Tupac, the philospher at 17

This short treatise by Tupac bespeaks the nature of wisdom this young and precocious rapper had. At the age of 17, he could figure out what is wrong with education. I like his take on political double-speak, especially.

-Courtesy of ‘The Real Afrikan Truth’ Facebook page.

“School is really important: Reading, writing, arithmetic. But what they tend to do is teach you reading, writing, arithmetic… then teach you reading, writing, arithmetic again. Then again, then again, just making it harder and harder just to keep you busy. And that’s where I think they messed up. There should be a class on drugs. There should be a class on sex education. No, REAL sex education class, not just pictures and illogical terms…There should be a class on scams, there should be a class on religious cults, there should be a class on police brutality, there should be a class on apartheid, there should be a class on racism in America, there should be a class on why people are hungry, but there not, their class is on…gym….Their class is like Algebra. we have yet to go a store and said, “Can I have X Y + 2 and give me my Y change back, thank you.” You know?…Like foreign languages. I think that they are important, but I don’t think it should be required. Actually, they should be teaching you English, and then teach you how to understand double talk, politician’s double talk. Not teaching you how to understand French and Spanish and GERMAN. When am I going to Germany? I can’t afford to pay my rent in America! How am I going to Germany?

-Tupac, Age 17 On the Topic of Education, 1988.

Weddings are for stupid people, why?

Weddings are for stupid people. I daresay.

I hate weddings. Hate is a wrong adjective. I loathe weddings. Fair try. I despise weddings. Not bad.

As a rule, I never attend weddings. Fortunately, I have only been invited to a few in my adult life. But I have attended a dozen wedding fundraisings for my friends, whom for kinship and friendship sake, I will reserve my vitriol. But really! Legalizing sex should not be such a fuss and a big deal.

I would make only one exception before I launch into this tirade. The church or garden weddings that only attract a handful of family folks and friends to witness are OK. Also those that take place at the AG chambers with even minimal witnesses, thumps up. We need more of that.

What I can’t really stand is the swine who parades Mercs and Audis on Saturdays doing million-shillings weddings. What is wrong with people? These people who do grand beach weddings so as to broadcast to the world on Citizen or NTV. Every time I tune to the wedding show, I am sickened, no end. I occasionally tune in just but to listen to the mellow ballads they have as background music. It is always fine listening to an unexpected James Ingram or Johnny Gill number. See, there is always a silver lining for every cloud.

But everything else drives nuts. See, a wedding is simply a female affair. Essentially, your would be wife manages to get you into a pissing match with her bitchy friends. Weddings are the ultimate show-offs for your average woman corporate woman who went to college. It is the best place to measure balls (or whatever women measure) with her girls. It is the ultimate ‘look, bitches, I got me a man and a grand wedding, keep talking,’ for the bridesmaid.

And women relationship can be so poisonous. Attend a wedding and get to the nearest woman to offer her opinion about the whole affair. Every woman always has an opinion. One would have problem with the colours, ‘they tamper with the coastal mood!’. Some will be complaining about flowers, ‘daisies are so yesterday’. Some will have problems with the food, ‘the amount of meat in the pilau is …’ And some will be having problems with the man, ‘Hesbon of all people…such a bore.’ Believe you me; they will be saying pretty horrible things than this.

Scientists in my head have long determined that the smile the bridesmaid is wearing is ‘FUCK YOU ALL, IT IS MY WEDDING’ SMILE. She only succeeds to drive a wedge among her closest friends. Actually women don’t have the best of friends. All they have are a bunch of haters and backbiters who are always running at the mouth about their them. They say that men are competitive, sometimes negatively, but the level of competition amongst women is yet to get a name in English. It is competition mixed with hatred and jealousy. A very explosive mixture. If women had genuine friends, they won’t let them step out of the house in only tights with nothing on top.

Nowhere is the legendary female bitchiness and pettiness witnessed than on a wedding day. All the women you see grinning and simpering for the camera have an agenda. Meat a woman who has not been invited to a wedding by a friend and you know what I mean and you might want to revise the phrase ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned to hell hath no fury like a woman who has been not invited to a wedding by the best friend.

So a wedding essentially is her day and a man has no role to play other than being reminded that the sound is down, this bill has not been sorted and so forth. The man is mainly a spectator and probably a ‘regretor’ the entire day. While being oppressed by the suit and the tie and the new shoes and the inseparable sight of the wife, he is also envying his best male friends having a ball with the girls. The hotties always turn up all hot and bothered.

