FREE WIFI

I swear I have been battling with my discipline and am confident that I lack it. Self-discipline.

Men, it’s likely that I need enforced discipline for the consequences of violating a rote. I wish I could administer this penalty to myself where, “Forgetting means push-ups. Bowing to temptations means sit-ups. Loosing things means docked wages. Lack of respect means seriously long runs with heavy back-packs. Desertion means confinement and other punitive measures that makes one a have the regimen of a uniformed officer”

Temptations. They are like a virulent virus that attacks the body riding it of vital immunity to fight it off. If you think that struggling with disciplinary issues is thus bad, wait a minute. My crystal balls tell me that temptations and indiscipline go hand in hand. If only I was self-disciplined, chances are I would have changed my fortunes given that I would have been able to finish some of the small projects that I work on when I commit. When I don’t, I end up having hanging projects.

You are probably wondering about this indiscipline thing. Well, I promised myself that I would write at least once a week and be consistent. I have lost that war. I write only when I feel like and given that I don’t subject myself through any  pain, I end up being the regular joe who has nothing to die for other that seeing the next day.

The last time I wrote about a writer’s block which I am slowly accepting is inanity from a lazy writer like me who felt like we suffer from it at some point. Serious writers don’t suffer from this illusion. You don’t get a driver saying he is suffering from a driver’s block, ok. I think serious writers wake up and realize that, “I have to feed myself and those who depend on me for survival. And maintain a certain standard.” So, they write. They do it by wreaking havoc, chasing adventure, building castles in the air, mulling somewhere in an isolated sanctuary or even in the bed after sex.  Even if what they write does not make sense. Because there is something spiritual and emotional about penning a thought, that jiggy jiggy feeling.

Officially, I can confess that I write illegibly. Two guys can't be wrong to say the same thing in a span of one week. That they could not decipher what I did put down in black and white, telling me, “Come up again, try it in another way”, it only means that I should simplify my words. Or better still, I need an editor to offer free service till that time I will feel charitable and philanthropic enough to dish out some few shekels by advising if am going overboard.

My indiscipline has cost me. You see, I have been writing in my dreams, splendid openers, delectable bodies and edgy conclusions that are not necessarily an anticlimax. Sadly, most of my stories never see the light of day. They are decoded but never encoded (Whatever! Whichever comes first). A while back when I used to love reading, an author told his audience that in the interest of retaining those abrupt thoughts, you always need a small notebook to pen down the thought because you can easily forget if you try to recall later. It’s true because all I had mused over, contemplating to write here has failed to summon up.

Back in the days when I had a smartphone, I would do that with ease, occasionally when I felt like. Thus, the writing app that I have forgotten the name became my notebook. I would scribe down the thoughts and wait for a time they would be relevant on this blog because my social media platforms are as barren as the ideas that sometimes never see the light of day in my writing. One day, when I grow up, I will be courageous enough to introduce guys to my ‘illegible prose’. When am sure that I have come of age. When I have money, and am independent and can be able to promote the blog on two serious social media platforms with financial ease.

The worst form of indiscipline that will eventually wreck my desired career is procrastination. By now, I should have got the result of a certain application I was making online whether I was to go to the next stage or not. I procrastinated a lot never did the second stage which had a timeline of the online application having finished the first. I did simulations of what I was expected to do, failed lugubriously and got discouraged. I ended up blowing the chance, the only one that I had in probably being a better paid proletariat. Hey, it’s never that serious, right?

My current employer also invited me for training to supplement the few skills to reduce on uncertainty when there was paucity of tasks online. I am currently doing what I came to learn are called secondary skills and men, it’s a hustle. I think, I probably went low on confidence, and when I was finally assessed for the task, a primary skill that has continuous workflow, I failed to reach the pass mark. Like the job I had applied for, there was the training bit before finally doing the final assessment that is graded. I flopped and am now thing of retaking the exam. I don’t know when but I will retake it, another episode of derailing from the norm.

The worst of it all is starting to write, then, in the middle of the collating those thoughts into a seamless flow, an imp comes, tells me to visit the net to find out what others are saying about what I am writing. Obviously, I should do this before I start writing, steal a few phrases and lurid thoughts here and there before I can finally put down my rumination on paper. Folks, I swear I am the reckless type who writes and when I feel like I need a certain phrase, I switch tabs to Google, then searches till I find something I wanted or next to what I wanted.

That boils down to the fact that I rarely have all words as my own, it’s natural if you are not a fulltime pen pusher. I search and get befitting thoughts from various sites online and to be true to myself, I steel some with no reference, in a nutshell, I am a sentences thief. And that is a plausible reason why my cogency is at stake given those two guys I have intimated about earlier could not comprehend what I was annulling at. Which is bad, bad because a writer should be understood at the first glance failure of which you risk losing an audience.

Looking at my fingers, there is dirt under the fingernails and this grey gunk is making me feel like I have turned into a skunk. Some guy wrote online that those stuff are keratin debris that should not worry you because they are ‘pretty harmless’, but who knows.  Not that I am normally dirty, it’s only that I love keeping my nails short to reduce the hatred I have for crap under my fingernails. Boy, I love my nails short, but the nail cutter I have that is almost celebrating its fourth year is not doing me any justice. It has become hell of a blunt cutter but I rarely buy nail cutters, and if I do, they get stolen or go misplaced. Luckily, this one has survived that long because I normally hide it inside my hanged coat once I have finished using it.

