POTASH: EXTRA! EXTRA!

Readership, it occurs to me that I am exactly one month old on KBW. On Blogger since two weeks or so longer. I have read their stories, and I have tried mine. I have been understood but as I say, most importantly, I have been understood but as I say, most importantly, I have been misunderstood. All in all just to get relevant and then stay that way. Well, for all it is worth, giving my Kshs 00.02 worth.
I still do not do interviews, still don’t do small talk, and still don’t answer fans. But you my Readership are human, I know; you love you some symbols, your anniversaries and your Red Letter days. Let me indulge you. On this special Blog entry I reproduce excerpts from a conversation with my self appointed official biographer- N.M. This conversation was recorded on his cell- phone at a trendy westlands bar over cold TKs and varicoloured drinks with hyphenated names. (When Yuppies get paid, lower life forms get splashed!)

(This might be difficult to read...i notice...need to get this background and things sorted...)


ACT I

NM: Still don’t do interviews?
Potash: Why, so they can ask me if I have a girlfriend? If that what their readership wants, I am bigger than….

Q: Easy kid, I didn’t mean Sunday Trash…
A: Ah! The Nation maybe, Standard, Time magazine… that kind of rag you mean? Mainstream dailies and all…?

Q: You can Say that…what if they did?
A: Sure woulda, long as they stick to the issues.

Q: What’s Beef?
A: Nah, I mean my Agenda, things that matter to me in the here and now,

Q: (Leering) Your next beer?
A: Kwenda huko… I am talking about my people, my issues. Urban kids trying to get by.
Unemployment, drugs, disillusionment… you jua? What we regular folks are about.
The kid of stuff, you know, stuff that doesn’t sell mainstream papers and glossies.

Q: Like why would I want to read about your apathy? Give me politics. Personal Finance. Damn it, I am Yuppie, I buy newspapers to read success stories not how yet another loser missed his dinner.
A: Strong words there; but you mirror my point exactly. The pertinent question though is:
Why would you want to read about the significant majority? About that demographic
group whose circumstances and their consequences have le you behind a high brick
wall while all you wanted was a picket fence?

Q: Blood hounds and criminals you mean? *@#$ jacked me last week… thank God for (a
certain security/ surveillance firm)…
A: I do not mean criminals, in isolation but the co-relation between social disability and
criminal behaviour, particularly violent crime.!

Q: Oh @*&%... they broke and they think I owe them some ‘coz I am a young,
hardworking… is bilas
A: I am not talking individuals here. I am talking about circumstances. Kibera is more
dangerous than Kileleshwa. The poor are robbing the poor, so quit your me- me-
victim mentality.

NM: Victim mentality… Puhliiz.

(Exeunt to empty expensive liquor down a marble rimmed drain.)

ACT III

NM: So, who is Potash?
A: A regular mid- twenties Kenyan guy trying to afford his next beer.

NM: You have been in your mid- twenties too long.
A: Really? Sitting on the Stone Zone, you only see time/ life pass you by through
glazed eyes. You never age, just fade away.

Q: How long you been sitting there?
A: When did we leave High School…? @#$% it’s been what? Ten years! Dude I need a life. Really, I do. I must buy me one soon as I can afford it.

Q: Same Crowd?
A: Well place is in total flux. You see there is kids sitting there for all manner of reasons, seasons. Some are just passing by: in between jobs/ schools. Others just want adventure. Then there are those like me who came, saw and got conquered. We are the ‘hoods sages doling out street wisdom. We are mendicants, keeping the faith in return for cans of Napshizzle.

Q: What is your underlying philosophy?
A: In Napshizzle I trust

Q: Sex?
A: Twice weekly. The callused hands prove it.

Q: so much for safe sex….
A: There is no such thing as safe sex. Sex is a spiritual experience. Is there such a thing as a safe soul? A safe mind? Safety is for mechanical processes like the Vaginal Masturbation that is transactional sex.

Q: God?
A: What about it? God is the unknown science, the unmapped gene. That which we do not know is God. God is an elusive quality; an indefinite quantity. An entity that would soon be running to the unemployment bureau if we found it. If God moved within the reaches of our minds, the realm of our comprehension, we would of necessity have to find It a replacement. It is human nature to worship only that which is beyond our understanding.

Q: Il Deuce?
A: God’s Alter ego. A mask God wears when Its E fails to equal MC2 and the tsunamis come rushing in.

Q: Are you an atheist?
A: Define that word.

Q: Okay, are you a skeptic?
A: In relation to skepticism as a Philosophical School of Thought, yes I am. I admire,
particularly Rene Descartes and his arrival, through Skepticism, at the premise Cogito
Ergo Sum- I think therefore I am. You cannot reduce that argument further unless in
absurdity.
In terms of skepticism, applied to the question of God, I say I am an Optimist. I am
optimistic that God’s crowd will be in the goodness of time be proved wrong.

NM: Like hell, Hell ain’t big enough for some egos…

(This last statement appears directed at a picturesque bust. Potash guzzles the blue
drink and shouts at the bartender to pour him the green one… emerald, amethyst…
whatever. It is on the Yuppies tab, silly.)

ACT III

NM: Nairobi?
A: As Milo would say, me I love Nairobi, regardless.

Q: For 1 Metre, would you sell your Kenyan Passport?
A: How can I sell what I do not have?

Q: Let’s say you had it…
A: Of course I would; for one metre I could start a passport selling business…

Q: You are taking this literally…
A: Ah… you meant selling my Nationality? A passport is just paper. But I fly the Kenyan
flag in my heart. Kenya is my country and Justice (whenever the price is right at
Kilimani PD) is still my Shield and Defender.

Q: English?
A: Unlike my grandfather, I chose to speak to the Imperialist in his own language. My
ancestor chose to voice his anger with a homemade gun and machetes while others
were busy shinning Johnnie boots and screaming “ Don’t we all know who time
proved to be what Keguro terms ‘Colonial Inheritors.’

Q: Swahili?
A: No one speaks Swahili in Nairobi apart from Mezungu…”Jembo Bana, Hekuna
Matiti…!” Oh, and maybe Swaleh Mdoe.

Q: Sheng?
A: Mimi ni boi wa mtaa…. Kiasi! Admittedly, I learnt Sheng from those small books
they used to sell on the street in tao. Sheng gives me street credibility.

Q: Kikuyu?
A: Wasn’t my first language, but I had to learn it or die. Really. I practice everyday. Love
their music... you know John Dematthew, Kamande Kio… it is one of my ways of
learning the language. I speak it at least 80 % of the time. Besides it is an important
language for hustling in Nairobi.

Q: Mixie?
A: I coined the term. Wouldn’t have clueless scholars finally ‘discovering’ it and calling
it Kenglish or such other atrocious epithets. I can conjugate mixie verbs better that a
westie blonde: Walapa, Walapanga, walapalungu! But I still don’t understand why
they pay so much in their British System Schools to end up sounding like illiterate
Negroes in North American ghettos. “…is of how?”

Q: Why do you write?
A: Catharsis.

Q: Are you talented?
A: Talent as an inherent quality? Yes, I have that. But I haven’t nurtured it. Notably,
though, when I get online I feel as though I am a dabbler so I rush to Mutua’s Kiosk
and grab the mainstream pullouts. Such a Travesty of Literature they are they make
me feel a part some Great Literary Canon. Their writings are of what M refers to as:
“I woke up and brushed my teeth...” variety. Stuff written by kids who think Literature
is a High School subject and the last book they read was a set book. If Taban still
thinks East Africa a literary desert, then we know who he has been reading….

Q: Great Irony…
A: If every kid that makes it in Kenya is either doing drugs or a Devil Worshipper, how
comes I am still in the ‘hood?

Me I love KBW, regardless.

DINDA WALKS!

Dinda walks! It is true son of your mother. They sprang him. “Who…his henchmen?” you ask. Puhliiz. “Smart people are hard to tell tales to… now if you will pass me the Rizla… yeah the Rolling Machine too… I will tell you. I will tell you that Dinda walks.”

This is Kenya, house. This is Kenya. Like they have been saying from way back, this here is the new Kenya. He with a pocketful of Ex- presidents (first ladies don’t count) walks. Like Pink Floyd say: (you) don’t need no education. No sir. I mean, look at Timi here, with tough brains that a truck load of Napshizzle wouldn’t flambé. But he sits here with us, doesn’t he? He is always here quoting dead poets like they were nursery rhymes. What’s it worth for him? Money is the true measure of a man. That is the reason why Dinda walks!

Now Milton don’t pay no rent for Timi. Doth he? All he done is keep Timi pensive about this our Paradise Lost. And in Bunyan’s book, Timi wallows in the ‘Slough of Despond’. Maybe Timi is Pliable always at the mercy of those who have. There for them to use and discard like a pack of Trust or like a voter after Election Day. And what if life were a stage? Timi’s life would be a Shakespearean Tragedy: at best, a Comedy of Errors. Oh poor Timi, e’en though he be “as true as truest horse, that yet would never tire”, he still sits on these Stones with a vacant stare. And all this while, Dinda walks.

At least I had my moments yesterday. I had blissful moments when I lay prostrate at the Temple of Lucre. For one instance people could smell money on me with no grimace at the odours of my aggravated periodontal disease and bi- monthly shower. But why does it have to be yesterday? It is always yesterday for me? Yesterday I got drank… yesterday I smelled success… Why should my last meal be my heritage and my next one- like the NARC Manifesto- an empty vision? Why should my life story and its imperfections be told in the Past Perfect as though it were a eulogy? (“Potash had arrived before the KumiKumi truck”.) And why, pray tell does “Potash will…” have to be an oxy- moron? All this is, certainly, possible in a world where Dinda walks.

At Jevanjee yesterday, the preacher put up his right hand and waved the tattered Bible at the trembling crowd. (I know next month he will have a gilt- edged Bible and a TV show; and that the crowd was trembling because they were hungry.) “Do not let your right hand know what the left one is doing…” he admonished. “An honest man you are, that practices what he preaches!” I observed as he paid me for the Special Delivery with his left hand. But that was yesterday: I was custom paid. But today I am back on these Stones, my fingers sore for clicking them after one Half- Life or the other… “moshi mbili kizee…” Today I am back where I ‘belong’ because Dinda walks.

I am back to squalor beyond Dickensian parallels. Yet yesterday I was ménage with the Sisters Fate. But today they stab in the back. (Witches gave me the Clap!) Vicissitudes. I thought Oliver Twist here had met up with his benefactor or the equivalent thereof, but good fortune was never my lot. (Free beer from a Yuppie doesn’t count because that is in part exchange for what Acolyte refers to as my ‘war stories’ and the pseudo intellectualism, if and when I can sneak it in.) Yeah I am back on these Stones that just might be the end of me because Dinda walks.

In two hours, five O’s not withstanding (like what do you think Utumishi kwa Wote means?) I will be handing over the tools of the trade to Dinda, the Resident pharmacist. That Dinda who cannot tell his brain from a joint on the ground. But that Dinda can afford to walk from a Stroke Two rap. (That is the kind that has got only one conviction.) All the Roach Clips, six Hookahs and Bongs, a forty foot container of Rizla, an eighteen wheeler worth of Premium Grade Busia Gold, motley aerosol and Nitrous Oxide cans… Hey can they sub- poena my Blog? I do not know: but I know that Dinda walks.

Whatever happens today, I know one thing is for sure, for one fleeting moment, Yesterday, I was more than a Regular Mid- Twenties Kenyan Guy trying to afford his next can of Napshizzle.

Random Post: Incomplete

The only reason I live beyond my means is because I will die before my time. I am not saying that there is an appointed time for dying. That we live our lives then say our Adieus when that moment comes. No. All I know is that I am going to die some day. Well, maybe.

See, I believe that human beings live, then they die...that is an immutable fact. The whole predestination, and things is a charade to keep deities in gainful employment. And deities- gods, the Fate Sisters, and other usurpers to related thrones- do not cut it with me. Infact, my greatest interest in their kind,lately is borne of jealousy. (Ambition is more like it). I have spent my last couple of non- working days trying to find God. The only place worth finding him, I have discovered is me. I want to be a god.