The wedding attire and make up of course bolsters the looks of any woman and they look hot and cheerful. They are always giggly and silly for the camera. And the perverted friends of the groom are always up to some mischief. They have a long day to lay them, play with them, dance with them, exchange the contacts and get some access to some good shag at some future date.

That is where the groom would rather be. Where the action is. Rather is condemned to be with the wife whom he will be spending lots and lots of time from then. Their provocative dresses and smiles of course will have little Joe Wood stirred since one or two of them will be looking hotter than your wife and willing to shag you as soon as you get the tie off. Women.

He will be with her and by the time they will be kissing; their mouths will be stinking from the quietness. Who deserves that?

Any right thinking man should resist any temptation to get into a settling score match for the wife. I have ever seen a man with a beard; a huge Adams apple and a bass confess how he met his wife, the chasing and all that. Such a disgrace to manhood. What would make a man say such silly things on TV? It can’t be sex, even if she has the tightest and most engaging game in town. It can’t be love, even if she is an angel on earth. What could it be? Only stupidity.

Think about the bill. I remember accompanying my homie Dave to search for a wedding dress at Realto in Anniversary Towers. A wedding dress went for Ksh 190,000(about $2250). What is wrong with the confused middle class in Kenya? They can’t help us get Sonko out of parliament, but they have time buy a wedding dress for all that money. A one-day dress. That patched-up mosquito net. I mean kids are dying in slums. So many beggars in the streets and you squander hundreds of thousands in dress that will not even improve your personality, still less, make your marriage worthwhile. You should have seen my face upon discovering that was not even the most expensive dress in the shop.

Think about the food, the hogging and the hedonistic pursuits of your male friends that you have to fulfill. The women and their exquisite tastes. Then, there is the lot that takes loans or goes into huge debts to legalize sex. This lot is better off dead than alive. Whatever happened to SIMPLE? Some people take so long to learn that the world does not give a damn. Whether you marry in Mars or in the Moon, people are preoccupied with their own mundane experiences, to even bother with your show-offs. They will gape, they will exhilarate but by nightfall, they would have forgotten.
I think people who deserve those grand weddings are those who have lived together for 20 years. Cohabiting and shagging for some months would not transform into a blissful existence in marriage. If anything marriage and a wedding are different things. And I am forced to think that the grander the wedding the higher the likelihood of a divorce in less than five years. Ask Fidel Odinga.

Having a grand wedding is like preparing for examination by buying expensive book titles and you forget to read them. Marriage is a union between two people. And the less people you involve other people in it the better and the more chances you have surviving the hard times guaranteed to come.

Anyway, weddings like dancing are some of the inventions of mankind to make our insufferable and mundane existences bearable. But any man who finds pleasure in weddings needs to have his head  examined. Stick to a simple affair witnessed with as few friends as possible. Make a good marriage the aim and not the wedding. Ensure that you don’t overspend, even if she insists.

On that sour note, merry Christmas to the family here on this blog.

What is this rush to motherhood, among my female peers?

It is like getting pregnant is the most fashionable thing in town. Two years after campus, just about every other female friend I had is either knocked up, a mother or married. I mean, we are certainly not younger and for women, the mid-20s is a ripe time for marriage, but why the hurry? I am rather beset by the state of affairs in town.

I must state from the get go that I have nothing against a woman having her child or even getting married. If anything I have stated a here severally that I respect a woman who opts to keep the child. Abortion is just as common. My statisticians insist that three out five women have aborted. Still their choice. May be not. For ours is a prejudiced society. Getting a child out of wedlock is still perceived as immoral and a sure sign of irresponsible and unprotected sex.

But in this case, I am little perturbed by the urgency of my year mates in campus  regarding motherhood and marriage. Back in campus a dozen chicks did get themselves knocked up and they stoically lived with it amid our prying eyes, gossipy mouths and judgmental minds. Last week I met one such who was attending her graduation, obviously postponed due to the pregnancy she incurred along the way while in campus. With her was her little pretty little daughter whom she proudly introduced to me. I was happy. Honestly, I felt a tinge of jealousy.

And since we left campus, it seems the rest moved into the bandwagon and they are now mothers. The men are still trying to find their feet in this unforgiving town. Marriage is a distant idea to them. But for women, it is understandable that 24-27 is a good time to get married, especially if they are marrying up (read yuppie or good money or even an older sober individual). If one gets to 28-34, it becomes a tricky affair, given that the baggage increases, the skepticism sets in and cynicism becomes the currency with which they transact in relationships and love matters.

