection is it kills potential talent. It squashes latent dreams. It diverts focus from the things that are important. People spend so much time learning tricks of the trade they never get to know the trade itself! It destroys the team dynamic, and turns everyone into a potential enemy. There are times, like now, when I wish we could all win. Yes pressure turns coal into diamonds, but it also collapses lungs, which I hear are very important! Like Martin Luther King I have a dream. But mine is that everyone will be able to find their place in this world. And that they will be able to find it without stepping over anyone else's head. And that we shall all be happy where we are, and be satisfied to advance as we walk step by step. And that we shall all strive to in so doing leave the world always a better place than we found it.

Ronald Reagan once postulated his life philsophy in a speech, and I found it quite admirable:

The house we hope to build is not for my generation but for
yours. It is your future that matters. And I hope that when you are my age, you
will be able to say, as I have: We lived in freedom. We lived lives that were a
statement, not an apology.

END

the world spins madly on

The other day I had an interview. My very first interview ever!!! I kid you not. You'd think being where I am I'd have done thousands of these things. I should be an old salt by now, but noooo. Bad things still happen to good people, and the employment system still shuts out some of its best potential talent (i.e. me, haha, I wish :). So it's only natural that I was freaking out, you know. coz asides from it being my first interview, it was kind of a big deal since it's a large company, but more importantly, since it's been my only call back since I started doing this. I've just been sitting in the sun watching everyone else in sharp suits go live their lives as mine passed me by, and now my chance was here.

I agonized over even seemingly small things like what-sized brush to use to polish my shoes. I wanted everything to be just right. I was slated for late afternoon so it was a pretty long morning, and as I found out later, our memory does NOT get better with age - in the one hour I spent in the waiting bay coz we started a little later than scheduled I forgot quite a bit of the material I had prepared! :( But, as it turned out, I didn't even need the stuff. I found that if you're really telling the truth and are really driven by your convictions then you've known yourself long enough that you'll be able to handle anything they throw at you. Maybe not as impressively, but it's gonna be pretty tough for you not to be able to say anything at all. You'd actually have to be actively trying to not get hired (in which case the question begs why you went to the interview in the first place :). Unless they decide to ask you about the budget. Or the East African Community. Or Chad. Ya, interviewers can get mean like that sometimes. So another thing I learnt is to always be a step ahead, answer the question and provide just a little bit of extra information. Little enough that the next question might actually come from your last answer; and then to make sure you stay off Amos Kimunya! Worked for me ;)

I also got my half-year results for the first semester, and they were less than exhilarating. It's a bit dishearting, considering those will form a big part of my average grade at the end of uni, but what can I do? They say the only way to live happily ever after is day by day. I want to be happy, so Im learning to take every moment as it comes. Making the best of a bad situation, that is the one thing you can only learn if you actually have bad situations to work with.

Now Im really trying to stay positive and not interpret it as a bad sign that my interview lasted twice as long as others', and that I wasn't asked any of the standard interview questions like what are my weaknesses and why should they hire me, but it's tough. I have a lot of things to think about, like how Im going to recover from my first semester goof-up, or what else I can do to enhance my employ-ability rating, or what's going to happen if we don't win the SIFE national exposition this weekend. And I would really have liked to be able to go back in time and change a few things, but on and on the clock ticks. Im finding that no matter how apprehensive I get, no matter how much I'd like to undo, time does not stop. The world spins madly on, sing The Weepies.

END

black holes and revelations

Last year at around this time, I found out I was going to New York City. I remember at that time being in like a daze of sorts, being unable to grasp the enormity of the news. I've won awards and competitions in my life before. Many, many times. (so they were almost all academic - sue me!) See I grew up blest. But this right here, this was different. It was like the culmination of a lifelong dream of mine Id had from way back when. To fly. And not just fly, but to NYC no less!

