War! What is it good for?

I’ve often laughed my fellow country men’s patriotism, first of all it seems that Kenya is a very unpatriotic country aside from the odd rhetoric (of saying “I’m patriotic”) and the harambee stars and Kenya rugby T-Shirts, there’s a distinct inability among many to talk positive about Kenya. If we were patriotic I suggest we’d have clear times when we circle the wagons and dedicate ourselves to matters greater than ourselves and our differences to the greater good of Kenya. Not to say the opportunities have been lacking, we’ve had a number, most recently Migingo and the Merile incursions. Our lack of patriotism in those cases may have been slightly advantageous to the government as they were able to seek out diplomatic solutions, but the aggressors never felt the threat that our government was holding back an angry and defiant people who jealously defended their territory. Kenya is by no means a big country; 1 hour in any direction on a jet engine plane will remove you from Kenyan territory. This is all we’ve got and we have to put a highest price on it, and it appears that we have with the recent military engagements in Somalia against Al Shabaab. In brief my opinion of the whole matter is doing the pursue up to the border and no further is it is myopic in the approach and plays in to the enemy’s hands, the enemy has no respect for the integrity of Kenyan soil in its operations, limiting our military to the border does little other than afford the enemy a tactical advantage. This situation is unlike the issue of Migingo and Merile there isn’t a government to engage in negotiation therefore the country was left with little option. But that’s beside the point, the greater issue here is how some have been proven wrong. In a recent editorial Charles Onyango-Obbo highlighted the difference between the Kenyan military and those of our neighbours which reminds us that in our own way Kenya is exceedingly capable militarily. As Kenyan we shouldn’t assume our government’s long standing policy of diplomacy first as a sign of inability; rather the fact that we have been successful enough diplomatically suggests we have enough to dissuade others from the viewing the military option as viable. The least we can do is to support the boots on the ground, they’re not the ones that make the decisions they are carrying out orders. Feel free to criticize the government but give your last ounce of support to the guys who are asked to put their lives on the line so that you can sit and talk, type and live your life as if nothing has changed other than the exchange rate.

Fake military historians have suddenly emerged and have been waxing lyrical about how the incursion against Al Shabaab is doomed to fail, or set to succeed because of what the US did in Somalia, or what happened in Afghanistan. Its simplistic to look at the global hegemon/superpower and mark military success based on their activity, without understanding various factors of military import such as objectives, geography and proximity to name a few. Tactically we’re also not sure if Kenya has gone to war as the Russians have in Chechnya or like the Americans in Vietnam. We don’t have a great view of our military tacticians’ plans and strategy, and we have a fairly mute Commander in Chief who probably isn’t going to announce a Linda Nchi version of the Tet offensive so it is imperative that our speculation is borne out of fact and not out of mere conjecture. What I do hope is that we’re going in a similar objective to the US in the first Gulf War (the one they won) to slap Al Shabaab hard in the face and remind them not to mess with us, then bring our heroes home. Frankly the TFG is weak, and even if Kenya could eliminate Al-Shabaab there’s still a power vacuum in Somalia, and till that is sorted out Al Shabaab or any radical Islamic element will always have a foothold. I also hope we are working hard to lobby Middle East to support this Jubaland proposal, I know the hegemons don’t like it, but selfishly I think having a peaceful semi-autonomous buffer between us will benefit the country on several levels.

Rule of Thirds

The 1/3 Minimum is one of those things in the constitution we didn’t really think out properly. The new constitution guarantees 1/3 of elective seats are reserved for women. This was a noble attempted at gender equality but fundamentally one of the most undemocratic clauses of the constitution particularly if implemented incorrectly.

