A KENYAN URBAN NARRATIVE

Writing my Gikuyu Nation

2010-05-13T17:20:00.000+03:00

I was socialised Gikuyu.

Growing up in the Kiambu of the eighties, all I ever wanted to be was a blinged out Gikuyu.

I wanted the Datsun twero, the ‘Godfather’ hat, the cowboy boots.

And when I heard that there was a Gikuyu, with a big bar in America called Kilimanjaro, I didn’t pause to marvel, just upgraded my dream. Me, two Friesians and a goat. Behind a picket fence in Dallas.

POLITICAL WRITING IN MY KENYA

2010-05-09T19:00:00.001+03:00

I do not write. I protest.

Chips Isiyo Funga

2010-05-05T19:02:00.001+03:00

For Bruno Schultz my private Pole: a lesson in translation; anticipating progress in your work.

***

Well it is bye to strangers who might come back our way as admirers in the made up ‘bravura’ of our revolution. Those are what ifs… The demons we didn’t kill- destined to come back and haunt Nairobi. Unless we turn them into Goddesses on the eve of the writing of Nairobi Histories.

Goddess, meet Nairobi Nyap Technician. Comrade NyapTech, Insatiable Goddess. Go forth, Nairobi, and fornicate.

Trust me, you are free to sow vulcanised oats.

“Sixteen rounds,” Nyaptech Nairumours sms’d, “and the Malaya kips wantnG so… Nayo!!!”

Hapa ni Nairobi.

Writing My Nairobi

2010-04-27T17:16:00.001+03:00

I learnt to tell stories in a world where there was no theory. I knew no Feminism; I was just a boy telling the stories of the life and the living in the idiom of my world. I knew no historical materialism; class struggles, just that there were things we didn’t have- things we wanted- and that Moi and Kenyatta had stolen them.

***

There is a Nairobi where Dinda, my mtaa Pharmacist, refers to women (and cars, phones, stereos) as Malaya.

Malaya, (n.); (Pl.) Malayas

Translation:

ENG: virgin (kamalaya). Girl. Woman. The way a man or a woman who has sex with men, women and mzungu pets for a living describes him/herself. A kept man. A man who has been tested and proven a sex machine.

NGO SPEAK: GirlChild™

KIS: bikira. Mwana dada. Jogoo (Nyap-Teknisheni)

***

Uptown Reggae- Downtown Feminism

2010-04-20T15:04:00.002+03:00

I am surrounded by breasts.

I like this part of Rezorous-

The kitchen grill- to your right.

It is like kuku porno with feathers on-

Three star chips funga.

And the reggae?

“Every, every night…” The Gladiators shout from my memories of Papa Charlie, outta Club Brilliant; JahKey Marley at Hollywood; Pupa Davis at Monte Carlo. “…someone’s always talking about music… reggae music…” But ‘something a gwan’ with this Uptown Reggae inside Rezorous every Thursday night.

Boombaclaat Sounds. F.M. Reggae.

The music is crowd sourced.

“Bend Over! Bend Over!” The speakers blare.

(Click on the text to read more)

Colonial Penetration Lowers the Risk of Clitoral Mutilation

2010-04-01T16:37:00.001+03:00

A couple of Martinis later and its time for sundowners. A Date With The African Sunset. Ms. Femme now knows the clitoris to adult ratio in Sub-Saharan Africa. How African women are living with less and less clitoris? Factoring in for: Christianity or animist; Maasai or Zulu. The savage depths of clitorial mutilation vary from one community to the next. Colonial Penetration Lowers the Risk of Clitorial Mutilation.

Colonial Penetration Lowers the Risk of Clitorial Mutilation

2010-04-01T16:37:00.000+03:00

Kenyan Tales from a Digital Age?

2010-03-30T19:44:00.000+03:00

The avatar kicks at us, trips on his customised @Mash Auto car key but collects himself into an eye roll emoticon flushed back into the linearity and predictability of the Kenyan internet night by the Twitter API

WRITING MY KENYA*

2010-03-29T18:38:00.002+03:00

"At home, I was socialised Gikuyu. Not the Gikuyu of We the Gikuyu- that doesn’t exist, anymore, outside of national politics- but Gikuyu according to my family. It was a Gikuyuness, like for most, nuanced principally by the brand of Christianity it had been filtered through. Outside of home, my Gikuyuness encountered that of others but important of all I came face to face with jaruo, maragori, kare-jini and other Beasts from the West."

*Bloggers cut from a work in progress. Other excerpts and thoughts under #PoBo link on the Black Campaign website.

Follow @matathia on Twitter and #PoBo

Wanaume Hufanya

2010-03-24T17:02:00.001+03:00

“After my weekly psychiatric self examination,” I am saying to N.M., “I like to take the time it takes to smoke a gaff to contemplate the meaning of life.” This seems to stretch his mind like a miraa high for a bit before he starts to bang on the rolled up window of Dinda’s moti of the day.

“Wee, Dinda, huyu boyz amejidai nani raundi hii…?”
“Kaa sii condom…” Dinda yells back rolling the window back up, “usinisumbue.”

“You see that, Potash,” N.M. turns to me, “The man with the takeaway in the mots is my kind of man. And clearly he has no time to contemplate the meaning of life with you. And neither do I.” He fishes, in his jeans for a pack of Sportos. What’s with the Calvin Klein pipe and pointed boots, I wonder, giving him a once over.

“Is that Kenyan Marlboro man or post modern Gikuyu?” I ask him. “I thought khakis, brown loafers and a Bonk tshirt is the look of your Nairobi?”

“It is Friday night, Potash,” he sounds agitated, “and you are talking too much gay shit while all I want to hear is ‘do me… do me… oga my broda…la la la la la la…’”
“Smack that, yani,” I laugh, “Shaking it like in the Akon video lakini you jua how that shit plays out when you do the horizontal.”
“I know what you mean,” he smiles, “and those are the weighty issues of men. If you must contemplate anything…” He pauses to stuff a wad of leaves into his mouth and bite a G.

“Is how,” I interrupt, “you are kulaing goks these days?”

“If you must contemplate anything, Potash,” he stares me in the eye, “it is the fate of some pussy with your name on it that is at this moment katikaing huko Molly’s.”

Half-lifing me the gaff, he says, “No guts, no morning glory! So will you be man enough, as Conrad says, to face the darkness? And that is all the difference between a thinking man and a doing man on a Nairobi night.” Then he started to walk off towards Qs.

“By the way,” he said turning around, “seeing that you have all this time to think…” He laughed and started walking back towards me. “Frankly, I can see how you can find the time, I mean, jerking off is what… one minute… like short time and then you are back to the cogitations in lieu of production; living out their existential angst- real and imagined- instead of writing that is your kind of artist?

This is Nairobi, not New Fuck.” He was, briefly interrupted by a lupa dawg, whoz happening and one armed hug from a street boy. “Fucking Westlands,” I say to myself, “Didn’t like Tupac die?”

“Listen Potash” N.M. said walking towards me and offering me a cigarette. “In the time it takes for you to smoke that cigarette,” he mocked, “why don’t you ponder over what your online avatar does on Friday nights. You know, when you are offline in that hovel of yours writing shit that don’t mean shit.

He is a Kenyan man, No? Mwanaume hufanya.”
“Wanawake,” The street boy, still hovering around, said and walked off after N.M.

#PoBo #5

2010-03-22T18:54:00.001+03:00

Apropos tech is good but we also need to bring back Story, personally, I tend to remember the people rather than the graphs. Recently, the number of Kenyans on Facebook has been thrown at me like two hundred times. But the figure never exists beyond a Stick It on my mind saying: so what? Who are these people? What are they doing on Facebook? Is anyone using them for social or political organising… what? Is it all cute cats; causes and high school reunions, really?

The numbers never stay with me the way stories- the technology user’s social experience- do. One day my cousin told me that his wife had scrawled the phone numbers of all his clandies on their bed. That to me was mobile telephony penetration. Ages later Safcom hit one million subscribers and I was like: So?

What numbers don’t tell me, stories do.

Yesterday, I was sitting at my local veve base catching up on my daily dose of boy talk.

“Weee,” Mwenda the miraa guy ulizaed Jamo wa taxi, “bwana ulichambua ile kitu ya Facebook?”
“Kwani?” Jamo chekaed. “Na imeshaanza kujileta kwangu ka hobby.”
“Facebook?” I asked, “yaani roundi hii Jamo unawakunywa na mtandao?”

My taxi guy picking up girls on Facebook? The internet has finally come to Kenya. Actually, as far as Facebook goes I am no longer interested in the numbers just how the street has gone Funga 2.0.

I mean, he drives a taxi and I am the guy with the blog.

TECH KILLED THE KENYAN BLOG

2010-03-21T17:25:00.000+03:00

Days I miss: when Kenyan blogs were about stories. The politics of every day- the Kenyan way of life relived by voices hitherto unknown- and not big politics.

In 2006 when I discovered Kenyan blogs, I stopped reading newspapers. I used to skim in fact rather than read newspapers because what Kibaki and Raila do is not news, how it affects me is. And newspapers didn’t tell me that. I cannot blame them, they weren’t addressing me… my demographic. Some blogs did.

As a blogger, a lot of my writing then was very political. Political in the sense of: how a certain kind of Kenyan responds to and copes with the consequences of bad governance. It wasn’t about the shenanigans of the political class but the ways in which some of us responded to them. When the political class made a cameo appearance in my blog it was because I, or one of my peers, had enjoyed their largesse. A largesse that faded into the new harems, bellies, Benzos and numbered accounts of a Kibaki era noveau riche class. In the Moi days, I liked to point out, they shared the love. You could walk into town and take a matatu home with a slice of Goldenberg money.

In Kenya most people are just trying to get by, trying not to shit where they eat and more often than not, failing. That is the story I told. Others told tall tales from their yuppie lives. I couldn’t relate, but the stories were so well told I read them anyway. Because they had place, and character. They were about a Kenya, but most important of all, they were not about News, they were about people. The internet lives and imaginations of certain Kenyans. The parochialism was not only charming, it put fluency and local colour into the blogs and for one moment a pastiche of an immensely stratified and arbitrary nation called Kenya was starting to emerge.

Not for long.

Outside our Kenyan web space it had became necessary, for some- almost always Westerners- to ‘showcase’ what was being hailed as Africa’s tech revolution. While localised web-rings had come into being much earlier and served as great go-to places for a non NGO or mainstream media mediated view of a given African country, they were quickly made irrelevant by a nascent but highly influential cabal of digitised African Consultants. A pan-African curation had emerged.

Unfortunately, it privileged tech. They defined what ‘Africa’s’ web space Is, Was and Will be: a place where the tech minority can say a lot about their innovations and very little about who they were making them for and why.

A bad situation, for the storytellers, turned horrible with the advent of Twitter. In the age of Twitter ‘our stories’ sound like this:

@X: I smoked weed today #maafaka
@Y: RT @X: I smoked weed today #maafaka
@Z: RTRT @X: I smoked weed today #maafaka
@A: Hihihi @X smoked weed today (via @Z) #maafaka

Why the fuck did you smoke weed? Where did you get it? Why the hell do I even need to know this? Constipated, stinky or both, a shit is just a shit and everyone takes one. The only reason I should know about yours is because it has more imagination than mine. #maafaka? Question: when it trends, what does it say about you- outside the internet- as an actor in time, space and social environments? That your life revolves around smoking weed, Twitter and Nigga
comedies?
But Twitter, is an easy drug to blame the death of storytelling on the Kenyan web space on. The death of Story came when Bloggers turned into professionals- Internet authorities. Suddenly the broadcaster and his equipment became more important than the broadcast.

By then, many of us had started clocking speaking engagements to talk about blogs and blogging. And we talked about Wordpress and Blogger and some even went ahead and registered their own domains. Those that did so assumed that the world would take them more seriously if they blogged on their own domains. Problem is, they remained all domains- Flash, Twitter and Facebook widgets- and no content. Who could find time to blog anymore while shuffling from ‘How to set up a blog’- Tech Aid, Kibera- to ‘The future of African blogs’- Afri Tech, New York?

Meanwhile, words buzzed into meaninglessness: Social media; cyber-activism; citizen journalism and Story died.

The pan-African curators or the African Internet’s power axis- chugging deux ex machina like in the background, all along- came to the fore and absorbed the Kenyan blogosphere into a broader African Internet narrative. A narrative, invariably, defined by the trope of Africa in crisis. A crisis ever defined by body counts and mitigated by a dash of solar power. In the spirit of pan-African technological innovation who cares that even the primordial swamp was solar powered? Why should the African bother with inventions while it can follow those who already have a wheel?

Pan-African curation brought, to some, money and Twitter fame but it took with it our choice in the stories we told. The blogger big times rolled in, yes, but they had ‘tech’ stamped all over them. Any blogger worth his salt either went into making tools and gadgets or into talking about them.

Tech for Africa became both media and content; all our internet lives became tech.

The ‘social media’ crowd made serious games; the ‘cyber-activists’ made and talked about web tools and gadgets and the ‘citizen journalists’- with the indolence and gravy-train-spotting of their mainstream media kin- followed the social media hacks and the cyberactivists around.

We were firmly in the digitised world, where fame is a workaday quality. And the African version was defined purely by ones ability to innovate web tools and gadgets. Just having a drink with the small crowd of toolmakers and Tweeting about it was enough, though. But online, where, who and what is hot changes every second, all that we can remember is not even faces but social media handles and avatars. So, what about the reason why those people or objects had earned their second of fame?

No one is really inventing anything; no one is talking about the tech-distance between their innovations and their purported end users. The hell, in this entire tech-speak, there is no analysis, there is no, ‘are these the innovations you need as a Kenyan writer on the web?’ We have gotten too busy realising the infrastructure of an imagined Africa Information and Communications Technology bubble we have forgotten the communication part. We have obliterated the social- the stories and their meanings - in Social Media.

Tech is good and I fully support and admire those who are doing it, but if anyone wants to know: As a storyteller, I struggle with writing; writing is not the way I learnt how to tell stories, so how does innovating Wordpress make my work easier?

#PoBo #4

2010-03-15T15:29:00.000+03:00

IX. Do You Write (or Read)?

I wish I could say, yes, I write checks. Like P. Diddy. But me… me I am a cash guy. Hihihi… if I wrote you a cheque you best treat it with the same dharau you reserve for your M.P’s cheques. The big difference between that M.P and me, really, is that I am a businessman servicing a need while he is a make believe civil servant who robs the needy.

Honestly, who sleeps better, the guy that stole the poor man’s unga or the guy that sold some bangi? To a bunch of American exchange students for crying out loud. Yaani, to a bunch of mzungus who come here, get arse, get ghanja and get out. Go home and get therapy… N.M, in his Mongo-speak would say, ‘no Africans were harmed in Dinda’s ghanja plantation.

I am not a slave driver, that is the fucking muhindis…Me I am the good guy.

The other day Potash is saying ati I am like a Mombasa beach hotel, I do not like doing business with Africans, what the hell does he know about business. Who has got some ethics here but me? Me, I do not sell drugs to people who don’t have health insurance. How does that make me a bad guy?

Busia Gold is a fair trade product.

Let us save the rest of the bull for those who know nothing about being a business man out here in Africa. Business, I mean, not biashara biashara…kuhustle, kuuza nyanya marikiti.

As reading goes, I am not much of a reader but I can tell if it is a fifty or a hundred. If it looks like money but I cannot read the amount, then it must be Chinese… and I do not touch Chinese shit. Hell, I do not fucking do business with the bloody business. Someday I must tell you about how Kang’ethe got burnt on a Semenya deal. No, not that Semenya, Semenya is, you know, a dual SIM phone. Hihihi, it is kinda clever, really, wish I could say I coined it.

But anyway, I do not touch Chinese shit… I mean, angalia phone yangu, unaona kama imeandikwa fockya.

I went into biashara for the dough-lo…and the only schooling I needed in money I got.

Peddling on the streets of Nairobi doesn’t teach you shit. You are selling joints for twenty bob but all the money you worry about is the 30 grand the cops want from you after they planted a joint on you. What was left of the joint you had share with them, that is. Dadi, you are no better than the hawker who has to bribe the kanjo who just smashed her tomatoes.

Waafrika! It is not worth playing, really.

If you aren’t playing big then you must be playing niche otherwise you are not a businessman, you are jailbait. Niche was my kind of game. And niche if I can attribute it to one philosophy of the Potash Book Club, it is that it is better to be read by ten people who get you than by ten million who assume they do. At the book club they used to say that they write for Kenyans who seek the truth outside the Nation, what I say is that my product is for consumers who care to trace it from farm to fork, so to speak.

And as a niche player I rubbed holsters with the fat and the fabulous. Waah… I have seen a guy pay for pussy with a fake hundred dollar bill. And he wasn’t Naija, just acting like one. There I was thinking: stupid bitch, stick to the Karumaindos and the two socs that you are used to.

Me, I have been on the Highway, some chick shooting off my dingila and two Johnnies sitting at the back looking like Big Ben and his twin. Tucked away, at least for now, are their British Army issue pistols.

The Johnnies are driving a hard bargain on a stone of Busia Gold. They are acting like this is 1954 and it is their place to tell an African what to do including what to charge for his crop. They acting like mzungus after they have been in Kenya long enough to say ‘Tusker baridi.’ You know how they play: Oh, my cab guy can get me more than that for five hundred bob… sijui my colleague is with some NGO in Ethiopia and he is bringing me Shashamane. Well, you know what I say to that shit, ‘my stone is 20 large, that is why I am pushing a VX and not driving you around in a taxi.’

So I am saying to the Johnnies, ‘I am told the weed in Europe kicks arse something, but how good is it to you when you are planting landmines and chasing Samburu arse in Kenya?’

Between them Brit falas they have like five thousand Kenya Shillings. But they have British Pounds too. So I hit them and more- like twenty Kenya Shillings on every Pound.

Soon they are handing me Pounds and Shillings. And I have to count them, do the math and fold them. The Malaya wants me to smack her in the arse but I think it is silly and feel inclined to tell her to stop using me in her sales pitch to the bloody Johnnies. I want to tell her to get her mind back to Kenya where she lies on her back and I hit it- simple! I smack her arse, anyway, coz it feels good to do it with a fistful of money. Do it like a Jay Z no one has heard of yet.

Long of the short is that if you be playing on anaa level, you’ve got to know your money. Live it. Feel it.

Oh, and of course I never gave them Busia Gold. It must have been a sudden feeling of hatefulness, you know, suddenly thinking too much about what their ancestors had done to mine. So I passed them some pussy brand called Zion from Mt. Kenya where it is too cold and too wet for a good crop. But, really, British Army, Embassy Marines, Kenya Police… is all the same from my business end view. And I do not have an arsehole big enough to hold my shit and theirs.

Well, I know this was meant to be about reading and writing but then again they did tell me to write what I know. And the Business it is. As for lessons to take away, I always say that everyone always gets the lesson they choose to learn. But if I must impose one, it is: If you hear someone say it is never personal, just business, then they learnt their business skills from movies.

#PoBo #3

2010-03-01T16:34:00.002+03:00

VIII. Shakespeare or the Bible?

Ati, what’s that got to do with anything…? Or do you mean to ask which one I penda, eh?

Skia, a guy… Just because I know some wannabe writers doesn’t maanisha ati I read them or anything else for that matter. Me, I read money…kwisha! I am a businessman… it is all I wanted to be when I grew up. And I am all grown now… and I am not saying that those boyz haven’t grown up yet, they just grew up into something I don’t jua.

I mean, how do you grow up with your boys, dinya the same chicks, half-life anything that matters with them and skive all the same classes… then you wake up one day and the guys are writing stuff that makes you go, ati what? Thing that puzzles me most is vile they are seaming: this is what it is like in our mtaa. But the only thing I recognise in those stories is the nouns.

Really, who are these guys, trying to tell more stories than my grandmother? And it is fine if that is what they want to do but why can’t they just tell stories like the rest of us. Yaani, anaa time I am in the old neighbourhood and I have brought 18 litres of muratina and you know these situations, people thank you for your largesse by giving you an audience. It is the same thing politicians do at funerals, yaani, if a guy writes you a cheque for five thousand bob, you have to sit and listen to his crap. So I am in the middle of a storo big time. See, I am right there speaking like a mtaa boy telling them about the hustle- cops sumbuaing, mafala kuangushwa- and you know what N.M says? “Dinda, man, conjugate?” I didn’t know what conjugate meant back then, but now that I do… conjugate sheng? Who the fuck is this guy, really?

If I am allowed to think, I can say that this writing thing is all good fun, when you are nineteen sipping on Napshizzle in the mtaa, but bro… by the time we are hitting 25 and I am living in one of those, so called leafy suburbs and Timi and P still don’t have a hustle… something is wrong. I mean, it is one thing to not believe in money but it is something else trying to at least try and afford your own fucking booze, you know.

So I am the guy that everyone is flashing because Timi’s sister needs school fees; the Stone Zone is grumpy from alcohol withdrawal; Jose has been arrested again and the OCS is on the case so we are looking at 10Gs, minimum, for the bribe and... Bobo needs another abortion.

It is the reason why us Africans cannot endelea…I mean, I haven’t shagged Bobo since she grew breasts but it is money out of my pocket when everyone else does.

But then again these are my people. It might keep a man like me, a man with ambition, down, but then a man like me cannot exist without a people like them. I am talking about community, belonging… and I cannot speak for Niggers in bloody Congo or Namibia, but what I know of Africa- Sekta III- down there they have a God who they call community. And I love my Sekta III people like ‘Bumpy’ loved his Harlem people. Because there was a time I was a ten-bob-a-joint peddler and yet they all loved me like a brother.

People had my back when I didn’t have shit and I was working choo namba nane. Insane times those, my friend, when I considered it a good day if I had sold nothing but got away with my life. Lived, as we used to say, to die another day. And you know, the boys would come down and shoot the breeze, write Kanjo Mavi on the wall… you know, just be around which a lot of times meant that some big, ugly street kid would not try to stick his mangy prick up my arse that day.

So, on the one hand I cannot bitch but on the other hand I have to hate the guy that invented Mpesa. It made it easier to give but it took away the speeches that go with it… the community. You know, long before Mpesa, when we would hit both an ATM and the nearest wines and spirits and then head out to meet our people, N.M used to say that, to Sekta III, I was like a visiting professor. I didn’t get it. But P put it better: “Dinda, you are the proud alumnus of Mtaa Senior School, who went out there and beat the system and are now returned laden not only with spoils but insider knowledge too. Tunakuinamishia…!”

Anyway, all I am saying is that a man’s money leaves him through many doors, question is: will people come to your funeral because you were a true Negro or will they come because someone has to dig the grave, anyway?

And what I say of me, Me I am a decent African man, the children I know off, I pay for, those that I do not, I pray for.

THE POLITICAL TRAGEDY OF OUR KENYAN TIMES

2010-02-24T19:09:00.003+03:00

Once again this blog is being taken over by a guest post from N.M

There comes a time, in the history of a nation, when all its citizens are staring the devil in the eye. A time when only two extremes remain: the evil and the lesser evil. That moment when the majority is us and the minority is them. A moment, so widely imagined by the individual citizens it sounds cliché: The moment of truth.
As I write this, Kenya is having its moment. But who knows- a day being worth its weight in stuffed ballots- by the time this is read that moment will be long lost. Mummified into rheumy excrements of disillusioned chang’aa den intellectuals with radical tendencies.

Quick recap: First President of Kenya, Kenyatta is doing this. Second President Moi is doing that and keeping Kenyatta’s boys down. Oginga Odinga, perpetual oppositionist says out with Kenyatta today and out with Moi the next day. Moi says in with Odinga (Oginga’s son). But Odinga, quite a chip off the old block that one, says out with Moi: Kibaki Tosha!

Now Kibaki, has over all these years, never said in with this one or out with that one. He has, somehow managed to stay, in with this one, in with that one or in with no one, ‘but if it comes with benefits then you can call me Chief of the Opposition.’ When Odinga calls him to glory, Kibaki, seems to falter. He appears to have absolutely no idea what to do with real power. But that begs the question: did Kibaki even want to be President? Was all Kibaki wanted to reap the benefits of our political system without ever being an economic victim of it? Or did he merely spend all his life ensuring a future for his grandchildren that would lack nothing.
Whatever Kibaki’s aims have been all these years, he is now president. Everything he does, now affects millions. And Kibaki does no wrong. In fact Kibaki does nothing in a country that knows when the President has lunch. With details, and that he liked it and gave the waitress a large sum of money. The president as benefactor; grand old African man who receives delegations of women leaders on one day and names a street in a far away town that hasn’t been built yet after his third wife. Kibaki would have none of that in a country where people had only known of The President and never of the Presidency.

Kibaki, startled out of the fence he had been sitting on, seemed to have missed the manual: The Kenyan President’s first duty is to entertain the masses. To be a friendly despot who eats ugali with you one minute and you, with who knows. Kibaki appeared to stand above politics in a country where everything was held together by politics. Quickly the country, economic boom, smooth roads and all, slipped into anarchy. It took bloodshed and gun-boat diplomats to restore us to the political rhythm of our fabled island of peace.

Ironically, the deal that was struck to win our peace is also the tragedy of our times. It is an interesting time in our history when the leaders of past governments and the opposers of them all are in the same government. Thugs not of any shade of Luo, Kamba, Kalenjin, Gikuyu or whatever but- thugs! Thugs!- as we say. Incorrigible thugs whose self-interest goes beyond any that caveman society can find acceptable, but that we, who accept them as leaders of our tribes, seem to approve of.
Somewhat that deal achieved the political equilibrium best suiting the dynasts. They proceeded to align themselves into PNU for the Kenyattas and ODM for the Odingas. The Moi’s place at the table faced a crisis worse than Gideon’s political immaturity- a pretender to the throne, William Ruto. Daniel Moi had to stay on to raise his own tribe. If he founds it, it will not be called Jogoo. All this time, the mwananchi describes himself as Man U, Arsenal or poor.

It is a free for all at the top until Odinga forgets that the government is him and the immediate beneficiaries of Ambassadorships. It is him and the Kenyattas, Mois and Kibakis that he and his father once fought. Odinga joins his ODM tribesmen in attacking the Mois, the Kenyattas and the Kibakis.

All we are hearing now is Kenyatta na Passat; Odinga na mahindi; Moi na Mau. In the meantime Kibaki lurks in the background with a paw, if only placed there by inaction, in every one of those bowls. Mwananchi na njaa!

#PoBo #2

2010-02-17T17:17:00.000+03:00

V. Old Bill says we are mere actors.

True. But he never says we cannot be writers and directors too

VI. It is meaningful to seek…

The artist’s primary duties are to his art and his politics. To find that equilibrium point where the politics don’t get in the way of the story and vice versa is what I consider most meaningful to seek. There are no Big-Bang moments when stories come into existence- they simmer through our everyday experiences. And because our everyday is, broadly speaking, inherently political then how can the artist ditch the political? You can spend all your ‘apolitical’ life carving zebras by day and as a dancing Maasai by night but bottom line is there is a political discourse- someone else idea of ‘art’- that not only underpays you but also orders your life. For me the difference between a Kitschden and a creative studio is the ability of one to feed off the politics while subverting it. One carves better and better giraffes while the other still carves giraffes but ones with albinism; with diamonds (that no one in Africa has ever seen) on the soles of their feet. …I don’t know, the dancing Maasai who fucks the mzungu and writes the book.

VII. The White Girl and the Savage?

Dude, that book doesn’t exist. Well, there were some 15,000 words or so. A focus group… and, uhm… auditions. Yeah, no white girls were harmed in the making of this film. I mean, of course that is the kind of thing I would say if I ever wrote such a film. But, frankly, with the text you imagine connections. What if somewhat the Savage never, really, wins? Is there a poetic justice ring to that ‘no white girls were harmed’ for the Hip Hop scholar meaning to compare your angst to that of Tupac? When it is all filtered through the discourses of Africa and development what are you: a poster boy for safe sex or yet another way to ‘other’ black masculinity? In the end, there could be something in there, digitally archived on the net that reveals the antagonism of our time. One jaundiced and probably ignorant view but a view expressed, nevertheless. …and somewhat, for me, that is the beauty of the internet.

Oh, but in the long run… long before he is dead, the artist is getting paid. He is after all still painting giraffes by day and working as a dancing Maasai by night. He remembers the face-off between Mahina and Patterson, in The Ghost and the Darkness, as one of the most poignant and political moments in Hollywood’s Africa. The last outing for a kind of African who power and its whitewash over history, rubbed off the face of the earth with a derisive noble savage. It is a scene after, Colonel Patterson, being in African for only a day and having never seen a lion before kills a lion with one shot and brings order to the place of killing that is Tsavo.

“You know, I also have killed a lion,” Mahina tells Patterson, recently Christened One Shot, “I used my hands.” Later on Mahina is killed by a lion. But Patterson kills all the lions are builds the bridge to the British exploitation of the East African mainland.

The lions are now at the Field Museum in Chicago, Colonel Patterson is celebrated in film and literature and the kind of African that declared him One shot, tamer of the African wild rules in place of the Brits. Mahina’s spirit, one hopes, still lives and though it carves giraffes to eke out a living, in the evening- before the wardrobe change into a dancing Maasai- he takes a little time off to carve gay giraffes.

VII. Who is the Ghost and who is the Darkness?

Don’t know… there are all Africa types in that film, mercenaries, collaborators, fools, conquistadors {…}

#PoBo #1

2010-02-15T18:24:00.001+03:00

I. Internet killed the toilet cubicle star…

{passage redacted}

II. I spent Valentine’s Day with two of my exes: pen and paper.

We agreed to spend a lot more time ménage a trois.

III. We were rebels, raiders of tombs that prison lost revolts…

{passage redacted}

IV. Not fighting souls but book adventurers. Knight Commanders of Idea.

Timi loved travel writing. Too bad he never read much of it. I always loved travel writing. But I never read much of it neither. Books weren’t there, not in the way they are, in my life now… I mean, I have picked up a decent library, now, been able to fill my space with books. Well, it is a minute space but for what, 30 books? That is the fucking University of Alexandria where I am coming from.

Coming soon: #PoBo.

You Win. Now. Play Again

2010-01-25T14:17:00.001+03:00

Some freedom fighters are more equal than others
Some terrorists get to bury their dead

What about the soldiers?
What about the ones that get dragged into the forest;
headshots; cops taking scalps;
Soulless bodies disintegrating- like video game avatars?
Those ones don’t grin at Game Over!

Some freedom fighters are more equal than others
Some terrorists get to bury their dead

They prostate themselves with the muslims
They genuflect with the Chrisitians
They ride in the limos of politicians:
“The war is over now, cake is ours to keep”
But what about the bushrats facing bombs?

Some freedom fighters are more equal than others
Some terrorists get to bury their dead

Do you remember Jommo Kenyatta?
Do you remember Dedan Kimathi?
One got his prison, one got his freedom:
“We accept their Gods: money; power. The war is over now”
But can the unburied soldier ever be dead?

Some freedom fighters are more equal than others
Some terrorists get to bury their dead

You win. “Now”. Play again

Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal: A Letter to Kenyan Muslims

2010-01-18T17:44:00.005+03:00

Dear fellow citizens,

On Friday last, a section of you took to the streets of Nairobi to protest against the deportation of a fellow Muslim, the Jamaican born cleric Abdullah al-Faisal. The Kenyan media, which many of you have accused of fuelling Islamophobia and I am with you on that one, informs me that six police men were wounded in that protest. One of them has since succumbed to his injuries. That policeman was shot, isn’t that strange?

As I write this, Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal is being held at the Industrial Area Prison in Nairobi. The government’s plans to deport him seem to have been thwarted by fact that he is on, that bane of many other Muslims, an international no fly list. When the government attempted to send him to the Gambia, the Nigerians refused to grant him a transit visa. I mean, it is nothing personal what the Nigerians did, seeing how one of theirs- Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab- (who happens to be a Muslim and on a similar list) embarrassed them last Christmas. Just about the time Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal entered Kenya through the Lunga Lunga border with Tanzania.

But who is this sheikh really? The Brits say that he is a convicted criminal. He was arrested, charged with incitement to murder and stirring hatred, found guilty and sentenced to nine years in prison. After the first half of his prison term was over, he became eligible for parole at which point the British released him, deported him to Jamaica and banned him from the UK for life.

I do believe that a conviction doesn’t always make one a criminal: bad laws do exist. On the other hand, public opinion rarely brooks reason and so the general perception remains that the sheikh is a ‘criminal’. And, in the interest of the public, foreign ‘criminals’ are arrested and, hopefully, deported.

The arrest itself is telling. Crooked as Kenyan cops are, and granted that the antiterrorism unit that apprehended him is for all intents and purposes a lackey of American imperialism, they were very decent in the process of making the arrest. They said they had nothing on him, he was not being arrested for alleged terrorism activities or connections but because there was a deportation order out on him. They didn’t waterboard him and demand Osama Bin Laden’s cell phone number, they just asked to see his travel documents.

Whatever the Kenyan government had on him, it doesn’t help his case any better that he has two passports with different names. I am made to understand that he converted to Islam when he was sixteen and studied the religion in the Middle East. The question I keep asking myself is, if the passport that says he is Trevor William Forest, is Jamaican- and it should be- was it issued before he was sixteen and a Muslim? But if so, and assuming the guy is 45, hasn’t that passport been renewed, at least once? That is to say that he has knowingly, and with an intention to conceal his identity implied, been carrying two passports with different names. I will not even talk about dishonesty here, but international law demands that this person be arrested and charged. I will not even ask what the nationality on his other passport is because I have already seen someone who needs to be denied entry into any country that considers itself a respectable citizen of the world. No law, no precept in international justice can be used in his defence.

Was he profiled because he was a Muslim? Not really, as the immigration minister, Otieno Kajwang, said: we are targeting him because he has a history of criminality and we just do not want him in this country. (What Alfred Mutua has to say, as always, doesn't count).