By the way, if you read this and you come from there then don't laugh, please understand where Im coming from. Here we consider 10-floor building skyscrappers. Ours is the epitome of insecurity - all one has to do to attract mugger detail is step out into the sunshine. If a road has three lanes on both sides we've outdone ourselves. It's virtually impossible to make jaywalking a jailable offence, coz then we'd need like twice as many cops as there are pedestrians - its like a way of life here to cross the road wherever. Traffic lights have only recently (3 months ago) been elevated above eye level, but even then it's still not unheard of for them to blink both red and green at the same time, or for two lights to blink green on opposing streets. Even something as simple as calling from a public payphone is an exercise in futility. The city (and I use that word loosely) is so hapharzadly planned that you'll get lost with a map, a guide and a gps device with two large blips, one for where you are and the other for where you want to go. But don't get me wrong, I dont not appreciate this place. I count my blessings everyday. Anyways, NYC. It meant we were going to need to work round the clock to come up with a world class presentation, and that for that reason I was gonna fail my exams (reading wasn't exactly priority at the time), but who cared - we were going to NEW YORK CITY!!!

So, three months flew by in a breeze, we managed to scrape together like 30K (A week's expenditure, mind you), and a truckload of work and a few sleepless nights later, we off to the city that never sleeps (turns out the sleepless nights were not wasted - they were actually good training :). And the rest, as they say, is history, the stuff of legend.

Ten months down the line and I can still see every second of that week as though it happened yesterday. The subways, the fast food and coffee, McDonald's, Broadway, Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue and the Trump Tower, The GAP, Dolce and Gabbana, Chanel, the NY Public Library, the fluid public system, Times Square, and the Manhattan skyline from the top of the Hilton. They easily count as the best days of my life so far. And I swore to myself I would go back, even if its the last thing I do. I still want to. Me by the way I actually want to move there. There's something alluring about a system that works, and things happen the way they should. You work hard you get rewarded, you don't you end up on the streets. Coz I know I can work hard. I can do it, but Im one of those idealistic people with their heads in the clouds. And where I am right now, those clouds are a little beyond my reach.

But Im a little wiser now, and Im learning that happiness isn't getting what you want, its wanting what you've got. So even if I never do get to go back, I hope it won't change me. And I hope I always know who I am.

I'm a saint and I'm a sinner
I'm a loser, I'm a winner
I am steady and I'm stable
I'm young but I am able
I, am Alividza's grandson,
The spitting image of my father,
When the day is done my mama's still my biggest fan.
Sometimes, I'm clueless and I'm clumsy,
But I've got friends that love me
And they know just where I stand
It's all a part of me, and that's who I am.

END

all these things i've done

I'm rude, so I've been told. I don't answer people in a polite manner. I speak without thinking, and end up hurting people's feelings. Ok, I'll bite. Am I really? When someone sees you busy eating lunch, then they ask you what you're doing, are you at fault if you tell them you're practising crop rotation? If you were clearly waiting for a bus at the bus stop - one of the few that's actually labelled, mark you - and then you were asked what you were waiting for, would it be impolite to answer "The turn of the century."? I ask

Apparently Im also selfish. I think only of myself, and no one else. Everything I do I do with myself in mind. I cannot undertake a kind deed that will not at least benefit me in some way. Well who isn't? The English have a word - altruism. It means "showing unselfish concern for the welfare of others." Doing good just because it is, without expecting anything in return. They also have a phrase: white unicorn, being "a rare mystical creature only rumored to exist but highly sought after," or "the perfect person, your dream person." The same English have another word: utopia. It means "an ideal and perfect place or state where everyone lives in harmony and everything is for the best." Could it be that the perfection and elusiveness of altruists, white unicorns and the place called utopia are somehow connected? Hmmmm...

I am not christian. I listen to rock music. I associate with non-saved people. I do not read my bible everyday. I do not attend bible studies and/or other christian events. I don't even go to church where I stay. Is my understanding of christianity at fault? coz I believe it should be a way of life. It should not really be something you explicitly say. It's the sum total of everything you do, and everything you omit to do. So I don't preach, or witness or sing and dance. First I have two left feet [why BTW do we say left and not right?], physically can't dance :). Birds have gone deaf listening to my voice singing, so that's kinda out as well. I find the bible is best read when you're not discussing it with folks. "And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all," goes the Bible. I hate the [pretentious] holier-than-thou attitude exhibited by most of the members of so called C.U's, and it is that, rather than the christianity itself, that I try to dissociate myself from. But apparently to those who would judge me, the two are one and the same.

