1. Last beverage:
Nice properly ground coffee – always works a treat early in the morning. None of that instant stuff.

2. Last phone call:
My graphic designer in Kenya – I’ve got this habit of insisting that I won’t employ someone in my neighbourhood when there’s a cheaper (not always though) alternative that will give someone a few bob at home to do his or her thing. Don’t ever say I didn’t help with the economy Back home.

3. Is there a number 3?
Val – what’s the conspiracy with this omission?

4. Last song you listened to:
Tabu Ley Rochereau – Muzina. Always in the car – and have my son singing along…

5. Last time you cried:
You’re fucking kidding me, right?

HAVE YOU EVER:

6. Dated someone twice?
No! – but if you mean had sex with an ex-girlfriend for old time sake – Yeah! I wouldn’t go as far as calling it dating again though – it was just a booty call. Why complicate things by letting another relationship get in the way of a perfectly legitimate good old fashioned arse tapping?

7. Been cheated on?
Probably – I’m not one to try and ask questions that have answers I’m not prepared for. Some sleeping dogs are just best left the fuck down.

8. Kissed someone?
Is the Pope Catholic?

9. Lost someone special?
I’m philosophical about this one – and I suppose it depends if they were mine in the first place. But I’ve had break-ups if that’s what you mean.

10. Been depressed?
No, not really – but I suppose if you asked a shrink they’d want to justify the fee and suggest otherwise. There was a time though many years back that I had to start learning how to live my life from scratch because of a life changing experience – but I was probably too busy learning how to start life from scratch again to even be depressed.

11. Been drunk and threw up?
Is this a trick question?

LIST FOUR FAVORITE COLORS:
Would it surprise you if I told you that the concept of colour is one that is foreign to my vocabulary?

12. Black – my car is metallic midnight black – love it.
13. Black – My laptop is black and no, I don’t do Goth.
14. Blue – I was in Batian House in primary school and we wore blue.
15. Beige – don’t know why, it just looks cool.

HAVE YOU:

16. Made new friends:
Yes – I recently met new friends and had a ball. Her of the crazy variety cooked me a platinum dinner of Olympic quality, although FG and M were still eating it as they carried it home the next day, and I was left driving home salivating for the second round…LOL.

17. Fallen out of love?
Now why would I want to complicate my life by contemplating such nebulous questions.

18. Laughed until you cried?
No!

19. Met someone who changed you?
Yes, my son.

20. Found out who your true friends were?
Oh Yes – a very long time ago.

21. Found out someone was talking about you?
Never gone looking but tis a fact of life – and all the more reason not to spend my energy looking.

22. Kissed anyone on your friend’s list?
On FB? Yeah – but that would be telling. Wanajijua wenyewe. →

23. How many people on your friends list do you know in real life?
Define ‘real’ life? I didn’t know the internet was fake. But just for consistency in answering the question, I know everyone on my FB list personally.

24. Again Val, where is No. 24? Is there a conspiracy?

25. Do you have any pets?
No! Now why would I want to live with an animal in my house.

26. Do you want to change your name?
It’s a bit too late for that…LOL

27. What did you do for your last birthday?
Worked during the day, went for dinner in the evening, and the rest would make my wife blush.

28. What time did you wake up today?
5.00 am as I do every weekday.

29. What were you doing at midnight last night?
Sleeping.

30. Name something you CANNOT wait for:
For project A to become a reality. It’s stressful being in the ‘sausage factory’ with this one and I’ll be glad to see it through and move on to the next thing.

31. Last time you saw your father?
Is this another trick question? I could say a few months ago, but those who understand will know why I ask if this is a trick question.

32. What is one thing you wish you could change about your life?
Another trick question…LOL! It can’t happen so let’s move right along.

33. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom?
Yeah, several.

34. What’s getting on your nerves right now?
The biased, unprofessional, pathetic and criminal media shit stirring being conducted by the western media about Africa. Everything to them about Africa is a cesspit. It really doesn’t help that the Coupe du Mond is being battled for in South Africa starting Friday.

35. Last visited webpage?
Project A. You’ll have to wait for a few weeks to know what I’m visiting out there.

36. What’s your name?
Darius.

37. Nicknames?
Stone Cold.

38. Relationship Status?
Married.

39. Zodiac sign?
Aries

40. Male or female or transgendered?
Go figure.

41. Primary?
Westlands.

42. Middle School?
What is it exactly that folks do here?

43. High school?
Patch

44. Hair color?
Black (when there’s some on my head)

45. Long/medium/short?
I’m clean cut most of the time, or low crop during winter. Nice, simple, no drama – and it brings out the handsome in yours truly.

46. Height?
6 ft and a cigarette butt.

47. Do you have a crush on someone?
LOL! Don’t know what stuff like this feels any more – it used to be easier.

48. What do you like about yourself?
The fact that I’m not vain enough to answer this question. It’s for others to decide.

49. Piercings?
Need some guidance here – does helping someone lose their virginity count? I’m struggling.

50. Tattoos
Hell No!

51. Righty? or lefty?
→ Righty, though I confess, it’s been a while since I wrote anything by hand…

FIRSTS

52. First surgery?
Don’t remember much probably because of the next 7 that followed. But I remember Deborah – she was nice and she took care of me. I remember thinking it must be really good to bang her in her nurses uniform…

53. First piercing
See number 49 above.

54. First best friends
Jamo. Still hang out until now.

55. First sport you joined?
Football of course.

56. First pet?
Please – no animals.

57. First vacation?
Mombasa…stayed at Whitesands hotel…and that was a long long time ago.

58. First concert?
Opening concert for Kasarani Sports Complex before some nutcase named it the Moi International Sports Centre. It was just before the 1987 All Africa games and the headline acts were Jermaine Jackson and Franco and his TPOK Jazz band. Also had my first kiss that night – met the girl there and we hang out the whole time together. I remember she was a year older than I was.

59. First crush?
Not telling, she’s on my FB friends list and probably reads this blog…LOL!

60. Eating?
Nothing, but I had a bacon sandwich earlier.

61. Drinking?
Fizzy water.

62. Already missing?
Arsenal playing twice a week. The world cup is not the same – club football is the bread and butter and lifeline for my Arsenalitis disease.

63. I’m about to?
Go back to what I was doing before I started this crazy list.

64. Listening to?
Nothing. →

65. Thinking about?
The next business activity after Project A is up and running.

66. Waiting for?
The second knock out round of the world cup when the chaff is separated from the wheat and we can start watching football proper.

YOUR FUTURE :

67. Want kids?
Already have one – but will think about more.

68. Want to get married?
LOL! Too late.

69. Careers in mind?
Anything away from the rat race. I love my freedom and flexibility and harmony.

WHICH IS BETTER WITH THE OPPOSITE SEX?

70. Lips or eyes?
Lips for sure – nyonyarable lips like Natalie Imbruglia’s lips. If I was to be honest, I’m a breast man myself….not too big, just nice and supple and easily fits the hand….but I digress…LOL! Lips will have to do. 

71. Hugs or kisses?
This is one of them functional questions that you see how it goes…LOL! But I don’t go around hugging people for the sake of it…its damn hard work.

72. Shorter or taller?
Not fussed.

73. Older or Younger?
Not fussed as I’ve buttered both sides of this slice, Age isn’t an issue believe me.

74. Romantic or spontaneous?
LOL! Wait till you get to my age.

75. Nice stomach or nice arms?
No breasts?

76. Sensitive or loud?
Sensitive rules.

77. Hook-up or relationship?
Are you trying to get me divorced?

78. Trouble maker or hesitant?
Trouble maker…

HAVE YOU EVER :

79. Drank hard liquor?
Is that what it was?

80. Lost glasses/contacts?
Don’t need them.

81. Had sex on 1st date?
Yes. And you know what I don’t get – it’s this “I can’t fuck someone on the first date nonsense”. What’s the point in waiting if you’ve already decided – and believe me, girls already put you in a zone within 5 minutes…LOL! “He’s a no no”, or “Hmm!, he’s got game…let’s see” or “But of course”…

This not doing it on a first date thing to protect my modesty and respect nonsense just amuses me…bang the bastard already.

82. Broken someone’s heart?
Yes. It wasn’t going to work.

83. Had your own heart broken ?
Yes. Should have never got in…LOL! She was poison (not in that nasty way…) – we’re still buddies but she was the ladies equivalent of a ‘bad boy’.

84. Been arrested?
This is arguable and I plead the 5th.

85. Turned someone down?
Yes…I was once proposed to live on an internet forum…very embarrassing considering who else was reading that stuff…LOL Funny that I’ve actually met the girl and we’re good friends.

86. Cried when someone died?
Is this another trick question?

87. Liked a friend that of the same sex?
You’re fucking kidding me, right? DO

YOU BELIEVE IN:

88. Yourself?
If I don’t, who will?

89. Miracles?
Yes.

90. Love at first sight?
No, lust at first sight has some mileage.

91. Heaven
I’ll pass on this one.

92. Santa Clause?
LOL – Hell no.

93. Kiss on the first date?
If you don’t get one on the first date, then it was a really bad day at the office. Otherwise it wasn’t a date.

94. Angels?
Guardian angels are all around us.

95. Is there one person you want to be with right now?
Can I plead the 5th amendment here?

96. Had more than one boyfriend/girlfriend at one time?
That would be telling…

97. Wish you could change things in your past?
Never going to happen, let’s move on.

98. Are you posting this as 100 Truths
99. What, we’ve run out of questions? You still haven’t told me what happened to no. 3 and no. 24.? → Yup!

100. Where are you right now?
In my home-office.

I think it might be a good idea to get back to work now….it was a nice break.
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I guess in business this would be lauded as innovation.

But hey! This NGO charity thing seems to be the new thing on the block. Let’s all get out there and help the poor helpless Africans…

Maybe I’m just getting too old.
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I guess I was only asked when it turned out that I actually went to high school with the said dead beat dad. You’ll be surprised how 6 degrees of separation can make the world smaller than it really seems.

I think we were talking about how kids change people’s lives – and one conversation too many ended up with the story of my former schoolmate. The said girl abandoned at the traffic lights is his ex-missus, so you can just picture where this conversation went short of wishing that she had actually been with us at the time.