Was his deportation legal? No it wasn’t, because it doesn’t seem as though he was given a chance to speak to his lawyer. Or at least a chance to challenge the deportation in a court of law which is what should be allowed him now. In another world, the immigration minister should have resigned for his part in the entire debacle, but that is just too much to ask. In the meantime, before any Muslim goes running on the street yelling: Oh, Islam this, Oh, Islam that, let him first explain to those Kenyans who do not seem to get it what a guy travelling with two passports with two different names has got to do with Islam. Before we find another reason to hate each other, let it be clear that just because one guy, who happens to be a Muslim is apprehended, does not mean that Islam has been apprehended. And if Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal goes on trial, the only people who will put Islam on trial will be his supporters, not the government of Kenya.

BACK TO BLOGS: Retweet or *&%$ Off

2010-01-18T03:29:00.004+03:00

Hello.
This is Potash and I am on my last glass of muratina. It is a new year. Maybe you noticed earlier but I just noticed now. Which is to say that after drinking for the last 30 days and waking up to sobriety every once in a while to see what the whole world was saying and trying to engage them on Twitter and Facebook, I realised that I have been speaking to myself.

I have X number of followers on Twitter and I have Z number of friends on Facebook, but that not withstanding, no one listens to me.

Let us face it, I have been on these interwebs too long and the one thing that has remained a constant is that I am one of the few people who does not tweet inanities. I mean, no one knows what my ablution is about. No, that is too low; no one even knows where I live. But still, as bland retweets go, no one mentions me.

The thing is that I know people who are famous. Not, merely famous online but really, famous. Famous in the real world. People who get to sign up for real writing gigs (which is what I want to be doing). And people who are famous for writing about their toilet.

I know people who are not famous but who still get to travel around the world talking about Africa and all that shit. You know, the Africa that doesn’t exist outside a made up space of: AFRICA. Yes, the Africa in capital letters of new media that says: Africa is not a country. Africa is inventing new media gizmos.

I am tired, drunk and incoherent, and my little corner of Nairobi is cold. But most important of all, I am tired of being used. I am tired of people calling me when they want me to do stuff for them. I am tired of people ‘DMing’ and ‘Inboxing’ me just to see they like the way I think. If you like the way I think, for fucks sake do not tell me, tell it to your world. Your 19 friends on Twitter. Why the hell do you want to keep my genius secret as though I was your second wife?

I am talking a lot of crap now but when this muratina is done, one thing will be certain: I am going back to blogging. The other thing, though not as certain now, is that I am purging my ‘followers’ and ‘friends’ list. That is to say that if you are in my virtual space and you do not to seem to like my nonsense enough to share it with your ‘friends’ and ‘followers’, I am cutting you out.

It might sound stupid but what the hell? I am a writer and in this digital media times; these times of ‘press button publishing’ you are as big as your network. And clearly, my network is not as big. Which is to say that POTASH is not big. And, frankly, if I cannot get as big as my friends, then I could as well, get new friends. So, retweet, or bust.

I am out.

A Kenyan Urban Narrative or a variant of it returns as soon as the booze gets out of my head.

In the meantime, thanks to all the people who have kept me in alcohol right through Christmas and new years. I could not have made this decision without you.

For all the people who have failed me in my writing career so far- and you know who you are- *&%^ you. And for all of you who have ignored me online, *&^% you too. And all you that have not paid me for what I wrote: *&^% you too. N.M: *&%$; Dinda; Mambo; Kamwana et al: *&^% you too. Kenyan mainstream media: *&^% you too. Kenyans on Twitter: *&^% you. My friends on Facebook: *&^% you.

Follow me on Twitter only if you are intent on retweeting: @POTASH

P.S: Most important of all, you might have been telling your friends that you know the cat that runs this blog, but between me and you, we know that you do not. You know N.M coz he is a yuppie bastard like you!

A(nother) Nice Laugh at Aid Inc.

2009-11-24T06:15:00.001+03:00

The Aid industry takes a ridiculous turn more as a rule than as an exception. This ridiculousness finds a zenith point- one that is quickly multiplied- the moment the Aid industry makes contact with Africa. The reason is simple: Africa, still remains, the great unknown. At least in the eyes of your average Westerner. What becomes clear is that while philanthropy in Western soil is a direct response to clearly discernible dispossession; an attempt to ameliorate the self-evident vagaries and social-economic divides that Capitalism inevitably produces, with Africa that philanthropy responds to a different reality. That of the imaginary.

The problem with Africa, in the eyes of the average Western philanthropist, is that which citizens of the West first imagine and then declare to be the problem. And for where there is a problem as solution must be provided. So the Aid industry comes in, bungling on its way and making the rules as it progresses, with solutions to Africa’s problems. But no one really asks the Africa: what is your problem?

In the end, for every imagined problem, an imagined solution. And because every Westerner who has a mind to can come to Africa and become the change, then for every Westerner in Africa a set of imaginary problems and one of imaginary solutions to match. Suddenly, in a crowded field of solutions, the need to be groundbreaking arises and since all the sane things have been done it seems as though the competition begins to be one for the most ridiculous solutions.

It is all so funny that I have always felt that, with the mounting critiques of the Aid industry, the only response left to some of us is satire. Why, I ask, should I bother with learned critiques while the Moyos and the Easterlys can do a far much better job of it? It really is the reason why I (N.M) set up the Black Campaign and borrowed the line this blog, Don’t Come to Africa, Send Money. (That I haven’t done a good job at keeping the satire coming is a different story all together).

That aside, it is always refreshing to see Bill Easterly come up with the sort of hilarious post he did this Tuesday where he wrote:

“An expert commission of African leaders today announced their plan for comprehensive reform of music band U2. Saying that U2’s rock had lost touch with its African roots, the commission called for urgent measures to halt U2’s slide towards impending crisis.”

That aside, I must admit that I love Bono the musician while Bono the activist makes me gag. Well, of course I mean Bono the activist for Africa because the Bono (and U2) of Sunday Bloody Sunday did once speak to the social conscience of my youthful years. And yes, I still do like to listen to U2. Oh, and didn’t Adam Clayton live in Kenya for a bit when he was little?

Apart from the final four paragraphs, this post is culled from the draft of an incomplete essay by Njoroge Matathia.

AS I SLIDE DEEPER INTO OBLIVION

2009-11-11T03:19:00.002+03:00

Writing, I have learnt, is about a time and a place. I am not claiming to speak a universal truth, just what my experience has taught me. It could be a truth about others, and then again it might not be. But it is a truth about me; a self-revelation and maybe, especially in times of drug induced self-analysis, an epiphany. That truth, simply, I write better when here. Here being the ‘old neighbourhood’. The place where what later became known as A Kenyan Urban Narrative began. The space, next to and a little to the left of Mutua’s kiosk, where we sat on stones, sipped on Napshizzle and wrote.

I have spent the last few months in and out of this place. In and out of this place trying to track old friends and make new acquaintances with the hope of reconstituting The Potash Book Club. In and out of this place trying to find an entry back in and be able to, once again, call this home. My successes have been way too few and far in between. Most of the old friends are long gone; most of the new acquaintances are too young and ‘intellectually’ distant from me. It really is a shame about the kids that hang out here now, they idle away their time just like we used to, but they do not indulge their mental faculties in the same way we did. They drink a lot more than we did and read a hell of a lot less. Which is polite for: They read nothing.

In truth, I have had only one real success, here, in the last two weeks. I have been writing. Writing seems like the only way I profit from being here. And when you think that it is the writing that took me out of this place, to begin with, and about the only thing I took with me, then it seems as though that has always been the worth of this place to me. But it isn’t and it shouldn’t appear to be so. This place gave me writing and a lot else too. A lot else like friendship and the camaraderie and firm bond of a shared experience. Family. At least all that when it lasted because I do not feel it anymore.

Trying to reconnect with this place, I feel like all the things that this place gave me have been stripped away and all that is left is the writing. The writing that seems to come to me, words and sentences instinctively forming in my head, the moment I enter this neighbourhood. The only thing being that then more I stay, the more time I spend talking to people here, the swifter the words and sentences arrange themselves into paragraphs.

Over the years, after I first left, I felt as though my writing was getting bland. Worse still, I felt as though I had lost familiarity with my writing voice. That I had even no story left in me to tell. Sometimes, agonised to tears, I would come down this way. Come down in search of both the muse and voice I believed I had left behind. But nothing. All these trips turned out to be were pilgrimages to the past of a writing me. A past not grand in itself but at least one that was insurmountably better than my present. A present of more craft and less art. A present of words correctly spelled, sentences well punctuated and, alas, no story.

It is then that I realised that the audiences might be out there but my writing lived down here. So, with big little steps, I have been working on my return. My return to this place where what later became known as A Kenyan Urban Narrative was born. A place where audiences will elude me but my writing will get better. A place where I can write and write and hope to be read, at least, when I am dead.

And with yet another, perfunctory Hello World of a blog post behind me, do allow me to return to the real writing.

THE STRAIGHT MAN'S BIBLE OF KINKY SEX?

2009-11-07T22:39:00.001+03:00

I have long learnt the folly of using the Bible as an excuse/ explanation/ Justification for anything. When I was a young boy, growing up in a very Christian family, I was taught that the Bible was the word of God. “In the beginning was the Word,” the Gospel according to John begins, “and the Word was God.”

Then I grew older, read a lot more than the Bible, and suddenly it was like Jesus Christ himself was standing before me yelling: Ephphatha. Open up. And the eye of my mind become open to the fact that if the Bible was indeed the Word of God, then God is man’s literary plumbing. The truth of the Bible became to me not the words but the words and meanings that men put into it. And there could be as many truths in the Bible as there were men who would care to read it. I could find my own version of truth in the Bible as much as the next man could find theirs, or in some cases, the lack thereof. The Bible thus became for me not the word of God but an oracle as crazy as its next reader.

I still read the Bible, but now only as an exceptional work of literature and philosophy. And to this day, the book of John remains one of the texts I admire the most. From a literary point of view, of course. The Jesus in the Gospel of John has the eloquence of Khalil Gibran’s prophet retold in the mystical realist voice of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I say these things because one of my Facebook Friends brought an interesting website to my attention. Sex In Christ- Sexuality according to the word of God, a site that argues that threesomes are scripturally, kosher as long as it is a husband and two women (two men and one woman is homo, silly!) has to be read to be believed.

This site, which reminds us that sex between two men is condemned by the Bible but that joining your wife and her girlfriend in bed is holy in matrimony, must have been written by a heterosexual male pervert who uses the Songs of Solomon to jerk off. If it was up to me, the site should be called The Straight Man’s Bible of Kinky Sex.
But before I let you go and leave the site to speak for itself let me tell you why, according to that site of course, anal sex (before marriage, no less) is in accordance with God’s will:

“Are you saving yourself for your wedding night? The Devil wants you to fail, that’s why he puts stumbling blocks in your way. But God wants you to succeed, and that’s why he has given us an alternative to intercourse before marriage: anal sex. Through anal sex, you can satisfy your body’s needs, while you avoid the risk of unwanted pregnancy and still keep yourself pure for marriage.

You may be shocked at first by this idea. Isn’t anal sex (sodomy) forbidden by the Bible? Isn’t anal sex dirty? What’s the difference between having anal sex before marriage and having regular intercourse? Let’s address these issues by debunking some myths about anal sex and God's will.”

But no, why don't you go find that out for yourself... I have drugs to abuse!

CONSTITUTIONS DON’T MAKE HOMOPHILES

2009-11-01T18:10:00.000+03:00

“That's what the niggers don't realize,” says Jack Nicholson’s character in The Departed (2006), “If I got one thing against the black chappies, it's this - no one gives it to you. You have to take it.” It is the same problem with Kenya’s gay activists, or so thinks our guest blogger. Njoroge Matathia of The Black Campaign returns to these pages with a demand for a more forceful political and social engagement on gay issues in Kenya. Arguing that in the eyes of the Kenyan public there are no homosexuals here, he concludes that the gay community has itself to blame for the perpetuation of that misconception. Matathia then proceeds to call for a more public approach to activism and falls slightly short of demanding that the gay movement radicalise.

We share these opinions, our emphasis though being on the need for radicalism, but if he has failed to express them succinctly in his rather long essay then the fault is his and not that of this blog.

***

by Njoroge Matathia

“The union is abnormal. As an African and a church leader, I am ashamed. We should advice others not to do the same,”1 Anglican Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, said. He was responding to the news of a wedding between two Kenyan men held in London recently. A wedding that, according to media reports, Kenyan religious leaders have described as “unacceptable and unnatural”.

The Archbishop’s point of view I respect, it is his collation of Christianity and ‘Africanness’ that I sneer upon. I desired to respond to that, point out the irony in a casual call to ‘Africanness’ by someone whose job description begins with ‘Anglican’ but I held back telling myself that I, like him, would be missing the point. The point being: A wedding.

People love weddings. Love weddings because they are a celebratory rite of passage into that much revered social status of Married. Weddings usher in marriage, the only state within which societal sanctions allow you, nay, consider you respectable enough to have sex and to raise a family. Ideally, weddings are seen as a celebration of love between two people. A love so deep and special that those that share it declare it publicly and make a commitment to love and care for each other until death parts them.

Weddings let the whole world know that X loves Y. Weddings say: Charles Ngengi loves Daniel Chege Gichia and promises to do so, forever after. Love and companionship are the dominant tropes weddings sell with sex remaining a subtext too subtle to be discerned by the youngling flower-girls and pages who these events are meant to and do inspire.

But when Njenga wedded Gachie, the tables turned. Sex was elevated from subtext to issue- the only issue. Worse still, it was as though a sexual pervert had stood up in public and threatened: I, Charles Ngengi swear I will bugger that Chege guy to death! And over the next few days our MSM (pun intended) and online media spaces proceeded to work up and host what seems like a national disgust at the idea of, not just any men but two Kenyan men having sex with each other. For once an opportunity, to see and hopefully discuss homosexuality as more than sexual intercourse between people of the same biological sex, was ours to grab. Kenya, as a nation wasted that chance, the Kenyan gay community- its so called activists, specifically- squandered it.

The Kenyan gay community had a chance to say, look it is not just about sex, it is about human relationships. If we must talk about sex, then let us begin with the fact that two gay girls can meet, date and fall in love without ever having had sex. You know, just like with ‘normal’ people, if one partner is not ready then she just is not ready. And if you really care about that person and that relationship then you, well, wait. Sometimes a gay boy sees another boy and is filled with lust for him- you know, just the way a straight boy would feel about a girl- he propositions him and if the other is good to go, then he is good to go. Bottom line is casual sex is simply that, casual sex. If the issue is sex, then all sex is sex regardless of where your penis ends up. Thank you very much for your questions but we must now move on to a more important conversation: Sexuality.

Gay folks, in Kenya, did not do that. They neither pre-empted public debate’s, predictable, slide into how gross gay sex is nor attempted to shift it back to sexuality and lifestyle choices when it did. Right from the get go, the homophobes came out to play and for now the ball remains in their court. Maybe until Moreno Ocampo arrives next week and Kenyans can forget that small bit of gay silliness and get back to real issues: politics. Get back to politics the deafening silence of the Kenyan gay community having once again established the fact that there are no gay people in Kenya. That there are no gay Kenyans, just a few misguided youngsters who knowing no better allow themselves to be fooled by mzungus and their money into allowing themselves to be sexually abused. I mean, wasn’t that Ngengi guy lured by a mzungu guy to London? Now he is recruiting for them and we do not know what to do but leave our children to the grace of God.

Granted that, in truth, there exists a huge gay community in Kenya, nobody is gay in Kenya. A paradox it may seem until you consider that physical existence is never a guarantee of social existence. In colonial Kenya, the Africans it was said were to be seen but not heard, it is worse for gay people in Kenya today- they can neither be seen nor heard. In those days, the Africans lived at the social periphery- their existence known but their presence ignored- but gay people are living in social cemetery- unheard of and unknown. Gay people in Kenya are not ignored, they do not exist.

Because gay people do not exist in Kenya is it not preposterous to enshrine gay rights in our constitution; protect the interest of homosexuals as a distinct category? As we speak the Committee of Experts on Constitutional Review, charged with preparing a draft constitution soon to be put to referendum, has stated that they will not include gay rights in the draft. In a telling, if slightly ironic statement, the Nation reported a member of the committee, Mr. Otiende Amolo, as saying that

“[t]he new constitution is supposed to cater for the interests of both the majority and minorities, […] but same-sex marriages had been rejected by all religious groups.”2
Of great import too is the manner in which the issue of gay rights was, allegedly, presented to the committee. Mr. Amolo, it is reported, said:

"On several occasions some British MPs have approached us on the gay matter. They wanted us to include homosexual and lesbians' rights in the draft. But we told them that such a thing cannot happen because if we did so, a majority of Kenyans will reject the draft during the forthcoming referendum."3

Assuming the Mr. Amolo was not misquoted, then two things become self-evident. First, that consensus amongst all religious groups (their leaders to be precise) means consensus amongst all Kenyan minorities and majorities. Second, that gay rights were only put on the committee’s agenda (not by any Kenyan or group of Kenyans) by foreigners. By British MPs, specifically, in whose country two Kenyans have already found a safe haven for their ‘unnatural and unacceptable’ union. The two points together speak to the argument- proven through deduction by the lack of any memoranda from gay Kenyans to the committee- that there are no gay people in Kenya.

Big jump, maybe, from weddings to constitution making but with it a significant reframing of the homosexuality debate. To begin with, though the stance against homosexuality taken by the religious groups is based on their moral and doctrinal perspectives, by arguing these points in a political space, they politicise homosexuality. By not responding- in political spaces- to the politicisation of their way of life the Kenyan gay community cedes any political ground there is to be won. Importantly, by not being the first to politicise their interests, the gay community becomes relegated to the unfortunate place of second guessing the political agenda set by their opponents.

It can be argued that their existence being, technically, illegal in Kenya means that homosexuals cannot publicly present memoranda. But truth is that declaring oneself to be a homosexual in Kenya is not in and of itself illegal. While Kenyan law criminalises acts- sodomy and the cryptic ‘acts against the order of nature’- it is society that anathematises homosexuality as a concept, identity and lifestyle. Thus, a public declaration of ones homosexuality puts you in danger of social ostracism and mob justice rather than criminal prosecution and jail. Therefore, if the written law and social values were two cats, gay rights a mouse and we had only one bell, which one ought we to bell first? The more vicious one of course; social stigmatisation of homosexuality rather than the laws that purportedly criminalise it.

And the first steps towards fighting social stigma are a broader public awareness of the stigmatised social reality coupled with, hopefully, a level of acceptance or, at the very least, tolerance.

Unfortunately, acceptance or tolerance are processes rather than events; fortunately, what is sought is not universal acceptance or tolerance but a modicum of it. It is in this environment that changes in the law begin to make sense. Laws in themselves do not change people, reason does. If it were, by any wild chance, possible to enshrine the rights of sexual minorities in the Kenyan constitution now, the only thing the gay community would come out with is the lesson that constitutions do not make homophiles. Just look at South Africa and their much celebrated gay friendly constitution and then look at their statistics on the ‘corrective rape’4 of lesbians.

But all is not lost. The rights that gay Kenyans deserve can be achieved but they will have to be earned. They will have to fight for them on two fronts, the social and the political. In the social, an intense public awareness campaign around gay issues must be embarked on. One that begins with the subtle and progresses towards the blatant. Think of a move from pamphlets, stickers and other merchandise in not only English but also Kiswahili and other languages. These can be dropped at market centres, people’s doorsteps and such places. Guerrilla social marketing, if there is such a thing. With time it will even be possible to have a gay character in a local TV show. The key thing, though, is to target rural areas more than the urban ones.

The political front is the hard part. The Kenyan gay community will need martyrs for this. It must be borne in mind that all significant political change in this country has been cut with blood. Why should gay people hope to be any luckier? They must get out on the street and march for their freedom, wipe off the spit and blood from their torn bodies and souls and march again. History has taught that easy civil rights victories are few and far in between. In the meantime gay Kenyans must ask themselves not what laws are against them but what laws are for them.

What laws protect them not as homosexuals but as both citizens of Kenya and human beings? Does the Sexual Offences Act limit rape to actions against heterosexuals? Does the penal code say, categorically, that the assault, infliction of grievous bodily harm or the murder of a homosexual is not a crime? Because lawyers, judges and policemen are products of our homophobic environment, it means that crimes committed against homosexuals do not get prosecuted, do not find their way into civil court and if they did the offender could claim the victim’s sexuality as a mitigating circumstance or cause for extreme provocation. But for how long can a precedent setting prosecution remain elusive? Haven’t we seen one yet?

It is alongside laws that rights and responsibilities exist. One great argument proposed by sexual rights activists, and one that I have used often in other writings, frames sexual orientation within the language of rights. That sexual (orientation) rights are human rights. Unfortunately rights are a moral issue that can only become legally relevant when they are politicised. And as we have seen, the Kenyan gay community has lost both the moral and the political argument. They have lost by default merely by not being seen and heard, in any significant way, enough to count as a constituent demographic group in Kenya. They have lost the advantage of having drawn first blood; stepping up and stepping out to frame the public discourse on homosexuality in their favour. They have refused to exist validating the myth of their non-existence through inaction.

It is this lack of political action and a refusal to engage the public on their issues that irks me the most about gay activists in Kenya. If they are involved in any activism at all then it plays out in formal spaces socially and intellectually distant from the broader publics they need win over. They play safe- talking heads at conferences that preach to the converted- while the world out there is living in the blissful heathenism of homophobia. “We are here, we are gay,” they whisper to each other inside their closet and then wonder, at the next exclusive conference, why no one knows they exist.

1. http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/673614/-/uo10l1/-/index.html
2. http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/674074/-/uo1kcr/-/index.html
3. http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/674074/-/uo1kcr/-/index.html
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrective_rape

Njoroge Matathia is a Nairobi based writer and social scientist. He can be reached at http://theblackcampaign.org Check that site over the next few days for a downloadable PDF version of this essay.

NAIROBI NIGHTS: URBAN BEATS- The Party

2009-10-30T18:05:00.001+03:00

It has been one of those times when the Nairobi cultural scene has more to offer than the time one has. And when I, who has so much idle time in his hands, says I am pressed for time, then you know it has been an intense schedule. The German cultural weeks, beginning October 18th and ending tomorrow have been particularly charming. But I only managed to attend two events: the screening of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others (2006) and Wanuri Kahiu's 12 minutes long sci-fi Pumzi (2009) at the Goethe Institute. Too bad I cannot be bothered to write reviews because they are both really important movies in their own rights.

On the 27th of October, I was back at the Goethe Institute for the opening of IngridMwangiRobertHutter's exhibition, Intruders. Ingrid Mwangi was born, to a Kenyan father and German mother, in Nairobi in 1970 while Robert Hutter was born in Ludwigshafen, Germany in the same year. Together they form the 'artisticly inspeparable identity', IngridMwangiRobertHutter, through which they do their art and, as Hutter puts it, 'other things together'. Those other things include raising their four children. Intruders, on show till the 12th of November at the Goethe Institute, is IngridMwangiRobertHutter's first solo show in Kenya.

At the opening I met up with Andy Teichmann and Sasha Perera. Andy, who I did a night out with back in February, is one half of the techno DJs unit Teichmann Brothers while Sasha of the Berlin based eloctronic band Jahcoozi. The Teichmann Brothers and Jahcoozi will alongside the b-boy artist Raphael team up with the Kenyan acts of hip hop DJ Bob of Headbangaz, house and techno DJ Drazen and the Swahili hiphop crew of Uko Flani for a party to draw the curtain on the German Cultural Weeks. Christened URBAN BEATS, the party will be held at the Marshall's service workshop in the ground floor of Marshall's House on Loita Street from 9.00p.m on the night of October 30th.

*Unfortunately, I can neither post the event poster nor attach links because either blogger or bad internet will not allow me. I cannot even format the text!

POTASH BOOK CLUB: Letter to a Convict

2009-10-25T21:20:00.000+03:00

Then he answered and spoke to me, saying, "This is the word of Potash to N-, saying, 'Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says commander of Armies.*

House,

Some people say that jail changes you, and it should. But that only if you are a criminal; a menace to the public, judged so by a system that is both fair and just. If on the other hand you are a prisoner of conscience, put away- the machinations of the unjust working in overdrive- to silence you, prison should not change you. Must never change you.

True revolutionaries; earnest believers in a just cause, can only be judged not by what they said before they went to prison but by what they say after. What did Kenyatta say when he left prison? What did those tortured under Moi say when they, finally, took over the reigns? What will you say, when tomorrow they set you free? That God is God all the time, huh? So let us forgive them for they know not what they do?

God is good, indeed. The God otherwise known as Capital.

It has been a long road since November 1997 when a third column was presented to you. Many have been martyred that no one will ever know of, many have sold out who history will judge harshly.

But one thing is certain, the Potash Book Club will rise again. Damn well it will, and this I swear by the spirit of our forefathers.

Potash

*Proper attribution for this quote is problematic. Early on in this decade, a slew of photocopies of handwritten texts were to be found circulating among the youth of several low income areas in Nairobi. Many of them contained lengthy passages from both Shakespeare and the Bible reworked with Kenyan characters and situations. With every subsequent photocopying, came redactions as is evident from this quote that is obviously originally sourced from the book of Zechariah, 4:6.

Homosexuality: A Brief Rant

2009-10-21T10:26:00.001+03:00

Nothing irks me more than a bigot with a bad argument. With the reports, in the last week, of a marriage between two Kenyan gay men and the introduction of an Anti-Homosexuality Bill into the Uganda parliament, this type of bigot has come out to play. The basic argument: Homosexuality is both against Christianity and Africanness.

Previously, on this blog, we have had a quick read through of what the Bible- the foundation of Christianity- has to say on homosexuality. That we insist is our own reading of the Bible and respect the fact that others can choose to read it differently. Anyone can read the Bible and find in it justification for all manner of hateful behaviour and that, whether it be slavery or homophobia, we respect. Respect it in the same way we respect all other opinions even when they significantly diverge from ours. To respect the opinions of others does not make them right, but it calls upon them to respect ours too or at least gives us the right to demand that our opinions be respected.

The opinion, held unwaveringly on this blog, is that up there with other recognized freedoms, id est, speech, religious belief, ownership of property, et cetera, lies sexual orientation. Whether people are born homosexual or choose to be so is moot our concern being that there are human beings who are homosexual. Irrevocably homosexual. And because they are does not mean they deserve special rights. What they deserve is equal rights. In the language of rights, homosexuals should not exist as a distinct category, because they belong in the same one as Ours: human being. In the same vein, there should be no category of laws that address homosexuals, specifically.

We, also, hold that the greatest sexual crime is non-consensual sex; where consent is established- between adults of a sound mind- the law can go jerk off.

Rants aside, we hope to engage you more on the Bahati Bill in Uganda and the whole business of homosexuality and Africanness soon. With time, it can be hoped that our region will arrive at a decent place where you do not have to be a cow to demand that cows be slaughtered humanely. But before then, universal human rights, must claim martyrs. Stand up and be counted.

Tweet your vitriol to @Potash

JUST A BAND ALBUM LAUNCH

2009-10-16T13:42:00.004+03:00

Self-effacement might have led Just a Band to describe themselves as an Experimental Boy Band but what they have turned out to be is a cult. That is a thought, I must return to on another day, but for now I have to go hustle because money, El Nino or the lack of a ride cannot get in the way of my attending the launch of their sophomore album kesho. The album, simply titled 82, will be launched at The Godown Arts Center, Industrial Area.

Here are the details, also available on Facebook:

“We've just released our second album - 82 and we'll be putting it out there with song and dance. Join us on Saturday 17th October from 7pm at the Godown Arts Center till much later (with the help of DJ Drazen). The album will be on sale for... Kshs. 500.

Advance tickets: Kshs. 400
Gate tickets: Kshs. 500

Advance Tickets available from:

The Sound Africa Store,
Ground Floor, 20th Century Plaza
Mama Ngina Street
CBD, Nairobi

The Bonk Store (opposite Steers Westlands)
Bishan Plaza, below Black Diamond
Mpaka Road, Westlands

The Godown Arts Center,
Dunga Road, Industrial Area
Nairobi.

AND from any of us band members, should you meet us. :D

With the gracious support of Penya Africa, The Godown Arts Center, ESL, bONK, Kiss FM and Kiss TV.”

Just a Band is as Urban Kenya as it gets, and this blog is proud to big them up big time, now and in future.

THE NUBIAN QUESTION IN KENYA

2009-10-06T15:54:00.003+03:00

Only about 300 acres of the original over 4,000 acres of settlement land granted to the Nubian community by the British in Nairobi remains. That is one of the claims made by Khamis Ramadhan’s 27 minutes long documentary The Nubian Question in Kenya. Premiering this Monday, at the Alliance Française, “the film brings forth the plight of the Nubians who reside in Kibra (now known as Kibera). The production revisits history and discusses the origins of the community, the struggle to own land and their effort to preserve their identity and culture.”

Nairobi is the Aid industry capital of Eastern Africa and the Great Lakes region and at the heart of Nairobi lays the crown jewel of that industry, Kibera. Kibera- where poverty and deprivation are only spoken of in superlatives- where your humane purse is coaxed open, not by a voice or face, but by a statistic. Wherever you are in the world, Kibera will find you and demand that you take urgent action now to save Them. Them that live in the biggest slum in, depending on the Aid Agency’s penchant for grand statements, Africa; Africa outside South Africa or East and Central Africa. Kibera is always about size and numbers, never about a people and their way of life. It is no small wonder then that the troubled, warped and complex histories of Kibera remain blurred by the infamy, nay, notoriety of its present.

It is thus by focusing on a people, their culture and their origins that Ramadhan brings one of the few noteworthy cinematic expeditions into Kibera in recent times. This is no more-slum-shots-from-Fernando Mierelles or Nathan Collett saving Kibera one Red One at a time but engaging social commentary. I am not saying that there is no social consciousness in The Constant Gardener or Kibera Kid; just that its rhyme and reason is wasted on Kenyan’s. Kenyans see their lives their lives through politics and politics is what, in the end, Ramadhans film delivers.

And Ramadhan, through the voices of his interviewees, makes political statements that, while at times grand, are pertinently Kenyan. Central to his documentary is the one thing that Kenyan blood has been and will continue to be spilled for the most: Land. If poverty, tribal animosity, ignorance and disease are the demons that haunt us, then land, to borrow an Edgar Poe phrase, is their avatar and seal. Kenyans are land poor; Kenyans fight each other over so called ‘ancestral land’; Kenyans want to live in the blissful ignorance of a long gone subsistence agriculture and pastoral economy that access to land is the only way to livelihood; Kenyans lack proper health care because public land earmarked for health centers has shifted to private hands. And in Ramadhan’s Kibera, decent housing is not the issue, as one of his interviewees notes, it is not that we are unable to build permanent houses here we just do not do it here because we do not own title deeds to this land.

The question of land in Kenya is immutably tied in with those of ethnic identity and the British colonial adventure in this region. The Nubian question in Kenya, as the documentary suggests, is one that becomes a volatile mix of all these. The documentary argues that there are about 200,000 Nubians living in Kenya today with twenty per cent of them living in Kibera. Importantly, all these people are direct descendants of Imperial British soldiery.

This last claim, as we see it, is important in that it pre-emptively rules out the needs for a screening in case restitutions and reparations are made available in future. It is one of many, of an astute activist nature, that raise further interest in Ramadhan’s work. Work that seems to paints a portrait of a community that served both the British Empire and the people and people and government of post-independence Kenya. A community that was in the end ‘marginalised’ by both.

Take the Nubian contribution to the struggle for independence, for instance. During the Emergency years, Nubian elders were approached by the British and requested to lend their support to the war against Mau Mau. The Nubians, according to this film, refused. If the implied claim ‘if we weren’t against these freedom fighters, then we were for them’ does not suffice, then there is more. Did you know that many a times Jomo Kenyatta would hide out here? Yes, the documentary, casually mentions Jomo Kenyatta as having, at one time or other, been dressed up as a Nubian and disappearing into Kibera.

What about that cockerel in the KANU flag? Do you know where it comes from? According to Ramadhan’s film, Tom Mboya used to spend time in conference with Nubian elders who used to wear blazers (maybe as part of some regimental dress) with a cockerel on the breast pocket. Later on as Mboya went on to form the PCP and with the emergence of KANU, he took this symbol and incorporated it into their signage.

Originally from the Sudan, the Nubians arrived in Kenya as soldiers, guards and porters loyal to the British crown. Principally, recorded history has the Nubians as- having been recognised as formidable warriors by the British- being hired to support Britain’s East African campaign at the end of the 19th Century. In the early years of the 20th Century, they became a part of the regiment known as the King’s African Rifles (KAR) formed in 1902 to protect British interests in East Africa and beyond. These forces not only saw action in numerous wars of occupation and the gorier ones of ‘pacification’, all the way to Uganda, but also fought gallantry in the two World Wars. The film tells us that the British always maintained comprehensive records of all Nubian males of a fighting age and fitness, who they considered a reserve force, and called on them in times of war.

To brand them mercenaries is to use a far too broad brush-stroke, for many of them, the film claims, had been forcefully conscripted. One interviewee tells of how large tribal dances would be organized and in the middle of which loud whistles would be heard and shortly heavily armed soldiers would surround them and take them captive. They would then be forced to join the British colonial army and sent to serve in far off places. The film states that that today Nubians can be found in places as far off as Burma.

Those in Kenya, who served alongside the British, have documents acknowledging that service but nothing more to show for it. Though Europeans who served in the World Wars were well rewarded- with among other things, large tracts of lands in Kenya- the Nubians who served alongside them, as with all the other Africans, received very little by manner of gratitude and or compensation.

The film claims that part of what the Nubians got was the land that they called Kibra. That land stretched from Dagoretti Corner, all the way to Wilson Airport on one side and bounded by the National Park and the Department of Defence on the other side. The only problem is that the British never gave them title deeds to that land. Neither did the Kenyan government. Why not? is the real Nubian question in Kenya. Or as one old man puts it: if the Indians and the Europeans have acquired land and citizenship, why not the Nubians?

