AL SHABAAB UNIVERSITY: EXPLOSIVE EDUCATION

I’m getting confused by this whole thing about terrorist organizations. CNN has this clip they play whenever they mention Al Shabaab or the Taliban. They cut to this slow motion video of some guys in bath robes running around on a playground and then shooting off into the distance before ducking into holes in the ground. This is confusing on a number of levels. Firstly, why do terrorists run in slow motion? I mean, wouldn’t it be faster for them to just run at a regular pace? And why do they need all that cardio? I have never heard of a suicide bombing at a marathon race. Actually if that were the case, they’d only recruit Kenyans. (Congrats to the team that scooped top ten places in Frankfurt Marathon. Suck on that!) 

But the mental image is changing with every passing day. Now it’s being replaced with an actual organization complete with a really rude receptionist and departments. I can almost see some campus with lecturers walking around, books clutched under their arms while they peruse that day’s paper. Once in a while they will rush to the corner to the corner excitedly to show their colleagues a picture in the paper. 

“That’s was one of mine,” he’d say pointing to a blob of blood in there. “One of my best and brightest. I always knew he’d do something explosive with his life. Obviously he had a blast!” 

THIS IS KENYAAAAAAA!!!(THINK 300)

Some idiot has been leaving his grenades everywhere around the nation. If that’s you then we need to have a sit down. A talk. No come closer. Ok drop the grenade. On second thought just hold it tight.Drop the Ak47 though. And the angry rat. I’ve seen what rodents can do. This is for your ears only. First, I won’t assume that it’s Al Shabaab. Why, you may ask? Well I just don’t wanna have them take the credit for someone else’s hard work without giving them a chance to prove themselves. I mean, it might be some drunk cop who just keeps leaving his work tools everywhere.

Though if it is Al Shabaab, here is the skinny. You don’t freak us out. We don’t scare easy as a nation. Either we are not smart enough to know when we should be afraid or we are more excited by the thought of showing up on the evening news as an eye witness. (Doesn’t matter if we heard the story from a friend of a friend of a brother of a sister’s cousin). We will be at each other’s necks over petty differences like who is stealing more money from our coffers but insult our nationality and you have a war on your hands.

GAY? ME? OF COURSE!

So I’m sitting in a barber shop the other day and after a thorough verbal thrashing of Manchester United,(yeah we get it. WE GOT OUR BUTTS KICKED!) the topic changed to something quite unexpected. The radio had a news item about some Zimbabwe’s response to a growing homosexual population in its midst. The topic was taken up by both the patrons and the barbers and within seconds, the consensus was that they should be hung.

I wouldn’t have necessarily been surprised had it been for a conversation I’d had earlier in the week. Apparently my own sexuality has been put into question and on some level I find this a bit laughable. But then the academic in me found that there was more to investigate in this matter.

I am from a generation that grew up in the information age. Most of my friends were brought up by a television and have grown into adults with the internet at their fingertips. I would like to think we are a learned lot. At least, a bit better off than our parents’ generation where the very idea of homosexuality was deemed a disease.

So the question was posed to me. Are you gay? It doesn’t necessarily surprise me. I am not the world’s manliest guy. It’s both nature and nurture. First puberty just messes around with me. Depending on the day, I wake up with a voice close to a shreaking little girl or a man talking in a flashback. I’m told I also have a gay build which is something I can’t quite understand.

NI KUNOMA:ECONOMIC BLUES

I had dinner at this swanky restaurant the other day. Swanky here denotes that there were tables and chairs as opposed to a shady spot under a tree. So anyway, after a hearty meal I had to settle my bill on the way out and then things got a bit hairy. While things have been getting thick economically, others have been getting thinner. I found this out the hard way when I had to pay for four chapatis. To save money, they had made the darn things half as thin for the same price. But the girl next to me just thought I was a hog.

The shilling is on a free fall. Like a fat kid diving for the last bit of cake or like Mike Sonko's IQ dropping whenever there is a camera crew around. Big up to Treasury and the Central Bank for doing stuff to help stall the drop. Our sources inside these places tell us that technocrats have been burning the midnight oil to turn the tide and thus some new economic policies have been announced to the public. These include crossing fingers, blaming those other guys and my personal favourite, NOT doing anything because it will sort itself out.

We are starting to feel the pinch though and with that comes the conspiracy theories. Is it aliens? Are guys filling up their war chests for the next elections? Is it blatant stupidity by the government? Ours is the worst performing currency. IN THE WORLD! Mind you, it's not the most worthless. Just the worst performing. That's after countries like Iran, North Korea and even Uganda despite the fact that they are still in 1957 as evidenced by UBC's coverage of last week's match. Yeah the Uganda bit hurts. It doesn't hurt quite as much when you are being beaten by military dictatorships.