Now, I am looking at templates of the gods. There is the Christian variety who cannot make up his mind- he is a father and thus a he- whether he is one in essence, or in substance. An elusive deity modelled in the lines, and is, indeed, a spoof- maybe with powerfoam, CG efxs (remember the day of pentecost?) and more gizmoes- of the older, fire- and- brimstone- Yahweh.

To Be continued.....

STREETS ARE MADE OF THIS

WARNING:The situations and circumstances detailed in this post could not be relieved in the abscence of strong language. They are narrated in context and in the idiom of the protagonists. This is not an intellectual excercise. This is the real world. If strong language offends you, skip to view the next post.

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

I am the Big Shit in this here, tiny Shitville. See, Dinda the Resident Pharmacist is on compulsory leave. He took the Green Moody to some government resort; I do not remember which. So me, I am locum.

Now I did me two units in applied Chemistry for my Advanced Levels at Mtaa Senior School. Recognise that. Okay, so what if I think Enthalpy Change is some Revolutionary Ideology, at least I know that Delta- 9- Hydro- Crapizzle + limited amounts of brain is equal to FUBARed.

Anyway, these two days, I am stuntin’ sudden like. I am dealing on Sector I- that is the Digz side- Sector III and Ngong Road; from Adams to Karen. Oh and I got to watch the Dead Letter Drop Box on Choo Namba Nane. That there is a War Zone good folks. But it is where shit hits town. You ain’t got control of supply lines they tell me; then go to Parliament, start a church or such like easy scams. (Now the only church I would be in is where I am God and I am too young for The Cabinet, so I gotta hustle.) Anything for money boy. Anything!

As Pac used to say “…I ain't guilty cause, even though I sell rocks it feels good puttin money in your mailbox…” And it ain’t easy partner. It ain’t easy sitting on those there rocks, in the ‘hood, with Papa that is Sixteen- with a gun -and the rest of the Kids from Sector III to right down my place pushing Jay like it was Kay Salt or some crap soft enough to take home to mama. But mama needs her insulin and Pfizer didn’t get big doing Pro bono, see? It’s the money or she dead- deader than The Rainbow Alliance.

Loose conversations, Half lifes and twigs, Trust wrappers and Napshizzle cans. That is the debris that is eternally pilling up all around us- defining our lives. (Defiling our souls.) Lives spent in emptiness trying to live, at least, today that we might die another day. Care to sift through the garbage? Mind to take a look see? Or you are afraid to see the hope that once was? You cannot stand to see how shit you did last year, and the year before has turned these lives into a theatre of broken dreams?

I am Big Shit today, yeah you can call me king up in here. King Shit of Turd Mountain! And all my subjects is sitting around me. Fucked up morons shooting crap into their membranes….ssssssss.

“Holy Kushumpeng” says Keno that been on these streets long enough to remember the tarmac.
“Yeah bra…. Jesus Christ on a Hookah…. this here shit be aiggghhhttt!” says my boy D
“Take two hits then you pass it on…pass it on!” yells Bobo- that Bobo that I toilet trained.
“Puff! Puff! Pass!”

Losers. I don’t smoke it. I just sell it.

Until they spring my boy Dinda, I am on this shit. But he ain’t gonna walk this time. They have done pinched him for a string of murders in Ngong. All the while that shit was going down, Dinda was in Mombasa with (censored) waiting for a boatload of crap. How is that for an alibi? Rest in peace young whore. (Pss…I hear they ain’t hang no one since my uncle’s second cousin in ’82.)

So how does this pan out? Well, Dunno. But in the mean time and in between times I got me a 3G cellie – which don’t mean squat coz we all on two G- and a bunch of low lives to carry whatever piece I be packing…like you know the deal, insecurity is a bitch in this city. What with all these morphs like cannot get a real job; they just wanna chill in the ‘hood acting like they was Potash. (Like I paid a couple of them last night to suck mine…just for kicks. Well, it feels kind of nice to pay for something, sometime. Help out a brother. It is like a three- second- Incarnation into Godhood. And my experience was more blessed coz I got to keep the fuckin’ Orgasm.)