Whichever way, The Nubian Question in Kenya might invent and reinvent history; no matter how much I see this as yet another Royal cock-up for Kenyans to deal with, one thing remains clear to me, the Nubian question is ours to deal with. And no matter how few our options are, only those that are just; those that have Kenya- the modern state of Kenya- beginning on the same day for all of us, no matter the road that brought our ancestors here, should be considered.

Note: Apologies for lack of text formatting, they are Blogger's not mine!

*PCP here refers to Tom Mboya's Nairobi People's Convention Party, which even his perennial rival Oginga Odinga admits to have been the best organised political party in Nairobi, in the late fifties and before joining KANU at its formation in 1960. (See, Oginga's Not Yet Uhuru, Pg. 147, 161, 181, 183, 193, 203)

Takhzin Diaries: You Never Chew Alone

2009-10-02T13:46:00.003+03:00

One cardinal rule, broken again and again even by old hands who should know better, is to never chew miraa alone. Miraa is generally considered a mild stimulant but, as with all drugs, threshold levels vary from one individual to the next and so does the intensity of the physiological and psychological effects. Also important with miraa is that because it is consumed in its natural state, with absolutely no laboratory processing, determining the potency of the product is still much of a fluke even for the self-professed connoiseur.

The active ingredients in miraa, Cathine and Cathinone, are ingested through chewing of fresh twigs and leaves of the Catha Edulis plant. These twigs and leaves are harvested all year round and, naturally, the crop from the dry season is bound to vary in potency and ease of consumption from that of the rainy as well as that of the cold season. The geographical location, age of the plant, the nature and extent of the plant husbandry, the lack of or the existence of inter-crops (and the nature of these crops) among other things are all conditions likely to mildly-to-significantly alter the potency of the product.

The unpredictable nature of miraa though has been demonstrated to me though by the observation of variance between what its chemistry says and what I have seen in real life. The most active ingredient in miraa, Cathinone is believed to decompose within forty eight hours after harvesting. This is to say, and all effort is made to ensure that, the product has to be delivered to the consumer long before the end of this period. Chemistry aside, everyone swears by fresh miraa and your supplier goes to great lengths to convince you that his stock was plucked and delivered on that same day. Yet, I have sat, chewing with a bunch of four other people who got mighty high even though they were chewing miraa that was at the very least, two days older than mine. Also, I have to admit that one of the very few times that I have had a head-rushing kind of miraa high, a feeling I can only occasionally induce with the smoking of the cheap, unfiltered Rooster cigarettes, was when I was chewing stock that had lain on my floor for at least five days. This days-old miraa, referred to as kilalo in allusion to its state of having ‘slept over’, seems quite as potent, albeit a little rough on the palate, as the fresh pick.

And reverting to the idea of solo chewing… I for one spend long hours chewing alone. Usually, I am seated in the same position reading or, as in the case now, writing. I cannot for a fact say that it enhances my productivity but the down time occasioned by post-chewing lethargy is significant. Then of course there is the anorectic effect which when coupled with the sore mouth makes eating a decent meal- assuming such can be found- quite a chore.

Maybe, because my mind is constantly focused on the reading and writing, at times even when chewing in a group or the fact that miraa affects me in a different way- I do not become hyperactive- I have not experienced certain things that many others have reported to me. It is common, for instance, for many people to get home while still chewing and clean their houses inside out. A story is also told at my regular chewing base of this guy who was chewing all alone in his house at night when he started to feel all sweaty and dehydrated. He got up and went to the corner of his bed-sit where a pack of jerry cans stood, Nairobi style. He picked one, took a massive swig from it and poured the rest on himself. It is the burning sensation in his mouth and the distinctive odour of paraffin that quickly enveloped him that brought him to his wits and sent him gagging into the shared toilet outside.

Of course the veracity of most of the stories you hear in the course of chewing, especially those from second hand sources and those that you hear different versions of in different chewing bases is impossible to ascertain. But attempts to poke holes in them are not only silly but bad form because story-telling is the Big G that binds the takhzin. If you have to take them any other way but as truth, then it must be as plausible.

The next story though, told to me last night is straight out of the mouth of a horse of my acquaintance. A few years back, my boy Ngure, used to chew out on Kirichwa Road in Kilimani. One night, at about two a.m. he decided to drive to his house, and as he had a bunch of sticks left, chew on his balcony for about another hour, screw his wife and then sleep. As he was driving, he started to hear this persistent humming sound and became convinced that he had a puncture. So with the one-track-mindedness that miraa induces he stopped the car, right there in the middle of the road at that ungodly hour. He stepped out of his car and inspected every single tyre, twice. Nothing. Vexed, he stepped back into the car and only then realised that what he had thought was a humming sound was actually his car’s stereo. Laughing loudly at himself, he set about lighting himself a cigarette and then as he was pushing his gear into drive, realised that he was parked on a bridge.

He was in Kikuyu, headed out of Nairobi in the opposite direction of his Langata house.

LETTER TO THE GREAT AND THE DEAD

2009-09-30T02:00:00.003+03:00

Dear Timi,

Here I am little brother. Incoherent I might be, but damn well I am right here. Right here where you and I spent long hours dreaming. Here where I watch one tear after the other dribble down my face and mix with the earth. Drib! Drib! My tears go, just like your blood did, for hours- from dusk to high noon- the day they stole you from us. Plucked you, that was a glorious blossom in the rocky garden that is my life, out.

It has been such a long time since. Far too many places I have been to, in the meantime, way too many things I have seen. None of them could make my memories of you any less fond. I might not spend hours starring vacantly at your grave. (Hell, they probably sold your cheap grave in Langata to someone else.) But in my mind, as a gentle thought, you have repose and every fair word that stumbles out of my pen I dedicate as an epitaph to you.

Then sometimes, when the road feels a tad bit to rough, I take a pause and shed a tear. And another… and another. Sit and watch the tears, like your blood, mingle with the earth. This earth that we always seemed fated to walk on but never own a piece of.

The pain gets much deeper whenever I return to this place. Not just the old neighbourhood but the Stone Zone, specifically. This place where we spent our days sitting and talking, pretty much watching the world pass us by, for lack of either gainful employment or leisure.

Sometimes, in mid-conversation, our imaginations would get the best of us. Then we would imagine ourselves as the greatest Kenyan writers of our degeneration and rush over to Mutua’s kiosk, take biros and foolscaps on credit and then spend five, six, seven… ten hours writing. At times we stood as we wrote, other times we knelt and then there was the times when we asked any one o the other boys to bend over so that we could use their backs as our desks.

Such anger as flew out of our pens no words, phrases, similes or metaphors I can invent today can best describe. When I think, and I often do, about the texts we churned they seem like dirges. Dirges to us. We the living dead to whom the future tense was a luxury.

Then the cans of Napshizzle would run dry. Our pens too. Then we would stagger, each to his hovel, slump on those sagging Vono beds and let the alcohol take us away. The next day, or night depending on how long or how much we had drunk, we would wake up, read what we had written and (maybe shamed by the emptiness of our own existence that stared us back through our own words) set it on fire.

We used to claim that the writing was cathartic, but how come it was, at the end of the day, the alcohol that lulled us? Is it because our drunken sleep was the place for dreams and the writing a place for making portraits of the frightful nightmares that stalked our wakefulness?

That though is not the question that bothers me the most but one of whether the goodness of time and life would have proved you to be the greatest of Kenyan writers? It is such a shame. Such a shame that I, who was given the time, life and chance to prove myself, failed. That is the reason why, after all my upstart journeys into the writerish world out there, I keep coming back here. Return to this place, brooding and prostrated by my inadequacies. Come here and mourn you, wishing that you instead of me had had half the chance that I have had.

I do not know kid, but I feel like all the writing is done. But for you, and all the little ones that looked up to us, I will keep trying. I will keep trying, not from the fanciful lairs of the bourgeoisie writer class, but from down here. This neighbourhood is, for me, both home and muse. If to write we were called to, pray I be the least of your avatars.

If to own a piece of this earth that we, merely, walk on be rightful, then let the words that ooze out of my pen run deeper than the blood that our ancestors spilled that we may have it.

Affectionately yours,
Potash

BREAST STROKE

2009-09-25T17:47:00.000+03:00

The other day, there was news about this cop who got drugged and the 25 mili or so that he was escorting got jacked. That reminded me of the sequel to my hangover review that I had promised a friend I would write but never came round to. Well, I actually did write it but never got a chance to put it up here and now it is all gone as it was in one of the notebooks that got drenched last weekend.

Anyway, I was talking about my experiences, and those of others close to me, with roofies- date rape drugs- here in Nairobi. One incident involves a cousin of mine. Dude called me up on a loose Tuesday night saying that he was in Tropez and if I was up to it, he could buy me ten beers or so.

I jumped into a matatu and headed his way. On arrival, I found that the guy had three Guinness bottles on his table and I am like, kwani umekuwa jaluo? Of course not, he replied, this one is mine and the other two are for those women. I think they both want me, he added.

No dude, what they want is your money, is what I meant to say. What came out was: Okay, where are those ten Tuskers? The guy suddenly started to act funny; you know all that I-am-buying-these-chicks-drinks-and-I-hadn’t-planned-for-it-business. Man, I hate it when boys act like that. I mean, here I was, bila bus fare nini nini, and I was not even going to get a consolation soda. Is sawas a guy, I said to him and spotting a guy I went to primary school with on the next table walked over and pulled fifteen beers or so out of him in the name of catching up.

Some point in the night, my cousin came over to me and told me that the girls had asked him to their house. Where do they live? I asked. Huko sides of Kilimani, he said. Can I come, I suggested, tag time like this? Is bila, he laughed, who needs a wingman when the eagle has landed.

Polite

I saw the guy a month later but by then I had heard about four different versions of how he had been seen staggering home at midday on a Wednesday afternoon wearing lodgo slippers. (Si you know those slippers: one of a pair is blue and has the front part chopped off and the other is red and has a hole drilled in the sole). I sikizaed the dude kidogo and he kubalied to give me the full 411. like that tu bila ati kachumbari and mob things.

It is like this.

The chicks were hookers he had meet huko in the bar. Kidogo, after he has bought mingi pint, they were like: do you want something something. Like hell yeah, he semaed. They negotiated and after two more Guinness each, sealed the deal at 2 Gs for both of them. So when he told me that he was going to their place in Kilimani, he had lied and was actually going with them to a lodgo.

The idiot, horny and drunk, broke the first rule of picking malayas: never go to your place or theirs (that is wherever they suggest). They told him that they knew of a 4 soc lodgo sides of River Road. He agreed. They jumped into a cab. He remembers the cab guy asking him whether he was sure of what he was doing and him telling the cab dude to suck himself.

At the lodgo, he gave one of the hookers a thousand bob to pay for the room and he does not remember getting a receipt or his change back. They went up to the room and one of the hookers, quickly, undressed and jumped onto the bed. The other stood behind him and pulled off his pants. The one on the bed grabbed his penis and pulled him towards her.

The one that had undressed him joined them in bed and started to rub his back. You look like you can handle us, big boy, she said to him while pushing a finger up his anus. He looks like he will hurt me, the naked one said, still not having let go of his penis. You have to make us wet first, the other one said. Yes, turn me on, the naked one said to him while pulling his face towards her breasts. The only way to turn me on is to lick my breasts.

***

And he licked them and whatever else she had rubbed on them.

***

Heavy pounding and yelling outside his door is what woke him. It is eleven o’clock, whoever was outside barked, we want the bed sheets.

***

There was no one else in the room with him and he had absolutely no recollection of having sex with one woman, leave alone two. And he hadn’t.

***

The last thing he had seen was breasts.
Till today, he is haunted by breasts.

Untitled Rant

2009-09-22T15:14:00.002+03:00

Sod’s law is, in the IT age, your laptop dying on the eve of a public holiday and with nonnegotiable deadlines starring you in the face. You work hard to find a technician and as soon as you have one, you realize that your ATM is not working and you do not have enough to pay the guy. Which is all good since the technician is willing to work and take payment later but there is the small matter of finding you a replacement part for your computer. That just means that you just have to wait till the next day, for the banks and the computer shop to open. Oops... but Tuesdays are rationing days at the technician's workshop! Ack, your deadline is a contract not a Muslim so Idd is not working your way. How sad the saying mwana mzuri hufaidi siku ya Idi considered; have you really been bad?

Wish that was the story of my life, though, and not just an excuse I had to give to this dude who was expecting 800 words from me before Monday. It is the kind of excuse I always have to come up with when the realities of my existence get in the way of occasional work.

Picture this:

It is Saturday afternoon and I am sitting at Vaite’s veve Base. I have been there since the night before and in between chewing miraa and bullshitting, I have managed to explain the Global Economy part of the Global Economic Crisis (I do not understand the Crisis part, either); write a review for our first Potash Book Club reading and 800 words for said dude. Basically, I am within deadline. Most important of all, I have what I had promised the readers of this blog earlier on in the week. All within the time it takes to get high. All that is left is to find this chick that, between one shag and the next, can be relied on to get that stuff typed up and posted/ emailed.
So I start walked, nay, staggering to her place but I am feeling mighty antsy from all the chewing so I decided to get a quick drink to fight the miraa. I enter the nearest supermarket and grab a can of Kane Extra, down it and hit the road.

Then it begins to rain.

I am somewhere between high and drunk. Damn drugs got a hold of me.
To make a long story short, I made to jump over a ditch, tripped and fell. My two notebooks got mighty soaked and all my doodles went down the drain. What is a guy to do in that situation but go back and get mighty wasted if only to keep pneumonia at bay. So here I am, a couple of days later, trying to pick myself up and make up a plausible- and acceptable in a yuppie’s world- excuse for not having met my deadline.

As for you my reader, the truth about what happened explained, you just have to wait a couple more days until we can get to work on those Potash Book Club readings. As long as it takes, of course, for me to approach a modicum of coherence.

ROOTED IN COMMUNISM: THE POTASH BOOK CLUB

2009-09-17T07:05:00.004+03:00

If you don't know it, then go ask your mother, Kenya died in the early nineties. Well, not died died, but when Moi has got a vicious arm around your neck and the World Bank's grip on your balls is tighter than the pliers of a Nyayo House torturer, then you are as good as dead.

There I was, transitioning from primary to high school with white-collar dreams as the only wind in my sails. Such is the folly of youth it blinded me from the fact that the formal economy was losing jobs by the thousands. Our parents, having been coerced into taking early retirement, took their golden handshakes and made a beeline for Dubai. They came back with panties of the same colour and television sets of the same make to sell to...er...who?

It is as they sat in exhibition stalls, in between long waits for customers, that self-employment quickly became a euphemism for unemployment. (Everyone you met on the streets was doing Biashara and, every one of them, was trying to pull a fifty out of you for bus fare). But maybe, as they sat in those stalls trying to keep up with the Onyango's, and the lower than cost price tags they had put on their Gushi hanbags, they wished they had followed Mr. Onyango's lead into sampling Mombasa's carnal delights. Do it, beginning with the more exotic thrills at the beach resorts, working down to no-frills Mtwapa and all the way down to Makadara Grounds, as their money ran out.

In the meantime, for those who still had jobs, a lot more shilling was paying for a lot less filling and only Chinese merchandise and the kadogo economy could save them.

Then the mid-nineties came. That age found my peers and I too wrapped up in our school work to see the anger and frustration that had consumed our parents even though the only thing it had left to gobble up was us. And it eventually did but at that moment we were looking forth into the future an unusual shade of hope glinting off our eyes. We were, after all, standing at the eve of our Tomorrow. The tomorrow that we had been harangued, ad nauseam, that we would be the leaders of.

Tomorrow came. The system spat us out, into the Kenyan economy. But the Kenyan economy had long found rigor mortis.

It has been over ten years now, for me since high school. Ten years of, at the risk of sounding fatuous, trying to play poker at the table of life with the foul hand that time, space and the circumstances of my birth had dealt me.

In those days, there were many of us running through this city, like headless chicken, trying to figure out the next step towards making ends meet. Ends that, somewhat, felt like they were tied to two bulls charging in opposite directions and us stuck in the middle. And all this while, more and more, like us and with the same dreams, were pouring into the city.

We did what work could be found, when it was to be found; we ate what there was to eat and often it was nothing. We spent so much time walking, searching for work, and then we spent a lot more time talking, for lack of gainful employment. Many of us turned to despondence, more and more turned towards illegitimate means of goal attainment. Those of us that had read a little bit more outside of the required readings in Nyayo Philosophy started to suspect that maybe that fellow Karl Marx was right, after all, and imagined ourselves the proletarian victims of a historically stratified society.

Suddenly, we wanted to know more; read everything that we had hitherto been disallowed. So we started to scrimp and save, cut deeper and deeper into our alcohol money- alcohol that was our primary escape vehicle from the harsh realities we were living in- in order to buy and rent books. That is how the thing that would later come to be referred to as the Potashian Book Club on this blog was formed. This of course being an abridged version that avoids details of our (or maybe mine, specifically) fallouts with individuals and entities that would, later on at the beginning of this decade, define the popular/ public perception of lower class youth in this city,

It is all a long time ago and some of those, at least those of the fifteen or so core members who have lived to see today, are no longer at the same place we were then. Not in ideology, in levels of desperation or even in a desire for a just world where everyone can find their basic needs fulfilled.
The only person, that I believe would still stand with me, (now, as then) and who would probably have been a far better chronicler of those days than I can ever be is Timi. But Timi is dead, having taken a stray bullet to the head.

Njane, Mumo and Vanga are dead too. But those ones took bullets (ten in Mumo's case) that left the Eldoret ordnance factory with their names stamped on. Dimosh (formerly of Dimosh's Kinyozi) died of tuberculosis last year- or AIDS related complications, if you insist.

Kari, as well.

Bobo is a mother of six and lives in Mukuru kwa Reuben with a paraplegic beggar. I am willing to take a DNA test to prove that none of those children are mine, a simple sight-test will tell you that they were not fathered by the man she lives with either.

Dan, Toma, Dudi and Jamo (not their real names) are in Kamiti. Or so I thought but I saw Toma, last week as I was taking the route eleven from Kangemi to Kawangware. I took a long pee behind a bush but felt terribly ashamed of myself later. But, frankly, I did not feel like I had something to say to him and neither did I have a fifty bob or so to give him for a Kane.

The only people left around that can afford more than just reminisces but also the time, and other resources, to write are Mambo, Dinda and NM.

Mambo got hit on by this American researcher who came down to the old neighbourhood to interview us on whether the music of the then wildly popular Hip Hop act, Kalamashaka, represented the voice (or maybe it was the political reawakening, no, it must have been Empowerment) of Nairobi's slum youth. She ended up with more than a PHD. One day Mambo brought her to the neighbourhood and they smoked tonnes of weed and flushed it all down with Napshizzle. Then he took her to the room, at the back of Mutua's kiosk, where we all used to take the girls that we figured 'deserved' to be shagged on a bed rather than in a phone booth. Earlier on in the day, he had borrowed a couple of condoms from someone and, with a drawing pin, put holes in them. Needless to say, all the condoms broke, that night but the girl was too lost in the rapture of drug enhanced ghetto sex to notice.

Next thing she knew, she was pregnant.

The American girl loved Mambo to bits and, even though she was not ready for that level of responsibility and commitment, she decided to keep both the boy and the baby. The next thing we knew, after a year of getting drunk and laid on her cash transfers, Manga was on his way to America. She invited him over for both a visit as well as, as she put it in an email to his recently opened email address, “...an opportunity to see, how we can make this work.”

He went over on a three month visa but by the time that was over, he had not only dumped the girl but also any idea, if such a thing could have existed in his mind to begin with, of returning to Kenya.

Mambo joined the ever growing horde of Kenyan baby daddies pursuing the burger-flipping dream and not paying a single cent in child support. We haven't spoken in eight years now but two years ago I got his email address from an old acquaintance and wrote him. He replied. The body of the email was blank but the subject line was a Western Union Control number. I shrugged my shoulders and collected 50USD. I still do not know where in America he is or what exactly he is doing there but every time I try to email an inquiry, he responds in the same way. And I collect 50USD. I just try not to make a habit of it.

As for N.M and Dinda, much has been said about them on this blog, it is unnecessary to repeat.

Unfortunately, Mambo, N.M and Dinda are the ones that were never really with us, ideologically. I am not just saying this with the benefit of hindsight but because I always felt it: these were people who the circumstances of physical and social proximity, more than ideological parallels, had thrown their lots in with ours. Or maybe there is a sense in what N.M said last weekend, when they had invited me to chew miraa with them at Dinda's Westlands apartment, “... it could be that it is easier to be drawn to Communism when you feel unable to access capital.” And they, somehow, accessed it.

Anyway, I write this now because I would like to read with you, my dear reader, the books we read way back in the mid to late nineties. Way back before the smart kids- the ones who could explain Dialectics- and the quick ones- the once who could raise a little extra money to buy the books- left the neighbourhood and we went back to reading out battered copies of Shakespeare and the Bible, and the occasional popular fiction. I can only hope that those of the original group- those that actually know what it was called back then- who can read and write will weigh in, with their opinions that a more educated than mine.

Maybe, I could interest you, the reader, in the books themselves. What I hope to do, though , is attempt a resurrection of The Potash Book Club. On this blog. Very soon.

Mourning Semenya

2009-09-13T21:03:00.002+03:00

Semenya's only crime was to be born the way she was, Athletics South Africa's president, Leonard Cheule, told the media at the 2009 Athletic World Championships in Berlin. Cheule was responding to what, beginning as murmurs at the 2009 African Junior Championship, had grown into loud protestations that Caster Semenya was a gender cheat. That she, Caster Semenya, winner in the Women's 800m Final, was actually a 'he'. The response from her camp and supporters was a miffed one, and acceptably so, had it not been drowned by the standard fare — racism & sexism — of the international kneejerk protests brigade.

As all this was happening and the most intimate details of this teen were speculated and fought over by strangers across the globe, the people expected to protect her betrayed her, her fans and her sport. Athletic's international governing body, IAAF, (having more leaks than the Kibaki cabinet) revealed that they had ordered gender verification tests on Semenya. With these revelations, Semenya's privacy was cast out of the window as even idiots generally incapable of an opinion made categorical remarks on what lay beneath the pants of a stranger they had only seen on TV.

Now the farce has quickly turned into tragedy as once again, on IAAF's watch, information on Semenya's supposed gender has been leaked. The news, emerging from the Australian press and gobbled up by the rest of the world is, brace yourself, that Semenya is neither a man or a woman. That Semenya, despite having the external genitalia of a 'she' has no womb and ovaries and instead, internal testes. Semenya is, technically, a hermaphrodite.It has neither been confirmed or denied, but the international media has alleged it and that is now a truth.

Fine. But why in hell did I need to know that?

Somehow, in the light of Semenya's humanity, all the arguments and counterarguments I have been having with myself and others about 'undue advantage' don't seem to matter any more. I am beginning to worry a lot more about this young teen who had a great future ahead of her and who will now lose it. I am thinking about what it means to be that person that grows up with one conception of the self and then has it shattered and smeared with public humiliation. But most important of all, I realise that because I know and you know what Semenya is then she has, in own foul sweep, died and been resurrected in public as a freak show.

The punishment for the crime of her birth will not be gentle. Semenya has been accused of and charged with being born different. Whatever the verdict, in official spaces, will be, the court of public opinion has sentenced her to a lifetime of self-loath.

HANGOVER MEETS THE YOUNG URBAN POLYSEXUAL

2009-09-10T07:09:00.003+03:00

Hangover, the movie, is like my life dressed up in a tuxedo. You would feel the same way too if you were to watch it from beneath a mushroom cloud of cannabis smoke, stale alcohol, constipated farts, smelly socks and whiffs of sweat with that tangy odour of last night's sex in it, like I did.

There is something about Kamwana's Video Parlour, where I watched this movie last Friday, that manages to peel the glamour off Hollywood; turn all that tinsel into post-midnight Cinderella. I used to think it was the bad quality DVDs, you know, those grainy 40-in-1s with subtitles- that you cannot disable- in a language that appears to be Chinese with an English accent. But now I think otherwise. It must be the social and economic distance. The distance between the actors and the spaces where their made up realities are played out and us and the spaces from which we observe them.

Anyway, it is not like we a reviewing a Warner Herzog film for the New Yorker or something, so let us cut the quasi-intelligent musings. Hangover is one hell of a funny movie. Even when you are watching it on a camera copy dubbed by an idiot who decided to: a) Sit too far left of the movie theatre giving you more theatre wall than screen in most frames; b) Enjoy the movie rather than film its screening and as he laughed into his mike gave the movie the feel of a broken fourth wall and with his body shaking with glee, the camera calls attention to itself like a bad version of that scene in Children of Men (2006) where blood from the shoot splashes on the camera; c) sit behind an incontinent guy who when he isn't getting up and walking right through your screen, manages to keep his long, shabby hair in it all the time. Simply put, this movie is straight out hilarious, no technical challenges in watching it can get in the way of the laughs.

Hangover doesn't pretend to be anything but a comedic guy flick, thus to judge it outside of these parameters is not to do it a disservice as much as to hoist it on a pedestal that it neither deserves or demands. If you are looking for a movie that will, above all else, make you think and or engages your social consciousness then get Kibera Kid, or whatever, Hangover is not for you. It is also not the movie for you if you are looking for that new; edgy; ground breaking comedy. That is unless you have never heard the phrase, 'what happens in Vegas stays there,' or watched a movie premised on amnesia.

With writing credits including the John Lucas & Scott Moore duo that gave us the the considerably hilarious Four Christmases, Hangover's plot is quite simple. Doug is getting married to Tracy Garner and so his boys, Stu and Phil, decide to take him to Vegas on his last night as a bachelor. Tracy's brother, Alan, Stu and Phil's reservations not withstanding, tags along. They head out in Tracy's dad's treasured old school Mercedes Benz convertible, which he has graciously entrusted to Doug.

Once in Vegas, after checking into the Caesers Palace, the guys go to the roof to toast to a great night out. The next we know is that they are passed out in their hotel room with a chicken clucking about, a tiger in the bathroom and a toddler in the closet. Two things are conspicuously missing from this tableau that is evidence of tremendously wild night out: everyone's recollection of the past night and the bridegroom. The movie then turns into this epic of hilarity as the present trio seek to find their memories and the bridegroom with only a few hours to go before the wedding.

Even as I laughed right through this movie, I couldn't help checking myself every time the thought of the number of times I have woken up in weird places and situations and with all the events over the past couple of hours or even days being able to fit in one blank slate. I do not even remember which of those moments it is that I have written about on this blog, but one particular one comes to mind. In a post titled Young Urban Polysexual, I recollected:

"I came to this morning at Jamo’s house as sticky between the legs as an SJ whore. To shower or not to shower, that was the question. I skived shawi but I had to have loads of alcohol to wash away the taste of semen and after shave from my mouth."

How I had ended up at Jamo's I have still never been able to explain and neither can I answer the question: with whom and how did I have sex.

But my life is paralleled by the movie Hangover only in the amnesia. The setting is totally withdrawn from my reality, what with the fancy car, the luxurious suite in a Las Vegas hotel and the fact that a guy can just put USD800 on his credit card on a whim. Man, if I just had the USD800, here in Nairobi, I would give myself permanent head damage.

The heartbreaking part though is the realisation that for this guys, Vegas, the big night is just this one night when they get to do something silly. For me, for all of these kids down here, this is what we try to do every day. At the end of the movie, the guys return home to a wedding and their normal lives of wives, jobs, cars and dogs. For us, when we come to, there is nothing to return to. Nothing but all that that we were trying to get high enough to forget, in the first place.

Blog Trivia

Posts that mention Kamwana's Video Parlour:

1. Return of the Sleazemeister
2. Last Thursday
3. The Night of the Rattlesnakes
4. Frm Grass to Grace

TIPS FOR KENYAN MEN WHO CHEAT

2009-09-06T16:09:00.003+03:00

People who have jobs tell me that Sunday is an easy day. Some spend the morning sleeping in and probably having lazy sex, possibly the only sex they have with their wives or live in girlfriends all week, while others head out to church, not to communion with God but rather to make amends for the sins of the past week and hopefully earn a pre-emptive forgiveness for the sins of the next. These people then spend Sunday afternoon with their families.

I lack the luxury of engaging in such an ordered life. I know no routine beyond trying to exist, one day at a time. I do not have a wife, a steady girlfriend or a live in girlfriend, unlike most of the guys of my age and acquaintance. That allows me a moment of self-righteous indignation at their promiscuous ways.

Your average Kenyan guy cheats on his partner. Incorrigibly so the anthropologist might be tempted to opine that men cheating is culturally acceptable in this society. I do not know that that is true or not but I know it is in my observed experience. (Note that I am not convinced there is such a thing as 'Kenyan' culture and so every time I say Kenyan, let it be assumed that the word is in quotes. So all of you who do not cheat in your relationships and those of you who believe that they are not cheated on, please leave me alone, I am not talking about you and your partners).

The young urban professionals that I know have, consciously or unconsciously grown up into their fathers. They wake up and go to work every weekday morning. In the evening they report to the local bar, or more likely, especially for the better paid lot, a trendy bar downtown or in either Westlands or Kilimani. They have a couple of beers, discuss work and who is sleeping with who and maybe chat up and exchange business cards with the the skirt suited girls in the next table. Though these guys will flirt with the waitresses, unlike their fathers, they are unlikely to end up sleeping with them. Aside from the women they will occasionally pick up in strip bars, Koinange Street and Florida clubs, and pay to have sex with, Kenyan yuppies will make an effort of having sex within their class. But it has to remain clear that the more licentious among them will still end up in bars like Rezorous and Tropez during the weekend intent on picking university, college and even high school girls for one night stands.

That is what Friday night is for. Boys, Booze and Babes. Most people work on Saturday morning so the girlfriends will be content with a Java coffee on Friday evening and maybe a quick drink at Tamasha or Bacchus leaving the boys to their own devices.

Hello Chips Funga!

Now chips funga and whores raise one problem for those guys who are married or living with their girlfriends: where to shag them. Forest Lodge on Forest Road, is a good option. I mean, if you just want to be in and out and do not insist on clean bedsheets, then that there is your Vegas: what happens there, stays there, as they say. As for the Herpes, please! Get over your American movies hangover and be a Kenyan for once; who the fuck in Kenya worries about herpes? So, condom, check; room, check.

Smack that!

But remember, as one of my uncles told me, never, ever shower in a lodging or hotel after clande sex. The soap smells, idiot, and it is unlikely to be the same as what you use at home. My advice is, use a lot of damp tissue paper to clean your penis and makendes. Then jump into the shower as soon as you get home. I mean even if your girlfriend or wife is up, it is not like she meets you at the door and gives you a hug. If she does, tell her to cut that crap.. that shit is too mzungu, and the consequences are emasculating. The ideal situation, though it works for only those with cars, is too keep an extra bottle of the deodorant you use in the car. There is no reason for the girlfriend or wife to see it, unless she is looking in which case she needs, like the girlfriend/ wife that answers your phone, to be replaced.

The one thing, though, that you are never to forget is that you are human. You can make mistakes. Here is what happened to my uncle referred above. He was drinking as usual and hoping to end the night as always with a clande in a lodgo. Naturally, by the time he was goading the clande upstairs with his elongated appendage, he had had too much to drink. So he entered the room, hit it drunkenly, and got dressed.

My uncle got into his car and engaged the autopilot. The car, as it does every night, found its way home. Once there, he banged on the door until my aunt let him in and staggered into the bathroom. What happened next is as clear to him as the mind of a drunk idiot. The last thing he remembers is seeing a condom on his now flaccid penis. Maybe because the last woman he had seen was his wife, the lone brain cell left standing told him that he had just had sex with her. He dropped the condom into the toilet bowl, pissed and obnoxious as hell, walked into the bedroom and slumped into bed.

He woke up the next morning to the yells and curses of a mad woman. The cobwebs in his eyes cleared immediately he saw that that woman was his wife and there was a used condom dangling from the edge of the kitchen knife she was holding. In their ten years of marriage, they had never used a condom.

WHY I DO NOT READ MY OWN BLOG

2009-09-02T20:37:00.001+03:00

Let us get this straight, I generally, do not read blogs. I used to until I realised that the blogosphere panders to two distinct pathologies: Voyeurism and Exhibitionism. It is a totally symbiotic relationship with bloggers intent at showing off, what they imagine to be, their incredibly exciting lives and their readers so dead set on hearing about it.

Blogs are like porno with bloggers as performers and their readers as goggle-eyed watchers. Bloggers are the wraiths of human experience's equivalent of a bigger penis. They are the kids with all the cool toys, having all the fun. Readers of blogs are the everyday folk who cannot experience life unless it is processed and canned. Sometimes, they even need it garnished with a slice of demographics. Bloggers blog and porn stars perform while their audiences can only hope to live vicariously through them.

This of course I present hypothetically, whereby in the absence of any scientifically derived data that I know of to support my claim, you can proceed to call me another idiot with a blog. Furthermore, I have to make it clear that, though the fact that I keep a blog suggests it, I am not trying to mark myself out as one of the well endowed.... with exciting lives, silly! (But I sure have lived an exciting life, thank you for asking). All I am saying is that I often have more important things to do with my limited internet access other than read blogs. Yes, downloading porn ranks high up amongst the useful things I do online, probably right at the top, but there are other things that, just because I cannot pin them down, doesn't mean they do not exist.

There are those rare moments, though, when I read blogs. In times like those, I will read anything and it doesn't necessary have to sound like Inside Karen Lucas, Lolita Goes to Brazil, Blacks on Blondes or any such thing. (Well, Lolita Gang Bang is a top Keyword search of mine with Blacks on Blondes as a close second but that only for video and not text).

What I do not read though is my own blog. God, only narcissists do that! Yes, I am a narcissist but not to the point of absurdity. Narcissism is a virtue greatly tainted, nay, desecrated by the kind of person that reads their own blog. That kind of being (beast, suggested) is right at the bottom of the human food chain. (I mean in terms of social graces, of course, and not privilege in which case I will consider myself as having it worse than even someone who is black, female and Muslim).

