HOW TO BE SHOT BY UNKNOWN GUNMEN IN KENYA

So you are tired of your miserable existence and you just want it all to end? Well, suicide is not the option. it is messy and most of the time doesn't work. Here is a tip for you; why dont you get gunned down by the most patriotic Kenyans: unknown gunmen! These guys love Kenya so much that they would not hesitate to put a bullet in you while you are strolling in the streets of Mombasa (or anywhere else). But you have to give these patriots some motivation first; afterall killing a person is not that easy, is it? Well it depends...

1) BE A MUSLIM

This is a good motivator. Apparently, unknown gunmen are fond of shooting muslims. So if you really want to die you can try shifting religions. All you need is a nice white Kanzu, a Friday and a mosque to walk out of. This seems to rattle the tail of these unknown Kenyans with weapons.

2)HAVE AN ACCENT

No. Not a Luhya accent... nor a Luo one. Unless you want a slot at Churchill Comedy show then you are good to go. But if you are serious about this dying business, then you need a dangerous one, either Arabic or Somali... Mostly the Somali one. According to unknown gunmen, a Somali accent can voice activate a hand grenade. True story. So come on you suicidal freak! Let us fake ourselves a "bahali yake" accent!

3)LEAVE YOUR IDENTIFICATION PAPERS AT HOME

So your girlfriend is a pain in the neck and just doesn't want to go away? this is a tip for you. Steal her Identification papers and send her for mtumba shopping in Eastleigh! We need a story to back your saddistic doings... she'll get arrested, sent to a refugee camp somewhere and when she comes back to the city BAM!!! Our unknown friends strike! a bullet to the head or a driveby and your love story comes to a bloody halt.

4) SHOW YOUR FACE ON "JICHO PEVU"

We want to see you on TV before and after you die. So have a chat with Mohamed Ali. And do not mince your words during the interview. Say something unpatriotic; like you hate Christians, Kenya sucks, KDF are thieves, mention ICC cases if you can, put the Inspector General under siege (wink!),  throw in an insult or two about the government of the day... you know, all the true juicy stuff. Here is the thing, Unknown gunmen watch Jicho Pevu too. They'll help you die and watch you in the next episode of the investigative documentary!  

5) FOLLOW ADEN DUALE'S ADVICE

Do not throw a grenade in Eastleigh... go to Machakos. I know Duale said it won't get you killed. He is right, the government might not get you but our buddies the unknown Kenyans will get you.

6) FOLLOW MY ADVICE

Thats right... follow my advice. But just incase your family tries to sue later on, I plead insanity!     

DRINKERS ASSOCIATION OF MOI UNIVERSITY (DAMU)

Imagine my excitement (as a journalist) when I bumped into two bona fide members DAMU, Drinkers Association of Moi University. They do exist people and my do they drink! They are more organised than some media groups i write for... this i gathered from their club t-shirts written "save water, drink alcohol", we dont even have a logo in some media group i write for!

Before you all get creative and jump to conclusions, let me announce that it was at broad daylight when i encountered these two gentlemen. I was at a pork joint in campus having my lunch and writing up material for my comedy show "laugh with impunity" when the duo staggered in. Despite being a Monday afternoon, the undergraduates were as drunk as a nominated senator (see what I did there?). Their t-shirts had a smiling face of Tabitha Karanja holding the new Guiness bottle. Remember when Bifwoli Wakoli walked the streets of Nairobi screaming "Awori poleeeeee!"? These two drunk vuvuzelas were doing exactly that only this time calling for more beer and some other things which i cannot write even when I am alone and in darkness!

"HII SIO BAR!" (this is not a bar) the pregnant waitress was almost in tears.
"Do we look drunk to you?" One of the beer bottles asked, "Do you know who we are?"
"We are DAMU!" screamed the alcohol in the other guy, "Drinkers Association of Moi University!"

At this point, most of the self righteous pork eaters made their way out of the joint cursing the makers of the brew. I would have walked out but I was still looking forward to an "ugali sosa" afterward. Besides, I figured this story might impress the editor of our publication (For the record, this story was killed).