My neighbor is one crazy chap. I have a love hate relationship with his free Wi-Fi. Browsing through the net, I realized that Wi-Fi is probably not the abbreviation for ‘wireless fidelity’ as some chap tried to argue. BS.  Apparently, this neighbor only feels like he should put the Wi-Fi on when he is feeling like and not when I need it. As opposed to a certain burger who wanted to hack into the neighbor’s free Wi-Fi on his android phone and he got a just answer on Quora, I managed to find the password to their free Wi-Fi when someone ‘accidently’ logged into a gadget that I use and I realized it saved the password. And because we have not renewed our own subscription on this end, I normally creep on it when I want to access the net. Cost cutting measures unorthodoxically, but do I say.

The other day while working, I was about to enter the submit button and when I checked down on the network signal, I saw five empty bars looking at me given that the network had shown remiss moments before, which I had overlooked. Of course, I had been saying, “I will buy airtime to counter the likelihood of lost Wi-Fi to take advantage of my modem.” That only happened happened when shit came to shove and I had to wake up very early probably being the first guy in the neighborhood kiosk. Yenyewe, kutegemea vya bure ni kutupa mbao.

Talking of free things, I have postponed finishing online courses that I should have finished by now because they are free. As such, we should hate free things  reason being they are free. And we should hate free things with the contempt it deserves because they are not worth the much. Free things more often than not abridge the quality of what we want. They also make us lazy. They induce the 'mbekho' mentality, reduce the incentive the donor affords and encourage lethargy among us. On my part, I seriously need deliverance and cure from free things. Do you?

Hasta la vista baby.

P/S: If only it was free wifey. And I will reward myself when I manage to stick to a rote for even a month.

[Picture source: Google Images]

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AND THEN THERE WAS DREAMING

Events happen that we never plan, but they just happen.

A cousin and an uncle got really sick they had to go for medical checkup prompting me to make a crass comment that the number of my kin kicking the bucket had slimmed down in the recent years in my extended family.

Well, there was a time my old man would journey from one interment to the other and I kept asking myself what spell had befallen us to witness so many relations succumbing in quick succession in a certain season. The portentous spate would cease then another would befall us, again. One time in a skewed pattern, the other in a string of events. Unforeseen as it was, the experiences were chilling. Obviously, then like now, we talked about the probability of the cause being the dreaded disease in hushed tones.

Unfortunately, as a guy who has come of age, there is never an explanation about the cause of death and how abrupt these folks die. Death just comes, perhaps, it should be planned. No, it shouldn’t, because I also fear death, the abruptness is just fine for now. The only part I hate is that it intrudes unexpectedly and robs us of loved ones we never expected would give in that fast. Thus, sometimes these are the incidents that take me to the countryside. To go grieve with kinfolks and rekindle and strengthen filial bonds that have been weakened by capitalism and distance. Albeit work and marriage distances us, still, blood is thicker than water. Oh, Christmas also takes me back to my roots but I don’t feel the vibe like I used to when I was growing up.

I reminisce with nostalgia the yore days that have evanesced. Apparently, I have even forgot what I wanted to write about here because of looking up for something I had written down. Poor me, am I this poor in memory? It was a hot thought. Something that you get the gist of while scribing what you had planned. It really pains that I am struggling to remember it like an exam question that will give me the coveted grade. It’s not right to admit that you have forgotten something as a writer. It seems that the cues that I normally rely on to recollect the pieces of thoughts have also failed me. Oh boy, that’s life.

Moving forward. Owning an analogue phone has never been this nice. I remember watching a certain program on telly where a young couple were planning to go for a vacation in some lonely island in Tahiti. They had a choice of three destinations. The first was a well-manicured island that was nested in a 20-acre piece of land going for $21,000 a week. The second was an island that offered a perfect scenery for viewing the sea underneath from their bedroom and it had been constructed by a carpenter giving it a unique touch and feel but also offered internet available for $12,000 for 10 days. The third was a semi-private sanctuary with an amazing pictorial sense of the mountains they had to share with 2 others in what offered the best bargain in terms of luxury, I thought they would settle for it since it was on offer for $13,000 for ten days. The body language of the lady in their final interview before settling on the priciest island gave in to suggest she wanted the more expensive one even though the man had talked about cutting costs and getting a place where they would be comfortable and free from the hustles of work.  In a way, ladies sometimes are no different in their life’s desires. They still love the costliest and if you can afford, give it to her because you never know when the chicken will come home to roost.

So, like the couple who went on vacation to relish time away from the constant noise of computers and phones, and let their minds roam free, I decided to take a sabbatical to go to the rurals with my phone that has no internet and away from my computer that is constantly keeping me abuzz because of Wi-fi. I wanted a destination that discouraged connectivity and the dings and beeps of modern technology. I wanted to unplug; to feel relaxed and rejuvenated by visiting the countryside.

Obviously, I go for days without receiving phone calls, so si ati I was being distracted by it, it is just that you must mention some things because unataka kujaza kurasa. That’s how unnetworked and seemingly unimportant I am. On the positive side, the phone has Tetris, I loved to play it on Brick Game when I was young. These days when I am bored and want to induce sleep when am insomniac, I play it the same way guys become busy with their Whatsapp, Facebook and social media manenos et al. But given that the game can be boring, I sometimes just make castles in the air thinking of my next big write up. Which may or may not be effectuated because when Bruno Mars sang the ‘Lazy Song’, he had buggers like me in mind. A guy who doesn’t feel like doing anything but wants to have a girlfriend he cannot maintain. Oh, a guy on Twitter did tweet that only broke buggers don’t have girlfriends. Kaboom. A guy who thinks that he can outpour his emotions on the web because that is another avenue for being lazy because writing is like a lazy job. But hey! Am just a man. So, I can be lazy sometimes.

