Kai Ni Kii?

Mama needs a new pair of shoes...

2016-01-04T19:01:00.000+03:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a new house. A new, squeaky clean house with a title deed and ef'thing. You should see the grin on my face right now... Now I love Google products the way no sane person should love any interwebs thingis, and Blogger is by far the easiest way to blog ever invented for idiots like me, but dammit if I've not tired of having a blog that looks like such a blog. I tried to redesign this page, but it is what it is, a basic page. It's time to move on.

kainikii.com

Seeing as how this is simply a quick hop across, I don't need to get all weepy, do I? I do not.

Thank you, each and every one of you who's passed through over the past four years. An extra special thank you to the deviants, and angels, who made the comments section here the absofuckinglutely best part of the blog. For real, the comments section we created is hands down the most hilarious, opinionated (yet for the most part never abusive), hands-down crassest comment section on any blog hereabouts. I bow down down to your greatness, my lovelies. My one regret with this move is that I can't take the comments with me, which is why this blog will stay up for as long as possible. I can't bring myself to take it, us, down (I folded Dunia into this one, because three sites seems a bit excessive, no? I mock myself...).

I have to thank Serikali and/or Google for never shutting my anti-establishment, borderline pornographic pages down (that's part of the reason for owning the domain, for just in case someone catches on to what really goes on here). I must also thank the lovely people at DMCA for only flagging my liberal, and apparently very illegal, use of lyrics that one time. Useless detour. You cannot use more than 5 words from a song, not without permission (for a fee, usually) from the song's author. You can, however, use the song title, because titles cannot be copyrighted. I looked for every conceivable loophole, fair use nini nini, nothing. Folks, don't use lyrics, especially if you publish for money (and that includes advertising on your blog). Fortunately for us, embedding videos and such is not illegal, so the show will go on, only now I'll have to hum the lyrics to you. I know, it's exciting, yes? Bloody internet.

A bit of housekeeping. Email people, I could transfer your subscriptions to the new site, but that strikes me as a little creepy, no? Sign up again na huko, tafadhali, apologies for the disruption. Those of you not on the email list, sign up, it's easier to keep track of me that way (bonus, I email full posts, none of that teaser nonsense, and I will never ever email you directly. because I'm not a stalker like that, promise).

Thank you all. See you on the other side.

They don't really care about us.

2016-01-03T00:09:00.000+03:00

Garissa.

I’d always planned on doing a post about this, figuring I’d wait for the dust to settle, victims laid to rest, fear subsiding and grief taking on a more reflective perspective. But as with all the tragedies that occur up in the north, in that region we consider not Kenya (not Nairobi), Garissa faded away into yet another statistic. 148(?) lives lost in most brutal fashion. And life went on. As it should, I guess, the world doesn’t stop turning for anyone. Back in...I couldn’t remember when exactly the attack happened, had to do a quick google (it says something about the sheer amount of bad news that floods our headlines every day if I can’t remember when exactly Garissa happened, either that or it speaks to my apathy, then and now, but more on that later)...back in April, I saved a photo of the massacre on my phone, the shot of the courtyard. I kept the photo as a reminder to write this, but also as a reminder that security, life, is not a given in this country, not in any country the way things are going.

Before I get into it, we need to talk about these pictures of dead people. I meant to use the photo in this post, but the constant stream of dead bodies on the internet has finally convinced me that these pictures add no value. If anything, they detract from what value there could possibly be in the lurid description of violence. Those gory images often reduce complex situations to simple images, stripping the nuance away and replacing it with our most basic emotions, fear, disgust, hate. Now there’s a difference between photojournalism, which is telling a story through pictures, and simply putting up shocking pictures. What we tend to do, us purveyors of internet outrage, is use gruesome images to grab your attention, attention we should actually be grabbing with our arguments. It’s a trick, see, sleight of hand, done to distract you from the fact that I, we, don’t have the words to convince you.

The one time I used a photo of dead people on the blog was the murder of the teachers in Mandera. My logic then was that people who were not actively on social media, people relying on mainstream media for their news, these people would never see the horror of that attack, or any of the other attacks that happen with frightening frequency in the frontier districts. I thought, misguidedly I now think, that everyone needed to see a skull split open, because that would get everyone suitably enraged, because outrage would somehow spark some sort of change. I didn’t elaborate on said change, mine was simply to trigger something, anything. The arrogance of the self righteous, no? I don’t need to see people who look like me lying dead in a pool of blood to feel sympathy, or fear, and I’m pretty sure you don’t either. More to the point, we shouldn’t need to see pictures of dead kids to believe the kids are dead, or should we? Are we that accustomed to death? I’m not, and I hope I never am. No more photos of dead people, tafadhali.

Living in the capital, it’s easy to forget that we’re in the middle of a dirty war and there are Kenyans out there on the frontlines, dying. Only they’re not soldiers, are they? After Westgate, I was eager to resume my normal routine, finding a sense of calm in the irrepressible spirit of a city that never truly sleeps. Nairobi may appear to shut down, but those of us who wander about after dark know it never does, not really. There was a certain pride I felt when the city kept going, despite the horror (terror?), but even then I was always cognisant of my good fortune, that I didn’t lose anyone, that I could pick up and move on virtually unscathed. Garissa was even more removed. These were random students far away in a distant town. Some of them were from Nairobi, for all I know one or two may have been from my shags up the highway. But the college was, is, unfamiliar to me. Garissa town is unfamiliar to me. Even the surrounding landscape is unfamiliar to my Kiambu born and bred ass. It might as well have been Bamako.

How shitty is it that I can say that without much shame? I’ll be completely honest with you, partly because of the (vitriolic) bickering between the pro and anti government types, partly because of the ‘watch me grieve more than the bereaved’ hand wringing from the activist set, partly because of the dodgy press coverage on TV, partly because of never ending stream of grim news from the frontier districts, and partly because of my own apathy, I was oddly removed from Garissa. Odd, considering I’m otherwise concerned about kids dying. I consider these students kids, too young to die at the hands of delusional idiots fighting a misguided war that can never be won. It’s not that older people deserve to die, but there’s something about burying nineteen, twenty year olds, or god forbid younger... It’s not right, no matter the cause.

Which is what made my government’s reaction to this massacre all the more surprising. To say Kamwana and co. dropped the ball would be an understatement. I’m not going to launch into a tirade about their inability to keep us safe, everything has already been said, and by people far better informed than me. My concern has more to do with what appeared to be the executive’s callous lack of concern. No memorial service, no days of mourning, no obligatory trip to Garissa by dear leader to condole with the shell shocked town. To the best of my recollection, I don’t think Kamwana even gave us one of his ‘Fellow Kenyans’ speeches. How now? We’ve since found out the attackers were Kenyan, which means it’s no longer about Somalia, or foreigners, or refugees, or whomever the government and it’s mafans like to blame for all bad things. We know one of the attackers was well educated, arguably a child of privilege, seeing as how he was the son of a chief or such like, which in turn means the old ‘poverty makes terrorists’ argument us left-leaning types like to make is no longer valid. That they killed mostly non Muslims speaks to the anti Christian propaganda Al Shabaab likes to throw about, but it also speaks to the inequalities of this country, being that they were ‘foreigners’ in a largely Muslim region. Nothing about Garissa was simple or straightforward. Perhaps that’s why serikali was so eager to wish it away.

148 dead Kenyans are hard to wish away.

This is the thing. Al Shabaab, contrary to claims in the press and slick PR videos from State House, is not finished. Diminished, in some parts, at best. We’re not safe yet, not here in the capital or out in the less Kenyan parts of Kenya. You’re not safe in France, for that matter, and you’re not safe in California. You’re sure as hell not safe in Syria, or Libya, or Mali, or Somalia, or Egypt, or CAR, or Nigeria. You’re not even safe in China these days, what with their knife wielding ‘terrorists’ (one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, especially in China).

Slight detour. Mass knife attacks? Am I the only one who’s picturing old Kung Fu movies? No? Just me then. Moving right along.

We’re living in the age of terror. That sounds melodramatic, no? I can’t think of another word to describe what these idiots are doing to us. We try to get on with our lives, acting like everything is normal, then we go through numerous security checks to get into a mall, or to board an airplane. We hold our vigils and mourn the dead and we move on, thinking that we’re fine, and then a student jumps out of a fourth floor window during a security drill. We thank our gods that we’re safe in our homes, but we still jump when fireworks go off unexpectedly, thinking for a moment that we are under attack again. We’re traumatised. We’re tired. We are, for lack of a better word, terrified.

I’m convinced we all have a mild case of PTSD.

And as well we should.

This is what happens when we refuse to deal with our violence. Our eagerness to accept and move on has us pretending everything is fine, when deep down we know it isn’t. We know this, we can feel it in our bones. That we’re only one shitty election, one large scale attack away from disintergration. I’m not saying we’re about to fall apart from the country, I’m saying we’re about to fall apart as individuals. I hate to admit it, but we need therapy, all of us. We need people in charge of the numerous security failures we endure to be held to account. We need answers to why, and how, these atrocities happened, everything from clashes in the Rift Valley, through to PEV and Mpeketoni. We need a collective, public reckoning of biblical proportions, destruction of Babylon type of reckoning. We need to sing kumbaya (and mean it) when said reckoning is done, so that we can truly move on. We need... We need a fucking Kagame is what we need. I may have gone too far there, but you get my point, we need a leadership that not only shares our hopes and dreams, but our darkness and fears as well. We need leaders that understand that we don’t all have 24 hour personal police guards at our disposal, and that we sometimes get scared as we’re out perambulating aimlessly trying to pay our taxes.

That’s my biggest issue with my president and his government of thieving imbeciles, and the bloody useless opposition. These idiots don’t know or don’t remember what it feels like to feel unprotected. I see the cops on patrol as I walk around the city, but given that they’re usually harassing innocent people, they inspire little confidence in me. I walk into a supermarket that looks eerily like the supermarket where a man was shot while hiding under an elephant, and I do not feel safe. I watch the news and hear these idiot politicians talk smack, and I have flashbacks of machete wielding thugs, thugs who kinda look like me (well, my cousins). I’m thinking, neither Kamwana nor Raila understands this, not if their bullshit proclamations are anything to go by.

Listen, I’ve made my peace with the possibility that some idiot may kill me while trying to steal my car, this while I drive home from the karaoke bar at 2 am on a loose Thursday night. It’s not right, but it is what it is. I’m not entirely paranoid, I don’t worry about someone stealing my wallet when I get into the bus to town, for the most part I choose not to obsess about these things, because crime is a part of life no matter where you are. But an idiot spraying his AK47 in the supermarket or a college hostel? That’s not regular crime, that’s ‘point at the government’ crime, they’re fighting against the government, not us. That’s why we call it terrorism. Worst part about it, there’s not much we can do but grin and bear it, such is our lot in life, us little people with no say in geopolitics and such like fancy nonsense.

I apologise. This was supposed to be a post remembering the victims of Garissa. For those who lost their lives, we grieve. You are not forgotten, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Sex. Again.

2015-12-30T23:10:00.000+03:00

Even in a year when I wrote not more than 10 posts, only 2 of which were about sex, someone rocked up in the comments section and accused me of, “still bitching about sex.” Now I ask you, is that what I do? I’ve been labouring under the misguided impression that I was sharing knowledge, having valuable conversations, dispelling (and maybe accidentally creating) myths. Useful shit. But noooooo... I’m just bitching about sex. I wept into my cups that day. And then the following day I resigned myself to my unfortunate reputation. I figure, there as worse things on this internet than being known as the mama railing against bad sex, no? I don't even have to issue a disclaimer any more, not if you deviant buggers read sex whenever I write, even when I write about the most nonsexual things. It's brilliant. Troubling, but brilliant. To wit...

If what I keep reading on the interwebs is to be believed, there are way too many people out there having bad, nay, tragic sex. Sex that involves pleasuring only one party. Sex that involves more exertion than may actually be necessary, all in an attempt to be freaky. Sex that involves pretending to be the person the other party desires, rather than who you really are. Sex that does not involve any connection save for the mandatory touching of genitals. Sex without intimacy. Sex that does not involve nearly enough conscious decisions. Sex that involves coercion, which may then no longer be sex, but rape. If what I keep reading is to be believed, there are people out here, many people it seems, who think sex is a way to get one over someone else, a way for them to get what they want by any means necessary.

How the hell did we get here?

Because it's the second day of my official Christmas break (woohoo!) and this post is intefering with my Dr Who marathon, I’m going to skip all the scientific research mumbo jumbo and skip right ahead to the list, a list, I might add, I suspect I’ve already written before in all its many variations. This is the year end summary of all things sex. Ready?

1. Pleasure must be mutual.

For fuck’s sake, stop being so bloody selfish in bed. You man, if you think pounding the woman for five minutes till you come is sex, you need to buy a plastic vagina and leave the real women alone, yes? Just nod. If you do not:
a. kiss her (all over, for the record, not just on her lips),
b. play with her boobs, where play involves hands and mouth, and maybe stubbly chin if she goes for the whole sandpaper effect on her skin,
c. stroke her back and/or belly and/or thighs and/or toes,
d. eat or finger her damn pussy, and/or ass if she goes for that too (please ask first),until she comes,
then you have no business inserting your business end into hers. Comprende?

