usually, i have the luck of remembering what transpired in dreamland when i wake up. i find it intriguing that the mind can conjure up such extraordinary and weird experiences when not under conscious control. many a times i have toyed with the idea of having a cctv camera next to my bed. this would help me analyze the physiological reactions to my psychological night adventures.

so here i was, back in the village within the most serene and tranquil environment. clean air, tasteless water and quiet silence unlike the smoky, dense and dirty air that is at the capital. water has a funny taste -mombasa is worse- and the place is always breaking the decibel gauge in my eardrum. loads of noise pollution!

i relived a section of a day that happened over ten years ago, only that this time, in the dark of the night, it was twisted. i also had a second person in me who made me analyze the way i made decisions that day. it turned weird and i woke up in a sweaty mood.

in the course of the day i was flashing back on, i had been sent to deliver some message to the mum of a cousin of my dad. effectively, that’s my dad's aunt and traditionally, that's my granny. that is the best way to understand it without trying to split dnas. actually, the cousin is not a first cousin, but some form of cousin. the relations were explained to me but for my mind, it was too much to figure out the many levels of a cousin and how we came to share blood. we do use the cousin term generally and liberally anyway. it is common to pass of a suspicious relation in normal life as a cousin unlike previous generations where a true relation could be described without a sweat or 'cousinizing' him or her.

i had never been to that village before and i had to find my way from the scanty directions i was given. to get there, through the shortcut i was shown, i had to go up a hill, down the hill, cross a river and up another hill to the slopes of that hill where my granny lived. alternatively, i would have to use two matatus to get round to the village. it was an alternative but not an option, so i had to walk all the way, a journey that took close to two hours.

the drama part occurred when i was going back home. bearing in mind that i walked a lot in the morning and later got well fed at my host's place, i was tired, full, lazy and it was getting late. a son of my father's cousin -what do i call him, cousin?- offered to show me a route that would shorten my journey back by half. i obliged and we embarked on the journey home. just before he could show me the diversions to make, we met with our reverend's daughter who was walking home from a visit to my host's parish. she had attended some youth meeting and was headed back home. we weren't very close but we were a bit acquainted with each other.

in the village, there was something about a church minister's daughter, or a chief's daughter or a headmaster's daughter that would hold the breath of the village men. we thought in our nasty minds that it was beauty but in retrospect, i don’t think so. it was great pride to be associated with such a one. heaven on this occasion opened its doors to me, and i had a chance to cover good ground as we headed home.

her home was halfway through my journey. she happened to know the short-route home. i dismissed my cousin fast and started enjoying the much cherished company. after a few minutes of ice breaking, we were merrily chatting and laughing all the way home.

sincerely, we didn't laugh all the way home. the new route shortened the distance but like everything in life, there is no free lunch. as we went down the hill through the thick vegetation and tall indigenous trees, i was having a time of my life. soon we were at the foot of the hill and what lay in front shocked me. in front of us was the ferocious river i had crossed earlier in the day. it was wider now and seemed to have gained momentum, its rapids raging madly through the edgy rocks.

i had no problem crossing it in the morning since i had used a well constructed bridge. the reverend's daughter was unwary of what i now considered a huge predicament. i shook her back to reality. i did not have to. she was already in this world and was proceeding on to cross the bridge. she had used this route more than once, it was routine for her to cross the river.

"you call that a bridge?" i responded to her.

she had asked me why i looked startled and shaken. i pointed to the 'stick' she called a bridge. the bridge, that, in an instant spoilt my moonlight date. in my view, it was a stick and not a bridge. i had crossed rivers via log or tree trunk bridges but what was before us was none of the two. the tree trunks i had used before were huge and stable, several of them running in parallel to make a bridge. it was fun doing the balancing act on such trunks while carrying a load of grass or sack of maize or potatoes on your back. i was not phobic to water or to using such kind of bridges.

in fact i used to tease a primary school friend who would not use a bridge constructed using tree trunks. he would always fear falling and hitting a rock with his head despite the fact that we had rudimentary swimming lessons every sunday afternoon at the river. it would be so hard on him, such that we would always have to wait for him to go down or up the river looking for the nearest 'government' constructed bridge!

here i was, facing disaster in my eyes. the main issue at the moment was to be a man or not to be in village terms. if she went across, there was no way i could chicken out.