Sometimes back in what used to be described as the ominous month in Kenya, that is in August, I had about three or four dreams about quietus. By death I mean I was seeing images of those long gone in my dreams doing normal stuff in my presence. If I was to interpret them the way I felt then, I had a feeling that someone I knew was going to succumb but I never knew who. It’s only while writing this piece that I decided to find out the correlation that exists between death dreams and life situations. Clicking on the first link which I believe is truthful to some extent, I discovered that such dreams normally signal something new in life. It means that a certain phase has elapsed and a fresh one is bound to begin. Or it can be an attempt to resolve anxiety or anger directed to the self. I will stick to that latter version of interpretation and try not to overinterpret the real meaning that has been researched by academics and professionals of repute.

Here is why. A couple of months ago I was feeling low and downcast. My morale was low and all I ever thought of was the fact that the world was against me. I hence retreated to my reclusive cocoon where I could hide and feel sorry for myself because life had granted me lemon at the expense of a lemonade even though I have toiled and moiled for quite some time now. I had so many insecurities, but now I am coping up. I am feeling like am rejuvenating. I am building up slowly, and that is why I can attest to the fact that the dreams were preparing me for steadfastness. Something new will surely happen.

Then………

When one of my distant grandfathers who was still in workforce collapsed and was admitted to the hospital, I had a feeling that he was not going to make it. And when results came that his brain was affected, I knew that it he had to fight for his life because the impact had resulted in brain hemorrhage. He finally succumbed after a while. Just about the same time he was admitted to the hospital, my mum broke her ankle and suffered a severe cut that almost cost her a leg because of the non-ending construction that my old man loves engaging in. Luckily, with his henchmen, they have sealed the stoned-filled-hole that would have posed a catastrophe to the many relations who visit my home because my mum does have an affectionate heart because she welcomes all and sundry who visit her without prejudice. I don’t want to speculate what would have happened if it were another person who suffered the injury because the gossip mill that find its way in the village can be quite venomous.

Consequently, two things took me back to the countryside, one was to go see my mum, the other was to go bury my distant grandfather. While I had not intentioned to travel back home, I felt that I had to owing to the intensity of the situation.

For someone of my ilk, I normally have the option of taking the modest Easy Coach or Guardian bus, a spacious shuttle, the comfortable Wish cars or a plane to jet out to the hot and lakeside city that is my hometown. Where the police were forced to erect a battalion to counter the bigheadedness of these folks who love truancy when they feel ‘Baba’ is aggrieved or under siege by the ruling class that has given the most beloved and hated personality with equal share from Bondo a run for his money towards being the president. As a matter of fact, my shallow pockets make me a perfect commuter for the less expensive road as a means of transport to my humble destination. Am aware that my body sometimes feels like it wants to take a flight but the fact that the plane is normally overbooked because reliable sources usually tell me so, I am obliged to use the road. (White lie because if I use a plane, I will be flat broke and may even fail to take the journey back to the city in the sun).

Going to Kisumu after a hiatus of about seven months means that I am bound to see new stuff while on my way. I had contemplated booking a night bus but rescinded the decision and opted for a ‘posh’ shuttle. It had been long before I went back because I normally use a personal car each time I snake out of this city, which was not available this time round. While I had thought I would part with almost a G, I parted with Sh100 less than the actual amount I had budgeted for. I realized that old habits die hard. While there are so many vehicles offering the same services or probably even better given that there are some that serve biscuits and bottled mineral water, I did stick to the one I have been using since time immemorial. Oh! Mineral water was at some point christened ‘funeral water’ because guys from the city would arrive clutching on the bottles afraid that the river water or pond water they were supposed to drink would cause them to have stomach complications after consuming the liquid. Kwani watu wa ushago wako na acids aina gani kwa tumbo wamesurvive hio miaka yote.

That day, I realized that there are sixteen seater matatus on our roads. Just tells you how clueless I am when it comes to long distance public haulage. I normally keep the cash I have in Mpesa to avoid the temptation of using it on unplanned spurges because like every other Kenyan, I join the bandwagon of the existential phrase that ‘Uchumi ni mbaya’, Times are hard for a guy whose income is so skewed that even if I tried to come up with a Kurtosis, I will end up with an abnormal curve. Mutatis Mutandis (sic). I feel like a faux hero barrister having erroneously used that legal phrase. Hio ndio ubaya wa kusoma kwingi. Unatumia maneno bila kuhakikisha maana falsafa, ati bora uonekane umetumia hio mistari, hili basi ni swala nyeti linalohitaji uchunguzi wa kina. Kubaff. Roughly translated, the best thing about reading a lot is that you develop an unrivalled diction so much so that you become very wise and intelligent even in matters law. And that bruh, is the reason why I bestow upon myself the phrase, the neo sagacious blogger- That Kubaff bit. It’s like what Thomas Edison’s mum lied about when she told him that he was a genius. That deserves a ceteris paribus. Can I get a kudos for my brilliance in getting things on point in Swahili?