And you woman...yes, you...the same applies to you, only swop out d. for suck/lick his dick and/or balls, and/or ass if he goes for that too. And throw in a quick lick or suck of that spot at the top of his hips, where there’s a dent in his body. I don’t know if it works for all men, but some men apparently has a loose nerve lurking therabouts that seems to do the trick for them. What? I read that in a Cosmo once. It's never worked for me and mine, but who knows? I told you this won’t be scientific, figure it out for your own damn self.

Bottom line, pleasure is mutual, which means both (or more, no?) parties have to be satisfied.

2. Freaky sex isn’t necessarily the best sex.

Cunnilingus or fellatio, or analingus, is not for everyone. Neither is doggy style, or reverse cowgirl. And you know what? That’s perfectly fine. Not every woman has a yearning for sex outdoors, or a 50 shades fantasy. Not every man wants to be tied up and flogged. Not everyone wants to have a threesome. The way they tell it, online at least, if you’re not having sex 3 times a day in all manner of positions or with all manner of implements, then your sex must be crap. Nope. Not even remotely. Sex is as personal as the individual having it, so do what makes you happy. Yes, I know that making someone else happy makes us happy, but you can only accommodate so far, no? Once it becomes a case of you pretending to be someone you’re not, especially when freakiness is the issue, then maybe it's not worth it.

This sounds odd coming from me, I’m the one always pushing you to try new things, but after seeing (reading, mostly on twitter) what people are doing in the name of sexual liberation, I’ve come to embrace the more conservative amongst us. That’s not to say I’ve become more conservative, hell will freeze over first, but even I have limits, and I’m no longer ashamed to admit it. Be as freaky as you want. Or don’t. Anyone who has a problem with you needs to walk on by, yes? Yes.

3. Seriously though, sex is supposed to feel good.

With the exception of the kinkier end of the spectrum where discomfort is part of the sexual experience and feeling good is somewhat more complicated (remind me to write that post one day, when I'm properly toasted ideally), sex is supposed to feel good. Really, really good. That’s kinda the whole point. So if you’re out there having sex with a man who doesn’t take the time to get you aroused enough before he shoves it in (ouch!), or if you’re shagging someone who’s a bit rough on your parts and you don’t like it (men and women alike have just crossed their legs after recalling a particularly unpleasant memory), or if you’re fucking someone who makes you feel like crap (before, during or after), then don’t fuck with them, again. It’s supposed to feel good. On this one aspect, you cannot compromise.

4. Unless you are a prize arsehole, you will make some sort of connection. Deal with it.

Proponents of casual sex are staring at me with one eye. Feelings types are getting ready to hoist me on my own petard. I’m about to disappoint you both. This is not a warning against no strings sex, go right ahead, I said some sort of a connection, not love or happily ever after, a connection. It’s built into good sex, great sex even more so.

The way I see it, sex is simply about getting yourself off, it’s wanking with audience participation. Good sex is about getting each other off, it’s more interactive, there’s give and take, I do you then you do me and then we do...us. Great sex, however, is about pleasure, not just getting off, the act is as important as the end result.
Viva la Revolución! Or not.

Yes, I quoted myself, but only because I think that was one of the most profound things I’ve ever said. Clearly, I’m biased.

Tell me, how on earth do you propose to get someone else off without making even the most basic connection with them? So how then do you turn around and claim intimacy-less sex could possibly be good? Do you see my point? You don’t, but I put it the list so I can refer you back here if and when you do something foolish.

5. Sex is a conscious decision.

We all like to have a slightly (or very) drunk roll in the hay from time to time, at least those of us fond of the tipple do. Alcohol lowers inhibitions, makes it...I’m not sure easier is the right word, but it fits...alcohol makes it easier for us to let our guard down, doesn’t it? Thing is, and this is where the complications arise, sex is something we choose to do, consciously. I need to repeat that. We choose to have sex. We don’t stumble into bed randomly, or accidentally land on a penis, we choose. Alcohol, or drugs, impairs our ability to make decisions.

See, it’s one thing when this drunk sex is being had between two people who already have a sexual relationship, the decision to have sex may already have been made, but what of people who are not already shagging? And what about random acts thrown in under the influence, acts you may not have agreed to prior, but now that you’re not thinking too clearly, well, shit goes to fuck? Even worse, what about the idiots out here who deliberately use alcohol to get laid? The moment alcohol is used to reduce or remove someone’s ability to make that decision, it’s no longer consensual sex, for the simple reason that they can’t consent, not with a clear mind.

For those of you still clinging to the idea of sex via intoxication, I read this analogy a few weeks back, if someone is too drunk to drive, you probably shouldn’t have sex with them. Operating heavy machinery and such like. Ahem.

Folks, I don’t know what else I can say at this point to convince you (them?) that sex is neither pointless sport nor competition. That’s not to say sex can’t be playful (it should be), or that trying to win at sex is a bad thing (we all love prizes, no?), but our obsession with winning at all costs is detrimental to the quality of our sex lives. Put differently, quality over quantity. And quality for both parties involved, not just you and your own genitals. How hard is it to understand that your lover’s pleasure should matter just as much as your own? That your lover’s desires, or lack thereof, are as central to the sexual experience as your own? That (great) sex is about getting naked, truly naked, sans bullshit and trickery, your own included?

I'm done bitching. Be safe, be careful, be gentle with each other.

38 (and a half).

2015-12-27T20:59:00.001+03:00

Yup, my lack of mojo was so great I let my birthday pass with no fanfare. I also let the four year anniversary of the blog slide on by, but given that I wasn’t blogging that seemed only right, no? We shall all nod sagely and get back to the birthday storo. I didn’t do much of anything for my birthday this year, no elaborate meal with the clan, nothing but another day at work with a surprise chocolates from a friend far away and the lack of a not surprise dinner from a friend much closer. That’s what I best remember from the day, the disappointment at a request I made being blithely ignored by someone I thought knew better than to ignore me. See, in my old age, I know better than to be vague or coy. I told this pal o’ mine that I wanted to go out for a meal and maybe some dancing. I stated it clearly, with reminders leading up to the day. Then the day came and not so much as an sms. And when I reminded said pal two weeks later, when he stopped by my house unannounced for a loose meal, I was brushed off like a pesky child asking for sweets I shouldn’t have, reminding me that some people will never get it, get me. Said pal has since been relegated to the ranks of people I will never rely on, not even for simple shit like a phone call.

People will let you down. People close to you will let you down. That’s just the way life goes, everyone’s so busy looking out for themselves that they forget, or are simply unable, to look out for you. We all do it, and then we feel bad about it and vow to change our ways, until we do it again. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in my 38 (and a half) years of life, it’s to stop making promises I can’t keep, and to keep promises I do make. You don’t want to be the idiot no one relies on, trust me when I tell you that’s a lonely way to live.

As odd as this will sound, coming after that grand declaration, I’ve also learnt to look out for myself, selfishly. I learnt this years ago, but it’s always a good lesson to learn again, as and when necessary. Jisort. Always. If you’re lucky, you’ll always have a few people around you who are there for you no matter what foolishness you get up to, but sometimes you have to be your own survival mechanism, self preservation and such like. Sometimes, we have to get our heads out our own asses and figure shit out for ourselves. The hidden bonus in that Deepak Chopra-esque self help nonsense, in figuring out our own shit, we’re better equipped to handle other people’s. Being self sufficient makes you a better friend, or lover. Go figure.

Which then makes this next bit even odder. You can’t be too self sufficient. I know, it makes no sense, but that’s why I’m not selling this dodgy wisdom (yet). If you’re not self sufficient enough, you become a drag on the people around you. Too self sufficient, you become their mule, carrying all their loads, because you do it so well. You’re looking for the goldilocks sweet spot; good, but not too good. I know, it’s a bit of a crap shoot, but isn’t that what life is all about, shooting crap and trying to make sure none of it ends up on your shoes?

I am no philosopher, clearly.

This year is the first time in a long time I’ve felt my age. It’s partly because of the younglings I keep reading on Twitter (still the work of the devil that one), partly because of the people I’ve buried this year, partly because of the aches and pains my body has been subjecting me to lately as it contemplates the second half of it’s stint on this planet. Whatever the reason, this year, a few months ago more than now, I felt 38 years old. And it scared me. This year, I’ve felt more mortal, fragile, than ever before. It also made me more impatient. We forget how truly short life is, convinced that we’ll be young forever, 18 till we die and whatnot. 'Ha!' she scoffs. If only. Thing is, along with my newfound fear of death came the urge not to waste any more time, which is a fancy way of saying I have no time for foolishness any more. Lately I find myself speaking more frankly, with less time for niceties, and given how blunt I sometimes get that’s saying something, no? You do know I see you nodding? You buggers are so disloyal. Nkt! My lovelies, I’m disinclined to entertain foolishness, not even mine, having learnt to speak less and listen more, sometimes even listening better. I’m finally learning not to waste time listening to every opinion, under the misguided hope that it may prove magically helpful even when I'm pretty sure it won't. I now know enough to dismiss the bullshit immediately, sometimes with eloquently expressed malice and forethought to ensure it never comes back (you’d be surprised how well that works).

This is the thing about getting older, you start to understand the irritation with which older people used to treat us when we were younglings. There’s no point trying to explain this, if you’re older than me you already know this. If you’re younger you won’t get it until you do, and when you do you’ll say the exact same thing to those behind you. This is one of those ‘you have to go through it yourself’ things, time has a way of showing you that there’s really nothing new under the sun.

I sound like one of those characters in Grumpy Old Men or Golden Girls, don’t I? I do. I’m not a cranky old crone, yet, but cross me on the wrong day with some bullshit and I can be. For the record, any day is the wrong day. For further record, some bullshit is basically anything that seems to be poorly thought out and/or otherwise foolish, or anything that maligns the good name of (insert my current favourite singer of tacky pop songs). Best you can hope for is that I have enough sugar/caffeine/nicotine/alcohol in my system, mellowing me out long enough for you to make a quick getaway before I slap you. On the upside, 38 (and a half) year old me is pretty easy to ignore so...fuck it, yes?

Live long and prosper sounds like an appropriate way to sign off, but then Spock went and died this year, bless his pointy eared soul. Granted, he died after living long and prospering, but still...maybe not. I say this all the time, but this year may be the year it makes most sense, my lovelies, life is too short.

Live, love, lust, linger, lick (ideally someone else). The 5 L’s to live by, no?

I'm (not) with stupid.

2015-12-26T18:12:00.000+03:00

The thing with blogging, it’s all about habit. You get used to rambling incoherently, all day any day, often with no greater purpose than to get that ka-kick of satisfaction when you see your words on a page, and maybe a ka -like or nice comment below it. It’s part addiction, part compulsive behaviour. And then you stop. For no particular reason. And the mojo disappears almost as quickly as it appeared. Before you know it, you haven’t written so much as a ‘will revert’ email (how is that even a reply?) in months. For shame!

I’m trying to figure out how to apologise to you without actually apologising, because I shouldn’t have to apologise, because you buggers (whom I love deeply) don’t pay me to do this shit, but if I don’t apologise you’ll sit there and sulk in silence, because that’s what we do around here, sulk in silence. Yes, I’ve been sulking, and no, I don’t expect you to care, but yes, I’mma tell you all about it anyway. So why, pray tell, have I been sulking? She sighs dramatically, too dramatically (all sighs are unnecessarily dramatic, no?), I have no fucking clue. She chuckles, and has a swig of cheap ‘made for swift and debilitating intoxication’ wine.

This wine though... It’s a hand me down from posh relatives who are above these things, seeing as how they drink wine with snooty French names these days. Mind you, this cheap swill, and it really is cheap swill, has a French name, but the bottle looks like it was manufactured pale Light Industries ya Kariobangi. Which is not to demean all Kariobangi products, only the dodgy glass bottles they use for the other generation booze they produce in lethal quantities. All I’m saying is the crooked neck and dodgy cork of this bottle has me convinced that this wine is neither French nor fancy, which is how it ended up in my possession, and how I came to be typing this when I’m approximately two sheets to the wind, which is to say I’m a bit drunk. Lakini I have missed writing sentences longer than 140 bloody characters. All hail Blogger (soon to be Wordpress)! If you’ve seen me on Twitter you know I don’t tweet much, but not because I have nothing to say, it’s because I completely lack the knack of brevity. And I’m convinced the format doesn’t allow for nuance. Now you know I’m all about nuance, no? No? She takes a swig of the aforementioned cheap swill...

So, otherwise? How y’all doin’? Is your Christmas merry? Did you have a good year? Has your government been behaving itself? Have you been having great sex? Have you finally found the man/woman of your dreams? Was your bread fluffy this morning? I’m particularly interested in the answer to the bread question...

