Wednesday, March 28, 2012

DEATH OF THE HAPPY ENDING?

Fresh from reading an excerpt of Ted Kennedy's letter to the Pope prior to his death, I was struck by the frailty of the human spirit. Here was a man powerful enough to have the leader of the free world hand-deliver a letter to the leader of one of the biggest religious institution in the world.The full text can be found here.

This isn't a eulogy to the life and times of Ted Kennedy but rather the humility which his letter shows. A man with power. A family that was seen to carry the hopes and imagination of a generation that believed in dreams. Here was a family that was linked to Camelot, the legendary kingdom led by Arthur. And with his death is the question posed; is the happy ending dying? Are we as a human race losing faith in the ability to be dreamers and be happy?

Pessimism is slowly creeping into our collective consciousness cleverly disguised as realism. If you expect the worst then there's no way you'll ever be disappointed, right? This culture has gone through every facet of our lives and is best illustrated in the popular media. Remember the days when the end of the movie invariably constituted a happy albeit metaphorical walk into the sunset? If Cinderella was adapted to a feature length movie then it would probably end with her being sent to work in a sweat shop somewhere in a East Asia.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

LOST IN TRANSLATION

We know they know.......
It's been a weird couple of weeks for the country when it comes to the international media. If you are wondering what I am talking about then you need to quit hitting the snooze button and wake the hell up. Firstly, the Daily Mail went berserk with creepy descriptions of Langata. It felt like a script straight out of Hollywood. The story was that Charlie Grieves-Cook basically sent death a personal invitation the minute he set foot on Langata Road. The descriptions, which were apparently sourced from British expats, made you wonder why any of us are still alive in this country where apparently death stalks us around every corner. Read that here...

A few days later, CNN hopped onto the crappy journalism bandwagon by implying that we were busy hacking each other to death since that's what us Kenyans are famous for. Well apart from that whole running side gig thing that we do to get lunch money. We all then got pissed off and patriotic and went into a crazy diatribe on social media demanding an apology for being described as animals. Then it took an ironic racist tone but that will be a topic for later.

So I wanna broker a peace deal and go all Koffi Annan and bring both sides to the table. The ignorant idiotic news conglomerate and Wanjiku. Think of it as therapy. Chicken soup for the troubled marriage.It's pretty simple really. All we need here is to open up the communication lines. So what I will do is provide a translator for both parties. So you will understand what is happening and nothing gets lost in translation. Since Wanjiku is the aggrieved party lets do this from her perspective. The first part is said by Wanjiku and the second is the translation by the international media.

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

ELECTIONS:'JOHNY KANGE WA 44' NEW FRONT RUNNER

The political world has been turned upside down with the news of the most recent opinion polls released just yesterday. In their most recent findings, opinion polls have listed 'Johny yule kange wa 44' as the man to beat in the upcoming general elections. Yes you heard right. The Kenyan political scene has completed shifted. The poll released by a cross-section of research and polling firms under the banner of 'Who Cares Who Rules This Country Anymore?- Initiative' released the results to a room full of people who we are assuming were journalists.(since they had pens and stuff)

This new entrant into the political scene has taken the country by storm and yet so little is known of him even as we went to press. In fact by the time of publishing this article, most journalists were still trying to find his facebook page which was proving hard due to the fact that no one can figure out his second name. In fact most political pundits are even doubting that his first name is Johny. But that said, he is leading the polls with 68% of the vote followed by Bikoli Wafoli with 3% and the rest shared evenly between the other guys who have been running around on telly.

Artist Rendition Of Johny
Johny (if that is even your real name) has been described as a nice kange who"always remembers to give me back my change." This was from some guy who was standing next to a 44 matatu. A woman standing next to the same matatu said he usually gives her rides for free and sometimes they are even in the matatu. His physical description has been said to be 'big but small when you see him from far' and 'funny if you are quite drunk'. He is rumoured to be about 23 or 57 years old depending on who you ask and is said to speak fluently in sheng only. (We have been asked to confirm that it's not Rapho-type sheng). Johny is also said to have a limp but only when he is not walking and a British accent when he is asleep.

Monday, March 05, 2012

KBC:KENYA'S BEEN WATCHING!

When I was a kid (And no this isn't a story from last week), we could tell the time based on what time tv started. I just saw the younger generation pass out from confusion about the very notion that tv had an 'end' and a 'beginning'. Back in those days we actually used to play outside because video games and social media hadn't been invented. In a way, neither had tv. Then 4 o'clock would come around and KBC would start up and the entertainment would last till midnight. On weekends, the fun started at noon. The national anthem signaled both the beginning and end.

The best shows from our childhood were things like Derrick, The Littlest Hobo, Due South and Star Trek. Back then wrestling was a family affair. Tuesday night. When guys were Rowdy Rowdy Piper & Hacksaw Jim Dugan (sp?) ruled the ring. That was before we knew it was all choreographed so everything was just madly real. The undertaker would give us sleepless nights while some in my family would wonder why we were watching this saitan.

 Remember Nguata Francis posting the weather at the end of every news cast? The weather forecast was awesome. The little symbols would fall off and he would have to pick them up and stick them back to the Kenyan map.That really had me confused for so many reasons. First Kisumu always had the same weather. It was always 'vipindi vya jua' in the morning and 'ngurumo za radi' in the afternoon. Secondly, it was the picha ya satellite. To a young kid, it made absolutely no sense. It resembled one of those fuzzy sonogram images where you can't tell if you are looking at the kid's eye or big toe. To make things worse, I grew up in Riruta Satellite so I was pretty sure as a kid that every hood had it own picha hence: