TIME OF THE KENYAN WRITER

Also: The Inchoate Thoughts of an Indolent Blogger


Now the Belgians fucked up a bunch of African nations and when you look at them, they have the same shit to deal with at home: the Flemings, the Walloon and the German speakers. Are those tribes? No, sir... those are social cultural movements and ethnological groupings. Tribes is for the rot the Belgians perpetuated in Rwanda. Tribe is for the atavistic Africans who manifest their culture in backward ways and whose penchant for primitivism and regression into the murky depths of the primordial soup is both inevitable and inexplicable.

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As I continue with my series of essays examining the Kenyan psyche, with a specific emphasis on Kikuyus, the desire for self-advancement leers.

In these troubled times, that I continue to refer to as the time of the Kenyan writer- a time when anything a Kenyan writer and us pseudo-writers of the blogosphere writes counts- the need to create a balance between this blog and other media out there cannot be gainsaid.

I have made a commitment to myself to blog every Monday and present on this space well thought out, analytical posts but challenges abound. For one, I am a lazy writer who prefers to engage in bar room intellectualism and high-faluting discourse via email. When it comes to being what I am meant to be- a writer- I just fail to deliver. The effort of translating words into clean, publication ready copy I refuse to take upon myself.

Secondly, and this worries me the most, the realities of being an unemployed writer mean that I have to divert my attentions to things that put bread, or the alcoholic equivalent, on the table in the short run.

Anyway, everything needs to begin somewhere. I appreciate all those who continue to pick up my work from this blog and republish it elsewhere. It allows me to kill two birds and saves me the agony of editing myself for publication. In the meantime, by manner of first-steps, I will attempt to give six solid hours of writing today. I have a couple of beers to work to so I reckon I will survive. If I do not pull it, then damn it, I will find it to be compelling evidence that, even though I claim to detest the concept of the struggling artiste, deep down I aspire for it.

Isn't it silly?