The only type of person that can be considered lower than the kind that read their own blogs is one who updates his/ her Facebook status and then 'Likes' it. Are you for real? But at least, in my reckoning, these kinds of people are merely socially deviant. There is worse. The lowest of the low. Down and out sociopaths. Those who to term deviant is to soil other otherwise fulfilling actions, such as the occasional indulgence in psychedelic substances, that are generally referred to as deviant. These: people who update their Twitter six times an hour. With inane details of their personal lives. Yes, Twitter exists to answer the question, What are you doing?, but details of your ablution? No way!

@potash: WAITIN For BathTUb to Fill UP

Dude, how about: Get a life, PERVERT! And a girlfriend while you are at it. Honestly, unless you are a Twitter god like Ashton Kushter, no one really interested in even six updates in one day from your private life. And it is fine, if your fifty or so followers are in acceptance of their Voyeur selves, but to constantly remind them is an insult.

Hmmm... I have run out of miraa and I am terribly antsy so I will have to go. But you know you can catch my peep-show on Twitter

TAKHZIN DIARIES: Hypnic Jerk

2009-08-29T13:52:00.001+03:00

Have you ever fallen asleep and had a rather lucid dream where you were all naked and tied, firmly, to a thick post? Then someone approached you with the intent of chopping off your penis with a large, battered and blunt pair of scissors. Just as the scissors were about to make contact with your favourite toy, your body made an involuntary twitch jolting you out of sleep. That is called a hypnic jerk.

“Hold it right there, Potash,” I hear the reader say, “Thanks for the lesson and all, and we totally get the picture, but your phallic obsessive dreams are not universal.”

Please, I say to the reader, pardon my Freud but it is all about the sex: its availability; the lack of it; the desire for it; the inability to rise up to the occasion of it. Now the fact that in your dream you are falling off your bike, does not make it any less sexual. Neither does the fact that, in your dream, you are actually falling off a ladder. Maybe that is because while for me sex is an act reduced to its basal functions, for you it is a means to other ends such as social climbing.

But if you will allow me to return to the matter at hand: Hypnic jerk. I have had at least three of those in the last six hours. That because, as I write this, I have been up and about for the last forty eight hours. Eight of those have been spent trying to raise some money for miraa and the other forty, chewing miraa. This stuff is meant to keep you awake, but would it really be a drug if its effects were predictable?

So what is happening now, is that a couple of uniformed policemen just walked into the base. Uhm, I think we have a problem here.... [Typist's note: Potash, your handwriting has become increasingly illegible, your narration incoherent and your habit of using the lit end of whatever you are smoking as punctuation totally unacceptable. I cannot read the rest of the paragraph.]

Er, excuse me while I pop my eyes back into their sockets. Man, miraa does that to you. Half the time you cannot see a thing because your eyes are dangling in your line of sight. Really does the writing no good and the fact that you need both hands to stick the twigs in your mouth, hold a cigarette, slip a wee bit of chewing gum or a groundnut into your mouth, sip on some Coke, et cetera. All at the same time. It is no small wonder then that sometimes I find myself holding two lit cigarettes. And that is just the fair moments. Better than this time when I lit a cigarette then flicked it casually into a ditch and stuck the used matchstick into my mouth. “Half life,” my boy Njeru said to me.
“Sawa,”I replied.
***
Tihiii, so what has a thatthingic jerk got to do with you 'smoking' a matchstick?
Eh?
What?
What, what?
Hypno... Hyphen...
Hypnic jerk.
Hypicnic jack.
Hy p nic. Hypnic. Dude, are you stupid or what?
Zimeshika...
Kuna vile.
Unatema saa ngapi?
Sijui... Wewe?
Ninakesha.
Sawa. Pia mimi.
Si tugawane tuongeze half?
Hapana
Utatoa soo basi?
Zii
Finje?
Doo
We Potash wachanga kuwa hivo...

TAKHZIN DIARIES

2009-08-26T19:31:00.002+03:00

“Warya! Warya! Saidia mate/” Brother, brother, lend me your saliva.

That is yet another punchline from a miraa chewer's oeuvre. The best part of chewing miraa/ khat, I have realised, is not the drug's high but the camaraderie in the process of getting there.

I have hang out in numerous drug dens. The quest for the ideal poison for me to write to has taken me through myriad journeys into intoxification. I have journeyed, variously, as a participant, an observer, a participant observer or even, with alcohol and nicotine, as inveterate consumer. Many substances I have become acquainted with; many delusional trips I have taken with them, but none surpasses miraa.

My recent adventures into the, largely indeterminate world of the miraa high demands an entire series of its own on this blog, but before I can take you there I have to tell you the 'lend me your saliva story'.

For those who might not know, part of the miraa chewing experience, takhzin, involves the telling and retelling of moments of highness that soon take on an aura of urban legend about them as chewers trade them from one chewing base to the next. So this version of the story is as it was told to me at my regular base and there is no guarantee that it is an accurate rendition or even that I will retell it in this same way the next time I chew.

The story goes something like this: A Somali guy has been hired to drive a lorry from Kisumu to Mombasa. As is the custom with a significant number of long-distance drivers on Kenyan roads, the fellow, who we shall call Hassan, is an incorrigible miraa chewer. So he grabs his three Kilos and tucks them on the seat between his legs. He fills one of those plastic Coke bottles with water from a nearby sink and tucks it in a compartment in the door on the driver's side of the cab. He throws a few bags of roasted groundnuts and some of cloves onto the dashboard and he is now good to go. He begins to chew on a few sticks as the engine idles, then drives of.

The thing with chewing miraa is that it dehydrates you: your mouth gets progressively drier and your lips begin to crack. That explains why most miraa chewers need to keep sipping on something. Ironically, because most people use sugary soft drinks, coffee or alcohol, their dehydration increases and their lips crack some more. To deal with that, most people apply petroleum jelly on their lips.

Some people, on the other hand, use cooking oil or whatever oily substance that is easily at hand. For Hassan, all he had was brake fluid.

So Hassan was driving. Hassan was chewing. Hassan was getting high. High. Higher. Highest. Every time he felt as though his lips were too dry, he dipped his finger into a can of brake fluid and smeared some of it on his lips.

Having got exceedingly high, Hassan begun to imagine that he had a puncture. So he pushed the lorry easily until he got to Nakuru where he pulled into a service station.

Hassan stepped out of the lorry and checked out all his tyres. They all looked fine. But he was convinced he had a meddling tear on the right rear wheel. The best way to prove it, as he knew, was to apply a bit of saliva on the tear and wait. If bubbles begun to show, then he would be certain that he had a puncture.

So he lunged a finger into his mouth. Hassan attempted to raise a mighty gob of spit from his mouth. Nothing happened.

Hassan hacked. Nothing happened.
Irritated, Hassan begun to yell at one of the station's attendants, “Warya! Warya! Saidia na mate...”

ON THE WAGALLA MASSACRE OF 1984

2009-08-19T20:02:00.002+03:00

I spent the entire afternoon in conversation with a friend I have not seen in over 12 years. S. Abdi Sheikh, his name is, has been quite busy raising a family and running a couple of businesses. Most important of all he has been writing. Most recently, and this being the particular reason I sought him out, he has published a book that examines the events surrounding yet another horrendous moment in Kenyan history, the Wagalla massacre of 1984.

I will let the blurb from the book, Blood on the Runway: The Wagalla Massacre of 1984 ,speak for itself:

“In February 1984, Kenyan security forces rounded up and detained over 5,000 men from the Degodia clan of the Somali tribe, confined them at the Wagalla airstrip, stripped them naked and held them without food and water for four days. Blood on the Runway is the story of what happened and over 20 years of the ongoing struggle for the justice for the victims and survivors.

The Wagalla massacre story has every bit of a horror movie; blood and scattered brains, severed limbs, rotting flesh and mass graves.

The story of Wagalla is filled with intrigue. There is a conspiracy at every turn and nothing seems what it is. There was a master plan that was drawn up and implemented; it failed at the last minute; what was thought as an easy job of slaughtering 'sheep' became a nightmare. The 'sheep' scattered and bleated loudly, waking up the nearby villagers. Hiding the feast in the bushes became the only hope for the hunter. But scavengers had already smelled the blood and were turning every corpse around. The mortally wounded hid in the bushes only to come out at night and die in the open fields. For a period, the confusion created confounded even its creators. As the drama unfolded something strange began to happen. The world turned around and saw the sorry state of Wagalla. The story could not be killed. “

There is a time and space for commentary, but for me, this is not it. I have a book to read. For those that might want to engage with this issue, and there are legion it can be hoped, please go out and get a copy from your preferred Nairobi bookshop. For a briefer analysis of the issues and events surrounding the Wagalla massacre, KenyaImagine has this week published an opinion piece by the same author.

WHEN I WAS HIGH...

2009-08-11T12:25:00.000+03:00

This is a vignette in search of a writer, a tableau in search of an artist.

Every tooth hurts. Usually I have cavities... now they feel like something the scope of a moon landing vehicle picked up.

The neighbour is playing Stevie Wonder's Fantasy Paradise and I am humming along. No, truth is I am mouthing the words from the hook of Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise. In my fantasy Island I am calling that a fuck you to that old neighbour for being so old... me, I came of age in the nineties.

Now the old boy is playing Otis Redding. Wait a minute, how do I even know this music? I think I am a time traveller.

I just burnt myself with the Rooster cigarette I was smoking. Damn it is stuck to my finger. The middle finger. Now who is getting a fuck you?

*X&^... Wait! The burning cigarette has fallen on the mattress. Looks like it will cause a fire. And maybe these notes will survive. And then I will find fame, lauded as a latter day Beatnik. Nairobi's first and last Situationist.

Posthumously...

Some louts just need to die to make a statement.

I need to pee...

Guess what, you know thing they say that God takes care of drunks and children, watch him now. He just sent me a fire extinguisher: a penis. A penis has never been put to much better use. I mean penises have been known to create life but saving one, now that is new!

“Get on the good foot...” James Brown wails. “Come on...”

But I only have one foot, or so it feels, and it is not a good one. I crash on the smouldering mattress. I am still holding a miraa stick and I continue to chew.

Happy Birthday Barack

2009-08-04T05:20:00.004+03:00

Dear Barack,

I do not know you but I Know of you. I have heard a helluva lot about you. The most important thing I have heard is that you are, currently, president of the United States of America. That, if what I am told is true, makes you the most powerful man in the world. (In the big world out there, of course, and not my little one here where the most powerful man in the world is the Administration Policeman with a gun on my head and a paw in my pocket).

Now here is the deal, I live in a small corner, of the big Island of Africa, called Kenya. That Kenya where, the internets keep reminding me, your roots run deep. Good for you. Good for you, I sometimes think, that all you have here is roots because most of us that have more than roots have a lot less than you do. Because you have the world beneath your feet and we don't. We have roots, trunk and head in Kenya (and maybe because of that)we cannot see the world for all the shit that is above us. That does not mean that I am not proud of Kenya, just not a fan of myriad of its everyday realities.

But why am I wasting rare and expensive internet time to write you? It is simply because today is your birthday and I was once told that birthdays are important dates in the West. There seems to be a problem though, some people think that you were not born in America but here in Kenya. That maybe a big deal, I do not know, but beyond suggesting to me that today might not even be your birthday, that matter does not change my life. You only affect my life as much as the next US president. And as long as you remain in office, then it is the great influence that you will continue to wield over the entire world that will always have an impact on my life and not the small matters of your place of birth, your wife's favourite colour or the fact that your grandfather and mine were kicked by the same pair of boots.

I do not know if I am making it clear enough but the name of the place you were born is as valuable to me as knowing whether or not Mwai Kibaki has a second wife. Well, I have lied there because if Kibaki has a second wife, then I want to know whether or not I am paying her rent even though I do not have a house of my own... But you get my general point, Barry, no?

Anyway, I really have to go, and meantime you do your thing son and lets hope that all the wacko people in the internets can go back to providing me with what I follow them for: Good Porno.

Happy Birthday Barrack (alleged or else)

Potash

KWANI TRUST SHORT STORY COMPETITION

2009-07-29T14:57:00.005+03:00

Following the launch of 5 new titles last week, Kwani Trust is pleased to announce the launch of a short story competition with a 1st prize of Ksh 100000, Ksh 75000 for the 2nd prize, and Ksh 50000 for the third prize, as well as publication in the upcoming issue of Kwani? 06. [They] are seeking stories on the theme, The Kenya I live in, - a story now being told by a new generation, a new imagination, new narratives and expression. Kindly circulate.

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JR: From Kibera to Sotheby’s

2009-07-28T15:06:00.003+03:00

A guest blogger post curled from a very rough draft Kibera Kitsch & other Tales of Art for Social Exclusion by Njoroge Matathia.

ABSTRACT

If Kibera were a cultural icon, then it is one that enters the global cultural economy certified Kitsch. And Kibera is a cultural icon, the template for an angst-filled other; a case study in the semiotics of African deprivation. Kibera as pallette; Kibera as theme; Kibera as setting, Kibera globalised through (faux) artistic expression. Brand Kibera: proven success in selling everything from soapstone carvings to box office movies and installation art. All fair trade of course. No Africans were violated in the production of these artworks!

Really?

From Kibera to Sotheby’s

On Saturday, I watched Christine Wambui’s Kibera Smiles Again. Screened at yet another one of the Urban Mirror shows hosted by the Goethe Institute, Nairobi, the documentary relives French artist JR’s work in Kibera. JR’s oeuvre is not vast, but it is, artistically, impressive. And at 25, and all of a ’street artist’ having found global critical acclaim and significant financial success is in itself no mean feat.

Friday, January 31st, 2009 marked the unveiling of the Nairobi leg of JR’s 28 Millimeters public art installation project in the city’s Kibera slum. As seen, on the documentary, JR and his assistants had stretched large black and white prints of his photographs over roofs and embankments. The photographs were of parts of the faces of a couple of local women. In one wow-inducing scene, as a train trudges past, above the shanty-line, the images pasted on the train align with those on the ground below to form three complete faces.

The Sunday Times has lauded JR as “the hippest street artist since Banksy”, and the parallels are evident. At least if the prices JR’s prints fetch is what you have in mind. And if I were to quote Banksy in his Wall and Piece (2005): “When you go to an art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires.”, then watching that documentary told me less about Kibera and more about the living rooms of those who have paid as much as £26,250 for JR’s work.

But the wealthy buyers of Sotheby’s JR are wasted on the JR of Kibera who maintains that he uses the street so that everybody can benefit from art [so that] people who don’t go to museums and galleries can know that they do not have to pay entrance fees to these places to see art. And his art is worth paying to see, but the question that I, and the two mzungu artists I stood watching the documentary with, couldn’t get over was: why Kibera?

I was not angry from watching the documentary, I was too busy admiring his work anyway. Admiring it and thinking that Kibera as a setting was an exceedingly gratuitous touch to something inherently appealing. Then I read about why he had chosen Kibera:

“The more you go to places like Kibera, the more you realise that the people don’t understand you,” JR states in his Times online interview, “Food is their first need. They don’t do art just for the love of art. It has to make sense. By making their roofs rainproof, what we did made sense. They loved it.”

Ire rose. There are transgressions I will willingly forgive, excuse away as naivety, but condescension just wont wash with me. So pulling furtively at my eyebrows I scrolled down:

"I see [ the planet’s poorest places] in the media,” he says. “But I want to see them with my own eyes. You realise when you do go to these places that there is no art. My aim is to show that art can work anywhere."

Interest in JR flew out of my window and into a battered cubicle in the lavatory section of my mind marked: African Consultants. A space I reserve for the kind of Westerner that makes one trip to some African country or other and suddenly becomes an authority on the entire continent. JR had gone further, yet, and bought the globe-trotting do-gooders maxim: All Poor People in the World are the Same. (Yes, and Bono has found the cure for Global Poverty but the G8 will not let him bottle it). But snideness aside, how this Parisian photographer had turned into both omniscient curator of his own ‘non-existent slum art’ show and Kibera’s foremost cultural anthropologist, eludes me.

[...]

VOLUNTARY DRINKING OVERSEAS

2009-07-22T07:10:00.002+03:00

Those who know this blog from its better days will remember a post titled Voluntary Drinking Overseas. As I have mentioned, previously that post has been professionally revised, edited and published in the Nigerian magazine Farafina. But that happened back in 1997.

Now I am pleased to inform you that my friends at the Black Campaign have not only republished it, but also made it available in PDF. That means that you can now read it online, download it and print it to read later or even (and this is highly recommended) email it to all your friends.

Alas, this might just be the thing to put in a care pack for your friend who abandoned the American dream and joined Peace Corps in West Africa. Yes that one who occasionally sends you long letters (postmarked six months previous)lamenting not so much the lack of decent coffee in her village but the fact that the only literature that comes in is USAID posters.

Download PDF

OFF WITH THEE POET!

2009-07-20T11:51:00.001+03:00

There is a lot of things in life that I do not get, poetry is one of them. This might come as a shock to a lot of people but not to me. People say to me: Potash you are a writer, how can you not get poetry. That is the problem right there. If it were to be assumed that I am a writer, how does that make me, by default, a good reader of every other means of artistic expression out there?

See, the thing I like to point out is that there is no lingua franca for artists. When people ask me what I write my response is: words mainly, but when I am lucky I get in a few sentences and paragraphs too. But no one asks me what I read and why, they just proceed to drag me into an engagement with their poetry. When I insist that I do not get it, they say: But, Potash you are a writer! Yes, I do write, but I write prose. It is the form that I appreciate the most. It is the structure through which I find myself most able to communicate creative ideas. I do not privilege prose, as the ultimate form of literary expression, I privilege it as the ultimate form of literary expression, for me.

Let me make a few things clear. I grew up being told, and I know it to be self evident, that the first step to being a writer is to be a reader. And a reader I am. In fact I go through alternating phases of intense reading and zero writing and intense writing and zero reading. (Zero is, of course an absolute and I baulk at such but see it here as hyperbole for illustrative purpose). As a reader, it ought to be noted that I read widely. I read everything I can get my hands on. And everything means everything, including Kenyan newspapers. The question is how often do I read Kenyan newspapers? How often do I read poetry?

The big challenge for me is the need to consume knowledge/ information and creative energies being on one hand, how to best consume these is on the other. So prose, being for me the easiest to ingest, must take an enormous amount of my time. Unfortunately, this need to consume aside, the writer part of me comes with more responsibilities than power. Being embraced by writers has made me part of a larger, global artistic and intellectual community that demands that you cannot trash it if you have not read it and therefore, once a month at most, if free internet is available and I have had a surfeit of breaking porn and trending tweets, I will skim through the most read stories in the Kenyan dailies.

Still there is horrid prose out there (and it is just not on page 1 of the Nation as my once in two years attempts at reading that blog Kumekucha have taught me) and though as a reader I am bonded to read them, as a human being, lately blessed with choice in reading material, I will often not.

And there is good poetry out there, too, I just cannot tell you if it is really good. I cannot because I do not get it. I just read it as part of my corporate social responsibility as a (fringe) player in the literary/ creative/ knowledge industry. And that responsibility ends with reading so spare me your demands for analysis.

Down but not out

2009-07-14T11:22:00.003+03:00

“I am sleepless and my mind is fuzzy...” Potash 2006

I am in Kiambu. The place I return to when things are going terribly wrong. This time round I have returned to recuperate. But the way I feel, it could be as well that I have returned to die. Returning to the village, empty-handed, to die, after living la vida loca in Nairobi. This is not the way I imagined my life would end: and he rested in poverty!

I am bedridden with a particularly virulent flu. And it has held me down for over a month getting progressively worse for the last two days that I decided to come here, twiddle my thumbs and see how it pans out.

The other day some guy asked me if I have been catching some odiero action. No comment but the idea that I have caught swine flu just keeps taking me back to the days when I was a young and vital Polysexual. And now that this flu has made me sleepless, my mind fuzzy and incapable of a coherent sentence I will take you back.

In the meantime, as you enjoy the archives, I will be here hoping to feel better and look to be back to scribbling inanities here in a day or two. Mad love.

TRANSITION: Off to Butterfly Blogs

2009-07-07T14:27:00.002+03:00

Every day we are changing. I am changing. This blog is changing. Over the last couple of years this blog has taken a life of its own. Many times I have found myself wondering if this blog is relevant, nay, necessary, any more. The truth is that it is not.

I started out looking at life through the eyes of a mid twenties Kenyan guy trying to afford his next measure of alcohol. In the Kenyan blogosphere circa 2006, filled with diaspora Kenyans with too much free bandwidth and Nairobi based yuppies, A Kenyan Urban Narrative was not only a unique voice but one set to rise above the din. And it did.

Within a few months, the laudatory clapping of literary admirers in its wake, the blog catapulted me into the warm embrace of the new generation of Kenyan writers. In the circles of writers, my name was mentioned. But praise doesn't make writers. And thus, he that was hailed as the next best thing in Kenyan writing, came and went... and, alas, there is no writing to show for it all. Sad.

All this while, my style was changing, my voice, my world-view even. Most important of all, beyond the fact of being distanced from the realities that I used to write about, I stopped being angry. The truth I can never deny is that my early blogging fed off the anger drawn from not being recognised as a writer. Without the anger there was nothing to express in texts. I was, in a word, irrelevant. I was now just another Kenyan with a blog.

In between times, I was exploring opportunities for collaboration. Well, mainly, being dragged into them. And I took them. I had a couple of things republished in cool places, others I had people rework them into stronger pieces through their more trained voices. And, because I now had access to publishers, I started on The Book. The Book that has long stalled and whose characters sound like pieces of wood.

In the end, I was tending towards the realisation that a blogger is the best I could ever hope to be. A couple of offers were on the table. There were still people willing to pay for my lazy writing and occasional musings. Most important of all, I was broke and contrary to popular belief, writing does not pay as well roundabout these shores. Which is to say that three or so years of passing for a 'celebrated writer' had not translated into money. I was as poor as when I started out but at least I knew I had the chance to buy my alcohol easier by selling words rather than as a grave digger or such thing.

Finally, I thinned everything down to two offers: The Black Campaign and Butterfly Blogs. Evidently, I have chosen Butterfly Blogs because at least they put in a cash incentive of some sort, in both the short and long term. As for the Black Campaign, well they are the biggest winners because through a deal with N.M they have full rights to more of my work than I imagined existed. Once again that fucker mercenary writer N.M, who cannot even write to save his life, has played me. And all I have left is this new problogging deal deal with Butterfly. A lifeline if ever there was one. A chance to go back to being relevant.

Y'all will be hearing from me, here, at least twice a week. Just because the contract says so.

African oil corp/ EAX Kenya oil exploration Deal

2009-06-11T16:46:00.002+03:00

"Oil exploration activity in Eastern Africa hit a notch higher on Monday [June 1, 2009) after two international exploration firms, signed joint venture agreements to explore black gold in the arid northern Kenya region and parts of Ethiopia."

Africa Oil Corp- a Canadian oil and gas company with interests in exploration licenses in Puntland, Somalia- signed an agreement to jointly seek for oil and gas resources in Kenya’s Anza basin with oil exploration firm, East Exploration Limited (EAX). (EAX) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Black Marlin Energy who run offices in Mombasa, Dar es Salaam, Antananarivo and the UK from their headquarters in Dubai.

Read more here...

WIKILEAKS WINS AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL AWARD FOR KENYA STORY

2009-06-05T23:05:00.002+03:00

The Black Campaign reports that "Wikileaks won in this year's Amnesty International's Media Award, New Media category for their expose on Kenya's extrajudicial police killings. The report titled Kenya: The Cry of Blood - Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances, was posted on Wikileaks' front page for an entire week beginning November 1st 2008."

Read the rest of the story here.

THE BLACK CAMPAIGN

2009-05-20T11:31:00.002+03:00

The Black Manifesto

Africa needs you. No it doesn’t:

As a First World citizen, you have tremendous power. What platitudes you choose to buy or not buy can change your life and your conception of the self. What you cannot do, though, is bring social change to Africa.

For Africa:

Social change is not an agenda that you can set;
Social change is not an ideology you can impose;
Social change is all the little things you do to take yourselves and others closer to a decent human reality.

Social change is not about wishing the best for Them, it is about making the best of yourself and letting Africans draw inspiration from you.
Social change is not travelling halfway around the world to dig a well, it is pausing first to ask the African: ‘But what do you need to solve your water problems?’
Social change is not about making decisions for Them, it is about making a conscious decision to let Africans make up their minds, define their hopes and dreams and then allowing them access to the tools that will help turn their dreams into reality.
Social change is not about what you do for Them.

Social change is about what you do for you.

Social change is not about going to right the wrongs in Africa.
Social change is about changing what your government does in Africa. And if you cannot, changing your government.

Social change is not about the globe-trotting do-gooders- degrade their noise.
Social change is not about switching to Black, but we urge you to switch anyway.
Get Black because you, unlike the impoverished millions in Africa, have the right to choose.

Black is the new Red.

I invite you to join me and others at The Black Campaign, today.

PICTURES OF STARVING CHILDREN SELL PORNO

2009-02-02T23:16:00.000+03:00

Once in a while a story comes up that is, admittedly, beyond the imagination of the sexually perverted moron that authors this blog. A story so up his alley- the purveying of sleaze and the bashing of the Save Africa brigade- that it is shelved.

Well, but let us face it, the reason why I did not blog about the Porn for Charity story when I first had it was because:

a) I was angry I had not thought of the idea first;
b) I could not believe that they shot this in Kenya without me
c) I had to spend weeks and weeks of, elusive, internet time trying to find a bootleg copy of the video.

And now that I have slightly got over the first two issues, by abusing myself to the titillations of Japanese AV (yes Nana, you didn't hola at this tribesman but know that his seed is spattered over all corner workstations in every cybercafe in downtown Nairobi), I can write this.

Okay this is where some people take a deep breath or others sing Kumbaya but I will watch just one more Japanese schoolgirl action take before I can write the next sentence.

Back!

Now where were we... Yes, issue three has not been fully resolved yet. The first thing I did when I learnt of the existence of the video was to email several Japanese girls of my sexual acquaintance asking them if they would be kind enough to send me the video. Unfortunately none of them replied and it is understandable considering the language barrier seeing as to how all the conversations I ever had with them begun with:

“You. Me. Jiggi... Jiggi?”

And ended with:

“Africa Jiggi good, No?”
“Africa Jiggi gooood, Yeeeesssss!”

Okay, the truth is that one responded. In Japanese. (Readers Voice: How resourceful!) But reader doesn't know what I know, that Google Translate is the one true International Postman- delivering smut to those who hanker after it, across language and geographical barriers, to even places beyond that point its sister, GoogleMaps, says be dragons. So I hit translate and:

“You dirty little monkey.”

You have a right to your own reading of her response but you must remain cognisant of how much of the nuance of meaning is lost in translation. Besides most of this software is written by Indians who got to America in shipping crates and ended up in Silicon Valley having miraculously evaded the TOEFL. So to every man his reading, mine being:

You: refers to me, silly!
Dirty: refers to the things I made her do, or the place I made her do it
Little: I do not know what that refers to but what it does not refer to- a part of my anatomy
Monkey: The reader can Sambo this to absurdity but I was recently informed that Monkey is a term of endearment in certain cultures

But I am yet to receive the video from her so I assume she is still trying to copy out my name and address, or (because a man can hope) making a video of herself to send over as bonus footage.

The upside of my weeks long search is that I have had a thorough recap of Japanese porn and been amazed at how much non-pixelleted stuff has come out since I been gone. Dude, the girls are even shaven now! But not even Time magazine could lure me to what they refer to as Japan's Booming Sex Niche: Elder Porn. Not, even with a turn-on title like Maniac Training of Lolitas because, prejudiced I am not but a porno featuring a 74 year old Jap is nothing more than a Viagra ad. I mean, honestly, who can survive Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Yakuza and still get it up? But I will keep an eye out on this Kamikaze and hope that one of his dives might give us a snuff film that will, while lacking any erotic appeal, have a comic one.

But you know, I really should be surfing this city for a couch to crash out on tonight rather than surfing the net for bukake!

WRITING QUEER KENYA

2009-01-26T02:52:00.004+03:00

A public service announcement in the spirit of this blog's continued pursuit (even when seeming more lewd than learned) of a public discourse on sex and sexuality. A discourse that revolves around pleasure and choice rather than the ubiquitous sex is immutably tied to death and disease paradigm of the religious and development industries.

Start of Message

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Writing Queer Kenya

Editors: Keguro Macharia and Angus Parkinson

We lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex individuals, in a word, queers, have had the distinct un-pleasure of being told we don't exist—in official government statements, historical documents, and contemporary statements. Well, we do.

We want Kenyan stories by Kenya-based and Kenya-born queers. About everything. We want writing about the dailyness of our lives, the good, the bad, the weird, the indifferent. If you have lived it, we want to hear about it. We especially want to reach beyond Nairobi, Mombasa, and other cities to all corners of the country. And we know the rest of Kenya, Africa, and the world wants to hear these stories as well.

Formats

We have three distinct formats. Choose what appeals to you.

1. Interviews: Tell us your story. Get in touch with us and we'll arrange an interview. We value your time and your confidentiality. Not sure you want to meet us directly? We have phones and email and all manner of ways to make this happen.
2. Letters to Kenya: Write (or unearth) a 500-1,000-word letter. To whom? Parents, pastors, the government, best friends, former friends, present lovers, former lovers, the person you really want to tune. Get personal, get intimate. Say what you really want to say!
3. Personal narratives: Write (or unearth) a 2,500-3,000-word narrative about the dailyness of being queer. The high points, low points, the endless plateaus, the quick glances, indrawn breaths of desire, domestic thrills, sexual boredom, beginnings and endings. If you write it, we'll consider it.

All submissions should be typed, double-spaced, and submitted electronically to queerkenya AT gmail.com. If you can't type, don't want to, or can't get hold of an email program that functions, get in touch with us. We can help.

How You Can Contribute

1. Get the word out. Convince your friends with hidden manuscripts or stories that must be shared to un-closet them.
2. Send us encouraging emails. We need your good wishes, your fabulously good wishes.
3. Volunteer time! We need all the help we can get.
4. Take ownership. We're editing, sure, but these are our collective stories.

Important Dates

April 30, 2009: Deadline to Receive Submissions
June 30, 2009: Selected Contributors Contacted
Publication: December 2009.

Questions? We're glad to answer. Please contact us at queerkenya AT gmail.com

End

OBAMA RESCINDS MEXICO CITY

2009-01-24T21:59:00.004+03:00

I generally do not do news and links on this blog but seeing that, I am creatively challenged this week due to a series of unfortunate events lately, I am posting this. Also in lieu of two blog posts I have been meaning to write since Obama's election last november:

The implications on Public Health Service delivery in Kenya of:

a) California's Proposition 8;
b) The Mexico City Policy

I will get round to it, someday, but in the meantime, and if only to keep my online footprint, here goes:

For those who have followed the politics of The Reagan- and successive rethugs- administration's ban on US funding for 'abortion' programmes abroad, it will come as no surprise that Obama rescinded the Mexico City Policy also known as the global gag rule within the first few days in office.

It is important, though, to note that while the tradition is to reinstate or rescind the policy by presidential decree on the 22nd of January, Obama held out until the 23rd. The 22nd of January is the anniversary of the landmark US ruling on Abortion, commonly referred to as Roe Vs. Wade and both Clinton and Bush have used this day to sign executive orders on the Mexico City Policy and make a statement of their views on Roe V.s Wade.

Obama, who signed the decree with little media fanfare, while choosing to be less combative noted that:

"For too long, international family planning assistance has been used
as a political wedge issue, the subject of a back and forth debate that has served only to divide us. I have no desire to continue this stale and fruitless debate."

Obama also reinstated America's payments to UNFPA, who the Reagan and Bush administrations accused of supporting imposed abortions in china's one child policy.

And now we can sit back and await the fallout.

And from Kenya, he can expect a letter from Dr. Jean Kagia

Only this time, the chairperson of the Protecting Life Movement of Kenya might feel inclined to attach pictures of aborted foetuses floating down the Nairobi.

A study- I cannot find the report online- results of which were released in 2004 and that involved the Kenya Medical Association, the Kenyan chapter of the Federation of Women Lawyers, and the Ministry of Health suggests that 300,000 women procure abortions annually in Kenya and of this 2,600 die from complications.

Bottom line is that those are not all fourteen year olds, there are many married women amongst them. So question is not whether that woman in Kibera who has ten kids and finds herself pregnant again and the mzee (who has totally refused to use a condom) tells her 'that is your shauri', needs an abortion or not but where she can get access to safe and affordable sexual and reproductive health information and
services.

In other news, there is a very queer anthology in the works, whispers of are beginning to become loud murmurs, whose details I will be posting here soon. All I can say now is that it is to be Edited by Dr. Keguro Macharia and Angus Parkinson. Now if I could just dig up that call for submissions....

RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW

2009-01-15T00:17:00.003+03:00

[...]

Now whatever I did over the next few days drained through the ever widening cracks in my memory. Lying here scribbling this, I can, through my legendary deductive skills, arrive at two conclusions: a) I have a numbing pain on my left arm and my left knee is badly grazed which means that I must have taken a mighty fall; b) I have an itch like I swallowed a tin of kukumanga and that is to, without a doubt, say that I did not get laid. Yet again.

As to the question of whether I drank or not, I will take the trouble to remind you that that is, in my profound view of life, a purely ontological question long addressed by Descartes: I drink therefore I am.

Now if you will allow me a moment, I need to scrummage for a cigarette. That while congratulating myself for not having spilt my alcohol. This is an assessment easily arrived at easily by noting the fact that only my left arm and knee are injured. Is it not funny how a can of Kanee can be not only a metaphorical clutch but a literal one too?

Yet at this point I must beg your empathy. See, wherever and whenever it is that I fell, I must have picked myself up and finished my drink. Pretty commendable, even fortunate, I agree but only for that time and terribly unfortunate for now because from where I crawl there is no alcohol in sight. And, obviously because misery loves company, I cannot find even a bloody cigarette butt.