General principles for the electoral system81. The electoral system shall comply with the following principles–

• not more than two-thirds of the members of elective public bodies shall be of the same gender;-
  constitution of the Republic of Kenya
  

First I must note that I had serious reservations about this particular clause in the constitution, I just didn’t know how it was going to be done. Second it made the assumption that gender imbalance will always favour men, I wont be around in 500 years but I get the impression that in Kenya its going to be a woman’s world sooner rather than later. Kenyan women = very aggressive go getter types
I also have problems with top down affirmative action, I’d have rather had stronger policies that guarantee girls education and strengthened our education system to ensure that a girl can grow up to achieve any of her dreams. Political theory tells us that there’s a close link between political and economic empowerment. It is much more practical to focus on empowering women economically, which means our affirmative action interventions must begin at the lowest levels. The there’s a wealth of information on the open data which seems to suggest that there’s a significant drop in girls attending high school and again moving on to tertiary institutions. That’s where the problem lies with lack in terms of gender equality. (You can see this on the open data website here or if you’re lazy I can email you the nifty little charts I made looking this stuff up.) If we feel we need to have women in position of leadership we better increase the “pool” of electable women by making sure our girls are educated, further more to that we need women not just in school but studying the right things. (I’m for a national 5 year moratorium on B-Comm degrees) Much of the farming that’s done in Kenya is done by women (who stay at home on the farm) then why aren’t we encouraging women to study agriculture? If you doubt that just drive around and see how many men you see in farms or selling agricultural produce on the side of the road. Men may own the deeds to the land but women are doing the farming as much if not more than men.
There has been a suggestion (in order not to create a constitutional crisis) have suggested that we “reserve” certain posts on a rotational basis. So for example in the coming election (2012) Tigania west may be reserved so that women may stand. That presumes 2 important things, first there is no incumbency. As an male MP what would be my lot if when as an incumbent my constituency was up for women only leadership? It also assumes the electorate want to elect a woman, or that in actual fact a woman is best for that seat. For example what if Obama had to sit out his senate run because it was a woman’s turn? I think what Kenyan women want isn’t necessarily to have a percentage of women in leadership but rather leadership that effectively addresses their issues.
Being forced to vote of someone smacks of the “single party democracy” of the Kanu era, where the party told us where to put our votes. I’m offended I’ll vote for anybody who will take our country forward and nobody else. And this is something tribal chieftain type leaders would abuse to no end to consolidate a power base. What this would create I think would be a great number of women who are nothing more than “yes women” in parliament who are there to rubber-stamp whoever helped them in to power’s agenda. This would in turn engender a lack of confidence in women leaders undermining the whole system, setting women back politically much more than the current environment.
Anyway I’ve talked enough about the problem, so what is the solution: My idea is simple, (Let democracy do what it does) let the voters decide who is the best person for their constituency, be that a man or a woman. Create instead additional seats (this already exists in parilament through the “nominated MP” system) that are for the express purpose of meeting the 1/3 rule. If women are popularly elected they’d be one less available nomination seat. Divide these seats as percentages for each party based on election results. So for example if ODM was to win the most seats then the party chooses 30% of the nominated WMPs, PNU comes second gets 20% so on and so forth until every represented party (up to a certain threshold of course) gets a number of WMPs. If the 1/3 rule is met via popular election then there is no need for nominated WMPs (saving the country money). I really don’t see why such a system wouldn’t work at least in parliament and simmilar bodies (senate, councillors, etc) and wouldn’t be beneficial for Kenya. Nobody feels like anything is forced on them; You’ve given women an arena to cut their teeth politically (it’s a direct form of capacity building), and most of all you’ve averted a constitutional crisis. I think our solutions to constitutional problems must envision a future Kenya where certain issues may have been addressed by the social development of the country. The biggest weakness if find for our current constitution is that I feel that its too detailed to make sense in 400 years time where if Kenya still exists will be socially and developmentally different from the Kenya of today. It’s very much a document for today and the near future, so the solutions we develop must bear that in mind and correct it such that our descendants also benefit from it fully and live in a greater more prosperous country.
Alright that’s more than long enough for the twitter generation. Let me go hide because I know there’s going to be hate from many for me having the audacity to talk about women’s issues (again).

Man Vs. Rooster a true story

They say that every man has an enemy, someone who for whatever reason is decidedly anti-you. I have never believed this, saying that enemies are made in this modern day by how you relate to people. This was until I met my very own personal enemy who hated me merely because I exist. The following post is how I happened to come across my enemy.

