GHETTO LIVITY

I have read of the Beauty of the African Sunset

but I never saw it beyond the shanty line.

I never heard a lion roar- what I hear is,

M.C. Bingi toasting over a heady reggae track:

"... sauti ya Simba!"

Sweaty bodies. Gyrating.

Foot shuffling. Groins bumpin',

a loud groan...

"... he coming, huh?"

No, Komo got stabbed... Blood on the Dance Floor!

But who cares?

Play on... D.J weka tracki!

***

I never smelt bush fires, or the coming of the rain;

but I can smell the Herb burning.

Dinda sits behind a pillar of smoke...

suddenly, he is transfigured.

"oh, I see Moses!" he says.

"Oh, fuck it!" I say.

Moses never lived to see Cannan!

In the backroom, Aaron's rod is budding.

But Bobo has no time to marvel.

(Tayari amecheki ya Musa, Firauni, labda hata Yesu!)

She just scratches her crotch and waits for the next;

the line is seven deep...

... I hate this shit!

Not the HIV- hell life is short anyhow.

I am thinking superfecundation- Multilateral Fertilisation!

Seven kids, in the ghetto, and no daddy;

shit, pass me that bar of Geisha-

"oh baby... call me Onan!"

***

In the Main Bar, now, with Morio.

He has 300 Grand, in cash and a HK-11;

(Ex- GK... si u jua!)

He smells of blood and cordite.

But the Tuskers he buying don' t smell...

... of... of blood and cordite;

of lives lost and families ruined!

Soon the sun will rise in the east

Who cares?

I cannot see it passed out under the table, FUBARed-

(Fucked Up Beyond Any Recognition) -

enough to escape my demons;

atleast for today... today!

and today is all I live for...

... And that is Ghetto Livity!

AUTO EROTIC ASPHYXIATION

Personally I blame Dr. Hannibal Lecter for introducing me not only to pulp fiction but also to Auto-Erotic-Asphyxiation (AEA). I can say, on the basis of empiricist data, that AEA works. But it is technically illegal considering that your local magistrate, not being famous for sexual inventiveness, can only view it as attempted suicide. Though the presence of a partner could be useful in case things go wrong, things could still go wrong- blame that on Sod’s Law! If you were to die, your partner could end up spending a lifetime as a Jail House pussy or worse, still, get Auto Erotically Asphyxiated by the Government executioner.

As a matter of record, I would insist that you do not try it at home. But the perverts Regimental Motto is, a hard on has no conscience, so I know you just might try it. Therefore as your shrink takes his Corporate Social Responsibility seriously, I recommend that you use a rope with low breaking strain. That could make all the difference between your living to see your next orgasm or not.

Considering that AEA is dependent on an Adrenaline high, there are other activities, besides manual strangulation, that could be used to achieve a similar effect and that can actually be seen to achieve greater utility in the punishment-reward equation. Robbing a bank for instance is a multiple orgasm experience not only because of the thrill of the heist but also the subsequent sight of an enormous amount of money. (Incidentally, money can buy you a session of vaginal Masturbation- a hooker that is- or a colostomy bag incase a stray bullet connects with your nether viscera.)

***
In the sex and drugs era, which our juvenile delinquent set referred to as Westland’s summer of ’99; I knew a dude named Gogo. Gogo wasn’t twisted- heck everyone was twisted in those days and life was one big hallucination- he was fucked up. He was so fucked up that had he been a white boy, he would have slit his wrists. This dude used to drive out to the open stretch of garbage that demarcates Woodley from Kibera with his ‘pussy of the day’. He would leave her in the car, walk over to the railway line, light a spliff and wait for the train.

As the train thundered past him missing him by an ass-hair, Gogo would run back into the car flashing the kind of boner that would make Sebastian, the huge ape at the Nairobi Orphanage, cover himself in shame. Once in the car, the medically provable aphrodisiac effect of Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol. Adrenaline after burn and the pheromone studded animal smell of mortal fear conspired to make Gogo the much sort after fuck-buddy that he was.

All that until Nana, the infamous Westie Succubus discovered that in the absence of train games, Gogo was doomed to earn Frequent Flyer Miles on Air Viagra. It wasn’t our business to know, but the heck we now did. What a coupe de grace, now Gogo couldn’t even have sex with his right hand without the left one sniggering at him. Certainly that Dog’s penis had gone to the dogs… it’s (Morning) Glory days were over. Anyway come September and Gogo left for Uni in England- and so did about everyone else.