I’ll plead the 5th amendment right here on going into the specific story of this couple for the simple reason that there’s a very high possibility that they will be directed to read this post.

I don’t consider myself a marriage counsellor, but for what it’s worth, I thought that this once, I’d provide a public service based on my experience and that of my peers. If it helps even one girl to make better choices in men – or convinces even one other guy to take care of responsibilities, then the post is most definitely worth my time.

It’s certainly easier than sitting down to talk sense to – you know who.

Girls, here’s 5 Stone Cold sure fire ways to identify a dead beat dad from a mile off.

1. Follow your instincts

God gave you instinct to protect you from the evil in this world. Use the damn instincts and save yourself from the world.

The best advice you can ever get is not to get yourself into certain situations especially when all your faculties are telling you that it’s plain madness. Your body is wired to be selective and to use any stimuli it can to detect what is inherently dangerous for you.

You have signs all over that only you choose to ignore – habits, what he says, what he does, the choices he makes, the risks he takes – even his scent gives you an indication about how dangerous the proposition is.

Let’s get one thing out of the way – you’re not going to totally avoid danger. There’s no such thing as zero risk. Everything you do is risky.

Even for a guy, looking at a girl’s ass is risky because it presents options not previously available. For a girl, the risks are different. I’m just saying listen to your instincts and minimize that risk.

2. Follow your instincts again (ground hog day, huh?)

Of course we live in a world where warm blooded males and females have raging sexual hormones so it’s inevitable that you’re going to get laid.

Having made that choice, you still need to exercise a level of ruthlessness that will put Jack Bauer to shame.

Simply put – unless you’re totally convinced that the man you’re shagging is material for being a decent father – never let him anywhere near an ejaculation. It’s his right to blow his load, but it doesn’t have to be inside you.

There’s a very big difference between boys that you want to get jiggy with and satisfy your sexual desires, and daddy material. For the former, you can pick up any rough neck from wherever.

But unless you’re sure the dude is made of daddy stuff – bullet proof yourself from conception even if you have to use a cocktail of birth control methods at the same time.

My point here is that the choice of who you have unprotected sex with is not for legislation. Just make sure if anything goes wrong, he’s someone who you can take home to your parents with a modicum of self respect and explain yourself.

3. Love is over-rated

When it comes to bringing up kids, there’s absolutely no place for romance. Your relationship with your man has little or nothing to do with the day to day responsibilities of raising and caring for a child.

It’s a full time job 24-7. Contrary to folklore – love will not conquer.

Bringing up children will test you in all the ways you can think of. It will make you scream, it will make you cry, it will make you curse. They focus on the fact that it’ll make you happy and provide you with something to live for yada yada yada.

Let’s get one thing straight – even your mother can’t prepare you for the drama your children will unleash on you. You’re mother has already had her share with you and your siblings and if anything, she’ll be laughing because of all them times you gave her grief.

There’s a lot you can already tell about how your man will cope with the responsibilities of bringing up a child. Does he have selfish habits? Does he still think you can both go gallivanting around town and hanging with the boys and stuff? Does he look at you with that ”how do I change this diaper” face? Does he roll over and fall asleep oblivious of the sleepless nights the kids are unleashing on you? Does he find it strange that being a father involves things like – giving the baby a bath and reading to them?

Love has a place in relationships, but this isn’t one of them.

4. It’s all around you – don’t ignore it

The bachelor pad tells you a million things a guy will never tell you. Everything from how clean the toilet is to what he has in the fridge is a message.

There’s something wrong with someone who’s driving a luxury car with all the trimmings, yet he doesn’t have enough toilet roll in the house or the stuff in his fridge expired 4 months ago but he hasn’t noticed. The car seats are more comfortable than his sofa, and the walls are overdue a lick of paint.

You can tell a lot from how often dude changes his sheets, to the extent and immaculate way (or not) he has wired his surround system in his bachelor pad.

Kids cost money – don’t let anyone lie to you and you can tell a lot about how a guy can cope with the financial responsibility by observing how he spends his money.

The point here is that the signs that a child will throw a monkey wrench into dude’s whole programme are there to be seen.

5. If he says he doesn’t want a child – listen to the bastard

I couldn’t be any blunter if I tried. He’s not ready so just move right along and find yourself another guy.

The years and time invested so far with him can never justify the heartache you’ll put an unwanted child in.

Cut your losses and run taking comfort from the fact that it’s better to have loved and lost than to have spent your whole life masturbating. It could be worse – believe me.

And guys, don’t worry – I have my own personal tips about how to totally avoid the dodgy broody girls you have to stay miles away from.

Unfortunately, they don’t come with signs written ’Certified Psycho’. Fatal attraction is nothing compared to what these girls will do to make your life hell.
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Even my wife was confused by my perceived indifference and reference to the aid and humanitarian organisations as vultures, as they geared up for what is turning out to be the biggest peace time humanitarian disaster of our generation, save for the 2004 Tsunami.

The earthquake and its aftershocks have caused untold devastation and suffering to the people of Haiti. Lord knows they need all the help they can get, and in principle, I have absolutely no problem with a coherent humanitarian effort followed by a structural programme to rehabilitate the country’s infrastructure.

Inevitably with such situations, the ugly side of the self righteous aid and development industry bears its teeth. It’s a conversation many people in the aid industry don’t want to have as they bury their heads in the sand.

Watch the news now, and it’s more to do with aid agencies marketing themselves and fund raising than actually doing the bread and butter things that helps stabilize relief issues in Haiti. Every aid agency you can think of are in town from Red Cross to Oxfam, from the Sisters of Guayando to The Pillars of Christian Faith, from Handicap International to Doctors Without Borders.

The question has to be asked though? Are all these people working with a silo mentality really helping? Some of the aid agencies are already being accused of focusing on the marketing opportunities the media coverage is providing. If you work in the aid industry, you’ll be well aware of the potential of fundraising off such a disaster.

Aid agencies are even claiming ownership of the relief efforts by using slogans like ”Spearheading the relief efforts” or ”Leading the relief challenge” – as if it was a job that belonged to that agency.

The blunt reality is that the co-ordination of the relief effort is incompetent at best and tragic at worst. The people of Haiti are already feeling the impact of these uncoordinated efforts. Lives that could have been saved are gone, those who could have been treated have developed permanent disabilities because aid agencies were still haggling on the tarmac at the airport in Port Au Prince.

The worst part is that the agencies will still continue to play territorial games and have the overall relief work hampered by politics and hidden agendas.

Where I live, we’ve even been approached by several people purporting to act for NGOs that are sending relief to Haiti. One of them even left a threatening note demanding that we give something.
See
, I’m one of those people who get pissed right off with such nonsense. For one, the heifer who left that note saying she was coming back to collect anything from money to old clothes has no clue where I stand on this issue – or even what I’ve already done for that matter.

I actually happen to know how the money trail works within the industry so I’ll be well placed to know what to do if and when I decide that my conscience needs to do something.

These same agencies haven’t even cleared up the mess of the bottlenecks they caused after the Asian Tsunami – and believe me when I say too many cooks spoilt that broth.

We’ve got a long way to go with Haiti.
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“Darius, she’s in secondary school now”, was the subdued answer and it was quickly followed by a resigned “Dude – it’s official, we’re old”.

But even after we both cracked out laughing, the thought lingered and you begin to take stock. I guess that the main change in my life over the last several years is that some things have become more important than others and you tend to prioritize better and focus on what’s important. What hasn’t changed though is the ability for nostalgia to hit you hard enough to make you home sick especially with the sub zero temperatures and snow storms that box you in the house and makes you ask that dreaded “what am I really doing here” question.

It made me think of the good old days growing up and enjoying some of the simplest and most cherishable moments life will ever present.

Don’t know about some readers up in here, but there were times when 5 bob could take you a long long way back in the day. My dad used to give us 5 bob a day and that would cover bus fare to and from school, a soda and a snack of some sort (usually quarter bread bandika) for lunch, and you’d still have left over change to buy roast maize with pili pili or patcos to carry you through the evening.

Long before the advent of satellite TV with over 20 exclusive movie channels, local entertainment back then was fronted by public service open air movie services like Tazama Mobile Cinema pitched up in an open field once a month to bring to you the blockbuster of the day. They had this strange habit though, of commentating the movie as it went on in a manner that was as equally funny as it was annoying.

Speaking of entertainment, there were classic shows that would definitely be in my DVD collection right now – From Vioja Mahakamani and the comical antics of the residents of Matopeni, to Vitimbi and the real celebrities like Othorong’ong’o and Masanduku (forget all these latter day celebs who think they’re celebs because…well, anything makes you a celeb these days). There were shows like Tushauriane that were banned outright because they showed a couple embracing and the chap started unblousing the girl. Or even the days when we didn’t have mobile phones and you had to walk a kilometre to the nearest phone box where there was a massive queue of all manner of people – and you’d be mad when your ‘girlfriend to be’ plays hard to get and pulls that stunt of asking you to call later because she’s watching No One But You or The Rich Also Cry. The ungrateful heifer – after all those hours you’ve waited in line to make that call….LOL!

And how was it that folks could actually watch such shows. The acting was so bad and the love scenes so predictable and drossy. Maybe I just hate them coz’ they cost me many a date.

Thinking about dates, I miss those day time dates where you save up the whole term and during the holidays you can take the young lady to a respectable restaurant in town followed by a movie. The only down side is that she has to leave by 4.30 pm so that she can get back home in time before her dad and mum arrive from work. It was such little time you didn’t even get the space to express yourself and give yourself a chance to get into her panties. The strategy was always to buy time and charm her enough to warrant the next date – and perhaps you might get the chance to start early enough in the day.