…to be continued...

kaburi bila msalaba loosely translated ‘a grave without a cross’ gave me the first true feel of what went on during the struggle for kenya’s independence. before that, the civics lessons in lower primary school just gave me recitals of what went on during the struggle. the national anthem and national flag colors significance maybe set a foundation but it never made me understand what really went on. i would confidently answer during those exams that the red in the kenyan flag symbolized the blood that was shed in the struggle for independence, now i know much more than that.

kenya attained its independence on 12^th december 1963 with jomo kenyatta as its first president. this was after a six month stint of having attained self internal rule on 1^st june 1963 marked by appointment of kenyatta as the first kenyan prime minister. kenya later became a republic on 12^th december 1964. today, kenya marks 43 years of independence.

kaburi bila msalaba, if my memory does not fail me was a story of how kenyan families suffered in the struggle for independence as many were detained, screened violently whether they belonged to the mau mau and separated form their beloved, many forever. a young bride was robbed off the joy of starting a family when her love went through the harsh hands of the british colonialists. she also had to go through the cruel process as she traced him and many other villagers suffered at the hands of the british, the maumau and their own sons nicknamed ‘kamatimu’ or homeguards for their loyalty to the british army. the story recounts the tribulations and agony of the lady as she tried to trace the grave of her man, a grave that had no mark and hence could not be traced.

reading this storybook at a young age and mostly in a tin-lamp lit kitchen besides a firewood fireplace, gave me the questioning mind that bothered my parents and grand parents. they had to explain to me what exactly happened during the state of emergeny. those stories created the fear and eeriness that they faced each evening either in detention at the concentration camp or at the villages they had been hounded into in order to curb their collaboration with the mau mau. every night they faced the reality that they might not see the sun rise again. my grandpa spent almost four years at the manyani detention camp where torture was the order of the day. my grandma would relive the sorrow of separation and mental agony of trying to balance double allegiance in order to live. loyalty to the british by day and duty to the maumau at night.

according to wangari maathai’s ‘unbowed one woman’s story’:

“new research indicates that in spite of the hysteria in the british press and the government, of the approximately four thousand people who died of mau mau activities, a total of thirty two were white settlers. in comparison, recent scholarship estimates that more than one hundred thousand africans, mostly kikuyus, may have died in concentration camps and emergency villages-on top of humiliation, loss of property, and trauma that families suffered. it is clear that terrorism was not confined to one side. interestingly, it is only very recently that the law in kenya has been changed so that mau maus are no longer described as ‘imaramuri’ (terrorists) but as freedom fighters”

in our young days we were told that the mau mau term is some form of a kikuyu anagram for ‘uma uma’ meaning ‘go go’ directed to the british settlers. the unbowed woman states thus: “in the early 1950s, frustrated by the slow pace of change, a guerilla war for independence was launched: the mau mau. while there are many theories about the origin of the term ‘mau mau’, the only one i find most interesting is this: in kikuyu, when beginning a list, you say, ‘maundu ni mau’-‘the main issues are…’-and then hold up three fingers to introduce them. for the mau mau, the three issues were land, freedom, and self-governance”

the sad bit of the jamhuri day story is that thousands of graves never got crosses, a sign of decent and honourable rights. the first government never compensated the freedom fighters adequately and most of the property was directed to the ‘homeguard’ oppressors. subsequent governments have failed to mark these graves effectively. not necessarily by erecting white crosses but living up to the ideals these noble men and women laboured for. neo-colonialism, corruption, greed and selfish leadership have failed to give millions of kenyans the full rights that these unsung heroes fought for. in retrospect, a lot has been achieved since the mau mau war. our foreparents fought their war, it is up to the current generation to fight the war that kenya faces. kenyans owe it to their forefathers and to history, to ensure that they no longer enslave themselves again economically, politically and socially.

for more about the untold struggle for independence grab caroline elkins “imperial reckoning: the untold story of britain's gulag in kenya”

sometime in the last half of the 90’s a group of ‘moralists’ stole the national lime light for their passion of undressing what they considered incompletely dressed women. women would not be allowed to wear trousers, tight fitting clothes or mini-skirts in the streets of kenya, they argued. many were quick to dismiss them as a group of rowdy touts but as their actions escalated to major towns, there was cause for alarm.

