Visiting Grandpa.

Once in a while I make a point to pay a visit to my grandfather.The visit involves a lot of psychological preparation than even the finincial part.You cannot make the journey by car.The potholes on the “road” , no, terrain, can swallow a car.In fact they are not potholes,they are gulleys which even a ministerial SUV with the Najivunia kuwa Mkenya sticker cannot do.

We used to carry our own drinking water bought from the shops with the high flying name of “mineral water”. That was before the old man rebuked us that the pond water we were shunning was what he has been drinking for the 90 years of his life. The funny thing is that the Victoria is less than 40 kilometers away and all that time they have only known the pond water which they share with all kinds of living and dead things. I mean once in a while they come across a floating carcass in the pond. Even with the constituency development funds reading 50 milloin this year there are no signs of tapped water ever making an appearance there. They dont, ok , he doeas not have the remotest idea that the funds exist.The MP sometimes has the guts to say the money is his own and the projects his brainchildren.

Still the reason I insist  on paying him a visit is because of a Kenyan MP-like blackmail.Remember the “You dont raise my salary ,I dont pass that budget” classic ?.The old man pulled one on me that the reason he still lives is because of his grandkids and that just a sight of one of us  makes his maladies disappear or cease to exist like Trasnsparency International Kenya without Mati. Actually we havent seen those damning reports on how the state spends 800 million shillings on fuel guzzlers while the North-Easterners are starving ! So just like the emotional ordinary Kenyan, who is being forced to be Patriotic with stickers, I have to pay him a visit.

Some one said Kenyans are optimistic. They were before the a hundred days came to pass.In real sense we are emotionaland concerened if not sentimental. We fear the death and respect the dead. Only in Kenya do we hear of ministers who “accumulate” astronomical ammounts in debts when in office. When they die, the state offers to pay off their debts of which not a single cent did us any good and educate their children.Yet we sit tight-lipped and dream of the day when we will not have auctioneers at our doorsteps demanding our dear possessions we bought with our measly overtaxed salaries. Cant the government do the same for the ordinary folk ?

Kenyan Stuff.

Lately a number of MPs have done an Exodus Izraeli style. They have moved or rather ditched there parties for the new  sherrif  in town which happens to be Narc-Kenya as if the first one was Narc-Uganda. Actually this comes as no surprise to the Kenyan who has been following thes events loosely called politics in our Kenya.

The most disgusting thing is that some of the defectors are serious turncoats who will make Koigi appear stupid. Funny how he has not joined the Narc-Kenya band wagon ,maybe he is somewhat reasonable. Look at Mwandawiro Mganga ,the once poltically-incorrcet university student leader now turned psycophnt. The guy was even detained once !

Now thatis politics Kenyan style ; you go where the grass is greener.

DEATH..etc …etc

Unthinking of the kids she could be carrying,I stabbed the coakroach under my heels.

Then I stabbed it again.

A tiny beast- Stabbed microscopic network of nerves. Yellow fluids oozing outwards. Perahps ova, perhaps sperm. Perhaps fluids that sustained life.Propellinf six legs. To detestful destiny of death.

Grim with s sense of murder over me.Yet still gloating in my manhood, I swept it out if sight. Unthinking of the kids she could be carrying, for nobody ever thinks of fertility. That gunpowder and naplam, blows out a female.

And so sprinkling waterover hands instead of heels that were dirty, I thought of guilt. That blunt edged sword. That is tired of biting conscience.

And I thought I would write a blog about  death etc etc .The long lost goodness of man and the weeping blister of war.

Then as I sipped in water from the tap .unthinking still of the kids she might be carrying. I thought only of war slapping afresh. Unformed flesh hiding in a woman”s womb.

