The So called future

Well, I don't hate him, but he sure hates me!

I'm fortunate enough to get a free ride home every evening after 8 hours of work. And I'm also fortunate enough to live close enough to the city so that I usually get dropped first by our kind, gender sensitive (not all of them are though) drivers. So this past Saturday, the 24th, I end up in the car with a guy I have never seen or heard of and I decide, oh well, there are always new people joining the company. I decide as usual that I'm going to mind my own business and I hope that he does the same. But does he?

"Why don't you just change the station? I hate this language, I hate these people with a passion...."

I ask the man why he has to shout so unreservedly about his hate for the Kikuyu music playing on the car radio. He says that he hates the music so much he hates the kikuyu people and that that is what makes him disagree with his pals sooooo much.

I'm thinking: this guy has pals????! Shock!

I ask the guy sitting in the back with me whether he knows who this guy is. He doesn't. I ask him whether he sounds like he's from the same parts that he comes from, he says that yes, he could be. The lucky guy is dropped a few seconds later and I'm stuck with a mouth and it's man filled with hate.

For the next twenty or so Kilometres, I'm forced to listen to how much this gifted gab's jibber jabber about how much he hates the people of the tribe I happen to have been born into, over and over again. He says:

"That tribe is garbage".
I cringe

"They are primitive"
I suck in my breath so sharply my lungs ache

"blah blah blah"
I thank God that he's starting to sound like a raging waterfall in the distance and for one second I'm not in the car with the lunatic.

"We will continue killing you until you are finished!"

Damn! He couldn't just let me drift into dreamland. At this point, I snap and tell him to.."shut the hell up!" Like a baby he says, "don't tell me to shut up. Who are you to tell me to shut up, this doesn't concern you".

What?! This doesn't concern me? This doesn't concern me? I listen to him saying how much he hates me, the driver, our tribe, that we are garbage, primitive and stupid and how they, whoever they are, are going to kill us until we are finished, and this doesn't concern me?

You try listening to a man with a high pitched voice for twenty kilometres and see if your ears don't hurt after that. He's likely to be atleast 2 or 3 years older than me but I had to tell him to shut up. Why?

1. He was talking too much in that unmanly voice of his
2. He was proclaiming his eternal hatred for MY tribe
3. He threatened to kill us (I have audio proof that he made those threats)
4. He called us primitive, garbage and something else I cannot quite remember because at the rate he was going and after how long I had been listening to him, it started to sound like blah, blah, blah, blah.

So yes, I told him to shut the hell up and yelled a few other things that I will edit out of the video I have, so that I don't incriminate myself along with incriminating him.

And by God, whoever said that women talk too much to fulfill the 2000 words per day myth, obviously had never met this man; this guy was going on and on and on and on. Energizers would have nothing on this man's mouth.

It took me a while to get over it and people wonder why I was so incensed by this. They weren't in the car that night so none of them would understand. And most of them were from certain other communities, not mine, so obviously, they wouldn't understand.

You! You know who you are. If you ever read this, I hope you get to this part because I think I should tell you that you are a very sick man, seek professional help lest you hold a panga to a Kikuyu that I happen to know. I shan't spare you if I find out that you are behind ambushes and attacks of my people, even if I don't know them personally, I wouldn't hesitate to tell the world what you did.

But for now, I'll protect you and keep the video to myself. And people think the tribalism problem is behind us! Hmh! This is a young guy, who someday, might become a leader in the community. He'll get children, brainwash them in the same way he no doubt was, and incite the youth of the future to attack their Kikuyu brothers.

With people like these, the killings never really end because there is always someone who wants to hit back. Who can blame those hitting back if the only thing making a man like this attack, is his pure, unreserved and loudly proclaimed hatree for the other tribe. And to call the Kikuyu primitive is quite laughable. He forgets that he works for a Kikuyu, lives in a neighbourhood with a Kikuyu name, the flat he lives in is owned by a Kikuyu, the matatu he takes to work every morning is probably owned by a Kikuyu, goes to the kiosk owned by a Kikuyu....seriously! Talk of the proverbial pupp that bites the hand that feeds it. And to call the Kikuyu primitive! If anyone is primitive in this picture it is most definitely him. Poor fellow so backward in his thinking that he deosn't even realize it.

