KENYAN AND CRAZY

A nairobians life is never easy, we don't have trees where we can just pluck fruits. No river nearby where you can just bathe and fetch drinking water, everything is for sale so the lazy don't make it. Someone once told me that I couldn't hack it in the rural area and I said he couldn't hack it in the city.   I ain't going to pretend that rural life is a cake walk as long as no one chastises me when I'm out blowing off steam. I found these lemons when I was born, so lemonade me bitch.  Back to the matter at hand, there are a few million people in Nairobi and a good number of them are not gainfully employed. This basically means that they live extra stressful lives for below average pay. When an object is compressed (stressed) without an avenue to release then it explodes. Thus I present to you the concept that nairobians know all too well " work hard play hard". With that concept in mind I would like to introduce to you an ideal nairobians week....

People say that there are only two groups of people, the haves and the have nots. Everyone wants to be the former but most eventually land on the latter. I today found myself among the haves who had closed out a road to showcase their mega beast bikes. The have nots on matatus or on foot are trying to get to their various destinations but are inconvenienced by the large number of haves who seem oblivious of all this. It's a story so old that people try as much as possible not to scream it in public. This is my story from the nairobian perspective and it all started about 80 years ago.  In those times the haves consisted of the white colonialists and their pets, home guards. The have nots on the other hand consisted of the illiterate, don't want to be bothered towing the line Africans who had their land stolen from them. Amongst these illiterate people some wisdom sprouted, this wisdom was either forced out in the form of forcing at least one child from the homestead to go...

So I like wearing power branded shoes sold by bata, some like weinbreinners and there are people who u really don't understand that wear sketchers. This is the most basic way of describing the different levels that we have in Nairobi, by levels I mean classes. There are those who treat crocs like something you wear around the yard while others may have it as a Sunday best. Don' t ask me if i have actually seen this but I'm sure it happens regularly.  Class isn't a new thing , from the aristocracy all the way to the caste system in India the classes have been clearly defined for millennia. I have a personal theory about this, with such a large population and there being such a powerful hunger to survive, people decided to try and define their difference between themselves and the others. When we first existed, the human race had such a low population that we required each other to survive. People may have existed like the bushmen of south africa where there were units of...

I am quite sure that this applies to all people and not just Nairobians but since they are the only people I know ,I am better off bringing that up. The other day I was listening to a Ted talk about whether we believe our decisions are our own. The speaker had a really valid point in that a company can give you three choices; one that is good ,the next that is bad and the third that would be otherwise the best. Due to the presence of the bad deal, most people would chose the the best deal which essentially makes the company more money and gives the purchaser products that they may other wise not use. This applies to a lot of things that we are manipulated into doing or using. All this can be termed into simple good marketing but when your very routines and ability to perform is under manipulation then it becomes a major problem.  I grew up in three different places but they were all at most 15 minutes from my primary school so I essentially saw the same things within a long period ...

OLX may be a difficult concept to digest for us Nairobians and this I can put good money on. The whole theory about some point in time you decide to sell off your furniture and buy new ones just doesn’t play well with us. This is especially when the question is, when do you think your furniture stops being good? In my years of study, or just observation, the line of reasoning used is we shall use it until it is embarrassing to use it anymore then ship it upcountry where the folks there will use it a lot more. I have seen this happen; the furniture I saw when I was born is decorating my grandma’s house. The furniture that I grew up with is decorating an out of town place my parents have so the whole theory of sell the stuff and get new stuff really doesn’t make sense. I have a few theories to probably try and explain this, my first and probably more relatable to is we do not grasp the theory of depreciation.   If you go to any company today, they depreciate some of their as...

I am currently trying to serve two masters by watching TV and writing this blog, it isn’t hard coz I’ve been doing this since I was born. When I grew up in a household where the TV was on almost throughout the day, when I was born it was a black and white TV and my mum never had to worry about me wandering away since I loved it. When I was older, they bought a VCR and a colour TV that spelled the end of any interaction with humans whenever it was on. After a while I developed one rile, learn from the TV and try to merge what the TV says with what mum says, if they kinda collide then I look for a middle ground. There is a reason why middle class Nairobian kinda sound alike and this is because we were raised mostly by televisions. Dad spends most of his time at work and you will only hear about 10 words from him a day ‘Son, take my brief case and   get me my slippers’ and the occasional ‘Hand me the remote’ or ‘go see who is at the door’. Mom on the other would either bend your ...

Greed, hate and envy those are the things we see every day. Sorry for starting this week on such a low note but any true Nairobian knows that wherever they go, they cannot be surprised if they run into this. For anyone who has read my earlier posts you know by know that I have been through all the hood levels and i can say without a doubt that this exists everywhere. I’m gonna back up a bit to explain why i speak of these vices today. I read an article this morning talking about the greed Kenyans have, click here if you would like to read it, it resonated with me because it was all true. I cannot speak for all Kenyans except for the ones I know so Im gonna say that I know not of any greater greed, hatred or envy than what I have seen here in Nairobi. It may be true that I have not lived anywhere else but most of it is directed to the person standing next to you so hate me or love me, it’s all true. So if we were to get down to the facts, we can start with what I believe is th...