                                              –Emphasis from Jagit Singh-

Castro and the kenyan youth

Fidel castro just turned 80.What an old man.Flashback to 1959.Fidel was 33 when he became the Cuban President.Vijana wa Cuba waligutuka kitambo! In the Kenyan context his presidency would have been illegal or unconstitutional because the age is 35.Unfortunately that is where ujana (youth0 rudely ends.So are Kenyan Vijanas striving to be mere MPs?
What the Kenyan youth needs is a Castro like Revolution to achieve his goals.We dont need to have guns like Castro to achieve this feat even if Mao Zedong saud that “the truth and the barrel never lie”.We only need papers.
But we already have the Vijana Tugutuke campaign? What was Uhuru Kenyatta doing in ine of their rallies?I anm a Kenyan with the remotest trust for the current crop of politicians.
We dont have to cross the Atlantic to look for examples.In Congo DR, Joseph Kabila ,a yuoth ,is showing his opponents dust in the polls.Even Jean Pierre Bemba his closest opponent is only 44. Hey the polls are said to be free and fair even by the western press which somewhat demonises Africa.
Why dont we form a lobby group to lower this age (35) limit.Actually if this is not done ,then we need not shout ourselves hoarse that the Kenyan youth is given a raw deal.We will still continue to have septugenerians like Mwananichi running the civil service which thety should have retired from twenty-something years ago.They claim they have unfinished business.Looting I presume.

THE GRUMBLING KENYA

Kenyans are becoming a “Grumbling ” nation.That is the latest goof coming from the minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs. A ministry with a high sounding name only that it is one of the kadhaa superflous ministries created in our later years. So what do we have the Attorney General for ? What about the one for Science and another for Education?

Back to the grumbling. How can you use 300 million shillings in hard currency to “renovate” a state lodge in someplace the president hardly sets foot in. Mind you it is renovation.300 million. How many habitable houses can that ammount put up in Kibera ? Eish I think the minister herself should be grumbling at the security situation in this country. She herself was carjarked (pun inteded)

How can a mwananichi (sic) get to sell off his prime land away from his motherland to the government for a cool 169 million? Ok , he “bought” the land and the bill of rights,no,the bill of statements states thata Kenyan canown property anywhere within the borders.The grumbling comes in when the two parties claim that the transacton was done in a transparent manner.Transparent my foot. We all know that  Transparency in this country ceased long before the Kenyan chapter of Transparency International became Opaque. Its board had people with interests in the companies it was investigating.

It is a win-win situationfor these guys.Mwananichi gets the cashand they get the votes from the people they will resttle inthat land.You cannot disown the person who give you land.That is why I believethe age of presidential candidates should be lowered from 35 to 21 because as lon as the status quo remains ,we the youth will never get the chance to make changes in our Kenya.

BEST JOBS…KENYA

School gong Kenyan kids have lots of proffesions in mind.Pilots ,doctors ,lawyers.Nobody talks of teachers.Eish… all that chalk dust….you would rather smoke and get arrested.At least when Ngilu and Ali get serious about having a puff in public.Yet the best Kenyan job is being an MP.

You see you will get an untaxed paycheque reading over 10000 dollars per month.They claim they should not pay taxes because they pay money for funerals.Hata we overtaxed fellows pay for those.. in fact the huge share.

These guys dont have to impress their bosses,who unfortunately happen to be us, to get a payrise.They do the raising themselves through one of the several dubious House Committees.They can even backdae it if they feel like uta do ?. Worse still they dont have the obligation to report to us.Maybe after five years when they are begging (literary) for a contract renewal from us.

They get ,I think free cars.Top of the range SUVs fuel guzzlers.The roads are pathetic you know and we dont expect the “royalty” to have bumpy rides ,they think about our development peacefully.Development? We their bosses pay for their gasoline per mile, even if their SUVs do some of the miles in a red-light district.Remember the oil prices are going up.

They also have the opportunity to preside over millions of shillings allocated for develoment .The thing is they can appoint their cronies in the committees .How about your wifey as its secretary?

The best thing about this job is that ….you dont need any qualifications.Maybe a registered party,voter”s and ID cards and be 21 years. You dont need to go to any school.Anybody can speak Swahili. Everybody does.One more credit , if your old man or kin is an Mp and he or she dies while in office,you can inherit the seat so as to complete the project he or she initiated.Damned are you if you dont have one.Welcome to the dynastic Kenya. I mean why should an outsider take the PROPERTY of your family? Bequeath the seat to yur offspring also if you die.