You are a very sick man!

Those that objectify women

So a friend and I are walking around on Saturday the 24th of May, looking for a place to eat some greasy junk food and we decide that it must be a place we can sit down comfortably, you know, like in a restaurant. We settle for this fast food joint on Moi Avenue, Skylight Dishes it's called. It's dimly lit, very romantic looking, the colours are nice and cheery, then come the people. We are served by a guy who looks like he's got better things to do like attend to his running stomach or something. Well....

First we ask for tea and come to think of it, I cringe at the thought of what the contents of my tea are. You see, the owners of the place are the kind that like to spit a lot, even in public. It simply doesn't bother them. They spit and spit, any chance they get. The funny thing though is that I don't think about it until I've drunk the last drop of my tea. Yuck!

So anyway, after we are done with the tea, the waiter tell us that the greasy junk food we'd got into the restaurant for in the first place was not there. Okay. Stay calm, I tell myself. As we get up to go next door, the place with the highstools, for the grease that we wanted, I decide I'm going to pay for the tea. I beat my friend to the cashier's eager hand.

We are standing there waiting for the guy to give us change and I'm asking questions but the guys around the counter, instead of addressing me when answering the questions I ask, are addressing my companion! A guy! Okay! Please, girl keep your calm....

What?! I pay for the tea and the falas (idiots) give the change to my companion? What are they thinking? That he gave me the money? What is with these guys? They saw me remove the money from my pocket and give them the receipt along with the money. They heard me ask how much it cost, meaning that I was intending to pay all along. And the cashier had the nerve to give my change to my companion?

My muslim brothers, I shan't insult you too much for fear that you'll cut my tongue off or bomb my house, but you should know, that not even dogs treat their bitches in such a condescending manner.

So, the next time I come to Skylight Dishes, I'm going to buy one cup of tea with Kshs. 5000, cash, and when you rush to give back MY change, I'll look you straight in the eye and ask you:

"Where is the man you want to give MY change back to now, you homo erectile nincompoop?"

Pathetic!

Help out a Little

I don't know whether I'm the smartest person in this country regarding our homeless especially in the city, or whether everybody else is just plain dumb. Or maybe, people have thought of this but unlike me, refused to share their ideas and therefore gone nowhere with all their good intentions. Or maybe the government is just too plain selfish and only interested in superficial economy growth to actually care about the people that need them to care the most. The homeless, the street people, the beggars.

Everyday, I come to work, I'm assured that at the end of the month, I'll get a little money for my trouble and that it will sustain me for the rest of the month and if not, at least I could always get a part time job in spite of my meager qualifications. So I’m not always hard up.

But every evening as I’m going to work or just taking a walk during my break, I see these people, people that most able people would shun. People that people with money would call “lazy”

But really, what do we the working class, know about the lives of the homeless, the street kids, their parents, what do we really know? A kid will follow me for over half a kilometer trying to get five shillings off of me. I’ll admit that sometimes, I can be mean, especially when I know that I don’t have enough money to be sharing with anyone, let alone a street kid who isn’t even my family. But why would anyone follow me that far and for that long?

Do I have the facial expression that makes people believe that if they pester me for long enough, I’ll give in so that they can leave me alone? Or is it that I look like I just have loose change with me all the time that I want to get rid of. Or maybe, just maybe, the kids are really hungry, really desperate that they would follow me for eternity just to get that worthless coin that to them means the only meal they’ll have for the next week or two.

Well whatever the reason, sometimes I’ll give in and sometimes I simply won’t.

But imagine this, the world will always have lazy people, the world will always have hardworking people, rich people, poor people, penniless people, homeless people and all sorts of other people. I don’t know what kind of balance we would have if all people were rich or if all people were just okay or if all people were poor. Well if all were rich or at least well-to-do, then no one would need anyone and it would be such a boring uninteresting world, now wouldn’t it? And if we were all poor then everyone would be begging and borrowing from everyone else and no one would ever be satisfied, right? So think of it this way. The reason we have so many social and economic classes is so that we can help each other out, learn to appreciate what we have and realize that no one ever gets where they are solely by their own power.