What, pray tell, did I ever do to deserve living through such interesting times? (Interesting, of course, in the Chinese curse's sense).

For now though, I have told you all- yes, all it takes is a few sentences- that I know about my life at this moment. What else is there to say while you know I cannot afford the luxury of the future tense and my past is a couple of inferences. I could hazard a peek at an immediately conceivable future, filled with Kanee and cigarettes, but haven't we been through that heartbreak already?

Yes, I hear your pontifical advice: “Why don't you at least try to sleep those injuries off, for now?”
I do hear you, but you know what? It is fucking New Year's eve and I just realised someone stole my mattress!

[...]

Well, and now that the new year is upon us and with this blog celebrating its third anniversary this Sunday, all I can say is that I have a new drink, a new crew and a desire to tell you about life in my neck (noose, policeman's boots and all) of the woods. Stay tuned!

ATAVISM OF HIGHER INEBRIATION

2009-01-09T02:49:00.003+03:00

[...]

It must have been about 3 pm the next day when I received a text message from an old friend. Well, not friend as in friend, as the Gikuyu say, of the front seat but, you know, one of those people from the collective masturbatory days of Oh-Potash-is-Like-a-So-Amazing-Writer-Man!

The text message serves no other purpose in this narrative beyond waking me up to the realisation that I was sprawled in a ditch and the world was spinning around me, scratching and howling, as though God had learnt his physics from the M.O.B DJs. I looked this way and that way hoping to lay sight on my true boy and ask him what holiday the rest of the world was celebrating and there he was slumped against a tree.

It was obvious to me that he was unconscious and the two guys standing over him were trying to rob him. “Hey you!” I yelled and trying to dig myself out of the ditch but, merely, managing to prop myself up on one leg, spin and fall back into the ditch. Well, butt first, this time round, if it makes any difference for you to know.

With one arm slumped over the edge of the ditch, the other, a crutch, wedged firmly on the floor of the ditch, I posed for a moment to collect my wits. I took a deep breath- I at least recall doing so mentally- shook my head vigorously and with one hand started to pick out muddy bits off my chest, knees and face and all the while trying to figure out where the fluid on those places had come from seeing that the ditch itself was as dry as my throat.

Anyho...

I hauled myself out of the ditch and saw that my true boy was still right there- slumped under a tree. With two guys still looming over him. Obviously, the guys are robbing him, I said to myself. “Hey you!” I yelled. The two fellows turned towards me with the mechanical slow-motion lean, silly grin and all, of the happily drunk. Two jets of urine clashed somewhere between them, their grins exploded into the loudest of guffaws and they, ignoring me, went back to their good-humoured peeing into my true boy's mouth.

I kicked myself for having taken them for thieves and, penis in wobbly hand, joined them in their oh-so-exhilarating-in-a-lumpen proletariat-sort-of-way sport.

[...]

***

Giving it deeper thought now, as I peek through this rapidly-turning-opaque window of sobriety, I do recall that what crossed my mind then was that the the alcohol buying world was celebrating the day of Pentecost. Even as I sought my boy to ask him, my mind had long concluded that the good lord had done gone and finally sent us a helper. Like for real. A drunken helper. A helper to drunkenness. Whatever. But, a guy, all I can say is that long before I ended up in that ditch and him by that tree, it had been raining alcohol all sorts. All things nice. In fact, what I can tell you now is that my last memory was of everyone in the wines and spirits speaking in tongues.

Mother tongues, I tell you. And we were all mighty fluent.

I mean, it is funny- and I know you have laughed parallel with me- but what is this thing about Gikuyu men getting drunk and immediately reverting to Gikuyu and particularly to the tone deaf howling of Gikuyu gospel songs?

Me, I have a theory, but first allow me to down this Kanee.
Ahh, man, my throat is like a burning bush. Everything is illuminated.

My theory is... wait, wait, let me light a cigarette; a torch to guide me through the murky depths of theory formulation.

Eish, I have a light but no cigarette. Will be back in a sec...

Allah is beneficent, I went in search of a cigarette and got a full one- yes a full, virgin stick- and a level (half a can of Kanee).

So, we were where? My theory... indeed!

My theory is that part of the tranquillity that this consumption of alcohol business- business of consumption alcohol(?)... consumption of business alcohol (?)... wtf?- brings is achieved through taking you to a place of primal instinct; a place of either childhood or the most bestial rationality encoding.

Now this place, if you will allow me to borrow from Freud and Nietzsche (two random guys one Jew and one normal dead white guy- the better if we haven' read them- is more than sufficient academic homage for our theory construction, no?) I will call the Atavism of Higher Inebriation (AHI). When the Gikuyu man arrives at the AHI- a place where the lone brain cell remnant contains only the basic life support (my yet to be pee reviewed data suggests that basic life support, unfortunately, does not include bowel movement)- he reverts to his earliest cultural/ civilising encounters: lying on a dirty lesso choking on his own stool, and that of other toddlers, and surrounded by the wails of mothers too drunk on the blood of Christ to remember their diarrhoeic offspring.

Quite an unbecoming state of affairs, you say, if only to be seen to be a man after my own heart.

Unfortunately, there is a (and quite the rare sort it ought to be noted) kind of Gikuyu man who, Nubian gin totting (the mental picture of tots or shots needs to be banished because you know we quaff it by the glass-load), cigarette butt dangling, arrives at the AHI to find nothing. This is the sort that- and I will gladly let you call me a heathen if it means that you understand that I am that sort of Gikuyu man- having been successfully indoctrinated, goes on, in later years, to attempt a reversal of the process.

A successful reversal of the process has immense, and particularly positive, real world implications. These kind of men make great drinking company. This not because they supply the alcohol but because they bring to an alcohol laden table the camaraderie born of argumentation, polemics and controversial turns of the alcohol-laced point that is the glue that best binds alcohol to the human brain cell. (It is a documented fact that every man, Kikuyu or otherwise, of a certain age imagines himself a bar-room intellectual, or as with most African traditions- marked as they are by the anthropologically proven lack of Rationality in the Africa- where the notion of intellectualism is unimaginable, non-existent and intolerable: soothsayer; diviner. Whatever it is Africans have that is analogous to the Western notion of intellectualism).

Now, I do not know if you are following my drift but what I can tell you for certain is that I do not...

[...]

THE OLD LEAVES THEY ARE A TURNING

2009-01-07T05:29:00.002+03:00

On the first day of Christmas my true boy said to me, “But Potash, don't you know it is Christmas?”
“Aaaish, nini...” I said to him my eyes, one moment fluttering open and quickly crinkling shut the next as a ray of sunlight hit them square-like through that ever growing space where the wall and the roof have sworn never to meet, “of course, I know it is Christmas, I just cannot afford it.”

“Clearly,” my true boy said to me kicking a can of Kanee into a pile in the corner. The can flew over the short distance and, save for a momentary clutter, soon settled into the eerily impotent silence of emptiness amongst its peers. It became like them: returned soldiers from the futile battle of escapism; carrier corps broken by a war that was not theirs to begin with. Cannon fodder. And we, with our human battles- sub-human, it could well be argued- quickly forgot them our hearts and desires yelling: “can them brew master, can them and we will kill them quick!”

I turned round to face him and with an instinctive flip of thumb and index finger: “Choma hiyo fegi!”
“Wacha moto,” the boy aaaahed, “Beggars point is bados.”
“You guy you malizaed my Kanee,” No, I was not complaining, boys don't play that way, I was just pointing out the obvious.
“There was bilas hapo,” he stared me down his bearded face devoid of emotion, its eyes sunken, its cheeks hollow. A face that only a new can of Kanee could lit up.
“Sasa unatakaje?” I asked while thrusting my hand into my cut-off jeans shorts, tugging at my penis (inadvertently dislodging a few pubic hairs in the process) and bringing the hand to my nose. “hmmm.”
“Hmmm.” He nodded ambiguously which was all the confirmation I needed to the fact that I was not in dire need of a birth, yet.

“Sasa aje?” I prodded and reached for the cigarette for which he obliged me this time.
“Ajee? Aje?”
“Manze si Kanee imepanda” I mumbled just to drill into his head what exactly were meant to be thinking about. I mean, like there could be anything else?
“Hauskii”
“Itakuwa aje sasa?”
“Ah,” shaking his head, “si hivo tu... lakini kuna vile Sir Godi atatumind.”

Where we live, God is good all the time. And even though he does not come through for the big things- jobs, money, self esteem- he is reliable when it comes to providing you with means to forget that you do not have those things: drugs, alcohol and, if you are so inclined, litter upon litter of progressively younger pussy.

“Kuwasha ni ka everyday,” I observed with conviction, “Hivyo ndio maboyz tunaishi”
“Ehh,” he agreed but the first trace of emotion crawled into his face to betray a lack of conviction, “lakini vile kumesota raondi hii, naona tukirudia mudi.”
“Eish, mudi si ni noma!”
“Dai tu hivo boy...” he reached into the corner and grabbing one of the empty cans turned it around, idly, on his hands. I stood back waiting to see him turn into Gollum. “Wee, dai to hivo...”

[Pause]

“Aih,” he started, flinging the can back into the corner, “Potash uko na mbao hapo?”
"Zii,” I replied upturning a chipped coffee mug to reveal all the money in my possession: a twenty shillings coin, “niko tu na mbao ya mafegi za kudoze.”
[Pause]

“Kwani ulikuwa unataka aje?”

[...]

DON'T ASK WHAT OBAMA CAN DO FOR KENYA

2008-11-05T14:30:00.001+03:00

I am excited for Obama and for America but I am saddened for Kenya. While the 'fierce urgency of now' must see Obama resuscitate the ailing American economy we, Kenyans, are celebrating his election to that duty by ruining our own economy.

What, pray tell, was the Government of Kenya thinking when it declared Thursday, 6th November a public holiday?

The best way for all progressive thinking Kenyans to celebrate Obama's victory is to work on bringing political change to this country from the bottom up. To not just sit and grumble about the inanity of our political discourse and the Bush-esque tyranny and divisive stance of our tribal chieftains but to rally one Kenyan at a time towards the embracing of a new political dispensation.

The time is now to move away from the press conferences and donor driven palavers; the yelling of empty threats at politicians from the shelter of posh NGO offices, by the 'activist-elites' and speak directly to our families and friends.

If America can, why can't we? We cannot because those who purport to preach the change gospel love to write concept notes, strategic plans, jingoistic communiques, jargon ridden country reports and Op-ed columns from here to new York City while the opponents of change are out in the field- face to face with the 'real Kenyans- handing out machetes and vitriol.

If you love Barrack Obama, spend your public holiday tomorrow talking to Main Street- tell them that, even here in Kenya, WE CAN!

To bastardise JFK, ask not what Obama can do for your country but what you can do for it.

END OF AN ERA?

2008-11-04T02:30:00.001+03:00

I gave a girl a flower...
Unless I have sex with two Jersey bulls and write about it, this blog and Potash as you have always known him is dead.

YOU BECAME

2008-10-27T01:46:00.000+03:00

We walked.
We walked and talked.
Talked about things- life; everything.
By the dark village paths we stopped.
We stopped, stopped to dream.
We dreamed of the city.
The city.
Bright lights.
Tin lamps that never ran out of kerosene.
We talked.
We walked and talked.
Talked as we walked.
Talked and made plans.
Plans.
Plans to leave.
Then we left.
The next day we left
Walking.
Walking away.

***

How come we do not talk any more? You. You do not talk to me any more. Is it because you are rich and famous now? Famous, huh!

I remember back when. Back when we had been back in the city two years. (Back from six months of lying low in the village. Lying low while everyone- from that crooked Constable Rono, who kept buying us Napshizzle with fifty bobs he had taken off us, to four OCPDs- sought us. Sought us over the matter of certain disturbances at the Dandora bus stop Circa 1997. That when, even though most of my witnesses are long dead, I had never even been to Dandora... Eish, dadi, in 1997 I used to think Dandora was a rap group...). I was sitting at Mutua's kiosk reading the paper. I was reading the paper when I saw you.

I saw you that day. Saw your face. Your face peering back at me from beneath the headline. You were the headline. You were the news and I, I was still a statistic: 2 million youths lack ID cards or such and such. I was still a statistic and you were the news: “Wanted Gangster Kills Again.”

That was you.

You, a wanted gangster? At least they wanted you. Such a joy it would be to be wanted. Rich or poor; dead or alive, it must feel good to be wanted. No?

We had dreams of being. You became. We, we still merely exist.

It has been two years now since I saw you. Saw your face in the paper. It has been three years since we talked. Three years of wishing we still talk. Two years of wondering: do they still want you?

Want you dead?

MY TEN MINUTES OF SOBRIETY

2008-10-21T12:50:00.002+03:00

Dear Timi,

Coherence eludes me. So much to do these days and very little time to do it. Well, maybe it is not the time that is lacking but the motivation. Because, lets face it, I am an unemployed writer- how can I not have time? But if no one is paying me, for anything, in the here and now, can't you just see how hard it is to think; write- work?

Anyway...

Now that I am back to our- yours, mine and those others that we shared it with- 'reality' (Nabokov, says this is “one of the few words which mean nothing without quotes” and I agree); this furtive place of 'always trying', I find myself thinking of you a lot.

I constantly wake from one of my increasingly frequent inebriated slumbers with a letter to you clawing at the tip of my fingers. Too bad that I can never get up and write it because, truth be told, it is not the gnawing letter that wakes me but that sick feeling at the pit of my stomach brought on by an over indulgence in cheap alcohol. So instead I turn, ever so slightly, and retch blood, bile and the remnants of many missed meals.

Sad is what all this is. And such a pity it is that being back in this place reminds me of you. In this dire place rather than a year or so ago when I felt that our shared dream- that of making our indelible marks on the Kenyan Canon (lol.... we used to say that Kenyan Canon will quit being a paradox when we were done with it)- was attainable. How sad that I forgot all about you when I was strutting my stuff on the theatre of dreams and only sneak you back in as metaphorical crutch and muse when I am returned to our theatre of broken dreams.

Now my mind staggers and I am Prometheus reaching out to grab that literary fire and bring it to the motherland. But divine hands intervene; thwart me. And here I am bound to a rock (some hideous monstrosity; a relic from an inglorious era; the Nyayo Monument perhaps) and life, shrouded in despondency; hateful leer turning into the curved beak of an eagle, lunges at me. Lunges at me. Consumes me. Frightful wings flap, the heat of my fire to sap. Destiny, I say, this is not. Vicissitudes, perhaps?

I write this here wary of what others will have to say. I mention destiny and emphasise that it is not at play here because recently an academic of my acquaintance accused me of having a teleological view of life... (Such cunt, er, I mean, how Kantian!)

But now I begin to lose my train of thought or rather than train finds itself dithering in the wake of my urgent need to reach for another can of naplam (if it quacks like a duck...) to blunt my senses.

Till my next ten minutes of sobriety (or its simulacrum) and hopefully, eloquence, Rest in Peace my dear friend.

Me

BOOKS OF MEMORIES

2008-10-13T12:07:00.003+03:00

Dear Timi,

These tears have been flowing since yesterday. I have tried to wipe them off with jug after jug of Senator but the only thing I have managed to still is my cash flow. Now I am sitting on the dirt floor surrounded by books and half drowned in my own tears. I am holding a dog-eared copy of The Complete Shakespeare with one wobbly hand and writing you this note with the other, more wobblier, hand.

Surrounded by books, huh? You must be wondering who died (apart from you...hehehe...) and made me an owner of many books,eh? No one really. It is just where I am now. I am the proud owner of volumes upon volumes of- brace yourself buddy- new books. Books, man, that only I have read since they left the bookshop. Books that have only had one owner: me. Books with covers- dust jackets too. For crying out loud. Books with all the pages in them and where they are meant to be.

Books. Books. Books.

Two piles of books: (a) The new; (b) the old.

a) The new: Zadie Smith, Ishmael Beah, Doreen Baingana, Piri Thomas, Edward P. Jones, Jeffrey Euginedes, Chinua Achebe, Azar Nafisi, Ryszard Kapuscinski, this one... that one... the other... etcetera.

b) The old: The Complete Shakespeare (a Front and back cover, frontispiece, indices, The Tempest, the first scene of Troillus and Cressida, one act of Much Ado About Nothing, the last two acts of A Comedy of Errors and ten sonnets short of complete). The New King James Bible (Beginning at the Third Chapter of Deuteronomy and ending in the middle of the John 10).

Only you know what those last two books meant to us. Only you understand why so many of those early blog posts yelled: I was raised on Shakespeare and the Bible. Shakespeare and the Bible, between us the only two books we had. But that seems like a long time ago. A long time before you left us. Left me.

If there is an afterlife, I hope you are sitting out there in its library. Sitting there, ye that died book-poor, surrounded by books. Reading. Reading and sipping on something finer than that Napshizzle that we shared.

Till we meet again.... do not quit believing that I loved you!

Me.

RETURN OF THE SLEAZEMEISTER- Unhappy Endings

2008-09-29T13:49:00.001+03:00

It all begins with a smell.

Silence stands tall between mother and I. Once in a while, the silence leans back and the fire cackles, a log burnt to embers splinters sending sparks flying all over the kitchen. Some sparks find our clothes- our dirt clothes- and drill holes onto the ageing fabrics. Mostly, I ignore them but mother, always with reflexive gestures, brushes them off. She reaches for another log but all the wood is gone. She rummages in the dirt around her and gathering a handful of tinder, throws it into the fire. It bursts into flames.

Smelly flames.

A breeze creeps in through a gaping hole where, with all their discordant shapes and sizes, the flattened out tin cans that make our kitchen's walls refuse to meet. The breeze sends a plume of smoke in my direction. I choke as the strong smell of burning Meru oak imprints itself into my childhood memories.

We lapse back into inertia. Silence stands up straight. The smell hovers.

Silence leans back again. The sufuria on the fire boils over. Mother sticks a calloused thumb under the lid and flips it over. It clutters over one of the three hearth stones and on to a corner. She reaches for her cooking stick, stirs the contents of the sufuria. She turns the cooking stick around and uses its handle to poke the fire.

The moon gapes at me through another hole this one high up where a section of the the wall shies away from the roof. I lean back- playing peek a boo with the moon- but she spies me through a constellation of holes and tears on the tin roof. In a few minutes, yet another bland dinner will be served. But this one I will have to miss because my phone rings and yanks me out of my day dream and into the _ _.

I did not name this place. She did. The white girl leaning over me. I ask her how I got here all the while trying to crane my neck and check the place out. My neck is immobile. Held in place by a neck brace.
Suddenly, things race through my mind. The strip bar. A stripper with her legs around my neck. An out of body experience. A drink with John the Apostle. The beginnings of a story ... the middle of a story... an end blurred out.

That day was the 10th of April 2008. I had, once again, lived to die another day.

***
The challenges of being a blogger who is not anonymous, and yet chooses to tell real-life stories, has finally caught up with me. I wrote the final three episodes of the Sleazemeister series, throughout last night, on note paper while lying on the floor of the kitchen described in this episode. Those three episodes were, in order of appearance: White Chicks; Miscegenation and Coitus Interrupters. Those episodes covered my experiences over the period May- August 2008. (August being the time when I wrote the first Sleazemeister episode.)

But as I lay there watching the kerosene lamp flicker, and eventually go off, my mind raced through the last one month the culmination of which was an episode titled Paradise Lost. This episode, written this morning, was a sort of afterword to the Sleazemeister that reveals me to be recently returned to Kiambu. Again.

So where are the posts? They will not be published here but I hope to turn them into a chapter in my memoirs. At that point, assuming I will finally make some money out of all this writing, I will have someone to deal with the legal issues- my publishers- and enough resources to not bother about pissing off some hoodlums and a string of lovers and sex partners both past and present.

The import of all this is that the Sleazemeister series has had to end prematurely and on a rather lame note here. I can be convinced though to make a limited edition PDF of it. But that is just a thought.

In the meantime, now that my return to the blogosphere has been firmly established, look out for new stories from the here and now. I might be back in the city by the time I write the next post or I might still be in Kiambu. Wherever I am, I promise to write. So see you all next monday.

RETURN OF THE SLEAZEMEISTER- Jesus Wept

2008-09-22T11:47:00.001+03:00

[The Story So Far...]

“In the beginning was the word.” the ancient Hebrew yelled.
“Take the word and stick it up your Kike arse.” I yelled back. “It all started with a smell.”
“What in heaven's name are you talking about Potash?”
“Listen here John,” I said to him as I lit up my third cigarette of the hour blowing smoke into his face. “It don't mean a thing to me that you have sold over a hundred million and I do not even have a bloody book yet, but you got to let me tell my story...”

We were seated at the terrace of a bar on the seedier side of heaven.

“Keep it down, out there,” shouted the barman his voice following his scraggy beard and screwed up face out of the window, “I am not licensed.” He looked the type that had started out as a bootlegger in Vanity Fair and through an oversight of Divine Bureaucracy or using a forged visa on Pilgrim's stolen passport had got into the Celestial City. John made a victory sign at him which in my newly enlightened state I knew to be the 60 AD equivalent of showing someone the finger. The barman jumped onto the window sill and pulling out an upstart penis wagged it at John. That I assumed to be a Masonic sign because, their type not being allowed here, I had no way of interpreting it.

The terrace faced a slow moving body of water that was, to my Nairobian's eyes, too clean to be a river. Nairobi River must have looked like that once long ago before even the do-gooders at UNEP gave up on it and decided to spend their money on duty free Hummers, I mused. Then my eyes were drawn to something on the river's west bank: Hyacinth? Detritus? Before I could figure out what it was I heard a series of loud bangs coming from that side of the river. The kind of loud bangs that you quickly learn to sleep through if, like me, you have lived in Kiambu or certain areas of Nairobi.

The sound of gunfire.

John: “Bastards!”
“What?”
“They just delivered a fresh bunch of virgins to that side”
“No shit!”
“If I had known that there was more than one way to heaven do you think I would have bothered to give up fishing?” John lamented. “I mean, look at fuckers like you, for all his vengeance who would have known God could give out guilt-free-passes?”
“Wacha I pee.” I dismissed his rant.

The toilets were at the back of the building. Down a dimly lit corridor. NAPOLEON WAS HERE! A squiggle, in dark coloured shit, on the wall informed me. HITLER TOO! Another, in a sloppy hand that was trying so hard to steal my attention from the other, insisted. “Who would have known?” I mumbled at the wall and reminded myself to sign this guest book on my way out. (Unfortunately, hard as I tried, a shit was not forthcoming so those of you that pass by that way in future might feel inclined to call me a liar but that is yours.)

As I walked back through the bar, a couple of medieval Popes beckoned me over to their table. “Hey moor,” one of them extended an avuncular smile at me, “you are new here no?”
“How about a glass of Roodeberg for two old hands who need it?”said the other.
“If you fuckers had bothered to store your treasures up here,” I said leaning against their table with all the weight of Sunday School behind me, “You would be drinking vintage Lachrymal Christi up in here instead of trying to cadge some cheap South African crud.”
“If we had known they would let Caliban in here we would have signed up for the other side.” one Pope yelled.
“Devil's dam, if you know your Shakespeare, Leo,” the other said to his friend, “every one of these bloody moors. I am so glad that in our time there was a sea between us and them. These days an honest to God man cannot afford decent neighbours for a lifetime of trying.”
Leo, returning to fiddling with the TV in an attempt to catch an illegal channel: “They even make the world turn now...” The TV screen stopped flickering to reveal one of porno's greatest moments: Bobbi Bliss deep-throating Mandingo. “... and just look at what the world has come to- a hot babe like this can only find fame by deep-throating that horse sized savage? Like who is this Mandingo anyway- Othello or something?”
“Fuck Othello,” Leo's friend retorted, “that son of Caligula ravished Maria, my youngest Venice mistress... caught the bastard negro jumping out of the window as I stepped into my lady's chamber and as I...”

I never heard the rest of that Pope's story because having shaken hands around the bar and stopping to show Kapuscinski where his arse was so he would know where to shove his Africa stories, I stepped out into the terrace.

“You know, “ I said to John, “those losers in there... the Popes... they remind me of some crafty Kenyans in America. Fuckers who hang around and wait for new kids to arrive from home with harambee money and welcome them with hearty smiles and before the kids can tell a quarter from a dime, it is all gone.”

“Forget those small timers, Potash,” John said shaking his head. “I have seen Kenyans here in heaven who make me think I am in the wrong place.” He paused and beckoning a waitress, ordered another drink for himself. On my tab. (It is surprising how much wealth a guy like me who cannot tell God from Adam has got stored up here. For those who like a moral with their story all I can say is that there is no rhyme or reason to God. God, like I have said before, works in mysterious ways his blunders to perform.)

“There are, er...” John stammered when I caught him staring at the retreating backside of the waitress. “There are Kenyans living up on Kingdom Hill and playing golf with God that have been damned by millions on earth. It is easy to be down there and see someone rob an entire country blind and say: 'That one is going to hell' but then you get here and you marvel at how much stock they bought up here.” He paused to commend the waitress, as she brought him his drink, on her good looks. “Potash, man, it is like there is some insider trading going on here.. it is as though the Nairobi Stock Exchange is the eye of the needle that you have to pass through to see the kingdom of heaven.”

“So how did I get in,” I asked him, “if as you say blessed are not the poor”
“Potash, have you seen the records office here?” He spat. “It is worse than a court registry down in Nairobi; even Jesus cannot find his own file if he tried to.”

“Ah, well... talking of Jesus,” I segued, “I am sure he is a spoilt brat... the type I know how to pull drinks out of...”
“He is a regular kid, I must say,” John said with a smile, “You know me and him go way back from when he was setting up his hustle down there...”
“I know man,” I responded, “I read your book a thousand times... it is one of my favourite books of all time...”
“Thanks, Potash.” John said raising his glass and clinking it against mine. “But you know I have had some people come up to me here and say I didn't write it. That I was just a fisherman who couldn't know better...”
“Hehehehe! Some people say Timi wrote the early posts on my blog; that Potash was a character N.M. created and formed a committee- the so called Potashian Book Club- to write fictional memoirs... and I am not saying that you and me are on the same level, but all I am saying is that once your work is out there then people are bound to say all manner of crass things.”
“But I wrote that book, Potash,” John said and I could fell a tide of tears assail him, “I want you to know that.”
“John, I am your number one fan.” I put my hand over his and he turned towards me. I looked him straight in the eye and said: “Forget Jane Austen and Tolstoy, you have my favourite first line of all time: In the beginning was the word...”

He rubbed a wee tear of his left eye and stared across the river as yet another salvo was fired to celebrate the arrival of more virgins. A rocket propelled grenade flew through the air and landed dangerously close to our terrace. As it exploded I wondered what happened to the virgins when they were virgins no more. Did God have a recall system and a warehouse full of 'virginity' creams or did the men just use the virgins and toss them into the river to float their useless way, alongside the spent mortar shells, towards hell?

“But Potash, if you liked that line so why were you disputing it?”
“I like it because of the metaphysical punch it packs... I am told that it has something to do with that gnostic stuff you were up to that almost had the Popes showing you where to get off... But, let us not miss the point, which is, that was your first line; your story, but it is not mine. All I was saying is that my story begins with the smells.”

“But which story, Potash?” John wondered. “The one about your death in a dingy strip club or the one about your resurrection?”
“Look here Hebrew,” I glared at him, “I am not dead. All I know is that for some weird reason I am stuck in this gaudy looking city listening to you bore me to death and wondering how the hell I got here.”

“You broke your neck, Potash.” John explained. “Well, sort of.”
“When...? where...? how...? What do you mean sort off?”
“Luke is the doctor not me.” He laughed. “Don't you know your bible, Potash.” I did not even humour him with a rude retort.
“So,” John started, “it was about 0230hrs East African Time and Jesus, some angel called Dino and I were on duty at The Panopticon...?”
“Hey, hey... easy on the jargon old man,” I interjected. “Panowhassat?”
“Oh, The Panopticon,” John explained, “a newfangled observatory this Frenchie faggot Foucault built for God in exchange for a visa into the Celestial City. Turns out later this Foucault guy had stolen the idea from some long dead English dude so visa got revoked.” John paused, cackled. “You should have seen the amount of water- straight out of this here river, I tell you- that Jesus turned into wine that day to celebrate and spite a bunch of his detractors here who say like to say that he, and the rest of us boys that hang with him, is queer.”
“Be easy on the faggots man,” I said to John, “God sure must have made them in his own image, no?”
“What shit you talking man?” John yelled at me.
“I am not talking,” I replied. “It is you who is telling me about being on duty at this Panopticon thingum.”
“Yes,” John continued. “so The Panopticon is not useful really, we just sit and watch the live feed from earth but there is not much we can do about it. Not much we are meant to do but watch; put the scient into omniscient; the presence into omnipresence and such things seeing that God caught the Outsourcing bug long before everyone else and men do the creation and the killing for him. Men know who to thank for small mercies: God; who to blame when they receive no mercy: The Devil.”
“Cut to the chase, old man,” I complained, “God played you, so what do I care, I have a story to write”

“So,” John carried on with his exposition on heavenly politics which, as far as I was concerned, was not only wasting my time but also messing up my word count, “there we were and I was the only one watching the live feed.

See, things have been very slack in heaven these days. Global warming means that God cannot grow his weed out in his garden any more so he spends most of his time in Hell- where The Devil has a massive grow operation going on- trying to bum a joint or two. The way I see it is that someone needs to tell God that if you give a man a joint he will get high for a day, but if you teach a man how to grow his own shit he will stay high, every day.”

“Word!” I said because I am the kind of person that will credit a good point when I see it. Even when it is standing in the way of my story.

“Anyway, God being absent more often than not has meant that no one is bothered to earn their Celestial digs. Most beings- the junior staff who need his signature to as much as sneeze, especially- cannot even get their work done even if they tried to. Jesus on the other hand has become more than a bit jaded. I mean, since people down there were able to split the atom, no one has remained impressed by some hippie who once upon a time split a few loaves between thousands of people. Who has heard of the miracle at some wedding in Canaan since men discovered 'bottomless' beer? So Jesus was on sms chat with Mary Magdalene while he should have been watching the live feed with me and Dino. (Which wouldn't be a problem if only Jesus had not been using the prayer Hotline.) Dino? Dino had fallen asleep, for the tenth night in a row, trying to read Ngugi wa Thiongo's Wizard of the Crow.

So, there I am, watching you. You had just done an impressive job with that Lolita in the 'Presidential Sweet' and were back at the bar.” John continued. I had a vague memory of being the fuckee rather than the fucker but I could not be bothered to interrupt John with small details. “Your friend Dinda and that mercenary cunt of a writer, ...N.M?”
“Yeah. N.M.” I confirmed. “More cunt than writer, I dare say...”
“Indeed. Dinda and N.M had gone off to handle business in other sections of the club so you perched your arse on a stool by the counter and ordered a yellow drink.”
“Damn, a yellow drink that soon? Yellow means I do not want to get it up again...”
John: “And you didn't. One of the girls dancing on the counter crawled over to you after a signal from the hostess.”

“I'll be damned,” I whistled the events of the previous night coming back to me, “the ones on the counter were ugly!”
“Sure was ugly...” John agreed. “The one that crawled over to you was uglier that Celie in The Color Purple. She whispered in your ear and you nodded your approval.”
“Inebriation.” I shout thumping my fist on the table and spilling our drinks. “Mitigation, sir!”
“The girl spun round and with her hands resting firmly on the counter she curled her legs around your neck...”
“Woah...” I exclaimed remembering that moment.
“Ditto.” John said. “'Check this shit out,' I said to Jesus. He glared at me and asked: 'What?' I pointed at the screen. Jesus switched off the phone- the prayer hotline mind you- and pulled a seat closer to the screen.”

“I see labia like an elephants ears lunging at me and then my mind goes blank.”
“That is when you ended up here.” John explained. “The table was wet, the girl's hands slid off it. The girl's legs were curled around your neck- Twist!”
“Snap?”
“I have seen people die in the freakiest of ways,” John laughed, “but yours Potash, yours was intolerable. An anti-climax, even.”
“Anti-climax?”
“By the time your neck snapped every one had been watching the show on their Panopticon Portable 2000s. Suddenly, phones went buzzing with blame games and buck-passing. The Fates insisted they didn't do it. Both God and The Devil were adamant they didn't do it, either- and they were each other's alibi.”

“So what the hell happened, man?”
“Baku.” John said shaking his head in exasperation.
“Baku?”
“Your guardian angel.” Said John. “He is a faggot. He has the hots for you.”
“Jesus F. Christ!”
“It is Baku that pushed the girl off the slippery table.”
“But, er... come on now,” I stammered. “What did you all do when I broke my neck? You, them, someone... Jesus... what did Jesus do?”
“Jesus,” John said a tangible solemnity taking over his voice. “Jesus did what Jesus does when bad things happen to good people.”
“Yeah, and what's that?”
“Jesus wept!”

RETURN OF THE SLEAZEMEISTER- Humping Humbert

2008-09-14T15:34:00.003+03:00

Also known as: Misleading Lolita in Nairobi

[The Story So Far...]

“Niaje, Niaje!” Dinda said acknowledging the salutes of all the watchmen. All the watchmen guarding that street had left their posts to come and say hello to Dinda. Most of them just to stare. A cripple selling cigarettes, condoms and other things nice from behind an upturned carton made as though to stand and shake Dinda's hand. Dinda put his hand on the cripple's shoulder and pushed him back onto his rickety stool. Dinda leaned over and asked him something that I could not hear. The cripple shook his head and lifted a calloused arm over his head. Dinda held him by the jowls and knocked his head against the wall. His stool gave way under him and the cripple crashed to the pavement his crutches flying one way and his wares the other, down the street. Suddenly all the watchmen and a motley crew of night-runners, gathered to hail Dinda disappeared into the shadows.

We stormed up the stairs and into the club the bouncers and the ticket girl ducking out of our way.

