Most of your adult life you are sure, very sure about one or two things. Things like I can never fit in a bikini, I can never wear a hawk on my head; I can never drink cheap alcohol. Omera. Just like I have started to be sure I can’t write now in the middle of my intro, at some point in my life I was sure I am not really a poetry guy. Just like sitting with a guitar on the pavement or wearing a sleeveless shirt thanks to a number of weeks at the gym, I thought poets were sissies, – and I quote – ‘poetry, guitars and biceps are desperate attempts to get noticed’. This is not a complain, it’s not a revolutionary call, it’s not what you want to think but you can think what you want, and above all it’s not personal. Sissy.
This is an arrangement of words that tell you the Adventures of Josh. Am writing this in the middle of a hangover, I need some water. In my head I have gone over the different ways I want this to come out but like teenage daughters, stories have a way of taking their own stand, either wrong or right from where you are stand is. Am going to be a very bad father to this story, am going to stand where I want and watch the story ruin its life- get pregnant, abort it or smoke it to leprosy, do a lot of alcohol, guys and useless stuff; whatever it wants. Brace yourself, you are about to get Harry Potterized.
It all begins before the beginning. It’s Sunday morning and my eyes are closed. My lips pulled to form this curve are forced by linguistics and traditional codes into calling a smile just so that you understand. I am smiling because am imagining myself somewhere else. At home. That shows you how much I was bored with Maseno.
I could have smiled imagining myself anywhere else; at that bus station where you play grab with a number of drunk or stoned(there is a very big difference)formerly gym going or guitar playing guys who will threaten to beat you up if you don’t get on the bus they show you; in the same bus -you are not in because you are afraid of settling it like a man, rather, unlike them you have brains that feed you and you don’t want them bouncing on the cold, wet pavement- this mother who keeps sleeping on your shoulder and smiling sheepishly when you wake her up only to sleep on you again in a few minutes. You could be anywhere, happily getting pushed shoved and threatened, bearing the weight of a mother's world, breathing, and smell of strange perfume on your shoulders. Sadly I was there, eyes closed. But I was not going to be there for long, am leaving.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Thursday, March 29, 2012
SPOKEN HEART STORY
Most of your adult life you are sure, very sure about one or two things. Things like i can never fit in a bikini, i can never wear a hawk on my head; i can never drink cheap alcohol Omera. Just like i have started to be sure i can’t write now in the middle of my intro, at some point in my life i was sure i am not really a poetry guy. Just like sitting with a guitar on the pavement or wearing a sleeveless shirt thanks to a number of weeks at the gym, I thought poets were sissies, – and I quote – ‘poetry, guitars and biceps are desperate attempts to get noticed’. Continued………….
Thursday, March 15, 2012
THE CONTRACT
I sat through a three hours class of psychology of communication this week. The topic was self concept. I don’t want to turn this into a review of that class but am going to tell you this; those quotes we write in facebook, hear from our preachers, told by our teachers about self esteem, happiness and personal behavior and their relationship have a strong psychological background.
The basic idea is that everyone has a painting – or several paintings depending on your creativity, sanity and emotional state - in their head of their own physical, behavioral and psychological attributes. The issue is not the number; the issue is the polarity of these paintings. Some people actually have a painting of themselves that they are proud of – they are very positive towards themselves. Most people have mixed feelings when it comes to looking at the picture of them. The rest hate that picture, they think it’s not good enough, they should have been taller, browner, sharper in class, their hips should have been fuller, their parents should have been a little richer, they should have had better social skills, their breath should have smelled a little better.
The relationship between these paintings and happiness, success and our behavior is very simple. By creating this picture, we are not only painting how our life is at the moment but most important we are casting an image of how we want our lives to be in future. Positivity draws positivity, negativity draws more of it.
The moment you view yourself as the best, as the brightest, the moment you tell yourself that ‘maybe am not doing good now but I know and I have always known that I have the potential, the connection, the will and the power to be the best and eventually I will’ you have painted a picture of success for yourself
A negative painting is a killer and a positive one is more of enduring happiness. One week ago I was looking for a movie to watch among the several in the computer. I’ve watched all of them so I settle for this documentary titled the secret.