THE PAST…THE PRESENT

“When you deal with the past,you are dealing with history.You are actually dealing with the origin of a thing.When you know the origin you know the cause.And if you dont know the cause,you dont know the reason .You are just cut off .You are left standing mid air.So the past deals with History.Or the origin of anything;a person,a nation,an incident or a trend.When you know the origin then you have a better understanding of the causes that produce whatever originated,its reason for originatng and the reason for its being.It is imposible for you and me to have a balanced mind in this society without going to the past,because in this society as we function and fit int it right now, we are such an underdog,we are trumpled upon,we are looked on as almost nothing”
-Malcom X-
When a skin head “wastes”two of us and gets away with the first one we should ask ourslelves when and where it all began.Did it begin with the scramble and partition in which we were divided into tribal areas for their advantage to come in form of our disunity and mistrust of one another.Ask yourself why new districts are created along tribal lines for political gain.What about the Provinces?
Did it begin with the massacre of the innocent and right demonstrators outside the Norfolk Hotel,where even merry-makers joined in the atrocity?
Yes we get our revenue from tourism and wild animals or wildlife.So between them and we Kenyans who is more important?The leopards and antelopes give them money ….but we give them votes which enable them to be in the position to plunder that money.After all what does the money do to us most of us still live well below the poverty line and cannot afford three square meals in a day. Ok the money buys a fleet ,no,fleets of luxurious fuel guzzlers for our miniters.I wish we were Rwanda.
Kenyans are shot for these animals.Even if the man is Kenyan.It is just by name not by deed.The ideas of colonialism ,bravely fought aginst by our forefathers, are still deeply etched in him.
It is just a typical case of shooting yourself in the foot,nay, the head.Why was he given a nolle prosequi by this government or is it the Judiciary?At least they now have to swallow their own deeds,Why are they now lcking up in a VIP cell at the Maximum Security Prison.I said VIP ….hey vips do not look like coal they are somewhat pinkish.

21 GUN SALUTE

The easiest thing in the African Republic of Kenya , apart from breathing unpolluted air,is to ….lets see…its to die.You see our air is not polluted because it is not yet 2015.Remember some minister said that Kenya would be inustrialised by that year(2015).The “prophet” was speaking in the 1970s.The year for free water taps in every home was 2000,I think.Six years later people still trk 100 kilometers for the rosource.Read the papers.

Back to dying.There are two easy ways to achieve this feat.Thai is if you dont want to go the natural way.First you can go the mechanical and “tabooed” way.You know acting as your hangman.Some fellows did it using bed-sheets and not ropes in Guantanamo Bay.You can ise cyanide,rat poison.Imean anything an this earth can be used.The differebce is the efficiency.The disclaimer is you have to watch where you are coming from. In some places they will whip and beat your body long after you have met your maker.

Or you can “end” yourself in a more dramatic way.How about speeding past a cop checkpoint(roadblocks in our context).Or rather get yourself a gun and go robbing banks.You will deffinitely stop kadhaa police bullets with your head.

Now this one is extremely unique down here.Get yourself a plum job in say, the central bank.Become the Holier than though guy to them and HONEST to us folks.Refuse to join then in fleecing or  LEASING our public coffers the Anglo way , blow the whistle and you will be home and dry.You will lose your job never to get it back even with the change of regimes.Come on, who wants an honest here?These guys are all the same.You will never get any Order of Something Award,whatever those orders are,for your selfless service to your country.

Thanks for your whistle blowing,they will burn a lot of hard cash in Commissions of Inquiries,recomend the culprits for prosecution.The courts then will promptly throw out the cases against them.And we will be as usual crying foul taht they made the commossioners millonairsfor nothin but som “muh-hucin” papers called reports.

-REST IN PEACE DAVID MUNYAKEI-

VOTE WHO….?

Thiis brother has learnt his political lessons.Though theoritically.I know that those rosy promises made and serious politicking done by politicians ,especially when the president decides to dissolve parliament, are half truths if there is any element of truth in them.I now know that you cannot make a constitiution in a hundred days.And most definitely youn cannot create 500000 new jobs as you fire some citizens.So when for the first time I go to the polls Iwill chose wisely.Maybe the most beautiful or handsome fellow will “pocket” my vote.

Sometimes I wish my area was a 50-50 zone.Where both the government of the day and the opposition have a say.In every December after every five years we could be  having the much expensive electricity brought right to our doorsteps.Every home by now could be  having tapped water and three hospitals to choose from.Sadly it is one of those in which no new person bothers to campaign in.Maybe you can campaign for the nomination of a certain party afterwhich the elections are just mere formalities.You as well be considered elected unoppesed.How that happens I dont know.

When I get my vote.sijui when.You see it has taken me half ayear without an ID .It might even take me a whole year to get a voters card.By that time we will be in 2008.Sometimes I wish the proponents if the  Vijana Wagutuke  campaign would concentrate more on  IDs than on voters registration.Start from the root of the problem.It is a dog”life in our Kenya without this small -in-size document.