The main section of the club was small. To the left and directly in front of us was the bar. Spread along its counter or dangling from a metal rail above it were four girls. None good-looking. Well, maybe it was the gloom in the room but the parts of their bodies I could see clearly, and that was all of their bodies, were not impressive. Neither was their act- a bored gyration to, of all things, crunk music. Several guys sat at the bar, oblivious of the drinks before them, staring at the girls as they mined their crotches with chipped nails. One of the guys was wearing a checked suit. A long abandoned lime coloured drink stood before him. One of the girls turned and pinched his face with her ass cheeks. His arms reached out blindly. I caught the gleam of a gold wedding band. He found both of the girl's thighs and anchoring his hands on them pummelled his face deeper into her.

To the right, a table with a pole through it that reached from the floor to the chipping plaster of the ceiling. A girl was perched on the table, her dangling legs splayed and her breasts- the shape, size and colour of Mombasa mangoes- curved upwards their nipples standing firm against the odds of what would soon be an early and droopy retirement. In front of her and with her face bobbing in and out of the others crotch was an intensely dark skinned girl with curves that would make King Mswati consider monogamy. Behind them a couch was cleared for us. The hostess whispered something in the ears of these two girls. They stopped their play and gave us a full frontal salute.

We did not bother to acknowledge them.

“What will you have, cocktails?” the hostess asked us.
“A cold Tusker for me,” N.M said, “and a double Viagra for Potash.”
“Go fuck yourself,” I said flipping N.M a birdie. “Why don't you order a bitch for yourself and a Rohypnol for her, you perv.”
“We will call you when we are ready to order.” Dinda told the hostess once again intervening between N.M and I.

Now, our friend Jane used to say that it is a truth universally acknowledged that a Kenyan man, regardless of his fortune, must be in want of a teenage mistress. She was talking about me. I called the hostess over and asked for two things: any blue coloured cocktail and any girl under the legal age of consent. It was a dive spot this one: no blue coloured drink and far too many under aged girls to choose from. I settled for a strawberry coloured drink and a girl in underwear of a matching colour.

We stepped up to the VIP section, then crossed the floor past miles of pulsing dicks crouching under rapidly gyrating rumps. The men's faces were blank. The girl's faces were blank. The girls groaned in unison; mumbled the same things. I looked around for a matronly madame hiding backstage of this debauched set holding a groan-script. What I found instead is what I needed most: the uber VIP room. I knew it from the sign on the door that invited you the heightened level of privilege that was their 'Presidential Sweet.'

Sweet!

I pushed the girl into the room and immediately pinned her to the wall. Like a butterfly, my fellow paedophiles, no? The rest of you readers will have to, as Vladmir says, imagine us- the girl and I- because if you do not then we cease to exist. So, the girl: Pinned to the wall of the lepidopterist. Potash: the lepidopterist with a dissecting scalpel that looks like a penis and acts like a penis.

“What's your name bitch?”
“Natasha”
Whatever... when I am humping you, your name is Lolita and I am Humbert.
“Ati what?”
“I have to do it to you in Nairobi,” I said to her knowing she wouldn't get it, “so that the millions, in tyrannous Tehran, living on less than one orgasm a day can find something to jerk off to.”

NOTE: This episode was delayed by my inability to access my blogger account. I wonder if other users of blogger have experienced such difficulties.

From a narrative point of view, this story has bored me and I do not feel inclined to tell it to the end any time soon. In the next posts we just might have to skip to the present.

RETURN OF THE SLEAZEMEISTER: The Night Watchers

2008-09-01T07:03:00.005+03:00

[The Story So Far...]

It was mid-April, 2008. Above us: an overcast sky that was all thunder and lightening but no rain. Like a bull with premature ejaculation. The street was empty. It looked dead, but only to a stranger.

Standing there, smoking in silence and exchanging swigs on the bottle of Viceroy, we knew that from behind the shadow of darkness, more than a dozen eyes were watching the street. Lurking in alleys, peering through peep-holes on boarded up windows. They watched and waited. They knew we knew they were there. We knew it was not us that they were watching and waiting for because we knew that they knew that we, like them, were creatures of the night. At least Dinda was and because of him we were protected from them.

Them!

The police with their guns, the thieves with their bigger guns and the prostitutes with their disease-ridden bodies. They were watching and waiting for you. Waiting to take your money or your life. Most likely both.

“That blog is just a crutch, Potash,” N.M broke the silence. He was not looking at me and seemed to be addressing the plume of smoke he had just blown into the air. Dinda swigged from the bottle, hesitated and instead of passing it on to N.M., he took another swig emptying the bottle.

N.M. stared at him. For a moment.

N.M's eyes moved to the now empty bottle. Dinda shrugged and hurled the bottle at a nearby window.
“Mbwa!” screeched a female voice.
“Malaya!” N.M. laughed.
“Kimya!” A man barked somewhere up the street.
The sound of two guns being cocked, simultaneously, down the street.

Silence.

Everyone knew of the others; that they were there. Everyone knew what was needed of him or her: that they mind their own business.

Everyone returned to watching the street.

Everyone but us. We piled into Dinda's car and drove off.

“Tao?” Dinda asked, N.M. N.M was riding shotgun.
“Eee,” N.M. responded. “Tao ya chini... huko juu niko na bill?"
“Ya kuma au ya pombe?”
“Pombe.” N.M. said. He passed me a cigarette and lit one for himself.

“So what I am semaing, Potash...” N.M. said. He unbuckled his belt and turned to face me. Dinda started fiddling with the stereo.
“You are blowing smoke into my face,” he said to N.M.
“Fuck you,” N.M. responded. “Just shut up and drive. Let me for a moment tell this bastard what is real and what is not?”
“Why say it while Culture can sing it?” Dinda asked and pushed up the volume on the stereo.

“Yo!Yo!Yo!” Tony Rebel's yells tore through the car as he introduced Hungry People, his collaboration with Joseph Hill and Mighty Culture.
“Why, oh, why, poor people 'ungry again?” Dinda sang along with Joseph Hill.

With one hand on the steering while and his eyes on the glove compartment, Dinda leaned over and pulled out a half smoked joint. He lit the joint using the car's electric lighter and then stepped on the accelerator rushing us towards hell or the city centre, whichever would come faster.

***

The Fates huddled. Deliberated. They called God but, inaccessible to Immortals as he is to men, his phone was off. “Hello, this is God's phone. I am sorry I cannot take your call at the moment. I have gone to Hell to find a fire. Bloody Global Warming has turned my house into a freezer. Leave your name...”

They called the Devil.

“El diablo...,” a high pitched voice with a Shona accent answered. The Devil listened briefly then apologised: “I am sorry I cannot do a conference call right now. God is, down here, sobbing in my house and flooding my kitchen.” In the background they could hear someone sniff back tears while blubbering something about Kyoto and how his E had turned out quite unequal to MC2. “Which would be fine,” the Devil added, “if he wasn't trying to use another one of his sob stories as an excuse to smoke up all my weed.”

The Deities otherwise engaged, the fate of three miscreants, driving recklessly drunk through the Nairobi night, was left to, well, The Fates.

“Everyday I am ashamed I gave those farts life,” Clotho bitched. “What do we do with them now?”
“I have given them more than a full measure.” Lachesis yawned and went back to her knitting and following of the Obama campaign on T.V. “Damn, I wish I was a nymph,” she cooed. “I would go down there and fuck that Negro!”
“Let the inevitable occur.” Atropos said reaching for her shears. She was referring to the three miscreants in Nairobi, of course, but her partners could not be bothered. Clotho was slumped by the fire drinking cheap South African wine from the bottle. Lachesis was, her eyes glued to the TV, now trying to weave her vestigial fingers- past a colostomy bag and folds of skin- towards her crotch. (The last time she had ogled at Obama that hard, Stevie Wonder had tripped on stage).

“Damn shears!” it was Atropos again. She had dropped the shears down the lavatory hours before. She had been, once again, using office equipment to shave her pubes.

In Nairobi, a silver bubble of chrome and thumping reggae crossed the Tom Mboya street line and entered the Third World section of the city. Its occupants, too intoxicated to be thankful for Global warming, a lachrymal god, a devil too busy saving his weed rather than damning the world and three witches with no office etiquette, staggered into a strip bar.

***

As fate-or maybe the gods who watch over us creatures that run in the dark- would have it, we found the city centre long before we could reach hell. “Hell is filled with good intentions,” I muttered under my breath as I stepped out of the car. “I have bad intentions, my brothers,” I said to N.M. and Dinda, “take me to heaven.”
“You speak my mind, home boy,” N.M. laughed.
“Welcome to fornicators heaven!” Dinda said his hands in the air and his groin grinding against the air around him.

The Saga Continues in the Next Episode: Humping Humbert or Misleading Lolita in Nairobi.

RETURN OF THE SLEAZEMEISTER: Coke and Cum

2008-08-25T12:37:00.005+03:00

[The Story So Far...]

“So, Potash...” Dinda drawls. He is high on shit like Martha Karua is high on power. And there is no let up as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out at least a hundred grammes of you know what, in a Ziplock bag. He spoons it out, sprinkles a neat line on the butt and grease-marked bench next to him, kneels on the dirty floor and shoots. I visualise, in graphic detail, his nasal membranes drying up like he just chugged a litre of formalin.

Dinda sits up and hands me the spoon and the sachet. I ignore it but dip a wary finger into the bag and with it bring several specks of powder to my mouth. “Looks high grade, tastes high grade,” I say to him continuing to ignore the spoon.

“Try it,” he coaxes, “if its mine, you know it is fine.”
“Is bilas,” I respond shaking my head for emphasis.
“You is a pussy, P...” He spits. “...always was.”
“Indeed.” N.M. Interjects even though the guy does not use and never did. “Trouble with this pussy is that he always gets fucked but never gets paid”
“You bastard.” I sneer at N.M. “You done fucked me a couple of times and you know it. You knew all I wanted to do was write and you said you were going to get me places but all you did was try sell my arse to tabloids.”

“Come on Potash,” Dinda is coming out of a vigorous nose rubbing session with his face crinkled by something half way between a smile and a grimace, “writing is writing... and some of us- see, those of us from where we coming from- have to work a little harder than them others; start at the lowest rungs and work our way up.”

When it comes to starting from the bottom then Dinda knows what it is all about. As he speaks my mind wanders back to those crazy years in the mid-nineties. We were all out of high school, or on our way out. Some prematurely and others with O'Level certificates that they would soon realise they couldn't use even for wiping their own backsides with. If the eighties decade was lived under Moi's political tyranny, then the nineties was lived under the excruciating pain of his economic misadventures.

Those were the post-Goldenberg years and the phrase Kenyan Economy was a paradox more baffling than President Kibaki or Nairobi Water. While the world out there had long landed a man on the moon, we were trying to land inflation there. While every one else was on the race to map the human genome, average Kenyans were mapping their ways back to, if not ignorance and pestilence, at least abject poverty and despondency. It did not help that the armchair economists at the World Bank had long unleashed their Structural Adjustment Programmes on us: Retrench; Retrench; Retrench. Cost sharing was the buzzword in the government hospitals but who could afford to be sick after that measly severance pay they so ironically termed Golden Handshake?

Our parents had nothing to begin with, and now they had lost it all.

We left school and stared at the future; an unrelenting wall of rapidly diminishing choices. Choices that came with the caveat: Do You Know Anybody? But who was there to Know: the father who took that Golden Handshake, went to Dubai and came back only to realise that every one else had been to Dubai and back bringing the same goods to a cash-starved market? The mother who spent more time ducking or bribing City Council askaris than selling her tomatoes on Tom Mboya Street?

Our parents were not worth knowing. At least not when it came to navigating the economy of a new Kenya.

We stared at the future. The future stared us down, clicked its tongue and turning, bared its calloused backside at us. The future forgot us; left us to strive for one day at a time. Left us to eke simple pleasures out of living to die another day.

For most, school was out of the question. Who could afford it. All things considered, two options remained: toiling for sub-minimum wage in muhindi sweatshops or a life of crime. Two options, two disparate sides of the law. Dinda chose crime. The rest is history. (Or fodder for yet another essay seeing how much time that mercenary writer N.M. spends with him.)

“Is true.” I agree with Dinda. “But this guy could not think out of the mainstream. Think about something like a blog. Anything that would put my work out there...”

N.M snickers and then says, “My blog, oh... My blog, oh... Negro please! That blog, Potash, is nothing but a crutch. It is like all that Napshizzle you ass holes used to drink and whatever you drink these days... Oops, sorry, I forgot you have no money now... Dinda, we need to take this fucker out for a drink...who knows, maybe even buy him a pussy so he can see and smell himself...”

“Enyewe...” Dinda agrees. “But do cut the brother some slack... though I agree that that blog has, in the broader scheme of things, not done anyone any good. There have been wars that needn't have occurred, animosity where goodwill would have profited all and alliances smashed where unity would have kept this city safe from snitches.”

I maintain the obsequious silence of the guilty.

N.M lights a cigarette, blows a plume of smoke towards the ceiling and then turning, the thought just occurring to him then, he offers me one. Our eyes meet for a moment and I do not read even an iota of malice or distaste in his.

Dinda blows his coke stuffed nose loudly. The young boy, who had disrespected me earlier, makes lewd slurping noises. Kamwana groans with yet another self-induced orgasm. Everyone else keeps their eyes glued to the 42 inch television screen as Lexington Steele squirts cum onto the faces and breasts of two white girls.

“Everything you write on that fucking blog, Potash,” N.M. hisses. “the world out there can take it for entertainment or whatever they fucking feel like... but down here, down here it makes all the difference between living or dying. Everything.”

He rises from his seat and Dinda and I follow him into the garbage streaked street.

The Saga Continues in the Next Episode: The Night Watchers

RETURN OF THE SLEAZEMEISTER

2008-08-20T10:45:00.004+03:00

Okay, so I have been out of circulation for quite a bit now. Word on the street, so my boy Dinda tells me, is that I been lying low because I have finally decided to write that book. Now I am going to sit here and give it to you straight.

Yes, I will have another drink... a blue one now... P.S: I like your arse, can I put that on Dinda's tab too?

You are my readers after all and I have to admit that I have come to like you and you have come to trust me to always tell it as it is. (Okay, cut me some slack Amber, I know there are stories I said I would finish but I didn't, but you know how this ball play: sometimes I get drunk long before I can finish the story. Yes and sometimes I write it but I cannot type it out for all the cum and alcohol spills on it the next day).

So here is the deal...

Is it not funny how some of us is just like village curs: crap, walk away with snout at full mast then turn around and eat humble poo? Look at me now, in a strip bar with NM and Dinda- and them buying me varicoloured drinks, lap dances and Extra. (Man, you know the Extra's what I am about. Out back in VIP. Playing meat to yet another sandwich).

It really sucks the way, you know, all of an easy sudden in the circles of writers my name started to get mentioned. So I went out and got me a little money, some airs and an apartment way up above all you riff-raff. Got gentrified, is what I did. Then the next thing I know, Potash is going down. Suddenly, the remnants of The Potashian Book Club- long disbanded in my haughty exit from the 'hood- just sitting at the Stone Zone speaking of me in shoulder shrugs: Sic transit gloria mundi. My guns from Nairobi's Finest, sitting in caucus and oiling their AKs under a mushroom cloud of marijuana smoke by the railway bridge, exploding taunts: Roundi hii kalikuwa kamejidai sonko...!

Potash hit the ground crawling.

So I walked over to the old neighbourhood and, well, all that knew me is long dead (Kwekwe squad was here!), doing time or helping the police with some investigation or other. There is new kids running that block now and they have no vacancy for a street sage. (Man, down here I was the Philosopher in Residence. And I gave it all up to pursue some snobbish Writer in Residence crap somewhere. Like what stories did I think I could write without these streets? The streets that made me).

So there I was, the shoulder of the street gone cold; boys I was thick as thieves with giving me one armed hugs like I was some faggot and they was scared I was going frot them. (Okay, okay... I like black boys but can't a guy swing a metaphor edgewise?). So what's Potash- yes, it is Potash now, not Potash, The- to do?

Potash makes a speedy getaway towards Kiambu.

But Kiambu offers no love. Who runs into Kiambu if they haven't robbed a bank?

In Kiambu respect comes in a crate of Tusker. If you cannot buy booze you are just a pussy so do not bother the wazee. Sit in the corner with the uncircumcised boys and behave yourself.

Oh, Misery- it does not drip, it ejaculates!

So I hang around Kiambu for about two weeks, keeping to the cattle paths and bumming Supermatch half-lifes from the Maragoli farmhands as they chug jerry cans of milk to the dairy. But soon even they are going all attitudinous on me: Aii, na si haka kamutu mimekaoneko kwa kaseti chuzi- kumbe hakana kitu!
Is of how... what's the dealie?

Now I am chilling and thinking things is thick, enyewe. So this is what I fanya: I go to Mogaka's kiosk.
“Ah, umepotea..”
“Mi niko Mogaka,” I say, “Mi niko...”
“Sawa, sema niskie...”

Stories, stories. Oh, Like this, like that. Kidogo I have pulled a soc out of him.

Nairobi; Shamba ya Mawe, Here I come.

I go back to the old neighbourhood. Kupitia tu.
I walk over to Kamwana's Video Parlour. Just at the right time- you know the time, eh, when they are showing Six Movies for One Ticket- to catch all the neighbourhood's heavy hitters. And guess who I find there? N.M and Dinda drinking Viceroy straight out of the bottle.

Am I lucky or am I lucky.

So there we are drinking liquor straight out of the bottle and jerking off. Just like old times. Place is up to the roof (which is not that high up, anyway, because this is not the Karen Country Club) in stinks: illicit brews; illicit love; illicit herbs.

Behind me is some kid who was in Standard Eight when I last saw him. He is drinking Napshizzle like it was Nyayo milk. I decide to stress the young one. “Eh, daddy. You finished school?”
“Who died and you started fucking my mother?” He asks blowing marijuana smoke into my face. Is this kid cool or what? If it was two years or so ago I would say that all he wanted to be when he grew up was me. But now I aint shit. I thump his fist, ruffle his wannabe dreadlocks and take a massive swig off his Napshizzle. “Buy your own, loser?”

Damn. What will it take to earn some respect back in this life time?

The Saga Continues in the Next Episode: Coke and Cum

THEY CAME IN THE NIGHT II

2008-06-05T19:55:00.000+03:00

They came in the night.

Consumed by sexual pleasure, I did not hear them, of course. But from the way my new girlfriend jumped from under me, I know for sure that they did not come in the clichéd 'stealthily they crept' manner we had imagined in our primary schools' English composition.

One moment we were there- girlfriend and I- cocooned in bliss. The two by six Vono camp bed, with its sag of broken springs and screech of ancient nuts; the thin and mouldy mattress; the table in the corner with its warped top and peeling Formica; the old table cloth presently reincarnated as a curtain- tea stains, shattered hems and all; the ceiling that had managed to drip-drip all through the rainy season in mockery of the dry tap, all these, had in the throes of ecstasy gained the opulence of a honeymoon suite. This was a love scene.

Love scene interruptus...

The girlfriend starts. Turns; her face freeze-framed in the moon beam. Her mouth a large O. O as in orgasm? No Sir! I turn to the left sliding my penis out of her, inadvertently, with the same movement. A battering ram stares me down. One phallus out, one phallus in.

Girlfriend covers her mouth at the speed of involuntary motion. A loaded gesture. An empty gesture. What she means to cover she cannot. The ageing Raymond's blanket is flung against the lone couch, her dress is dangling in the air clinging to the tap with one shoulder-strap as the other soaks in an ugali sufuria hurriedly filled with water and thrust into the sink, her panties are playing blindfold to the kerosene stove, and I am still wedged between her thighs. Those thighs that are the colour of rich loam. Thighs that are still warm from mutual stimulation.

Rigor mortis, er, the post-coital equivalent has not yet set in...

I love you girlfriend signs. My right hand is pinned to my back with brute force, my left hand, as though still latched onto her love handles, is delicately pinned to my genitals. The left hand shots up and quickly signs back at her but a greasy pile of man blurs the communication line. He hulks over her, a beefy back to me and an evil leer, a penis as twisted as his mind even, towards her.

“Ahhh...!” I grunt kicking at him. He is both oblivious and out of reach. Two men in badly cut suits hurl me out of the door and in the few seconds it takes me to hit the ground outside, I feel like a feather plucked from my lovely bird. A bird that for all its glory is, like Shakespeare's Julius Ceaser, to be used as a carcass for hounds....

Excerpted From: The Stories I Forgot As a prelude to Phase II of A Kenyan Urban Narrative.... in development!

ROMANCE BY THE RIVER

2008-05-12T21:56:00.000+03:00

To one across the sea...

There is a place down-river from the glorified squatter settlement I was raised in. Right on the banks of the Kitisuru river. That Kitisuru, the life-blood of my people... and lots of others in the city who partake of cabbages, sukuma wiki and varied greens nourished in its waters by a motley bunch of peasant farmers along its meandering tracks.

Yes, there is a place. A place that brings succour to my broken spirit. A place where I take my rustic retreat. It is a place of escape from life's theatre of broken dreams and the harries of a city that will not let me be. By the pleasant stream I lie with the tapering royal palm and the ancient mugumo tree as my shield from the invidious beckoning of a city that cannot brook my penury.

Sometimes I loll upon a grassy knoll, with the slender stalks of the Kikuyu grass brushing against my blushing face. My countenance lights up as I pull, ever so gently, on the wet, tender fronds of the water plants. As the musky fragrance of new bloom tickles my nostrils with a bitter-sweet stimulation, everything about me is transmogrified. All of an easy sudden, those wet... tender fronds are dark tresses of hair. The cuddly soft breeze is not the wind but your whisper in my ear.

How I have longed for your company. Right from when I was a little boy, shaping flutes out of the giant reeds and humming happy tunes, I knew that someday there will be two of us here. Two of us, all giggly, perched up on the crook of that Meru oak. Up there with our just-for-two tickets to the Kitisuru Bird Orchestra. I have always known that on that day you will share the magic of my world and marvel at the refrain of the weaver birds. And the birds, as you would realise, sounding as though they were calling out my name.

And all that merely the matinee.

“So, how about a late lunch?”
There is a glorious clump of arrowroots thereabouts. How is that with a side of that sugar cane, there? How luscious it looks. How succulent? Just like... just like... Then we can wash it all down with this here water melon.

Hey, I can even show you a trick: how to split the water melon's outer covering with just the teeth. ...split it and suck it... Suck it all out.... With my tongue! Here Boo Boo, want to try that?

It is the taste of the Kitisuru. Wild. Addictive. Changing. Just like chocolate, this here as they say, will make you never want to go back to vanila.

Want some dessert?
There is a wide selection of berries down stream. Hey watch out for the stinging nettle... Ouch! Okay, let me rub this there. Right there where it itches. We used to call this weed rub-rub-sweetness. Works better than that there your newfangled Vaseline.

Berries?
Try those ones. No, No... that there is Datura Stramonium... I meant those other ones. The ones to the left. Yes, those in the glistening shades of Kitisuru rich ochre.
Delicious, eh?

Let us sit here. Uhm, this spot reminds me of a Christmas long gone. We had no money for liquorice and all sorts of goodies and yet we had grown up knowing that Christmas was about special things. The special things, mind you, that money can buy. But we had no money so we made do? No way, we improvised. (Sometimes I feel like poor people have the best fun sometimes, they can draw joy out of the smallest things; make a feast out of the most banal of ingredients. But it is always a fleeting thought... me, I have no time to romanticise poverty).

We had no money so we pinched a wee morsel of lard from the filthy tin-can in grandmother's kitchen. A can that had started its journey around the world carrying cooking oil: Gift From the People of the USA. That must have been the year when our parents used to walk over to the Chief's camp to pick food rations. And sometimes we would accompany them and finding our nursery school teacher there, she would make us line up and sing: Wi ara the woud... wi ara the shudren...
With the lard and a discoloured, used can of Kimbo, we made our way through the thickets and over long barren plots of land to this place.

On this spot we made our greatest Christmas lunch ever: fried grasshopper with flame-grilled locust. (A chameleon happened to pass by and changed colour from the dusty brown of that rock there to the crispy, golden-brown of kuku porno). To crown it all, we munched on pilfered sugarcane, sweet potato and nduma baked the traditional way- just the way cucu used to- under a pile of smouldering ashes.

Sometimes Christmas comes but once in a lifetime!

After lunch we decided to paint the waterfall blue. Literally. Yes, we had half a tub of paint from God-knows-where. Oh, waterfall... It is upstream... Here, give me your hand, sweet lover... let me show you.

Beautiful, no...? See... look, baby, look... over there on that rock-face on the right bank. No, not where the antelope is... a little lower... yes there.

POTASH

On that Christmas day I wrote my name there. I wrote it in blue paint. Blue is the colour of love, my love.

Uhm, that... a Swastika? ...yes it is. We were young country boys, what did we know about all these Western wars, symbols, semiotics and bullshit? We just liked the symbols because we thought they were cool. Cultured. Drawing a Swastika on your wall was right up there with sticking a Pele picture on your autograph book. It meant you were with it. No, you were IT. You knew that you knew and everyone knew that you knew. Tut tut...! Hey, look here on my left arm, see? I got a Star of David tattoo. I did it with that prickly plant over there. Maybe I should replace that star with your name. No, no... it doesn't hurt. Not much, anyway... There you go... yeah, deeper sunshine... deeper....

Now pass me that there rub-rub-sweetness.

MAD AT SELF

2008-04-21T18:18:00.001+03:00

I write best when I am angry, but I angry in a different kind of way now; angry at myself. My penchant for self-censorship, these days, cannot allow me to write here this week. But I will write elsewhere. Catch me if you can...

...otherwise, see you next monday

P.

HAVE THEY TAKEN OVER?

2008-04-14T18:08:00.002+03:00

Sunday afternoon.

I am at Peterson's (gwa bita) throwing jug- worth and mug-worth of Senator left, right and centre. This is Kiambu and before me, in various stages of inebriation, are its jobless youth, lowlifes, petty thieves; the dregs not only of a social system that does not brook penury but also an economic construct that allows for only two things: having and not having.

Njoro, my cousin on my mother's side, is re-introducing me to this space. He runs me through the basic rules, once again, as I throw scar-faced Muriuki a 1 litre jug. The rules: stay calm; pay cash; and do not buy too much too quick. These rules are premised on certain facts: if you look fidgety, you are either new here or carrying large amounts of money. If you buy too much too quick, it means that you have a large amount to blow. The guys you buy the drinks will be the ones that will relieve you of your change, eventually. And, finally, pay cash because a bill in these kind of places is just a piece of paper with numbers on it; it has no correlation with your consumption.

But I cannot be bothered about rules. Me I am always saying, any young bachelor in this country who has some kind of hustle going on needs to redistribute their income. If the big fish will not share, if they insist on running a capitalistic economy and refuse to put in place safety nets for the disadvantaged majorities such as a better access to income generating activities, health, education and alcohol, then someone else has to do it. Someone like me...so, “Wakonyo, wape kitu!” If you want to inflate my bill, go ahead, how much can I possibly spend in a place where you can get totally wasted on 100 Kshs? Wee, kuzoo, pewa Napshizzle! I am only here for a week or two; these dudes haven't seen me in a dog's year, how will they know Potash lives?

The zero inches TV is on and a grainy John Dematthew VCD is playing. “I love this song!” I yell throwing my hands up like a Nairobi girl to the first riff of Linking Park's Numb. I wave my hands this and that way and hum incoherently. Of course I have never heard this song, but it is one of those John Dematthew 'Kikuyu Power' chants and I am seeking credibility. This, ladies and gentlemen, is Kikuyuland, and having been away for quite a bit, I need to prove that I haven't lost it. Especially seeing that, in the height of stupidity, I am wearing an orange shirt.

Scarface Muriuki's phone rings. It is one of those fancy phones that only a guy like Muriuki can answer in a bar like this. A bar where they will stab you for your last twenty bob. He has a text message. He reads it. He whispers, something, to the guy next to him and I see the other guy's face crinkle in a half-smile-half-scowl. Furtive glances are exchanged. Nodding heads and drinks being pushed away, thoughtfully. The room slowly begins to empty.

“Yo, P, take me I buy a joint.”
“But we got drinks cousin, niaje, niaje...?
“Okay, dude, I will see you later then, baadayes....”

I follow him outside wondering what happened to our drinker's creed that to leave an unfinished drink is like chewing on a goat's bone and throwing it away without breaking it; taboo.

“Tomorrow, cousin, it is going down.” he mutters and I am not even sure he is talking to me.
“Kesho, aje, aje...?” My cousin doesn't respond. Outside the bar, we squint our eyes in pain as we transition from the dark and smoky den into the sun-splashed afternoon. No more words are exchanged and we end up walking our separate ways. I walk into a 'proper' bar, with beer in bottles, across the street and my cousin heads off to God-knows-where.

At the 'proper' bar, I find a clump of uncles, cousins and kinsfolk of various removes, join them and swallow several litres of beer. At 2.00 am, Monday morning we stagger home.

***

I get out of bed at 10.00 am. Today, I will go into the city and meet up, or at least try to, a couple of writing projects contacts, I decide.

I choose to skip a shower and jump into the clothes I wore on Sunday. At the matatu stop, things are others....

...Mungiki has taken over!

KIAMBU; A MOMENT OF REALITY

2008-04-07T11:34:00.000+03:00

It has been many a month since I was in Kiambu. Kiambu, the land of my people; the motherland. So last week, finding the need to wean myself to reality; to set the pace for my re-engagement with the hoi polloi, I set out for Kiambu.

Kiambu, being the most affluent of the Kikuyu districts, is without a doubt Kenya's least poverty struck region. But therein lies an irony because Kiambu is easily one of the most unsafe places, in Kenya, to live in. Kiambu is the birthplace of the scum that runs Nairobi nights. Long before robbers graduate into gun-totting killers and take over Nairobi, they are schooled in blood-thirst and impunity; a callous approach to human life, in the dark village paths and muddy cattle tracks of Kiambu.

Kiambu the land of my birth. Let me take you there...

Imagine you were a made gangster. It is about mid-day and you are about to rob a bank or a Forex Bureau on Kenyatta Avenue. At this hour, you know that the exit routes towards a westerly direction are your best bet. The traffic is low and the roads are less pot-holed. But most importantly, they all lead towards home: Kiambu.

So, 1215hrs. Grab the money and shoot your way out of the banking hall. Saunter towards the white Toyota Corolla, it is your getaway car. (You idiot of course you didn't come here in it, but it is your GETAWAY car now, so shot the driver and get in). You are the one driving and you should concentrate on just that but at the back of your head you should be listening out for a single shot. That is one of your accomplices putting a bullet in the head of a random woman across the street. (Just in case people get the despicable notion that you are packing toy guns like village petty thieves.)

Step on the clutch and accelerator simultaneously. Good for effect. Then let go of the clutch and push the accelerator to the floor. Take a right at Kenyatta and Uhuru (fuck, isn't that a father and son from Kiambu, lucky bastards who robbed not just one bloody bank but a whole country without firing a single shot?) and brace yourself for aburst of rifle fire close by. It is the accomplice riding shot gun and he is either celebrating or nervous. Ignore him and keep driving.

This route out of Nairobi is on a dual carriageway and runs through the upmarket shopping centre of Westlands, and its leafy environs, on and on into the most affluent constituency in the country: Kikuyu. Government statistics say that only sixteen per cent of the population here lives below the poverty line. (Fuck, so how come all the people you grew up knowing were poor? But that gun, that posse... will change all that. Well, maybe you will just die trying to change that!)

'Welcome to Kiambu,' a billboard used to say. Urutaguo Mwiruti (It is taught to the self taught). Such is life.

As you drive past, your attention is drawn to a clutter of peeling paint and dust streaked shopping centres interspersed with incomplete yet fully occupied apartment blocks sharing the same gated and well manicured compound as posh bungalows, rows of one-roomed rental shacks made of corrugated iron sheets and small holder farms, (a successful one- with four fat cows lolling in a pen and hundreds of chickens fluttering about a storied run- nested against a desolate one with a mangy dog chasing a gangly and featherless-necked hen around a wooden cabin with a massive column of smoke pushing out of a window-shaped hole in the wall). This, as I said, is Kikuyu constituency of Kiambu District in the Central Province of Kenya.

I was born here. In one of the desolate farms. I was born here, not in an actual sense, but in the way that a Kenyan national ID puts it. I was born here because no one, as I grew up being told, is from Nairobi. I have lived in too many places; too many woe-begotten shacks, but this farm- this has the saddest memories. This place is real, the others are just dream places, spaces that I occupied in other lives that I cannot really return to. But this one, this one there will never be an escaping it. It feels so strange to be back.

Now if someone could just get that cow to shut up, I could finish this story....

SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI

2008-03-31T12:23:00.000+03:00

The higher you go the harder you fall. Here I am returned to the flat in the sky. Returned long enough to sign out; kiss the good times bye bye.

But first a party. A big party to celebrate my descent. In a few hours I will be down there with the masses. I am close enough now, to the masses, and as the clock ticks away, I begin to smell the stench of depravity and shattered dreams. My nostrils are inundated with the bitter-sweet stench of every-day-people Nairobi. Everyday, like I soon will be. Good bye tower; good bye drinks that come in glass bottles.

Tonight we drink, tomorrow we forget. At the dawn, the sun will rise in beautiful splendour. The serenity of the white clouds against a blue sky will find itself reflected in the pool. The trees will swing this way and that sending gentle ripples over the bird-baths. At noon the sun will move up the sky and while burning the meagre clothes off the backs of everyday Nairobians, it will find itself tamed and celebrated in this gated community. The neighbours will bring out their deck chairs, put their feet up on the porch walls and soak up the sun. I know they will do it, because I have always seen them do it; but I will not join them for I will be gone.

Good bye my serene Ivory Tower, let down the bridge over your moat for me. The real world awaits me. And thus passes my glory in your world.