The documentary simplifies the reasons for success and failure into one very subtle secret: we draw these things towards us by our thoughts. We succeed because we think of success, we are happy because our thoughts appreciate the reasons for us to be happy. We fail because we keep thinking of the failure, we keep thinking of those obstacles of reasons why we could not succeed.
To make this clear, think of it this way. Your brain is your life magnet, successes and failures are tiny iron pieces hanging in the atmosphere, and your thoughts are the power that draws particular pieces to your life. The more you think of failure, the more pieces of failure you attract and in the end you are one big magnet covered in failure. The opposite applies to success. The stronger and more frequent your thoughts are, the more your chances of achieving either. To some the power that rearranges everything in this world to fit into your thought is the universe. To me, it’s God
Two weeks ago I was travelling back to Maseno after attending a funeral of a very close cousin of mine, he died very young and in that bus from Magadi to Nairobi I was feeling like shit. I was counting the things I’ve done wrong, the mistakes I haven’t apologized for, the people I haven’t told I loved, the wrongs I’ve never made an effort to make right and wondering if my cousin had his wrongs, his mistakes, negligence instances, things he wished he could say but never got the chance to. My question to myself was, will I have a chance to? What really would have changed my mood that day was the opposite of my line of thoughts, the positive things I’ve done, what I have been able to accomplish, and the far I’ve gone. Even with those few mistakes in your life, the things you have done right are way much more. The problem with us is we overlook a dozen good things about ourselves and obsess over that one thing we think is wrong.
In Nairobi I spent the night with another cousin of mine. In the morning before I leave I pick one DVD with messages from Joel Osteen. I’ve always admired the way he speaks but mostly for the humor and the stories, not really listening to the message. So I watch one sermon and I wake up to take a shower. I leave with that DVD in the Drive. I only notice that I have it when I get to Maseno and I get it out of the drive and put it on shelve. Am back to watching movies.
The same thing that happened one week ago happened last night only this time round I find that Joel Osteen DVD and I continue watching from where I had stopped. The next message in that DVD is called ‘not being critical about yourself’.
What I got from that message is that even though we have a painting of ourselves and we believe that we know ourselves the most, God has a painting of us too. He is the master painter, He painted the universe, all those natural landscapes and features you see at and say wow, He painted them. And then He painted you. What our paintings say is that God made all these paintings we admire so perfectly and then when he got to us, somehow, He made mistakes. That is not even remotely true. You are as good as those things that make you wow in fact even better because God actually took His time, got His hands dirty to make you in His image and breathed His life into you.
You did not get the wrong hips, a smaller mind, the wrong nose, the wrong eye color, the wrong parents, or the wrong neighborhood. What you got is the perfect of all those for you. Joel Osteen said that we are living in defeat because we don’t recognize the value of what we are. You are a masterpiece painting and all that is in your life plays into making you that. Get up in the morning; look in the mirror and say, ‘Good morning you wonderful being’
We are Masterpieces of God. We don’t get our worth from what people think about us. We get it from who the painter is. An original Picaso, no matter how bad it might look would sell for millions of dollars. What would the worth of God’s work be?
Everyday you have to pray that, that painting in your head about yourself draws closer to what God made you and the only way we achieve that is to think positive, to praise ourselves for the good things in our lives, to appreciate our achievements. Too often we tend to obsess over how far we need to go that we forget to look back and say ‘This far am doing very good’. God did it, why not you? Every time he created something, the bible says, and God saw that it was good.
Last night I prayed. It started ‘God, I know its been long…..’. In the end I have decided to make this contract with God and myself. For every negative thought that I can consciously pick, I am going to make an effort to counter it with five positive ones. I am dedicated to painting a picture of my success and that I will start now. You can also do the same. Don’t you dare let yourself go through life with that negative painting in your mind
The basic idea is that everyone has a painting – or several paintings depending on your creativity, sanity and emotional state - in their head of their own physical, behavioral and psychological attributes. The issue is not the number; the issue is the polarity of these paintings. Some people actually have a painting of themselves that they are proud of – they are very positive towards themselves. Most people have mixed feelings when it comes to looking at the picture of them. The rest hate that picture, they think it’s not good enough, they should have been taller, browner, sharper in class, their hips should have been fuller, their parents should have been a little richer, they should have had better social skills, their breath should have smelled a little better.