I am pimpin’ man.

Now I see myself in the big time. So what about these kids? How they be the Change when they blazed to Indo Heaven? Maybe they can get high and think they was revolutionaries, I say. Okay I mean, hallucinate it. That is where they meant to be anyhow. Young and dreaming. Leadership is for the old. It is the African way.

Meantime I do not care. I am still too broke to afford a conscience. So I am on the hustle so I can be a bigger thug. Imagine me Hon. Potash, M.P, LTE- Legal Tax Evader. I want to be the first kid to bring a tax-free salary, or any salary for that matter- to the ‘hood.

Like I am fucking tired. Fucking tired of these walks down the railway line to inda and petty cash vouchers that you cannot wipe your ass with. Yeah, they taken Dinda’s felonious arse out of these streets. (Made it a better place, at least for their children- coz ours is hungry) and I am big fish…I got a plan…this is the plan…. now see…

Oh fuck, there goes my cellie, some cat wants to claim Sector II. Oh fuck, where is my (censored), like I need a bloody flack jacket. These streets is too hot…. run Potash run…

They don’t take you alive. They take your balls.

THEY CAME IN THE NIGHT

They came again last night. They always come in the dark. Once the Ghost Of Robert Ouko told me that the dark gives people special qualities. The dark allows you to do such uncanny things like shooting yourself in the head and then pouring acid all over your face, maybe because you do not want the world to remember you. (But the world never forgets, never could. It just moves on.) Well, I never shot myself in the head and neither do I have intentions to that effect, but I have the irrepressible ability to shoot myself in the foot. It happens a lot when I talk. When I talk and talk like I was Githongo on the BBC news night.

They came again last night. They came to take away my computer. (Reader’s Voice: “Which Computer”) Well, what about the one that I do not have. They found me sitting in the dark, like I always do, starring at where the ceiling ought to be. Sitting in the dark because my tin lamp ran out of paraffin last..uhm..er…sometime in the east.
Man, with what kerosene prices been like lately, you must of necessity, wait for daylight to pluck that pesky jigger off your suppurating toe.

In daylight that suppurating toe is shod in Gikomba Deluxe- finest quality patent leather- Kshs 85/- (Eighty Five Only) at Toi Market. That is more than a dollar and your NGO TIMES told you I live on less than a dollar a day. That might be what Harambee Avenue wants me to live on. They have a decided interest in my poverty. It means that, when they need it, my vote won’t cost more than a dollar either. But you know me; I am a Yuppie- Young Urban Poser- too. I insist on living beyond my means. But I digress.

They came again in the last night. They said that my utterances at Mama Pima’s last Friday night amount to high treason. I quoted certain sections of their preferred constitution- just to suck up. They said I could shove it up my dysentery prone posterior. Besides, in their book, my so-called Right to Bar Room Intellectualism is not a human right and neither is holding my ‘selected’ leaders accountable for their actions in public office. I asked them, what about Shebeen Intellectualism, which is my Particular Specialisation. They slapped me all upside my head. (Yet another one for Maina Kia’s in- tray: with Black-eyed-regards, Potash).

They came again last night. They came with Uzis and balaclavas. Swiftly. (If only they had arrived that way the night before when Kamanu and his Forty Thieves held up the nieghbourhood for four hours). They sent such an elite unit to get me that for a moment I thought I had died and reincarnated as a Mungiki Grand Master. They showed me the Ceska- it is always a Ceska Pistol with two rounds of ammunition- that would be recovered from me after a shoot out.

And the good cop said: “Potash, the general message is that you take it slow.” Then he laughed, “Ke..Ke..Ke, There is nothing wrong with looting a country that is already too willing!”
But the bad cop had nothing but contempt for me. He just kept snarling: “High Treason!” working himself into a torrential sweat. He hated me like a well-kept voters’ register.
If I had my patent leather- Gikomba Deluxe- on, he would have vomited on the same.