My year has been...odd. Not bad or good, just odd. Feels like it was one long out of body experience. In between serikali acting like fools and the idiot langas pretending to be press, Donald Trump and Van Gaal, a peculiar afro (on my head) and peculiar clients from hell (including the one who has me working over what should be a lovely Christmas break), a tuktuk of a car so temperamental I swear it was conceived in a Stephen King book (that bitch is trying to kill me), a depreciating shilling that’s playing havoc on Chilean wine prices at the off-licence, Avengers 2: the age of maybe they shoulda skipped right on to the third, Sauti Sol’s album cover, Sauti Sol’s album... Odd. Very odd. On the upside, however, I have now confirmed that it’s not me that’s delusional (read, possibly insane), it’s the whole damn planet that’s fucked up, all the way to Timbuktu. Timbuktu is particularly fucked up, but that’s a story for another day. The reason our collective fucked-up-ness is a good thing? I figure it’s a pretty valid reason for running a blog that continually asks, ‘What the actual fuck?’ because it occurs to me not enough people bother to ask that one most important question.

My lovelies, what the actual fuck?

When did it become acceptable for people to run around stealing, cheating and just generally screwing each other over just so they can have more money/power/sex? Worse still, when did it become acceptable to be wilfully, gleefully, arrogantly ignorant, especially in this age of damn near unlimited information a click away?

If it’s not el presidente making his umpteenth speech on his oh so grand fight against corruption even as his extremely corrupt deputy stands next to him undisturbed, it’s a recklesss government borrowing money like loans don’t need to be repaid and interest is optional. If it’s not self appointed, do gooder, saviour of the downtrodden for a fee, activist types pushing some idiotic, ill-informed campaign, it’s some self appointed knowers of all things enlightened trying to convince us that their enlightenment is the only enlightenment that’s valid, and all so they can both make a career selling, not giving, water to the thirsty. If it’s not the dodgy tenderpreneur trying to convince you he made his astronomical, obscene billions through hard work and perseverance, it’s the greasy, grabbing preacher man, or woman, or couple, trying to convince you that your money will help him, them, lead you to heaven. If it’s not the girl in the Saturday paper telling you to buy a girl shisha so you can rape her passed-out ass in your car, it’s the wanna-be (possibly not particularly well-read) sex advice twits declaring ‘Mollis’ type sex (which, for the record, sounded unnnervingly like non-consensual sex, which is rape last I checked) the ultimate in sexual misadventures. If it’s not idiots with little to no knowledge proclaiming Sepp Blatter the saviour of African football, it’s idiots with little to no knowledge proclaiming Sam Nyamweya the saviour of Kenyan football. I could go on and on and on, but for what? We know what’s going on around us, hell, some of us are actively involved in the fuckery, and by some of us I mean some of them (points over yonder), not us, us we’re perfect. Ahem. Have a swig...

Greed. Hubris. Ignorance. This explains everything from (no longer?) Sweetie of NYS fame to ‘Reverend’ Kyuna et al, through to Trump and the cock on that most idiotic album cover. (Slight detour. That I get to use the word cock in a non-sewer post is the highlight of my year. For real. Detour over.) Almost every instance of foolishness I can point to this past year has it’s roots in some variation of mendacity, borne of what appears to be a frightening aversion to knowledge. That’s what scares me most. An aversion to knowledge.

I don’t know how this happened, but these days people are strutting around not knowing shit, and proud of the fact that they don’t know shit. Rather than do a quick google to find out, an idiot would rather call you an idiot for knowing something they don’t, either that or they’ll discount your knowledge as not true knowledge, because they cannot or will not understand. In some peculiar plot twist in this reality show we call life, stupid has become cool. It’s almost as if we’re all extras in a mash-up of ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians’ and ‘News at 9’, taking selfies and clapping along to foolish antics like trained seals, all for a fish or two to keep us going. That Billy the Wailer can stand in front of us and lecture us on corruption, and he gets a 15 minute slot on the prime time news. That a girl whose claim to fame is her ass can be branded a celebrity on the front page of a seemingly serious newspaper, her and a conman preacherman. That a minister responsible for billions of shillings claims not to be responsible for how said billions were spent, including the dodgy purchase of, and this has to be a first even for our special country, a piano. And people out here are not just tolerating the idiocy, they’re revelling in it, clap clap clapping along...

This is some bullshit, man. Surreal, epic bullshit.

Does that sound depressing? It’s not meant to be, I'm far too happy (read, drunk-ish) right now to be depressed. I think accepting this pathetic state of affairs in the first step in our recovery. I think we need to embrace the stupidity, smother it in knowledge until it chokes on it’s own saliva and dies a slow gruesome death. (Sorry, I’ve been watching serial killer TV, as is my December custom.) No more idiots who think patriotism is agreeing with everything dear leader says. No more giving the media that doesn’t seem to give a shit about accountability our hard to spare attention. No more reading silly little fuckers, and I use this term most loosely, 'writing' idiotic opinion pieces in the papers designed to offend us. No more modern day quacks/shamans claiming to cure us from all manner of ailments, spiritual or emotional, or sexual for that matter. No more saviours looking to make money off our misery. No more enlightenment that comes bundled with scorn for the unenlightened. No more twats who think sex is a hasty transaction, or a drunk one, or a hasty drunk one. In fact, no more twats who don’t think about their sex, and by association yours. No more stupid, my lovelies.

With that in mind (of course there’s a reason for this rant, oh ye of little faith...), I propose to end the year as it began (even as I prepare to move to a new house), with 7 posts in 7 days. Or 5 posts in 7 days. Or maybe 3 posts in 7 days. We’ll see how it goes.

Happy holidays.

Love at first...shag?

2015-09-07T22:35:00.001+03:00

I'm not often at a loss for words. I am often gobsmacked by unexpected brilliance, but that's the whole point of brilliance, to smack you across the face and make you sit up and take notice. That's not what I'm talking about. I mean I am rarely struck dumb. Come now, I have too much to say, on damn near everything, irrespective of whether or not I actually know anything about anything. So you can imagine my surprise last week when a reply from Ann* left me speechless. This is not an exaggeration, for the record, I truly had no response to what she said...

I asked:

My next question should then be, did you shag with him with the idea that it could possibly blossom (always wanted to say that) into a relationship, or was it simply a shag because you both wanted to and could? For the record, either answer is perfectly acceptable (\o/), I'm just trying to get a better idea of where your head is/was at. Did you talk about relationships prior to the shag?

She replied:

I prefer my hook ups to bloom into relationships. I have been accused of reversing the process, hookup-> relationship instead of relationship->hookup.

It took me three days to formulate a basic reply, in my head:

Eh?

And why, you ask, was I struck dumb? If you've read any of my sewer tales you may have picked up on my, umm, aversion to looking for love in between the legs of another. I've said it, many times, don’t have sex as a means to the end that is love. So for me to find someone who is a firm believer in said practice here, on my front page no less... It's like I stumbled upon a pink unicorn in my living room. “What in the actual fuck?” I exclaimed, Katt Williams expression on my face. Understand me, it's not that I object to this choice, whatever rocks your boat is my motto, no? It's that I don’t understand how she ended up here, amongst the deviants looking for a good shag and not much else.

Eh?

Incidentally, how many more of you unicorns are out here lurking in my closets? Reveal yourselves... No really, reveal yourselves, I'm curious. I am, really. I won't give you a hard time, this is more of an educational head count, for me, she adds, looking away in what can only be described as a very suspicious manner.

Looking for some education
I made my way into the night
All that bullshit conversation
Baby can't you read the signs?

I won't bore you with the details baby

I don't even want to waste your time
Let's just say that maybe
You could help to ease my mind
Baby, I ain't Mr. Right

But if you're looking for fast love...

After a couple of days, the shock wore off and I got to thinking, perhaps I'm too jaded (I am, no?). What if casual sex really can lead to a meaningful relationship, love, happiness, all that stuff? My first impression was this may be an age thing, where younglings shag first and stick around long enough to ask questions later, and the older you get the more hesitant you become, for a myriad of reasons. That theory made sense for about two minutes, until I recalled having a conversation with someone older than me about their messy relationship with an idiot who was originally supposed to be just a one night stand. It's clearly not an age thing. My next theory was even better, it's that we've gotten more liberal, sexually, thus we're having more no strings sex even as we still look for strings. Problem with this theory, if we're looking for strings, then doesn’t that mean the sex automatically is not no strings sex? Put differently, if you have no strings sex, and then catch feelings and want the bloody strings, was the initial sex really sans strings? Does it matter, in the grand scheme of things? That, my lovelies, is today's 67 bob question.

I have to issue a disclaimer at this point and state my bias upfront: I think this is all bollocks. Bollocks. I'm writing this post with one eye, which is to say I'll be shaking my head vehemently, scoffing at the scientists and 'It worked for me!' essays I shall no doubt have to quote. Wait, don’t click off in a huff just yet. Inasmuch as I am not a believer, this is the one time I will be extremely happy to disabuse myself of a few misguided notions, if only so I can have more sex with new people, instead of wasting time on silly preliminaries like tedious questionnaires, plans and such. There's also the possibility that I'll finally prove to all you unicorns (I see you...) once and for all that the horn thingi on your foreheads is an illusion. Win/win either way, no? Probably not.

Because I know there is that one genius smartass who'll rock up pale chini and start a discussion on the proper meaning of 'casual sex', definitions.

Wikipedia takes romance out of the equation:

Casual sex are certain types of sexual activity outside of romantic relationships that imply an absence of commitment, emotional attachment, or familiarity between sexual partners. Examples are sex in casual relationships, one-night stands, extramarital sex, prostitution, or swinging.

My problem with this definition is the absence of attachment or familiarity bit, because that implies that casual sex can only be had with a stranger. Also, lumping one night stands and prostitution together is not helpful, but maybe that's just me.

Urban dictionary makes it simpler, as always:

Having sexual contact with another person with no plans on furthering a long term/committed relationship with that person.

Simple, no? Sex without future plans. Sounds about right.

Or not, as the lovely shrinks at Psychology Today explain:

Because human sexual behavior(sic) is so various, the phrase "casual sex" turns out to be a most treacherously roomy category. Casual sex" applies indiscriminately to one-night stands, playful sex with a friend-with-benefit's, exploratory sex with an acquaintance or roommate. It describes some sex between long-married couples, some open marriage encounters and masturbation (with or without porn or phone sex). It can be accurately applied to sex-junkets in colonized countries, adventures arranged on Web dating sites or swingers clubs...

(Random question, what the hell are 'sex-junkets in colonized countries'? Every so often I suspect some of these wazungus I read are undeclared racists. Don’t laugh at me, these buggers are devious, hiding their imperialist tendencies under a cloak of advanced knowledge. That was a detour.) The gist of that article is simple, your definition of casual sex depends almost entirely on your personal bias, which in turn means that what I consider casual sex may not be what you consider casual sex, which in turn means any definition I attempt here will be subject to lengthy discussion with aforementioned smartass in the comments section. I know, the shrinks always complicate everything.

Casual sex is an umbrella term that encompasses many forms of sex that are similar in the fact that they do not involve committed relationships. This can include one night stands, friends with benefit's, and swinging. Other terms that are used to desribe(sic) casual sex are no strings attached sex and hooking up.

This is the definition I'm using today, from the sexy people over at Kinkly, sex minus commitment. This covers everything from Friday night fungas to booty calls to Freddie Jackson 'Rock Me Tonight' sex with the ex to your biannual orgy with six of your closest friends; it's all casual, until flags are planted and declarations are made. Yes? Yes.

Now as it turns out, the term 'hook up' is not synonymous with casual sex. I assumed it was, but apparently the Americans who coined the phrase insist it isn’t. From the earlier Wikipedia page:

A hookup (colloquial American English) is a casual sexual encounter involving physical pleasure without necessarily including emotional bonding or long-term commitment; it can range from kissing (for example, making out) to other sexual activities. Hooking up became a widespread practice among young people in the 1980s and 1990s. Researchers say that what differentiates hooking up from casual sex in previous generations of young people is the "virtual disappearance" of dating, which had been dominant from the postwar period onwards. Today, researchers say, casual sex rather than dating is the primary path for young people into having a relationship.

Where I assumed that the hook up meant no strings sex, and it sometimes does, it might be that same hook up is this generation's (I mean people in their teens/20's right now, the generation that grew up with FM radio, yaani, not me) way of getting to know someone, i.e. dating, but without the date.

Yes, I can see my flawed theories beginning to tumble down. Stop smirking.

Looking for some affirmation
I made my way into the sun
My friends got their ladies
They're all having babies
I just wannna have some fun

I won't bore you with the details baby

Gotta get there in your own sweet time
Let's just say that maybe
You could help to ease my mind
Baby, I ain't Mr. Right

But if you're looking for fast love...

Despite this definition, I can't help wondering if perhaps they've got it wrong. Thing is, older people inevitably try to impart their own meaning when they don’t understand what's going on. That's why all the magazines now have way too long articles on how 'hook-up culture' hurts young people, young women in particular, often along the lines of 9 Ways The Hook-Up Culture Is Ruining Love As We Know It (don’t bother with that list, unless you're sanctimonious and/or prudish). It's not that us geriatrics oppose casual sex, or that we didn’t do it in our misguided youth, it's just that (cue melodramatic clutching of pearls) we think it's making these kids numb to real relationships (gasp!).

