tHiNkEr’S rOoM

By and large I believe in Charles Darwin’s theories, especially natural selection and survival of the fittest. But do the fittest of the species always survive?

• Why or why do doofuses at an elevator push both the up and down buttons, fondly imagining the lift will come faster? To add insult to injury, the stain on our collective DNA pushes the buttons repeatedly, suspecting that the bright red light is just, to coin a rugby expression, a “dummy”.
• While still on the lifts, one wonders whether to laugh, cry or both when seeing a daughter of a mother
  • Wait 5 minutes for a lift to come down to the ground floor
  • Upon entering the lift press the button for 1st floor (there are no mezzanines)
  • Upon getting to the 1st floor enter an establishment whose core business is a gymnasium
  • Later over hear said lady, over a large and greasy meal. asking her friends if they think she has lost wait. No, HMS Ulysses, you have not lost weight. If you wait 5 minutes for a lift to take you up one floor, you don’t have to think too hard to realize why your friends refer to your belt as the equator and your trousers as the Tropic Of Capricorn
• I am sick and tired of hearting about Raila Odinga and his bloody Hummer. I have had enough forwards from kind people who think my knowledge of all things Hummer is wanting, and thus pollute my inbox with all sorts of photos, specifications and catalogues. Listen nitwits:
  • There is no way a plain vanilla Hummer can cost 45 million shillings. 45 million shillings, using a rounded off dollar rate of 70 bob, is about 640,000 dollars.
  • Unless Raila Odinga’s Hummer polishes Raila Odinga’s shoes, brushes Raila Odinga’s teeth, reads to him bedtime stories and calls him Papi after a hard day’s work, no one gives a flying rat’s ass.
  • If you are still forwarding these bloody forwards, rest assured someone somewhere is imagining taking the largest model of the hummer, covering with with gravy, turning it sideways and STICKING IT STRAIGHT UP YOUR [This section reserved by management]
• The next time you’re preaching to me about Don Imus, you’ll be a lot more convincing if at the time
  • You don’t hail me with a smile and a cordial “What’s up nigga!”
  • Your CD player is not belting out very loudly “I make it rain on them hoes, I make it rain“.
  • You keep referring to bitches and it is common knowledge you have no pets
• The next time you attempt to justify anything by telling me you were under the influence of Mr Al Koholic, that look in my eye is me imagining you
  • Being horse whipped
  • Being whipped by a horse
• The other day concerned souls forcefully sat me down and told me who the Kenya’s celebs are. Among them are
  • A doofus who hired a helicopter to fly over a fence
  • Several half-witted stars and starlettes who torture our eardrums on radio. Since when did reading news on radio make you a celebrity?
• It goes without saying I completely reject the nitwits we celebrate as celebrities. I can confidently say that I am jolly interested in what folks like Paul Tergat are up to, not the shenanigans of twelve jabronies at the coast
• A movie is in the works about Anna Nicole Smith. Who. Cares?
• Paris Hilton and Britney Spears are generally top searches on Yahoo. If you are one of the doofuses wasting our limited bandwidth searching for those two smack your fat head as hard as you possibly can.
• There is no difference between Othaya Really Old Boys & Country Club (Narc Kenya) and the Court Jesters Association (ODM-K). Both should take very long walks off very short piers.
• I no longer take the notion of “African Time” or ladies being “fashionably late” seriously. At all. In fact if you find yourself saying this that patient look on my face is not of understanding. It is me praying very hard that re-incarnation is true, so that you can come back as a toilet seat in the only toilet in  a men’s hostel during a diarrhoea outbreak.
• And last but not least, I object to being generalized. I object to being referred to as a typical man. And should you find yourself addressing me thus, then rest assured this typical man is typically thinking you can kiss his typical [This section reserved by management]

Groan Of The Day

Dude, you need to get serious. Wash your damn car! Kwani you think you’re Chamillionaire?

 Walanguzi - Vaseline

Apparently black people wish for some sort of apology, as well as some sort of financial consideration because at some point in time these sons of toil moved tons of soil under a variety of persuasive agents such as whips, shotguns and axes. They sowed, weeded and harvested for massa to eat. They cleaned, washed, mowed and painted for the modest salary of room and board, shared and hard respectively.

I am not one of these seeking these nebulous things.

As a matter of fact, I find these attempts, and the resulting rippling gymnastics hilarious.

Tony Blair, trademark Cheshire cat grin in abeyance, bemoans the shameful enterprise that was the slave trade, conveniently overlooking the fact that a good bit of Rule Britannia was built on the backs of slaves on all 7 continents. If Atlantis had been around you bet your boots some of His Majesty’s vessels would have set out there and delivered gifts of whips, guns, bibles and small pox. Tony came just short of wringing his hands in sorrow. 

The Archbishop of York, emotion plainly visible across his countenance, also called for a formal apology from the UK, temporarily forgetting that the UK is not the shouting gentlemen who sit in parliament — he too is part and parcel of it.

