mistakes we knew we were making

I have just spent the whole day listening to the same song over and over again - Lifeline, by Angels and Airwaves. It was supposed to be a working day so I showed up but apparently no one else did (it's like I'm the only one who's committed to the firm!) so I cranked up the ipod and for some reason I just couldn't bring myself to move from that song. It's made think about a lot of little missteps I made growing up, most of them really petty and childish. Well, in my defence, I was a child. And if there's one problem I've always had, it's speaking before I think and saying things I don't really mean. It's usually all a joke to me, but my particular brand of comedy is apparently an acquired taste.

I remember there was this one time it was I think one of those holidays around end of year, and it was Saturday so everyone was home, and then my mum just walks in and tells us all we're going to eat out. I was overjoyed! I think I was born with a craving for fast food. So gleefully me and kina my brothers dress up and off we go. And then shock on us - turns out it wasn't a hotel, like, you know, the Hilton or anything. It was actually a shanty. Deep inside the small town that was our home. My immediate reaction, and I believed I was speaking for everyone when I said this, was something to the tune of "You must be crazy if you think we're going to eat in a place like that." Of course my mum pulled rank and forced us on, and when we got closer I saw that a few of my friends from school were actually in there eating and my mind took an absolute 180. I was like this place rocks! Let's go eat. She noticed the reason I'd changed my mind, and I noticed the implication. I was young, but old enough that I could tell when I'd disappointed my mother (about 13). It wasn't so much that when it was her taking me there I said no, it was more that when I saw my friends eat there I decided it must be ok. I believe that was my first real snobbish act, and needless to say it haunted me for quite a while. Up until then I was the guy for whom peer pressure had only been a topic in Home Science class, things you read coz you have to make it into Starehe. I've always been the perceptive kind, so I could definitely tell she thought less of me in that moment. As far as boo boos in my childhood go, that was pretty much as big as it got. It's actually a big part of the reason I try so hard to not get influenced by anyone into doing things I wouldn't normally do, that look in her eyes, so yes, it did make me a better person.

I remember also a time now in high school when I don't remember why, but we were having an argument, still with my mum. It must have been about food, coz I remember the subject of breakfast came up, and I blurted out, "It's just three slices of bread, and the stomach's still the same size it was when we ate three heapings of rice last night, so don't think that breakfast even does that much to satisfy us! It's not like if I didn't have it I'd suddenly drop down and die of hunger," or something to that tune. And again, I could tell straight away that was something I shouldn't have said. But this time she didn't spare me, she actually told me off, and told me it was time I started thinking before I spoke, and the people actually did have feelings and all that crap. It was a long talk, that one! Whew! And she used to teach English in a past life so she has this really rich language set that she resorts to when she's mad, so suffice it to say by the end of that talk I was that much better at English, coz I always note new words when I meet them. I managed to figure the error of my ways in both cases - one she'd jitolead to take us out and here we were acting like ingrateful littel brats, and in the second case she'd jitolead to provide us three square meals a day breakfast being the first one and here I was acting like, well, an ingrateful little brat.

Then there was that time when we were in NYC and we're in the subway and I have the camcorder capturing the scenes and all, then I notice that one of the girls we were with had held onto this really sweet little black kid who happened to be sitting next to her and they were posing for a photo and laughing and generally connecting, then I zone in me and my camera, shoot a few minutes of that mush-fest and then just out of nowhere I blurt out, "Nancy (that was her name) how do you spell sodomy?" Of course, being the guy with the camera, all eyes were on me, a situation that was less-than-ideal given the circumstances. WHAT!! Ya, that was definitely not one of my finer moments. I cannot believe I actually said that in a subway-full of people in America! I honestly meant it as a joke, but really, the way to hell is paved with good intentions, so they say. One of my other pals reprimanded me and at that moment I started to wonder why it is the ground never opens up to swallow errant people like we read about in all those good books.

I used to play video games a lot growing up. Still do, just a little less, and more console than PC. But anyway, it follows that when this friend of mine was having a problem with his, he turned to me for help. Do I have any ideas, he asked? Of course I did, why wouldn't I? I'm the guy who always has something to say. "Grow up, get a real job and stop playing computer games," said I. Turns out he didn't quite find it funny, if the really long message about his life that he sent back to me was anything to go by. Or that time in first year that I sat down right opposite a really self-concious chic who I knew was self concious but still asked her straight on, "Are you cross-eyed?" with a certain inflection that she found not so flattering. She was, but I must be pretty good at apologising, coz we were actually like best friends all thro uni.

I guess I'm one of those people who's eternally grateful that the concept of second chances was invented. Coz if it hadn't I can't imagine how many bridges I'd have burned by now. I'm also one of those people who talks really fast so it really does I appear like I talk before I think, but in reality sometimes that's just the excuse I hide behind, coz truth is like everyone else I do think faster than I speak. But I really do make an intentional effort to learn from my mistakes, things I can and things I can't say at least.