It's said that there are many paths to success, but the quickest way to failure is to try to please everyone. It would seem that I can't win them all. Mother Teresa once wrote a poem [actually she wrote many, but this one kinda stands out]:

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered,
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives,
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies,
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you,
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight,
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous,
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow,
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough,
Give the world the best you have anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God.
It was never between you and them anyway.

How true.

END

so a stranger can live

As human beings, we are naturally predisposed to act from a vantage point of self interest. We do things in a way that will yield most benefit to us, and if there's harm to others, this is very often a secondary consideration. That must sound horrendous, but it is "only human" [that little phrase that was invented to cover every mistake man makes. apparently there's an entire website dedicated to them!]. There is however another class of person. People to whom sacrifice is a way of life. People who think of others before themselves. The United States Coast Guard has one such class: an elite group of swimmers called Rescue Swimmers. Not surprisingly, their mantra is "So a stranger can live." There is a song, by Bryan Adams called Never Let Go, that was probably written for a movie but really got me thinking:

Can you lay your life down, so a stranger can live
Can you take what you
need, but take less than you give
Could you close every day, without the
glory and fame
Could you hold your head high, when no one knows your name
That's how legends are made, at least that's what they say

I don't know, these sound like important questions for all of us to ask ourselves, because it seems to me they go to the very core of our humanity. This self-serving predilection was actually not an intention of the creator. Man was made with fellowship in mind. How much would we really be willing to do for others? In fact we could even [for the sake of our sanity] set the bar a little lower than the song, how far would we be willing to go for our friends?

We live in a time and society that worships star power. Name recognition. Celebrity. So when someone does a kind deed, they are like companies - they probably want the media there. To, you know, let everyone know. It is, after all, news, [that someone has committed a random act of kindness]. Or maybe even on a much less grand scale, we'd like our friends to know all the things we do "out of the kindness of our hearts." In fact, this public acknowledgment is ostensibly so important that the Reader's Digest has these days created an entire regular column called [aptly] "Kindness of Strangers" [but at least to the Digest's credit, it is the recepient of the acts who write to this column, not the doers]. But assuming there was no fame and there was no glory attaching, would we still do the things we do?

I heard this story in January about this woman who, watching Bethuel Kiplagat talking, called the network and asked how she could get in touch with him, she wanted to help. She's a counsellor by profession, and apparently by April she'd seen over 4700 people and couples. I cannot even imagine the tragedies she may have in so doing averted. Just one person, who decided to reach out to a stranger. How many of us keep asking ourselves "Really, I'm just me. What can I do?" Apparently a lot. And until we try, we can never know. Hellen Keller was an american woman who turned deaf and blind at age 2, and so this of course meant she also couldn't talk. But she did not let this deter her. She wanted to change the world, and change the world she did.

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can
do something; and just because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do
the something that I can do.

END

the trick is to keep breathing

Im just recovering from the worst attack of malaria like ever. So bad in fact the doctors couldn't even see it in my blood - it's learned how to play dead!! Yikes! Or maybe it was just burnout. Either way, I was six feet from the edge for quite a while, and it was not heaven. Musta had something to do with that night shift I'd been working lately. Id like to say I took the time to sit back and reflect on my life, and strategise for the next phase just about to begin, but nooo. I spent the time under the influence, and those times I wasn't I took sleeping pills, or hit my head really hard against the table. That's how bad the pain was. But having gotten better, I have realised one thing, Murphy be damned, when things appear at their most hopeless, that's usually when our miracle comes. Ever hear the saying "It'll get worse before it gets better"? Ya, there's apparently a ceiling as to how much worse it can get, so you can actually get to that point where it can't possibly get much worse, and the only way to go is better. I was there, although only for a day, and let's just say I've had better days.

The thing you really need to do is to not give up. To hang in there. The trick is to keep breathing. When life throws you a curve ball and you can't hit back. When you get dumped (or dumped on - never exchange words with the garbage man BTW, take it from me :) ). When there's too much month at the end of the money (that might actually be all the time). When the examiner tests everything you dint read and ignores everything you did (perhaps because it was all FHM and Sports Illustrated - these examiners can be such a drag sometimes! :) ). When you find you haven't landed your dream job, and are instead stuck selling insurance to people who would much rather have bread and milk. When the one day you're late for an interview is the day an oil tanker falls across the entire road. When you do get your dream job, but get the boss from hell who never lays off. When the bank forecloses on your house, or the landlord doubles the rent. When the person you love does not love you back. When you're handed lemons, make lemonade, and then find that people actually prefer icecream. When you land in the taxman's radar. Or when it's just one of those days. The trick is to keep breathing. Everything else will work itself out with time. You just keep breathing.