It all began innocently enough, the home has been full of children so hearing children crying is nothing of great concern, usually it’s as a result of disagreements which include declarations of broken friendships which are quickly amended within five minutes. Little did I know a terror as bleak as Siberia had spread its influence upon our peaceful yard!

So it came time for the little ones to head home, but the idea resulted in them bursting in tears and the declaration that sealed my fate; they were scared of chickens! My first reaction was fear that the next generation of our family was going to be more than chicken they were going to be scared of chicken! Family pride was on the line; I had to rectify this. So I called the group together and marched them towards home in full confidence after all what is a chicken. Now along the way there was a tap which I told the boys to wash their feet, and any chicken that came near I told them to tell it “kwenda!” which being normal chickens they did; they scurried off much to the pleasure of the boys and much to my happiness having taught the boys a life lesson…This I was soon to discover was a grave error, from in the distance a red and black flash was falling upon up with Spartan fury. Wisely the young boys fled, and I assuming nothing of the flash stood my ground. This was my second error which was necessitated by the first. The angriest rooster on the planet was racing towards me, in the decisive moment still thinking this was an ordinary chicken I too raced towards it calling its bluff. A real game of chicken was afoot the rooster armed with beak and talons, me armed with little else other than my wits. Having already put my family pride on the line I was not about to accept defeat easily, after all the nephews were watching from a safe distance with blurry tear and terror filled eyes. The battle was on! At the decisive moment I swerved to my left in order to give my strong kicking foot the necessary thrust of an intent filled swipe at the hateful rooster. Thinking even a miss would frighten the animal. The agile rooster read my intent and dodged and counter attacked claws first. I feinted again to the left and spun expecting a palpable hit and a round-housed rooster begging for mercy. However only the air tasted my fury and the rooster had no intention of retreating. The battle continued for a few minutes with attack and counter attack from both sides until finally the jogoo made a critical mistake of falling for my dummy kick and proceeded to attack where upon it met a fury laced kick to the head and fell back. Prematurely I declared victory but the rooster was no David Haye and again attacked, again I landed a kick to its chest the tide of battle had turned, feeling my advantage had been established I stepped back (not wanting to kill another man’s chicken) Though looking in the rooster’s eyes I saw abhorrence; maybe it has an idea what me and my kind (black folk) had done to millions of his people. Maybe it was just a hateful rooster, but even in its retreat, it still had the spirit to fight on, as a result a Mexican stand-off ensued. Each step was met with a counter, until I had moved far enough, from there the chicken ran off to do what angry chickens do. My next move was to quickly move the boys home which I did with relative ease though the threat of the rooster was ever present. Then I had to make my way back, In order to do this I enlisted my trustworthy dogs as my auxiliary should the battle of jogoo have a part duex, however I made it back without any problems, but knowing full well I now have a bitter enemy. What I didn’t know prior to the battle is the chicken had terrorized the children, having chased on, and jumped on another’s back, it also had a reputation of chasing everybody.

I now have an enemy; should I ever meet the angry rooster again in the field of battle, only one of us will come out alive, and to the victor goes the breast and thigh piece! I believe that the victor will gain the strength of the defeated by consuming the flesh! And on that day I will have my bottle of hawt sauce ready, and I’ll have my face painted for battle. I only wish death (and the coronel’s secret spices) to my enemy!

Lunchtime blog Version #1 - SCALPING

I have dry skin: no, dry is an understatement! My skin rivals the Atacama Desert in Chile which hasn’t had rain for thousands of years dry; ‘have I been rolling around in a fire pit?’- ashy. Its one of those things that ensures that by noon my elbows look like they’ve seen a ghost, but that’s not of bother. I’ve learned to manage it in a properly manic way of either completely ignoring at times and on other occasions walking around with a travel size bottle of lotion. However the part I can’t stand is dandruff, which only shows up when I go to the barber. I gets so bad the dude starts singing Christmas carols as he gives me my cut, continued with a joke about “snow in the tropics” etc. (I am thankful that I don’t “shed” during other times, because it’s hard to look serious at a meeting when you have snow drifts on your shoulders.) Now solutions I’ve been given thus far:
1. Stop using anti-dandruff shampoo which may be too hard on your delicate scalp (the fact that the word “delicate” was used clearly this was a woman’s advice) …yeah WRONG!
2. My barber who told me hair food was the solution. Yup! I have hair fuller and softer than a Somali but my scalp is still the testing ground for vehicles that are designed for harsh desolate environments.