The most affordable place seemed to be Wimpy on Kenyatta Avenue where you had to contend with their Indian manager always shouting orders at waiters like ”upstairs-downstairs”. But the funny part was the red and blue Bata rubber shoes that they used to wear as part of their uniform. On occasion, some of them would be allowed to wear North stars – but you catch my drift…LOL

But on the entertainment – I miss shows like This is it whatever happened to Sam Madoka the presenter of the coolest music video show at the time); or Family Affairs that had Mambo and Riziki and their troubled family. On radio, there always seemed to be the same 3 or 4 folks sending salaams on shows like Yours for the Asking. I think there was Robbie Reuben Robbie and Agnetta Machinga who would never miss a shout out on radio. And of course Sundowner with legendary DJ’s like Ike Mulembo.
And what
Happened to Kenya’s best known (now he is a celebrity for sure) radio news reader Agao Patrobas. I used to think he was called A gang of robbers. But Patrobas used to front every news bulletin on radio until he became a household name. Legend has it that the reason why he was too good on radio and wasn’t seen on TV was that he was too ugly – but I honestly don’t think so. But a gang of robbers had the mojo for radio.

There were times that it was so boring during the day in the estates, my best friend and I would wear our Sunday best suits and head for town and just walk around. We would carry them brief case type portfolios and fill them with newspapers and Malkiat Singh text books just to give them substance. If we met someone we knew, they’d be impressed about how sharp and on the ball we were even though we were barely out of school. We’d try to say something intelligent to give our cover story some credence.

Speaking of Malkiat Singh, that dude had to be my best author during that time. He was either a mega multi-talented factual author of text books on every subject including Christianity, or he was the biggest conman in town. Either way, he trousered millions of shillings from unsuspecting Kenyan students.

But despite being in town, we would always end up at Jivanjee gardens at lunch time. It was the place to be. If you were lucky, you’d have a few bob to buy some chips and sausage at the only Kenchic in town at the time. Watching those naked chickens rotate on that machine was bad enough knowing you were never going to afford them – but what made Jivanjee gardens interesting is that most if not all of the folks hanging out there were broke like nobody’s business and they all came to pass time and listening to them loud lunch time preachers. But if you looked into the eyes of most of the people, they couldn’t disguise that hunger that oozed out and screamed ”I could murder a bandika and cold Fanta right now”.

We eventually figured out a way to survive being broke during meal times. We would go to Burma market by City Stadium and in the market, there is a long row of restaurants that do nyama choma. The idea was to pop into every restaurant and ask for a sample which would come on a very small plate. After you had the sample, just respectfully decline the offer of a meal and move on to the next restaurant. By the time you hit 8 or so restaurants, you’d have had a whole meal and all you have to do is ask for a glass of water to drink. It wasn’t glamorous but it worked for sure.

Down town Nairobi was a very interesting place though. I always thought the funniest part was whenever there was a fracas of some sort, people would just explode and run away in one direction. But if you even asked someone why they were running, they’d scratch their heads and say “I don’t know – people were running”. I never did figure this one out.

And who can forget the lunch time kiosks along the route to the railway station. I had a friend who used to work with mum and set out to start his own food kiosk called Aluta Continua. The thing was this though, Johnny used to give my best friend and I free meals and once in a while, he’d ask us to run him some errands – collect stock, heavy lifting, that sort of stuff. Sometimes when we got pressurised by girls who were only interested in being taken out for dates in expensive restaurants, we’d get them all dressed up and eventually weave our way to Johnny’s kiosk. There was a bonus for us of course and it’s not just the free meal. If we brought a pretty face it enhanced the equity of the kiosk and was the envy of many others around it – so Johnny would throw in a Fanta madiaba for good measure. Some chicks couldn’t cope and considered it humiliating – LOL, but some took to it like water off a ducks back. You can’t beat fried matumbo and chapos even if you were dressed for a lunch date at Trattoria.
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It’s been a great year though, and from a blogging point of view, I’ve learnt a lot and I’ve laughed a lot. I hope I’ve given Stone Cold Haven readers as much joy as I’ve had from reading other blogs.

I wouldn’t have met wonderful people like Kellie who had the privilege of being the first person to leave a comment on my blog; or the schizophrenic 3TOC who cried after reading my tribute to Michael Jackson (at least I can say I’ve made a grown woman cry); or the many blogthren like Farmgal, our girl from the bundux; the girl from Valentia Street; Mo who spent time actually psycho analysing me from my posts; Our Kid my favourite divorce lawyer; Shiko the celebrity blogger (well Zuqka thinks so); Savvy the campus genius; CB the drama queen (btw I’ve upgraded you on the Stone Cold Dramometer) – and all other contributors and lurkers on this blog.

You will of course forgive me if I’ve left you out of the roll call either by design or inadvertently, but all you all including Kidada (‘acha kupotea Mami), Mystic, Mama, Maua, Mrembo, and all other blogthren – thank you for making 2009 a good year on the blogosphere.

I’d be lying if I said I haven’t grown up from the experience. From my first post The Ghosts of Christmas past, to other thought provoking penmanship attempts like Why do we rarely ask why?

I was thinking which was my favourite or most inspiring post and I concluded it has to be the Kenya’s Shotgun wedding post. I think it’s because of the raw emotion and pain I still have about what happened after the 2007 election with the hope of an entire generation that got flushed down the drain because of…well – it’s a long story.

There were other amusing moments like when all hell broke loose when ’POTUS The Eagle’ landed in central London for the first time to try and sort out the blue eyed white folk who left our economy in a mucking fuddle; or when the Russians decided to shaft us during the winter; or the discussion as to why men should never be anywhere near a delivery room lest they lose all interest in the business end of their partner’s femininity; or a running commentary of my day in therapy; or even my confessions about well….a lot.

Apart from the Kenyan shotgun wedding post, 2 other posts were very emotional for me – one just acknowledging that we don’t have to go to hell because we already live in it; and the other emotional post being my tribute to Whacko Jacko, simply the greatest entertainer who has ever lived on this planet.

I even managed to get myself suckered into writing a weekly column for one of the most popular Arsenal blogs (did I mention that I love Arsenal??? Coz if I didn’t, then I thought I’d just clarify that…LOL!)

It’s been a great 2009 folks and you all have been responsible for making it a great year for the Stone Cold Haven. Happy new year to you all.Related Articles:

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Abdulmutallab, the Arsenal hating virgin who couldn’t even do a competent job as a suicide bomber has just made things overly complicated for hundreds of thousands of air travellers around the world. It’s bad enough to go to any airport and watch passengers being prodded around like useless cattle while being told to remove shoes and go through the most humiliating security checks that are legally sanctioned. But this 23 year old punk had to go try redefine the meaning of a Christmas cracker.

The removing the shoes thing started after some freak tried to blow up a plane with a device implanted in his sneakers and failed. What are they going to do now? Ask everyone to strip and flap their underwear in front of the security guards to make sure that only remnants of pubic hair drop out?

Conventional wisdom suggests that only securing the cockpit door of an aircraft with a Fort Knox style of security system will stop a hijacker taking control of an aircraft and using it as a loaded weapon. However, this ”just do it” mentality is starting to really piss me off.

All this reactive ‘extra security’ nonsense is only designed to make passengers feel better, but it does fuck all (forgive the industrial language) to deal with the issue of terrorist threats. It’s the old classic ideology of Problem, Reaction, Solution. Create a problem, cause a reaction and implement the solution you’ve always wanted because no one can really bitch about it.

They’ve now introduced thermal imaging machines at UK airports to scan through your clothes. Notwithstanding the fact that the guy at the other side of the TV monitor will pretty much be watching X-rated images of passenger’s genetalia, it still doesn’t stop another underwear bomber anyway.

So the politicians sign off another ”Just do it” initiative to pretend to do something about global terrorism. How about dealing with the Palestinian Israeli conflict for one. You’ll be surprised how many fundamentalist nutters will down their tools if the biggest miscarriage of justice in the middle east is resolved – or at least is seen to be dealt with fairly.

Meanwhile, the latest version of ‘Just Do It’ will see passengers being treated in airports around the world like concentration camp prisoners being queued up for slaughter. Airlines will continue to spout nonsense like “you need to check in 3 hrs before your flight”. What nonsense! I’ve never ever tried to appear at an airport 3 hrs before a flight. Why would I do something crazy like that?

If all 290 passengers turned up 3 hrs before (and combine that with all the other outbound flights) that’s just a nightmare in itself. I think it’s all a conspiracy supported by the airport management who want to keep you locked up in their airport for the longest possible time so that you can spend money as a captive customer.

But seriously, enough with this heightened security nonsense. Can someone in America or the UK (anywhere really) start dealing with the reason why people are so pissed off with them they’d want to use a fully fuelled long-haul aircraft as a live explosive device. We can start with prosecutors at the Hague indicting George Bush and Tony Blair for war crimes against the innocent citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Imagine then when the reason for you not getting a job is self inflicted. And it has nothing to do with your performance on the day of the interview. Well, it was only a matter of time before employers resorted to using Facebook for intelligence gathering about current or prospective employees. It’s like everything else in life, we don’t think it’ll ever happen to us and demons from our past come back to haunt us like a nonsense.

I bumped into a casual friend who was still job hunting and he was lamenting how times are tough out there. We occasionally have a drink at the local watering hole and have a good chin wag. His latest disappointment was that a prospective employer admitted to him that he had to make a tough decision on who to appoint and the young man lost out because this employer decided to look at the Facebook profiles of the last 3 candidates in question. Let’s just say, his own Facebook profile left a lot to be desired and he admitted that if he was the employer, he wouldn’t employ himself based on the shenanigans on his profile.

I sometimes wonder why people assume that their online persona’s are a plug and play component of their life that they can switch on and off when it’s convenient. It’s even more damaging for those who don’t realise the intricate electronic footprint that they leave behind with every single action they take on an electronic network – whether it be the office network or the internet. The register of mortified parents is littered with those who are shocked beyond repair when they find out that their kids as young as 12 are taking nude photos of themselves on cell phones and posting them on YouTube – simply because they think it’s cool and everyone is doing it.

Years ago in a job that I did in a previous life, I was nicknamed the ’Network Hitler’. This was because of my no nonsense ruthlessness when dealing with misguided colleagues who thought the company network was their pissing pot. Instead of carrying on with their job like the rest of us, they spent most of their working hours visiting some unsavoury websites that would make anyone’s mother blush and die in embarrassment.