Kudos bro.

I chose the backseat where I could peer out of the window and thought that I could also open and savor the cool breeze once in a while when I was feeling like I was developing some beaded sweat on my forehead. A situation that came to naught because the weather worked to reverse the probability of such an occurrence. Since I had worked for close to eight hours nonstop that day before boarding the car, I thought that I would recline on the seat and sleep the exhaustion away. I sprawled uncomfortably on my seat twitching and turning to find a good position for seamless sleep. The legroom in the vehicle was terse. I slept intermittently and decided to sleep no more by staying astir.

A small-scale trader who was seated next to me was also encroaching on my space because he had very long legs and hairy hands. I could tell he was one because he was constantly looking at the goods he had carried when the boot was being open for a passenger to pick his luggage. When he arrived, he was all sweaty because he looked like someone who was rushing. I silently praying that the lady who I saw outside to be the person who would sit next to me because she looked decent and spruced. But when this ruffian of a guy who I noticed had traces of dirt on his trouser sat next to me, I cursed inwardly because he turned out to be a space bully and sleeping while leaning on me. At some point, he raided my space leaving my legs to squirm for a small section as he opened his feet as wide as he could. I felt like giving him a tirade of his life but rescinded and waited until that point when he had readjusted his position and I reclaimed my space.

Along the way, I could hear him speaking to various people on his two analogue Chinese phones with that annoying ringtone. At some point, he was saying he was interested in a certain lady but did not know how to approach her. She also talked to another who was noncommittal on him visiting her and checking on his various business that he wanted closed at around 2000hrs.

In Nakuru, which is the nourishing hub for those who are heading to or from the Western side of Kenya, I remember having a chat with a certain guy who started a conversation about the fact that the ruling party was already prepared for the next re-run election. He went on tell me that he had read somewhere that Raila had decided to step down in favour of Uhuru after many unsuccessful trials. Rogue bloggers have a way of writing what the audience wants to hear I swear. He told me that in the event Raila had gone to the media and said that in the past three elections he had participated in, the elections were being stolen from him, he would have cemented his position in history and would have received international acclamation. Well, I thought he was right but at the end of the day, a warrior in a battle never concedes until he has been defeated in the field of fury. I loved the way he was analyzing the political space in the country and like any other layman, he was just what I call a pedestrian analyst. There is nothing much I did pick from his analysis that I never knew.

I arrived in Kisumu late and took a bus to my village. The day I arrived was the wake night for my grandfather and I could hear dirges on the public address that was hired for the night. Feeling tired, I slept like a baby because I am the kind who sleeps and fails to notice that something has happened if I am tired.

I guess the fact that one stays in the rurals makes him or her develop a penchant for attending funerals as if it is a requirement by tradition. There is this lady who I met with an uncle a day after my grandfather had been buried asking whether the body of the person who was to be buried in the area had been bought. It was around 1400hrs and she was telling us how our Luhya neighbours bury people faster as opposed to us who sometime bury at 1800hrs because of this ‘neno’ thing. ‘Yawa jumalo iko pio. Parie ni ahae iko kuno to koro adhie e liel mokel cha.’

My old man had wanted me to accompany him to another funeral but when the politics of heading there became too much, I decided not to go given that I was also planning to drive my uncle who had offered a free ride for me back to the city in his car. Guys in love freebies back home but when it comes to work, they will never do voluntary stuff even though they may be forced to. I was planning to extend my stay but when I realized that I was going to save some chapaa and not have to struggle in a public car, I decided to take advantage of the offer. Not that I was saving much but it was an opportunity I could not resist. Public or private transport, private wins for me.

He drove till Nakuru and boy, I hate slow drivers. But for a guy in his fifties, that was bound to happen. At the junction heading to Muhoroni, some boys in blue who were paper hungry stopped us for no apparent reason because the guy was doing sixty kmph and when the searched for mistakes and could not find one, the police decided to ask for lunch on realizing that my uncle works for a big parastatal. Obviously, being the kind of guy who does not love conflicts, he gave him some few notes and off we went.

When we stopped for lunch, we had this conversation about unemployment and whether I was employed and he was bitter that his two sons had worked hard in school, but were still jobless years after finishing campus. Then I remembered my uncle who dropped out of primary school before finishing jibing how guys have gone to school to university level but they don’t have commendable jobs while we were assisting a certain motorcycle rider who was transporting tents we had used for the function back at home. I felt like he was talking about me but decided not to evoke emotions because comments like those deserve silence as a response.

Hasta La Vista Baby.

[Picture Source: Pixabay]

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DEARTH

Writer’s block finally catches up with you. Your brain feels like mush. And procrastination takes the better of you. You try to mull deeply what to scribe about but nothing seems to be forthcoming, not even freewriting. It’s like you are in a desert and you cannot find your way out. This scarcity of thoughts gives you a blow like a Mayweather punch. You easily forget that which you wanted to put in black and white. Then you find you are wallowing in self-pity. Only fathoming but never penning delectable mental imagery. You wonder how you can channel the mental distress in a serendipity.

Anyway.

You know you had been having upbeat moments until the job you are doing decided to smirk you on the face through the adjustment of your hourly earning back to square one. Because they assigned you new tasks. Truth is, it’s not only devastating but also disheartening. That you have worked so hard to achieve a certain milestone, then all of a sudden that does not matter anymore.