The British are not a people to do things by halves. London Mayor Ken Livingston is unable to resist the overwhelming urge to apologize for London’s complicity in the Slave Trade. He also finds among his conflicting great emotions, overwhelming sorrow.

Some doofuses even had the temerity to chain themselves and had a brisk walk with said chains in empathy for the slaves. Uh huh. Try doing that for 60 years.

The Church too has not hesitated to toss its hat into the ring. The Archbishop of Canterbury too wishes for the Church to make amends post haste for the trade.

Whoever came up with the pearl “honey catches more flies than dung” ought to have shared this with the bearded gentlemen who landed on our hallowed shores to convert our black hearts. I find it hilarious that they found the natives rather reluctant to be converted. I wasn’t there, you understand, but perhaps the natives found it difficult to reconcile fellows talking out “turning the other cheek”, “blessed are the meek” and “peace on earth” with hard swearing, vicious fellows who substituted lambs with village maidens and proceeded to lay down with them by night, whipped, clubbed and shot errant natives before noon and in the afternoon burnt incense and read from the Good Book.

The good Archbishop conveniently forgets to mention that the Good Book itself is replete with slaves and slavery. Just mention Hagar to Abraham and watch him turn pink.

But I digress.

With little fanfare, the 25th of March was the anniversary of the ban of the slave trade. There was little mention of this in the Kenyan media. This could be due to the fact that we are:

1. Bored beyond belief with the proliferation of meaningless anniversaries and holidays. The other day we had ‘ World Water Day’.
2. There was nothing actually to commemorate.
3. All the above

The fact that people believe the slave trade is over just because there are no people living in plantations saying “Yessuh massa William suh!” speaks volumes of the collective naivete of a civilization that prides itself on “information everywhere”, “globalization” and “communication”. Visiting the yahoo home page and giving a cursory look to the headlines therein is enough to convince most that they are indeed in touch with the realities on the ground.

Consider for example the domestic maid. This poor lass is generally source from some remote village and planted in a household. Her impressive array of duties include cooking, cleaning, sewing, darning, washing, taking care of the general household and taking care of the massa home owner’s children. Her pay is usually token, and meals are deducted from the same. She generally eats on her own in the kitchen. Any breakages or damage is invariably deducted from her token pay.

And then on the 25th of March the massa home owner sits down at his PC and, emotion creasing the face, poured out the heart about the angst, consternation, anger, sadness  the vile trade(delete as applicable)

• His/her people inflicted on the slaves
• His/her people had inflicted upon them

Consider too the thriving traffic of young girls and women to Europe, where under lock, key and whip, they attend to the assorted needs of their masters and mistresses.

Today. 2007. 200 years since slavery was banned.

So, with regards to this reparation, I wonder if anyone would answer for me the following questions:

1. Who, exactly is going to apologize is it the governments? I for one would laugh myself to tears seeing Condoleezza Rice or Baroness Amos apologizing for the slave trade. Is it the civic society? Is it the common man? The church?   
2. If we generously generalize that black people were oppressed by the white people, what becomes of those shades of grey like Colin Powell and Barack Obama? Do they apologize from one side of the mouth and accept the apology with the other?
3. Since the blacks happily took part in the slave trade themselves, vigorously buying and selling their brothers, how do these factor into the apologies?
4. Our Arab brethren also took part in this trade and made some good living out of it. Why then the double standards?
5. What use is this apology?
6. Why am I being apologized to, and it is my great great great grandfather who was bought, sold and worked himself into the grave for no pay?
7. Why do people want an apology from Tony Blair for things done 150 years before he was even an idea in his folks’ minds?
8. if Mr Blair does make this apology, it will be completely hollow and meaningless. Why would he take responsibility for the deeds of his forefathers? If my ancestors through guns, whips and ships propelled my country to be the second superpower in the world and I stepped into the shoes of leadership,  I dare say I could find the tears and sorrow to be as sorry as you would like me to be. I would even apologize if you’d like. At the end of the day I’d still be sure that it wouldn’t change a damn thing
9. Am I the only one who finds ludicrous the notion that I have to apologize to a boy I wouldn’t know from Adam because my father soundly clobbered his father in nursery school?
10. Those outraged black folk fuming about the white oppressing them ought to put down those writs and dig a little deeper into history where they will find the Berbers took white slaves from Europe. Are they ready for that reparation?
11. There was a roaring slave trade in West Africa, and as a matter of fact they even constructed a market! Demanding an apology from Tony Blair is as absurd of demanding an apology from a bullet and neglecting to mention the gun.
12. Why stop at the transatlantic slave trade? Myopia appears to be a fairly coming affliction
    1. The prime minister of Greece should apologue for all the things the Greeks did when they dominated the world, including trading in slaves
    2. The prime minister of Italy should apologize for all the things the Romans did when they dominated the world, including trading in slaves
    3. Saddam Hussein, before being unceremoniously hanged, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should have been made to apologize for all the things the Persians did when they dominated the world, including trading in slaves
    4. The relatively mild people of Norway, Denmark and Sweden should be startled out of their placid lives with demands that they apologize for the things the Vikings did
    5. We can ask the same of the Mongols, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the Egyptians …
13. If financial reparation is to be made:
    1. Who will actually foot the bills for this? The taxpayers of the US and the UK? Which include descendants of the said slaves?
    2. How will the figures be arrived at?
    3. Who will receive this monies? If your great grand mother was the bed wench of a plantation owner are you eligible for half?
14. If we can figure out who will offer the reparation, and how it will be done, how will this invalidate the inhumanity that took place?
15. If it is an apology people want, what if I personally offered an apology for the inhumanity of the slave trade. Will that do? If not, why not?
16. We have spent all these centuries without these reparations. Why the sudden urgent need now? I like to think that most of us are doing just fine without it.