I ordinarily wouldn’t mind, but when the alert console on my screen keeps popping up dialog boxes every 10 seconds telling me that someone is continuously trying to visit porn sites that the network has quarantined, then it becomes an itch that I have to scratch. My M.O was simply to freeze the account remotely and force the employee to explain to their supervisor why the guys in IT have blocked his network account and why he can’t work. Let’s just say I rarely bought drinks and dinner on nights out with colleagues…and only I knew why.

But my advice to all the transgressors was that the minute they logged onto my network – I owned their arse and could tell every single thing that they did and every single location on the internet that they visited and what they did there. I was sometimes shocked by the brazen and reckless attitude of most internet users, including company directors who were oblivious to the ability of a network to retain certain information. We of course acted absolutely professionally and without question – but if you gave me an itch, I would scratch it.

There was even an occasion while resolving a virus attack, I came across a series of emails that had two colleagues explicitly discussing their affair notwithstanding the fact that the woman’s husband worked for the same company and I knew all three of them. It was my job to fix the virus and not to be a marriage counsellor and the professional thing to do was forget every single thing I had just seen in the emails.

I’m still amazed today when I see how clueless some folks are when it comes to being careful with their internet footprint. The internet is a very small place and believe it or not, it’s possible to do something or say something that will come back to haunt you. Facebook seems to be the new frontier. Only recently in the UK, some woman lost her job because she constantly bitched about how her boss was a nasty piece of work and how she hated to go to work. Her only problem was that she forgot that her boss was one of her Facebook friends and could read every single thing she wrote on her wall.

The boss didn’t disappoint for he handed the woman her notice of a summary dismissal right on her Facebook wall telling her not to bother coming into work on Monday and that her P45 was in the mail.
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It’s unsurprising then, to find a storm brewing between groups of commercial sex workers in Copenhagen and the Mayor’s office who are determined that none of the working girls are going to have an early Christmas. What with the whole world descending on Copenhagen, it’s naive at best to assume that horizontal refreshments aren’t part and parcel of the ’entertainment package’ available to delegates at the climate and environment conference just beginning in the Danish capital. Just because it’s not on the official programme doesn’t mean that it’s not available.

So when the Copenhagen Mayor’s office issues a formal communiqué that blatantly says ”Be Sustainable, Don’t Buy Sex” and distributes it to hotels, the response from representative groups of the working girls is emphatic.

Conference delegates who show the official “Anti-prostitution postcards” being distributed at the conference and in hotels, in conjunction with their official conference delegates ID cards – are being offered free sexual services as a retaliatory measure against the move by the Mayor’s office.

A spokeswoman from SIO, a sex workers interest organization says:

”It’s completely discriminatory. Ritt Bjerregaard the Mayor is abusing her position when she uses her power to prevent us from carrying out our legal work. I don’t understand how she can be allowed to contact people in this way – we have to defend ourselves.”

It wasn’t so long ago that Jackie Selebi, the South African Police Commissioner urged the South African government to legalize prostitution for the duration of the FIFA 2010 World Cup. Not surprisingly, Selebii’s ‘pragmatism’ as some would say was totally laughed out of the room into the media circles, despite the validity of the argument that the Police should be “policing” the crowds and not focussing stretched resources on vice duties.

Sometimes, morality has no place in situations where practical solutions are needed to manage unsolvable practical problems, and let’s face it, the Copenhagen conference, and the 2010 World cup for that matter is like Christmas, Easter, 4 leap year birthdays and the lotto all rolled into one for a commercial sex worker. There are some things that are simply unpoliceable when supply meets demand if you will.

You can understand why both sides fight their corner though – and why the police helplessly look on.

I’ve made a point though of maintaining my inherent cynicism about this week’s environment and climate conference in Copenhagen. In March, I wrote the article Environmental fascism in its element – Doomsayers are at it again.

In the March article, I conclude that if there’s one thing I’ve come to understand (and something that acts as another contributor to my cynicism) about this environmental fascism, it boils down to the ability to pay salaries and pay mortgages for all these environmental activists. All the focus and enthusiasm and passion and whatever you can call it about the cause for environmentalism, is simply a cover for a direct route to government funding and donor funding for the environment. The environment and lobbying about global warming is a fashion statement for the next decade. In the 70’s women’s liberation was fashionable, in the 80s race relations was fashionable, in the 90s it was all about the gay and lesbian movement, this decade disability rights has become the new gay, and next decade, watch out for the fair trade consuming, bicycle riding, garbage recycling tree huggers.

For one, it’s hard to take anything that happens in the conference seriously if you consider that the Russian security services are being suspected for leaking ’toxic’ (forgive the pun) e-mails being bandied around – totally discrediting the whole environmental movement. Have all these scientist been lying to us about global warming all these years, or are the KGB back to their old tricks. It’s no wonder the sex workers in Copenhagen are seeing the event as pay day and nothing to do with our environment.
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This one caught my attention though as it’s not only true to life, it’s also hilarious. And my buddy who sent it didn’t threaten me with something dodgy if I didn’t send it on. Any parent will relate to this. Enjoy:

Birth order of children

1st baby: You begin wearing maternity clothes as soon as your doctor confirms your pregnancy.
2nd baby: You wear your regular clothes for as long as possible.
3rd baby: Your maternity clothes ARE your regular clothes.

_____________________________________________________
Preparing for the Birth:

1st baby: You practice your breathing religiously.
2nd baby: You don’t bother because you remember that last time breathing didn’t do a thing.
3rd baby : You ask for an epidural in your eighth month.

________________________________________________
The Layette :

1st baby: You pre-wash newborn’s clothes, colour coordinate them, and fold them neatly in the baby’s little bureau.
2nd baby: You check to make sure that the clothes are clean and discard only the ones with the darkest stains.
3rd baby: Boys can wear pink, can’t they?
______________________________________________________

Worries:

1st baby: At the first sign of distress–a whimper, a frown–you pick up the baby.
2nd baby: You pick the baby up when her wails threaten to wake your firstborn.
3rd baby: You teach your three-year-old how to rewind the mechanical swing.

______________________________________________________
Dummy:

1st baby: If the dummy falls on the floor, you put it away until you can go home and wash and boil it.
2nd baby: When the dummy falls on the floor, you squirt it off with some juice from the baby’s bottle..
3rd baby: You wipe it off on your shirt and pop it back in.

______________________________________________________
Nappies:

1st baby: You change your baby’s nappy every hour, whether they need it or not.
2nd baby: You change their nappy every two to three hours, if needed.
3rd baby: You try to change their nappy before others start to complain about the smell or you see it sagging to their knees.
____________________

Activities:

1st baby: You take your infant to Baby Gymnastics, Baby Swing, and Baby Story Hour.
2nd baby: You take your infant to Baby Gymnastics.
3rd baby: You take your infant to the supermarket and the dry cleaner.

______________________________________________________
Going Out:

1st baby: The first time you leave your baby with a sitter, you call home five times.
2nd baby: Just before you walk out the door, you remember to leave a number where you can be reached…
3rd baby: You leave instructions for the sitter to call only if she sees blood.

______________________________________________________
At Home:

1st baby : You spend a good bit of every day just gazing at the baby.
2nd baby: You spend a bit of everyday watching to be sure your older child isn’t squeezing, poking, or hitting the baby.
3rd baby: You spend a little bit of every day hiding from the children.
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They’re the only two professions that have withstood the test of time. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the tax authorities can easily be your new found best friend if you register your sole trading vocations as funeral services and sheltered adult entertainment services. It’s the combination that’s a killer – the revenue folks don’t flag up each of them in isolation.

I even remember a story a few years ago in the famous Kondele area of Kisumu City. There was a chap who religiously attended church every Sunday and vociferously prayed to God to bless his business and ensure that there’s always a ready stream of customers. You see, this chap was the most successful coffin maker in the area, and most definitely a believer in the school of thought that unconventional and diversified marketing, if carried out with discipline and without fear, can yield incredible results.

It’s not surprising then, that the oldest profession in the world has caught onto the most popular phenomenon of latter day citizen media – this here blogosphere of ours. I think it’s safe to say that residents of the local stiff house will never take advantage of the wi-fi provision in their guest house facility, though I’d hazard a guess that you’ll find a mortician or two blogging away to pass time while literally doing the graveyard shift. No, no – I’m talking here about prostitution getting the most high profile attention any blog in the world will want.

Until this week, the biggest and most sought after secret of the blogosphere was the identity of Belle du jour, a high class £300 an hour London call girl who anonymously blogged about her exploits in the sex industry. Her blog – The Diary of a London Call Girl – was a witty, matter of fact kind of blog about her experiences with her punters that whilst not necessarily explicit, left very little to the imagination.

From the time her blog (which unsurprisingly has been moved offline was chosen by the Guardian Newspaper as the best blog of 2003, the literary world and the tabloid and mainstream press set out on a mission to identify and flush out the person behind the blog. There were even claims that the blog was a work of fiction by some professional writer, or that it was written by a man.

Belle du jour, eventually unmasked herself to the Sunday Times in fear that an ex-boyfriend was about to cash in on one of the best kept literary secrets of all time. Now known as Dr Brooke Magnanti, a research scientist in cancer and epidemiology at a Top Bristol hospital for children, she admits that she worked as a prostitute for 14 months to pay her way through graduate medical school.

Her exploits as Belle du jour also earned her a neat cushy income with 2 biographical type books based on her blog and work as a prostitute, and a novel classified as fiction, as well as a TV series based on the life and times of Belle – who was played by a famous actress Billy Piper. Until this week, only Billy Piper had met Dr. Magnanti when familiarizing herself with the role before doing the TV show. Even her publishers Orion had no clue who she was.

Flat-backing your way through school is not a new phenomenon (well, maybe writing about it and publishing a couple of books is a bit different), but the truth is that if you look at most if not all the universities around the world, you’ll find a story to tell. It’s like one of them taboo things that folks don’t speak about – but it’s the white elephant in the room. The methods of payment may vary for most students trying to pay their way through school, and these range from favours, to rent payments, to good old fashioned hard currency. In recent times, many have resorted to publicly auctioning their virginity to pay their way through school.