In His Words- Fanon

I was attempting a well thought out post- for once- when power went out. I am hanging on now with ten minutes on the UPS, so I am going back to basics. Telling an off the cuff me story.Yet one more of my random thoughts. I am just moving my hands over this keyboard. Fingering it and getting the thrill of words forming on the rapidly fading screen. I am no technophiliac. It is not the beauty of word processors that is getting me all wet. It is the words. I love words. The are beautiful. They allow me pretend to be smart.When I have nothing to say I can always trust a big word to make me sound knowledgable. Let us see how this post pans out.....uhm..

Have I said I am a pseudo- intellectual. Well, I say it again. I quote books, writers, and sages I have never read. I never read Fanon, for instance, though I wish I could. Don't tell that to others though, it will ruin my authority as a bar room conversationalist. Imagine, me walking into a bar and these yuppie guys are debating race relations or something; and potash goes:

"I have no wish to be the victim of the Fraud of a black world.My life should not be devoted to drawing up the balance sheet of Negro values.There is no white world, there is no white ethic, any more than there is a white intelligence.There are in every part of the world men who search.I am not a prisoner of history. I should not seek there for the meaning of my destiny.I should constantly remind myself that the real leap consists in introduction invention into existence.In the world through which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself."
(Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks, 1952)

That will intrigue them. The yuppies will lose themselves in mental acrobatics trying to decipher the meaning of the quote. They will keep the drinks coming as they seek my insight. Insight that I absolutely don't have because I just picked the quote from some website, and have no way of putting it in context as I have never seen the preceeding text. But I have to afford my next beer, now don't I?

And affording it doesn't necessarily mean buying it myself. It is a sorry life that I live. And it ain't easy, every day trying to put beer on the table. Feeding off these streets that never pay no more. Sometimes I yearn for the good old Nyayo days. When they looted state coffers and pumped the money into the streets. I mean the president bought my moms banana's at Kinungi. Two bananas for a freshly printed five hundred bill. The bill was so fresh the President hadn't even signed it. But he was a sport, he took out another big fiver and bought a black Bic from Kamanu who just happened to be selling Bics that day. (Well the chief had asked all the hoodlums to try and look respectable on that day) The president, without missing a stride signed the bills with the black Bic.

How is that for road side Legal Tender. Beats an official State House press release on billions recovered. Billions that you only know about because they told you they exist. But if they are siting at Central Bank- if they actually are- how do they increase the sufurias of ugali at Mutua' s Kiosk?

Now the power is fading out, the UPS is screaming...what am I even gonna call this post? What was it about anyway?

GITHONGO....Whasat?

This is a special Blog entry. I have been avoiding the Githongo debate like it was dog food. Then I happened on the BBC news night video at Kenya Unlimited Kenyan Blogs. So this post is a special shout to the web ring, it has been great to finally join and be part of the voices. Special mention to Mental Acrobatics for the video and the PDF document, with the text of Githongo' s report.

But out side the blogoshphere, is another reality maybe born of ignorance or a silly attitude of "I do not care about politics as long as I get by In my life." I was inspired to write this post by a conversation I had on my MSN messanger with a Kenyan freshly returned to the UK after a Kenyan holiday. The full text is reprinted here and it may not hit your senses like 26 inches of Githongo, but it really makes you wonder: Where are we gonna start changing this country? (This conversation reprinted here with permission of my discussant. Note: I am KenyasMostWanted..in the conversation....Like Duh!)

kenyas-most-wanted says:
anyway.. i am downloading Githongo's; video you watched it?

VUTA PUMZ! says:
aha bout 4 or 5

A VUTA PUMZ! says:
who?

kenyas-most-wanted says:
ish...John Githongo...like hello

kenyas-most-wanted says:
He did a collabo with Longombas

A VUTA PUMZ! says:
u jua there r so many kenyan artists siku hizi

A VUTA PUMZ! says:
kukeep track ni kazi mob

kenyas-most-wanted says:
????

A VUTA PUMZ! says:
plus hadnt been home in forever

kenyas-most-wanted says:
i am

kenyas-most-wanted says:
lmao

You have just sent a Nudge!

A VUTA PUMZ! says:
which song with longombas?

kenyas-most-wanted says:
???

kenyas-most-wanted says:
i have to post this

kenyas-most-wanted says:
just open a google window and type john githongo

A VUTA PUMZ! says:
K

kenyas-most-wanted says:
hey I am posting on this..wonder what I say your name is?