SUNDAY OF THE PRODIGAL SON

2008-03-24T15:56:00.002+03:00

Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found. – (Luke 15:32, KJV)

In the old days, a son returning home was celebrated. The Kikuyu people did not celebrate with the slaughtering of a fattened calf, like the Jews of old, but they slaughtered a goat instead. But things have changed- in my part of the city, at least- returned sons get wary smiles and uneasy back-pats as their pockets get picked. Sons who return with empty hands get the cold shoulder.

I returned with empty hands. My mother embraced me. Tukutenderesa!

My mum sat on a stool outside her house. She was poised delicately, leaning over the charcoal brazier, with only two legs of the stool touching the ground. The stool's third leg jutted out of its seat at an unlikely angle- broken. Like dreams in this neighbourhood. The fourth leg was missing; gone for as long as I can remember. Like many sons in this neighbourhood.

“Thanks and praises to the almighty...” My mother yelled as she reached out to me her calloused palms touching my face. The stool tumbled over an edge of its seat hitting her unshod heel before finding the pebbled ground. In its rapid descent, the stool spun slightly and knocked over a plastic bowl of uncooked sukumawiki. “Welcome home my son...” mother said putting her arms around me. At that moment, the charcoal brazier she had been coaxing came to life. The measly bits of charcoal burst into low, dancing flames sending sparks all around us even threatening to set the palm fronds placed against the kitchen wall on fire.

It was Palm Sunday and this place was my Jerusalem. Would I last through Easter before the local chief crucifies me, for a crime I have not committed? I thought to myself.

“Where did you go to, Potash?” My mum asked her eyes squinted somewhere between joy and pent up concern.
“I have been around and about, mami... here in Nairobi.”
“So how comes you never came to see us, at all... did you move out of home and not tell me... is it a girl that kept you away from us; we that have always loved you?”
“What are you talking about mami? ...I was busy. Working.”
“What kind of work is this, Potash, ...work, work, work..., for twenty four hours a day, seven days a week? Even muhindis give you a Sunday off, once in a while.”
“I cannot make you understand, mami, but that is what it is: I have been very busy. With work.”
“So you have money... you really need to give me some. Look at this house, this place... look at my roof... over there... can I tell anyone that my son is out there working?” My mum started to sob but could not stop talking. “... my son, Potash, all you are, I made you... and if you got married and didn't tell me, hmmm....”

I had no money and no girl. Not here not now. In the year and a half since I left this place, there has been money- not much, but a lot for where I am coming from- and there have been girls. But now I have nothing. How could I make my mum understand that I had done my best, at least tried to, in most cases, to make a better life for me and in the broader scheme of things, for them too? Here I was, with nothing, and yet I had done my best- in love and in labour.

I stepped out of my mum's embrace and stared at all of the horizon that I could see beyond the low-lying cluster of tin roofs. Dusk was creeping, rapidly, upon this neighbourhood. My mind wandered into the nights of a distant past. Nights filled with rancorous yells; muffled grunts, of both pain and pleasure. Illicit pleasure. Sobs of a two year old flower plucked. Some times the nights smothered you with an eerie silence. A silence punctured by gunshots and the wailing from the vigil of another son.

It is the vibrating urgency of my cellphone that brought me back to the living. I pulled out my phone. Flipped it open expectantly. Maybe someone, from the world I had left a few hours earlier- a world of affected conversations: the craft of writing and the proper use of a semicolon; construction and deconstructions of the 'other'; positive ethnicity and the role of the writer, over exotic cuisines, Scottish whiskey and South African wines- was inviting me back.

“Eiiii, nice phone, baba Potashi...” Karis, my brother's son, Exclaimed. “... ni ya camera, eh? ...Photo me!”
I could barely hear him as I brought up the phones screen to my face while fumbling with the 'answer' button.
“Hmmm, is that one of those people you left us for, ii? ... you know, Potash, and I have told you this many times before, the book of Isaiah tells us that blessed is the man that does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners... those there friends of yours are nothing more than chaff in the wind...” she punctuated her sermon by brushing spit off the corner of her mouth with one hand and waving the other about to mimic the wind. “...but here son, in this house, no matter how much we use poverty to light the jiko, Jehovah knows our way. And our way is righteous. Stay here, with us, where you belong and the lord will make you like a tree planted planted by the water's side...”

It was not one of those 'sinners' calling, just a reminder I had set two days before. A reminder to go home today, no matter what. But I had remembered to come home and here I was. What I should have remembered was to tell someone- anyone- to call me and summon me out of this place. But who was there to tell, anyway- the writers I was walking away from or the the girls who had walked away from me?

***
The sound of thunder reaches us from a distance and above us cumulus clouds swiftly steal the sun's thunder. A drop of water lands on my face and then another and another in quick succession. “Come inside, Potash...” my mum whispers and I can feel the soft, kind pleasure of her hand on my elbow. “... I have to put something on the floor under the leaking roof...

...remember when you were very young and I left you sleeping alone in the house and went to the market...? ” My mum smiles into my eyes.
“Mami, I can never forget, that day... but I will never believe that it is the wind that blew away the iron sheet from our roof. Baba Njenga stole it...”

THE PLACE I ONCE CALLED HOME

2008-03-17T02:22:00.001+03:00

A mangy dog yelps past propelled by the sheer force of my boot against his backside. I pluck a leaf of nappier grass and use it to wipe a spot where the new and tan leather of my boot has been soiled by its collision with the dog. Well, maybe the dirt is not particularly evident but you can never be too sure in these places- what with rabies, tetanus and all.

I continue to walk down the slope. It is 2.00pm and the sun is perched high up in the sky leering furiously. Nairobi has been so hot lately but today it is scalding. Maybe it is this place. There are no swimming pools and trees and hyphenated cocktails here; those rose coloured glasses that turn the African sun into an endearing tourist attraction. In this place the largest water mass is a gallon-full and it is in a chang'aa brewery. The only trees, here, are burning: the charcoal and the marijuana.

“Potash....” It is some kid straight out of a Save Africa commercial. Too bad I have not brought my camera. That there would have been a great image for the blog. Nothing like a photo of a mud-streaked African child running towards a camera (towards the salvation that invariably wears a white face?), to get that hit counter dancing.

The kid runs towards me, his arms outstretched, his ribs pushing against his dark skin. It is the kind of moment that international careers; fame and fortune, are forged out of. Imagine the savage beauty of that photograph. The boy, caught in mid air and his smile photoshoped into an enigmatic grin, looks like an outcast grasping at the straws of the (international) community. His puny frame, his bare feet- everything about him, scabs, ringworms and all- captured in one frame. Africa freeze-framed.

“Wee, mtoto...Usinipake matope!” I yell at him while he is still at a distance from which I cannot see the ubiquitous skin lesions and fungal infections that mark childhood here.
“Mimi si mtoto... kwani umesahau jina yangu?” Damn it, it can walk and talk.

The child is so close now I can see his swollen eye. He parts the distance between us enough for me to recoil from his slum fragrance: urine and dirt. The boy is upon me but not before a blob of mucus can swing out of his nose and perch on the sleeve of my polo shirt.

“Baba Potashi...” he coos, his emaciated arms attempting but failing a stranglehold of me and his messy nose succeeding in grossing me out.
“Karis...” I say holding him by the arms, lifting him up and looking into his eyes.

The son of my brother is my son.

All my yuppie affectations melt away. Is this child me two decades ago? What chance, for a decent life, does Karis stand in this place? What can I do for him that would be worthwhile; more meaningful than all that sneakers, fresh fragrances and material bullshit? Love, affection, mentorship, what?

Karis' eyes lock with mine, the good one at least. I run my thumb lightly over his infected eye. It all reminds me of a time long ago when I sat in a corner trying to read for an exam. Only one of my eyes was working because I had caught an eye infection from my cousin who had caught it from our other cousin on and on ad infinitum. It is not the discomfort that I remember from that night though, it is that the lamp ran out of fuel. Such a long time ago, I mutter inwardly and hug Karis closer. Is there a me in him, I wonder

“...You have grown,” I say to Karis. I use that sing song voice adults speak to children with and it doesn't feel cheesy or awkward, to me at all.

I put him down and with his hand firmly held in mine we walk together into the sunset. Okay, okay... I put him down and we walk into that place I once called home.

POTASH PRESENTS: The Stories I Forgot

2008-03-10T13:08:00.001+03:00

The best times blur in remembrance; it is the painful ones that have stayed with me. Long days of seeking and not finding; of empty pursuits thrust into perpetuity. Hard, cold nights of catching moonbeams through an ageing roof. Some nights the full moon, hanging low in the sky would turn an eerie shade of red, the wind would blow malevolently against the tin (or the mad and wattle depending on where we lived then) walls and dark clouds creep on the moon; smother her light and loll over the sky an ominous rumble in their wake.

Then it would begin to rain.

To remember it all brings tears to my eyes- these tears do not rain, they pour. In private, in between spotless white linen, I curl myself into a foetal position and let the sheets mop up more fluid than they have from all the trysts they have seen lately. Those are my only moments of truth; times when the uppity conversations in mood lit rooms are done and I have no one to go home to.

In those days, the conversations would have been vulgar- held in coarse tongues over ugali and sukuma wiki (a jug or two of Senator or a jik of Chang'aa as we grew older) but at least there would have been someone to go home to. You would always return to your brothers' drunken snoring as they lay sprawled over the Vono single-bed. Or maybe it was one of your relatives from the village; an old mate from high school. Someone. Sometimes all these people would be all in there, sober and hungry, hurdled over the charcoal brazier telling war stories. Other times there would be nobody and you hoped for the best: that at least they were spending a night at the police station.

The Police station... nyumba ya mawe kizee!

Yes and the police station came with security. Security from our biggest fear: The Police. If you were spending a night at the police station it meant that they had caught you alive. And that, I kid you not, was a rare occurrence. Most important of all, the police station, for those who know its ways, came with a guaranteed breakfast. Scalding tea and a measly slice of bread after a night of cat naps in a crouching position might not seem like much but it was divine compared to the air burger breakfast at home.

In the morning, the OCS (Officer Commanding Station) would put you to work sweeping the police station's compound and send you on your way. They knew those who could be bailed out and those who couldn't. And you knew that they wouldn't bother taking you to court on charges of 'idling' because that was a charge they preferred on those they hoped to extort money from. Money which they knew you didn't have. Set free you returned to the same emptiness- to the constant struggle in search of any means of escape from poverty. In most cases the only means to be found was through cheap drugs and alcohol.

I say these things now because the soft voice that has been whispering in my year for over a year has turned into a yell. When I started this blog, it was because of two things. First I knew I had a story to tell. I did not know how well to tell stories, as I do now, but I had more stories then than now. But stories do not go away, they live in our hearts but the desire to rewrite history and escape its lowest moments thrusts us into the murky depths of forgetfulness.

The story I wanted to tell was that of a mid twenties Kenyan guy trying to afford his next shot of moonshine; his urban escape vehicle. About the realities of a life of fruitless striving and the ways we tried to escape it. It was about how life was and still is in that small theatre of broken dreams that is our end of Nairobi. The story of an urban space and a people who only live in NGO statistics and the dispatches of foreign correspondents. I wanted to imbue this space with character, take away the jaded and callous ways real people were constantly reduced to objects to which a subject (war, hunger and pestilence) and a verb were added to complete that 'balanced' news story. I meant to take away the emasculation of a people through turning them into data that fit well into a pie chart in a funding proposal. I desired to translate the lived experience into the written word. Maybe in the process of transferring life into words, I would be discovered as a writer.

The being discovered as a writer was the second reason I started doing this blog. These days they call me a writer. But how can I be an accomplished writer while the story that made me languishes in oblivion? Without the Kenyan Urban Narrative, I am incomplete.

I write these words now because, lately, I have been thinking about truth and forgetfulness. The written word has been for centuries, now, the most efficient way of documenting and preserving truths. Books, nay, written words have an element of permanence, they immortalise the author and grow the database of the record of a human existence. Our existence. What is written now affects what we think tomorrow. Yet all that is written today is not of necessity true. And some of those falsehoods are peddled purposely. The purpose is never, out rightly, to deceive but merely to add drama to mundane experiences.

Mainly, I am talking about the Memoir here. It is amazing how many autobiographies are being called to question in recent times. Forget about the blatant inventions of Margaret Seltzer aka Margaret B. Jones in Love and Consequences, Misha Defonseca in Misha: A Memoire of The Holocaust Years, the Oprah-Bubble-Busting James Frey and the like but the accusations of embellishment and anachronism in say Ishmael Beah's A long Way Gone. If such accusations can be true, can these narratives be seen to have been ruined by a desire in the publishing world to publish what is sensational, if badly told, rather than what is mundane yet well and truthfully narrated? Are readers more interested in the humanity of their subject or in their celebrity, infamy and vileness? Are stories of every day, forgotten people remarkable out of once-in-a-while news features?

Can the Kenyan Urban Narrative be told for and as what it is- a lived experience- and continue to appeal to its audience and the world that does not know the story?

Most important of all, how much can its author remember? How much of story is there without the detail? Is the accuracy of time vis a vis incident relevant or is placing real incidents in wrong times a misrepresentation of fact enough to push the narrative into the realm of fiction?

Such have been my thoughts for long days. I have many answers from the ethical to the philosophical but what I have realised is that those answers are not necessary or in anyway related to what I set out to do. Not, at least, in the most fundamental of ways which is whether or not this blog can give voice to a disenfranchised majority. To my own self, then, I shall be true and return to the neighbourhood. Shed this ridiculous pandering for literary greatness that is lived more in association that in works published.

I am slipping out of the writers' network that has taken me into its bourgeoisie embrace. Now, I will jump back into the murky depths of Nairobi under-privilege where this writing business all begun. I seek to and hope to return to those days of striving and not finding. Return even in metaphorical ways: through memory and lucid dreams. I want to go back to those days, when the writing was cathartic. To that place where words were the best way to escape that low moment when the alcohol and drug buzz is worn out and you know not where your next high is coming from. I am going back to a time when I wrote and wrote, grinding pencil lead to a pulp and wearing out exercise book after exercise book right through to the margins just to still the demons and wait out the unpredictable, yet much hoped for, arrival of a psychotropic escape route from despondency.

I am going back to the Kenyan Urban Narrative. At least to the most of it that I can still remember.

QUEER FOR 2008

2008-03-03T16:01:00.001+03:00

These queer folks sure thrown down a cool party. Friday night and the first queer bash of the year is, finally, here. I have been waiting all week. I need to go because I have long run out of lube and it has been ages since I have seen more queer folk in a room that I got head rush.

It all began the other week, on Monday, when a little birdie whispered in my browser: Q-Bash on next week Friday. I called my people. Got confirmation- venue, ticket prices et al. But a party is not a party without an entourage, so I called my other people. My other people happen to be press so I called my people to vouch for them.

Then D-Day crawled upon us. Friday, February 29th. It was a busy day. I had this writers' support group thingie to attend, at the British Council, all day. It was one of the better ones, I must say, where you know everyone and you have read more of their work beyond what they are presenting that day. I have been a lazy one, you know, so I had nothing to present which is such a shame as it was the kind of writing that has a guaranteed publication and possible payment option. But, I think I am getting enamoured to the life of a struggling artiste: spend all your time between getting wasted and complaining about how hard it is to make money as an artiste in this country.

But I digress...

After the workshop I walked downtown with two of my mates and I made a meal out of a dead goat and some rice. Then some chick texted to say she had hit the airport and was cruising in my direction. “What's happening P, you going for the gay party or can I buy you some Ethiopian?”I assumed that to be a rhetorical question. Some truths, ladies and gentlemen, you have to hold as self evident, that queer parties and exotic dinners with heteros are not created equal. So the gay party it was, but not before some lame conversation was had:

“Potash...”
“Niaje... niaje!”
“I am really dying for some Ethiopian food...”
“Pole...but there is some gay action to catch...”
“Sawa...but can we eat first?”
“Nope, I will not let your hunger eat into my crotch time...”
“But wait... you do white chicks and black guys, no?”
“Yeah!”
“I am a white chick...!”
“Nice, so we have to go find a black guy at this party so I can have me a sandwich!”
“Okay fine, lets go then... what is Ethiopian food anyway, isn't Ethiopia not more famous for the lack of food?”
“Hey, do not insult starving Africans....”

My retort was interrupted by the arrival of the rest of the entourage, to make up a party assault vehicle of: Potash, the, two girls, two boys and one homophobe. The homophobe had the ride, but it was my invite he was rolling on, so I threw my rule book at him,

“Dude, parental advisory, it is either you are in or you are out. I would rather you out but on the promise of good behaviour I will let you in.”
“Potash, us guys are miros, man.... this shit...”
“It is two ways here... and please, do not miro me... either you are in or out. If you are in, then it is quit-homophobia-cold-turkey-night for you.”

So he was in. And like that guy in the bible- Jesus Christ, or something- it is like I had said to him: Ephphatha, for behold, on that night the homophobe's eyes were opened.

Ahhh... I am too lazy to write these days but I need to keep this blog going. So this will suffice for this Monday's quota. I am off to the bar. Such is the life of the struggling artist.

ZARATHUSTRA AND THE GOD POTASH

2008-02-25T14:08:00.001+03:00

A Dream That Will, Hopefully, Become A Work in Progress

“Potash ist tot,” Thus spoke Zarathustra.
“Indeed,” said I, Potash, The. “For what does it profit one to abandon the pursuit of Godhood and, in lieu, wallow in carnal pursuits. The raison d'etre of mortals.”
“False premise, that,” said he. For mortals- Men; humanity- live not for canal gratification. The corpus is not but a mere vessel, in truth, the soul makes the being.”
“...and you, Zarathustra, deign the soul choice?”
“... or words to that effect!” Zarathustra grinned.
“But assuming that the soul allows, nay, commands the vessel to seek its own gratification, what comes first: the erogenous zone or the orgasm?” I asked knowing him to be of the teleological school.
“Come...?”
“A philosophical question you perverted soul...”
“I, Zarathustra, has a penis because I need an orgasm”
“How shallow. I, Potash, has an orgasm because I have a penis. And that orgasm never was a need but a consequence of penis usage- that usage deriving from said penis telling the brain that in that vagina, that anus, (or my right palm, in most instances) lies an orgasm.”
“But would, in the absence of your penis seeking it, the orgasm still not exist?”
“Cause and effect, sir, is the nature of the orgasm. As a spark is born when steel is put to flint and so is an orgasm when mortise and tenon conjoin.”
“You are the steel, my man; the spark bringer.” Zarathustra touchéd.
I could see the colour drain out of his eyes and gush downwards through his blood vessels. Nature indeed abhors a vacuum penis.

***

“Potash ist Hootttt....!” Thus cooed Zarathustra.
“Indeed,” said I, Potash, The. For what will it profit I to pursue Godhood and, in failure, fall; recede from high up into the arms of a frumpy maid (or manchild)?
“Yes, yes,“ agreed Zarathustra. “For even though canal gratification is not the purpose of man, there sure lives another orgasm out there waiting for you to find. And you can only find it by remaining mortal.”
“Where, my good man, do you reckon that orgasm lives; in you perhaps?”
“Oh, you are too kind...” he blushed.
For one second there I couldn't convince myself that it was his mind, I was attracted to. Not for the way his face crinkled in cute lines and the crow feet under his eyes turned into rivulets draining away his happy tears. There are wrinkles, I thought to myself, that a facelift can ruin. All this while I ran a wary finger down a vein on his forehead.
“Maybe, “ opined Zarathustra, “you can be a sex God.”
“I could be a Greek god. I will be a Greek God. I, Potash, the Young Urban Polysexual is become, henceforth, Hermes the Pansexual... and you, beautiful being, are Hermaphroditus...”
“In my father's house are many gods but I go now to prepare a shrine just for you, Potash. My people shall be your people and their gods... their gods I declare an abomination, before thee.”
“I am. I, Potash... I am the Lord; your sex God. Thou shall not have any more gods before me... for I am a vengeful God!”
“Amen!” cried Zarathustra genuflecting.
“God, humble Zarathustra, can never die. Not unless your need to invent him does.” I philosophised.
But Zarathustra was too busy burning incense at my feet to be bothered with philosophical cogitations.
“Arise, Zarathustra,” I commanded.
And at that moment I tore my garment into two and Zarathustra, beholding the holy of holies, went down on his knees to worship.
Potash came.

TIME OF THE KENYAN WRITER II

2008-02-18T09:28:00.001+03:00

In conversation (maybe ranting) with writers. A transcript

Let peace prevail... ha... not until I get into the New York Times.

Good Evening ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you for coming out tonight.

I see many faces I recognise: those of writers, journalists and varied media types..

You all know as much as I do that the Kenyan crisis is bigger, much more sexier now, than HIV babies...

You all know that in Africa, careers are made in adversity... are we going to let Bono and Angelina Jolie beat us to this one?

The speed and accuracy at which shit hits the fan in Africa means that we the chroniclers of this continent- of its body count mainly- will never go out of business.

The question we as writers have to answer before the international gaze shifts to the next crisis is not why Kenya happened or Rwanda...or Chad... but where we were when it happened.

To those who were no there, may fame and glory elude you. Elude you unless you are Ngugi wa Thiongo and have a book of prophecies to sell.

And the book of prophesies is indeed the easier way out... The template exists for an African crisis: The Shona and the Ndebele, the Igbo and the Yoruba, the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin are all by a singular thread of atavism conjoined.

Indeed, all of Africa is but two tribes: The Killers and the Killed.

So where was I when Kenya happened? Story for another day but I can tell you this:

For one moment at the beginning, Britney spears had a tantrum and we got thrown of the News Charts.

Then we blew up a church and the Christian civilisations up North stopped to listen.

Damn, Kenya is so big now, even George Bush knows where it is...

We have weathered a storm in china... the slave trade in Chad, the siege of Ndjamena even Amy Winehouse's coke and Grammies party.

And now people who know people are telling me that Don Cheadle has been spotted at the Hotel Sirikwa in Eldoret.

TIME OF THE KENYAN WRITER

2008-02-13T09:39:00.002+03:00

Also: The Inchoate Thoughts of an Indolent Blogger

Now the Belgians fucked up a bunch of African nations and when you look at them, they have the same shit to deal with at home: the Flemings, the Walloon and the German speakers. Are those tribes? No, sir... those are social cultural movements and ethnological groupings. Tribes is for the rot the Belgians perpetuated in Rwanda. Tribe is for the atavistic Africans who manifest their culture in backward ways and whose penchant for primitivism and regression into the murky depths of the primordial soup is both inevitable and inexplicable.

***

As I continue with my series of essays examining the Kenyan psyche, with a specific emphasis on Kikuyus, the desire for self-advancement leers.

In these troubled times, that I continue to refer to as the time of the Kenyan writer- a time when anything a Kenyan writer and us pseudo-writers of the blogosphere writes counts- the need to create a balance between this blog and other media out there cannot be gainsaid.

I have made a commitment to myself to blog every Monday and present on this space well thought out, analytical posts but challenges abound. For one, I am a lazy writer who prefers to engage in bar room intellectualism and high-faluting discourse via email. When it comes to being what I am meant to be- a writer- I just fail to deliver. The effort of translating words into clean, publication ready copy I refuse to take upon myself.

Secondly, and this worries me the most, the realities of being an unemployed writer mean that I have to divert my attentions to things that put bread, or the alcoholic equivalent, on the table in the short run.

Anyway, everything needs to begin somewhere. I appreciate all those who continue to pick up my work from this blog and republish it elsewhere. It allows me to kill two birds and saves me the agony of editing myself for publication. In the meantime, by manner of first-steps, I will attempt to give six solid hours of writing today. I have a couple of beers to work to so I reckon I will survive. If I do not pull it, then damn it, I will find it to be compelling evidence that, even though I claim to detest the concept of the struggling artiste, deep down I aspire for it.

Isn't it silly?

FACES ON A KIKUYU WALL*

2008-02-04T08:23:00.000+03:00

"In the eyes of the Kikuyu people, the submission to a despotic rule of any particular man or a group, white or black, is the greatest humiliation to mankind.”
In the living room of every Kikuyu man of a certain age, a portrait of the Muthamaki. And with every portrait you see, Jommo Kenyatta, the man turns into God. A man who in real life is not imposing in stature turns into a giant killer in the ubiquity of his image- larger than the family portrait- that dominates every wall shrine from Kabete to Ruguru, Ruare to Warubaga.
Kenyatta is resplendent in leather jacket- a status symbol among the Kikuyu of that era- and the ceremonial monkey skins of authority. He stares out the future, nobility perched on his brow, with dignity. The fly-whisk in his hand, a freeze framing of autocratic grace punctuates the caption: Mutongoria Njamba/ hero and leader.
Sometimes when you have visited enough homes, you begin to encounter, rather sporadically, another photo. It is always a small one, often times seen in a butchery or hoteli owned by an angry old man who wears the same great coat every day and talks of old wars in foreign lands. This photo has no caption. It is a photo that seems to have lost the fight to stay relevant yet it still clings tenaciously to what space is left, after Kenyatta is done, in the gallery of Kikuyu pride. But in a society where folk lore speaks more than a thousand pictures, every one knows the name of the man in the untitled photo. The man whose name is only mentioned in whispers. Kimathi. Dedan Kimathi Waciuri.
Kimathi's photo looks grainier than a Chinese DVD. Kimathi is lying on the ground his hair in matted locks and his lean frame emphasised by the blanket wrapped around him. He is in handcuffs.
A few years later, I join school. In my history text book, Kimathi is still in handcuffs.
My history textbook dedicates an entire chapter to Jommo Kenyatta and one paragraph to Kimathi Waciuri. Kimathi Waciuri was a Mau Mau; Jommo Kenyatta, as he wrote (or another mzungu wrote for him, again) in Suffering Without Bitterness, was not. In this Kenya of today; a Kenya premised on Uhuru na Kazi, there can be no place for terrorist elements. As Kenyatta was quick to remind us, at the birthing of our republic,(or did we just overhear a private conversation between him and the settlers?), Mau was a disease that had been eradicated.

As I grew older, the image of Kimathi in shackles began to haunt me. Then the haunting turned into a deep seated pain that was constantly awakened by a modern Kikuyu saying: Nairobi (Kenya, really) was shared out when people were sleeping.

That saying and the photos of the two independence heroes coalesced into a kind of metaphor for this nation in my mind: Some Kenyans had inherited the monkey skin- control over the means of production- while others had inherited the shackles- cursed to forever feed at the foot of Dives table. Slaves in their own land. The homeland that was shared out while they were out fighting for it.

The Mau Mau war, my grandparents told me was about land and freedom. Half a century later, tens of thousands of Kikuyus roam this country with no land, no Uhuru and no Kazi. About ten Kikuyu families own land the size of a province and control all the free and foul enterprise of the Kikuyu nation and beyond.

The new picture on Kikuyu walls is that of Mwai Kibaki. Don't you wish to hear him remind the Kikuyu, the Economy, anyone, that the disease has been eradicated?

There is only one picture on Kikuyu walls yet, once again, just like in the colonial days, the Kikuyus are being hounded out of their homes. Is there a new picture of a Kikuyu man in shackles? Is there a new name whispered?

The saga continues....

*Post to be reviewed in 30 mins for footnoting and disclaimer

WHY I BLAME KIBAKI

2008-01-22T20:44:00.000+03:00

On Thursday December 27th, 2007, I voted. I could have been somewhere having a beer, but no, I went out to a polling station and stood in a line waiting to cast my vote.

Yes I voted in Kenya's last General Election. I didn't vote because I believe in democracy; I didn't vote because I wanted to make a difference in my country; I voted because it is both my right and civic duty. I voted because, even though I believe democracy to be a sham, it is a nice ritual every couple of years that creates the impression that the power to govern- to lord it over the masses- is derived from the masses.

But I was worried that this time round, after several years of doing it right, we would get it wrong. And when nations get it wrong; when the mandate is questioned or appropriated by individuals or a group of them who have no ability to beguile the masses, anarchy takes over. And Kenya was headed that way.

The incumbent president, Kibaki had lost control over Kenya. No, Kibaki had never had control of Kenya. Kibaki was president because Raila had said: Kibaki Tosha! (Translation: Let there be President Kibaki). And there was President Kibaki.

Granted President Kibaki had the Economy- which is something you could take to Equity, er, I mean, the bank- Raila had the masses. And in these Third World, emerging (pseudo) Democracies, the masses is what you need. Raila was the new religion.

Kibaki's mistake wasn't because he was corrupt. Corruption, after all, is the smallest, big issue in Kenya. And you would have expected Kibaki to know that. Having served in both the Kenyatta and the Moi governments, he must have learnt from the best that Kenyan know that the President is never corrupt, it is the President's men who are.

Kibaki's mistake was in the things he didn't learn from his predecessors: have pictures of you doing manual labour like building gabions placed in text books; rename streets and roads after yourself (Mombasa Road by any other name will still congest the same); hire and fire people at random so that all of Kenya stays tuned to the same radio station only to hear that today you went to church or that you bought bananas by the roadside in Kangemi; meet the people because unlike you, they do not live in State House. But most important of all, detain an Odinga.

Because he never did these things, Kibaki lost control of this country. In the meantime, his Roads Minister, an Odinga was out there building roads, by-passes and such other fancy things that only Kenyans in the diaspora with their, “you know in America... (or wherever else Kenya's economic exiles congregate) ...” could fathom. Playing to the gallery. Raila Odinga, then Roads Minister, was working while Kibaki was nowhere that Kenyans could tell you of. That while Kibaki, from his experience in two regimes, should have known that Kenyan ministers do not work, the President works through them.

Every day, Kenyans heard: Raila was here, Raila was there, but the only time the Kibaki name was mentioned, it was Lucy Kibaki behaving badly, again.

Then Kibaki called a Referendum on a new constitution. Kibaki lost. That was November 2005 and I knew that this country had gone to dogs.

What followed was two years of political bickering. For the first time in the history of this country , every fool with a mouth could say that President Kibaki was a *$%& so and so and live to vote again. Na hiyo ni upubaff!

Suddenly, to me, the terms President Kibaki and the Kibaki Government became an oxymoron in the league of Nairobi Water and Kenya Power. For the first time in Kenya's post-independent history, the office of the president, that of the Head of State and Government and the man occupying them were separated; there was now the State, the Government and Kibaki . Too many centres of power.

Kibaki, in a country that was used to Rais ndio baba na mama, mwalimu namba moja... hizi mbuzi zote ni yeye na tuko nyuma ya matako yake, reduced himself to: the man who sleeps at State House; a mere mortal; fallible.

The myth of Government was shattered; the siri was yanked out of Sirikali.

What followed was Kenya's most politically unstable reign. What was seditious and treasonable in past regimes now wore the veil of democracy and freedom of expression. The Press declared itself free and was generally seen to be so- at least on those nights when the First Lady wasn't insomniac.

Democracy had found Kenya but a Social Contract that would have bound the Kenyan People and their leaders to it was still not there. The President, it would have been expected, would have filled this vacuum; steered Kenyans towards the enjoyment of new freedoms responsibly. But he did not. The People, ever dependent, or at least used to, strongmen cried out for leadership.

While Kibaki retired to State House, with his Old Money peers, the new faces in his government took control of the public coffers. They threw the safe doors open. They had inherited massive corrupt deals, they signed them over to themselves. This was the Government of the Noveaus Riche. The public returned to its disgruntled mumblings.

New heroes rose. Unlikely heroes. The political thieves of yesteryear, finding themselves wearing the strange new mask of The Opposition, took it all in stride. They reinvented themselves as the new voices of probity. Our version of democracy was defined: the tyrants and the corrupt are only found in the government in power, they become Democrats and progressives when they cross the floor and vice versa.

In the meantime, Raila Odinga was still reading from Machiavelli. He had found himself ousted of government for revealing to Kenyans the real reason he had said Kibaki Tosha, in that October 2002, at the twilight of the Daniel Moi rule. He had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Kibaki, it was said, that would see the Kibaki presidency promulgate Raila's preferred constitution for Kenya. Somewhere along the way, having emerged president and yet again achieving political glory without breaking a sweat, Kibaki had either suffered a massive concussion and forgotten the MOU or realised how powerful the current constitution made him to be bothered with changing it.

Raila protested. Kibaki stayed put.

Raila began to fight against Kibaki's. Kibaki continued to ignore him. Raila was on TV every day. Nobody knew where Kibaki was. Raila began to galvanise the masses; sell himself as the real and only hero of the liberation from the tyranny of Nyayo while Kibaki was a pretender to the throne. Kibaki continued to sit on his throne- the throne Raila made him- nonplussed.

Then 2007 came. The year of the General Election. Raila had been campaigning, politicking, since 2003; Kibaki had been sitting and watching the economy grow. Raila had been all over the country and all over the media talking to people. Kibaki had been sitting at State House- a gated community of one.

2007 was the year of the Opinion Polls. Kalonzo was leading at first, but Raila worked hard to prove that Kalonzo's appeal lay merely in looks and not substance. Sooner than later, Raila took the lead in all the polls. Kibaki did nothing. The campaign period hasn't begun yet, Kibaki's men said while continuing to cast aspersions at the accuracy and neutrality of the polls. The point they missed though was that this was about politics, and the one thing that matters most is not truth but perceptions; and the public perception was that Raila was in the lead. That Raila would be the next president.

As the election approached, Kibaki hit the campaign trail. He had the benefit of incumbency- which in Kenya means that he had an arsenal of political goodies to bribe the voters with: Districts were dished out, hawkers were allowed to take over the CBD and the police were warned against harassing the youth. A week to the election date, the final polls came in and Kibaki continued to trail Raila.

At this point I became immensely worried. People asked me: “do you think Kibaki will win?”
I responded, emphatically, No!
“What do you think Kibaki's strategy is?”
None!
“So will he hand over power?”
“Kibaki cannot hand over power... the power he has is not his to hand over, Kibaki is holding power in trust for the Kikuyu people.”

Of course by the Kikuyu people I meant, the Kikuyu elite. Those Kikuyus who amassed wealth under Kenyatta; Kikuyus who kept their wealth under Moi even as Agriculture, the lifeline of the Kikuyu, found itself crippled. Kikuyus who purport to speak for other Kikuyus even when their, economic and political realities are worlds apart.