You could always make a moral argument about whether flat-backing is a sign of an industrious and entrepreneurial spirit, or whether it’s just pure ole exploitation of girls who are desperate to change the course of their lives by daring to aim for the best careers. A good friend of mine I went to college with saw it totally different – “Pragmatic mi old chap, pragmatic” she used to say.

While I understood her reasons for doing it, my only gripe with her was that as a Business student, she was short-changing herself. It’s the classic business conundrum of how to build equity by not committing yourself too much. My argument with her was that if she turned tricks herself, her body could only let her work a finite amount of hours. However, if she got a customer willing to pay £100 an hour to tap arse, and gave someone else £70 to do it, she could better spend her time pimping and building equity. If she had 4 girls working in one hour, she’ll break even and some, and she didn’t even need to stare at the ceiling and think of the Queen.

LOL! Stop looking at me like that. The girl simply asked me for my advice. I was just thinking of the quickest way she could pay her way through school and finish paying off her student loans.

But seriously – like with anything in life, there’s a nasty side to the game. For those like Dr. Magnanti, it probably is a happy ever after story and she’s got her PhD and working in a cushy job (with a few bob also from her books and TV show).

For millions of other girls and women, prostitution is a means of survival and will never be a glamorous affair or the stuff of Hollywood. It was only in September that I wrote about the exploitation of children in Mombasa in We’re not going to hell, we already live in it.
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I must admit, I have a fascination for statistical information often bandied around in the news media as they tell us something about how we live our lives. But it’s not often you come across a statistical claim that men on average, only purchase their own underwear for 17 years of their lives. This got me thinking. When was the last time I actually went out to buy new underwear? You know what, I honestly can’t remember.

Don’t get me wrong, my side of the dresser always has an abundance of neatly folded clean and fresh stock – but just like hangers that seem to be in every closet, I’ve never really taken time to think about where the new underwear came from or where the old ones were dispatched to. I guess ‘er indoors is due a monumental thank you for taking care of the finer detail in life.

Apparently, one of the biggest stores in the UK has done some research from the information they collect from their sales, and concluded that there’s credence in the notion that men in stable relationships probably have no clue how much underwear costs.

According to Debenhams, most men buy new underwear only if they are starting or about to start a relationship. The unfortunate chap whose job it was to extrapolate this info suggests:

“You can tell when a man is looking for a partner by the number of new underwear they buy. If he buys more than 31 pairs every year, he’s either still trying desperately to impress the woman in his life – or else she’s not The One”.

“This is the one issue that feminism has never addressed. It’s not who wears the pants in each household – it’s who has to buy them that counts”.

They further suggest that men’s underwear buying activity reaches a peak at the age of 23, but declines gradually until the age of 33 when it falls to zero – because many men are in a stable relationship. It picks up again between the ages of 38 and 40, when some men are going through relationship break ups and are seeking new partners again.

But it goes into a sharp decline again and slumps to zero at the age of 44 when they are generally in another stable relationship. After the age of 44 men remain strangers to the underwear department for the rest of their lives, handing all responsibility for their underwear to women.

You know, after reading this stuff, I made a point of asking ‘er indoors how much underwear costs these days and she laughed me out of the room. She was curious to know what brought this on since I’ve never bothered asking her something like this. I admit that I still don’t know how much bread, let alone underwear costs, but I guess each time I pick up a new pair from the drawer, I best be thankful for the small comforts in life. I did entertain the thought of getting in touch with all my ex’s just to thank them for this studious duty of seamlessly ensuring my dignity – but I guess this blog post will have to do.

After all, we have to relentlessly adhere to the old maxim of how important it is to wear clean underwear at every available opportunity. I doubt this has anything to do with personal hygiene….nothing like that. It’s primarily because we all owe our loved ones some dignity in case something tragic was to happen to us – say if we absent mindedly walked under a bus and ended up on a slab in an unsavoury backroom in the local mortuary.

Can you imagine your folks claiming your personal effects only to be handed dodgy underwear with skid marks? The poor folks have to grieve and need to be cut some slack.
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Odent, a veteran who has overseen more than 15,000 deliveries in over 50 years says:

”I am more and more convinced that the participation of the father is one of the main reasons for long and difficult labours. A labouring woman needs to be protected against any stimulation of the thinking part of her brain – the neocortex – for labour to proceed with any
degree of ease. She needs to be in a private world where she doesn’t have to think or talk.

Yet, motivated by a desire to ‘share the experience’, the man asks questions and offers words of reassurance and advice, denying his partner the quiet mind that she needs. The father’s release of the stress hormone adrenaline as he watches his partner labour causes her anxiety, and prevents her from
Relaxing. No matter how much he tries to smile and appear relaxed, he cannot help but feel anxious. And the release of adrenaline is contagious.”

You see, my first encounter with the trauma of childbirth happened nowhere near a delivery room. Matter of fact, it happened at a social gathering while I attended some sort of party, I forget what the party was for, but I remember that I arrived late and was talked into having some dinner first before joining with the rough and tumble of the bash if you will.

The food was being served upstairs in the restaurant area and I ended up on the same table as a good friend of mine Bella, who had given birth less than 3 weeks earlier and was cuddling her little bundle of joy. While waiting for my food, I did what everyone who came through did – congratulated Bella, cuddled the baby myself and sang goo gaa songs as if the baby gave a fuck who I was. I of course questioned Bella about the father of the child coz’ this child was too cute to belong to her husband. I know him well, and G is one ugly son of a bitch.

Speaking of which, I really get cheezed off about how pretentious people can be. How many times have you heard people go all soft kneed and gooey and lying to a mother that her new born is a cute little thing, yet it’s all plain to see how ugly the sprog is. What happened to the good ole days when people were brave enough to call things for what they are? What happened to saying congratulations, but with a cautionary “lakini dude this baby is goddamn ugly, why lie”. But I digress.

As I tucked into my dish, more and more usual suspects came through to see the new baby. Unfortunately for me, many of them were young mothers who were keen to discuss more than just the baby. How was it? (as in the delivery) Was it as bad as the first? How badly did you tear?

I was very comfortable with how obscene these girls could get as we had been clubbing buddies for a long long time and very few things surprised any of us, or at least that’s what I thought. And believe me, this group of girls could be both vulgar and breath-taking in the same respect. I remember one of them once telling a dude who fancied her in the club not to bother if he was only going to survive one shot at an orgasm. If he wasn’t going to make her cum at least thrice, he should just cut his losses and run. And it was said with a nonchalant coldness it would unsettle any warm blooded male with a dick hard enough to cut diamonds.

Naturally, I made what I thought was a stealth move to relocate to another part of the room as clearly, the graphic conversation and description of childbirth was not conducive conversation for the meal. I was quickly ordered to sit the fuck down and listen to their tales, and I suspect the girls were enjoying watching me squirm as much as they were enjoying their conversation. I didn’t even realise at what point this banter turned into an indictment of the male species as I was blamed for all the happy go lucky men who just enjoy the orgasmic pleasure of sex and want little to do with the consequences. The least I could do was to sit and listen to the consequences of our orgasmic pleasure.

Of course I severely protested and insisted that they should blame their husbands and boyfriends seated downstairs, beer in hand and screaming at the football on the big screens. But that wasn’t going to cut any mustard. Calling my girlfriend at the time to bail me out was as useless as expecting the men downstairs to even attempt to venture into this conversation. I had to listen to every graphic detail from how Bella coped with the excruciating pain to the extent of her vaginal tears and how she was sown up by the midwife – and all this while having my rice and chicken. To tell you the truth, eating rice and chicken has never been the same for me any more.

Thinking of this debate about fathers in delivery rooms does make you wonder though. Will it all fall apart if we’re not there? I know for a fact, that many of my peers who are still back home won’t go anywhere near a delivery room. The best they’ll do is probably wait for the phone call to confirm whether it’s a girl or a boy, pop in to see mother and baby and then head off to the pub to celebrate with their mates.

I know it used to be like that in the 60s and 70’s, but the bra burning brigades of the 70s saw to it that some “bonding” was forthcoming and before long, men attending deliveries of their kids became more common than microwaves in the average household – at least in the western world. A good proportion even film the whole delivery and keep the video tape in the household collection alongside 101 Dalmatians, Chuck Norris’s Delta Force and that Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

Let’s face it. Despite the perceived bonding and closeness and the out of this world human experience that a couple can get from the man being present during the delivery, childbirth is a painful, stressful, unpleasant and traumatic experience. No amount of rose tinted “having my hubby around to support and share the experience” will change that fact.

Experiencing the birth of a child will definitely change a man. The question is whether it will change them enough to appreciate what their partner has just gone through enough to strengthen their relationship; or whether it traumatizes them to the point where they have a problem even looking at the business end of their partner’s femininity with the same enthusiasm that they used to do.

There are documented stories of men who have attended childbirth, and have been so traumatized that they have subsequently walked away never to be seen again by their partner.
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I have this habit for example, of washing my hands with soap and water every time I get into the house. There’s this voice in my head that tells me that nothing outside my house is cleaner than what I have inside. Maybe even thinking that outside is just outright filthy. I won’t touch anything in the house until I scrub my hands. I also won’t sit on my bed (whether it has covers or not) without changing the clothes I wore while outside – maybe it’s that thought of all the public places I sat on or the dirt I accumulate at work or wherever.

This past week, a friend and I took the wives and kids bowling and while waiting our turn, we decided to have something to eat at the bowling alley. ‘ER indoors always carries sanitized wet wipes because my son has octopus hands – you can never know what he’s been touching. So whenever we’re out and need to eat, they come in quite handy where soap and water is not an option.

My friend’s wife was also equipped at the bowling alley with a purse sized sanitizer that pretty much illustrated to me that we all seem to have these crazy rituals that we may not necessarily acknowledge or even tell people about. Her kids were not even going to touch the plate without a ritualistic clean with the sanitizer. I didn’t even realise they were sold as fashion accessories, or that literally half the population wanted to carry them lest they get infected by something.