elaborate expose’ of the group’s ritual and initiation ceremonies hit our screens and many thought it was the ‘thaai’ sect led by ngonya wa gakonya, now deceased, that many were familiar with. ‘thaai’ was a kikuyu religious sect that advocated a return to the worship of the kikuyu god, ‘mwene-nyaga’. mwene-nyaga (he who owns the ostriches) was worshipped under the mugumo (oak?) tree facing the snow-capped mount kirinyaga (has ostriches), now known as mount kenya, the tallest mountain in kenya. you would recognize the ‘thaai’ group by the way they rebelled against modernism by clothing in hide-made clothes and sandals. they had long dreadlocks akin to the maumau liberation fighters and were committed to sniffing the traditional tobacco ‘snuff’.

kenyans were wrong, the new grouping on their screens was no harmless worshippers. they were zealous in their anarchy business and had taken over the matatu sector for a while by the time they became public. you had to pay up to 60,000 kenya shillings or more as entry fee to operate your matatu in the routes they controlled. in addition you had to pay a daily protection fee. they were available for hire to cause terror and scare during political campaigns. they were no longer jeshi la mzee or jeshi la embakasi. they were mungiki and they had their nairobi base at the heart of eastlands, mainly dandora.

mungiki according to michuki, the internal security minister is a kikuyu word pronounced ‘muingi ki’ meaning ‘all people without exception’. their initiation rites include taking ‘muma’ or ‘oath’which binds the recruits to the ideals of this terror group and includes high penalties for defaulters: their clean shaven head! mungiki is also notorious for advocating forced female circumcision, otherwise regularized as female genital mutilation. their insatiable thirst for blood ensures that once a mungiki follower draws out a sword in an attack, it cannot go back to its sheath without being soaked in blood.

a story is told of how they terrorized an upcountry town after one of their own was set on fire by the public. one mungiki follower met an old man who was fleeing, drew out a sword ready to go for the old man’s neck as trained but sympathized with the grandpa. however he could not take back his sword without blood, so he asked the old man which part of his body needed trimming. the man chose the hand and the sword executed the ruling. any village that has been visited by the followers remains traumatized for long, daily reminded of the havoc the sect lives behind in form of deaths and maiming.

the grapevine has it that the sect was formed during the mid eighties after the 1982 coup and got entrenched when the government of the time cracked its whip on mwakenya ‘dissidents’. a few years ago, i once sat and listened as a mungiki follower who was then a university student detailed how the sect operates and came into being. that was before the 2002 elections.

when in the early 90’s some parts of the rift valley were engulfed in tribal clashes which mainly affected the kikuyu community, the 80’s group was revived by young kikuyu men of the area in an attempt to forge a resistance to the blood shed that was being directed at the community.

they went into the forest where oath was administered by old men who participated in previous oaths. the mandate was to protect the community from further deaths. however, before the group had time to fully stamp their authority in the region, the clashes ended. unfortunately, many youths were still jobless as kenya faced an economic depression then. having no sources of income and with the rural urban migration turning a disappointment, the group turned to uncivil means of generating income. to survive, the group redefined its mission and coalesced around traditional religious teachings. it was to later redesign its mission to that of thuggery and extortionist, the matatu industry being a prime target for its lawlessness and loads of cash.

mungiki sect was able to attract the high and the mighty in the land with its following, penetrating the rank and file of key security sectors in kenya. politicians would hire them to cause fright and flight of their rivals. the police would not deter them as the group was worth tens of millions a day which was enough to keep the police on their side. it was no wonder to find that the 2003 government tried in vain to recover ex-army and ex-police land rovers which had being sold to the group prior to the 2002 elections.

ndura waruinge, became identified as the national chairman of the group and steered the group to more dreadful missions. oath taking became a serious affair and deserters were beheaded. ndura has since “seen the light” and is now a pastor of a church in nairobi. no doubt jesus saves lives. however, the question in the minds of many is how come he has escaped the wrath of his former servants, when they continue to behead other deserters? this will be his great undoing as he eyes and goes for the langata seat, currently being held by raila odinga. what a tall order?

maina njenga took up the mantle of revulsion from waruinge and is currently being charged in the courts while being held at the kamiti maximum prison. he and 30 others were caught last year in a kitengela ‘palace’ with illicit brew, oath taking paraphernalia and a flag belonging to the kenya national youth alliance (kenya) political party. the house has been under guard since then. ‘kenya’ party demonstrated last month for the release of what they termed as the only political prisoner in kenya today, maina njenga! how times change! maina njenga also ‘saw the light’ last week and is bent on following the footsteps of ndura waruinge. or is it meant to hoodwink the authorities? he truly came to save the lost and set the captives free.