A VUTA PUMZ! says:
eh?

A VUTA PUMZ! says:
unapost wat? where?

kenyas-most-wanted says:
no you response is mad hilarious so i am putting it on the kenyan blogs place as my response to the Githongo video

A VUTA PUMZ! says:
oh seen

A VUTA PUMZ! says:
hehehehe

kenyas-most-wanted says:
si i copy paste this?

A VUTA PUMZ! says:
shoh

kenyas-most-wanted says:
huh?

A VUTA PUMZ! says:
nu'n

A VUTA PUMZ! says:
can i read it afterwards?

A VUTA PUMZ! says:
yo blog?

kenyas-most-wanted says:
i usually do not post such on my blog..

A VUTA PUMZ! says:
hmm

kenyas-most-wanted says:
i will post it on my tribe...someone also mentioned the githongo report

kenyas-most-wanted says:
will cross post

A VUTA PUMZ! says:
ok am lost but errmm this is tha part I jus say ok



ADDENDUM
I am not of the habit of reading my own blog but the volume of traffic this post was attracting has necessitated a late edit.

1. I still insist that this post was incidental and not in character with my blog's philosophy and editorial- if any existed- bent.

2. I joined the Kenyan Blogs Webring on february 28th because I was excited about blogs and had read a couple of excellent blogs by Kenyans. But as soon as I joined, I realised that I did not relate to 90% of the bloggers. I wasn't keen on being part of a collective where the only point of commonality is nationality. So I left KBW soon after.

3. This post doesn't even begin to represent my thinking or the fundamental issues that this blog was about. To get closer to that I suggest you read the rest of the blogs or for a quick hit:

Do They Know it is Clitoris?

I Am Tired

CAVEAT EMPTOR

Yesu Kristo Ltd. For sale as a going concern. YKL- trading as Church of God, Kenya- is a fully established church with branches in all major stadiums and market centers. Owner leaving for the United Kingdom at the behest of Her Majesty’s Government to serve as an “in- house spiritual Advisor to the prison system”.

The Church is for sale on an As Is Where Is basis and the following details though not warranted, exist through faith. Yesu Kristo Ltd has a well-heeled clientele and the church owns the only Matatus allowed into our premises.

Our congregation, who we refer to as clients, is pleasantly God- fearing. This makes them follow The Bible without questioning. One section of the scriptures that they have embraced like a miracle baby is tithing. After lengthy fire and brimstone sermons on why the Prophets wife must buy another Mercedes, the clients have offered to tithe ten (10) percent of their income and/ or Fifteen Thousand Shillings, whichever is higher- every month.

To further glorify God and also as a part of our Corporate Social Responsibility, we engage in ‘Crusades’ and missions to the neighbourhoods. This has enabled us to take the Gospel to those who would otherwise no be able to afford our main service. In view of the stiff competition, from other players, for the souls of this demographic group, we have acquired state of the art sound systems that are loud enough to send Francis Sigei in search of solace at the nearest bar.

Further to our calling to community service, we believe that all the projects we support must be self- sustaining. In this regard, we have achieved great success in our mission of taking the Gospel to the underprivileged. At our Crusades, we now accept offerings not only in cash but also in kind. Mobile phones have been a particular Godsend such that we are in the process of lobbying Government friendly M.Ps for the creation of an organized used phone market so that we can maximize our returns after sale of the phones presented to us by our clients.

The church also has the largest money- doubling facility in Sub- Saharan Africa (Outside of Nigeria) Recently we have ‘re-branded’ our ushers who we prefer to refer to as ‘Customer Service Officers’ Finally, we have engaged the services of a renowned Hip Hop artiste- Dunda Mode- and are in the process of releasing his first hit single: ‘Mikono Juu Kwa Yesu’

For further details, please contact the Prophet through the Premium Rate number listed hereunder. You are advised to make haste before his extradition papers are signed.