You might not realize it but possibly, the reason you are so well-up today, is because of that beggar sitting on the corner of Kenyatta and Moi Avenue. Sometimes, it’s not always because we made the right decision that we have a good job. Sometimes it’s because the other person who would have gotten the job instead of you decided that he could do better and in spite of him/her being more qualified and better suited for the job than you, the employer settled for you because, the other guy, ditched the opportunity.

So you see, it’s not always because we are the best that we get the opportunities that are deserving only of the best, it’s because sometimes the best, decided they can do better. In other words, the opportunity gets handed to you, even though you don’t really deserve it. Let’s look at it this way. The guy after turning down the opportunity to get a good job fails to get another job anywhere and goes insane because he simply can’t believe that with all the skills, qualifications and brains he has, no one will hire him. So he starts to walk the streets, forgets who he was, or is, he stops bathing, he forgets to eat sometimes, he abandons his home and family and finally settles down at the corner of yes, that street.

You? You pass him by every morning when going to work and every evening when going home. And yet, you have no Idea that that was the man that put you where you are now, opened up the avenues for you to better yourself. He? He has no idea that you are the one that took his place. You are the one who gets to sit in that cozy office that could have been his, claiming that you got there because you were the best. You claim that you got there fair and square, but you don’t know and neither does he.

You ignore a little girl who comes to you at the behest of her mother, to borrow a few coins or at least a little shopping for milk and bread. When you do, things start to smoothen out for you and you think that you have your life under control and you think to yourself, ‘wow, I’ve really improved myself’. But you don’t know that this little girl’s mother prays for you night and day, everyday of her life, and all because you bought her one packet of milk and a loaf of bread. You think that it’s because you are so good that things are working out for you, but really, the woman’s prayers are that you might prosper in life and be happy with yourself. I guess the prayers work, but really to think that you are the cause of your own happiness?

It pains me everyday when I encounter a little child begging, a mother sleeping on the street with her newborn, a teenager sniffing glue to drown out the hard reality that he shan’t have a bite to eat for the next two weeks or so, men lining the pavements displaying their severed limbs, blind people trying to entertain pedestrians for a shilling or two on Tom Mboya Street. It’s painful, it really is.

Why can’t the rich, or the government or those that claim to be fighting for the rights of the people, think up something to help these people? Why? I’ve thought something up.

Why can’t we, like America and other countries start soup kitchens? Just a bowl a day of any kind of rich, nutritious soup will do for most people. Think of the breast feeding mothers, especially those that were displaced during the violence in December and January? It doesn’t have to be a big thing; it could be a mobile truck with barrels of soup and a pickup full of loaves of bread to eat the soup with. Then later, we could develop a semi-permanent structure that could be used as sleeping quarters for the homeless just for a night at a time. Then later on, we could make it a permanent structure which helps the homeless get jobs and only allows people a maximum of three months support, after which they must get a job and pay to use the sleeping quarters. Think of all the people that would benefit from all this. Think of all the good it could do! I know that sleeping somewhere for a night and having to go back onto the street at the crack of dawn is hardly dignified but really, it beats roaming the streets all day and using the pavements as your bed at night, doesn’t it?
So please, whoever you are, if you can, and I know you can, help out a little. In reality you not only help the beggar, but you also help yourself out. You just don’t realize it, until you stop.

Constant Gardener: Murder in the Valley

The Constant Gardener is no doubt a thriller, characterized by a clever weave of secrets, deception, ruthless murder, love and the pain of losing a loved one. We are taken through the lives of Tessa, a young, enthusiastic political activist who meets, and within a very short time marries Justin Quayle, a laid back official of the British High Commission. It however highlights the dangers of drug testing, especially to the unsuspecting poor of any underdeveloped country, but in this particular case Kenya.

It is a film based on John le Carre’s novel and tells of how Tessa Quayle is found murdered in Lokichoggio, Rift Valley, Kenya.