The relationship between these paintings and happiness, success and our behavior is very simple. By creating this picture, we are not only painting how our life is at the moment but most important we are casting an image of how we want our lives to be in future. Positivity draws positivity, negativity draws more of it.
The moment you view yourself as the best, as the brightest, the moment you tell yourself that ‘maybe am not doing good now but I know and I have always known that I have the potential, the connection, the will and the power to be the best and eventually I will’ you have painted a picture of success for yourself
A negative painting is a killer and a positive one is more of enduring happiness. One week ago I was looking for a movie to watch among the several in the computer. I’ve watched all of them so I settle for this documentary titled the secret.
The documentary simplifies the reasons for success and failure into one very subtle secret: we draw these things towards us by our thoughts. We succeed because we think of success, we are happy because our thoughts appreciate the reasons for us to be happy. We fail because we keep thinking of the failure, we keep thinking of those obstacles of reasons why we could not succeed.
To make this clear, think of it this way. Your brain is your life magnet, successes and failures are tiny iron pieces hanging in the atmosphere, and your thoughts are the power that draws particular pieces to your life. The more you think of failure, the more pieces of failure you attract and in the end you are one big magnet covered in failure. The opposite applies to success. The stronger and more frequent your thoughts are, the more your chances of achieving either. To some the power that rearranges everything in this world to fit into your thought is the universe. To me, it’s God
Two weeks ago I was travelling back to Maseno after attending a funeral of a very close cousin of mine, he died very young and in that bus from Magadi to Nairobi I was feeling like shit. I was counting the things I’ve done wrong, the mistakes I haven’t apologized for, the people I haven’t told I loved, the wrongs I’ve never made an effort to make right and wondering if my cousin had his wrongs, his mistakes, negligence instances, things he wished he could say but never got the chance to. My question to myself was, will I have a chance to? What really would have changed my mood that day was the opposite of my line of thoughts, the positive things I’ve done, what I have been able to accomplish, and the far I’ve gone. Even with those few mistakes in your life, the things you have done right are way much more. The problem with us is we overlook a dozen good things about ourselves and obsess over that one thing we think is wrong.
In Nairobi I spent the night with another cousin of mine. In the morning before I leave I pick one DVD with messages from Joel Osteen. I’ve always admired the way he speaks but mostly for the humor and the stories, not really listening to the message. So I watch one sermon and I wake up to take a shower. I leave with that DVD in the Drive. I only notice that I have it when I get to Maseno and I get it out of the drive and put it on shelve. Am back to watching movies.
The same thing that happened one week ago happened last night only this time round I find that Joel Osteen DVD and I continue watching from where I had stopped. The next message in that DVD is called ‘not being critical about yourself’.
What I got from that message is that even though we have a painting of ourselves and we believe that we know ourselves the most, God has a painting of us too. He is the master painter, He painted the universe, all those natural landscapes and features you see at and say wow, He painted them. And then He painted you. What our paintings say is that God made all these paintings we admire so perfectly and then when he got to us, somehow, He made mistakes. That is not even remotely true. You are as good as those things that make you wow in fact even better because God actually took His time, got His hands dirty to make you in His image and breathed His life into you.
You did not get the wrong hips, a smaller mind, the wrong nose, the wrong eye color, the wrong parents, or the wrong neighborhood. What you got is the perfect of all those for you. Joel Osteen said that we are living in defeat because we don’t recognize the value of what we are. You are a masterpiece painting and all that is in your life plays into making you that. Get up in the morning; look in the mirror and say, ‘Good morning you wonderful being’
We are Masterpieces of God. We don’t get our worth from what people think about us. We get it from who the painter is. An original Picaso, no matter how bad it might look would sell for millions of dollars. What would the worth of God’s work be?
Everyday you have to pray that, that painting in your head about yourself draws closer to what God made you and the only way we achieve that is to think positive, to praise ourselves for the good things in our lives, to appreciate our achievements. Too often we tend to obsess over how far we need to go that we forget to look back and say ‘This far am doing very good’. God did it, why not you? Every time he created something, the bible says, and God saw that it was good.