Shock on us oldies, then, when research shows us that:

Millennials have fewer sexual partners than their parents’ generation.

Specifically, boomers had an average of 11 sexual partners as adults, whereas those born in the ’80s and ’90s had eight. Gen-Xers, who came in-between, had an average of 10 lays.

Yup, younglings are less freaky than my geriatric ass. Woobloodyhoo. Unrelated, this explains so much...

Casual sex can have psychological benefit's ... if you like casual sex.

“If you’re the sort of person who likes casual sex, then having casual sex will probably make you feel better about things. If you're not, it won't.”

Sounds legit, no? Wait for the best bit...

'Hookups' can turn into meaningful relationships, study suggests

Relationships that start with a spark and not much else aren't necessarily doomed from the get-go, new research suggests. Couples who became sexually involved as friends or acquaintances and were open to a serious relationship ended up just as happy as those who dated and waited.

I can see all my unicorns doing a wee dance of joy right now, smug rainbow-tailed bastards...

My people, turns out I've been wrong all along. You can find love in between the legs of another:

In an analysis of relationship surveys, UI sociologist Anthony Paik found that average relationship quality was higher for individuals who waited until things were serious to have sex compared to those who became sexually involved in "hookups," "friends with benefit's," or casual dating relationships. But having sex early on wasn't to blame for the disparity. When Paik factored out people who weren't interested in getting serious, he found no real difference in relationship quality. That is, couples who became sexually involved as friends or acquaintances and were open to a serious relationship ended up just as happy as those who dated and waited. [emphasis mine]

"We didn't see much evidence that relationships were lower quality because they started off as hookups," said Paik, an assistant professor in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. "The study suggests that rewarding relationships are possible for those who delay sex. But it's also possible for true love to emerge if things start off with a more 'Sex and the City' approach, when people spot each other across the room, become sexually involved and then build a relationship."

Before you start waxing romantic, read the fine print...

So if not the context of sexual involvement, what is behind the lower quality scores for relationships initiated as hookups? Paik points to selection: Certain people are prone to finding relationships unrewarding, and those individuals are more likely to form hookups.[emphasis mine]

"The question is whether it's the type of relationship that causes lower quality or whether it's the people," he said. "The finding is that it's something about the people."

People with higher numbers of past sexual partners were more likely to form hookups, and to report lower relationship quality. Through the acquisition of partners, Paik said, they begin to favor(sic) short-term relationships and find the long-term ones less rewarding. It's also likely that people who are predisposed to short-term relationships are screened out of serious ones because they don't invest the time and energy to develop long-term ties, Paik said.

What they're saying is the nature of the relationship depends on the people in said relationship. Sounds obvious, but it's not always that clear, is it? Simply put, odds are either you or your casual partner, or both of you, are uninterested in commitment, which is how you ended up casually shagging to begin with. Which means, there's no guarantee that casual sex will become anything more, not unless both parties are actively looking to get into something more meaningful. I clarify this bit because it's often the cause of possibly the number one agony aunt question in this age of random shags, “I've fallen for my fuck buddy/friend with benefit's/no strings shag, what do I do?”

But if you're looking for fast love
Fast love in your eyes
It's more than enough
Had some bad love
Some fast love is all that I've got on my mind...

I figure if anyone knows anything about casual sex, then it's George Michael. One could even argue that he is intimately acquainted with the ins and outs of the random shag. Ahem. He also knows a fair share about unrequited love, and love that doesn’t work out as planned, if his music is anything to go by.

In the absence of security

I made my way into the night
Stupid cupid keeps on calling me
And I see nothing in his eyes...

Listen, I'm usually quite happy to take the scientists at their word, but not today. If there's one thing I've learnt in this my peculiar life, it's that casual sex is just that, casual. That doesn’t mean it's bad, or meaningless, or boring, or something to avoid, it's just casual. Frankly, I think that's what makes it so good, when it is good. (When it's bad it's always the twat's fault. Default position unless proven otherwise, yes? Yes.) Thing is, this is what works for me and my issues, so feel free to ignore me and do your own thing. Can't hurt, can it?

Can you form a relationship from a random shag? It would appear so. Does it matter how the relationship began? It would appear not. Will said relationship last? That's entirely up to you, my lovely little unicorn.

Introducing...Ann*. Again.

2015-08-24T13:00:00.001+03:00

Ladies and gentlemen, she's back and she has a new man, which of course means new muchene. Woohoo! Given how hectic the comments section was on her last post (if you didn't read them, you really should, buggers went above and beyond. Hell, songs were quoted...), I don't think I need to waste your time with elaborate explainers or disclaimers. Read, enjoy, discuss at length...

We are in an open relationship.

When I went to pick Brian up from the stage, I was literally thunderstruck by his looks. He is just too good looking. He took away my power of speech, 6ft tall and golden, dressed in casual shorts and a sports vest. I hadn’t realized he was this handsome before. Let me back up a little.

I met Brian at sporting event; he came with his group of friends and I had come my with group of friends, and afterwards we all had dinner and drinks together, friended each other on Facebook and went our separate ways. He didn’t particularly stand out then, but later we started talking on Facebook inbox.

May I take a detour here to illustrate how not to pick up a girl on Facebook? The other day, I changed my profile picture to one where all the good angles of my face are shown, you know the picture where you get the photo filters and your expression just right. It got over 100 likes. So I was not surprised when I received an inbox from one of the many strangers who are my friends on Facebook.

I was abroad the time so I sent him the link, knowing he would have to board a few planes to arrive at my destination.

I lost interest at this point (and I believe in honesty so I told him) but anyway, is this how easily men get lunch invitations? All you have to do is say, “You look good,” and the lady is just ready to cook you lunch.

Back to Brian.

Our conversation on Facebook was of course mundane, but interesting. It just naturally meandered to topics of mutual interest, neither of which was lunch or Langata, and a date was set to watch football one Sunday evening at my place as I have quite a sizeable 42 inch screen.

I honestly hadn’t thought beyond a mutual friendship until that afternoon, I wasn’t even sure I was picking the right person but he was the only one at the stage! He got into the passenger side, said hallo and I mumbled something back. I was going to stop by Uchumi for some beer and snacks, he’d brought some whiskey with him. On the way there, I almost caused an accident, I was completely distracted from my driving. I hadn’t seen the red light at the roundabout and so joined the traffic blindly, almost getting hit on the right by a car that was exiting the roundabout. I had to tell myself, Ann, eyes on the road, eyes on the road, calm down, breathe…but in spite of my erratic driving we made it home in one piece.

Another friend joined us and we drank beer and watched the game, then the friend left and it was just the two of us. It was past midnight, way past the last matatu operating hours, so like a good host I offered Brian a place to sleep. I didn’t want to drive tipsy, I had been erratic enough sober. I live in a one bedroomed place so I dragged the spare mattress to the sitting room and readied it.. sheets and blankets and pillows. I was going to take a shower before sleeping but Brian wanted to take one too, so I let him go first because he’d probably be quicker.

When he came out of the bathroom I caught my breath, again, at the sight of him, towel around his waist. I know some women say they can’t date a man who is lighter skinned than them, but I don’t mind light(sic)-skinned guys, in other words I don’t mind colour(sic) at all. Brian is super fit and athletic, he was rubbing his hair in a nonchalant way telling me, “The bathroom is all yours now...” When I came out of the shower, he was still lounging on the mattress shirtless, he smiled at me, our eyes locked, and suffice to say I never made it back to my bedroom.

Later in the week, the friend who had watched the game with the both of us asked me about Brian and I… I told him, um, you know nothing much going on there. He told me good, because I know Brian’s girlfriend. Just check on Facebook, it’s there.

Blood was rushing to my head and I was of course mostly in denial like, no way... I have seen his Facebook page several times. When I went back however, one particular girl stood out, they were together in a lot of photos at a lot of events. There was no need to make assumptions, I immediately opened Whatsapp and typed a quick, “Hey, how are you?” When he replied, my next question was, “Is Karen your girlfriend?”

“We are in an open relationship.

“We are currently seeing other people as things are a little strained at the moment. To be fair, I probably should have told you earlier, I’m sorry. We can talk about it next time we meet.”

I thought this is insane. Open relationships, like 3somes, are things we read about in magazines and on internet blogs, but we don’t do them in real life. Or do we? Before Brian I had never met anyone in an open relationship. How do you like someone and you don’t mind them getting it on with other people? He told me they don’t tell each other, you don’t ask, you don’t tell.

I was about to start asking more questions, like, so when did this happen? Why did you decide to have an open relationship instead of just breaking up? And he was like, do you really want to know? I thought about it and responded, “No actually, I don’t.” I want to feel those arms around me and touch that firm chest and feel the six pack and enjoy the friendship that comes with no strings, if there is such.

It is very easy to over think this. I think in this open relationship thing, I am the “open” (no pun intended), and the girlfriend is the “relationship”, and I can’t help but wonder how many of us girls are in the “open” group? Now every time I see a Facebook post where he is tagged with a girl I can’t help but wonder… Of course I shouldn’t wonder, it doesn’t bother me that much but I am new to this and I don’t know many of the rules of open relationships. I just know I shouldn’t ask, and I shouldn’t tell. This means that I too am free to meet up with whomever I feel like, whenever. This can go on until everyone in the world is in an open relationship with basically everyone else… I am totally confused.

A ping arrives on my phone. It’s a Whatsapp from Brian.

“Hey, you free tonight.”

Life isn’t about overthinking things. It’s about taking chances at happiness. My body remembers his touch.

“Sure.”

I drop him a PIN of my exact location so he doesn’t have to call me for directions every few minutes.

If you read this blog, what’s your experience/opinion on open relationships? Any advice for this novice?

Blogging 401: It's been a minute...

2015-08-21T22:27:00.000+03:00

I know, I know... What can I say? I should probably start off with a lengthy apology, accompanied by a suitably lengthy explanation as to my whereabouts for the past 7 months, but what's the point of wasting time on pointless formalities? Better to get on with it, yes? Yes. To wit...

I love You Tube. I mean I really, really, REALLY love You Tube. For someone who grew up with one TV station that operated from 4:00 pm (2:00 pm on weekends) to 11:00 pm every day, with next to no music on screen save for the odd 30 minute show once a week, You Tube is the MTV I never had. All the songs I grew up with, live in technicolor, all at my fingertips. It's brilliant. Brilliant, I tell you. The only drawback is (and this isn't really a drawback, more my general discontent with all things), these musicians I loved back in the day look nothing like I thought they would. I was watching a Commodores video the other day that pretty much ruined 'Sail On' for me, forever, what with their unseemly groin thrusting in what I thought was a song of romantic longing. Dude...she peers over her glasses...why you gotta hold the mic like that? On the up side, I now have a keen fascination with wind sailing. Yay! I don't, for the record. Now the best part of You Tube is finding a clip of a live performance of a song you absolutely love. See, it's one thing to know the album version, in and out, but it's another thing to see it performed live. Think about the last concert you attended and how you felt hearing, and singing along, to that song you've been obsessed with; the vocals may not have been as perfect as the album cut and the music arrangement may have been different, but still you loved it, maybe even loved it more than the now seemingly sterile version on your player. That's the beauty of live music. All my life I've been sulking over all these great musicians I'll never get to see in person, but no more! I have...wait for it...the interwebs. Cue sound of heavens opening...

What? Don't look at me like that, you cocky youngling, you have no idea what life was like without everything a click away. This shit right here is truly revolutionary. Take it from someone who listened to AM radio, in mono. I wish I was kidding.

So there I was, listening to the aforementioned Commodores song, and the suggestions panel on the right had Al Green. Now you know I have great love for the Rev, and You Tube knows that too, seeing as how he's on almost all my playlists, hence the suggestion. I should have known better, but clearly I don't, I clicked on the link and proceeded to spend an hour watching the same song, in different clips. I haven’t been that happy since I found those Hoda queen cakes at the petrol station a few months ago (don’t judge me, those little cakes are bite sized morsels of joy, soft and fluffy, aaahhhh...). Those clips of Al Green performing 'Let's Stay Together', from Soul Train back in the day through to a talk show in London 5 years ago, those clips became my own little world tour; skipping from a swaying dance floor to a swanky night club, from the glitzy Grammies to the always raucous Apollo; the Rev morphing from bare chested, deliciously sweaty crooner to soul man in requisite shades to three piece suited preacher-man; the song shifting from mellow ballad to raunchy falsetto to gospel call and response to salsa funk and back to mellow ballad. In those 60 minutes, I realised there's a version of this song, and the Rev, for every occasion. It's like I discovered him all over again, bless his truly genius soul.

I'm half tempted to stick in each and every one of these clips here, I've found 14 so far, but I suspect if I do one of you might actually slap me (by way of a harsh comment). What I will do is stick in the ones that struck me most. Bear with me, there is a reason for this music geek moment.

Before we do the live versions, the album recording, for reference purposes.

Laid back, no? It's almost like he's caressing the words as he sings, all gentle like, very mellow, very unlike what's typical in soul music. As it turns out, how he sang the song was very deliberate...