But I make no apologies for how I am. In fact, if there's anything I wanna be able to apply the same principle to the rest of my life. I like fantisizing that were I ever in a boardroom I'm not going to be one of those people that gets plagued by analysis paralysis. If a decision needs to be made it's gonna be made now. I mean, if there's no new information coming in then just as well now as next week, right? I'll be a happy guy if I end up that kind of person. Yes I'll probably make a lot of mistakes, but an opportunity is never going to pass me by just because I didn't react fast enough. There's an ad guy who used to run his father's company, Deutsch, Inc, and then sold it to IPG called Donny Deutsch. He had the most outrageous methods of doing things, but he did raise up their enterprise to the top 10 ad agency list, so he must have been doing something right. This is what someone else said about him when reviewing his auto-bio, "Deutsch has been enormously successful in building a top-ranked advertising organization - and empire. Two things impressed me in a positive way as my mental Polaroid image of Deutsch finally took on full color and clarity. First, he risks, and because he risks, he wins more often than he loses. Second, he values his people, and places them in positions to win." Imagine that - he risks, and because he risks, he wins more often than he loses. I want that to be me. If in 20 years I can say that about myself, then my work here will be done. Of course, not surprisingly, Deutsch's book is called Often Wrong, Never In Doubt.

END

where hope and daylight die

This was an article published in The East African sometime mid-last year but I just found it and it was too good to pass up. It's by a Miss Wambui Mwangi from the University of Toronto. The story is a bit old, but I don't think that makes it any less true:

I am finding it very difficult to join in the jubilation about Senator Barack Obama. Not that I want to deny the man his victory, but my impulse to celebrate keeps deflating on the idea that the best thing that happened to little Barack was not growing up in Kenya.

I have been imagining alternative trajectories for him if he had come to know the world through the eyes of a Kenyan citizen, if his mother and grandparents had not rescued him from our chaos and contradictions and brought him up somewhere his intellect and talent could grow.

If he had grown up here, and had he somehow managed to retain most elements of his current self, he would have been another outstanding, intelligent and competent Luo man in our midst: and he would have been killed.

Yes, we would have assassinated a Barack Obama if he had remained ours, with us, one of us here in this schizophrenic cauldron we call home. This is not going to stretch the imagination of any Kenyan - after all, when we had that incredibly good-looking and charismatic home-grown hero, Tom Mboya, we shot him to death.

And when that austerely intellectual and elegant leader, Robert Ouko, threatened to look overly intelligent to the world, we killed him too. We killed Pio Gama Pinto and we killed JM Kariuki. There is no reason to suppose that Barack Obama, whose integrity of purpose and stringent sense of ethics even his enemies concede, would have survived his Kenyan roots.

HE IS MUCH TOO INTELLIGENT, TOO charged with the promise of history, too bold in his claim to a shining destiny, too full of the audacity of hope, for us to have let him survive. Kenya would have killed Barack Obama, or at least his dream, as we inevitably destroy, in one way or another, the best and the boldest of us. Goldenberg whistle blower David Munyakei's challenge to his country to be bigger than our greed was met with a whimper, and then with rapid abandonment. We did not deserve him, either.

As for John Githongo, he should have known better than to take the idea of public ethics seriously - this is Kenya, after all. Let him enlighten people at Oxford instead; such considerations are too virtuous for us, too sensible, too conducive to a promising future. We do not even remark on the haunting wastage of all this shining accomplishment - Micere Mugo sings her lyrical poetry for Americans, and we do not even know enough to mourn the loss.

AND YET WE ARE ALL ENCHANTED with the power of the idea of Barack Obama, the hope of him, the beauty of his life's trajectory, the universe of possibilities and probabilities that it conjures for the least of the rest of us. If someone's cousin's friend's neighbour makes it to the United States... then we all have a chance. We have a strange predilection for schizophrenic loves and loyalties; we let geography dictate our alliances and imaginary lines decide our friends. It is as if our social contract states that here, at home, we are obliged to behave like fighting rats to each other but when abroad, when released from the shackles of kin and clan and conclave, we can fly and soar and master the sky.

When Wangari Maathai is abroad, we feel that her Nobel Prize is partly represented in each of our Kenyan living rooms; when she comes home, she is just another Kikuyu politico. We preen about our athletes winning yet another international competition to anybody who will give us half a chance, but when they are at home we turn them into more fodder for militias.

Caine Prize winners are Kenyan by automatic assent, but Binyavanga Wainaina is a Kikuyu writer when at home and Yvonne Owuor is indelibly a Luo - we shrink them to fit the midget-sized visions we have of ourselves.