what is the government doing to curb this group from unleashing more terror to hapless kenyans? 2007 is an election year when chaos and anarchy tend to thrive. this group needs to be stopped in its tracks. this year, it has been linked to the deathly confrontation of the police and the hawkers. the hawkers pay protection fee to this group and ‘licenses’ to operate in nairobi streets. the recent skirmishes in various nairobi slums have been linked to a clash of mungiki and other emergent gangs fighting over their turfs. slum dwellers have to pay this group to access basic facilities.

today, you cannot drive into dandora and some parts of kariobangi in eastlands without paying some fee. and you have to be out before dusk lest you encounter their wrath. some parts of central kenya are aware of the terror that the gang leaves in its wake whenever they go to bury one of their own. worse still the mungiki death signature of disembering various parts of their victim and leaving them in symmetric distance or a clean shaven head of a be-headed renegade is traumatic to all.

in 2003 when faced with the gigantic rise and rise of the mungiki, the then internal security minister, chris murungaru is rumoured to have authorized the “smoking off” of the mungiki followers in their bunkers. hundreds of mungikians suffocated to death in their foxholes! i leave that for the archaeologists to disapprove, prove and marvel at the history makers who turned into the millennium.

when all is said and done, who will protect the fearful kenyans from their own vicious, barbaric and heartless sons and daughters in the name of mungiki?

once in not so a blue moon, i encounter what i call day killers. these are circumstances, people or emotions that just mess up my day totally. in addition to spoiling my day, these day killers ensure i find myself unable to recover the day. i end up accounting for such a day as a loss. such stuff kill my day in the sense that only a nap can recover it. in other words i have to sleep and wake up in the course of that day to make it productive, just like a new day. otherwise i have to wait till the next day to pick up life.

waking up in the morning from a terrible nightmare definitely tops the list. some of these are horrors that give me a throbbing headache, which apparently stays put for the rest of the day. some of them are plain crazy, a common one being wrenching nails from a wall with my teeth or working myself tired a whole night trying to find my way out of an eerie maze or digging trenches to contain the floods.

missing out the alarm in the morning coz of heavy sleep is another day killer. especially when i have an important appointment and i wake up an hour or more later. it is worse when i hear the damn thing but i switch it off unconsciously. some form of conditional response. my hand is used to reaching out from the heap of warm beddings and skillfully maneuvering through the snow, find some ice cream in the form of the alarm button, pressing it and triumphantly retreating to the igloo to savor the delicacy of a morning sleep.

the conditioning had replaced the constant smacking of the alarm which left my hand aching and the occasional smashing against the wall. that’s how i lost my first cell phone. this made me relocate the alarm to weird places like under the bedside table or under the bed or inside the wardrobe. at first it worked, but the morning gymnastics of nabbing the intrusive spy turned dangerous as the sleuth in me working 99.9 percent asleep severally suffered grievous body harm. the alarm had to go to its bedside watchtower! after alarm relocation, the devious mechanism in me connived with the ears to be ignoring the melody all the same, especially when i have important assignments. i end up waking hours later with a back ache to boot.

another morning day killer is when i wake up and find that kenya power and lighting company has decided to challenge god’s edict of ‘let there be light’. there are alternatives but i am yet to find an effective one for un-ironed clothes. this collusion happens when i fail to iron on a sunday or the previous evening and i have a presentation or an interview. possibility thinking gets challenged, its just a matter of seconds and the lights are back. of course that does not happen and i have to crisscross town impulse buying formal clad and looking for an open dry cleaning service to get them straightened up. if the appointment is early in the morning, the tongue and the cell phone gets to work to negotiate a few hours or another day. but with the mind at a freeze, it is like reading a book with no cover and lots of nibbled out pages!

bosses do kill their employees’ days too! you are upbeat in the morning, feeling good and gorgeous, armed with the report whose deadline is today. you pass it to your boss with a smile and she smiles back approvingly. you rush back to your desk feeling king solomon. you grab a cup of coffee since you spent most of the night polishing up and colourfully laying out the report.

before you can settle for the day, your boss calls you to her office and kills your day! the nicely formatted report is now full of ugly red markings, all these ?!@*??!! characters combined and implied. nearly all sentences have been cancelled and indecipherable writings have replaced your favourite font.

with the handing back of the report, the boss opens your x-files in her mind and spats to you all the mistakes you have ever done since you signed the dotted line. no chance for explanations, you are supposed to hand over the report in an hour’s time. in many other instances than this one, you feel micromanaged. as you sit down to redo the report, you wonder why she didn’t do it herself, she has rewritten all over it anyway! nevertheless she is your boss, and you asked for it. you just swallow hard that your day was killed and you long for a fresh day. if only you could take a nap!