At what point do these habits become an obsessive compulsive disorder or at what point are we just being anal. My wife for example, is anal about having a clean house. Leaving dirty dishes and pots in and around the sink might as well be a class A felony punishable by 2 nights in the dog house and a dressing down. “I’ll do them later” doesn’t cut the mustard in the Stone household any more.

I’ve heard of people who won’t even touch door knobs with their bare hands or sit down on a bus or subway if they’re wearing a mini-skirt. There’s a guy who recently died in Germany from inhaling dettol. This dude had dettol everywhere in his house – buckets and bucket loads of dettol in the bathroom, kitchen and probably under his bed.

There’s this former neighbour of ours (thank God she moved) who had this crazy habit of walking into our kitchen and the first thing she always did was open our fridge and appraise its contents. It didn’t matter what time of day or night or whether she was on her cell phone when she rang the door bell and we opened the door. She would head straight for the kitchen as she started her gossip of the day or continued her phone call, and go straight for the fridge. I tried to convince my wife that this was not a Kenyan thing (long story)…but truth be told, this girl really pissed me off too.

One day when ‘er indoors told me the neighbour was on her way, I quickly emptied the fridge and put the contents in the nearby cupboards. The picture of her face when she opened the door of an empty fridge was so priceless, MasterCard would have a problem selling it.
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The truth is, we don’t need to look forward to spending our eternity in hell, we already live in it.

About 3 years ago, a UNICEF funded report that still haunts me today landed on my desk with a post it note suggesting what I can do to highlight what was in the report within my sphere of work. The general subject of the report was not alien by any means, I guess it was the scale of it and the impact that continues to disturb me. The report was about the scale of child abuse and child prostitution in Kenya in general, and around the coastal region in particular.

Fast forward to last night and I’m watching my favourite Channel 4 news and out of the blue, they feature a comprehensive investigative report about the prevalence of child prostitution and child abuse in Mombasa. What was different is that the children involved and highlighted in the report were given names and faces, and they actually came alive to tell their story. Not that they weren’t alive, but hearing the story from them is gut wrenching.

Here is the blog and video of the untold suffering of Kenyan children story by Jonathan Rugman, the Foreign Affairs correspondent of Channel 4.

Leyla, a 14 year old girl being interviewed in the video made tears roll from my eyes. She is clearly a bright, intelligent and articulate girl, and accepts that poverty has dealt her a raw deal and she’s ended up selling her body to survive. There’s one point she says that she reflects and asks God how the hell she ended up where she is and tearfully laments “I’m just a child”.

There’s also the story of a 6 year old girl now in an orphanage and able to better relate to her carers following her ordeal of abuse since the age of 3. It wasn’t only the physical marks of her abuse like the whipping on her back or the vaginal and anal trauma she’s sustained at her tender age of 6 – I submit to you that this girl doesn’t have to wait to live in hell. It’s her life now.

The sentiments of one mother whose 13 year old girl attends church on Sunday morning and from the afternoon is prostituting herself on the beaches of Mombasa to ensure that her family don’t starve to death captures an even more devastating side to this nightmare.

Until the issue of poverty is addressed, it’s hard to see how the “foreign” money from the mzungu – most of who travel for child sex is going to be turned away by those desperate to put food on the table.

It’s estimated that over 20,000 children, most under the age of 15 are involved in child prostitution, but I think it’s fair to say that this is only the tip of a very ugly iceberg. An iceberg that our society, particularly in Kenya, doesn’t want to deal with. For all the publicity the news report yesterday will bring, I’m more concerned with those who suffer in silence and for whatever reason, are not able to speak out.

I have previously worked on issues of social injustice in various forms, and the one that makes it hardest for me to comprehend, is the untold story of our children who are abused daily and don’t have a voice.

I once told a group of colleagues I worked with on a project “show me 5 girls living in a context of social depravation, and I’ll show you a story of physical, emotional and sexual abuse that is likely to be taken by the victim to her grave”.
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That was my cousin JQ narrating to us his conversation with his God when he woke up in a sewerage gutter somewhere in Kayole estate. He doesn’t recall how he got there, but we all agreed it had to do with consuming copious amounts of alcohol, though the jury’s still out as to whether it was regulation booze or the kumi kumi variety from Mama Pima.

He vaguely remembers sounds of people and one or two cars passing by, but not much else apart from the realisation that he didn’t want to die. It sounds tragic, but his narration of this near death experience was too hilarious – and JQ was compelled to divulge all after he declined a routine 3rd round of booze as we sat outside a bar in Hurlingham some time back. JQ is not one to turn down a drink, but he was already uneasy about us being there. You see, he’s the sort of chap who’s conscience doesn’t tolerate paying a price for a beer that you can get cheaper elsewhere.

His protest was clearly visible each time the waiter brought a round of drinks and he quickly grabbed the bill before reminding us “majamaa, hizi pombe na weza sakanya 33 bob kule kwa mahindi” (Guys, I can hustle this booze for 33 bob in the maize plantations). At one point, he actually challenged the waiter to clarify whether the figure on the receipt was the actual bill or a phone number.

JQ was the last person I suggested to that he was seeing dead people, something he really couldn’t argue with as that is what he felt when in that filthy gutter. So you can imagine my surprise when while on the concourse of Charing Cross Station in London, a familiar voice shouted to me “Hey – I see dead people”.

Most people around me thought Jamie had lost the plot, but there was no mistaking that husky voice running at me from the direction of platform 6 shouting “you jammy bastard”. The bear hug and the testosterone filled hi-fives confirmed to all and sundry that it was possible that we had indeed seen dead folk.

Talk about a blast from the past. I hadn’t seen Jamie for over 8 years if not more, and he hadn’t changed one bit. It wasn’t long before we were in the nearest pub catching up on the good old days of our mis-spent youth.

You see, the first time we coined the catch phrase of “I see dead people” was some time in the mid 90s. I lived in a close Knit community in a small village in the county better known as the garden of England.

Jamie was the bartender at the local pub which literally became my second home. It wasn’t just because of the booze, the landlord and his family became very good friends of mine, I could have passed for a family member if I wasn’t black. The landlord Nash and I clicked the very first day I walked into the pub as both of us were wearing replica Arsenal shirts, and he pulled a bar stool right next to his and bought me my first drink. Jamie was behind the bar.

Over the 6 or so years that I lived there, we had life changing experiences that I’ll never forget. During Christmas breaks, usually one of the days between Christmas and new year, we had a tradition of getting together all the usual suspects who frequented the pub, and we’d have our very own cultural exchange madness. Each year, every household will be nominated a country, and they would then take the mantle of representing this country in a crazy fun-feast for all participants.

So if you got Germany for example, you would have to cook German food, dress up as Germans would, serve German drinks, etc. If you get Mexico, you had to dress up like Mexicans, hook up some Mexican food and drink, and blast Mexican music when the village madness hit your house and so on.

Everyone would then meet at the pub at 12 noon, have a single drink, before starting a crawl round everyone’s house beginning furthest afield. Everybody would enjoy the delights and booze of one country and after dancing to some obscure music from that country, we would all then file to the next destination for a new experience. Naturally, the lightweights will fall off the cliff or black out somewhere along the way, though nobody really cared as they would be expected to sleep it off in readiness for the last round at the pub. If you think of it, crawling at least 12 to 14 different countries, eating and drinking God knows what, and aiming to be at the pub before 10 pm was quite an expedition.

This one particular year, Nash and his wife didn’t get past the 5th house, which was not unusual, so folks decided to end the party at Jimbo’s house instead of the pub. Hindsight would have brought some perspective to this decision, but I doubt if anyone was compus mentus enough to predict the drama about to unfold.

Jimbo is a Kiwi who was prone to do stupid and dangerous things like luring me into an Australian pub in London on the day that the Wallabies were beaten by the All Blacks and only suicidal folks would walk into an Aussie pub wearing an All Blacks jersey. The smirk on his face while doing this was priceless though, just the sort of thing a crazy Kiwi will never hesitate to do given the opportunity.

The stunt nevertheless got me into a tight spot and my only get out clause was to dance and mime to Alanis Morissette’s Ironic on top of a table with a beer bottle as the microphone. Oh! Don’t you worry, Jimbo and his 14 stone All Black self was on the table next to mine also doing his Ironic routine with the rest of the pub cheering like crazy.

That particular night, I had done well even to make it back to Jimbo’s, though most of the folks by then were the ones who had blacked out earlier and bought themselves a new lease of life. The last thing I remember was playing grab ass with Katie and dancing to Brown Girl in the Rain by Boney M – now that I think of me singing that song in the state I was in, I shudder. I don’t even remember when Marco, my Aussie house mate and partner in crime switched places with Katie and started slow dancing with me. I guess it took me a while to notice that his chest didn’t have the customary C cup cushioning that I had already warmed up to, his prickly stubs of a beard that needed a shave were scraping my face, and his ass wasn’t as supple and rounded as Katie’s was.

There was some cake and snacks being dished around and who was I to refuse some good ol’ fashioned Mexican cuisine. Only problem was that Jimbo and his twisted pals decided to lace the sugar they baked the cake with. I have since taken the 5th when asked what was in that cake, except to ask the inquisitive party – “what is white and can be used to lace other white stuff put in a cake?”, and you quickly get my drift. If this was a practical joke, then no one saw it coming.

My next interaction with the world around me was when Marco and Katie’s dad were carrying me into a taxi. I could still hear voices and it was as if people were talking about me like I was dead. Somebody did insist on asking if I’ll make it and I distinctly recall Marco responding “Darius is OK – he’s just seeing dead people”.

He then turned round to me and tried to get me awake before asking me if I was seeing dead people. I honestly don’t know if they were dead, but I had visions of a familiar room with folks that I thought I knew. Leslie (at least I thought it was though I couldn’t see her face) was at one corner and kneeling down as if praying though she was speaking Gaelic, and I remember wanting to shout to her that it’s OK and that it’s peaceful – she didn’t need to fight it. There was Pauly as usual scrounging around for his last blunt, and swearing that he can’t finish the job until he gets that spliff but what distinctly worried me was that I recalled him stripping the tables and chairs in the pub and using them to build a weird shaped casket. There were other people I didn’t know repeatedly chanting some stuff like “Hamnyo mlengonyo” almost as if they were in a temple and surrounded by smoke filled enclosures and the smoke rising and forming images on the roof.