Tessa, 24, was at the time of her murder, the representative for Effective Aid, seemingly attached to the British High Commission. Her job was to ensure that the drugs donated to the Kenyan poor actually got to them. Tessa also took it upon herself to observe whether drugs being tested on the Kenyan poor were working effectively.

On her watch, she discovers that Dypraxa, along with curing tuberculosis, had other terribly negative side effects; liver failure, blurred vision and ultimately death for some patients. This we discover when Tessa, having lost her baby in childbirth, confides in Sandy that Wanza Kilulu, a new mother at 15 and a patient at the hospital where Tessa gives birth, was used to test Dypraxa and died because of its effects.

Sandy Woodrow promises to hand in Tessa’s report on the drug’s effects to Bernard Pelligrin, a British Government official, who is supposed to help her get the word out that The Three Bees is killing people with. Her report does get to Pelligrin but is pushed aside. Tessa is asked to drop it. What Tessa didn’t know is that Pelligrin was complicit in the clinical trial use of Dypraxa and in hiding its effects.

Tessa did actually do her job, the known and the unknown. She kept the nature of her work from her husband, to protect him. She’s seen bullying an official from Kenya’s Ministry of health and embarrassing several other colleagues of her own in the same breath. Her husband’s colleagues and hers as well, mistake her passion for bitchiness and suggest to her husband that he lock her up, if he can’t control her.

Tessa’s tenacity however is not slowed down any. Even when Sandy, a colleague and friend of her husband’s wants her to promise to sleep with him, in return for a piece of information, she accepts but, known only to her and the viewer, that is one promise she does not intend to keep. The piece of information regards the British Government’s relation to the death pill Dypraxa, its manufacturer KVH (a Swiss Canadian drug manufacturing company) and its distributor and tester Three Bees Pharmaceuticals (a British Drug Company).

Tessa’s digging gets her killed.

It is not all in vain however. Her husband, Justin unconvinced of his wife’s unfaithfulness, searches for the truth. He gradually uncovers what Tessa had kept so well hidden from him and puts it all together bit by bit.

As the plot unfolds, Justin discovers that the British Government is letting Karel Vita Hudson (KVH) a Swiss Canadian pharmaceutical company distribute Dypraxa, a drug that is supposed to cure Tuberculosis through a British distributor known as The Three Bees.

The common man can only hope that the Kenyan Government would not sell out its citizens as was portrayed in the film. Apparently, the British Government bribed the Kenyan Government so that Three Bees could carry out drug tests on the poor in Kibera. As the film nears its end, we learn that the deaths were nothing to KVH or Three Bees. That according to them, a Tuberculosis epidemic was going to sweep across all continents. Their intention was to come up with a drug that could cure TB and they did. This drug would then go on sale, curing TB patients all over the world, hence making KVH billions in profit. The deaths that occurred in the trials were because KVH had not yet got the formula for Dypraxa right yet. The British Government played with what they considered “dispensable lives” but lives nonetheless. Not only did they break the law of any and every land but they also

It has been frequently said that developed countries use poorer countries to test all sorts of products, not only drugs. This film is just one that shows the lengths to which profit oriented companies will go, to protect their interests.

This is just one of those cases and to use the very poor who are in need of treatment and are unable to pay for their own is just ghastly. Wanza Kilulu, the 15 year old mother who died after being administered with Dypraxa is a representation of the many poor people who will assent to such experiments.

In many of the experimental trials, especially in Africa, patients are not told of the possible side effects of the drugs that are tried on them and end up suffering alone because they signed release forms, which makes them the toys of companies such as these.

Who knows how many AIDS drugs, skin lotions; birth control pills have been tested on us Africans and had deadly effects? And yet, nothing has been done or even said about it.

Perhaps with more writers like John Le Caree, on whose novel the film is based on, Africa as a whole will see ‘donations’ for what they really are and refused to be used on guinea pigs.

Do Africans Hate Their Music?

Sad Affair this Tusker Project Fame. In spite of the show being an African, more specifically a Kenyan initiative, contestants within the Academy are still being encouraged to sing foreign songs.

What is this? What are the teachers and organizers trying to say? That African musicians are not worth emulating? That the songs of our motherland are not challenging enough to be used in competitions? Really, What is this?

