tHiNkEr’S rOoM

Within the last two months or so I have heard of some mysterious concept that I am finding great difficulty in swallowing.

Apparently, there is something called “positive tribalism“. Every time I hear this I struggle to know which way to react. Generally it is one or a combination of the following:

1. Huh?
2. What
3. WHAT?!
4. WTF??

I have tried very hard to bend my mind around this concept and failed.

Every time I hear that phrase it occurs to me that it might just one of the most most ridiculous things I have ever heard, chiefly because if there WAS such a thing, then by logical extension there would certainly exist mind boggling things like positive bigotry and positive racism.

This strikes me as the very clever shadow puppeting that allows people to sneak in elitist bigotry masquerading as pride in one’s culture into making unfortunate ridiculous crass mind numbingly stupid comments like “it is time for one of our own to be in State House”.

By and large, people who purport to be “agitating for the rights of  their people” or “fighting for their community” or “fostering political unity of their community” by and large tend to be talking through their nether regions.

And what is this pride in culture anyway? (Nebulous canned responses about pride in one’s roots can be left at the door). What exactly is it to be proud of one’s culture?

Which further beggars the question, if this “pride in culture” is what is being abused left right and center, and used as the cloak over our elitism, so much so that it is becoming increasingly apparent that the more we identify ourselves as Kikuyu, Luo, Meru, Giriama, Luhya, Kisii, Kamba etc, the less and less we identify ourselves as Kenyans, what use is it?

Until human beings develop the emotional and intellectual capacity enough to really celebrate our differences, and not just talk the cliche, we need to give serious thought to leaving our Kikuyu-ness and our Luo-ness,  our Kenyan-ness and our Tanzanian-ness, our Israeli-ness and our Palestinian-ness, our African-ness and our Asian-ness, our Blackness and our Whiteness, our Christianity and our Islam at the door and walk in what we all are — humans.

So tell me all about this “positive tribalism“. Because as of now — I don’t believe a damn word.

Blessed Union Of Souls - I Believe

Some people are naturally very intelligent. Other people work hard at it. Others are both. Think Albert Einstein. Stephen Hawking. Galileo Gallilei. Leonardo Da Vinci. The chap who came up with sliced bread.

But since nature believes in balance, there must exist individuals on the other side of the balance. People dumber than fencing posts. People as thick as molasses in January. People so dense they have their own center of gravity. People without the sense to hit the water if they fell out of a boat.

By some stroke of ill fortune, almost all of them seem to have found employment in the NARC government, but that’s OK. A transition from a highway robber or a shouting tout to a Cabinet minister is nothing if not inspiring to other mere mortals like us.

And then I read this article in the press and laugh until tears come to my eyes at the evidence that there is stiff competition to our noble leaders.

The headline stuns enough for you to reach out to the nearest object firmly moored to the earth for support.

DP to support Kibaki, even on ODM-K ticket

And then you start reading the evidence that when God was offering brains, brawn and beauty, some people asked for biscuits, beef jerky and broth.

President Mwai Kibaki will not be replaced as the Democratic Party of Kenya chairman even if he decamps to ODM Kenya, the party has announced.

The DP national executive council meeting yesterday also resolved that the party would support Mr Kibaki as a presidential candidate in next year’s General Election, regardless of his party.

Grabbing the top of my head to keep it from exploding, and sitting down on a hard, firm chair, I read some more

Addressing a press conference at the party’s headquarters in Nairobi yesterday, the officials led by deputy secretary-general George Nyamweya said they had no plans of subjecting the chairman to elections, since they trusted him.

Grimly ploughing along Nitwit Boulevard, the officials rush towards their doom

“We will support him for the presidential seat even if he runs on an ODM-Kenya ticket,” said Mr Nyamweya . The officials said DP would not dissolve.

And with a final hint as to why the quality of the gene pool is not as high as we would like it to be, the final Dam Buster assault crashes into the Tirpitz of our credulity

The DP constitution disqualifies the President from continuing to hold chairmanship after declaring support for another party.

I cannot recall the last time I laughed until tears came to my eyes. Read the sordid details here (Free registration required)

Passionately resisting attempts from the public to usurp their authority as Doyens Of The Dense are various employees who earn their bread and butter on the sweat of the working Kenyan.