I tell you, working online can cut both ways like a doubled edged sword. There are weeks you will find yourself having a reliable and stable income while there are others you will be in total disarray. Then you start wondering what is wrong. Then you remember you have a program as your paymaster which is thus bad. You work but cannot be able to ascertain how tasks have been codified using machine learning. You even don’t know how your earning algorithm is worked out. But you just work, work because you have a dearth of cash. And when you have no one to intimate the hurt you are feeling, you turn up to your blog. The blog because it also has no feelings but will tell the world if someone does care out there.

Plus, it offers solace, it offers an avenue to tell it that you have been having down moments after your pay was clashed by more than half yet you still struggle to do the same amount of work in the same environment but the motivation has dwindled. You no longer feel like you enjoy what you do, instead the deep-seated desire plummets as time flies. You try to piece up the reasons and even ask yourself, “Why me? And not the others”. Then you tell God, “You gat this.” Just to console yourself that things will look up like they used to do.

But this is not the first time that this is happening. It’s a déjà vu. Employers have reneged on their initial contract they had with you and this now does not look different in a bad way. It’s just that it makes you feel less worthy of a person. It makes you feel like a coin that can be tossed without care of where it lands. Or is it that a die has been cast and you are waiting while you should look for things abound other than restricting your breadth? Perhaps widening your perspective to get out of constantly being at a limbo.

That said, a real man never complains or becomes bitter. A real man learns from the past and make alchemy out of lemon situations. You push hard next time. Push till you cannot push anymore. If you get to that place between a rock and a hard place, you decide to face it one with an IED that you conjure up in the midst of time.

Enough of masquerading in this bulshit, well that word, the way it has been used was not the intention. It happened. Writer’s block is not real. It’s a mental creation and a dearth of imagination. You just kill it by sitting down in a quiet place, reduce distraction like internet and all that (me, I can’t write without net). And my paper writing using a pen is messed up. While you are at it kill the urge to throw in the towel by writing something as nonsensical as this piece.

Hasta La Vista Baby.

PS. Looks like I need read and apply the instructs of Graham Greene’s journal to liven my imagery and console myself after all.

[Picture Source: Courtesy]

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A RANDOM WALK

Pounding pavements in a bid to be an avid exerciser, I have decided to sometimes work my feet to walk lonely paths where I only encounter vehicular motion. I am a rapid rambler with short majestic steps. My brisk pace makes me look like a speed walker who appears to be floating while pacing. I wish I would have a way of making my walking genes addictive as opposed to getting psyched at the spur of the moment. Well, I am a feckless walker, born without a sense of direction. I hate it though, but at the end of the day not all who wander are lost.

Sometimes I spell my coordinates, but most times, I let my mind piece up the whole jigsaw that is the map of where I want to end up. The best part is that my sense of direction is intact. What I know is that I have a goal; to sweat out the lethargy that characterizes my sedentary lifestyle as a worker who rarely has time for socializing. Walking hence is a respite, a chance to process the problems and struggles I go through in sometimes gloomy days that I hide in my introverted life. The out life has a sanguine feel, I am melancholic.

Truth be told, I am in this carefree time of my life where things have reached a stalemate. I am not pushing harder like I should. There should obviously be things that I should have sealed tight like a can but I have not, ‘yaani, nilikuwa nimekafunga tene’. Who cares, it’s a feeling I have learnt to grow comfortable with. Which should not be the case. To kill these mediocrity thoughts, I meander from the slums to the leafy suburbs like a river winding its way across grassy plains, down rocky waterfalls and occasionally collecting debris that line the watercourse. I love this crisp wintry weather with its sedating air, you can walk as far as your legs can carry you given that you rarely feel drained and parched. The fluffy cumulus clouds shield you from the devastating heat of the menacing sun which hides in its private room.

I started walking way back in campus, at night, to burn off the heavy meal that I rarely took for supper. I just wanted to go off and explore the bowels of our raucous Nairobi City. At such a time, I would not be harassed by hundreds of people who dot the busy streets during the day with nothing particular in their minds. Walking at night when peddlers had spread their wares with generic and cut-rate products probably from China was by and large imbuing. I loved the eeriness of the night as I passed lonely streets, some darkened while others glowing you feel like you are walking in broad daylight. Obviously, dark spots did send a chill down my spine and I felt my typical bravery being pricked. To date nighttime roving remains a facet that springs up occasionally when I go out to sip ale as a mechanism to remain sober.

These days, I walk during the day, I reserve the night for work and sleep. As I did trek on my way to the city’s exurb, I saw this lady who trudged along the pavements in a sedate pace. My mind focused on the gentle footsteps that seemed to echo throughout the desolate street. She had a random gait, and she was in walking gear pounding her feet with experience. Her steps revealed her feet was used to the shoes she was wearing which were gel cushioned to absorb shocks and the reflexive details of the rising terrain. She was probably the kind who does not want to crank her muscles through a rigorous exercise like running. She walked in front of me for a while before I overtook her leaving her dawdling not to be seen again from her sight.

I love the surge of endorphins that feels my body with a feel-good rush each time I walk where I presume I cannot meet someone twice. I have a sharp memory and there are instances where I have noticed individuals especially those with distinct features or clothing in different stretches of where I have been to. Not that meeting a stranger a second time is perilous, but it’s odd and tells a lot about you when you are wandering on the streets looking for something spectacular to write home about. The question that I ask is whether those guys I met also recognize that they saw me roaming the streets. Is it a coincidence that we met twice? This normally prompts me to take the next available action that comes into mind, take the next matatu back to the digs and think about nothing and to format delete the trails of the day and the individuals I met.

