KENYAN AND CRAZY

I recently faced a situation that I have faced multiple times, getting vindicated for my integirty while those who chose a different path finding themselves on the wrong side. I have worked in the industry I am in for almost 16 years now and during that time I have seen colleagues get rich through dubious means. My time in this iindustryhas made me aware of ways in which this is possibe but I have always questioned on whether it is worth it. Guys getting kick backs or outright theft looks attractive in the moment but at the end of the day you always get caught and find yourself in a worse of position than before. We see the same thing in our politicians and even though theirs is the making oofa kleptocracy we always ask ourselves, How much is really enough? I think I may have found out how much in my perspective may be enough. KES. 300 MILLION Hear me out on this, if you were to have a windfall or accumulate wealth in a short time i personally believe that amount would serve my family ...

A man’s primary purpose in life is to provide, both for the present and the future. Often, nothing he possesses naturally is seen as inherently valuable. For a woman, however, the opposite is true, as she is born with much of what is deemed valuable for the species. It's a rather bleak topic to discuss, yet it reflects a truth we have come to understand. Recently, I buried a great man who did everything right, though it wasn’t enough to earn him the long life he so deserved. Born and raised in poverty, he was on his way to becoming the best in his field, until he met someone he couldn't resist. As a child, he encountered a beautiful girl whom he believed could walk on water. Their young love blossomed in the dusty, rural farmlands of western Kenya, only for life’s circumstances to separate them for nearly two decades. During their time apart, he built a foundation that his peers from the village could only dream of. From barefoot maize harvests in the village to excelling at a ...

 Hi Everyone, my name is Kevin and i am an addict. It’s been 1,360 days since I last shared and not to tempt fate but, I think I am healed. It has been a crazy roller coaster ride of relapses, stuff that i may not be proud off crossing my mind and generally the kind of pain and trauma that i never thought I would make it out off. I started through this journey of recovery maybe 5 or 6 years ago and during that time i think i have learned more than i thought i would. My vision is a lot more clearer and even though i am a lot more hardy than i was, i think that its all for the best. I really don’t need to share more than that. Thank you for all those who stood with me.

 I wrote this title quite some time ago but didn’t put words to it. It’s taken me a few minutes to try and put meaning to the words but just as i am sitting here I realize why. There hasn’t been much activity from me in a while but that mostly is because I realized that I was letting my personal life appear too frequently in my writing.  That kind of transparency is honestly not good for relationships and stability. They say never let them see you sweat, which would basically mean I cant plaster my day to day struggles on the internet for all to see. This topic however has very little to do with me and a lot more to do with the power that other people are yielding over us as a society. Not to just throw blame in one direction, we are very complicit in all this and thats what has been bothering me. Since the last time I posted, my life has become way different. My wife and I now have two kids, live in our own home and we are now basically working ourselves like crazy to build s...

Public service is supposed to be the hardest , least financially rewarding and thankless career to aspire to but should be a calling to some. The idea of waking up every morning and performing tasks and duties without the notion of personal wealth, with only the thought that it may ease the lives of others, is not meant to be an easy one. The endless toil of 14 hour days and long durations of time spent away from your home and your loved ones wouldn't be classified as typical human behavior especially when those closest to you feel that they have lost you to the masses. What could possibly lead someone to live a life like that, where your own life hangs in the balance and you resist every urge of self  preservation . One ends up choosing a life of altruism and they end up alienating the ones closest to them who may not be able to understand why they do that. They chose to do this becasue they have a moral obligation to what is right and just..............well, some do. When parent...

Hi, I am Kevin and I am Addict. Its been 1,180 days since i shared in this group. I see some familiar faces like Mark over there. Stay strong brother, good to see you are still alive. I guess since only Mark and I laughed, we are the only ones who get it. I see some new faces, hey everyone, and off course our group counselor. For the new people around, a few years a go I hit rock bottom. For those who are yet to get hat feeling it is both the worst feeling in the world and a blessing for those who survive it. My addiction pushed me to lows that I didn't know. My own self-worth was tied to the feeling that this drug gave me and to be honest I never thought I could be able to let it go. Just to be completely honest , especially for those who just joined the group, you never really stop wanting to use. You will always want that puff, the snort , that one pill that you feel you need to get you through the next minute of your life. The true power of sobriety comes from being able to ...

I am a writer... I think, I see, I transcribe into words, I tell a story and pretend that my work isn't influenced by any personal feelings. Unfortunately its never that easy, Eminem said music is just reflection of self so whatever words i conjure up will be seasoned with my thoughts and feelings. Its what sometimes makes the difference between the good and the bad writers. One of my favorite novelists is Jeffrey Archer, I have read a few of his first books .My favorite books were on the Kane and Abel series and  after doing some research I realized how autobiographical they were. He wrote his first book (Not a penny more, not a penny less) after he resigned from his post as a British MP. He had fallen prey to a fraudulent scheme that left him 500,000 pounds in debt.  Comparatively the book talks about a group of investors who were taken in by a wealthy conman, they invested all they had and on discovering the con vowed to get their money back "Not a penny more not a penny le...