Points extracted from Jimnah Mbaru’s – Nairobi Stock Exchange Chairman - published statement on the growth of Kenya’s stock market.
…

1. Increased individual domestic savings arising from increased incomes from the milk sector, sugar, maize and horticulture, among others. we must also bear in mind that many parents are no longer paying school fees for primary school education since the government implemented free primary education, hence, their disposable incomes are higher

2. Expansion in the size of funds held by pension funds following reforms that have been carried out by the retirement benefits authority (RBA) since 1988. Previously, most pension funds were overweight in property investments and underweight in equities. Many of these pension funds are rebalancing their portfolios in line with RBA’s regulations, hence, their push into equities market. It should be noted that the size of the pension funds is now in excess of KShs 200 billion and continues to grow annually.

3. Increased in investments in securities by the National social Security Fund (NSSF) as it tries to balance its portfolio as per the RBA guidelines. NSSF holds over KShs 50 billion mostly in real estate and treasury bonds

4. Increased insurance premiums as the sector has become more aggressive in marketing innovative life assurance products such as funeral policies, travel insurance, education plans and mortgage protection policies among others. insurance companies have also expanded with the neighbouring countries and continue to tap new premiums

5. Increased retained earnings by the corporate sector following improved profitability. This is evident from the many companies that have achieved substantial recovery after years of depressed growth including Kenya Airways, Kenya commercial Bank, Barclays Bank of Kenya, East African Cables and Mumias Sugar company, just to mention a few.

6. Increased profitability of small and micro enterprises due to improved market conditions including competition and greater transparency in the award of government tenders.

7. Rapid growth in mutual funds and unit trusts, giving small investors an opportunity to invest their small savings in large, profitable firms. Some of these mutual funds include Old Mutual and British American unit trusts. Currently, these unit trusts hold over KShs 10 billion.

8. Substantial remittances by Kenyans in the Diaspora, who are remitting back to Kenya an estimated USD 750 million – USD 1 billion (KShs 50-75 billion) annually through western union and commercial banks. Most of these funds find their way into the stock market and the real estate, among others.

9. Increased inflows from international investors, including speculators, dedicated emerging market funds and hedge funds. Presently, international investors contribute about 15 per cent of the stock market turnover. Most of these funds are remitted to Kenya through commercial banks who act as custodians for these investors. The Central Bank of Kenya keeps track of where these funds are coming from.

10. Availability of low interest rate and unsecured personal loans to individual investors and similar business loans to small and medium enterprises. The impact of this lending was demonstrated during the recent Kengen primary share issue

11. First time investors in the stock market. The Kengen issue, for example, attracted 240,000 investors, of which majority were first time participants in the equities market. These new investors include the youth and students who are at home with financial assets, as well as trading on the internet.

These sources of funds have not just developed by accident. They have expanded because of the attractiveness of the Kenyan economy due to economic recovery arising from better macro-economic management, which is demonstrated by low fiscal budget deficit, low inflation, low interest rates and a competitive exchange rate. The Kenya Revenue Authority has also increased its tax collections from about KShs 200 billion in 2003 to KShs 375 billion in 2006. The increased tax revenue has contributed to less borrowing by Government from the money market, hence, the low interest rate environment.

…

it was once written on kenyan papers that raila odinga has an intelligence network that leaves kenya's formal intelligence service envious. how he manages to finance and create such a network is beyond this post. he has all plots being hatched figured out; be it the standard raid, mercenaries out to finish opposition, a stage-managed attack at security minister home or meetings held specifically to plot how he will be assassinated. one thing in kenya is that raila is a top contender for the presidency and at times i think he wants that seat just too badly. he cannot afford to miss a thing that’s happening around kenya. that i understand. he leaves many with admiration of his energy, charisma and his attention seeking tactics.

he has also had the nse bubble figured out as well. according to his theology, the current boom being experienced at the nairobi stock exchange is largely due to drug money being sanitized through the exchange. there is no bit of economic prosperity and the economy has grown at a paltry three per cent if any growth has occurred at all. raila's claims at face value look ridiculous. well, there is nothing to stop a drug dealer from using the exchange to cleanse his money and it’s hard to say that kenya has no drug money given the fact that only the other day, kenya destroyed a billion worth of netted cocaine haul. but attributing the nse bubble to dug money is to say the least, misleading.