GAFFE GALORE

Most homes have a plaque along the following lines hung in the dining room or the sitting room

An enterprising Kenyan could make good money selling a plaque reading as follows to the subordinates of His Excellency The President Mwai Kibaki

This will work wonders for individuals like the ever so infamous Security Minister John Michuki, Former Constitutional Affairs Minister Kiraitu Murungi, Former Finance Minister David Mwiraria and now Constitutional Minister Martha Karua, who had the nerve temerity gall audacity cojones to lie with a perfectly straight face that scandals like Anglo Leasing had nothing to do with the NARC Government.

Uh huh!

It will also work well for gaffe machines like Government Court Jester Clown Comic Spokesman Alfred Mutua and Ambassador Peter Oginga Ogego who are doing for Kenya’s foreign relations with the US what the Ku Klux Klan did for black-white relations.

WTF OF THE DAY

Apparently George Walker Bush and Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete met and over warm tea and Cerelac, discussed Kenya’s stability or lack thereof. I’m still trying to bend my mind around that one.

PIC OF THE DAY

En Vogue - Hold On

One of my favourite quotes is from one George Bernard Shaw when he says:

Youth
is wasted
on the young

Each day that elapses and I understand what he was saying  just that little bit more.

If I were to go back just five years in my life … by golly!

But I digress. When talking of this amorphous term “The Youth”, who exactly are the youth?

Think back. I’m sure many a time you have been told “You are the leaders of tomorrow.” This you fondly believed and encouraged you. You keep hearing that term and then one day to your surprise when you hear the very words they are not actually being addressed at you.

Funny isn’t it?

The transition between you being the leader of tomorrow and the leader of yesterday is almost seamless. Paradoxically it creeps up on you and at the same time sprints at you.

Recall if you will, how agonizingly long it took for the forty minutes to elapse between each ringing of the school bell. And fast forward now, to when you can swear it was January just the other day and already the year is coming to a close.

Ah, how time sweetens with time! How its value appreciates with each advance of the second hand! And how that much more bitter the realization that the second that has just elapsed will never come again!

Increasingly I find that 24 hours are not nearly enough to half the things I wish to accomplish in a day. Not nearly. Ideas struggle for the opportunity to see the light of day. And it is at such times I think wistfully to the generous amounts of time I wasted in years gone by that I could have done some of these things.

I find it increasingly difficult to swallow the idea that the purpose of youth is to “have fun” while they are young. This beggars a couple of questions:

1. What is, after all, having fun?
2. Is having fun linked only with the young?
3. And after having fun, then what?

The more I think about it the more I don’t buy this entire meme at all.

The youth are so pre-occupied with “having fun” and “enjoying life” that they don’t actually realize that very many things are passing  them by as they purportedly sip the elixir of their youth.

Things like leadership opportunities. Self discovery. Knowledge. Expanded minds. Exchange of ideas.

There is no way the youth are ever going to be taken seriously when they spend all their free time from Monday to Monday ”having fun”.

Think about your average Joe. Has a degree in hand and 4 years of working under his belt. He has developed the typical rut. Wake at 6:30, in the office at 8, where he will work till 1. Over lunch he will discuss the ample charms  of the office buxom, Manchester United vs Arsenal and how bollocks the government is. He will then work till 5:30 or 6 after which he will meet friends in town for a few cold drinks as they decide where they will go out.

Joe will arrive home with the morning milk, in time for a shower and a repeat of the same.

Few things are as ludicrous as Joe one day waking up and demanding leadership. Why should he get it? What does he have to offer? What, besides youth, does he bring to the table? Will Joe’s administration be better than Daniel’s? Or Emilio’s? Just because he is young?

In his nice cocoon of work, home, friends and clubs, Joe is blissfully unaware of the colossal morass of ignorance he wallows in.

He does not realize the howling irony of complaining about tribalism and yet he forwards stereotypic jokes.

He does not realize that a good leader starts off by just being knowledgeable, period. Not book knowledge per - se — but plain old knowing what’s going on.

He does not realize how he can refine his ideas and ideals by listening to different, or even opposing ideas without taking offence.

He does not realize the vital importance of cause and effect, and why he cannot, as he repeatedly tells his friends over a frothy glass, abolish all taxes under his administration.

And most importantly he does not realize that he can demand leadership until he is blue in the face but is not going to get anything of the kind. Real leadership must be worked for.

People will eventually forget Daniel Moi and his iron rule. People will even more quickly forget Mwai Kibaki and his hastily cobbled controversy ridden government.