While walking, there was this time I was pacing on a grassy side path that was also characterized by intermittent mud after a heavy downpour. I never realized that the treads of my shoes had worn out while feeling like a real nigga walking on the lonely path. While jumping over an insignificant stream that had been eroded at the banks by water, I almost slipped but the impact of the slide fell on my shoes that escaped with mud all over after slightly sinking on the wet banks. I started feeling panicky because crossing to the hilly side almost made me feel like a drowning man clutching on a straw. After the near scary and embarrassing experience, my step picked up speed as did my pounding heart. But that incident had clearly sabotaged my confident gait. If I had fallen how could I explain the soiled clothes in an already dry environment? Luckily, nothing ruined an already good day.

PS: There are free apps online to monitor the amount of brisk walking an individual does and provide tips on how to incorporate more into the daily routine.

Hasta La Vista Baby.

[Picture Source: Google Images]

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AMERICAN ROULETTE

Old habits die hard. They are like a permanent flu that some guys genetically inherited and in some cases, the casket serves as the portent anticlimax to the kooky wont. Clearly, I don’t know the thin line that demarcates that boundary between addiction and a flaky habit. Yet, when a habit gets out of hand, especially the covert ones, like a tot, you need guidance until that point in life when you can walk on your own. 

And gambling is one such habit that never ceases among those who develop it when young because it may regurgitate at any given point in time when you especially thought you are done with it. Well, at the end of the day, life itself is a gamble. The decisions we make and the repercussions, whether good or bad can only be likened to gambling only that we do not need to necessarily lose money when we engage in whatever action that comes into mind.

Take smoking for instance, we have been told a thousand and one times that cancer sticks are just that, cancer sticks. Medical research corroborates the same. In light of the situation, I think being a cancer stick salesperson could have been a very lucrative job, but because stringent policies have come to radically deal a big blow to the sector, the unrivaled sales from the product have plummeted in contrast to those of mainstream ale makers which fall under the same category of sin stocks. Had this not been the case, tobacco farming would have been booming and sin stock investing in the same product spiraling to unprecedented levels because cigarettes have an inelastic demand and are recession-proof. That’s economics one’o’one.

Men, I hate the evocative scent that permeates after smoking cheap to mid-range cigarettes.  The smell sticks like strong incense and it takes days for it to completely fade away which in an anathema. I wonder how partners married to smokers feel given that they must tolerate the stench that emanates from both the clothes and breathe. Yet they must cope with the noxious smell if the partner is an addict and cannot do without a midrange scented cancer stick in a day.

That said, my bedding are still laced with the redolent smell when a smoker who spent the night playing PS3 lay on it for about two hours after getting spent during the day after voting as he could no longer stay astir. The worst thing is that the scent became part and parcel of my blankets. It’s more than a week ever since the bugger slept on my bed and the struggle that I have gone through to sleep on it is not worthy a description. It’s bad, it’s synonymous to sleeping with a tramp or wearing a damp cloth and you have no option. 

Yet the culprit looked unfrazzled as if he was subtly inhaling flower-scented deodorant or he was perhaps suffering from parosmia.  And every day, I thought the inimical smoke odor would die a natural death. Sadly, it kept on decreasing at an increasing rate. That is the reason why I have hanged my blankets outside after the smell escalated, to fix the problem given that they needed the proverbial airing. I hope this will be a lasting solution because the smell was so deep into the fabric I felt like it was chocking.

American roulette. This reminds me of the first time I went to a posh casino to hawk bank products. Never mind that the policy of the institution was strict against gambling and any form of association.

I have been playing American Roulette but at an academic level. That is, Roulette mathematics and the results were awesome until I was expected to find an odd number standard deviation. It was so mind boggling I spent two days researching on what I already knew. When I got it, I felt like running nude in the estate screaming, “Eureka! Eureka! Eureka!” like the legendary Greek mathematician and Physicist Archimedes. Then I realized there was no discovery I had made and I coiled like a millipede that has sensed danger ahead.   

An American Roulette has 38 divisions; 18 of the numbers are red, 18 are black and two are green. As a player, the main objective, which any player pursuits, is to predict, which numbered pocket the roulette ball is going to settle into. A ‘sure bet’ in roulette is tantamount to picking one of the main colors, either black or red. You either win or lose an equal amount of money when you have placed such a bet. And the expected value irrespective of the type of the bet you place is a constant -0.0526 for every dollar. The expected value is the weighted average of how much you can win or lose.

Consequently, I inadvertently bumped into a research that was carried out in the US on the correlation between gambling and smoking and there is no evidence to authenticate the fact that most gamblers are smokers. The scenario depicts an almost equal number in comparison to the general population with a slighter margin on gamblers who smoke. The casino I went to did not have so many smokers. In fact, the Indian guy we sat next to who had gone to gamble was taking tea. And it goes without doubt that majority of gamblers in in Kenya are Indians (me opine). Why? You need money and to be living beyond the mere tenets of being able to pay bills. You also need to have a fall back plan which is to come from a well-to-do family or having a reliable cash cow that you can milk to sustain the addictive behaviour that is gambling.