But if I can confess, there is something uncomfortable when you bump into one of the prettier year mates heavy. If she was one of your Crushes, it crashes you completely. Especially if you still had hopes, however forlorn. Sometime back in September while having some late night banter in the desert with my boy Billy about the unfulfilled campus dates, the name Samantha popped up. My friend had had specifically randy thing for her. But she didn’t even bother knowing his first name. And that phony ‘Hi?’ with a plastic grin is all he got back for his troubles. While having this talk, I had a premonition that I will arrive back in Nairobi to find her pregnant. I am always right when it comes to first instincts.

My story with her is much different. It goes back to our first week in campus. Let me indulge you summarily. We were going back to our hostels when she sauntered through us and apparently she had made acquaintances with one of my first friends. We introduced each other, and she walked on. She had the best waist, tinier than the wasp’s and her hips were as such that you could perch a wine glass on it. Facially she was quietly beautiful with expressed sexuality, a distant smile and she looked unaffected by her obvious erotic features. No piece of clothing could hide that hour-glass shape.

I had expressed my desire to go after her but my friend told me that she is from the biggest town in Western Kenya and parties like a rock star. Truth be told I went to two high schools; Nyamagwa and Nyambaria. These schools are not even on Google maps. They are somewhere in the armpits of Gusiiland. That means I had some sprucing up to do before I could take my villager self to her. I later realized that my friend had designs for her and wanted me to keep me off her. They actually dated for a couple of months before he realized that she plays big, not with small-time broke ass campus chaps.

I remember seeking a class representative position and the lecturer decided that we go democratic and we had to vote. That fateful morning in Taifa Hall, some 25 ambitious freshers stood in front of 300 odd students in a communication class who had to vote for the two of them. We were given two minutes each to campaign. Each one of us spat some silly and really inane things. I was among the last ones to speak when the attention span, was somewhere between zero and zero. I made an ass of myself and this might not be the most stupid thing I ever did in campus, but it is a damn close second.

Needless to say that I only got one vote. I have never determined whether it was hers or my old pal (do men my age call their male friends pals?) Ndeda because they both claimed that they had voted for me. I lost laughably and miserably. But we all make mistakes. Me and Samantha will remain good friends, not so close, but I was guaranteed her smile when we met or that occasional warm hug that I always cherished. She never particularly considered me funny, but that is pardonable given she never looked someone who could digest a witty joke quickly.

As fate would have it, the day I returned my graduation gown is the day she returned hers. We chatted in the queue briefly. Upon submitting, we bid each other bye without promising each other to meet soon, or even a good day. Not even a number or even a Facebook hook up later. We are not even friends in Facebook.

I disappear to North Africa, I come back and I am standing in a bank queue, when a warm hand slithers into mine with a radiant smile,

“MPESA haifanyi!” she exclaimed loud enough for those next to me in the queue to hear.
“Just let us withdraw over the counter…”

I actually didn’t have an idea what she was talking about but I presumed she wanted to skip the queue and had spotted me and wanted those around to believe that we were together. Not a bad attempt. But it was pointless. She was expectant, obviously in the final trimester and possibly with twins if the size was anything to go by.

The beauty had gone. The skin too dry and the flesh on the cheek bones completely gone. Somebody forbid. I was shell-shocked. She never looked the type who could get herself up in the daff. I was heartbroken. When you saw Samantha, the word mother didn’t cross your mind. Dutiful mistress, probably. Material girl, obviously. Gold-digger, little bit. But Mother never did cross my mind. How mistaken could I be?

I was chagrined to say the least. And to express my displeasure, I didn’t wait for her to have any brief chat with her. I had her call my name but I ignored and walked on like I was not hearing her. See life is unfair.

There is nothing wrong in getting pregnant. It is their choice and desire. But when it is someone you know, there is something personal about it. There is an irresponsible jealousy that creeps up on you. You suddenly picture her nude getting pregnant. You hate it, if you are not the man giving it. Pardon my crudeness, but it happens and at least 99% of functional straight men feel it. There is nothing you can do about it. It comes up, you accept it and life goes on.

I really can’t get their haste. I mean I hate seeing my colleagues from campus aging that fast. And motherhood has a way of adding one or two years onto you and that inevitable fat. They make me feel so late into this fatherhood party. A couple of my male peers are already fathers and I missed the opportunity a while back.