Psychoanalysts say that it is all in the mind. That in the absence of a deeper physiological problem, a man finding himself unable to rise to the occasion need only believe in himself that he can and he will. The traditional healer at the exorbitant fee of a heifer of one body will give you your own pee to drink and tell you to imagine yourself a simba… Raauuu… Rauuuu! Gogo was a lion, in a new concrete jungle. The cock of Nairobi could crow in Northumberland. But first he had to be rid of the Kenyan crowd. His past- so he ignored them.

In his thinking, who needed a past when the future was a rainbow nation of orgasms? …his name screamed in varied accents… picturesque colour chromatography as ebony dips into sepia, olive, tan or onlygodfuckingknowswhat shade of melanin privilege. Gogo was soon spotted by the railway line with a string of eager freshmen. Waiting. Naked. Spliffing. Hey even some of them- those with numerous freckles, braces and, no price for guessing, slit wrists- would walk with him all the way to the line and play the train game. Foreplay!

***
In those Westie years still, there was a dude named Binji. Binji was a hustler. Okay, his occupation was unknown (who cared about occupations, we were professional bums- Young Urban Posers!) Binji was more blinged out than a hip hop video but most importantly, he had strange merchandise. Stuff like this hundred dollar bill that was issued by the US Confederate States during the civil war. One day, he showed me something I found infinitely more interesting- a postcard. A postcard made in the Dirty South, circa 1918.

***
The picture on the postcard is of a lynch party. A dirty nigger hangs from a maple tree. He has shat himself but I do not think he has ejaculated. It is too soon after… you know he was caught…! Huh, but it takes two to tango? I do not know about that but I do know that a Black Widow ain’t necessarily black, …boy!

At the foot of the tree, a pre-coital mood freeze framed. Men hold up sjamboks and riffles- Phalluses of the Sadists! On the other hand each holds a token- a woman. The men below seem to be wishing that the women will equate what they hold in their hands with what is in their pants. Power! And the women look up. They seem to be asphyxiated by the Auto Erotically Engorged Mandingo.

The Savage is up on the tree- not cutting much of a Christ figure- and the Neurotics down below. Is it a Freudian Point of Agreement between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics? Who knows, but I am a theorist- I can put sex on a pedestal… or up a Maple tree!

Everyone at the foot of the tree looks sex ready. Everyone wants to have sex with someone. But not everyone will have sex with whoever they are most attracted to (sometimes even the plausible Darwinian Theory of the dominant male decides to go wank. In those instances, people will settle for the monkey with the dubious cranial structures and shrug: The heck, I am horny!)

It is a scene loaded with sexual meaning. A scene that proves that both the asphxiator and the asphyxiatee can share a single, fleeting moment of erotic stimulation…

On the upper left hand side of the picture, a mockingbird in flight!

DEFILING THE SOB!

Ms. Femme is back in the USA from a successful conference with some rubbernecking African Consultant. She is now raising money to lobby the Kenyan parliament.


As Mr. Africa Consultant bows out of our narrative in a drunken stupor, he leaves a legacy of platitudes that will shape Ms. Femme’s Agenda for Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and even Somalia- when the CIA money moves from a rebel’s hawala into a real central bank. These, with my editorial input, are:

a) The Kenyan government works in mysterious ways its blunders to perform, (TRUE);
b) The Kenyan Parliamentarian will vote for any Bill, he is bribed to, as long as it doesn’t reduce his salary, (TRUE);
c) All women in Kenya are opposed to Female Circumcision, (Existential Question- Incomputable).

Ms. Femme has a real Agenda, for Africa, now. Her erstwhile programmes she now considers too sissy. All those shelters for battered women are better of abandoned. This is Africa, after all, who needs practical solutions? All those Alternative Initiation rites programmes seem too sensible for Africa. Why bother trying to change illiterate minds while you can change their laws? Make everything they believe in illegal in one quorum-less afternoon. The law and its enforcement- or so says the African Consultant and his predecessor, the Colonial Secretary- are the only ways to tame the native savage!

So the male member, through his parliamentary representative, is invited to a conference to drum up support for the new fangled sexual offences Bill. At the onset, it is obvious that the only offence the MP can see is whereby the words sex and offence are used in the same phrase. But the Beach Resort is enticing. And there is the matter of the allowances. Allowances that can be used quite well in putting offence into sex- but that only in your definition not his. (His opinion: “Sasa kama ime amuka, utauliza yeye kama ako na ID...?)