well, a nation newspaper columnist once commented that whenever raila opens his mouth to talk about economics, his economic professor, prof. anyang nyong'o feels like going under the table. what with his trashing of gdp and ndp reported growth rate? instead he recommended for a measure of gnu. gross national happiness! imagine him as president, such radicalness. maybe kenya needs such now; railanomics!

other than the growth in the kenyan economy, which is a fact, there are numerous other factors that have led to the nse boom. the other leading factors include government goodwill in privatisation of parastatals and automation of the trading process (cds & ats) that increased trades executed per day as well as reduced turnaround times. the banks have been more than willing to finance share buying at affordable rates. the local mwananchi is more aware of the investment opportunities available at the nse than he/she was five years ago. the pension rule that was introduced three years ago that one cannot access their employer retirement contribution until they are 55, have left pension funds with more than enough funds to invest.

good tax collection by the kenya revenue authority have reduced the government's domestic borrowing, making treasury bills and bonds unattractive to corporate investors. the base interest rate has been caged to a single-digit figure making banks to release their funds to other higher rate borrowers fuelling enterprise growth. the ipo craze both for public and private companies has also fuelled the nse bonfire. the business community is at peace with more predictable policies and the political stability has been near-guaranteed. that in my opinion has fuelled the nse boom.

other interesting factors are that the average kenyan investor at the nse is more gullible, less risk averse-or pure risk blindness and quite speculative. we hedge our hopes on the ever skyrocketing prices hoping to make a kill from a more gullible investor. the broker cartel has colluded to keep manipulating the market and this has acquired a life of its own. insider trading is the order of the day. ever wondered why some suspect deals like the massive offloading of uchumi shares a day before closure has never been acted upon? or a city trust deal investigation that saw the share price take a hike form kshs 120 to kshs 407 in a matter of hours?

the above paragraph has led to another category of doomsday prophets who advocate that in a few days to come the nse bubble will burst on the face of its ardent believers. market professionals call it a sure prediction of market correction that will leave many wounded when the bull and the bear touch base. i call them prophets of doom because they say the end of the nse triple-your-cash is just before the end of the month bearing in mind that this school of thought got class-full beginning of this month. i respect their opinion but i feel the crash is not coming that soon. eveready will still be oversubscribed regardless of what the prospectus says or the battery market prospects. mumias maybe a quiet one but not the kenya-re ipo or the 20 per cent safaricom offload in 2007.

i see a situation where even the election volatility and political tension in 2007 will not scratch the over-zealous nse investors. going by 2002 elections, there are enough of us gullible investors who are ready to pump funds at the nse by near-end 2007 - we speculate the prices to be low, courtesy of election uncertainty and cash-in once the new government stabilizes in 2008. if there is a hundred thousand of us, what will make nse crash? not to be taken seriously, i could be in my own class of doomsday cult. however it is said that the best test for a prophet is time. time will tell. in the same light i am also slowly building up my scanad shares, advertising will be key in an election year.

what i wonder is whether there will be a time when market fundamentals and financial analysis will matter at the nse. currently it is largely a speculative market. maybe the best strategy is to have two classes of portfolio, a sound market fundamental one and a speculative portfolio balanced based on the risk one is willing to take. maybe price speculation is a part of market fundamentals?

after scouting around, i have decided to settle for jean. there were several candidates to choose from but jean beat them all. it was interesting to see that despite being a candidate in many a ladies list, i never appeared in her list. well, with tact, words and actions, i top it now. not an easy game, i would have preferred learning backgammon but jean it had to be.

jean’s candidature as the first lady poses its unique challenges and i have to spend a fortune, prayers and strategy to overcome the challenges.

i would have preferred a quiet solemn ceremony somewhere inside the attorney general’s chambers, but jean wont hear of it. she has the senate and congress votes and that ensures that i play ball. the senate comprises of her nuclear gang and the congress, mine nuclear gang!

i am also in a busy mode shopping for a clergyman to do the knots bearing in mind that i have been a visiting church member in many a nairobi churches, i am not sure i belong anywhere. i am seriously considering my pcea roots but that communion card has not been filled for years.