Maybe it’s the water and I should behave like those Nouveau riche types and only use Perrier to wash my hair, but that would mean wearing a shower cap which is generally against man-laws and common sense. Furthermore I don’t think my scalp is that valuable to warrant going broke…So yeah point is I’m in the market for solutions, nothing expensive and nothing nasty like washing with egg yolks!

True Patriots vs the Blogosphere

Ok,
I’ve been simmering for a minute and decided to go ahead and look hypocritical and rant on the internet.
Kenyans! We have a beautiful country in so many ways. A look to our neigbours shows how blessed we really are, if you don’t believe it look at this! In Uganda when people threatened to protest the high cost of living the government response what to unleash the shield and truncheon. Ours faced with such a threat reacted by reducing duty on the most essentials (sorry folks petrol is not essential, however diesel and kerosene is critical) And it is my hope that more steps will be taken to shield us from the external factors creating inflationary pressure on our country. There are still criticisms of this government but this case was pretty impressive knowing the rate which government works.
However I have mad beef with the blogosphere- facebook-twitter “I’m mad at what the politicians are doing” crowd. First we and the government know for sure that that’s all they’ll do, create an angry facebook status. This is no Egypt people can be bought for cheap! The worst thing you can ask someone whose “arrived” is to get out of their vitz and be democratic. No democracy is not voting, that is a democratic process within the overarching system. I get mad frustrated when people somehow think I’m not being patriotic by refusing to vote at a general election but really it’s hardly my right if I didn’t even involve myself in other parts of democracy (and who’s to say I don’t love my country if I don’t believe in democracy anyway?). The FBTC (facebook twitter crowd) miss this and imagine that going to the ballot box on Election Day and voting somehow will propagate a free and fair system when in fact all it does is guarantee the corruption of the system. You leave the poor masses to make the decision for you and you’re shocked that the choices are not up to scratch. Let me put it like this; if you were babysitting a child and let them decide what they wanted for dinner, you can easily guess the choices the child will make; Chips, Pizza, Candy, all the above most of all no vegetables (YUCK!). However when it comes to our voting habits we do the same thing, we let the idle and uneducated chose the menu at the primary level, then come to the table to eat on election day feeling very democratic with our kenya rugby or harambee stars t-shirt and get "surprised" with what is on offer. Well truth is the collective stomach ache is your fault, you know better but haven’t done much beyond a bird song about it. You want change; blast your MP’s mail box with letters. If you want our politics to become issues based, join an issues based pressure group and bother your representative. If you want the IDPs to be resettled stop saying “Kenyatta has land” and shame the government in to doing something. Ultimately the failure of Kenya will be in the fact that those who could (ie middle class…and if you’re reading this you’re there!) did nothing while the rich manipulated the poor for their ends.
I keep hearing the mantra that somewhere in Kenya there’s a leader who will bring us out of all this; the Moses of Kenya, lol What we don’t realize is Moses was created by God, He learned to govern in the house of pharaoh and Jethro, both as a political and spiritual leader…lesson here we still need the institutions to bring up that so called Moses, are your angry tweets and status updates going to do that?
Like I said I’m about to look like a hypocrite but #justsayin true patriots are the cats out there doing it, the rest of us need to stop stepping in their shine and shut up or back up our anger with action.