Then came December 27th. It was clear that Kibaki had no winning plan. As the poll results came in it became increasingly obvious that Kibaki was loosing. I began to worry. Then a series of sad and dubious events transpired and Kibaki was declared the winner in the presidential election. I was angry but not because Kibaki had won. I felt that the election had been rigged, but it is not for that that I was angry. I was angry because I felt that the election had been rigged after the fact. I was mad because, for the first time in Kenya's multi-party era, the charade of democratic elections hadn't been well executed- the majority felt cheated and those on the winning side felt they cheated foolishly.

On Sunday 30th, December, Kibaki was sworn in as the President of the Republic of Kenya. He was sworn in a few hours before the expiry of his previous term. A term he had taken over at a glorious public ceremony was being extended behind closed gates. Kibaki came out of the bowels of State House, took his oath in the gardens, and went back in.

Outside of State House, the country exploded.

Many Kenyans, have died since then. Many more will continue to die, especially poor ones who happen to be Kikuyus living without high walls and armed guards, until Kibaki steps out of State House and speaks to Kenya.

WE THE KIKUYU

2008-01-14T23:45:00.000+03:00

Walking and talking to a crowd of Internally Displaced Kikuyus in Eldoret, this blogger revisits his Kikuyuness.

When I was young, I wanted it all: the pick-up, the farm, the Godfather hat and the pointed shoes. I wanted the beer, the goat ribs and what in those days was called a Public Opinion- a beer belly. For God's sake I even wanted gout, because it bespoke, eating well, conspicuous consumption. Gout was to me the disease of those who had arrived.

When I was young, all I wanted to be, when I grew up, was a Kikuyu.

I was born in Kiambu. That was just after Jommo Kenyatta died but just before the first coup in Kenya's history. When I became of a school going age, I was sent off to school in the Rift Valley. In my school were many Kikuyus: Kikuyus from Rware and Kikuyus from Kabete; Kikuyus from Muranga and Kikuyus from the Diaspora. Those were days when Kikuyu regional rivalries and one-up-manship had been lost in the passage from one generation to the next and all that was left for us were the witticisms, hackneyed stereotypes and jocose contestations. Nobody cared where the next person was from- unless it was Dundori- and yet I made a point of reminding everyone that I was from Kiambu. I was Kiambu Mafia.

Then I grew up.

When I grew up, I realised that there were People from Kiambu and then there was the Kiambu Mafia. I was of the People- Kiambu had its owners. Indeed there was a Kiambu Mafia, with its GEMA conspiracies and massive loans to buy off every Mzungu settler from Kabete to Warubaga; loans that would later find their way into that classified document called the Debt Register which states how much you and your descendants, for ever and ever, amen, owe a Shylock in the Isle of Man. But also there were People From Kiambu, a significant majority, who scrimped and saved to buy land- through, often fictitious or fly-by-night, land buying companies formed by the Kiambu Mafia to dispose off the parcels of land that they had acquired through the previously mentioned loans.

In retrospect, I was blessed; my family was privileged- my grandfather had land in Kiambu. He had a parcel of land in what was formerly known as the Native Reserve and a plot in the Gicagi. (My grandfather inherited those from his father who had acquired them in the Demarcation, colonial land allotments, and split it out between all his sons from a stable of wives. The Gicagi became the dice throw of Kikuyu-land: in some places, Gicagis became shopping centres and the land appreciated while in others they became a Kibera in microcosm.)

Then the Mau Mau war happened. Everyone was shipped into the Emergency villages. When the war ended, many returned to nothing. Some men returned from the bush and found that the only thing that their, now homeless, wives had acquired was a son or two that looked like the Chief and that one of the many things that the Chief had acquired was their land.

Isn't all fair in love and war?

When I was young, I was taught that the Mau Mau war was a struggle for independence. Then I grew up. When I grew up, I realised that the Mau Mau war was a dud; Kenya's independence was negotiated. Long before the Mau Mau declared war against the white man, Jommo Kenyatta had been sleeping with a white woman. Jommo Kenyatta knew- because he had known books that one- that the problem was the top; the system, and not the colour of the man at the top. The British knew that he knew. And he knew that they knew that he knew. So the British called Kenyatta to England and negotiated a deal with him that would allow them to change the colour of the man at the top without changing the system.

And that is the way Kenyatta and his ilk; their kinsmen and descendants, from 1963 to perpetuity, won their Independence.

The Mau Mau war didn't win anyone their independence, it won them dependence on a black man rather then a white one.

It thus came to pass, that one day in December of 1963 the Governor of Kenya, on behalf of Her Majesty the Tyrant of Empire, ceremoniously handed over power to Mzee Jommo Kenyatta. A celebratory mood rose all over Kenya; this was one nation under God, and no blessings from the Queen needed. The Union Jack was lowered. The Kenyan flag was hoisted.

Ee mungu nguvu yetu.
Ilete baraka kwetu...

Red, White, Black and Green

They told me that Red was for the blood that was shed and green was for the land that was won. I grew up and then I realised: red was for those who died fighting and green was for those who lived- to reap matunda ya uhuru. My ancestor inherited the red, your ancestor inherited the red; so why do we have to die that those that inherited the land may stay ever green?

THE RISE OF THE CITIZEN JOURNALIST

2008-01-09T12:13:00.000+03:00

Dec: 27th, 2007: 13:35:15- Wuod wa ner wan rigging plan kendo tho mua. PNU ose keto mipango mar rigging to ini nyalo stop. Ani kode nyathiwa OBAMA.

Dec: 27th, 2007: 13:50:15- Mwathani arokugitara kumana na maundu mothe ma mucukani ta mirimu, aici, arogi, thuya, ndaa, ngunguni, na muno muno kiama kia ODM.

Dec: 30th, 2007: 14:33:20- the only way is the third way, the only guy whose results are not in doubt, akubalishwe apenye!

Jan 1st, 2008: 01:34:45- The ministry of Internal Security urges you to please desist from sending or forwarding any SMS that may cause public unrest. This may lead to your prosecution.

Jan 3rd, 2008: 02:33:59- In the interest of peace, we appeal to Kenyans to embrace each other in the spirit of patriotism, and exercise restraint to restore calm to our nation.

***

Were u @... Hukus is Harsh. That was the text message I received on new year's day. It was one of a string of truncated texts from Kakamega, Kisumu, Kibera; status reports from people too weighed with worry to bother with detail. It was a radical departure from the text messages of the previous two weeks: those voluble, half essays that moved from the witty, to the abrasive, to the repugnant.

On December 30th 2008, President Mwai Kibaki (was) declared (himself) the winner of the hotly contested presidential election. The aftermath: an escalation of violence, hooliganism and anarchy. This was not only the bloodiest General Election in Kenya's history, it was its most embarrassing. The results were delayed; the public grew restless, then the results were announced and the simmering discontent and allegations of rigging led to what various analysts have termed as a premeditated genocide.

The anxiety was heightened by the ban on live news broadcasts by the Minister for Internal Security. As witnessed earlier, in the 2005 Referendum, the General Election in 2007 had seen hundreds of private citizens, sitting at polling centres throughout the country, sending text messages of the vote tallies as they emerged; broadcasting, virally across the country on the cellular networks any irregularities and anomalies that they saw in their polling stations. All over the country, people had a general idea of the losers and winners from every constituency. And it was suddenly becoming evident that figures were being adjusted to the advantage of both sides. (Raila Odinga has conceded and named the constituencies in which he was added votes, Kibaki as always is not saying anything.)

Then the winner was announced. Chaos reigned. The Minister for Internal Security took over. He declared, while the country continued to wonder as to the whereabouts of the President, a virtual State of Emergency- ruling by decree. Text messages that may cause public unrest were outlawed. But no one told Kenyans what consisted a text message that may cause public unrest: questioning the final tally? Freedom of expression was thrust out of the window. The public was left to its own devices: the grapevine- a hub of half truths and conspiracy theories.

To bridge this information gap, many Kenyans went to the internet; to the blogs and mailing lists. The digital age is, after all the age of the citizen journalist where big media finds itself rivalled by its primary audience in content provision. The monopoly of 'truth' has shifted from the media house with the widest coverage to those private citizens reporting 'live from the scene of their lives.' Some of these stories are well told, a majority are amateurish and filled with conjecture but they are living stories, imbued with that touch of human reality that mainstream journalism has long lost in its pretentious quest for objectivity and angles. These stories continue to find new broadcast media, to travel across the world on their own steam; they are redefining not only the traditional media's approach to reporting but also the communication models of advocacy groups.

It remains unfortunate that this blogger has been quiet at the time his opinion mattered most. But the truth of the matter is that he has been involved in a larger behind the scene attempt by Kenyan writers to 'give a human face to the crisis that erupted in this country. These writers have also set out to They also set out to counter the prevailing view of Kenya, by the world, from the the jaundiced eye of the Foreign Press.

In the meantime, we promise to resume regular transmission from this space, our efforts towards moving house having been thwarted by forces beyond our control.

MOVING PLANS

2007-12-20T15:13:00.001+03:00

The more they called me a writer, the less I wrote. Well, lets put it all in perspective: there is writing and then there is writing. I feel like I write a lot these days. Not the most I have written in my most prolific times, previously, but a lot still. In fits, I write; in hits and misses, just like before. The only difference now is that most of what I write cannot and will never add to my dream of a Kenyan Canon.

One of my handlers said to me the other day, “Potash, what is this thing about not blogging? ...You are nothing without that blog!” Indeed. For all its bawdy leanings, an ovum thin veneer of pseudo-intellectualism and pedestrian approach to the craft of writing, this blog remains my only claim to literary cred.

It has found its spaces; thrust me into new places. Six excerpts from it made it into the latest edition of the journal Kwani? Charles A. Matathia has done an impressive rendition of Voluntary Drinking Overseas for the latest edition of the Nigerian Literary magazine Farafina- Farafina 11: Journeys. Keguro Macharia taught excerpts from it out there in the American Midwest. Then there was the BBC interview, being plagiarised by fringe newsletters and being turned into spam. Hey, some nice Italian journal even translated me into Italian.

All said... I need to return to this space. I need it. And I am working on that return. It might not be as dramatic as I had envisioned it... but I am working on things... working with others, to find this blog a new home.

All this hopefully in the new year. Meantime watch this space.

SENTENCES

2007-09-21T11:11:00.000+03:00

“Imagine me Hon. Potash, M.P, LTE- Legal Tax Evader. I want to be the first kid to bring a tax-free salary, or any salary for that matter- to the ‘hood.”

It is midnight here. Half past midnight to be precise. I have just been working on this piece for some (Insert journal of choice, if this is not for them then you can be sure I will be writing for them next) and it feels done. I revised, for God's sake I revised. Now I got a bunch of sentences in there that feel so neat I cannot recognise that I wrote them.
I kinda like one of the sentences:

“They die deaths so painful and laboured for they have mastered the world- caught a view of the living from across multiple planes of existence- seen, heard, walked with the whispers of the Great Winds creasing their ears as their toes crunched the sand on the receding shoreline of mortality.”

Can you spot the punctuation? I do not know man, but in the last one year I have learnt a thing or two about the craft of writing. In one year I have moved from a self styled street philosopher and pseudo-intellectual into a Writer. Yes, I have become a bore.
I open a document with my entire blog that a so called groupie sent to me. I read two pieces from the street days and tears come to my eyes. It suddenly occurs to me that I haven't blogged in ages and I become aware of the fact that it isn't that I have been too busy to blog, it is just that I cannot do this blog justice.

For many years I went on and on about how much I wanted to be a writer, but now that in the circles of writers my name is mentioned, I do not write no more. It is true that the best path in life is the one of learning, improving, even perfecting your trade- in a word, growing- but growing for me means I have lost the best part of me. I am at that point where art meets commerce and being the kind of person that is not averse to prostitute what their mother gave them, I have shunted the art to the back burner to pander to the philistine pursuit of life, lucre and a ranch in Laikipia.

Growing means that I I write and rewrite/ revise- okay let us be frank, I just do some significant plumbing of the prose and chuck out the messy adverbs. It means that the honesty is gone, the angst and heat of the moment is yanked out of sentences like:

“But mama needs her insulin and Pfizer didn’t get big doing Pro bono, see? It’s the money or she dead- deader than The Rainbow Alliance.”

It is when I read that sentence that I decide to call a future writing partner- the one I intend to collaborate on my A Laikipia Ranch for Potash project- to share the earlier sentence, the one from my new story.

“wee mzungu”
“sema”
“I just wrote a sentence that I kinda like...”
“oh..”
(I read out the sentence.)
“hmmm...”
“You know, more and more I am beginning to sound like one of those MFA types...”
“Cool stuff...”
“No, that actually is the problem..”
“Huh”
(There is a thump on her end)
“You funny chick... what are you doing?”
“I was crushing a bug that fell out of nowhere.”
“Eish, you see why we need to work on that writing project: it is so that I can get me a ranch in Laikipia...”
“That ranch will be part mine funny boy...”
“That's fine- you can be the memsahib of the house and instead of worrying about bugs you can trouble yourself with more meaningful things like how to get decent help.”
“My own masais you mean?”
“I don't know ma'am. They don't make masais like they used to!”
“So you... what about the sentence, anyway, Mr. Sketchy Boy?”
“Dammit, quit calling me boy. If you call me that in Laikipia the neighbours will think I am the Kitchen Toto in my own house.”
Sawa. Tell me about the sentence, Bwana!”
“Ahh.. let me just get back to my writing. Shit's gonna get me paid like fucking soon!”

THE PROSELYTE OF OPHIR

2007-09-07T12:29:00.000+03:00

For a struggling writer, this blogger is too lazy. Picture this: The editor of a insanely exciting South African journal asks, 'Potash can you send us a couple of random words?'
'Yea, easy like,' says P, The.
Two months post-deadline, Potash, The, in one of those ubiquitous moments of deliriums tremens, pens some inchoate junk but passes out at a point sub- 700 words.
Here it is...

In a small village, near Voi, as you approach the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa, there lives a young man. A man of great learning. A man well versed in both Bantu folk lore and Judaic-Christian-Hellenistic thought. His name: Mengo Samana- the philosopher; the mad man.

Samana's ancestors were great medicine men, even kings and queens. They were great travellers and conquistadors, ruling the Land of the Motapas and the territories of Moshoeshoe. Great Sangomas is what they were, holding dominion over all manner of being on the great veld long before Shaka the Zulu. They staged epic battles against the merchants from Arabia and hoarded Africa's bounty long before oom Paul Kruger's Afrikaner crud and the Rooineks.

In that tiny village near Voi, a nameless village on the Nyika Plateau, lives Mengo Samana. Mengo Samana whose belief in the ways of ancient Africa has been defiled by that thing that the Butterfly People call education. Samana now lives by a new religion that is an abomination to the kayas of his ancestors; a streak of murk against the chaste cloth that is the ways of the tribe.

That Mengo Samana is the Proselyte of Ophir and this here is but a page from his tome: Vanga va Zilizea- Ages of the Gods.

***

From whose face shall we pluck an eye, that we may be rid of the miscegenation of our times? From the face of our noble Moses or from that of his filthy Ethiopian?
“Oh our dear sister, Miriam,” quoth Aaron, “how shamed before our people doth this sin of our brother make us!”
“Ye, Aaron, that is our brother...” Miriam wept, “intercede for us. Before the altar of Yahweh our people dare not stand for we are shamed.”

Upon whose back shall we lay the sjambok, that the house of Japheth- whose purity now lies desecrate- may escape the wrath of the great Jehovah? Upon the back of the dirty Kaffir or upon that of her Baas?
“It is my right to lay this pink whip on the kaffir,” yells the Baas. He holds up the scriptures- God's covenant with the men of his choice- with one hand and the sjambok in the other. (A later day Onan on the high street). “Spare the rod and spoil the Kaffir!”Baas tells it to the mountains, the hills and everywhere.
“Whatever,” says Oom Paul in the shoulder shrug dialect, “she just a Kaffir anyhow and he a man... may that man that has not sinned against his dog cast the first stone against the Baas.”

And it comes to pass, once again, that out in the fields where only men and livestock go, the Kaffir gets the sjambok. Just for being a kaffir you may say but also it might be seen that the master likes to put sjambok to Kaffir?

Back home the womenfolk wait- wait, with ovens heated and ready, for the men to bring in the oats. Late into the night, when the hearth has gone cold and the women taken to bed their hot water bottles, douche and suppositories, again, the men bring in chaff. Chaff while every Sunday morning they stand solemn before the altar of the lord and sing: Bringing in the sheaves... bringing in the sheaves.. we shall come rejoicing bringing in the sheaves.

But who is to blame? The Kaffir will lie with anything, or so the tales of our old wives go, and the Kaffir is full of diseases and desires for our kind. Who will teach our children to be wary of the wiles of the Kaffir- the harlotry of Kaffirdom? Wasn't the wisest of our people, that great King Solomon, not violated by that Shulamite with her sexual entreaties of 'I am black and comely?'

May the thigh of the Kaffir that tempts our sons to lie with her rot and may her belly swell. That is the curse as given to us by the lord through Moses.

2007-08-30T10:24:00.000+03:00

It occurs to us that this blogger has been AWOL for a whole month. What he now tells us is that he has been trying to take time off to revise his work for a bunch of literary journals and magazines and return to writing his memoirs- again. (Oh and some of us heard him on radio the other day, no? What exactly is the deal with that Mr. I Do Not Do Interviews?)

Well we managed to catch a sneak preview of those memoirs and all we have to say is that though they reveal him as not being the city boy we always made of him, they prove that the urban space and the pursuit of yuppiness has taken toll on his village voice. Just take a peek at the last paragraph where he goes all aspirational on us and ruins a good story.

IN THE CITY: ARRIVALS

The city is fast. Too fast. See all these cars. Rushing past... here, there, here, there. I wonder, wonder where they will all be going. Wonder where they was. And those daughters of mothers, aren't they beautiful. See how they walk: kabich! Carrot! Kabich...!

Ngai! How do they get here, to the city?Get here without wearing many clothes? Me, my sister, hapana... my mother wouldn't let her out of the house dressed like this one here. Look at her thigh- yellow like Mombasa mango.

“Darling!”

“Haiya, me?”

Woman, who is your mother?

***

I came into the city today. Yes. Wanted to walk but I got lucky. I got a lift into the city. That boy, Ngamau, his father is the only butcher three ridges over- you know him, eh? Ngamau gave me a lift today. Yes, yes his father is the one who has that brown Datsun twero. He has a Mitsubishi Canter? Yes, yes, a bluish one, I have seen it outside Chemsha Butchery. What? No, that is not true- aki gishagi people and their siasas!- the only reason they do not use both cars at the same time is because they have to use the battery to watch television and not because they cannot afford iruri!

Anyway, it was Ngamau that gave me a lift into Nairobi. Me and him go a long way since stadi one. I tell you, even nursery we were desk-mates. But mother says I never went nursery. Like she would know about school or not seeing that she was picking coffee when these women of baggy cars were eating big books. Mother don't know school from last weeks ugali. That goes for the rest of my family too. Apart from me, obviously. Me I go school many times. See, I speak English like queen. Then I write good story. I tell you, all the time in school, teachers were calling me Ngugi wa Thiongo.

But that is no matter. This here butcher's son, Ngamau, he gave me a lift into the city. It was market day today and he had to take a couple of goats, they had bought to the kichinjio at Dagoretti Market. So Ngamau said to me, “Potash, son of my mother...” (yes we are always calling each other that because we have grown up like we were of the same mother. Their was the only family on our side of the G_ River with a TV- a Greatwall, black and white that must have cost about two million shillings or thereabouts- and I was always visiting to watch Tushauriane.

Sometimes her mother would insist that I stay on for supper. When the meal was served and I saw all that nyama, I would instinctively yell, 'Merry Christmas!,' then remember that I wasn't at our mucii and blush.)

Now this Ngamau, who is the butcher's soon and also a friend of heart to me gave me a lift into the city. To tell you, my friend, the truth, I wanted to come and then again I did not want. You know mother has the sugar disease, eh? Always had it these last fifteen years but now it is too much. Last week, I think it was on Wednesday, sijui, Thursday.. but then the next day I saw her digging up arrowroots on Gikonyo's garden. And that was after she had gone down there to fetch water and off to K_ to barter the arrowroots for firewood. And all that time I was sitting there, outside my cube, with Karanja and Gitiho pulling jiggers out of our feet and me saying, 'Ngai is great for mother is well...!”

Today. Today I wanted to stay home and look at mother because she was in a bad way again. “Well,” Ngamau jeered. “You might not get another chance to see the place of lights.” Of course that bothered me many because in all these eighteen years I have been eating Githeri, I haven't looked at the place of many lights. So there, standing outside Chemsha Butchery watching that fellow who herds baba Ngamau's goats- his name is Ngunjiri, isn't it?- loading the twero, i begin to think, what if my luck works in eighteen year cycles? The next time Mwene Nyaga smiles at me, I could be long dead from all this typhoid, bacteria or kumi kumi.

So to the city I had to come. Today.

There and there I decided to come into the city with my friend- my best friend who I must have already mentioned to you also happens to be the butcher's son. Yes, yes... we came in the twero. Oh, the goats? The goats were right there at the back.

What Ngamau was telling me all this time is that as soon as we sold the goats, we would drive into City Center and he would buy us many beers. Can you imagine that, real Tuskers, for me and him like grown men with office jobs?

Sick mother or not, can a young man say no to such things?

I jumped into the twero.

Next to him? I wish it was so. He suggested that I sit at the back and watch that the goats stay tethered. And there I was, riding at the back. Astride randy goats. Ouch... it does send a cold flea... uhm, something... down my throat to remember!

But, really, I wish no one beat a picture of me. Me sitting there on top of those goats. You know I could get rich and infamous. In my next lifetime, you are saying. And to imagine that I never thought of you as an enemy of my development. Anyway, imagine one day when I make money in this Nairobi and I am eating with Honourable So and Sos and then someone gives those pictures to those people of newspapers. Can you see Nairobi Scar screaming: Beast of Burden (I being the beast and the goat, well, burdened.) Then Kenya Inconfidential will shout: Potash Rides Goats (who needs prepositions?). And the racist Nairobi Bureau chief of (some) Times or other will, as a nod to to Frantz Fanon and other noble savages before me file: The Wretched of the Earth.

***

The city is bright. Too bright. See all these lights. I wonder. I wonder who lights them. Oh, see they off. Haiya, see they on again... Mwaaa! Where are the lights staying when they are not on, in that globe?

The girls here... look at this one, Kwanza... they are showing too much. Me, my sister, hapana... mother wouldn't let her show what this one is showing to me. Not even let her show it to that boy who is bringing goats next week.

“I love you!!

“Uuuuiiii, me?”

Woman, can I touch here?

UNPLUGGED

2007-07-30T08:24:00.000+03:00

After many months of turning down mainstream media interviews, this blogger agrees to talk to - Radio, Africa. This is why they didn't broadcast it.

“So what has blogging done for you, Potash?”asks the – Radio man.

We are sitting on the potholed concrete of a dimly lit staircase. I take a long drag on my ninth cigarette of the day mulling over his question.

It is 9 am. It is dark in here. The darkness that is the bane of these unplanned multi-stories. Out there it is dark too. The dark of an ovecast July- chilly and ugly- with no chance of lighting things up with a gaff two.

“You know,” I say to him, “...maybe I should go out on that street there and start a new game. Get all my boys together, we light up, and instead of competing on who will blow the best smoke rings,we try blow out plumes shaped like a middle finger.”

“Huh, flick a smoke birdie at a City Council by-law, you mean? Potash, man, are you some kind of rebel without a cause... an anarchist?”

“Nah, it is just a line for the blog, dude. Just another node on the Potashian myth creation sequence... like the fabled Dakimu... me building myself up as some kind of urban legend, you know...!”

“Oh, come on now,” he interrupts. “Talking to you does beg the question: does Potash believe in anything?”

“Of course he does. Potash believes that one day he will make a pile of lucre from his scribbles... Potash believes that one day America will be safe for the rest of the world...!”

“I am not sure you can say that on the – Radio.”

“Yes and you already said that I cannot say Fuck and Orgasm. So I am wondering what the FUCK I am meant to read out for the intellectual stimulation of your staid audience, from my blog. An excerpt from the King James Bible? Yes, so what about, '...and Onan used S- vagina to jerk off earning the wrath of Yahweh for spilling his seed'?”

“Mate...”

“The Bible is one of my greatest influences, Mr. - Radio. I admire its rendering of history in code form; under a holy shroud of ambiguity.

I believe, for instance, that what later became called the Immaculate Conception was the first successful In Vitro Fertilisation in the history of man. Jesus was a test tube baby; in such a time and age, how would such a being escape deification?”

“Oh yeah... and Joseph was the Mad Scientist!”

“Gabriel, comes close actually. In the absence of poor Africans to conduct his unapproved experiment on, he chose a lowly carpenter, with an incredibly low sperm count to match probably, and his desperate-for-a-baby wife as guinea pigs.

Think about it this way: Gabriel was Isaac Newton, Mary's conceiving was through alchemistry and the angel of the lord was like an apple falling from a tree- an explanation Luddite contemporaries could live with!”

“Okay Potash, this is not an interview for Da Vinci Radio, it is for – Radio, Africa, so just tell me what blogging has done for you and I can go file my story.”

“Man, blogging has got me custom laid. Because I blog, I have had my dick sucked by boys and girls of all races- from all places. I have heard wide eyed fans scream: 'Fuck me hard, Potash' in more tongues than at the UN General Assembly.”

“Seriously, Potash, s...so a university don in the States taught excerpts from your blog, what does that mean?”

“Mean to who? As Wittgenstein once said, '...if Potash were to speak Midwest America wouldn't understand him!'”

“Good Lord. And rumour has it that you have jumped from blogs to deadwood...”

“Rumour has it!”

“No blook?”

“No blook.”

“Extracts?”

“Yes. Kwani? 4 and hopefully Farafina 11, this September.”

“Kwani? is Kenyan, Farafina...?”

“Nigerian”

“Excellent. So in parting, what would you like to tell our listeners as they are bound to visit your blog?”

“The sexual activity portrayed here is that of a professional. Please don't try it at home (unless you are wearing a condom and lubricant!)

THWARTED

2007-07-19T16:42:00.000+03:00

If you are in the Northern Frontier District and you get a 'lift' into Nairobi in an Administration Police lorry, is that or is that not a deportation?

Who knows. All I know is that it happened to me.

So here I am in this city that, as I used to say in a seemingly far gone time, 'will not brook my penury.' But rumour has it that these days I live large. The truth though is that the only thing large is my ego. I started out with nothing and I still have most of it left.

But I try... I try. It is the only life I know!

So what happened up North? How did I get back to this city?

It all begins with my Probation Officer. An APB out... There are four OCPDs in this city who cannot sleep without knowing where I am. And fifteen CID officers; three chiefs and a contingent of APs.

“Hiyo kijana niliona yeye kwa Equator...” With a fine looking mzungu they will add.

So let us get this straight: Yes I was at the Equator, and yes there was a mzungu. (Damn, these days there are more zungs on this blog than in a whole season of Friends.) But I met her there. She was enamoured by my locks... (aren't they all?)

She was headed out to Samburu, so she said. “I am headed in that general direction,” said I.

We jumped into a matatu headed into the main bus stop at Nanyuki. I sat next to this cucu. She looked at me, looked at the girl, looked at me again and said: “Wagia kairitu kega ukagurira cucu thota!”

Haiya! Did I just get hustled? I chomoad the cash and all the time I was thinking, it is fair for people to pay White Tax, but why the fuck should I should I pay it by association?At this rate they will start staging Maasai booga booga shit in my room when I grab a whore at Karumaindo.

Anyway, this are all long and useless stories and they are probably against my bond to keep the peace. So I will leave you with the promise of some kind of report of my premature ejaculation... er,... escape. Soon... people.. soon.

As soon as I can get drank enough to write it!

ESCAPE ROUTES

2007-07-12T14:29:00.000+03:00

Good People,

I am finally in one town where the police do not want me. Well, at least not yet. I am in Isiolo heading further north. If I end up in another place I will tell you... but kesho I will try and catch a matatu to Archers Post. If I get caught I will email you all from jail. Or what the hell reforms does uncle Moody keep bragging about.

Isiolo
July 2007

VOLUNTARY DRINKING OVERSEAS- II

2007-06-24T08:02:00.000+03:00

Last Saturday night found me at yet another Voluntary Drinking Oversees party. Some people have said that the only reason I keep getting invited is because of my nappy hair but the truth is that these volunteers need a token African to feed, once in a while, because they have realized that they cannot feed the entire continent.

The reason I attend these atrocious parties is because they are excellent blog fodder. Your average volunteer is such a made to measure protagonist, for my NGO Bashing genre, to the point of being a caricature. He possesses vast amounts of self delusion that imbues his existence in Africa with a dramatic irony only paralleled in the Comedy of Errors. The volunteer is a Quixote per excellence- forever tilting at windmills; windmills of the protestant ethic, the American Dream, capital and all those Occidental measures of success.

He says to himself: I want to save Africa while in reality the thing he means to save is himself due to his inability to fit within the capitalistic construct that is his society.

The party last Saturday was held at an Ethiopian restaurant. The mood got a little uncomfortable when I arrived. It seemed unclear who had invited me. As things stood everyone had had issues with me and my blog post filed after the last party.

The Peace Corps girl from the look of things had forgiven me for what I said to her the last time: “The Peace Corps and al Qaeda share the same agenda—hegemony—but the Peace Corps fail because its troops cannot spell ‘infiltrate’. But angry at me she was nevertheless. She was angry because she didn’t get a mention on my blog, it seems that even a wee moment of ridicule would have sufficed. How was I to know that American’s cannot leave the ‘look at me: before and after flab/ clitoris piercing/ county jail, etc.’ mindset of their voyeuristic society at home?

When I said hello to BS (no points for guessing that BS stands for Bull Shit), a Canadian volunteer, she got up and hugged me. The table went quiet and you could hear three pieces of silver clang clanging somewhere in the deep recesses of her gypsy skirt. Woah… and then she kissed me so hard she roused Dakimu’s messianic complex (unto you stupid girls a dick is given!)

B.S introduced me to a new volunteer so freshly arrived that she was carrying around a brand new Rough Guide and Lonely Planet and was still goggle-eyed from hours of watching Lion King and Out of Africa. For God’s sake she had to peer into a well thumbed copy of (Generic) Swahili for Dummies to say Hakuna Matata.

“Kenya Hakuna Matiti!” I told her even though the restaurant’s cashier looked like Pamela Anderson’s new boob job.
“Hakuna Matya-tya!” She corrected me.
“Ohhh,” I mocked. “Hakuna Matya-tya is a song by Boney M.”

“For God’s sake Potash,” B.S interjected. “I am determined to keep you in white chicks so the least you can be is polite!”
“Keep the Trojan Horses coming, you mean.”
“Of course not, Potash… I could never compromise your integrity.”
“My integrity is like the ‘NARC Government,’ an oxymoron.”

“Whatever dude… “BS said and turned to the new girl (lets call her, er… New Girl), “Potash is gay.”
“What, but I thought you guys had a thing?”
“Here is the thing,” I explained. “In my writing, I am out rightly gay and that in a society where it is unacceptable to be so. Therefore being seen in public with a white girl creates a hetero-normative façade for me because everyone imagines us to be having vanilla sex both literally and figuratively of course. ”
“So there is no vanilla sex, in any sense of the phrase, going on?”
“Well, not at all, quite frankly, but she is gradually warming up to my idea of a threesome, with two boys obviously. The cool thing about that is we all win. She gets to live out her rape fantasy…”
“Come on Potash, I have no rape fantasies,” Interrupts BS.
I ignore her… people are so touchy about such of their sexual fantasies that society generally deems deviant it is no small wonder such things continue to be branded abnormal.
“So she gets to live her rape fantasies, the other guy and I do our thing and wipe the lube off with her arse and then we walk out wearing the heterosexual guy’s badge of honour: putting the Big O into orgy! It is cool for two straight guys to hit one chick…

Fuck, it gives me a mighty boner to recall all this…

(Exeunt Blogger& Co. to jerk off, frot et cetera!)

BLOG WEDNESDAY

2007-06-17T02:36:00.000+03:00

Insane thing being this blogger being blocked out of his own blog for so many days. He is mighty drank now but all he wants to test if is his pals' internet connection works better in the mid of a heavy night of drinking. We appreciate that he has had nothing to say for ages!

Sitting here starring at the screen. On my ear the music is so loud. Maybe I need to numb myself. Spend a few days away from the semi colon, the hyphen- all those punctuation marks that I cannot use correctly and yet the world expects me to.

Like what is all this about? My business is words. That is what I trade with. Maybe it is not a rewarding occupation but it is inspiring.

No wait a minute. This business of words used to be inspiring. But it is not anymore. Maybe it is- in the deep down corners of my self- still fulfilling but I am not sure what I feel about it all on a day to day.

The thing is writing has become a job. It is no longer a passion- something I do because I can and love to do it- it is all about a word count now. It is all about deadlines that I cannot meet not because I have burnt out or that my creativity has hit its lowest ebb but just because I have to meet them and yet I have this image of a reckless slob to live up to.

So all the time, in my email these days, is one call for submissions to the next; some short story contest, anything. Yet I have entered none. I would have loved to be all published, worldwide, but that seems like a dream from a past long gone. A childhood ambition that so isolated from the person that I have grown up to be.

But maybe I have refused to grow up. Refused to accept the fact that I am at that place and time when opportunity knocks on your door and you have to prove yourself. Show the world that you are all what you claim to be.

Maybe I am too scared to rise up to the challenge. It takes more than talent to be a writer. In fact the greatest asset is discipline. And that, of all my failings, is the greatest.

Now wouldn’t that explain why I am doing yet another lame blog post? See it my way: I have to put up a blog post every Wednesday, yes I have to, and I have only twenty minutes today to do it. Well, when I got started I had less time in which to do it… but then I didn’t have to do it, see?

Now where is that booze?