The conference begins with Ms. Femme stating categorically that voting against the Sexual Offences Bill will contravene the will of the majority voters, who happen to be women. (The insinuation here that all men are tyrants who need to be kept on the short leash of the law is lost on the five male MPs present because they are…er… uhm… sending text messages on their phones.) The male MPs present, are by the way, those who were bullied by their Nairobi wives into bringing them along and are thus stuck in the conference room while the other male MPs spend their allowances on their Mombasa wives.

As the conference ends and declarations of support are sworn- declarations as binding as the NARC MOU- the MPs care less. As it is, even though he acts to the contrary, the Kenyan MP lives in Kenya, Also in as much as he doesn’t know what he is meant to do when he is elected, he knows how to get elected. He knows that the majority of his voters are women but most importantly, it is women who circumcise women. He knows that it is circumcised women who jeer at the uncircumcised. (The argument that that wouldn’t happen in a gynocentric world is only relevant as far as he is concerned, to dabblers in Gender Studies and other busybody theorists.) In a word, then he cannot figure out which women these NGO types with their empowered suits and powdered noses are talking about.

The MP has no respect for NGOs unless they are run by his wife. To him, this Bill has that odour of ostentation so characteristic of NGO boardrooms (as opposed to the sweat and wood smoke of the village woman?) The women in his constituency certainly, do not work for NGOs- they cook; they clean, and vote for whatever idiot their husband demands that they vote for. Infact, the only women from his constituency who work for NGOS are the ones running against him in 2007.

Back in Nairobi and things come to a head. An MP who skipped the conference- the talk part and not the allowances- rises on a point of order. He doesn’t say it but he hasn’t read the Bill and all his information is based on what he read in that morning’ s Letters to the Editor, and that to the effect that the Sexual Offences Bill, attempts to legalise Abortion and Homosexuality.

The stakes are raised. Abortion… Homosexuality? Now that is something the representatives of the largest demographic group- Religion- are against. If the church is against it, what MP can be for it? That even though the MP’s daughter is scheduled for an abortion at a prestigious hospital in Nairobi that afternoon…

The Bill cannot be passed as it is… No one is against it per se… hey no one even knows what it is about. But the Bill must be rewritten.
“Mr. Speaker sir, I move to defile this Bill….!”

********************

I am told that Bill Clinton reacted to the Abortion Bill by paying it. For the Kenyan MP, his reaction will depend on two things: If it is his daughter’s, he will make sure Parliament’s Health Scheme pays for it. If it is your daughter’s, he will write her a bouncing cheque….!

CASH BUFFETT FOR GATES

Usually I do not blog links but the lead story from this week's edition of Fortune magazine caught my eye. Warren Buffett has finally decided to be a philanthropist and he is giving a significant portion of his Berkshire Hathaway stock to...uhm...er.. the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation- among others. Certainly good for his conscience and good news to a world that needs it.

Interesting... The figures are mind boogling...even before you get round to the funny math.

Hey, and I am reading the print edition... it has this photo where Buffett crashes a Gateses photo shot with that Rocker with the Messianic Complex. (I do not follow his philanthropy, but I sure love his music!)

Warren Buffett Gives it Away

Do They Know It's Clitoris?

If Janet Jackson pierces her clitoris, she is liberated;
If wanjiku pierces her clitoris, she is mutilated...

The Fraternity boys were already in New York ‘developing’ Africa one jargon word at a time. In the Bible Belt, Special Air Mission Veni Vici Vidi was successfully returned from a Crusading Mission against the barbarous moors. In Ivy League, USA, the Anthropology class had long returned from the Cradle of Man and- with their war badges of primitive art forms safely on the mantel- were out angling for State Department Internships. Even George Clooney had been to Darfur and back (and that ‘war experience’ could hopefully earn him a bigger role in the sequel to The Thin Red Line.)

The suits on UN Avenue, had been yakking rhetorical for years. They had sustained a veneer of gainful employment formulating Structural Adjustments; Cliché Empowerment and sustainable gobbledegook programmes and all that in between calls to their stockbrokers and clocking frequent flier miles.

Across the pond, a Band had got Aid in overcoming the sophomore slump by once again- as Chumba Wumba used to say- using the pictures of starving children to sell records. They had had two awareness concerts; a low key one for the starving African artistes and the other, a huge one featuring I-am-free-to-starve-myself super models. (Graced by waif-like millionaires who cannot tell Marsabit from nose candy.) Suddenly later day Queen Marie Antoinettes had become the spokespeople for the peasants:
“Why would the bliks want food? Food is sooo…grosssss…. So fattening!”