"I'm in here trying to blow the studio top off," Green says, "and Willie kept saying, 'No, just say it.' I'm going, like, 'I think I need to just muscle up and sing it.' He said, 'Don't try to handle the song, Al. Just let the song happen. Just let it happen. Just let it ooze out and let it — that's right.' "

"I wanted this golden voice on it, and he kept giving me somebody else's voice," Mitchell says. "And that's why we just kept going over and over and over and over again. Yeah. When he nailed it, I said, 'That's the one.' "

'Let's Stay Together'

Now compare that gentle with this live performance, a few years after it's release...

It's a concert performance, he's shirtless and sweaty (hello reverend...), and a bit less restrained, which in turn means the song has a bit less mellow to it and a bit more of the longing/urgency we've come to associate with R&B. And yet he still manages to keep the song quiet.

Fast forward 15 years, the song evolved into funk...

...and gospel celebration...

At this point the song had already become a soul anthem, which is what made this my favourite clip of the afternoon...

Do you see/hear how the Apollo reacts? I don’t care what anyone says, there is no way you weren’t getting down when you watched this, not if you love this song, not unless you're a bloody...say it with me...philistine.

Don’t worry, I haven’t been gone from the blog so long that I actually think you buggers play these thingis. I know you're sitting there reading this with one eye and wondering when, or if, I'll get to the point of this little two step down memory lane. Patience, grasshopper, I'm getting there.

Why, oh tell me, why do people break up,

Then turn around and make up,

I just can’t see…

You’ll never do that to me, would you babe,

This song has been on the soundtrack before, way back in 2012. I wrote a post about blogging, more accurately about no longer blogging. I was giving myself a long winded woiyee, such as I do, to mourn what seemed to be the end of blogging by people I loved reading. It was a bit of a bittersweet post, as was the version of the song I used, Ms Tina's (still the most excellent) cover (on the soundtrack). As fate would have it, I ended up in the rut I spoke of, the 'cant blog, won't blog' rut. Now I'd love to tell you there was some brilliant reason behind it, but there wasn’t, not really. I just woke up one day and realised I had nothing to say. No, that's a lie, a shameless one at that. I had lots to say, I just couldn’t be bothered to say it. I was tired, 'I feel it in my bones' kinda tired. See, what they don’t tell you about blogging, ideally before you start, is what happens when you go digging in the recesses of your mind, digging up shit that perhaps shouldn’t be dug up. That shit starts to fuck with your mind, slowly making you even more neurotic than you are (yes, that is in fact possible). It gets to the point where all you want to do is curl up in the foetal position and eat chocolate, without thinking, or over analysing, or picking every little thing apart looking for some godforsaken answer that will in all likelihood never help your life in any way. It becomes a bit much, is all I'm saying, makes it hard to do this blogging thing.

And then I heard a song that reminded me of this my baby, and I read the old post, and now here I am clawing my way out of the strange, self-indulgent rut.

Good personal blogging is, to my mind, honest above all else. Not honest in the sense of 'thou shalt not lie', everybody lies, it's simply a matter of omission or commission. I'm talking about honest in the sense of unvarnished truth. The good, the bad and the ugly. I've always told myself that there is no point to any tale if I'm only telling you the shiny-happy bits and I can only hope I've managed to keep to my word, this in my attempt to be a good blogger. From the conversations I've had about the blog during my time away, conversations with disgruntled readers (these buggers can lecture like you wouldn’t believe, you'd think they'd paid a subscription or such like, greedy so and so's), turns out what I considered 'the ugly' is a large part of why they, and possibly you, kept coming back here, week after week. Well, that and the sex stuff. Fine, mostly the sex stuff, dammit. I'll admit, the not so shiny bits are harder to write, and read, but let's face it, without them, this would be one long soliloquy about songs that make me happy. Wait, most of these posts are long soliloquies about songs that make me happy, no? Sorry, my bad. I lie, again, I'm not sorry.

According to my uber opinionated audience sample, the best part of the blog for them is the part I struggle with most. Thing is, I stopped blogging because I was tired of having all of you (pointing at all 8 of you) in my house (taps head), poking about, moving things around, making tea at odd hours, drinking my booze, leaving a mess behind for me to clean up. That's what happens, see, I climb into yours (tap your own head) and you climb into mine. Does that sound creepy? Good, it's meant to. In the spirit of being completely honest with you, I didn’t feel like being honest any more. I felt over-exposed, like I was naked in the town square and people were throwing (sometimes not too) ripe tomatoes at me. That analogy is a bit dodgy, but fuck it, you know what I mean. As it turns out, yes, I am naked in the square, but, and this is the bit that made my head spin a little, my nakedness makes you feel naked, and you like it. My lovelies, turns out we are all naked here.

I almost pulled off deep and meaningful until that last bit. Almost.

At the beginning of the post I talked about how Mr Green sang the album version of the song, all soft and mellow. In the article I pulled the quote from, they talk about the Rev learning to “let loose his vulnerable side, when the song called for it”, as opposed to singing in the 'belt it out' style favoured by musicians at the time, a style that did nothing to show off his greatest talent. “Al Green is a singer who does more with a whisper than a scream.” That was the point to all those versions I put up. In as much as he was singing the same song, over and over again, the music tweaked just so to fit his varied audience and his evolving persona, the meaning of the song never changed, and neither did the way he sang it, not really. In almost every performance I've found, that rare ability to sing gentle (even when he's singing loud) always makes the song feel personal, to him and to the people listening. Isn’t that what this particular brand of blogging, writing and reading, is all about? Our themes are constant, life and love and all the messy stuff in between, but our context is constantly changing, as we grow older, learn from our mistakes, make more mistakes, win some, lose some... I was worried that I was starting to repeat myself, getting frustrated (and sometimes embarrassed) at picking at the same issues over and over, but now I’m thinking, that's the nature of the song, no?

She shrugs and walks off in search of a glass of wine and socks...

‘Cause being around you is all I see,

So baby let’s, we outta stay together,

Loving you whether, whether,

Times are good or bad, happy or sad…

Hello, my lovelies, it's been a minute.

Introducing...Ann* (not her real name). And Tom Cruise* (not his real name either).

2015-05-23T15:09:00.000+03:00

You know your reputation is in the toilet when someone sends you a tale of bad sex, unsolicited. Why, you ask, would a lady feel compelled to do this? That's exactly what I asked her, once I was done laughing. She proceeded to point out the numerous tales of bad sex on this here blog, to which I responded, aha. Ladies and gentlemen, my lovelies, this is now, officially, where (y)our bad sex comes to die. It's bloody brilliant! Or not, who knows? Moving swiftly along. This tale; it's short, it's not sweet, it is hilarious and it's oh so sad, but only for Tom Cruise*. Ann, short for anonymous (she has no intention of sticking her name, real or imagined on this little piece of brilliance), is one of you silent lurker types who like to wander the corridors all stealthy like, apparently taking notes to use against me at a later date when I run for president (evil little buggers). This is her contribution to the sewer, a refreshingly honest take on sex between consenting adults and all (well, some) of the perils that lie therein. Don't be scared, this tale is neither crude nor rude (who knew it could be done this way?). Enjoy, then dive into what I suspect may end up being quite the raucous conversation down below (my hand is already in the air, I have muchos questions...).

Disposing of...

So I rise to go pee and in my toilet bowl, there is a used condom staring back at me. I am stunned. No, not at the condom, but at the location. Who, in their right mind, disposes of a condom in the toilet? Well, at least he didn’t flush the toilet so it is easy to wear a plastic bag, and dispose it properly. Oh wait, this hits me that he didn’t flush the toilet! Now I am wondering which is worse... is he one of those people who don’t flush the toilet after peeing? But at least the non-flushing will not lead to a clogged up pipe system in the future... So why did he just leave it there, like seriously, where does he expect it to go? Sigh. There is so much to teach this guy, I thought he was a man, but it just hit me he is a boy.

Wait, I just got a flashback. We have been walking the corridors of the workplace, and sometimes he pops into the gent’s and each time he comes out, his hands are completely dry. Which is odd because our hand driers take forever to work; there are no paper towels to be seen around! What a pet peeve! A non-flusher and non-hand washer... I should have known, but perhaps lust, like love, is like wool over the eyes of the beholder. I should have known he was a boy and not a man!

Okay this post is now becoming bad poetry so let us get to the crux of the matter. After all the preliminaries had been set aside, we set a date and time. My place. We had dinner that I had made. We started making out. The kissing wasn’t too bad, but you could tell he has been watching too many movies because, ladies and gentlemen, kisses shouldn’t start all at once unless you were out somewhere building it up and the passion is bridling. But from a banal dinner (there were no candles or such), the tension should be allowed to build. Our movie star firmly planted his mouth on mine and we could hardly breathe. Naturally matters progressed to the bed where you think, okay, slow down, but no, the scene has to act out like in a movie, clothes are being pulled off faster than the speed of light. I tried to put away my glasses safely on the table, but Tom Cruise was having none of that, on the floor they went (he, later on, stepped on them on the way to un-flush the condom). The lady received one lick of a nipple and that was all that counted as the foreplay, before our hero swiftly wore the said condom and in the same manner proceeded to thrust for at most 4 minutes. I thought he had stopped to, you know, change position or something, but no, it was over.

I guess it is partly my fault too, I should have taken control, slowed Tom Cruise down, showed him how it is done. He has potential, I think, but I don’t feel like teaching a man who is around 30 the basics of sex (you can’t learn these things from movies guys, the movies are edited!). However, I am still recovering from the trauma of a condom in the toilet, unwashed hands (I picture crawlies on unwashed hands, is it just me?), movie-star tendencies of breathless kissing and flying clothes, consequently, shattered glasses (do you know how much a decent pair of spectacles cost?), and worst of all, I still can’t get the question of “Hii ni nini?” in response to the salad that I served, the man has never had raw vegetables. Gosh, I thought that we are now all beyond the village ways and into the world of sophisticated dining, Caesar's salads et al? This is where you just ask, kai ni kii?

From now on, the get to know phase will include questions like, do you know what salad is? How do you dispose a condom? I need someone to help me wrap it all into diplomatic language. Suffice to say, there were no sleepovers that day. This post (This is about (bad) sex) should all make us better lovers, I hope. Happy sexing ladies and gentlemen.

Knocking on Heaven's Door.

2015-04-05T20:23:00.000+03:00

I don’t handle grief well. I'm not sure anyone does, but I am particularly bad at it. I alternate between wallowing in sadness for a few minutes, then I forget all about it for days, blocking it out completely. It's not conscious, I think, I suspect it's how I process loss, putting it off until I'm finally ready to deal with it. Problem is, I'm never ready to deal with it, and I don’t think I ever will be.

Mama, take this badge off of me,
I can't use it any more,
It's getting dark, too dark to see,
I feel I'm knocking on Heaven's door...

I've been working like a dog for the past couple of months. Long days, working weekends, working nights, the works. I haven’t had too much time to sit and think too much about everything that's been going on, and while part of me was happy for the distraction, part of me knew it was temporary. Eventually, Francis was going to catch up with me. That's his name. Francis. An old friend, brother almost. Our relationship was one of crass humour, brutal honesty and more alcohol than is considered wise by saner (read, sober) people. He was my brother's friend, which would make him my brother by extension, except Francis wasn’t, how do I say this, very brotherly. He was that smooth pal your brother has, the one who you were always warned to stay well away from, because he was a bit of a ladies' man (read, man whore). Stop pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about. Listen here, every woman has that friend of her brother's she crushed on hopelessly when she was a teenager, the hot one who had loads of girls. Usually said friend didn’t know you existed, being that he was older and unconcerned with the little girl making doe eyes at him, but as you got older, young adult rather than teenager, these boys/men started to eye you back, but only eye, because the bro code and such barred them from making moves on baby sisters. Didn’t stop them from flirting, that alleged code, but it almost never became more than that, did it? Wait, did it? Maybe it's just that my brother's friends that were restrained that way. Or maybe they weren't really flirting? Oh my...

I'm laughing and crying right now, picturing him laughing at my nonsense. He got my nonsense, Francis, he understood me. Yes, I am mocking myself, and he would too, if he was reading this shit.

Francis was my brother's sexy pal, the one I crushed on as an awkward 18 year old, then got to know better, properly, as a 30 something year old. He become that friend I could talk to, really talk to. He was family, but not family, close enough that I didn’t have to pretend to be anything more than I was, but removed enough that I could talk about the more intimate bits without blushing. We could talk about our personal drama in a way you simply can't with family, or even close friends; family don't need to know about the sex you had last night, no? He did. He knew about my errant escapades and my deep, dark secrets, some of them anyhow (no one knows it all, not even me). And it was the same for him, he'd talk to me about the shit going on with him, things he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, talk about with those closest to him. Like I said, he was family, but not family.

And now he's gone.