I know that since the prize is a recording deal with Gallo Records, an internationally acclaimed Recording Company, it might influence the kind of music that flies around in TPF 2.

However, making contestants do songs they neither understand nor can sing, and then evicting them for it is criminal! Shocking!

Are they trying to tell us that there isn't a single African that can match the talent of Aretha Franklin or Tina Turner or Lionel Richie. Surely, talent is talent anywhere in the world and focusing on western music is insulting to our very own African Talent.

Magic System, Mariam Makeba, Femi Kuti, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Two Face Idibia, all are talented and very much accomplished musicians.

Why oh! Why can't the teachers select African music for African contestants. I know that as Kenyans we are trying to get internationally recognized but , where else in the world in Asia, Europe or America do contestants perform African music in their competitions. Nowhere. Have we as Africans decided that unless we ape the west, we shan't get recognized?

In the West, they emulate their musical greats. That is expected. Why on earth can't we as Africans do the same damn thing. It is truly sickening to have to listen to our heavily accented African musicians try to sound like Michael Bolton, making it sound like a space martian language that no one, not even the copy cat himself can understand.

I don't know where as Africans, we are headed in matters music, and though I encourage convergence, versatility and variety in any musician, I am pained that no one in the Academy is fighting to do African music. And those that do perform African music do it so poorly as to make one wonder whether there is talent in Africa! What is it? Are you dear musicians not proud of your music when you sing it? Is that why you can't sing it well enough to evoke envy and admiration from cultures other than ours. What is it?

Africa, I am pained.

This Journey We're On.

Today, I woke up psyched up for the day and for the life ahead of me. I took a shower, had breakfast, watched Tusker Project Fame, got disgusted at how westernized the whole show is, then Ieft for work at about 5pm.

I live 10 minutes away from the city centre. On weekends or holidays, it’s three minutes away. Anyway, on weekends, the matatu guys have a really hard time getting customers to travel with them, because the customers assume that because it’s a weekend they should be charged half price for travelling in those matatus. The matatu owners, preferring to make a loss rather than carry people at half price, go ahead with those who agree to pay the full fare.

So, today, I got a mat soon after walking out of my gate, but the driver had intentions other than taking me to the City Centre. I ended up further from my destination than I had been while at home. You see, the driver kept reversing into side roads to get passengers that didn’t want to board the damn matatu, simply because, they didn’t want to go anywhere, they were just walking around aimlessly soaking up the evening sun, or just walking to the shops that are near their homes. But would the driver accept that? No! He just kept going ass first into side road after side road and after some time, I did get depressed and start to think that maybe, it was never my destiny to get what I want or be happy for more than a minute.

Not only that, but when he realized that really the only people that wanted to travel were those in his vehicle at that time, he ran into a weekend revelers jam, and he? Well, he did the unthinkable, he started to drive on the sidewalks, pushing pedestrians into walls and receiving a few insults for it. And then, he got us stuck in a ditch, so we all had to get out of the vehicle and lift it out of the ditch. We couldn’t ask for our money and we were too close to the city to demand all our money back so the other passengers and I just decided to wait it out in the hope that it wouldn’t be too long before we did reach our destinations. I vowed to assess any other matatu very carefully before boarding to ensure that it was partially occupied and would not go forcing pedestrians to become passengers.

This story is not about matatus. It’s about life as a journey and how sometimes, it can be full of unexpected twists and turns. Take me for instance. All I wanted was to get to the City Centre of Nairobi. I got there true, but the hellish bumps and ditches I had to encounter were part of the journey. It is so with life too. I wake up one morning enthusiastic about life, vowing to accomplish great things, but make one silly mistake. I trust others to drive the course of my life and end up in places that I had never intended to go. “Tis so with everyone at one point or another in their lives; we aspire to do great things, we plan for them, we get started but then people along the way direct us to places that are not good for us. And the only way to beat this kind of trusting, wavering habit that takes us nowhere is focus.

We need to focus. We need to focus. For this journey we’re on, the two things that will get us where we want to go are God and Focus.