Fleetwood Mac were right on the mark. (that's a fun phrase, Fleetwood Mac on the mark :D) They say in their song Don't stop:

Don't stop thinking about tomorrow
Don't stop it'll soon be here
It'll be better than before
Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone.

The trick is to just keep breathing. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.

END

ideas are like stars

It's been a while since I wrote, and with good reason - I got a job!! See ordinarily that would be a good thing, but when they said be careful what you wish for coz you might just get it, I think they were onto something, coz get a job I did. And the night shift no less! You know the way when you sleep at 8 and have an early morning the next day the night seems to last like 15 minutes? Trust me, it's all in your head. Nights typically last for three weeks each - at the very least! There have been times when I've stayed up, dozed, taken coffee, dozed some more, put on thirty pounds, and looking at my watch, found it to be only thirty minutes later. You actually start to crave for mornings. And of course fate being fate, the sun does not rise. Ever.

But I digress. I was looking at the US polls (Zimbabwe have censored all their news so it's not that Im being unpatriotic - it's that I don't own a news agency so I have to watch what CNN decide), and I noticed Obama has now eclipsed Hilary. All that talk about him creating a new wave, a movement, has started to come to fruition. I learn the thing about movements is that you're either in them or in the way, much like the Japanese Shinkasen (trains). In the movie V for Vendetta, he was faced with all these british cops who had guns and told him so, and he said, "No what you have are bullets, and the hope that by the time you're empty Im not still standing, because if I am you'll all be dead before you've reloaded." So they fired till they were empty, then he just says in that chilling voice, "My turn," and what happens next was just poetry, literally, there was even an opera playing in the background. The lead inspector was the only person left, and was firing shots at V and V just kept walking towards him, so he was like "Die! Die! Why won't you die??!?", and so naturally V took it upon himself to explain (of course while strangling the guy): "Because beneath this mask is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof." - of course in V's case I think it also helped that he was wearing a steel breastplate that tended to stop the bullets :)

And apparently that applies even in life. Obama is just one of those people that exudes confidence. He has that look in his eye that tells you he really believes whatever it is he's telling you. He actually respects the opinion of experts (do you know how many leaders of latter days actually do that? You'd be surprised!). He places a lot of faith in people's intelligence and their capacity to make the right choice given favorable circumstances, and, he tells it like it is. Obama is a classic modern-day idea. In fact, it was from him that I first learned that governments aren't supposed to build an economy, they're supposed to create an environment fitting for the private sector to thrive, and for a middle class to grow (Ok, maybe Id also heard that from Economics class, but it was much less interesting then). That is one thing we are lacking in Kenya - a middle class (actually we currently also don't have a chain of command that extends beyond the president, but that is another story for another day). We have the rich, and those who literally live on faith - I guess coz everything else you have to buy with money which they don't have. Real sad.

Victor Hugo said, in 1870, that there was nothing more powerful than an idea whose time had come. Not even the sound of marching armies. And he was right. We've seen it time and time again. With broadcast TV, with internet music downloads, with (napster and kazaa) file-sharing networks, with democracy, with unions and collective bargaining. Give the masses hope, provide meaningful challenges and rewards, trust them, then get out of their way - they'll knock your socks of. Is Obama really really the next big thing? He certainly does represent that new principle.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once described the measure of a man:

Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy... The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Obama has certainly made it clear where he stands. From the beginning. No black has ever before him done what he's done. Parallels are already being drawn between him and Dr. Martin Luther King. If he's an idea whose time has come, Id go to church if I was Hillary, or McCain.