I'm getting to that part of life where we start to bury our friends, our parents, our siblings. In the past five months I've been to four funerals, three in one month. Thing is, before Francis', his was the last, the other deaths were somewhat removed from me. I was sad, but I wasn't grieving, the people close to me were. I moved on, life continuing with barely any change apart from the occasional woiyee in my head, when I remembered someone else's loss. The arrogance with which we think life happens to everyone else but us. After Francis, I continued as before, the occasional woiyee to myself, brief failed attempts at talking about it with friends who didn’t, couldn’t, understand my ramblings. I was rambling, struggling to put this strange, vague feeling into language someone else could understand, something I could label neatly and file away, a picture I could frame to look at later on when life wasn’t quite so hectic and the wound wasn’t quite so fresh. That's how I process, I file shit away, neatly.

As it turns out, grief has its own rules.

And it is seldom neat.

Fast forward a couple of months.

OGAO and my big sister have me hooked on The Voice, an American TV talent show with amateur singers and whatnot (like Idol, but without the irritating British dude in a tight t-shirt). These two evil women have slowly but surely managed to turn me into a country music...I was going to say fan, but that would be too strong...admirer. Stop judging me, country music has its charms. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly they are, but at least now I know they're there, so, progress. One afternoon a couple of weeks back, I went off in search of Blake Shelton's music (he's one of the judges on the show), this after OGAO sent me in search of his version of 'Footloose', a cover that is possibly the happiest song I've heard this year (watch it and tell me you weren't tapping your foot and grinning. I did 'The Carlton', that's how happy it made me...). Being quite impressionable and suitably smitten by Mr Shelton, and calling OGAO bad names in the process, I found a playlist of his older albums and set it on loop in the background as I pottered around the house, picking up clutter and randomly cleaning dusty surfaces, until a song came on that stopped me dead in my tracks.

You know when you hear something that cuts through all the noise in your head? It's like someone suddenly muted everything but this one noise, a voice, a melody, an instrument... I don’t have moments like this very often these days, a lot of the 'new' music I've been listening to is quite old, or a remake of something old, or something deliberately made to sound old and thus not new to my ears, not really. These days I tend to get that 'Fuck me sideways!' feeling only when I listen to unfamiliar musicians in genres that are alien to me, like metal, or rap, sometimes pop, or, as was the case that afternoon, country.

I already knew the man has a gorgeous voice, I'd been listening to him for close to an hour, but something about the lyrics slapped me still. Something about the longing, the loneliness...the sadness is almost tangible. It took me back to a conversation I had with Francis, towards the end of last year. We were in the bar up the road from my house, a ka nyama choma joint with old men watching news at the counter, and he was trying to convince me to get into country music. He absolutely loved the stuff, as does any self respecting Meru man, and to make matters worse, he lived in Texas for 10 or so years. “Country,” he drunkenly declared, “is in my blood.” He then insisted I YouTube a Kenny Chesney (or someone such like) song, proceeding to narrate the song to me, using the video, explaining the 'great emotion' (his words) in country music. We were in a bar, remember, at around midnight (it may have been closer to 2:00 am, but that’s beside the point). We argued about country until he wrote me off as a useless philistine, making me promise to go learn more the following day. I never bothered, for the record, I was content to hang on to my proud (read, ignorant) anti-country stance, partly to spite him. I don’t know what exactly it is about this song that took me back to that particular conversation, but in those three minutes all the things I'd been carefully filing away started popping out of their neat little boxes. I thought I was done grieving for Francis. I thought, for some absurd and likely arrogant reason, that I had come to terms with the fact that he was no longer here. But standing in my living room, listening to a song that eerily mimicked one of the last conversations I had with him, in said living room, well...

And I feel just like I'm living someone else's life,
Its like I just stepped outside,
When everything was going right,
And I know just why you could not come along with me,
This was not your dream,
But you always believed in me...

Last year we were both in transition, coming to terms with this age that sneaked up on us. Our individual issues were completely different, but the underlying sentiment was almost identical. The thing with getting older, in as much as you're proud of what you've achieved, most of us seem unable to shake off that picture we had of ourselves when we were young and idealistic, dreaming of a shiny happy life where our hair would never turn grey, our backs would never ache and we would never have to take jobs we detested to pay bills, hell, we would never have to pay bills period. In your 20's the world is your oyster. In your 30's the world could still be your oyster, if only (insert your choice excuse here...). In your 40's the world is an oyster, but it's definitely not yours, and it never will be. I'm not sure what the 50's bring, but from the wazees at the counter in the aforementioned bar, I suspect it has something to do with telling the oysters to go fuck themselves. I can barely wait. I'm swiftly headed out of my 30's and into my 40's and Francis was in his early 40's. We were suitably morose at our prospects, which is to say we were fond of drowning our (real and perceived) sorrows with Jack and Freddie Jackson.

Slight detour. This idiot pal of mine loved to taunt me with the fact that my Freddie is not a tall man. Useless bugger. Francis, not Freddie, Freddie is a small god in my eyes, quite literally now thanks to Francis, evil little shit. Francis, not Freddie. Ah! Do you see what he havoc he wreaked? Bloody nkt! The moral of this story, don’t fuck with my small gods, yes? Yes. Detour over.

Another winter day has come and gone away,
In even Paris and Rome,
And I wanna go home,
Let me go home,

And I'm surrounded by a million people, I still feel alone and I wanna go home,
Oh, I miss you, you know...

I was growing old with Francis. Those of you of a certain age will understand that vague statement. Friends are harder to make and keep as you get older, friends who know who you used to be, and who you are, and who you want to be. Who you've always wanted to be. Those friends are damn near impossible to find later on in life. He was one of too few friends who was willing to see all sides of me, especially the fragile, sometimes broken, always mending side of myself, the side I try my damnedest not to show. And he was one of too few friends comfortable showing me that side of himself, making me feel better about my stumbles, if only because I no longer felt alone. I miss him terribly. More than I realised. More than I can explain, despite my best efforts.

Mama, put my guns in the ground,
I can't shoot them any more,
That long black cloud is coming down,
I feel I'm knocking on Heaven's door...

Today's soundtrack, and the title of this post, is Bob Dylan's 'Knocking on Heaven's Door'. This is what got me talking about Blake Shelton. A couple of his contestants did a duet of the song on The Voice, a stunning rendition of a classic I thought I knew so well. Now I'm a bit of a weepy bastard when it comes to watching things on the TV (don’t laugh, its a genetic trait. I get it from my pa, the old man cries at the drop of a hat. For real...), but even I was surprised at my reaction to this particular performance. It was like they were singing to me, specifically. At the time I didn’t think much of it, blaming my tears (yes, I cried, and no, I am not ashamed) on my father's dodgy influence and the brilliance of the two voices I was listening to. It wasn’t until later that I realised this was the song that cracked the dam, put me in a grief frame of mind, so to speak.

Knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door...

Francis is possibly the least likely candidate for heaven I have ever known, but I figure if any misguided deviant has the balls to knock on that particular door, knowing full well he has no business up in all of that (points heaven-ward), it would be him, bless his irreverent ass.

Day 7: Asante.

2015-01-25T23:28:00.001+03:00

I have never been so happy it's Sunday evening. Not even the thought of Monday morning tomorrow can bring me down. Ladies and gentlemen, this little experiment is finally over, and the end couldn’t have come any sooner. I didn’t think I'd live to say this, but I am all talked out. Wait, that's not entirely true. I have a few choice things to say about the idiot MPs who felt the need to act like fools last night, but that can wait. Apart from that I have nothing to say. Although there was this brilliant article I read about porn addiction and how its complete bollo...no...nothing to say tonight. Tonight I let other people speak.

I present to you part of my current playlist, inspired/created almost entirely by the brilliant people I follow on twitter (while it is still the work of the devil, I've finally accepted that I have sold my soul, and embraced it. Most of it. Well, about a tenth of it. I've digressed...). I'd love to take credit for what you're about to see and hear, but save for putting them in some sort of discernible order, this list has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the kindness of strangers.

That's also a disclaimer in case you get offended by something and you feel the need to rant huko chini.

First up, Ms Eartha Kitt.

Have you ever listened to someone and you sat up straight, goosebumps on your arms, back of your neck tingling? That's what happened when I clicked play on this clip. Ms Kitt speaks with such clarity its a little frightening, no one should be this sure of themselves, right? Wrong. We should all be so lucky to know our minds this well, and speak them without fear. When I finally find the documentary from which this clip is taken, you best know I will return to this most fascinating woman.

In keeping with the theme of women speaking their minds, Ms Janet, who's been on my playlist since December.

I'm not sure how to explain just how important Janet, last name Jackson, is, I suspect I’ll have to do a separate post on her. This woman was and still is the shit. Ignore the dodgy Tyler Perry movies, her genius is almost as great as her brother's, hell, she only loses points because his voice was in a class of its own. 'You want this' is what a sexy video should look and sound like, oh ye younglings fond of girls shaking their thonged asses for the camera. I'm just saying, Nicki ain’t got shit on Janet, never has never will. Useless fact, back in the day we all wanted to look like Janet. We didn’t have the body, or the face, but we had the braids, dammit. Another useless titbit, I can still pull off the MC Lyte rap perfectly and my sister still does that kuteremka dance step like the aspiring video vixen she was back in the day. Yes, my family is a bit special.

Special, in a good way, describes this chap quite aptly...

I had never heard of dub poetry before I played this clip, now I can't get enough of it. This was a bit of a mind fuck for me, reggae plus rap/spoken word. Its gorgeous music and words that make sense. Brilliant, and so confusing to my lover's rock loving ass.

Speaking of spoken, this is my latest crush...

Smart, articulate, gorgeous, funny as hell, and she swears like a sailor. How can I resist Staceyanne Chin? I've had her playlist on in the background while I work for the past two weeks. I think I love her.

I also love these two...

This reminds me of the Whedon version of 'Much Ado About Nothing', the one in B&W. It's the rapid dialogue cum poetry, fascinates me to no end, probably because I talk quite slowly (because I think even slower). I figure if poetry reminds me of Shakespeare, good Shakespeare, and mind you I struggle with the bard, then it's a keeper. These two are brilliant.

Speaking of brilliant...

So I've been getting music lessons of sorts from these two junkies I follow, they who like to fuck up my playlist at random, because they can. Its a bit fuzzy how I ended up at Chuck Brown (it probably had something to do with Chef, the movie), but I’m glad I did. This is funk, pure unadulterated funk. As is this one...

You know how you click a link to prove someone wrong? I clicked on this because I thought there is no way it could be anywhere near as funky as he claimed it would be, its a random white dude for crying out loud. I now have all of Mayer Hawthorne's music. Woi.

I could keep going, but I suspect I’m already pushing it. One last one, to say asante, for keeping me company this week.

Thank me later.

Day 6: syn·co·pa·tion

2015-01-24T23:27:00.001+03:00

Ooh, I miss that syncopation,
I guess I'll never really understand,
She gave no indication,
that she was loving any other man...

Folks, these musicians have been lying to me all my (not so) innocent life. When I first heard this song, 'Syncopation', I thought the word meant in sync, as in, together. It's a bloody love song, for crying out loud, what else could the word possibly mean? Then I'm googling the lyrics, last year, getting ready to stick it in a post and lo and behold, that is not what the word means, at all.

syn·co·pa·tion [sing-kuh-pey-shuh-n]

noun

Music. a shifting of the normal accent, usually by stressing the normally unaccented beats.
something, as a rhythm or a passage of music, that is syncopated.
Also called counterpoint, counterpoint rhythm. Prosody. the use of rhetorical stress at variance with the metrical stress of a line of verse.

Simply put, syncopation is a general term for "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm": a "placement of rhythmic stresses or accents where they wouldn't normally occur." Wikipedia

Now I ask you, how does the man miss a disturbance? Is a disturbance not a bad thing, sir? Bloody nkt! I'm starting to wonder about his Caribbean woman now, in light of his comprehension problems, perhaps she was from Sudan or something. Don’t look at me like that, you don’t know where I’m coming from. Billy Ocean practically a small god when I was growing up. When this man sang about the mythical love zone, I was the idiot looking at his curly kit and thinking how lovely it would be to pat (dry). This man was the man! And this song was a lovely tale of longing...

When she holds me, her body does strange things to mine,
When she loves me, then I know she's one of a kind,She's really special,

She knows what good love is all about,
Ooh, yeah...

Happy love song, without a doubt. Or not. In verse two he reveals...

I can't imagine, my baby with somebody new,
Oh, no, no. I'm so confused, that I don't know what to do,
I took love for granted,
and now I'm left here all alone,
Alone and crying,
You're all I'm wanting,
so girl won't you come back home?

Clearly my attention span as a child was wanting. If I had stuck around long enough I might have realised that this was not a happy love song, more a tale of abandonment, and longing. And it was a bloody riddle.

I wrote that intro ages ago, and then I tossed it in the trash once I realised the song and the post didn’t fit together. Problem is, as with all good songs, Billy was stuck in my head, and the bloody word with him. It's such a lovely word this, syncopation. Musical, no? It got me thinking about music, and why we love what we love, what makes one song a good tune and the other a mess of sound. Don't fret my pet, this post isn’t about music, it's about dating. Why do we pick the people we pick to date? More to the point, why are we often syncopated with the people we date? (Syncopated is a real word. Yes, I saw you frowning.) Is that disturbance in the rhythm the key to a good rhythm?

