Separated at Birth?

Me Vs. Editor

Some time ago, Baz wrote a brilliant blog on editor-writer wars. And while I found it hillarious, that was about as far as my consideration of it went. I never thought I would find myself in a situation where his words would actually come true.

My editor is a very personable fellow. Well, most of the time amyway. She lets me get away with the most atrocious deadline violations ever, she never hesitates to show her appreciation when something I write is actually good, and she is really cute, as in REALLY cute, but that is besides the point.

But today, a mere two days after valentine, the thought of her very cute face doesn't fill my heart with much cheer. In fact, the tingling that used to come to my lower lip every time this image would come to my mind has inexplicably been transferred to my fists.

The reason for this is, of course, what editors do. They EDIT, and by doing that, transform whatever magic you may have thought you've woven into something else.

Last thursday,this is what I wrote:

Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Panadol Omusala. He really does exist, but I assume you already understand that for purposes of privacy, names had to be changed.

Anyway, When Panadol was born, Ksh. 513/- was all the money his dad had between him and his next paycheck. But so happy was the old man at finally having sired a son that after clearing with Pumwani Maternity, he threw all fiscal prudence into the wind, bought five crates of beer and a goat, and celebrated all night with his friends at his house in Dagoretti.

I know Five hundred shillings can't get you half a crate of the cheapest beer around, let alone bid for even the most seriously unhealthy goat. This of course introduces credible grounds for doubt as to the veracity of my analogy.

But since you're aware that lying doesn't feature very prominently in the very short list of vices I am prone to, then you've probably deduced that Panadol's birth must have co-incided with a very rosy period for the Kenyan economy. And working with the prices I've just quoted, then you should have arrived at the very obvious conclusion that Panadol was born during independent Kenya's first administration.

I am not at liberty to quote Panadol's exact age, but of course by now you know he is well past his twenties, and he has lived through a lot of changes; not least of which being a cost of living which has discovered an affinity for the stratosphere. He has also acquired an education, a well-paying job and twin grandchildren for his mother.

But one thing which has not changed throughout that time is Panadol's address. He still lives-along with his two kids [but NOT with their mother]- in the same Dagoretti house that hosted a beer-and- goat party the night he was born. And no matter how constantly his friends and the women he dates pester him to move out and settle in his own house, Panadol won't have any of it.

With the possible exception of none, I'm very sure all women out there would find Panadol's behaviour revolting. A man in his thirties, and with kids to boot, still living with his mother? Like the mother of Panadol's kids, they will probably put it down to a stubborn refusal on his part to just grow up. They will wonder why the hell his dad celebrated his birth. This isn't a man, they will claim. Just a baby masquerading in a man's body!

I am however of a very different opinion. Much as I wouldn't mind seeing him finding a nice house and moving out of his mother's place with his kids, I happen to find absolutely nothing wrong with his continued residience in his mother's abode. Too many people in my opinion pressure themselves into leaving the roost too early, resulting in the proliferation of slums to carter for the needs of these unready adults, children growing up in unhealthy environments and, eventually, hopelessness.

I totally agree with Panadol because for starters, his mother doesn't mind seeing him around. And since she is the legal owner of the premises following her husband's unfortunate demise ten years ago, then I don't think anyone else has a say on the matter except maybe Panadol himself. And judging by his continued residence there, I think he agrees with his mother.

Secondly, he is a very responsible parent to his two children, all thanks to the steadying influence of his mother who I'm sure in another life would have been a best-selling guide book on good parenting. His children are well-behaved, good-natured, honest, kind and neat, traits which are directly attributable to the warm, affectionate figure in their life that is their grandmother.

Of course a misguided section of the public would opine that the children should have grown up with their mother, but the children's mother is the very one who left Panadol because he wouldn't desert the comfortable recesses of his mother's three bedroomed house in Dagoretti for a two-room shack in Kawangware, which was what my friend could afford at the time she gave birth to his kids.

I will never condemn anyone who lives with their parents despite a relatively advanced age. That is unless, of course, you are a lazy mooching oaf that causes your parents nothing but grief and contribute zero towards household expenses, in which case you really do need to move out and louse your life away elsewhere.

But if like Panadol you take care of your own bills, you respect your parents, you handle your responsibilities and, above all, your parents have no quarrels with you staying with them, then by all means, live with them forever if you want to!

Today, this is what came out.

What's in a name?

Well, this finally happened.

Fuck! I actually witnessed history! [OK, not on location. But the big screen at Steak Out was clear enough, and the proceedings were live. You can't take that away from me!]

But the most striking thing for me, apart from my big brother's speech, [He is my big brother. Something to do with Luo culture. You can't take that one from me either.] was the fact that two years ago, America hanged a guy called Hussein

And yesterday, my brother stood beneath the revered statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Capitol and infront of an estimated 1.5 million people, said the words:

I Barack Hussein Obama do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Change does happen, no?

Staying with names, would you attend a concert or show by an artiste called Elgin Baylor Lumpkin? I know I wouldn't. I would sue my own mother if she gave me such a name, for chrissakes!