END

forty is the new twenty

So as it happens, another semester has just ended, and as always Im jubilant, have collected quite a few movies and series to get me through to the next exam season, and I've made those resolutions I always make at times like now - to be a better student, go to the lib, attend all the classes, even the 8 O'clock ones, et al. But this time it's with a twist - I've started applying to companies that are hiring. See this is my final year, and this being the second semester of that final year, it's also my last one as a student. There are times when I sit down and dread the days I won't be student any more. Being a non-student brings with it a lot of freedoms, but it does carry a truckload of resposibility, and methinks that truck is larger than the one carrying the freedom :) I cannot for the life of me imagine how Im gonna support myself for the first few months if things don't work out like they haven't been working out quite a bit in my life. I've embarked on a few personal projects and I've invested quite a bit of time there, but like all other upstarts there is always the what if's. What if there are no takers? what if we overprojected our cashflows? What if market acceptance is just a little bit harder to secure than we foresaw? And what if it takes longer than we anticipated? Anyway, the good thing is the chances of success are just as equal, being that the future follows a random walk. Although Murphy would have us believe otherwise, Im staying postive on that.

At some point over the last few weeks the government had reached an agreement on cabinet, even down to specifics (ya, my fixation with News is now completely over so now my knowledge is limited to petty neighborhood talk - although my neighbors thesedays are very intellectual people), and then that govt spokesperson went and told people that there was going to be no difference in the way cabinet was run, that it would be the same way financially as a twenty-person cabinet. It would seem that our government spokesperson, in his infinite wisdom, would have us believe that 40 is the new 20. Really?!!? Now granted most of us Kenyans haven't done those doctorate degrees he's done, we should be at least a little less bright than he is right? You'd think. Hmmm :/

Anyway, on one of the jobs I was applying, they needed no experience, which obviously rocks coz I don't have any (used to spend my long holidays at home during the junior years) but they had a maximum age limit. Now Im on the periphery - Im 24 and their max was 25, but I was thinking, following the lesson we've learned from our government recently, shouldn't we all be able to, you know, lie about - no Im gonna go with 'favourably restate' - our ages? So that really, it stops being a disqualifying factor. After all, age, just like the number of cabinet ministers, ain't nothing but a number, right? Riiiight??? :)

END

on the subject of moving forward...

Yesterday was the BEST DAY EVER! See I finally got my results for that torture fest they call CPA, professional accounting exams. Unless it's a choice between moving to Canada [watch How I met your mother, anyone?] and doing CPA, wouldn't recommend that anyone do it. Anyways, my results. First of all this was the last section I was doing last December, and I've passed. Really. I can't take all the credit though, or really any of it:) Accolades have to go to the Big Guy, coz I remember saying this one was gonna have to be on him again, and boy did He deliver! So as it happens, Im done with the profession. I got sent for these forms to fill, to join the Association. The forms are like a small booklet, and Im thinking "Really, even if Id had the interest to begin with..."

This time Im gonna make them treat me. I've done well for myself in the past - in fact I'd say, in the [mortal] words of And 1's Main Event, "I brung it every time". So just congratulations is starting to get a little old. Im at that point where I need more. And honestly, who doesn't? So now Im moving on to the next big thing, which I sincerely hope is gonna at least be something I like doing. Or I could just take a much-deserved break... Nah, it's gonna be the next challenge - I find Im one of those self-driven people, not content to just sit there when I know I could be doing something more [ha ha, as if any employers actually read my blog]

William Blake once wrote: There are things that are known, and things that are unknown. And in between, there are doors.

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life for rent

I've had this like REALLY long week last week. Three exams, on tenterhooks about my CPA results for that last part I did last December [everyone else seems to have gotten theirs, but on the bright side I hear if they come late there's a greater chance that I've passed. Hey, maybe I've even gotten an award - na, who're we kidding? Im still same ol me!] Anyways, when weeks like the last one end, I just wanna get out and do something crazy. Keyword - want. Turns out I don't have ANY bad habits. At all! So I pass my time and release the pent-up pressure watching TV.

So I was watching this documentary on CNN, The World's Untold Stories. They were running this story about women being hawked in West Africa someplace, think it was Nigeria and Mali. Literally being sold, to pimps or something in Copenhagen. For a thousand euros. The people who sell them prey on all the same types of chicks - anguished, deserted, without families or friends, and desperate for a place to stay. And the worst part is, these women know exactly what's gonna happen to them but they still come along. The pimps spin this spiel about a better life, security, money, food, maybe even a family down the line. And the girls eat it all up, hook, line and sinker.