It was impossible to convince these enemies of Mututho that they were not in a bar. In fact, they broke into their club anthem which was interrupted by a series of belching and hiccups. At this point is where I intervened, heroically even, i dare say.
"Comrade power!" I screamed.
"Hey! aren't you that comedian guy?" I must say one does not feel particularly safe when recognized by a drunk.
"Thats me bwana!"
"Your joke about the toothless girl was pathetic man!"
I made a mental note to scrap that one off my script.
"You guys are a club or something?" I asked partly out of curiosity but mostly to change the subject.
"Ofcourse! we are DAMU!" (after which they sang their uncomprehendible anthem) "the lady you see on this t-shirt is Tabitha Karanja... do you know her?" i shook my head though she looked vaguely farmiliar.
"You do not know her?" the other drunkard sang. I swear his breathe did make me a little bit tipsy! "This is the mother of all beer! the CEO Keroche breweries!"
"We have been trying to contact her to sponsor our club..." a sudden sadness covered their faces, "You see the University cannot support our club... is that really fair?" I did not feel safe answering that question so I dipped a serious piece of ugali into the pork fat and stuffed my mouth.
"We are a free country for God's sake!!"
"Wako wapi?" a kalenjin accent asked at the door. security was here. As the two were being whisked away loudly, I scheduled an interview with their leader which they agreed on condition that I find them a sponsor. so if you are out there....

WAZEE WA SIKU HIZI

The old people of nowadays have a problem with our generation. I am not talking about age here. I refer to the good men and women who are scared of change especially in fashion and technology. They disapprove of everything youngsters do. Sometimes justly so but more often than not they are just scared… And it did not just start recently; it began when we were born. Ask anybody who was born after 1990 and they will tell you that, in more than one occasion, we have been referred to as “watoto wa siku hizi”; the children of nowadays. We have been branded as the manner less generation that watches violence and sex on TV… and we do not respect our elders. Flash forward to approximately 15 years later… there we are in our early 20s and the “watoto wa siku hizi” has metamorphosized into “vijana wa siku hizi”.

 It is true that my generation has done many wrong things including twerking, skinny jeans and killing letter “s” by replacing it with “x” (xorry, am not apologizing!).

You do not see us condemning your generation when Aden Duale exposes his small brains and big mouth on national television, do you? Or when Shebesh and Kidero are slapping each other senseless? Or when some genius decides to embezzle tax-payers money? Do you see us shaking our heads and condemning the whole lot of you going “tsk tsk tsk! Wazee wa siku hizi!”? Many of the Wazee wa siku hizi have done a lot of harm to the society too. Well, we have out done you but that doesn’t give you the right to judge us blindly. All these feelings I have “caught” come from a single incident where my hair was on the spotlight…

I am a proud owner of a curl activated semi-Mohawk that I spent my own money to make. For those wazee wa siku hizi who do not know what that means, it’s almost similar to the box shaving style only that I have put some chemicals on mine to make it look awesome. My problems started at the salon where I was having it treated. That is right, we go to salons nowadays. A woman in her midlife crisis could not contemplate for the life of her what a man was doing under a drier.

“They do that nowadays madam… it is normal” the salon lady tried to come to my aid.

“Vijana wa siku hizi…” she shook her head in disapproval. She went ahead to give everyone who cared to listen a lesson in morality. Well, I have seen rapists and thieves who are loyal to the old fashioned kinyozi with old fashioned hairstyles.

Things took a turn for the worse when I boarded a matatu in Eldoret. It was in the evening and the wise old people of today were coming from work. I could sense more than ten pairs of eyes staring at my freshly done hair. Everyone had decided to keep their opinion to themselves were it not for Mama nani who had coincidentally followed me from the salon.

“Mimi nipate kijana wangu amekaranga nywele!” (Should I find my son frying his hair!). The all too familiar voice broke the tense silence. And just like that the “vijana wa siku hizi” massacre arose. Dreadlocks and skinny jeans were put on the table and devoured hungrily and angrily. Examples were given of naked girls in the streets and in the villages alike. Universities were cursed as the breeding ground for irresponsible youth. The driver even slowed down and threw his thoughts on the topic. He predicted that the next time we meet I will have ear-rings on my nose and a tattoo of the devil on my fore head!

I am twenty one, the hair on my head is yet to fall out when balding sets in, let me play with my hair! Plus I am not trying to impress the wazee wa siku hizi, this is for my future wife!

The Fundamentals of Quails, Mohawks and Selfies BY BARASA B'JAY ONGETI

There are songs that sound good but never hit. Then there are songs that are a hit the instant they are released. For example, Sinzia by Nameless, Kigeugeu by Jaguar, or Merimela by that guy. These songs stick with us and are repeated over and over like a broken record (pun intended). The third category of songs that hit is the most curious: Songs that take forever to hit, and once they reach a certain boiling point they do not want to leave us. The most apt example is Fundamentals by Ken Wamaria.

This song was released two years ago and only caught its buzz recently. Despite being a song with utterly no content and basic repetition of the same ten words in four different languages, it is so infectious you will catch yourself humming it in church. You probably started humming it as soon as you saw the word fundamentals in this sentence. What caused its sudden catchiness two years after release?


Infectious. That is the word. What makes things infectious? What made the "Pesa Pap" advert so infectious that today pap is accepted as a word meaning "instant"? Why would you yawn when the person seated across you yawns? What made quail rearing a hit in Kenya? Why is everyone and their president taking selfies?