Some days ago while at the airport, there was this man holding his two year-old kid on his shoulder. The kid looked confident and my attempt to make a scary face was met by the kid making a scarier one. The kid was confident. I liked the kid. I made a mental note to do something about it. In January I will be turning another year, closer to 30 no less and it is time I got things in order.

In my community, if something happened to me-God forbid-I will never be remembered for I cannot be named any child within the family or elsewhere for that matter. That is motivational enough. I think my female campus colleagues have challenged me and have jolted me into action. All I can say, being a baby mother ain’t bad per se, but they should get the men to show up for their responsibilities. Those kids will need fathers. That independence nonsense won’t help the child.

In conclusion, sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. For now, I don’t want to see one more expectant chick from the lot. That will sure drive me nuts. Some must remain around long enough. Who knows, they might be a sudden change of heart and for us to walk them down the aisle. Being broke is a temporary thing, as we say back in Kisii.

Aguem: Why she deserves better

She is probably 18, 19 or 20 but certainly not older than 25 at the outside. She is dark, tall, leggy and beautiful after a fashion. She possesses a rather statuesque body. Undoubtedly, a sculptor or a painter with a touch for the erotic will wish to have a go at her, especially the nude.

When she stands, she projects her buttocks backwards such that the back of her knees is projected backwards also so that even from 50 yards away, you want to spank her, albeit lightly. It is silently provocative, but I can’t tell whether it is conscious or subconscious since I am in a village where their conception of sex is purely procreational.

Her feet are not straight, she is slightly bow-legged and she projects her feet when walking at an angle of about 45, spread outwardly, sort of that her ankles possibly knock each other. She walks her feet ahead of her body. The result is that she sashays, sorts of floating on air when walking. Her walking style by default is like that of a confident model cat walking to cheers from the libidinous old white people. Her boobs stand erect and look like two slightly large apples with the nipples optimistically protruded reminding me of the 1047 abilities of my tongue. That is another story.

She kinda has a bus-shaped head, that cornrows seem to work magic on, giving her infinitely Africa beauty. In this country, they don’t know what acne is. They have the smoothest bodies, all the way. It could be the sun (always over 36 degrees) or the too much work and walking that burns the fat. But even so, they don’t have many fatty foods.

But she is in class four, primary school. A loud mouth and from her theatrics she must be dramatic. She tops her class. That means if she had been brought up in Nairobi or some other plastic city in Africa, she will the official overbearing Ms.Bitch, hated and loved in equal measure. If she had a girls’ clique, she won’t be the hottest but given that she is not ugly either, she will bully the rest of the girls. For sure she has both the dominant  (height-wise and intelligence) genes and the dominating ones (her talkative nature and the endless theatrics). The kind that whispers playfully and loudly about the boyfriend of one of the girls, ‘he has short fingers, probably short down there’ to her bewildered friends.
And she can punch anyone mercilessly. They like fighting, these people. I hear she has ever wrapped up some lanky teacher like a bundle of soft firewood. Her eyes are white and sharp. Sexy as well.  She is aggressive. She is sparkly and bubbly. Playful as the latter day Kelly Rowland when behaving or feeling horny in a video. And she possesses a latent sexiness that you must possess a certain software for the detail and subtlety to see. I have asked my colleague teachers and they all agree that she is a piece of work, but they’d rather not touch.
There is a class of women, especially the talkative, bright (even in class 4) and tall that men steer away from. You have to be incredibly sure about yourself in order to make that first move. Unless, you are a nerd and ready to wash her pants.

She is an attention-seeker. The kind who thinks that she must be the axis and the orbit upon which the world must rotate on and revolve around.

There is a way she walks that is peasant, yet exquisitely erotic, elegant and bemusing. She has this girlish excitement about her combined with a youthful exuberance, bubbly, sensuous and infectious. The kind that you naturally greet either laughing or smiling with the widest conceivable grin.

But she is a class four pupil and I shouldn’t be writing these kind of things about her. For heaven sake, I am a teacher and at a senior level. While we can’t control our eyes and thoughts and running that perverted thought is inevitable, lemme be specific and categorical that I cannot lay her. Admire? Certainly. Obviously. But it can’t go beyond that. I have a conscience and even though she is old and might be married any hour from now to any old randy man with cows, I can’t do anything beyond admiring her.