Last night I prayed. It started ‘God, I know its been long…..’. In the end I have decided to make this contract with God and myself. For every negative thought that I can consciously pick, I am going to make an effort to counter it with five positive ones. I am dedicated to painting a picture of my success and that I will start now. You can also do the same. Don’t you dare let yourself go through life with that negative painting in your mind
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
IS KENYA FLIRTING WITH WAR
I wrote this piece many months ago. sorry, many weeks ago. i wrote it for a school newsletter then i felt it was too graphical for the newsletter. I edited it to fit and it got published. Then i kept the original for this blog but i have thought that i posted it a long time ago - i don't know where i got the idea. So am posting it now because it deserves to be posted, because you deserve to read it. It starts below.............
Kenya as a country has had its dark moments. Darker than this Al-shabaab war. Darker than a few grenade attacks on early morning revelers in a club and late evening travelers in a populated bus stop. But these dark moments have not brought the realities of a nation on the brink of destruction close home than the events of the past two weeks.
It’s only when you are in the thick of things that you realize how grave the situation is. You realize that a country can move from being a safe haven to skeletons decorating its streets, blood filling its potholes and faces caught by sudden death in total astonishment lying around its pavements.
When you are caught in a traffic jam pretty close to where a grenade is exploded, you fear for your life, you are terrified. The conversation in that bus is a combination of very frustrating efforts to sound assuring. Efforts to avoid showing fear, still, it is expressed in your voice and in every word you utter.
If you are not talking you are thinking. A lot of what ifs. What if they intentionally caused this diversion of traffic so that they create a richer crowd to bomb on the highway? In your head you hear a boom then you imagine people scrambling for the narrow bus door. Then you are scared more.
Why am I telling you that? You ask. In a documentary titled the ghosts of Rwanda, a United States general who was send by the UN on a peace mission to Rwanda during the genocide says that the faces of dead people are still vivid in his mind. He says that he is scared the most by the faces of those who were caught in total astonishment. Their eyes expressing pain and questions at the same time. Those people never expected it will get to them. Those who were asking ' what in the hell happened?'
Most African countries have had serious civil war. There has been serious bloodshed from independence up until now. Some like Rwanda have recovered while others like Somalia, the war laid them flat on their bellies. The truth is, most civilians don’t realize the gravity of a war situation until a gun is pointed in their face. People will still go to work, shop, swim, play golf, chew miraa on pavements or do whatever things they do with their life even after a few building are bombed.
But when your life is seriously on the line, you start questioning the wisdom in a country involving itself in such confrontations. You start asking yourself questions
Why would we follow alshabaab to Somalia if their leaders are in Kenya? Why did we wait until the sect has done all this harm – infiltrated our country, recruited our youths, hijacked a number of our ships and seriously harmed our tourism industry by kidnapping tourists – before we got this sworn dedication to destroy them?
On 29th of this month, I saw a picture in a daily newspaper, on the FrontPage. The face was shocking. He didn’t have vampire teeth, his eyes were not bloodshot and he did not have scars all over his face. Instead his face was smooth, he wore a pretty genuine smile and his name was Bwire.
Mr. Bwire was sentenced to life imprisonment in connection with the Nairobi grenade attacks, he was happy for it. He received it with a smile for the camera. This only happens in movies. A person would not be happy to receive a life sentence unless he is absolutely psycho, he is putting a show, he is convinced that there is nothing more to live for and bombing people is their right or he knows that he is not going anywhere near jail for life.
Whatever the situation with Mr. Bwire, I am afraid. First my stereotype Alshabaab face is gone, now it could be anyone and they are stocked with grenades. Two, these people are either protected or they are sycophants and you don’t want to be involved in a war with a sycophant who could be living with you.
Mr. Bwire confirmed one nagging thought in my mind. There are some Kenyans especially youths who are always ready and willing to grab arms and kill fellow Kenyans. If this is the case, whether it’s a matter of unemployment, brainwashing or whatever, Kenya is sitting on a very dangerous time bomb.