Millennials , as they call them, do not know this feeling. They grew up on text messages and emails. They could snapchat and Facebook message stuff. They could send videos of themselves on whatsapp and all that new tech stuff. Just realized something, they would categorize me as a millennial. Millenial or otherwise I know what that feeling was like, when someone hands you a letter. Whatever the color of the envelope , you could feel the excitement building up inside of you, It could be anyone, mother may be telling you to expect them on visiting day, An aunt may have sent a letter with some money folded inside of it. All this sounds like boarding school behavior, it actually is. The days when people used to dedicate songs to each other on the bottom of the letter. My personal favorite was "I need a girl" by p diddy.  To be totally honest, I never actually was a ladies man in high school. I was in a mixed high school but just having the girls there was good enough. I was...

Over the years I have realized that this is what I would call my 'Vanity Blog', I don't write it to get noticed but for it to echo to myself. I have written things here both in drafts and published posts that I would not say out loud to anyone else, I keep doing it because its like a conversation I have with some one out there. Some one I cant see but I know they are out there. Weird as it sounds I find it therapeutic.  So today is my birthday and I figured, I better just post something about today....... Like many people, I usually get birthday blues. Its usually a feeling that starts a couple of days before my birthday where I think of the fact that now I have to change my age. The number I use to explain my status in life is going up again. I only actually started to get birthday blues a couple of years ago when I moved to Mombasa. Far away from family, friends and the place I could call home. It really brought out the home sickness in me. Thankfully I had made new fr...

It's dark in your mind but it's sunny outside. Your face is downcast but you are surrounded by laughter. There is some happy tool who keeps laughing at his own jokes yet you don't see the fun in them. You could hide behind the fact that you are used to British humor so the slapstick kind annoys you ,but at the very least you should crack  a smile at the blundering buffoon in front of you. Everyone who looks at you sees a blank expression,  it's almost like you are not there. You feel no stimulus , nothing at all makes you jump.  One thing and only one thing makes you "feel". Feel your heart pounding,  your palms sweaty and your muscles more energized. You feel more, alive, more in tune with the world. This one thing that can take different forms wakes you up, calms you down and excites you at the same time.  What is it......I would call them mind altering substances but you would call them drugs.  In this new life that we have created for ourselves you nee...

It's been a while since I wrote on this, mostly because of the writers block but probably because I have been so busy. I'm writing this on the couch next to my five month old son and it's almost midnight.  Those who have been parents before me know this all familiar sight of a child who won't sleep and demands all the attention from you who needs to sleep. I just came from a 13 hour work day and the little one has only sporadically slept during the day, much to his mother's chagrin. I have another long day tomorrow but I just can't sleep to the sounds of him crying the going quiet then starting up again. His mother has tried everything, little guy doesn't want to give up.  I decided to take up the challenge. Walked him around the apartment, to the balcony and back to the living and he is quiet now.  His eyes darting left and right, I decide that maybe an episode of the good wife would be nice. He quickly reminded me that I'm the only who enjoys it and ...

6 am Monday morning, squinting through ghost cum and morning breath trying to get my bearings. The most beautiful feeling you can ever have on a Monday morning is when you realize that you don't actually have to get out of bed. This Monday morning represents the halfway point of my 14 day vacation so what do you think i should do today? Lets start with the new routine I am trying to cultivate, jogging as frequently as possible.  I recently moved from weighing in the triple digits and I sure as hell want to keep it that way so I have decided to sit less and move more. Step one of this is to get myself off of this bed and grab some sweat pants and running shoes then hit the road. I sometimes believe that when I am exercising, it isn't a way for me to lose weight but some time I can take off from the world and just disappear into a rabbit hole until I am exhausted. Today was not an exception, head phones on and my feet to the ground. The sun not fully out but giving enough light...

To GIVE UP, a transitive verb that webster defines as  to abandon (oneself) to a particular feeling, influence, or activity  < gave  himself  up  to despair>. Not something anyone wants to admit but there are times you have given up, you walked into a ace and your heart sank because you just couldn't take another step. I have every now and then but there is always that inner power that pushes me to take that next step. The small burst of adrenaline that pushes my mind to forget the aching muscles that scream in rebellion, to get that little will power I need to move forward. Have you ever heard of the broken heart syndrome, to paraphrase it there are people out there who have died because of a broken heart. After experiencing a great loss or betrayal, your heart just can't take it anymore and stops working. I once heard of a man whose wife passed then he went into deep depression and died as well only 3 days later. He wasn't unwell in any way but they were...