IT IS CLEAR TO ALL OF US, AND THE evidence continues to accrue, that we have, collectively, a certain global competence, as Kenyans, that we produce individuals of substance and historical purpose.

Being Kenyan, however, we prefer to drown in the pettiness of our parochial quarrels when at home, and if one of us threatens to be too hopeful, too ambitious, too intelligent, too creative or too inspirational to fit into our trivial little categories of hatred and suspicion, we kill them, or exile them from our societies, or we just cause them to run away inside, hiding from us and from themselves the grandeur of their souls, the splendid landscapes of their imagined tomorrows.

Nothing but the worst for us, at home. We recognise each other by our most rancid rhetoric. We insist upon it, we cultivate it, we elevate it to an art form: Kenyan, and quarrelsome.

Kenyan, and clannish. Kenyan, and counter-productive. Kenyan, and self-destructive. Kenyan, and consistently heart-breaking. Genius everywhere, and not a thought to be had. Promise and potential everywhere, and not an opportunity to be had. Money everywhere, and not an honest penny to be earned. Helicopters aplenty, but no help for the needy. A land awash in Cabinet ministers and poverty.

I HAVE BEEN WATCHING KENYANS getting high on Obamamania, and I am wondering what we are so happy about? It is perhaps that we are beginning to acknowledge what we should always have known - given a half a chance, an ever so slightly conducive context, Kenyans are more likely to over-achieve than not. At the faintest provocation, Kenyans will leap past expectations without breaking their stride or breaking a sweat, especially if they happen to have escaped the imprisoning edifice we call home and found foreign contexts to flourish in, no matter how alien.

I went to a town in the Canadian Arctic once, in the far north, where in summer the sun shines even at midnight and in the winter the world is an endless landscape of ice and snow. Here, far, far away from home, where nothing was familiar except the gentleness of elderly Inuit women and the comforting weirdness of the white residents, I was told that the local dentist had, for many years, been a Kenyan. Everybody said he had been an excellent dentist, out there in the desert of the cold. I was unsurprised.

We are an adventurous people, we Kenyans, and we take to the world outside our home as if born to a conquistador culture - we are brave and brash and bold, out there. We buy and sell things, and make money at it, out there. We go to school and excel and cover ourselves with accreditations, out there. We win things, out there. We get prizes, out there. We are at our best, out there.

HOWEVER, AT HOME, FOR SOME REAson we refuse to either acknowledge or examine - we have chosen simply to set aside this capacity. Here, at home, nothing but the very lowest common denominator will do; nothing but the basest and most brutal aspects of our selves are to be presented to each other; nothing but the most cynical manipulation is the basis of our political space. We prefer to be ruled by individuals whose mediocrity is matched only by their mendacity, here at home.

We prefer to abdicate our adult responsibilities and capacity for reason to "leaders" whose lack of virtue is as legendary as our attractively exotic pastoralists. We do not only waste talent, here at home - we go out of our way to suppress and repress it. We do not only deny dreams, here in Kenya - we devour them, and ask each other, "Who do you think you are?" As if the success of another is an affront.

In Kenya, grand vision and soaring imagination is illegitimate; here, they just call you naive. Out there, you stand a chance of becoming a hero; at home, you will have nothing but the taste of ashes in your mouth. Mothers, take your children abroad.

Barack Obama has written two books, in which he discusses ideas. Ideas. This is a man with vision and conviction, and enough good ideas that even those who do not like the pigmentally-advantaged are listening, and changing their minds.

Even those who think that his name sounds suspiciously like a terrorist's are reading his books and listening to his speeches, and changing their minds. This is a man with interesting and inspiring things to say - which disqualifies him from any Kenyan-ness we would have liked to claim.

Americans like the image of them that Barack Obama has painted in words; which Kenyan leader would dare to build dreams bigger than his roots? Which Kenyan leader would ever be so foolish as to attempt inspiration instead of instigation?

BARACK OBAMA HAS SEDUCED THE world by the power of his persuasiveness, and while Kenyans raise another glass to the accomplishments of "one of our own," it seems clear to me that we gave up our rights to him when we gave up our hopes for ourselves. When we settled for incompetence, and corruption, and callousness, we defined ourselves out of his universe, and out of his dreams.

We rejected Barack Obama-ness when we allowed those pangas to slash our dreams, when we watched our hopes spiral away in smoke. We allowed the ones who had done this to become the only mirrors of ourselves, and then squelched our disgraced selves back to the mire of our despondency.

Barack Obama cannot be a Kenyan, and Kenyans cannot grasp Barack Obama's dream. We have already despaired of it, and of ourselves. His dream would have died with ours, here at home, here in the graveyard of hope.

But oh, how we yearn to see ourselves reflected in his eyes...

END