Everyone had played their part in changing the world. Changing the world by churning out more policy ‘paper’ that the Congolese rainforests they were trying to save could provide. Everyone, well, almost everyone- the sorority sisters were yet to tailor their own agenda for Africa.

In truth the girls had set up a couple of shelters- in maasai land, obviously- but it was time for a real Feminist Agenda for Africa. You know, the type of Agenda that looks perfect in situ- as a college dissertation that is- but implodes upon initial contact with its prescribed banana republic. It was time for the Feminist Lobby to Globalise; to reach out to their (insert preferred synonym for deprived) Sisters in Africa. It was time to talk to Mr. Africa Consultant.


Ms. Femme books an appointment with the Consultant. Kenya sounds like a fair enough location to have the meeting seeing that it is the only non-rebel held province in South Africa. MS. Femme gets her shots- considers acquiring a bio safety suit? - and a Zulu phrase book and prepares for her flight into the Heart of Darkness. Naturally, she will not fly Kenya Airways; I mean the pilot could be this mung-ek-ey thing the CIA Handbooks talk about that hates women with clitoris. Then again, from what she reads, Kenyans are congenitally corrupt and ergo, a Kenyan pilot could easily take a bribe and land in uncoca-colonised territory.

Anyway, sooner rather than later, she finds herself at The Nairobi Serena- or is it The Panari sky center these days? She is in time for her appointment with the consultant and now one of two things is bound to happen:
A) The consultant is late. The reason, she will later learn, has to do with a road- or the lack of it- right through a migratory route for elephants. That will make much sense to her because as she will note sagely, “where else can one build roads in Africa while it is all untamed bush?” (A fair surmise informed by her favourite ‘me Karen Blixen- you monkey!’ movie.)

B) The consultant is right there at The Serena- at the Bar! It is about midday but the fellow is on his umpteenth Tusker. In response to her ‘how do,’ he goes on and on as to how “… inspite of all their peculiar ways, these kafirs can brew…”

Now you know our consultant, don’t you? He failed in everything from coal mining to garbage collection in his home country and took a one way ticket to Africa. Now he lives in Karen but drives a Range Rover with a sawed-off roof and a survival kit at the back. The Consultant cuts the image of a fellow who knows how to survive in a failed state- you jua- where the words coup and democracy are interchangeable.

So Ms. Femme sits down to listen and learn about the African woman. All this from a man whose experiences with African women begin: “you me...like jiggy jiggy…yes?” But what choice does Ms. Femme have? She cannot go into the bush to meet The People. There are too many risks involved; like encountering the business end of a Janja Weed militia’s, Ak-47 (or what is it the CNN Nairobi correspondent called the rebels, Banyamulenge?)

After all, the consultant has been in Africa for twenty years. He knows the lay of the land. He knows which cabinet minister is sleeping with what…
“What…?
Yeah… this Africans are a queer lot!”

In a short while, she learns the reason for a high prevalence of HIV infection from Cape Town to Timbuktu. She now knows why the infinitely misogynistic Samburu man (“Samburu is what Maasais call themselves, here!”) circumcises his wife. She now has all the information she needs to change Africa one constitution at a time. And that is an easy thing to do, considering that the Africans have no constitutions or any understanding of such things as “we hold to be self evident that all men -and women- are created equal.”

It is now time to return to the air conditioned DC office and write her project proposal. But first she has to write a grant proposal because as she has learnt, all she needs in Africa is money to ‘lobby’ parliament.

Money is no issue, though; there is always Bill Gates types trying to earn a tax cut, a conscience or both. If the mega-rich aren’t interested,then, she can always count on the American Public. But she has to scare them shitless. Scare them like Dubya…”if you aren’t for the African Woman, then you is against them”

It is time to hit the Lecture Circuit running. Circumcise must of neccessity mutate into Mutilate….MU-TI-LA-TE!

“…imagine your genitals mutilated, America…!”
“…yeah… you can make a difference…
Thank You…
What… they don’t know it is Christmas…
Yes you too can give…

…Clitoris For Africa!”

This post Inspired by: Kibera Recolonised

The saga continues...

PHALLIC MONOLOGUES

Wanjiku came to dialogue on sexual offences; all she heard was their Vagina monologue…….

Of all the peculiar habits of Kenyans, the one that gets me all miffed is forgetfulness. Kenyans are incorrigibly and pathologically forgetful.