But there is a multi-platinum selling artiste who goes by that name. Only you know him as Ginuwine.

Dangerous friendships

School opening days are certified hazards to any parent's fiscal health, thirst for liquids alcoholic always reach their zenith whenever one is experiencing serious fiscal problems, and these two relatively unrelated phenomena somehow managed to forge a working relationship in my life last week.

And boy, did they work or what! By thursday, I was tight in the clutches of near-violent withdrawal symptoms due to the balance of the blood-alcohol ratio in my system showing extreme bias on the side of blood. By friday, I was day-dreaming about brown bottles every waking moment of the day, and when I actually day-dreamed about the same brown bottles on saturday night, I realised the time for desperate measures was just about overdue. So I picked up my mobile and made probably the worst mistake of my life.

For about one month now, WafulaKimani has been suspended from my life for being a genuine bona-fide safety risk, but I was desperate and besides, I must admit an inability to stay away from the potential for a Prison break-season-4 like drama being around him always promises. So I called him to announce his reinstatement as my friend and to beg for delivery from alcohol deficiency.

As I should have expected, WafulaKimani as calmly as a joint-presidenial press conference in Iraq tset about disrupting whatever semblance of tranquility I may have enforced in my life for the past month with a single-mindedness of purpose that was positively terrifying. "Beer, my friend?!" His voice howled down my earpiece. "I'm practically drowning in the stuff! By all means, come by and knock yourself out!"

Thus reprieved, I hurried over to his place and sure enough, the fridge did indeed hold all the beer that he hadn't stuffed under the bed. "I have a ranking officcer friend in the army." He whispered conspirationally at my look of amazement .

We drank until around 11pm when suddenly, my friend requested that I accompany him to see a girl somewhere. Under normal circumstances, this would have been an innocent enough request, but in this case three things made it something else alltogether.

1. It is never a good idea to accompany WafulaKimani anywhere at night.

2.The idea gets even worse if he makes the request while drunk.

3. If the request to accompany him starts with the words "There is this girl..." Then you are in alot of trouble.

But WafulaKimani is my friend and he had just done me a good deed, so I smothered my reservations and we called a taxi which took us and dropped us off infront of a house in Jericho. Then with the self-assurance of someone familliar with the place, my friend led me up the steps and rang the doorbell.

The door was opened by a lovely young lady who upon seeing WafulaKimani, gave what I think was a cross between a smile and a grimace."Oh, Darling." She muttered. "You shouldn't have come. My brother is home..." She was cut short by the appearance of a very angry-looking young man who shoved her aside and accosted us. "How may I help you?" He rudely demanded.

"By slithering back to whatever hole it is you emerged from and letting me and the lady finish our conversation. "WafulaKimani replied, very politely.

Despite the darkness and the alcohol in my brain, I swear I saw the guy's face go through the entire color spectrum.

"Who do you think you are?" He spluttered. "Do you know who I am? How dare you talk to me like that?"

"I know who I am, I don't give a crap who you are and I'm telling you that if you don't let me finish my conversation with the lady, I will kick you so hard between the legs that your reproductive organs will exit through your skull. You got that?" WafulaKimani's tone never changed.

The expression on the guy's face was like none I have ever seen before. Shooting us a murderous glare, he turned and stormed back into the house and we smiled in triumph. WafulaKimani then turned to finish his conversation with his lady friend but to our utter puzzlement, she simly said "Run." and vanished into the house.

We were still puzzled when a very long barrel appeared through the window a few seconds later, but an omnious click suggested that it was a gun and slightly eased our puzzlement. A loud report confirmed that it was indeed a gun, and an eruption of soil near our feet totally erased any doubts as to whether the gun was loaded. Another click advised us on the wisdom of seeking urgent and immediate appointments elsewhere, and we quickly heeded it.

At the moment,WafulaKimani's ban from my life has been re-instated

Post Christmas Blues

Bar an attack of horribly bad humor from the Big Guy, I think it is safe to assume that nothing catastrophic is going to happen between now and next Thursday when the new year finally comes along.


But I'm having a few problems of my own and if things keep happening this way, I probably won't be seeing the new year.

How, you ask? well, this is how. I arrived home pretty late last night... All right! I arrived home very late last night. Happy?

Anyway, because of the slur in my speech and the fact that I don't subscribe to the Christian faith, I kinda figured the "I went for midnight mass" routine wouldn't work with my girlfriend, so I decided to go the "Stop nagging, Woman!" way.

Fine, except I hadn't counted on three things:

1. My girlfriend was pissed off. As in really, really pissed off.

2.For some reason, she took up Karate classes when I was in Kampala.

3.She's got an impressive 5ft8in kick, which by unfortunate co-incidence, is the exact distance my face is from the ground when I'm standing.

Well, you can see where this is leading. I was very practically reminded of these three facts, and by the time I picked myself up from the sofa which had mercifully broken my fall, she had disappeared into our bedroom and locked herself in.