It's 9:00 pm on the last flight out of Jomo Kenyatta international airport to Moi international airport and I'm sipping a cold beer at 23,000 feet. The flip side is I have a cold and I have not had a good nights rest in a while. I am sleep deprived and pretty hungry so it's not all rosy up here. That however, isn't why I am writing this. I am writing this because of a totally different reason. I generally don't pay attention to the safety instructions at the beginning of the flight but this time I did . Why do you ask, because of the male flight attendant. Why would a male flight attendant make me concentrate, well it was late at night and he had probably flown back and forth a couple of times but he still entertained us. The guy got up on the P.A system and gave us an audio presentation worthy of a radio talk-show host. He introduced the captain, first officer and all the flight attendants like he was introducing his fellow band mates and it was refreshing.  I ha...

One of my favorite thought provoking songs is Tracy chapman's "fast car". Those who haven't heard it should go ahead and listen to it, a line in the song states "Leave tonight or live and die this way". It's a hot Monday morning and you are at your desk at work listening to another boring customer who for one reason or the other believes they can get you to do what they want even if it's contrary to all laws or norms. You day dream a bit of where you would rather be at that point in time. Maybe you like mountain climbing and at that very moment you are in the Himalayas with a bunch of Sherpas or you are an avid swimmer crossing the English Channel. You could be anywhere right now but that doesn't seem possible right now on your desk, does it? Why doesn't it seem possible? Well I guess it could be the mortgage you have on your house that needs paying, the car loan that for some reason doesn't seem to go anywhere coz you are upgrading cars ...

"My children cannot eat glory", that is a line from Sarafina. Sarafina is a movie adapted from a play in the early 90s starring Leleti Ngema (née Khumalo), Whoopie Goldberg , Miriam Makeba and Bongeni Ngema. It was written and directed by Bongeni Ngema, I first watched it when I was about 5 years old. My mother and I loved it so much that we watched it at the Nairobi cinema 3 timesand to this day I have a copy of it at home. The movie is based on the African uprising against apartheid in South Africa and depicts the struggles of a group of school children who are arrested, tortured and some openly shot during protests. The scene where that line comes from is of a mother having an argument with her daughter who is now discontent with the life that they live. The mother , played by the late Miriam Makeba, lost her husband in Mozambique and left her to take care of their 4 children. The daughter, played by Leleti Khumalo, defends her fathers decision of fighting and sees it as a...

What's wrong with not having emotions? What purpose do they serve in this world where we do horrible things to each other. A planet where wevconsciously abandon our own morals to get ahead and treading other on people's freedoms and basic human rights while we are at it. The most successful people on the planet are the ones who have no qualms with putting their needs first and disregarding others well being. There was a study that was performed ,and I believe I may have referenced it in an earlier post, it states that there is a fine line between the most successful C.E.Os and sociopaths. Why is that you ask? A C.E.O has one goal and one goal only, making a profit for his shareholder and make himself rich as he goes along. His 30,000 employees will not or should not get in the way of this as they are a secondary concern to the primary. Case in point, it has been a slow year for a certain banking giant and he needs to show that he is not letting things run a muck. There are two ...

Friday night and we are hanging out at the local. All hands on deck tonight as the youthful class come out to play and make merry as we always do. I am surrounded by guys in their late 20s and early 30s plus a few people outside of this age bracket trying to fit in. The girls are ageless here with some looking like they were in a dormitory a short while ago and just got picked up by their sponsors or older boyfriends for the night, or the weekend. This is supposed to be progress, the generation that my father came from came out at night to get away from the wife and annoying kids who really didn't want him in the house. Strange isn't it, not being wanted in the house you pay for by the people who you feed. It's a fact of life that is hard to explain but still they came out at night. However, in this day and age, guys do this not to hang out not to get away from the family but because their houses are empty. I am in my late twenties but thinking back I don't think I hav...

Like a large portion of society I feel weird in funerals, I feel especially lost in a funeral of a close member of the family. You look to your left and see your mother crying and to your right your father looking indifferent. Aunts beside themselves with grief and neighbors you have never seen before screaming for God to help them, what is going on here. The scene doesn't really do much for me except sculpt my face into an emotionless form. With the lack of emotion comes deep thought, thoughts that make you drift far away from this place that flows with tears and keeps you in a constant day dream. The question I ask is, since I am already dead and cannot take my self to the grave , who will carry me? As a child your parents carried you around, dad drove the car while mum sat in the passenger seat chatting everyone up. Growing up you took yourself to places that you wanted to go but at the end someone will hold Your hand and take you somewhere you don't want to go. Who lead...

Music, the food for the soul I call it because everywhere you go and whatever you do, any form of music just speaks to you. I am not here to talk about the tunes and instruments but the little things done and sounds made that are actually music to your ears. Put together make songs that help you as a person get through your day. The morning can be bright the morning could be dull but when you hear the gentle breathing of the one you love next to you and the soft rhythm of her heart beat to your own chest then the into to the day has began. Most people usually can tell how the song will be just by the intro so if this is what you get then the day is already looking bright. Warm showers have always had this refreshing feeling but the feeling of soap being rubbed on your back and the sound of water splashing around you really invigorates the body and drowns all other feelings. Breakfast, the most important meal of the day. With a newspaper or your ipad in your hands right now you shoul...