This specific chick who was being interviewed, she was about 18, but the places she'd been, the things she'd done, she looked 40 or something. Her dad left her when she was like two. She's always lived on the streets and has never known what it's like to come home to a hot plate and a warm hug. So naturally when she heard about this new life, in Denmark noless, she jumped at it. Now she's facing deportation, probably had an STD or five and back home was probably gonna face criminal charges for prostitution. I remembered what one of those old New York mayors, before his days in public office when he was still a judge, back in the 50s or something - there was this one case about a guy who'd stolen bread from a convenience store. So when he heard it, he asked the guy why he stole, and the guy said he hadn't eaten for three days. So naturally, the judge sentenced him to pay a fine of 10 dollars, coz that was the law, but then paid it in himself. And then he fined everyone in that courtroom a dollar - for living in a town where someone had to steal to eat. A hat was passed round and the money collected was given to the delinquent. Story kinda touched me, you know, that life should be a communal affair, not that whole every man for himself we see around. The girl got a hundred euros I think from the Danish government to start her off once she got back home, and given cops in third world African countries really dig bribes, no prizes for guessing where that money went.

From the perspective of a person like that, sometimes I feel I can't blame people for not believing. Surely God can't always serve people up like that, not if He loves them, right? Anyways, her story did have a happy ending - the church took her in and where the documentary ended she was trynna find her family and reconnect. But still, should one person really have to go through all that? To be sold like a pound of flesh? How can they have self esteem after that? The average Beemer is about 3.5M shillings, a flat panel TV costs about 200K, and a smart phone is about 25K. So how much for a person? Really.

END

you only live twice

So I heard about this story last week where some guy had lived in Naivasha for like 30 years. Apparently when at the end of Jan their place erupted, he was attacked, and by people who used to be his neighbors. I dint get exactly how, but at the time he wasn't at his place. He'd bought a ka-plot and built a house and used to live there with his family and a few relatives. So wherever he was, he lay down and pretended as though he was dead, and that was how he survived, but on waking up the entire area to his house was like cordoned off so he couldn't go there. So for a few days he was in limbo wondering what happened to his folks, coz no one around was spilling. He even started looking for them in the mortuary, and one day he did find them. Apparently they'd all been burned up inside his house. All of them, nine children BTW. No one survived, except now him. He just didn't know where to start. To cry over lost family, find a place to stay, or arrange how to transport them back home for burial. And as fate would have it, that was also the time roads were murder, so even if he'd had a car, not to say he did, he wouldn't have been able to go back. And for obvious reasons there was no way he was staying in Naivasha. So he just moved to the police station and prayed. I hear stories like that and all over again it becomes real. Sometimes I cannot understand people when they vilify a whole tribe just because two of its members did something bad, but when something like that happens to you Im guessing it's pretty hard to play who-did-what-and-who-didn't-do. I don't know what I'd think were that me. I was being told by a counsellor friend of mine about marriages that broke after the violence, simply because the spouse was from the other tribe. I'm thinking if the effects of the violence were deep enough to destroy as strong a bond as marriage, what chance do the others stand? The more flimsy ones like just neighbors, or even aquaintances, or people who just happen to go to the same church, or school. Or maybe the only thing binding two people together is the fact that they're both kenyans. I guess it's safe to assume that those relationships would be gone with the wind, just like that. Anyways, our guy's prayers got answered and the Red Cross provided him two vehicles to carry him and his departed home to Nyanza. And now he says he wouldn't go back to Naivasha for the world. 30 years of someone's life, erased just like that. In one day, and those who did it, without remorse. When you see his face as he says that... suffice it to say, if you have to gift of empathy you should probably stay off the News for a while.

Over the hols [just after Christmas] I rolled with our car [had I said that? It was like in a movie - everything just went slow-mo. But, God is good and I lived], and in the seconds just before we rolled I was thinking "It can't this easy. It shouldn't. We're supposed to have a choice, to be able to fight for our lives. Is this really how it all ends?" Well, turns out wishes aren't horses, and beggars don't ride, and we really don't have a say when the Grim Reaper comes a-knocking. I guess we then have nought but to live every day as though it were the last and hope for a better tomorrow. Or in the light of recent events maybe we should just settle for tomorrow, better or otherwise.

Life is supposed to be the greatest gift from God. Ian Fleming [he of the James Bond fame] says you only live twice: once when you're born and once when you stare death in the face.
END