Do you ever get the impression you and your lover are not in sync? I do. All the time, man. If I had to point out the one thing that went wrong in my relationships over the last couple of years it would be this, we were not in any sort of rhythm, all the damn time. Sure, there were odd moments of happy melding of mind (and body...), but for the most part I felt like I was in a reggae song and the bugger was playing classical music (I can't think of two more different genres). When I was getting excited and falling, he was getting cautious and pulling away. When I was hesitant, he was barrelling full steam ahead, scaring me off with his enthusiasm. When I was committing, he was still playing the field. Any example you can think of, odds are I’ve been there, done that, read the book, saw the movie, went to the damn theme park and bought the fucking t-shirt. And why exactly do I tend to end up with discordant partners? This is where it gets good. I’ve always believed that the best matches are two people who are happy to be together while remaining individuals. That 'and two shall become one' story has never held any appeal to me. Why would I, fully formed brilliant creature that I am (ahem) want to become part of some mutant creature with 'one heart'? Then what the hell have I being doing with my life all this time, I ask you? I should have just stayed home knitting sweaters, no? Before you laugh, I’d just like to point out that I can knit like a mother..., but I still went out and got me some other interests and skills, because that's what life is about, no? I figure, until I'm a complete person, only then will I be able to have a complete relationship.

Yeah...no.

The more complete I get, the more I find out I will never be complete. There’s no end to this growing (up), is there? I’m pretty sure I will never get to that day when I can sit back and say I’m done. Strange thing is, I’m fine with that, these days anyhow. I have to be completely honest with you, these days I love knowing I don’t have it all figured out, it means I get to keep learning, plus I can't be held criminally liable for any of my frequent fuck ups (ignorance can be a defence, if you play dumb enough, and flash some bosom). Haven’t I told you how much I love to learn? That's how I finally figured out that the complete relationship is a bit of a myth, like unicorns, only less pretty. Complete implies finished, which implies static, which implies dead. Dead relationships aren’t relationships. That analogy may have run away from me, and disturbingly fast. Moving right along. My (possibly misguided) independent streak is why I always look for similarly minded independent types, which would be great except for the minor matter of, well, independence. People who don't want to couple tend to make lousy coupling partners, if only because they don’t see the need to couple. Folks, stubborn and stubborn rarely make a good match, is all I'm saying, but dammit if it doesn’t always make for interesting matches. Troubling matches, but interesting all the same.

For those of you playing the song (all two of you), listen to this bit at 3:19 (ignore the lyrics, listen to the music)...

Ooh, how I miss that syncopation.
(Baby's found another.)
(Baby's found another.)
(She's found another lover.)
Ooh my baby.
Woooh, how I miss that syncopation...

My understanding of syncopation is that 'tripping over itself' rhythm, kinda like they're skipping beats every so often, like a scratched CD, but somehow not skipping anything. It sounds broken, yet whole. This is not a technical description, clearly, but it might be the closest analogy to the nature of relationships I've made yet. This is what my relationships feel like most times, skipping, tripping, slightly unpredictable, not entirely settled. When I was 10 years younger and much more dramatic, it was the most exhilarating feeling ever. I loved the inherent instability of the awkward pairing of two idiots who wanted to be together, yet didn’t, it made me feel blissfully untethered. These days, however, not so much. Listen, I'm all for a little disruption once in a while, but tripping all day every day? No. That requires way too much effort, effort my old ass has no time for. These days my theory is simple, if we're not in sync, then maybe we shouldn’t be syncing.

Or not.

I’m not sure.

I started this post off as an anti-syncopation ode. I was ready to declare that in the year of (y)our lord 2015, I was no longer going to date buggers who couldn’t match my rhythm perfectly, nor I theirs. To hell with this never ending quest for like minded independent (read, stubborn and unyielding) spirits, I was convinced that I was going to change my ways and become a 'one heart'-er. In this year of (y)our lord. Then I sat back and listened to Billy a couple more times. The reason this song is so brilliant is because of the syncopation, without it this would be just another bland love song, monotonous woowoowoo bullshit. Put differently, breaking the rhythm makes the rhythm better, as counter-intuitive as that sounds. See, now I finally understand why he's pining for this woman...

You see I never had a lover
who could make me over like this, like this...

Billy didn't lie to me (thank you, gods of all things R&B), disturbance is something worth pining over. Disturbance, it seems, is a good thing. Lovers don’t have to be perfectly matched, if anything they work better when they're not. Ignore everything else I may have said tonight to the contrary.

Day 4: I CAN make you love me, if...

2015-01-22T23:37:00.000+03:00

I knew if I waited long enough, and prayed to my gods hard enough, that one day someone would figure out how to make a man (or a woman, who knows?) fall in love with me. I knew this day would come, and it finally did. Strictly speaking, that day came 20 years ago, but let's not split hairs. It's official people, a couple of questions and four minutes of gazing into someone's eyes is all you need. Can I get an amen?!

As tempting as it is to use Foreigner as today's soundtrack, I shall curb my fondness for 80's pop ballads and use a 60's soul classic instead. Granted, I'm using the cover done in 1982, but it's not a ballad so...

I need love, love, ooh, to ease my mind
And I need to find time
Someone to call mine

My mama said...

Back in 1997, a couple of scientists conducted a study on close relationships, not specifically on romantic relationships, eventually creating a set of 36 questions that, when asked in sequence, create closeness between the respondents. Simply put, the questions help in bonding. Dr Aron explains (36 Questions for Intimacy, Back Story):

The basis of the 36 questions is that back-and-forth self-disclosure, that increases gradually (not too fast), is consistently linked with coming to like the other person you do this with. We just made it a systematic method that could be used in the lab. In more recent research by Harry Reis and colleagues, another factor is also proving very important - being responsive to the other's self-disclosure! These factors are important for both starting a relationship, and even more important, for its continued quality.

She then goes further to explain that this is not a recipe for love...

We had not created the 36 questions to help you fall in love. To do a good job of that we would have needed to do a study with people who, above all, came into it really wanting to fall in love, and we were not in that business!

The reason for that disclaimer is this article, causing a great deal of buzz the past two weeks, To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This, in which the author describes trying out this experiment, albeit in a more casual setting, and falling in love.

I first read about the study when I was in the midst of a breakup. Each time I thought of leaving, my heart overruled my brain. I felt stuck. So, like a good academic, I turned to science, hoping there was a way to love smarter.

You can see how I got hooked by this article, no?

I explained the study to my university acquaintance. A heterosexual man and woman enter the lab through separate doors. They sit face to face and answer a series of increasingly personal questions. Then they stare silently into each other’s eyes for four minutes. The most tantalizing detail: Six months later, two participants were married. They invited the entire lab to the ceremony. “Let’s try it,” he said.

You're loving the science too now, aren’t you? But wait...

Let me acknowledge the ways our experiment already fails to line up with the study. First, we were in a bar, not a lab. Second, we weren’t strangers. Not only that, but I see now that one neither suggests nor agrees to try an experiment designed to create romantic love if one isn’t open to this happening.

And so it came to pass that 36 questions later, plus the recommended four minutes of staring into each other's eyes, the happy couple was suitably enamoured with each other and are now in love. Aaaaawwww...

Now, the romantic in me was slightly wet of eye at the end of that article. The cynic, however, she that writes this blog, she was having none of it. '36 whatnow?' she scoffed. I went off in search of the questions, and the original study, convinced it was all a load of guff. Not so much as it turns out.

The questions are grouped into three sets of 12 questions each, of slowly increasing depth, starting off with a simple, 1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?, graduating to 13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?, with the last set starting off with, 25. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling ...” By the time you're on the last question, 36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen., you've pretty much gone past most of the boundaries you normally maintain when you meet someone new. The idea behind this is quite simple, the mutual self disclosure creates a feeling of intimacy between you. Incidentally, I can't find any reference to the eye gazing in the original study, but I skimmed through most of the methodology, so perhaps it's in there somewhere (shakes head vehemently). I'm leaving that bit out, it sounds a little creepy, even for me who loves to stare at people.

Question is, does this intimacy created by the question and answer sequence lead to attraction, or does the attraction need to be there from the beginning? Put differently, can you ask someone you like these 36 questions and get them to like you back? Come now, that's all we really want to know, isn’t it? The short answer. Perhaps. What's important is both parties have to willing to open up for this exercise to work, which then means you can't ambush that guy you've been stalking with a bloody questionnaire and expect the magic to happen. That said, assuming both parties are genuine and don't hold back, then, voilà! You'll fall in love like the author of that lovely tale, or, as was originally intended, you become friends.

The scientists issued a disclaimer at the end of their paper:

So are we producing real closeness? Yes and no. We think that the closeness produced in these studies is experienced as similar in many important ways to felt closeness in naturally occurring relationships that develop over time. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that the procedure produces loyalty, dependence, commitment, or other relationship aspects that might take longer to develop.

You can't sue them if it doesn’t work. Now you know.

You can't hurry love

No, you'll just have to wait
She said love don't come easy
But it's a game of give and take

You can't hurry love
No, you'll just have to wait
Just trust in a good time
No matter how long it takes...

Can you make someone fall in love with you?

From the NYT article:

Most of us think about love as something that happens to us. We fall. We get crushed.

But what I like about this study is how it assumes that love is an action. It assumes that what matters to my partner matters to me because we have at least three things in common, because we have close relationships with our mothers, and because he let me look at him.

I wondered what would come of our interaction. If nothing else, I thought it would make a good story. But I see now that the story isn’t about us; it’s about what it means to bother to know someone, which is really a story about what it means to be known.

It’s true you can’t choose who loves you, although I’ve spent years hoping otherwise, and you can’t create romantic feelings based on convenience alone. Science tells us biology matters; our pheromones and hormones do a lot of work behind the scenes.

But despite all this, I’ve begun to think love is a more pliable thing than we make it out to be. Arthur Aron’s study taught me that it’s possible — simple, even — to generate trust and intimacy, the feelings love needs to thrive.

Ms Catron seems to think so.

I’m inclined to agree.

Don’t look so surprised.

What they describe here is not too different from what you experience during online dating, or a holiday fling cum love affair, or a long evening with good company. That intense rush you get from getting to know someone very well, very quickly, this is what its all about, see? This is why, she wags her finger, meeting strangers on the internet is so bloody dangerous, its an experiment! Wait, no, sorry, that's my conspiracy theory gear kicking in. Ignore that bit. Seriously though, internet dating, much like all dating, is basically one long questionnaire. You start off on favourite colours and before you know it you're talking about your pet dog Simba who was run over by your father that evening he came home drunk, and all this in a matter of hours. It's the Aron experiment, on computer. Same thing happens when you have a mind fuck night, talking into the wee hours with a (former) stranger about anything and everything. The questions themselves are not the point of this exercise, what matters is the order in which these, or any other questions are asked.

Dr Aron explains:

...please know that those 36 are only suggestions. If you are going to use this approach with more than one person, or more than once with a particular partner, you may need to make up new questions so your answers don't become rote. Whatever questions you use, they should gradually escalate in personalness. If you don't want to rewrite them, you could use every third or fourth from the list of 36, one or a few from each of the three sections, but always include the ones that build the particular relationship, such as the three things you both have in common.

What she's describing is exactly what we do when dating. We ask questions to find out about the other person, the questions getting more intimate as we open up more to each other, and the questions tend to focus on finding commonalities. All this experiment does is expedite the matter, says the non-scientist with a degree in google. It also explains why we bond closely with people who, a. ask us about ourselves, b. listen to what we tell them, and c. tell us about themselves in return.

No, I can't bear to live my life alone
I grow impatient for a love to call my own
But when I feel that I, I can't go on
Well, these precious words keep me hanging on, I remember mama said...

You can't hurry love...

Bottom line. Dear Phil Collins, mama lied. Love can in fact be hurried along.

Line after the bottom line. Yes, I can make you love me, if, and only if you want me to.

Line after the line after the bottom line. I've been right all along, you foolish buggers, asking questions is the secret to love and happiness. If only you could hear me laugh my evil laugh right now... For the record, I am going to milk this story the entire year. Don’t look at me like that, this is manna from heaven, no? Exactly. I'm thinking a new Dr A series...

Day 3: On the bus...

2015-01-21T17:30:00.002+03:00

This was definitely not one of my more intelligent plans. Who the hell does 7 posts in 7 days? ‘Do we not have jobs to go to?’ she asked herself last night, as she shrugged off the fast waning urge to blog. Then I woke up this morning ashamed, ‘Surely,’ I implored myself, ‘surely you can scrabble together a random list?’ I know, it’s cheeky, but when all else fails, write a list. The interwebs is built on pointless lists. To wit…

A Not Particularly Useful List Of Things I Thought About While Sitting In Traffic Today.