Is there a correlation between gambling and smoking? I strongly believe there is. While the research I was relying on for analysis was carried out ages ago, probably more than a decade, the reality is that so much has changed post that period. I cannot fail to factor in the fact that awareness levels among the public has increased. More people have gone to school and the media has played a vital role in spreading the message far and wide.

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A former primary school pal who I met while training to be a clerk is now a weed addict and he smokes sticks with abandon. Apparently, we were also in the same campus but doing different courses having different tastes and preferences and during different time periods. He intimated how a couple of times he forfeited using public transport just to use the bucks to sustain his thirst to get stoned. I wish I saw him walking, making his way into Kibera to finally be in Langata were he resides. I told him he was hooked on substance but like the perennial addict he denied the allegation though seceding when I pressed further. What he confessed was he will never move to the ghetto because, “Unawezaenda hio mtaa ukute uko na mamorio wenye wanakugeuka ukitoka nao rave juu wanasaka na hivyo ndio wanakuruka vitu zikienda mbaya.”

Then we started reminiscing the good old days. The times we were considered bookworms and chops, now we were both together hustling as clerks. What an embarrassment it would be having worked hard in both primary and secondary school only to find yourself jobless looking for whatever they might throw to you to make money. Damn, it can never be that serious, right? He is yet to finish school and reminds me of an uncle who dropped out of campus to be a watchman because as he intimated, he did the course he did to please his peeps. He never did what he liked and that was the reason why he never felt like completing what he started.

So, at the end of the day life is like a roulette, you spin the wheel hoping that things will go in a certain way only for them to give you the complement of what you had staked on in terms of probability. Even clairvoyants and psychics predict the natural course of life and fail miserably. That is well depicted when the Financial Times noted that, “The clairvoyant society of London will not meet Tuesday because of unforeseen circumstances.”

Hasta La Vista Baby.

[Picture Source: Google Images].

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SOMETIMES AUGUST SUCKS

About two decades ago when I was still a toddler, there were a certain breed of white birds that flew a in  flock forming a triangular pattern just high enough in the sky. I don’t know their botanical or plebeian names though, and rarely notice them these day. Well, there was something special about them. As tots, they assured us of felicity. Whereas the bliss would come late, you also got an instantaneous reward from them.  The immediate reward was in form of your finger nails getting white spots which was a sign of glad tidings if you followed them with your fingers pointing towards the  sky. Never mind that as children we were quite oblivious and the next time we spotted the birds, we would go amok following the birds requesting them to polish our nails with white spots so that they could look beautiful. 

As time passed by, I soon realized that I could cheat my way in getting white spots on my nails by using a sharp razor blade to create light cuts on my nails. This, I did carefully by ensuring I created tiny dots speckled across the nail that would look like the ones these birds would give us upon following them. Little did I know that it is a medical condition called Leukonychia, which is totally harmless and probably some of my childhood buddies were suffering from it

Later, I realized that there were people who essentially had them which was kind of strange because as opposed to them I had to hustle in order to get the dazzling white amorphous dots on my nails. Little did I know they came naturally. I think there were those kids who had them genetically and therefore used the opportunity to taunt those of us who hadn’t into believing the birds would give us small, bright white dots on the nails. It was a fuss having them I tell you.

What is fascinating is that there was a time I truly admired those whose parents had bought VCR machines and would walk around the estate with videotapes much to my chagrin because my old man took a while to buy it. I wished he could buy the damn gadget once and for all and put me out of the misery I was going through each time I saw neighbours carrying tapes to go exchange after watching. Nowadays, a movie is just a click away (vindu vichenjanga). As a matter of fact, I did suffer in silence until lady lack smiled on us and my dad bought a coloured tv screen, which he travelled all the way to Nairobi to get since we resided in Eldoret. And it came with the coveted JVC VCR. Now we had the opportunity of flossing just like our neighbours.

Years later, my old man thought that buying a satellite would ease our troubles and he bought one big white satellite that would reduce the hustle of watching a blurry TV with ‘mchele’ on the screen. Unluckily, it was not strategically mounted and a couple of times, it got dislodged which means we would go back to square one because it also required a technician to properly mount it on the direction of the TV waves frequency. The downside of this satellite was the fact that it only displayed clear Bollywood and Chinese channels that were less captivating for a dude on the verge of being a teenager.

Looking back, I feel nostalgic about those good old days. When I would see a hawk in the sky and I would expend the little vit I had trying to step on its shadow because it came with a reward of walking the next few steps and as assurance of getting a KSh. 500 note which was not a petty figure for a kid of my ilk. Thus, when a certain guy who now wastes away in the hood told me that he was handling more than KSh. 20000 in the nineties as a teenager monthly in an international school where the fee now is over a milli and keeping even more for his prodigal classmates, I felt like we were really of humble upbringing.

Alluding to matters monetary, I am still in a bind. I have even lost hope in a financial sense. But that does not mean am out. It’s only that I have taken time to make an impact on myself and am feeling like yes, time is coming when I will be counted as one among equals. Surprisingly, this time is a healer façade has taken too long and I feel kind of purposeless. Who else goes through this times in life and feels he can take the next challenge that comes along the way without bouts of self-doubt.

Which makes me soliloquy asking myself, “ Is it that I am making wrong decisions? How sure am I that am still placing doubtful bets that may fail to reward me with anything other than being frustrated and hoping if wishes were horses I ride on? Or is it that I am going through a process of sensational awareness? Could this be the result of sitting quietly indoors most of the time. Do the decisions I make augur well with that which I should be steadily focusing on? Or are these thoughts corroborating the fact that August sucks sometimes.”