But people will never forget true leaders like Nelson Mandela. Martin Luther King. Gandhi. Jesus.

Now, I’m not asking everyone to go home at 5 and analyze the works of Adam Smith, Lao Tzu, Machiavelli and for a light read, War and Peace and Morte d’ Arthur.

Far from it.

All I am saying is that the youth can no longer have their cake and eat it. Whether they like it or not the youth will have to “enjoy life” and “have fun” a little less and work a bit harder if the expect to lose the unfortunate reputation they have in society: that they are an ignorant, party loving lot, best seen and not heard, useful pawns in the political process.

The youth must begin to take an interest in things outside their narrow comfort zone of family, friends and work. The youth must not see life through the bottom of tankards, or rose tinted glasses, or the TV screen but raw, with their very own eyes.

The youth must start to be more ambitious, and dream bigger dreams. When asked, say, where they want to go on holiday the youth must stop fronting cliches like “sun and sand”, “the beach” and instead “climb Mount Kenya” or “See the pyramids”.

“A people get the leadership they deserve” is not a light statement. People do not become good leaders suddenly. They take a lifetime.

Yes, the youth had better get cracking.

AOB

Kenya hosted a Conference on Youth Development that begun this past Wednesday. Gracing the occasion where President Mwai Kibaki (75), Defence Minister Njenga Karume (77), Security Minister John Michuki (74) and Livestock Minister Joseph Munyao (66).

Indeed, God has an excellent sense of humour.

PIC OF THE DAY

Is it just me or does John Bolton look like a Dixie Colonel?

 Shania Twain - From This Moment

Mzalendo Buzz

Having Mzalendo.com mentioned in Wednesday’s Daily Nation has led to a flood of feedback that has certainly shown that there is keen interest in what Ory and I are trying to do.

Which is pretty much empowering Kenyans with regard to their own Government.

You have a right to know just how your MP represents you. You have a right to know how they voted in certain bills. You have a right to know how they express themselves. You have a right to know what sort of questions they ask on the floor. You have a right to know how government representatives respond to questions.

It is your right!

If there is one thing we’d like to become clear to anyone, everywhere it is that

Your representative

Works for you

and not the other way round

That having been said, a minor gripe here. It would be nice if newspapers checked their facts before they publish. Really.

1. Ory is in fact a woman, and not a man as the story says
2. Contrary to what the headline says, neither of us is in the United States, and we cannot imagine where the notion came from. One is not sure whether to be amused or annoyed at the notion that anything of substance must come from overseas

That last bit of disinformation forces me to now say, for the record, that I am NOT in the United States but am very much in Kenya. When I talk about events and issues in Kenya it is from first hand experience and not through proxy.

But as they say — publicity is publicity. If anything it will force us to up our game still more

Of Titles

President Kibaki has been at the coast over the weekend dishing out title deeds. Last week he was merrily doing this wearing a loud shirt that gave the impression to those who could not see him directly that he was wearing chain mail on a windy day.

Personally, I find the notion of  a President physically handing out title deeds a colossal waste of valuable time that could be better spent elsewhere.

Now, handling out title deeds, according to a distant relative who works for the Ministry of Lands, is clerical work for the most junior of officers. It is not like giving out a Doctorate.

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that Baba Jimmy is scoring political points.

Who’d have thought that impending elections would drive the legendary lethargy out of our Leader!

Gangsta Nation

There was a shootout last Sunday. There are generally shootouts at one point or another in this country, but this one was special because it took place right outside my back gate, on the road I use to get to Mi Casa.

It was equally more special because it took place 5 minutes before my whistling person was strolling down the road wondering where the heck everyone was and why there was a crowd further down the road.

Let’s just say the 4 carjackers are having their names looked for in the Book Of Life

Charity And The Snake Charmer

A very angry and very determined Health Minister Charity Ngilu led a large group of equally angry women to the doorstep of Security Minister John “Python” Michuki to demand an apology to slights made to the Kamba culture and the Kenyan Woman.

I did not watch the news in full yesterday but from the little I could deduce, he had somehow found more room in what is turning out to be an ample mouth to put his foot in, with some choice remarks to her about her reluctance to join NARC-Kenya.

That Charity objected strongly was very clear. As he slithered out the back door of his office it was clear what his views on Charity were. Charity may begin at home but he was quite willing to leave Charity behind.

Pic Of The Day

Whatever this guy is thinking, I doubt it is pure and pious!