African Gender Blogging...#oxymoron

In brief a young man decided not to wrestle a young woman at a wrestling contest in Iowa due to his moral convictions. Now its been argued by many including Jonah Goldberg that political correctness is a form of fascism and reading the comments on the cnn religion blog its hard argue against this. The poor kid by living up to his convictions has encountered a modern day potifer’s wife situation, where this young man is encountering persecution. You can see the whole article and comments here

I’m not going to even try to address all the accusations that have been put against this young man, but I will say I highly doubt he is a bigot, chauvinist or a wimp. He’s a man of conviction, and had the roles been reversed then the big “deal” wouldn’t be a big deal.

Also I’m two ways about whether women should be allowed to wrestle and such, I’m all for Co-ed Sport e.g. football (soccer for you in America), volley ball etc. But if I had a daughter I really would struggle letting her do any major contact sport or wrestling. By struggle I mean “No daughter of mine while living under my roof and eating my food…” kind of struggle. However seeing little xiao wei roundhouse the crap out of a snotty brat in karate class would bring all sorts of joy to the evil in my heart. If I had a son I wouldn’t want him feeling its right to pin down, tackle or otherwise rough up a girl regardless of the context. I don’t want him to be a wilting flower but the kid has to understand where and how to express his aggression. But I respect people who feel like that’s ok, I’m just not one of them.

MY FAIR LADY

But this view has lead me to argue what I’ve always argued (big shout Wa) that equality hardly means sameness. Take for example the Heart and the Liver, We need both equally to live. One keeps the body alive by pumping blood, the other cleans up our bodies assists with metabolism etc. As human beings we do not have a choice to live one without the other. We would die if our livers became hearts. Similarly humanity is incapable of survival without men and women. That is to say men being men doing man things, and women being women doing woman things. Granted there is a history of inequality, and I’m not advocating a “separate but equal” jim crow approach to gender issues, but we really do discount the rights women should have when we try to push for sameness. My homegirl Kendra said it best: “Fair does not mean always equal” what we all are really hoping for is fairness. A fair chance for a man to achieve his full potential within society and the same for women, nobody wants the brain with the cure for cancer barefoot and preggers in the kitchen and nobody wants to watch the WNBA (don’t blame me blame the numbers). We have to be fair, and fair is agreeing that women and men aren’t the same and play different but critical roles in society in the same way the liver and the heart play an important role in the human body. Fairness might mean for men allowing women a few more rights (lol like the right to complain that chivalry is dead but getting mad when you try to open the door for her) because historically we’ve treated them unfairly. For women it may mean letting your pride down just a tad and allowing a man to be a man (y’all know what I mean!). Fair is respecting the young wrestler’s decision and exercising his right to forfeit without persecuting him for having a set of convictions. Surprisingly enough with all the assault and gender based drama I thought it would be refreshing to hear that a boy decided not to try to wrestle a girl.

THINKING OUT LOUD

I really wonder if this gender gap and the resultant fall out has a lot to do with lack of expectation. I can only speak from what I know, and generally speaking on some of the most equal cross gender relationships I know. I do notice is there’s a great deal of expectation that drives equality, since roles are clearly defined expectations are established and met and there’s effective fairness. Possibly as we erode the definitions of gender and make it fluid it becomes increasingly impossible to create expectation around a gender. (sorry to use this again) but when a liver stops doing what a liver does, what other organ will do it, none the body dies…lol maybe this is what will kill this civilization. For the Greeks it was the Romans that ultimately sealed their fate, the Romans the barbarians, Anglo-American civilization the suits of PC (political correctness) committee.

SPORTS AND GENDER

On sports and gender…Recently I was reading how there’s a proposition that professional football (sigh soccer...American need to standardize with the rest of the globe) teams should have a mandatory spot for women on the pitch. (Since women’s leagues aren’t getting the big support they hoped for) now I’ve always felt that if a woman is good enough then we’ll see her signed for a team, even if this is in the lower leagues. (and it has happened in Italy I believe) but legislating this sort of thing is pure nonsense, quality is quality and if you’re up to playing 50 plus games a season and taking tackles from Rino Gattusso then the “glass ceiling” will come down otherwise its absolutely fine for women to play against one another in leagues. And honestly other than the few outliers the rules would have to be amended to cater the inherent physical imbalance between the genders. Will we ever see superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo in the female game, well if you follow football you’ve already heard of names like Mia Hamm, Marta, and Birgit Prinz, so we’re getting there but we’re not hearing from the terraces songs of “sign her” for any of them at Arsenal matches. The women’s game probably needs a little marketing and hopefully better approach than the WNBA (lol fundamentals my foot I just want to watch Blake Griffin dunk) After all there’s women’s tennis which is the more entertaining version of the game and has been for a hot minute.