I have never been one for carnal knowledge with young girls or women who can’t decide on themselves still less even drug a woman with alcohol in order to get laid. And there seems to a lot of men who have no qualms doing that. And many women without the software to regret.  The teachers I am working with are possibly laying the kids in a bush around 3 a.m, but that is them.

Some things open your eyes and often you cry. Those men who are into incest with young female relatives or young girls in primary or secondary school should be castrated. They don’t deserve their balls.

Even though I am smitten, if I had to pursue her, there ought to be an appropriate channel of getting her. Namely, since she is of marriage age and certainly can consent to sex on her will, all I have to do is cough up 100 cows, each cow is about $250(or Ksh 20,000). In return I will be getting sex every once in two years until the first  child reaches puberty and that will be it. You only sleep with her once and you only submit the seed once(cum once), and you are jerked off. See, sex is overrated. That ism how they live and they don’t die. So what is it with Nairobians…?I am just saying. She will be a dutiful wife, she will probably never cheat, may be if bring her to Nairobi she might pick up the habit. And then they work like donkeys on their own volition. Men only go to war. The woman does everything from building the house, to going to the farm, feeding kids et al.

One afternoon, I am seated outside the staff quarters enjoying Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice(a book I should have read two years ago for my coursework on English Literature but never quite had the time, so I skipped the question altogether). A colleague I had mentioned to that given a chance I would tap that chick was a dick enough and took me seriously. So when she brought sour milk to them, he drags her to our quarters that are a little bit far from theirs. We share the house with boss who lives in the main house.He drags as if they are going there just to bump her into me and he claims to have told her that I have hots for her.

I am dumbfounded as usual. My man Pete to pitch for me first, but even so I am so linguistically crippled that all I know is a five step plan to get laid int their language  that goes like?
“Hi?
“What is your name?”
“I like you”
“Give me” (rather crude in mother tongue)
“Yes or No”.
That is as much mother tongue I know and the English she probably know. So I cannot start flattering her about her beauty or the youthful appearance (the two flatteries that have gotten me everywhere in Nairobi.). So I just look on as she shakes her hand with long and  deft fingers that would have been a source of pleasure to many men, had she grown up in Nairobi. I make an ass of myself because generally I can’t do anything or her for that matter. They disappear into the boss’s house leaving me confused. That unsettling feeling you get when around your crush.

She probably would have heard about my interest because painstakingly she has laid herself on my way and tried to attract my attention but it could be her usual theatrics and I am overrating myself. Sure. There hasn’t been any clear-cut giveaway and it has been a matter of conjecture and relying on my instincts. They are never wrong. But positively, if I thought my advantaged position and nationality might make her go gaga, I have been sadly disappointed. Going on to prove that she is a chaste, disciplined girl.

Every one week, monthly, I don’t see her at school and it breaks my heart to hear that she alongside other girls stay at home when they are having periods because they cannot afford a sanitary pad. Actually there are no sanitary pads, and they have never heard about them. Rarely can they come up with an improv…I hate it that there are no sanitary pads and unless something is done, they will start getting them in a decade time. It is so unfair. Not just her, but every school going girl who has to interrupt her learning for something that humanity resolved a million years ago.

My interest in her is purely visual and I want the best for every girl in these region. I hate it when they get married so young and robbed off their lives. I hate anything that gives women under 25 any obstacle to schooling or a promising life in the future. Early marriage is a constraint. Uninformed premarital sex is fraught with all sorts of dangers, often fatal.

As you read this, if there is anything you can do to help a young girl or woman, be it a that cousin, sister or anyone towards getting the basics until she comes of age, do it. Let us protect our women from misguided sexual behavior, unwanted pregnancies, prostitution and abusive men. Anything you can do.

As for me and Aguem, were we not so much on different planes, who knows, she is the kind of wife you would like. She is talkative, brilliant, bitchy, leggy, tall, sexy, smoothly ebony. Just about how I like them. And I will never have a dull day in my life.

And if I dare touch and I am caught I will pay 200 cows and serve a jail sentence where you take cold water for breakfast, warm water for supper, and lukewarm water for dinner.

This blog is back and will resume its normal course. I took a break and disappeared to Northen Barl el Ghazal in Sudan for some teaching job and it has been a revelation, but I am back. And for good. Big things will be popping up from next week. Apology for anyone who popped up his head here and found nothing. Here is something for a start. And a change.