With very little financial motivation, youths killed fellow Kenyans with very crude weapons after the 2007 general elections. They burned women and children in churches and slashed heads of their fellow Kenyans in transit.
Some said that Kenya is over that, that we learned our lesson. We haven’t. If we did, our youths would not be enrolling for Alshabaab, they would not be happy to grenade bus stops and clubs, they would not participate in kidnapping tourists knowing how much harm that could cause to the country. If we are not careful, the lesson will be learned. The hard way.
Kenya as a country has had its dark moments. Darker than this Al-shabaab war. Darker than a few grenade attacks on early morning revelers in a club and late evening travelers in a populated bus stop. But these dark moments have not brought the realities of a nation on the brink of destruction close home than the events of the past two weeks.
It’s only when you are in the thick of things that you realize how grave the situation is. You realize that a country can move from being a safe haven to skeletons decorating its streets, blood filling its potholes and faces caught by sudden death in total astonishment lying around its pavements.
When you are caught in a traffic jam pretty close to where a grenade is exploded, you fear for your life, you are terrified. The conversation in that bus is a combination of very frustrating efforts to sound assuring. Efforts to avoid showing fear, still, it is expressed in your voice and in every word you utter.
If you are not talking you are thinking. A lot of what ifs. What if they intentionally caused this diversion of traffic so that they create a richer crowd to bomb on the highway? In your head you hear a boom then you imagine people scrambling for the narrow bus door. Then you are scared more.
Why am I telling you that? You ask. In a documentary titled the ghosts of Rwanda, a United States general who was send by the UN on a peace mission to Rwanda during the genocide says that the faces of dead people are still vivid in his mind. He says that he is scared the most by the faces of those who were caught in total astonishment. Their eyes expressing pain and questions at the same time. Those people never expected it will get to them. Those who were asking ' what in the hell happened?'
Most African countries have had serious civil war. There has been serious bloodshed from independence up until now. Some like Rwanda have recovered while others like Somalia, the war laid them flat on their bellies. The truth is, most civilians don’t realize the gravity of a war situation until a gun is pointed in their face. People will still go to work, shop, swim, play golf, chew miraa on pavements or do whatever things they do with their life even after a few building are bombed.
But when your life is seriously on the line, you start questioning the wisdom in a country involving itself in such confrontations. You start asking yourself questions
Why would we follow alshabaab to Somalia if their leaders are in Kenya? Why did we wait until the sect has done all this harm – infiltrated our country, recruited our youths, hijacked a number of our ships and seriously harmed our tourism industry by kidnapping tourists – before we got this sworn dedication to destroy them?
On 29th of this month, I saw a picture in a daily newspaper, on the FrontPage. The face was shocking. He didn’t have vampire teeth, his eyes were not bloodshot and he did not have scars all over his face. Instead his face was smooth, he wore a pretty genuine smile and his name was Bwire.
Mr. Bwire was sentenced to life imprisonment in connection with the Nairobi grenade attacks, he was happy for it. He received it with a smile for the camera. This only happens in movies. A person would not be happy to receive a life sentence unless he is absolutely psycho, he is putting a show, he is convinced that there is nothing more to live for and bombing people is their right or he knows that he is not going anywhere near jail for life.
Whatever the situation with Mr. Bwire, I am afraid. First my stereotype Alshabaab face is gone, now it could be anyone and they are stocked with grenades. Two, these people are either protected or they are sycophants and you don’t want to be involved in a war with a sycophant who could be living with you.
Mr. Bwire confirmed one nagging thought in my mind. There are some Kenyans especially youths who are always ready and willing to grab arms and kill fellow Kenyans. If this is the case, whether it’s a matter of unemployment, brainwashing or whatever, Kenya is sitting on a very dangerous time bomb.
With very little financial motivation, youths killed fellow Kenyans with very crude weapons after the 2007 general elections. They burned women and children in churches and slashed heads of their fellow Kenyans in transit.
Some said that Kenya is over that, that we learned our lesson. We haven’t. If we did, our youths would not be enrolling for Alshabaab, they would not be happy to grenade bus stops and clubs, they would not participate in kidnapping tourists knowing how much harm that could cause to the country. If we are not careful, the lesson will be learned. The hard way.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)