The complex answer is based on biologist Richard Dawkin's theory of genes. A simplification of it is that just like genes; songs, ideas, social behaviour, catchphrases, fashion trends – like skinny jeans and Mohawks – replicate themselves and transfer themselves from human mind to human mind. These ideas are called memes.


A book I read recently by Malcolm Gladwell seeks to explain the self propagation of a message/idea/product in three ways:

1. It has to be sticky: Such a message has to have an inherent quality of being memorable. For a song, catchy beats and repetitiveness are probably the most obvious sticky factors.

2. The 'right' people have to spread it: Gladwell says three kinds of people are fundamental (ahem) if an idea is to become epidemic. You need connectors who are people who know almost everyone. You need mavens who are guys who know almost everything. And you need salesmen, who are persuaders. Somebody influential, say a respected DJ like DJ Styles, must have come across Fundamentals recently and claimed that it is a great song. Then our minds were convinced it is a great song.

3. It has to be in the right context: Human beings are sensitive to their environment. There has to be a right environment for an idea to become an epidemic. This can explain how waves of student strikes become fashionable in boarding schools before mock exams. For the case of a song, if it is what is played to you in a matatu or a bar after a long day, it becomes catchy.


Can this theory be used to make your product or business or political campaign catch and spread like wildfire? I think so. But this article only tries to explain the What of memes. I do not know the How. If I did, I would become an advertising agent and every commercial I make will hit.

DARLING... ENHANCE YOUR BEAUTY...

“Man saw colors and invented paint.  Woman got inspired by paint and invented makeup. Man coined words and invented conversation. Woman got inspired by conversation and invented gossip. Man learned agriculture and invented food. Woman got inspired from food and invented diet. Man discovered friendship and invented love. Woman got inspired from love and invented love triangles. Man discovered trading and invented money. Woman got inspired from money and invented shopping… that’s it! Thereafter, man has invented many things and women are still shopping!”

This goes out to all men out there who take their girlfriends to shop for hair. Before I continue, let me state that I have nothing against weaves or any other hairy implants. My friend Manyasi told me that those artificial hairs come from an indian kinyozi, they are packaged well then send to Africa for financial purposes. I like indians and I like hair too. In short I do not mind the weave… but that does not mean I like shopping for them!

Take yesterday for instance; my sister had tricked me to go shopping with her.we were welcomed by  hot air decorated with all mixtures of perfume. Someone must have been burning something back there!  The room was disturbingly pink. It was almost noon, the sun was generous enough to light up the place but some genius saw it better to light it up, complete with disco lights! it was like entering the Hair kingdom where all the women had arrived to worship the hair queen! My heart beat my ribcage with such determination; it wanted to get out of here…

Before I hatched my escape plan, a lady with all exaggerated body parts suddenly appeared and gapped my left arm. She wrestled her way through the sea of ladies. The staff of Moses would have done me good at this moment! I was sweating  (like everyone else) by the time we reached our destination!

“si hii ni skin tone ya Sabina?” (isn’t this Sabina’s skin tone) she inquired pulling my skin towards a gang of women for inspection.

“ni hiyo exactly!” a lady who looked trapped behind a drier shouted over the noise of boiling water next to her. “I think that Darling number 203 will be good for her” with that, the big lady shoved me out of the shop, my job was over.. I was calculating on how I would break  out if this hairdom but luck was not on my side… I bumped into my sister.

“Which one do you think I should buy?” now I have no knowledge of hair!

“Darling number 203” I said with such confidence.

“nope.” I was dismissed. The next three hours looked like centuaries! At some point I even thought I had missed the 2017 election and my 24^th birthday! Here is another thing I learnt, if left to choose, women do not know what they want! Imagine my dismay when she finally picked DARLING 203 on it was written “enhance your beauty”

I wanted to punch her on the nose!

SUB CHIEF VERSUS MUTUTHO

I did not know I was under arrest until Jesse the sub chief pissed on his old khaki shorts while at the same time crying like a little boy. Jesse is our sub chief and I am proud to have shared a cell with him. Dont get me wrong, I am not happy at all that I was arrested. Before I go any further, I just want to state that Mututho is a real person, as real as "his" laws. I had faithfully gone to pick my girlfriend from Murenju Bar where reports said that she was drunk as a fish and her high heels had fallen in a pit latrine. Another piece of advice, if your heels fall in a pit latrine, let them go.

So before going to Murenju I decided to pass by the sub chief's premises to collect some back up. One has to be prepared for such missions.

Mzee Jesse took his sweet time to go inside his official regalia, a white long sleeved shirt (I suspect it was originally white because, like everything else in his abode, was dirty), an old khaki short, a thick pair of beige socks whose torn parts were hidden in a pair of shoes that were originally gumboots. The upper part of the gumboots were cleverly cut off by some genius whom I suspect was Jesse's son, Wekhomba.