I think it is high time we started taking responsibility for ourselves, and stop looking for feeble crutches like the need for reparation to get on with our lives. Don’t get me wrong — the life of a slave back then was infinitely worse than death. The people that participated in this were undoubtedly the scum of the earth. I believe that they and Hitler will get their own heated section of Hell to themselves.

But come on people! Enough with the feeble crutches! Are we poor because of the slave trade? Perhaps. Perhaps not. The question is what are we going to do to correct the situation? Sit on our backsides waiting for nebulous apologies and money from the guilty descendants of the slave traders that will magically transform us? Someone has even discovered post traumatic slave syndrome! Get over yourselves already!!!

When will people ever learn — no one is going to help you. You wait for George Bush and Tony Blair to apologize. You wait for money to be wired to your bank account in reparation. That’s right, my sons and daughters. Wait right there for millennia of oppression and brutality to be corrected by a hallmark e-card and a wire transfer. Bush and Blair won’t apologize for something blatant for invading Iraq but somehow they will apologize for centauries of slave trade. They have so much money in their coffers and have fulfilled all their health care, defence, education and social security needs that they are looking for something to do with the extra funds.

You wait there. You may never walk alone my lovely but I can assure you that you will jolly well wait alone.

PIC OF THE DAY

If there ever was a clever logo …

Henry Mancini - Baby Elephant Walk

Francis Xavier Ole Kaparo is the grim, tough talking speaker of the current loud yet mediocre parliament. Generally when he speaks, people tend to listen. Having 250  or so members of parliament  of varying levels of maturity and intelligence under your thumb is not a task for the faint of heart.

However this last week Francis has been speaking in a manner likely to suggest that his wig is too tight, or the flatulence of honourable members have interfered with the knitting of his thinking cap.

I listened with stunned amazement when Ole Kaparo with a perfectly straight face told us that

Kenyan members of parliament are overworked

At this juncture quite a number of honourable members had composed themselves for slumber and their snores were shaking parliament’s rafters.

I pinched myself very hard just in case I was sleeping, or was operating in a parallel universe.

The very notion of an overworked MP is something my mind is struggling to grapple with. Running over the MPs I know by name, and picturing their rosy cheeks, considerable girth and third trimester like bellies, it is difficult to reconcile that image with the sweat of back breaking honest toil.

Driving from Being driven from the parliamentary canteen to a public rally, where they wear loudly clashing t-shirts and clutching flowers or oranges (as the case may be) can by no stretch of the imagination be construed as work.

Just how are these fellows overworked? Most of them do  not even go to their own constituencies, so how, pray tell, can they claim to be overworked?

Unless of course our speaker is referring to the hard work of ruthlessly attacking samosas, biscuits, queen cakes and mabuyu at the parliamentary canteen.

The other stunning declaration was that

The media should not capture sleeping MPs on film

This was in reaction to the hilarious footage from the parliamentary opening.

Within minutes of arriving and lowering their considerable girths to their seats, the sandman ruthlessly resumed his duties.

Hitherto bone dry Parliamentary leather suddenly had a coating of parliamentary drool from honourable members who were so overwhelmed with their back breaking work that even after a three month recess they were fast asleep within minutes of lowering their honourable backsides to the leather.

The president had just welcomed them back when the first snores rattled the rafters and within ten minutes a symphony in B major was being orchestrated, with NARC-Kenya snoring in bass, ODM-Kenya snoring in Alto, Ford People in fine voice in soprano and Ford Kenya handling the alto with aplomb.

Mungatana clutched his blankie closer. Kajwang clutched his teddy bear closer. Munyao and Karume sucked their thumbs. Gumo and Ndolo in their sleep groped for their sippy cups.

I find it preopostorous that Kapro can make such a request. In fact if possible Kaparo should have his head smacked.

OF COURSE they should be captured on film! Have they forgotten a simple tenet — that the MP is an employee of the people?

I’m working very hard to transition from employee to employer and i jolly well know i will be very interested in any employees of mine who take my money and sleep instead of working!

Xavier my man, your MPs are our employees and we damn sure have the right to know what they are doing during office hours!

PIC OF THE DAY

Someone is very kindly offering me a work permit

I especially like their ‘gaurantee’

Elvis Presley - Return To Sender