1. Why are the traffic cops still controlling traffic at the roundabout, when the lights work just fine?

I’m not sure how many more times I can rant about this before I lose what little is left of my mind and stone a cop. Seriously, government of the great county of Nairobi, what the hell? Buggers installed newfangled technology and ef’thing, complete with a countdown, at great cost. And then? Just when we hit the all important critical mass of drivers obeying the lights (and no longer hooting at you when you’re the one idiot that stops at a red light, because stopping at a red light is such an insane thing to do), the cops come out and shit goes right back to fuck. Throw in the lack of parking and the CBD becomes a no go zone for drivers. Which is why I was in a bus…

2. Why is the aisle in the bus so bloody narrow?

Now listen here bus fabricator people, some of us (read, me) are slightly wider than a coin and therefore cannot slither through those little gaps you falsely label aisles. Don’t laugh at me, you try weaving through that slit carrying a huge hand bag, trying not to rub your ass in some strangers face, or decapitate another with your laptop bag, all while trying not to trip over someone’s awkwardly placed feet or (my favourite) the omnipresent gunia of whatever, and this while the bus driver is swerving in and out of whatever lane he clearly doesn’t think he should be in. But hey, it’s only for a minute or two, while you make your way to your seat. Ptuh! What seat?

3. Why, oh why, won’t other passengers make space for you (me) on the back seat?

It’s bad enough I had to squeeze my way down the entire length of the bus, but when I got there these buggers wouldn’t make space for me. These two women, irritated at my sudden intrusion (mind you, its not like I popped out of nowhere all magical like, they’d watched me walk towards them for a full two minutes, bumping and apologising my awkward way down, only for them to stare up at me blankly), these lovely women moved apart a whopping two inches, and then looked up at me with a shrug. Now I’m a laid back kinda chick myself, not looking to start nothing, but these women were looking to get smacked. The conductor is shouting to me from the front of the bus, ‘Kiti huko nyuma!’ The women are nudging the men beside them to move. An additional two inches was created. Four inches of clear space, narrower than the aisle. ‘Songa huko nyuma!’ he hollers. No further movement. He stomps down the aisle at speed (how do they do that?). ‘Boss, hii space siwezi toshea,’ I tell him, pointing at my hips, hips wider than four inches. He looks at the four inches, then back at me. He nods. ‘Kiti huko mbele!’ Stop laughing. Listen, my hips are not that wide, they're just not 4 inch skinny, dammit.

4. Why are bus seats so small though?

Those geniuses tried to make space for me. They didn’t try so hard, but they tried. Problem is, those seats are made for children. Small children. They are not nearly wide enough and they have barely any leg room. As for the genius who thought a seat that sits three was a good idea in a bus, well… The one thing I regret about the Michuki Rules and the changes they wrought was what they did to the buses. Remember the old KBS/Stagecoach buses? The bit with packing us in like sardines wasn’t good, but when the buses weren’t overcrowded they were the best thing ever. Bright and airy; comfortable seats without unnecessary accessories like head rests; an aisle wide enough to walk through without having a discussion about your hips, or ass, or boobs, or your belly (ahem); slow enough that you didn’t need a seat belt and a prayer to feel safe… Good times.

5. Have you noticed we don’t litter at bus stops any more?

I didn’t think we’d ever stop tossing our tickets wherever as we alighted. Not too long ago you knew where the stage was not by the sign but by the rubbish on the ground, and the obligatory maize seller. These days, not a scrap of paper in sight. Well, the odd scrap, but not a ticket, at least not in the CBD. Who would have thought? Perhaps now we can stop throwing crap everywhere else? No? Baby steps.

6. I don’t think those hand held scanners work.

Either that or they are finely tuned, very finely tuned. I didn’t think so either. Makes for a reassuring gesture I guess, although it gets me thinking, if the bus is jacked, or god forbid blown up, can I sue the bus company for negligence, assuming I don’t die?

7. Bus drivers have split personalities.

When I’m driving, the bus driver is the one guy I can count on to cut me off and then swear at me. When I’m his passenger, he’s the nicest fellow, happily chatting to me like we’re old friends, telling me about his kid who’s just started school, even as he’s cutting off another driver to his right, and swearing at them. Split personalities those ones. In fairness, I should point out that I may, possibly, drive as badly as he does, and I definitely swear at other drivers worse than he does, and I'm almost as charming to my passengers too, but in my defence, I already know I have several personalities all up in here (motions at hips…yes, you can nod…). Guess that means I should become a bus driver.

Day 2: What's going on?

2015-01-20T00:37:00.000+03:00

Around the time of the Mike Brown shooting, and the subsequent protests in Ferguson, I stumbled across John Legend's Marvin Gaye tribute concert held in LA. He was one of the more vocal celebrities, speaking out loudly against a system that treats black men, people, like shit, and in the process he got treated like shit (online) for his troubles. This was the backdrop to his concert, held 11 days after the shooting. The first half was standard Motown fare, the duets, all very lovely and mellow. Then he took a break and came back wearing a 'Don’t shoot' t-shirt and let me tell you, the second half was definitely not Motown (where Motown means fluffy love songs designed not to ruffle feathers). He brought out a bunch of young poets and these girls, nay, ladies… Brilliance so profound it's all you can do not to kiss the screen (I know I always say that, but watch this and tell me you didn't want to...).

This young lady says in 3 minutes what we’ve been struggling with for a year. Helplessness in the face of tragedy is the curse of our generation. We’re constantly bombarded with all manner of information, all day every day, with little we can do to change the situation, no matter how horrific it is. Like she says, 'the best I can do is tweet about it...' She was talking about America and I was thinking about Lamu.

Not long after the Mike Brown incident, we found out about our own not so little police killing, and because our cops make other cops look like amateurs, ours was even more horrific, because we are nothing if not ambitious.

Have you ever been so angry you can't speak for fear of screaming? You know that anger that gets you visibly trembling, insides churning, fists clenched, vein on your forehead throbbing, mouth twisted into a cross between a sneer and a snarl... I'm angry. I have been since August, last year. I was angry all year come to think of it, but that month I finally tipped over the edge, from angrily resigning myself to the shit that is this world we live in to seething anger at the shit that is this country I live in.

All it took was the death of a 14 year old girl...

On Monday 25^th August, the Nation reported:

The mother of a 14-year-old girl allegedly shot dead when police opened fire on a house on Saturday morning as she slept on wants the body exhumed.

Mother wants her daughter’s body exhumed

In that opening sentence, the Nation unwittingly, or perhaps wittingly (credit where credit is due, the Nation were on top of this story from the get go), encapsulated just what is wrong with our police force. They killed a child and tried to hide it.

From Tuesday 26^th...

The girl’s uncle Hussein Zani questioned the manner in which police handled the shooting after the killing of the 14-year-old at Maweu village and her hurried burial by the local administration 16 hours later. “We are still in shock and puzzled as to why the police and local chief buried her even after our objections,” Mr Zani said. He called on area chief Samson Chale to tell the family who gave him the authority to allow the burial yet the family had requested that an independent postmortem examination was done first.

But Mr Chale claimed he was a family member and he saw no reason why they should not bury the girl after the police released the body on Saturday. “I am a family member and the deceased’s mother Umazi and her husband Mwandaza attended the burial,” he said and denied receiving any complaints to stop the burial.

Slain girl’s kin to lodge complaint

Now when the chief is mentioned, you know this story can only get worse. It did. The then inspector of general things, Bwana Kimaiyo, explained what happened that night...

Our top cop claimed that the girl attacked his officers with a panga, and they responded in self defence. The County Commissioner for Kwale goes on to explain that these cops only realised they had shot a child when they took her to hospital. His tone of voice is particularly galling, but we'll come back to that later. The official version: as many as eight armed policemen storm a house, they get attacked by a person with a machete, they fire in self defence, and then rush this assailant to hospital where he, later she, dies.

From a witness account...

“We heard a commotion outside before the police officers kicked the door open. They first lobbed tear gas cannisters in the house before they entered demanding to know where my uncle was,” the boy explained. He went on: “Kwekwe jumped off the bed and told them that uncle was not in. However, they still went ahead and shot her in head. She fell on the floor.” He said the officers continued shooting even after killing her. “Then one took her and they hurriedly left with blood still oozing out of her body,’’ said a traumatised George.

His 67-year-old grandmother Grace said she heard gunshots from her house which is a few metres away. “I feared venturing out because it was raining heavily that night,” Ms Zani said. “It was later that I learnt my grandchild had been killed.” “Since we did not know where they had taken her body, we started tracing blood stains. We later found her naked body at the Kinango District Hospital mortuary,” she said. She said mortuary attendants told them that Kwekwe’s body had been found in a thicket and that her killers were unknown.

Boy tells how police shot dead cousin, 14

Have you written these men off as monsters already? Not so fast, here's another WTF moment...

“Soon after killing her, they realised I had been watching. One of them ordered his colleague to finish me,’’ said George, who was in the company of his grandmother Grace Zani. “However, the officer who was being ordered to shoot me said I should not be killed because I was too young to reveal anything. That is how my life was spared,” he told the Nation on Wednesday.

George, the witness, is 10 years old.

These cops killed a 14 year old girl and dumped her corpse in the bush. When her body was found they tried to cover up the shooting with a dodgy autopsy report, claiming she died of a heart attack of sorts, and then burying her without her family's knowledge. And when the family and press started to sniff around they claimed it was self defence, and tried to threaten them into silence.

I have to detour here quickly to take you forward to December and the Al Jazeera documentary on extra judicial killings. One of the comments I kept hearing at the time, from people who didn’t (or didn’t want to) believe what they saw, was that those interviews must have been faked, because the cops were too blasé about killing people. Blasé isn’t the half of it, is it? Detour over.

Based on an investigation by the police oversight body, in early October the Director of Public Prosecutions instructed that two officers be charged...

“I have perused both files and given careful consideration to the evidence contained therein and the respective recommendations by the police and IPOA. Having done so, I am satisfied that there is sufficient evidence to charge Inspector Veronicah Gitahi and Constable Issa Mzee with the murder of Kwekwe Mwandaza,” the DPP said in a letter to Inspector General of Police David Kimaiyo. It added: “Accordingly, I direct that both be apprehended immediately and arraigned before the Mombasa High Court to answer a charge of murder.”

Several days later, the two cops appeared in court...

Inspector Veronicah Gitahi and Police Constable Issa Mzee denied the charge when they appeared before Mombasa High Court judge Maureen Odero. They were each freed on a bond of Sh500,000.

Two Kwale police officers charged over Kwekwe Mwandaza murder

Incidentally, I need a lawyer to explain to me how murder suspects are released on bail.

At the beginning of December...

THE High Court in Mombasa has allowed an application made by the mother of Kwekwe Mwandaza to be enjoined in the case. In his ruling, judge Martin Muya gave Umazi Zani the right of audience by herself or through her lawyer. He said, however, that her input would be limited only to the points of law. Muya said the mother will not be allowed to add any point of facts or question any witness.

On November 19, Zani made an application to be enjoined in the case. Her lawyer Harun Ndubi said Zani does not plan to interfere with the proceedings. Lawyers Cliff Ombeta and Jared Magolo representing Kinango DCIO Veronicah Gitahi and police constable Issa Mzee objected to the application, saying the constitution does not allow a victim to participate in a case. “There is no provision in the law for accommodation of the victims and thus they should address their issues through the office of the DPP as stipulated by law,” Ombeta said.

The case will be heard on March 19.

Kwekwe’s mum enjoined in case

I'll update this post as and when the case proceeds, and once its done we shall have a conversation about allegedly underpaid cops who can afford Mr Ombeta (aka lawyer to the rich and criminal).

So why does this shooting make me so angry I want to slap a pig? It's not only that this shooting was more egregious than other random shootings of ‘suspects’. We live in a country where the police routinely shoot people down allegedly in the name of fighting crime and/or terror. And if the cops don’t get you, the idiot terrorists will, or the idiot criminals who shoot you dead to steal your phone, or maybe even your friendly neighbourhood lunatic with a gun permit and a short fuse. Frankly, in this country its not when you’ll get shot, but by whom. A 14 year old gets shot and dumped in the bush? Par for the course, no? No.

Surely not.

8 policemen do not barge into a house and shoot a child. They just don’t. This isn’t bloody Syria or fucking Palestine. We cannot have policemen running around killing people willy nilly. I do not want a police boss who spins bullshit lies about a panga. A panga? How the fuck was that even a remotely plausible theory? I don’t want a County Commissioner who shrugs off the death of a child like its just one of those things that happen. His tone of voice… Sweet Jesus! Every time I think to let this one slide, I hear that smug bastard droning on and I get mad all over again. Listen, I see how we got to this point as a country, too many years of a system designed to be brutal and nothing but, but at one point we need to stand up and say enough.

No more.

From the John Legend show...

Kwekwe Mwandaza was a 14 year old girl, about the same age as these three girls. Maybe that's why her death struck a nerve with me, coming so soon after I watched the concert. Or maybe the death of Kwekwe got me ridiculously angry because it's ridiculously wrong.

From Father Dolan's column, published on August29th 2014...

Both sets of police bosses produced indefensible reasons to justify the executions, but that is where the similarities end. We witnessed the outrage in Ferguson and the silent indifference in Kwale — not a single complaint from the Woman Representative, MCA, MP, Governor or any other person that would claim to be a leader.

We have lost our sense of outrage.

This morning, riot police tear-gassed a bunch of school children...