KIBERA RECOLONISED

On Sunday as I was walking- walking and thinking- I met Canute. Canute is an old School friend of mine. He asked me the ubiquitous question “So, what are you up to these days?” See everyone wants to know what you do, and that in one word; lawyer, banker, felon et cetera. But some of us do this and that, which is to mean that we do nothing. So for clarity I will say I am a Pro- Bum. That is to mean that I bum professionally. I spend my non- working day in the ‘hood, chilling. My office is at the stone slabs outside Mutua’s Kiosk. My job description includes: Posing, Flicking my fingers for a Half- life, sipping on Napshizzle and sundry liquor, Walking, Talking and attempting pseudo- intellectual commentary on life from the Living- Dead’s point of view.

I didn’t break it all down that way for Canute, when I met him last Sunday. When I met him on the dusty road into Kibera. (Right next to another Rehabilitated Public toilet, I have spotted and this one a Project of The Rotary Club of Kenya). But I mentioned, to him, my hacktivism and how I have found a forum for my pseudo- intellectualism on the Internet. (At Tribe for Instance). He asked why I wasn’t posting at Starehe. I cannot really answer that but I have referred to Starehe in my discussion on Peace Corps at the Africa Tribe. Really, I shouldn’t call it a discussion. Rather I gave my Kshs 00.02/- worth.

In relation to my question in the Peace Corps post: [“Who is better qualified to facilitate community based initiatives, in Boon Docks Kenya; The kid fresh out of Yankee College with his copy of "Swahili for dummies" and a dream to change the world or the Local boy who went to University of Nairobi and now has no job? Who has a better understanding of the underlying problems and needs of that community? Who is a more committed 'stake holder' to any ensuing development initiatives?”] Canute echoed Phil's argument: ["Why wouldn't the two work together? Both with education, the local boy with knowledge of the ins and outs of the politics, culture and obviously some smarts, and the "Yankee" with the Harvard degree who may be eager to apply some skills learned from an excellent school?"]

And I agree with that thinking My sole problem, though, is not with the Yankee kid with his back-packful of desire to heal the world, but with the Neo- colonialist intent of the system that funds him.

That and the subtle perpetuation of American social- cultural hegemonies. The university kid from Kenya might be able, as I told Canute, to swim against the "This is how it is done in America..." tide. He might be able to sift through the American's rhetoric borrow only that knowledge that is relevant to teh peculiar needs of his community and armed with that and his insider perspective on the target group, tailor a solution that is in tandem with with teh aspirations of his people. A uniquely local solution to a local problem. A solution that is not informed by a condescending treatise on 'why the pastrolist starves to death while he has ten cows', written after interviews with a bunch of yuppies at the Hilton.

But what about teh semi literate kid from Kibera who worries most about his next meal and where to have his toilet- if he has any? I worry about the influence the humanitarian throng has on him. He grows grows up knowing that Mazungu feeds him, takes him to school and builds him a toilet. He believes what they tell him: that the African is unable to run a government, that the African thinks Urban Planning is about grabbing Public Land. The African kid is taught, ever so covertly, that he is nothing on his own. That his ideas aren't worth listening to unless CNN says so. (This must all be what Keguro aptly refers to as 'Colonial Infibulation').

Think about it, why are Kenyan kids spending sleepless nights over an elusive American Visa? Why do they want to be Americans when they grow up? Wanting to get to America by any means even when they have no clue about what they plan to do when they get there? It is because they have been taught that only a Mazungu system works- creates opportunities. That you are better off flipping Burgers at Burger King than as a doctor in Kitui. They have no hope for a better Kenya attainable through their individual and collective worth/ effort.

These kids feel that the reason why their government has failed them is because it is an African government and thus incompetent and corrupt...."si unajua tu Mwafrika!"
Even their grandparents yearn for the colonial days.

Through the Aid Industry and such donor driven initiatives, the Native has remained dependent on the North for condoms, food, Basic Education, ARVs et cetera, and can therefore not attempt to break the slave- master relationship. (Fanon refers to it as the Nagoya bond or something.) The native can never be free. Doesn't even desire to be so, because he is clueless about what to do with Madaraka. Surely, as my grandmother (R.I.P) used to say "The white man is like God"

All that Canute, is why I, with all due respect to your suggestion, will not change my paradigm.