Making Pirates Privateers

I’m taking a break because my brain is fried from a meeting that started at around 10 and ended at 4:30. Sigh gotta earn a living. You know you aint earning much when you someone tries to sell you a mortgage for your average house (3 bed room) in a run of the mill (that is to say not expensive) neighborhood and the repayments are more than your salary. (true story happened to me last week at the bank) I guess that’s why the 2 income household has become the norm, basically a single income can’t gain traction unless you’re name has “sheikh” some where there or you do “government procurement” (black range rover!) But I’m not here to complain I’m paid enough to survive and that really is what one needs, all the other things are over and above. (Do not confuse that for lack of ambition, just a realization that that ambition for stuff cars, homes, kids in expensive schools end up messing your priorities, and leads you in to all sorts of temptation to do “government procurement” and sit at java house all day speaking in hushed tones with important or Somali looking people.)

So I’ve been mulling about things these last few days, which normally spells trouble for my worn-from-use soap box and I’ve been lead to wonder why tv shows and movie makers decide on old models the consumer does not want. For movies and TV shows piracy out in the 3^rd world is rampant like water in the ocean. It’s a fact of life that very few people “follow” TV shows on TV any more. Honestly who would want to watch 24 season 2 when a walk to your local “video lib” has the latest season, and even your cousin “Timo” has just come back from abroad with the latest DVD’s. Its impractical, however Hollywood has cried foul that pirates in Indonesia and Pakistan have made their copyrighted material accessible for next to nothing. And yes this is wrong but really if the original copy of desperate housewives will reach my little corner of existence 10 years after original airing at a price I can hardly afford is it really My problem that Eva Longoria isn’t getting her fat royalty cheque with love from Malawi? (you have to remeber the tv show or movie normally has paid for iteslf in the first running in the US market) Instead of “fighting” the pirates by annoying local governments (for whom “DHW is the least of their problems with rampant crime and malaria) to undertake half hearted crackdowns on pirates, how about taking positive action as well, until you create a business model that assists you get revenue from the “low end market” don’t bother crying when they watch your material because at the end of the day you wouldn’t have gotten that money anyway. Its like me crying that I missed the sale of a million dollar home for 500 grand, I couldn’t afford it away so there’s no real loss. However here there’s real opportunity to tap in to the mass market in the same way bollywood and nollywood has. Its been shown time and time again that given the option people would pay for an original if they can get it “within their requirements” Anyway my 2 in all that is that traditional models of marketing distribution and access must be reviewed if you hope to capture the market. The other way to look at it too is often these unfavorable markets of today are the emerging and then desirable markets of tomorrow so why not put you’re stake in early and get it right and we all know whats going on and we know that “mad men” is popular and we want to see what its about, don’t make people wait like they did for the sopranos till it was done to be able to watch it.

So on a similar note, I went to a music store yesterday that says they sell “original” music, so of course it was expensive, shock on me that all the CD’s in the store were taken out of their cases and put in the back. It was weird but I thought it was fine considering the weirdness that is shopping in Kenya. It was only after I bought the CD (a double disk) that I realized that these dudes sell fake CDs. My album was supposed to have CD1 and CD2….here’s the problem the music on CD2 is exactly the same as CD1 although the CD art was for CD2. On closer inspection the CD did not look professionally done as well, lol the toner was running out when they were printing the copyright material. Here’s the kicker too, it’s a Christian music store and they had that FBI little picture warning me of the ills of pirating music…Suddenly a trip to pirate bay doesn’t seem so reprehensible.

Trafficmatatu Face

So this is my impression of the shopping expirience in Nairobi, especially when you're looking for something that's not Unga ya Ugali.