Where was I? yeah, at Jesse's house collecting backup.

"Nalyanya do not worry. I handle cases like these every night!" The good sub chief assured me. There was something about his heavy Luhya accent that added confidence to his words.

"So I hear your girlfriend is a regular at Murenju's!" He chuckled. Like his shirt, his teeth too were originally white; but not at present! "My son tells me that she even has a table there... is that true?"

It is embarrasing to have such girlfriends. What is even more annoying is that I had met MJ (Those are her initials) during a Bible study session. Like any other good christian girl, MJ was hard to get. It took me countless prayer sessions and Bible verses in equal measure just to get her into a restaurant! How she resorted to this disgusting habit of drinking , dropping her heels in latrines then trying to retrieve them is a long story...

Back to the events that led the sub chief and I behind bars.... I had to endure the lecture on dating, courtship and marriage all the way to Murenju's. We needed not to be directed to where the ladies was, MJ was screaming at the top of her voice you would have thought she had dropped her bad liver inside there. There was a small crowd of potbellies watching the scene. The guy who had called me was busy receiving blows to the face as he fought to restrain my violent girlfriend.

Jesse took me completely by surprise when he gave birth to a five feet whip from somewhere within his sub chief uniform. The effect was impressive, miraculous I dare say. the wine in their systems immediately turned into water and all openings at Murenju's were converted into emergency exits! some fool even pulled the fire alarm!

It was after Jesse, MJ and I were thrown at the back of the Uasin Gishu county Police pick up did we realise that the drunk folk down at Murenju's were not running away from Jesse's whip. It was 11:01pm. Mututho.

you can find this article at kenyawriting.com too. 

OF SECOND SHARE AND A BEATING.

The year is 2005, I am 12 and hungry. The sun is up and I have just licked of the plate clean, no evidence of my illegal second share. Yet my stomach won't just shut up. I look at the queue leading to the dining hall, its reasonably long. I get creative. Maybe the cook has not registered my face. But its dangerous given that I had already gone for a second share. The fact that I had been arrested thrice the previous week just made it even riskier to go for a third share. To add on that, the same cook who was serving had caught me pants down stealing remains of food from the staffroom earlier on that term. All odds were playing against me. My stomach growled again as if telling me "Be a man!"

I was in Nzoia Sugar Co. Primary School, an institution buried at the heart of a vast sugarcane plantation. Hunger pangs tend to be sharper at such remote places. Our class, STD 7W was popularly known for being masters of disguise while going for second shares. The boys would go at all lengths including soiling our faces to avoid recognition. The boarding master who also doubled up as the canteen man even tried to de-worm us to rid us of this gluttonous behavior. Wandera was his name. On the day that we were to be de-wormed, we ran away from school and spent the better part of the day in the sugarcane plantation. Our reason for escaping this medical procedure was because of Ojago whose dad was apparently a doctor. Ojago had narrated to us in gory detail how worms would crawl out every opening in our malnourished bodies once we took the deworming pill. Who wouldn't trust a medical opinion? So two of my cousins and I took to the Greenwich meridian, for that is how we referred to the plantation.

It was therefore not a surprise that I wanted to risk my life and go for a third share. We had survived solely on sugar-canes the previous day... The grumbling in my stomach made me wish i had rather had worms crawling out of my ears! I could not take this.

Hunger can make one creative. I went back in Starehe House and took out my checked green shirt. This was a clad we were to wear only on weekends. Feeling like a chameleon on a wall, i confidently marched back to the queue with my licked plate shining in the sun. My heart was racing faster as we approached the counter. Maybe this was a bad Idea. "Maybe not.." said the voice in my belly.

My turn came. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. The cook, Musa, was looking directly into my scared eyes as he dug the serving plate into the cake of rice. Just as he was about to put it on my clean-licked plate, he stopped. I was about to run for it when the other cook, Eliud, got hold of my hand.

"Marango!" he screamed for the third cook who was chopping cabbages with an axe, to come into the arresting party. My panic went wild when Marango approached still holding the axe in his hand! I had to defend my self...

"Wait!" I shouted. I had not yet broken my voice.

"Hii ni seki!" Musa said reaching for a pipe. My bladder gave way. This is why you should visit the loo before embarking on such a dangerous mission!

"I am not the one!" my soprano rang the air, "the one who was here had a sky blue shirt, I am wearing a checked green shirt!"

They stopped, thinking through my explanation.
"How did you know the 'other one' had a sky blue shirt?" Marango asked. What followed was the worst beating I have ever received in a kitchen... well, the only beating I have ever received in a kitchen.... True story.