            

To cut the terse monologue short……

I got a temporary job as an election clerk and realized that we have so many people who are unemployed and just like me, they are actively looking for a legit job. Yes, they want a place where they can  get a reliable source of income. They want to experience the liberty that comes with being financially independent which is the best kind of independence that one can achieve.

Unfortunately, I never got to do the job even though I went for the training. Admittedly, I chickened out before verifying where I was posted to because hurried placement of clerks was done at night. That means there was a lot of scramming at night to see where you are posted to work for among those who were eager to have probably found a lifeline in the stipend. The disorganization that our seniors subjected us was more than enough, I resigned and went to sleep on the eve of elections feeling wasted.

Prior to that, I thought that I had qualified for a bigger and better job when I was called to be part of the process after applying for some jobs I had merited in terms of experience and education. I was eventually called to be a clerk which I never applied for. I deliberated on the idea but eventually went because I normally work at night and saw this as another source of income because my current policy is money first.

Sadly, there is this breed of Kenyans who think that when you are given a job, you are more privileged than those who were never shortlisted for the job. You’ll hear them say, “You know you are the few among the many who qualified for this job but got it. So, don’t take this job for granted”. Kwani it’s a favour when in actual case you will go back to your status quo. Bullshit.

But ultimately the major reason for not participating in the job was because I remember the prior experience that I had as a clerk. It is a hectic job and though the pay was somehow good for a jobless bugger or a bloke on peanuts, it was wearisome. You work like a carousel and although you love it as a guy in his early twenties, the impact that is after the exercise makes you feel really wasted.

I remember feeling like going to the toilet and kind of being pressed and hoping that the voters would not turn their heat on me, I hurriedly went and peed on an alley between the wooden-walled classroom and the live fence that demarcated the compound. Unlucky for me, in the process of peeing, I also slightly soiled my clothes.  You see, you can be so pressed and jittery that in the process of peeing, you find that the dual sphincters of the anus have relaxed and refused to hold given that we were also on zero diet and it had interfered with my digestive process. So, some little watery stools gain way out of your anus and you end up smelling like a skunk the entire voting exercise. Luckily, you sit next to the window, open it wide to reduce the strong putrid smell that your mates notice but don’t know who is effusing it. Hence, they talked about it in hushed tones.

Another reason why I forfeited work was because I felt did not need the money as much as I needed to vote. It was either going to be the first or second time am voting in a process. Consequently, I wanted to feel the thrill of voting like a newbie. While most people normally feel optimistic. I realized I felt nothing at all. Even though this was my first time voting to change the leadership of the country. But politics has its consequences and being politically engaged has dire consequences to all and sundry.

Albeit some people are feeling victorious, there is a certain lot like yours truly who feel like something is amiss each time we go to elect new leaders. What was a tightly contested race has turned into a one man show which is laughable given that opinion polls had projected something different. As for me, I am a firm believer that you need to get your act right when you are going for any process. And it all boils down to preparation for the herculean task verily. You need to prepare well and be thorough in reducing grey areas failure of which it will backfire on you and you will feel what we all feel when we don’t get that which we want. The resentment is real among some people. I remember a guy saying that an assassin should have been hired to deal with a candidate he hated to calm the high tempers sometimes back. Would it have pacified the already tensed aura or spiked deeper animosity? Well, it would have even been more divisive and lethally  volatile.

To someone like me, politics does not matter a lot. But again, voting is imperative. There is a certain anxiety that normally surrounds the nation after a peaceful voting process and it has to do with the transmission of the presidential results which leaves us divided along our ethnic lines. We are all determined to make our voice heard and that is captured by the mark we place on a ballot. When you think of who you have voted for, you think of the revolutionary dreams and the hard-headed pragmatism you engaged in. You tell yourself, “I don’t want to regret, I want to vote to make things better. There is this surge of hope of a better tomorrow if I vote. Voting hence makes me feel optimistic.”

Normally when we vote, nothing changes in our lives. In some cases, it plummets. It’s not like we vote to better our prospects and bring closer the future we can rely on. A future that my children who are unborn can be proud of when they are sired. One where they can get access to the best healthcare, education and social amenities within their disposal at no premium. But now like always, I will have to continue being optimistic for a better tomorrow. If tomorrow ever comes?

I tell you what though, to remain optimistic amid the hardships of life is quite challenging, I wish I could hope for a better tomorrow and deliver it. Or can I be just forget about the past and be joyful and positive even though I feel like I participated in an already predetermined process? And I was just a rubber stamp to authenticate the validity of the plebiscite. Can this feeling turn out to be a lemonade once I am through with it? Well, we all get worried sometimes and feel like the deck has been stacked against us or in our favour depending on who you think should win an election.

This is the time I wish I was taken to a farm full of manure. And instead of feeling sorry for being put where there is shit, I brighten my face with joy, look at it as a platform of making the most out of it by requesting for a shovel. Then work till I can’t labour no more when sweat ceases to drip over my body because they sudoriferous glands have reached a climax and the pores on my skin have shrunk and closed. I am still zetetic but finding this sunnier side of the street by just being optimistic may remain a hopeful dream.

Hasta la vista baby.

[Picture source: Google Images]

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