Every Kenyan has an opinion on last night’s news. Everyone wants to be seen riding on the crest of the day’s euphoria. Our adrenaline burns on today’s Marga-this as yesterday's Githongo and the previous day’s Referendum and what have you take the back burner. We never dwell on an issue long enough to learn from it, yet history, painfully repeats itself. Who cares? We are people of the moment. Yeah, no wonder- same ass different dick- we stay shafted!

Like swing through the Kenyan Blogosphere on any given Monday- same issues, same perspectives. (It is a sort of ‘aggregated tautology’) Then kicks in the back-slapping-I-agree-with-yous- of the comment boxes. Everyone is on the same script. It’s like a poor-kenya-support-group-come-soak-your-mouse-pads-till-the-next-post! No, it is more like a transcript of the past weekend’s barroom conversations.

(Oh, but Kenyans are inveterate barroom Intellectuals; Commissioners of Inquiry and Eminent Persons.)

Now that the Sexual Offences Bill proved to be a Premature Ejaculation, that was quickly forgotten, I uncap- unsheathe?- my pen and work its plunger to tumescence…

If you were to listen to our nascent ‘feminists’, you would take it for an inalienable fact that the male member- of parliament?- considers the term Sexual offence an Oxymoron. That is obviously a blatant misrepresentation by individuals who chose to take Penis Envy literary. Allow me then to posit that even though (Patriarchal) folk wisdom has it that a hard-on has no conscience, there are many amongst the male of the species who can subdue their primal instincts via their superego. Men who are- NGO speak back atcha- Consensus Builders.

Nevertheless, of men’s reaction to the SOB, much has been said; of its merits- or lack thereof- a lot more. The Bill was passed, anyway, but by that time it was too emasculate- and I apply my choice of word there- to bother us. Besides, some titled colonial relic had shot a dog or something which kept our mouths otherwise engaged.

Because by the time of the Bills passage it had long left the realm of National Debate, I cannot categorically say that there are those people who felt that in its redrafting, their baby had been thrown out with the placenta. I also then cannot say that there are those who made a joyful noise with the realisation that the words cruel and unusual would not be used to describe their foreplay.
Then one question I couldn’t answer, though was, who were this so called Feminists? Of course I have heard of feminists, it is the kind of thing I have read in the International News pages or pulp fiction. In Kenya, though, I didn’t imagine that we had feminists- only Maendeleo ya wanawake and that chama thingy for buying sufurias and njahis. The women that I know do not describe themselves as feminists and neither do they fit the feminist mould as I conceive it.

I have heard that in the West, feminists do not shave their armpits. Neither do the women in my village. I do not know why they do not do it in the West but I know that the girls in my village do not shave their armpits because they cannot afford Veeto or a Bic razor.

I read that feminists In the West used to have rallies where they burnt their bras, but when I walk down Tom Mboya Street, all I see is Wanjiku- who cannot tell a D cup from a melamine one- trying out… “Fifty bob! Fifty bob! Bei ya nyanya….”

Since I, P. Mwananchi, only knows wanjiku, then I can assume that Kenyan feminists belong to a yuppie-True Love- Eve- reading- Minority. (You know the type: Basic Pay- 60,000; Car Loan- 30,000; Rent- 20,000; Food/ Utilities- Who knows?)

These ones can roll down to the Carnivore in their Starlets for an evening of Vagina Monologues. These ones say that the O is for Orgasm, yet their mothers thought it was for Ovulation- they were child bearing machines, you know!

I am told that the feminists have dildos- purchased with credit cards over the internet obviously because even studded condoms are technically illegal in Kenya. What I wonder is that since the feminist are so trendily, politically correct, are their dildos from alternative- consumer- natural- manufacturers?
Id Est., are the dildos:
a) Environmentally friendly, non- CFC, non- GM?
b) Manufactured under fair trade agreements and not in Chinese Sweatshops?
c) Tested on animals…lol… Human Beasts?

Finally, do any of them call their mothers after the Vagina Monologues?

‘Hallo
Uko Wapi?
Carnivore
Ah, mambo makubwa… kuna nini huko mwanangu?
Mama, Ku— inaongea peke yake…!
Eti…?

(Come on Ms. Femme, say Vagina in your mother tongue… say it loud!)

How can Ms. Femme make her mother understand? Her conformist and conservative mother who has always shrugged her shoulders and clung, subserviently to the self same Female Genital Mutilating traditions designed to clip her wings and her clitoris.