The cab driver was getting a bit anal and wondering whether I’ll throw up in his taxi and arguing with Marco about who will clean it if I do. Apparently, I then told the cab driver to relax, I wasn’t going to throw up, I was just seeing dead people.

And the catch phrase was born.
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Sometimes you just want some quiet and some private head space to contemplate stuff. Usually, it’s taxi drivers who can’t get the concept of leaving a passenger alone wanting to eagerly chat to you about everything from the weather to the problems that immigrants are bringing to the beloved British isles. Every once in a while though, you’re forced to become a third party to a telephone conversation on the train that let’s face it, you really don’t want to be part of.

I took my seat across the table from a “quietish” young woman who was busy reading some magazine or something. Even when the conductor approached us for tickets, she was very soft spoken when responding and asking about something or the other. The hits started rolling when her phone violently vibrated on the table and started ringing.

I don’t know what it was that ticked me off instantly. Maybe it was the fact that she left it there wringing for what seemed to be ages so that we could hear the hideous song that was her ring tone, or the fact that it was so loud, I’m sure you could hear it from outside even if the diesel powered train swept past you at 120 miles an hour.

“It’s for you”, I calmly suggested through gritted teeth.

“Oh! Shoot – I was looking for it” was the response.

Who was it who said the art of conversation was dead? Nobody told this girl.

Talk about a lack of spacial awareness and totally disregarding your surroundings. This girl just transformed into the world’s loudest gossip monger with a flip of that phone.

“C’mon C’mon. Spill it out”, she loudly blurted.

I thought the volume of the ring tone was bad, but this girl could talk for England and she wasn’t about to go shy on us.

“How was it”, followed with constant giggles of excitement only of the kind you would dare indulge when you’re alone. You could hear the groans and sighs from the other passengers in the cabin, as if willing each other for someone to wake up and slap the senses into this girl.

“So was it big?” she fearlessly asked before the middle aged woman sitting across from us decided enough was enough and respectfully reminded her that she wasn’t the only one on the train.

“Zip it luv”, was the curt and shameless response.

I was kind of pissed off with that response to tell you the truth. The lady didn’t deserve to be dismissed like that. But chatter box didn’t want to know. The giggles went on with the almost queued up remarks of “awesome”, “wow”, “your kidding me”….you know the drill.

I had one of them moments where I contemplated being arrested for assault because a combination of the girls voice, the nature of the conversation that was making everyone uncomfortable, and the volume of the conversation all conspired for me to consider sleeping in a police cell.

And she continued…“So what will you do, will you think about it?” “I don’t know, how big is it?”. “What are you going to do?”

I’d had enough by then, and before she could indulge further, I audibly interjected, “tell her to use lubrication, it makes it easier – nobody likes it too big”.

The whole cabin just cracked out in laughter. The girl was so embarrassed she picked her stuff up and moved right along probably to the next cabin.

Poetic justice I call it. The chap sitting opposite the lady who was earlier insulted for confronting the girl offered to buy me a drink.

The thing is though – she could have easily been talking about shoes or I don’t know, a bag of potatos? Who knows.Related Articles:

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You see, some of the most drama generating issues for any couple are the mundane things like who does what in the house from washing the toilets and changing diapers, to mowing the lawn and scrubbing the pots and pans. They say it’s the stuff relationships are made of, but in the same token, it’s most definitely the stuff drama is made of. Of course, it doesn’t help that you’re both probably busting a gut at work to make ends meet, and there’s a small matter of kids who might not see things as you see them when it comes to being reasonable.

So once in a while, you resolve to lighten the load for both of you and sub-contract some of the more straight forward chores. A live in house help is most definitely not an option, so the natural thing is to pick up the yellow pages, and look for the locally advertising domestic cleaners, who can pop in once or twice a week. The truth is, doing most of the work yourself for the simple reason that it saves money is a false economy. For the sake of sanity, investing in external help on occasion makes perfect sense.

I thought finding a cleaner would be easy. Back in my bachelor days, it was most definitely easy. I found a nice lady on the other side of the phone, she came with a cleaner on the first day, we laughed and chatted, haggled on a price, and I gave her the spare key, and that was that. Twice a week, I’d come home from work and my apartment would look like a million bucks.

I didn’t have to worry about much, and even if I wasn’t able to leave a few bob under the biscuit tin when I was broke, I could always square things on payday. They were even flexible enough to pop in on an additional day to do a spring clean if I was expecting a booty call (a sparkling clean house never harms your chances of wooing and convincing an undecided chick that panty removal isn’t such a bad thing after all)…but I digress.

I had a bad feeling about this one from the get go. The first sign should have been that a man with an annoying voice answered the phone. His response to my simple question about how much they charge per hour was delivered with an air of disdain that only Ugly Betty would expect from the pretentious, back stabbing colleagues on her first day at Mode magazine.

“I need to arrange an appointment to come and view your house”, the Pratt kept insisting.

“I don’t think you need to see my house to answer a simple question about your hourly rate. Does it change depending on the number of rooms I have?”, was my simple riposte.

“Oh no – sir, we have to follow a certain procedure and make sure that everything is right”.

I should have hung up and just left the fucker out to dry, but I needed to get someone in to do some regular cleaning, and I really didn’t have time to call around left right and centre. And so I gave him my address, and told him that either ‘er indoors or myself will be at home at a certain time, and that he should call before he gets there to make sure that someone is at home.

I found the freak waiting up front 15 minutes before he was due to visit, and his blunt excuse was that he had other appointments so he thought he might turn up early. This was a clear red flag that I ignored (maybe I’m getting soft in my old age), but I decided to just get it over with.

The dude reminded me of a former college lecturer who was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. His arrogance oozed out in everything that he did, how he moved and his appraisal of the living room as he entered the house. Now, every parent with a toddler will know full well that a living room looking like a building site with all manner of toys and implements is a normal state of affairs. I don’t know if he was more pissed off at the fact that Pepper Pig, a popular kids TV show was playing on TV – and clearly, it didn’t make any sense to him (not that it was ever supposed to, it’s a kids show, or the state of the living room was not up to his standards. I would have normally said “sorry about the mess”, but considering I wanted them to clean the mess regularly, I figured it was appropriate that he had an idea of the intensity of the chore.

He started by giving me a history of his company, to which I responded by cutting him off. I didn’t have the time for niceties and I had to go back out again. And so the ridiculous started.

“I have to look around the house and then describe it to “my lady” who will be cleaning. They usually clean from top left to bottom right.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less”, I responded, “but it still doesn’t answer my question about how much it costs per hour. I’ll only agree to it if it’s a reasonable cost”.

“Well, this type of house we would charge x and y per hour, and it has to be a minimum of z hours”, he answered with anger as if I had twisted his arm and slammed his face onto the wall.

“And you couldn’t tell me this on the phone?”

“No sir, we have to agree on the terms and conditions”.

“What do you mean – it’s a cleaning job, I’m not asking you for a loan”.

“Well sir, we usually sign a contract with clients, and then we go through a check list of issues. I have to examine the house for health and safety and for insurance purposes to satisfy that our liability insurance will be met.”

By this time I was rolling my eyes and wishing this fucker had never walked into my house.

“I also need you to sign a direct debit mandate and we normally collect payment 3 months in advance for the first payment as a deposit, and then a monthly payment in advance”.

“For what”, I cynically asked.

“It’s our policy”, the freak says.

“It’s a cleaning job. Why would I want to do something as stupid as sign off a direct debit to you? Besides, I haven’t agreed to it yet”.

He still insisted that they had to take the first deposit and payment in advance and by this time I was already pissed off enough to try find a way to get him out of my house without drop kicking him onto the front yard.

“You see Mr. So and so” I calmly said, “Where I come from, the only people who get paid before a job is completed are prostitutes. Unless “your ladies” are coming here to regularly get laid for a fee, I really don’t see why I should even contemplate paying in advance”.

That clearly got him as he stormed up and suggested that I need to think about it then and give him an answer.

To which I responded, “don’t call me, I’ll call you before the end of the week”….which was clearly a mistake. I should have perhaps said, “fuck off”.

A few days later, ‘er indoors hands me the phone and says “your friend is on the line asking why his lady is still waiting”.

Lo and behold, the dude had the arrogance to say that he had been waiting for my phone call, and that he needed to respond to his lady as she was waiting to know when she can come and start and to organize her schedule to accommodate me.

“I thought I told you I’ll call if and when I decide to go ahead with this”

“But my lady has been waiting”, was his persistent response.

“Then tell her to stop waiting”, and with that I hung up.

Did I mention that he insisted that I needed to buy cleaning materials for his so called ladies? At the hourly rate they were charging you’d think that they were hiring a cherry picker to clean the windows and roof.
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I first came across this memo from an employer to his employee years and years ago, and hadn’t seen it again until this week – and thought it was still an excellent piece of diplomacy. I must remind myself to use it some time.

From: Team Leader

To: (Enter employee’s name here)

Subject: Your request for a day off work

Thank you for submitting a request for a day off work. I’m concerned though, that you haven’t looked at things from my point of view, so I think it’s important to examine what you’re asking for.

There are 365 days in a year, and out of these, you only work during the week, leaving us with only 261 available working days.

Out of these 261 days, you are only theoretically available to the company for at most 8 hours a day. If you take the rest of the 16 hours a day as a whole and calculate them into days, then you don’t work for another 174 days, technically leaving you with 87 working days in a year.

If we then subtract all public holidays and the period between Christmas and new year when the company is not open for business, you will see that you only have 74 working days.

We haven’t even considered the time that you have off for lunch, tea and coffee breaks in the morning and afternoon, and the down time that you have for chit chat and office gossip. Take all these in totality through the year, and you effectively have 52 working days left to offer the company.

You will also be aware that the company has a policy of setting aside 1 day a month for staff training. Add to this, the time you spent travelling during the day to and from company clients, and we clearly see that there’s at least another 24 days down time through the year, technically leaving us with 28 working days.