Obviously, I had to find an alternative place to sleep, and the carpet was quite fine by me. So after setting my radio to automatically turn itself on at 7am, I fell asleep under the coffee table.

When I woke up this morning and looked at my watch, I was petrified. You see, there was this article that my editor wanted in her inbox by noon today.

My editor bears a frightening resemblanbe to Brig. Hussein Ali at a crime scene when she is in a bad mood. Believe me, you don't want to get on her wrong side, for example through unmet deadlines, or worse, unsubmitted articles. That can honestly be considered a health hazard.

So my worst fears, were confirmed when I looked at my watch and saw it was a few hours past noon. I sat up in shock...

And my head connected with the underside of the coffee table.

In that instant, I saw more stars than most astronauts ever got to see in their entire careers.

Rats!

You can tell that a ship is leaking by the inexplicable absence of rats in the ship scullery, so goes a saying I've read in one of my lengthy travails through the world of literature. What basically this means is that if something is wrong somewhere within a system, you tell by the mundane manifest discomforts.

Back to that in a tri. My semester ended jana, and like most reprobates in pretended pursuit of education at the Ivory Tower, I am looking foward to several weeks of continuing what I have been doing throughout the semester-alot of nothing. I am looking foward to it because much as it is a continuation of what I've been doing all along, this time I get to do it from the more pleasant surroundings of home and so I don't have to feel so guilty about it!

But before one gets to enjoying the next phase of his lazy existence away from the incredibly irritating distractions posed by courseworks, lectures, tests, projects and other equally useless things, there exists one very minuscle but nevertheless extremely pertinent phase: Getting home.

Of course that won't be a problem if you hail from Wandegeya or Kikoni or Bwaise any other place disturbingly near enough for your dad to access your faculty notice board when the coursework mark list for your worst-performed course unit is displayed, or worse still, near enough for your good-looking coursemate from Ethiopia to meet your younger sister.

But if you come from more far-flung places such as Bulemia village of Budalang'i division in the Samia district of western Kenya, such problems are mercifully eliminated, but getting home requires more than just packed belongings and a quick good-bye-see-you-next-sem-please-keep-in-touch to your friends. It also requires fifteen thousand Uganda shillings for a taxi ride to Busia Kenya, fifty Kenya shillings for another taxi ride from Busia town to Bumala centre, and two hundred Kenya shillings for a ride in a contraption that bears a frightening resemblance to a pregnant pig all the way to Bulemia.

The problem in this case however is not money, but comfort. Between Iganga and Bugiri, you eat more dust than a mafia execution victim in the sahara. Between Busia and Bumala, you pray very hard that you won't meet the fate of all the bugs that hit the windscreen of the taxi you are travelling in at between 120 and 130k.p.h. Between Bumala and Bulemia, you struggle not to gag at the stench of unwashed humanity around you. Such scenarios, you will have to agree with me, don't measure up to a vast many people's acceptable standards of comfort.

And the smells you sometimes encounter are exceedingly strange, for example the smell of a fresh cob of maize being chewed by a decent-looking guy I sat next to inside the pig-inspired contraption. Not strange in itself until you consider that the maize cob being chewed is straight up raw, as in straight from the fields into the belly, no hint of fire or a milling machine having been involved anywhere its lifespan.

Maybe some of you wouldn't find that strange, but I did. It was actually the first time I have ever seen someone who is not a child or someone of unfortunate mental circumstance chew on a raw maize cob, and much as it is anyone's inaleniable constitutional right to chew on a raw maize cob if he so wishes, I just had to ask him why the hell he was doing that.

"The price of maize flour has gone up." He answered.

Back to rats and sinking ships. You know the food situation in your country is really bad if you see a sane person eating raw maize because he claims he can't afford the finishing product!

Conspiracy theory. [Is it just me...]

Today, we woke up to the news... To be precise, yestyerday we went to sleep with the news that coordinated groups of gunmen shot and blasted their way through tourist sites in the Indian financial center of Mumbai

Throughout November and indeed, for the better part of the year, partly due to the frustrations that come with the paenuts I am yet to start earning despite a university education, [education which, by the way, is being threatened by Makerere University's policy of overcharging Kenyan students,] I have been seriously considering a career in bucaneering, since it seems there is alot of money to be made there.

But seriously, authorities commented on this latest terror incidient by saying it exhibited a previously unseen degree of reconnaissance and planning. The scale and synchronization of the attacks pointed to the likely involvement of experienced commanders and very detailed planning. Several witnesses also said the gunmen demanded to see passports from cornered guests, separating American and British tourists from the others.

A previously unknown group calling itself Deccan Mujahedin said it carried out the attack.

Now, let's do a little math.

1. Such a flawlessly planned operation needs money. Lots of money.

2. Money pouring in from pirate ransoms have reached $30 million this year alone.

3. The indian navy has been protecting ships from the islamist pirates, with support from Britain and America.

4. Somalia, despite being a very failed state, has never ever let go of its strict and very extreme Islamic way of life.

5. Deccan Mujahedin sounds like an islamist group to me.

Is it just me, or does anybody else notice a thread?