jean wants a garden wedding. i thought hallowed grounds make the event get the seriousness it deserves but she is of a venusian mindset. “jeevanjee gardens?” i innocently ask. “no sweetie, not any of that, and don’t mention uhuru park or arboretum, i know that’s where you are getting next” she extends the reply. jean can read minds, that’s a revelation. she now knows my tactics. she knew i wanted to joke about the garden wedding idea and push for my hallowed grounds eventually. jean is damn serious about a garden wedding. i hope she doesn’t mention naivasha, and camouflage the boat ride down the aisle.

the samantha’s bridal magazine is my next challenge. i innocently bought for my mademoiselle the bride magazine and its now making me feel like tearing off some pages. i intend to do no loans neither fund raising nor wedding committees, its all on my precious savings. jean has decided to give the budget a shove but if we follow that magazine, my goodness, we will feed on stones for sometime after the wedding. the baby magazine isn’t helping either. i am wishing she just kept to eve, drum and true love. i have introduced some collections which are bringing grim finalities to the reality of the situation. thank heavens, the event is still afar off i have some time to be sane and plan.

i intended to post about the nse drug money and its prophets of doom but i reserve that crap for another time. hearty heart matters first. the heart likes candy and biscuits!

watching my 25^th year fizzle away fills my mind with nostalgia, calmness and uncertainty. a concoction of sought. or is it 26^th year if the nine gestation months matters. god bless the lovely mothers. no, its not birthday time.

i always subconsciously longed for the twenty fifth year of oxygen addiction. now it feels more like the getting on a summit as the downhill slide to thirty starts in earnest. fortunately, this year moves away the cloud of the valley of the shadow of… okay, i don’t intend to be freaky but….

i just realized that i never got over it. what? when i was sweet sixteen (does it apply to dudes?) i read this book titled ‘eighteen and no time to waste’ about some teenagers whose life were cut short immediately after making that best decision of following the lord. one of them was so determined to recoup the wasted years by putting in more effort into the service of the king after making the life changing decision.

she never made it past the eighteenth year. well, for her to live was christ to die was gain, the theme of the book. as we analyzed the book, with one of my mentors, that’s where the idea of the twenty fifth year slowly colonized my fearful mind. get off the pulpit jp!

well, at the time a statement flew from my mentor’s wise mouth that genius guys like jp- but do i say- never get past their twenty fifth year. it was innocent, but my mind wasn’t going to treat such wisdom like chaff, especially when it came from my mentor. i just realized the other day that the statement never escaped my sharp subconscious since.

i know you are wondering, jp a genius? holy joe! i wont blow any jp trumpet but a simple “blogeometer” could give us indications. one of our bright bloggers around is still fighting wars with kasneb, the accountancy body. jp zoomed past that before he could say kcse, the secondary education in kenya. if that does not make jp a genius then i don’t know who a genius is. i think it goes without saying. please don’t come for my jugular, i had a rough day and i am just having fun with words.

other than the fun of flying past the twenty fifth goal post, it was an eventful year. i once had a chat with an old friend moments before he passed on and the words that came from him if written down would give solomon’s recital of vanity of vanities a run for his fame. one thing he felt so sure is that we all have a mark of … somewhere in our bodies. some form of expiry date if you know what i mean. he felt this strongly for he spent a fortune sealing what he and his doctor felt were the life escape routes only for one unnoticed, undiscovered dent to quickly and surely usher him to the gods.

in my twenty fifth count i happened to get an injury and many a times i feel herein lies the mark of …. no, i aint scared as it sounds in words; i believe i have at least seven more decades to count.

the downhill to thirty has begun in earnest with a well orchestrated effort to have jp start passing on the gene button. it started casually with extended relatives and now the nuclear gang has taken on the rallying call to have the family pedigree longer and bigger.

the nuclear gang has gained ample support in the embodiment of the “sinful nature” which is pushing jp to an edge, almost breaking the leash of the mosaic law. i adeptly support job of the book in one of his declarations. compliance rates to the “job of the book” covenant call don’t really matter a lot, what matters is the spirit. I think if there are any deviations, they are not statistically significant.

job made a covenant with his eyes that they will not lustfully look at a cutie. i believe the only way out for dudes who subscribe to this school of thought is to have the cutie legally, religiously and societically–excuse the battering of the queen’s language. and therein lies jp’s dilemma, yet he is determined to surmount all.

"If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

i am in the middle of implementing a novel idea that will eventually become something very useful to the community and my future.