Now, I’m reliably told by the folks in the IT department that on average, you spend 30 to 45 minutes a day browsing websites that have nothing to do with why we employ you. We don’t want you to consider us anal, so we normally overlook this sort of down time for most employees, but give or take, I suggest that this leaves us with 26 working days in a year.

Apparently, the government requires that we give you a mandatory 25 days off work for annual leave, leaving you with only one working day in the year.

I’LL BE DAMNED IF THAT’S THE DAY YOU HAVE IN MIND!
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You know them tight situations when a father comes home from work for lunch unexpectedly, and the biggest problem isn’t that his daughter hasn’t prepared lunch yet, or doesn’t look like she’s anywhere near preparing anything edible. The biggest problem is that you happen to be naked and firmly anchored in between his teenage daughter’s legs – and as he calls out for her, you’re traumatizing about whether to complete an exercise in coitus that is a justified reward for the time and effort that you’ve clearly invested your whole school holiday in, or jump out through the second floor bedroom window and take your chances with the unsuspecting neighbours who you’re about to grace, truth be told, with what you can find of your clothes in one hand, and if you’re not injured – trying to cover a rock hard penis with the other hand.

No, no – this recent close shave wasn’t as dramatic, but nevertheless, a gentle reminder about why it’s important to keep alert and avoid “sitting duck” situations. So while with a friend of the family, we bumped into some folks from the church that the friends go to, and the chit chat and nosy enquiries started.

“So are you all from the same country?” “Did you know each other before you moved here?” “Do you speak the same language?” “Do you live locally?” – you know the usual check list.

“Hey P, why don’t you invite your lovely friends to church this Sunday, it’ll be really lovely, we’ve got a really worthy theme this Sunday”

And before I could process where all this chit chat was going, P turned around with that “Sure, you guys can come right? You’re not doing anything this weekend…”, and turning back to the friends, assuringly concluding “don’t worry, I’ll make sure they’re there”.

I should have said something. You know when you get those moments, those split second situations where a “no” may sound really cold, but it’s so much better for everyone. Well, my no moment passed and come Sunday, we found ourselves looking for a free parking zone (parking attendants out here get paid on commission for the number of cars they clamp, so even on Sunday, I was taking no chances)

Side bar here. I’m not averse to attending church – really. It’s just that since I left my mother’s house many years ago to go to boarding school, my perception of things have changed and the rest is complicated (at least for the scope of this post). Before then, it was a cardinal crime in my mother’s house to miss church every weekend, and I do respect and appreciate why she took this stance. But she also gave us the freedom to decide what to do about attending church once we were older and could make that decision ourselves.

I even had the privilege of being one of the chapel wardens during high school helping the Chaplain run the school chapel day to day – and got involved in everything from organizing the cleaning (first form rabbles did it of course), to helping coordinate regular services and managing finances, and on a couple of occasions, being very proud to be one of the wardens on duty when the chapel hosted the funeral services for two fellow students who passed away while we were still in school.

The long and short of it is that it’s a very long time since I went to church, the only two exceptions being my brother’s funeral service several years ago, and the wedding of our close friends (to each other), both of which meant a lot to me in different ways.

So when my opportunity to step in and say “no, we actually have plans” faded past amidst the “great, we’ll see you Sunday” byes and hugs, I was left with that “what did I just get myself into” feeling.

‘Er indoors is fine with it and attends church very regularly, but there’s just something about these local churches that even she finds unnerving. We have a small church less than 400 metres from where we live, but that’s just gossip central. My neighbours and folks in the surrounding area don’t go to church to know the town gossip, they just go to find out and confirm whether the local paper printed out the version of the story they had heard. Drama central describes the culture of it much better.

So when we entered this new (for us) church as they were singing a hymn, the deacons and ushers sat at the back scrambled to make space for us to sit together, and we just calmly slotted in and assumed the necessary by joining into the chorus. I must have heard this hymn somewhere but I didn’t know the words so I just sang what they were singing only a second or two late – it works.

As we sat down, I thought I’d readjust my chair only to be put in my place by my son. I’m sure he totally didn’t mean to embarrass me (kids his age will say the darnest things), but shouting “don’t be silly daddy, sit down” in a church with pin drop silence doesn’t normally achieve that desired “I didn’t mean to” effect. After the laughter, I knew I was fodder.

My wife’s attention was caught by something else on a projector screen and it was only when she turned around and whispered to me in Swahili did I register her disappointment at the semi-naked starving boy from Liberia that they had on the screen in your now classic International NGO “give us your frigging money for poor African’s” mode.

If you read my post Cynicism in its true colours – Well!, they’ll say they’re saving the world , then you’ll clearly understand my lack of enthusiasm for all matters innately patronizing.

I thought we were coming for a church service not a frigging fundraising event. For the sake of expediency and acceptance that I can’t afford a law suit, I’ll refrain from naming the organization involved, but this was a new low.

I’ll come back to the “give us your frigging money” story in a second, but I digressed when talking about my project of sitting down without any more embarrassment. The next speaker at the pulpit then pronounced the dreaded phrase – “I understand we have visitors today – We’d like them to introduce themselves!”.

I don’t know if I can aptly explain how that call for visitors in a church evokes certain feelings in my being that freak me out. Maybe it’s the conditioning I got as a child every time we visited the grandparents in the bundux and when attending the local church with them – they couldn’t pass the opportunity to show off their neatly dressed grand children from “the city”. We had to stand up, wave and smile back at everyone, and I guess anyone in a church who says “we have visitors”, triggers those raw emotions.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not afraid of crowds or speeches for that matter, far from it. I’m actually quite good at it when I’m in my element. It’s just that being paraded for everyone like a dairy cow from Athi River about to be sold at an auction is not my style. A couple with three kids quickly came to our rescue as they made their way up front. What a relief, but then again, I was busy trying to figure out where P and her family were. I just thought it would be useful, while we have the breathing space to just remind P that I was not averse to breaking legs if I had to – and I’ll do it if it’ll stop me from being cajoled into standing up and walking up front like the couple and their 3 kids.

Apparently though, these folks had been debriefed and they were only being introduced as they were new folks who wanted to become members. For some reason, I thought that churches let any Thomas, Dickson and Harrison walk through the door, but maybe I’m mistaken. What I wasn’t mistaken about is that I wasn’t about to fill any membership form.

Fast forward to the service and we come back to the travels of the speaker (who I understood was a guest speaker) talking about his travels on behalf of a charity working in West Africa. I kid you not, if I had a brick, I would have thrown it at the dude with the precision of Andrew Flintoff trying to dismiss the batsman of the Australian cricket team. He wasn’t preaching for crying out loud, he was running a full length live infomercial with video props to boot.

At one point, I wanted to storm out when they started showing a video of how they’ve helped poor Africans plant tomatoes or breed chickens. Clearly, this is something a population of over 850 million people from 52 countries wouldn’t know how to do, and only westerners running charities know how to “teach” the natives. My wife had clearly picked on my mood and as I got shifty in my chair, she stepped on my foot with enough to transmit her clear message “you ain’t going anywhere – sit down”.

I had to endure another soppy story of dilemmas in life where the dude talking had to struggle to make a moral decision to give a pen to a child in the village. His dilemma apparently was that if he gave the child a pen, then every child would then want a pen, and considering that they can’t read and write, this was a big issue. This dude even ask the congregation to tell by a show of hands how many would have given the pen. It was so surreal I just had to lean back and look at the roof.

And the moral of the story – as if it was unpredictable – “Give us your frigging money – we’re saving poor Africans”. If he would have just started with that 1 minute advert, it would have been less painful.

I didn’t realise it was possible to go lower than the very patronizing daytime “please give us £2 a month, we need it to save poor people in Africa” advertisement screened every 5 minutes on cable and satellite TV. Adverts like this one or this one. This dude was actually pulling it off in church – and the congregation were all teary eyed and possibly contemplating their wicked shame of living without caring for the poor of the world – or more succinctly, what William Easterly calls “The white man’s burden”.

If you thought that was dramatic enough, then you must have been as confused as I was. You see, churches out here have a small gathering after the service where the congregation mill around, share a lousy cup of tea and a few biscuits and cakes. It’s during this time that I got reminded how it’s very important to take things in context as the alternative is to get arrested for expressing your contempt about what is being said and the undertones it’s being delivered in.

So while sitting at a table with P catching up, sipping the tea and biting into a biscuit, regular folks pass by, say hello and pull a chair, and the hits just keep on rolling.

(Note to reader: The questions and awkward conversations are aggregated from different “well meaning” smiling people – And the answers up in here were the one’s in my head, but not what I responded)

Q: “So how did you come to the UK?”
My thoughts: A fishing boat
Q: “I didn’t realise you had it that bad in Africa – do you know that village?”
My thoughts: “Yeah, it’s just down the road from where my family is from
Q: If you’ve lived for that long in this area, why haven’t you come to church like your fellow Africans?”
My thoughts: What? It’s now a crime?
Q: “Do you work? The economy is really bad – it must affect you?”
My thoughts: Actually, I run a brothel from my basement during the day – pretty low key, only referral punters, and a different girl every day.
Q: “Are you on benefits (welfare)?
My thoughts: Do I have a frigging sign on my head saying – post office regular every Thursday to cash welfare cheque?
Q:”You know the church is always here – if you’re ever in difficulty, you and your family must ask us for help”
My thoughts: What the fuck!

You get the gist anyway….

This was as bad as the funky outfit in Kenya that got a group of my mum’s maendeleo ya wanake group hooked on their fascinating take of why the world was so troubling – got to admit though, they got my friends and I (see – the mum’s dragged all their teenage kids to such redemptions from evil) singing “Riswah” at every available opportunity – it was a ball….

….Or the shenanigans of a one Mary Akatsa, the prophetess of comedy – did I tell you that I had the privilege of visiting her and being prayed for to rid me of the demons of my misspent youth(this is clearly a story for another blog post)…

…Or Kenya’s very own Mr. Miracle Baby, a one Pastor Deya, but that also ladies and gentlemen, is a story in itself.
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