STONE COLD HAVEN

I have a deep rooted cynicism for politics, notwithstanding the fact that I don’t trust politicians as far as I could spit the fuckers.

You always know it’s election season when they start gallivanting around the UK purporting to reach out to the Kenyan Diaspora and pretend they care. It’s the twisted rendition of them visiting rural areas to hand out lessos and bags of sugar to the hapless electorate who are supposed to be thankful that the politicians are coming to their village to listen to them.

I mean, these are the same folk who literally hijack burial services because it’s one of the most sure fire ways of reaching a captive audience. They don’t even give a damn about the deceased and instead shamelessly preach their tribalistic nonsense.

The game has changed with dual citizenship a reality. It gives politicians access to campaign funds from Diasporans abroad desperate to maintain a link with politics at home. It gives them potential access to votes if the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission can get its shit together. It gives them a platform to spew their diatribe and tired political messages.

Kalonzo Musyoka is already at it with his entourage of dodgy ministerial lackeys and civil servants. And guess what their carrot is. Kenyans in the Diaspora should lobby for a seat in parliament.

Forgive my cynicism, but if the Vice President was serious about representation of Diasporans in the Kenyan parliament, he should have pushed for the creation of such a presence before the constitution was sealed.

What point is there jerking off excitable Kenyans in the Diaspora with the tantalizing prospect of a seat in parliament instead of presenting it as a bill for law change in the said parliament and having it debated. The parliament building is in down town Nairobi and not in East London.

All Kalonzo and other politicians and their hapless bus boys and girls are interested in is exerting influence over the Diaspora to gain advantage before the election next year.

The Vice President should stop being a manipulative punk and stop taking people for idiots. The government can’t even sort out the issues around the ICC and the criminal case against the Occampo 6, and he’s here promising a seat in parliament for the hundreds of thousands of Kenyans abroad? Does he think we walked into this election season from the cotton fields?

The irony is that Kenyans abroad are directly responsible for 5.3% of Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product. That’s a budget segment even bigger than the budget of most ministries in government. And all the punk can offer is a single solitary seat in parliament? What’s he going to give us next, a meal for our Diaspora MP every time he or she attends parliament?

If Kalonzo wants to impress us, get the president and prime minister to create a full blown ministry of Diaspora affairs to channel the human, social and financial capital and absolute clout that Kenyans abroad can bring to bear for the development of the country. You don’t need any Kenyans in the Diaspora to lobby that one for you – you’re the vice president, convince your bosses.

Kalonzo should stop this cheap ass politicking and cock teasing of Kenyans in some back water in East London. Go back home and get us some real shit in government.

And in case you were wondering where my contempt for Kenyan politicians comes from, have a look at this article I wrote quite a while back about the Rapists Of The Kenyan Spirit. Believe me, these guys don’t do themselves any justice – but I have to tell you, I blame all of us Kenyans for collective gross negligence and deriliction of our civic responsibilities by the reckless and irresponsible way we keep voting these punks into parliament.

And don’t forget the shot gun wedding that Kibaki and Raila had to endure. we still don’t know who’s children will survive this marriage..

If you haven’t yet, follow us on twitter. You might even get the chance to help us get Larry Madowo laid.

I always figured I was in the wrong profession. Not that I’ll even get away with trying to sell my body. A sell-by date doesn’t even apply in my case. I doubt that I’d ever pass any type of screening that would declare me fit for purpose for what seems to be a very lucrative trade in austere times.

Legend has it that there’s only 2 professions in the world that are recession proof. Being an undertaker and prostitution. You’ll never run out of a ready customer base willing to pay the going rate for services rendered.

But of course once in a while someone just takes the piss and redefines their own rules in the market. Take poor old Dawn. She thought she’d hit the jackpot, but didn’t account for her client being a thief. For the record, whoever pays for sex to the tune of £1.7 million in less than 3 years deserves to be locked up in prison and the keys thrown away. That kind of stupidity endangers the human gene pool.

It’s bad enough that the guy steals over £3 million from his employer, but he should have been executed for the manner in which he spent the proceeds of the heist.

The lady argues that her sexual services were value for money and the guy was prepared to pay the market rate – a rate her accountant estimates at about £20,000 a week. Even the judge in this case hard a problem with that appraisal of the defendants market value as a professional provider of horizontal refreshments. Which makes you really ask the question – is any pussy worth circa £3K a day? The law of the land clearly thinks not.

But then again, what price do you put on someone being a platinum idiot and agreeing to pay that amount. The lady is clearly aggrieved that she’s losing the fruits of her loins, literally – but you really can’t argue about a judge clawing back the proceeds of crime. It’s forbidden fruit.

My take – she should have hired a more savvy accountant to keep her hard earned money away from the long arm of the criminal justice system. There’s nothing that’s more of a bastard than thinking you’ve earned £1.7 million for a judge to tell you “actually, sweet heart – you need to pay that shit back”.

Or maybe she should have opted to become an undertaker. There are no grey areas when it comes to splitting hairs over the prices of the services rendered.

So I’ve also joined this twitter thing. I’m told its safer and more sane than MKZ – but what do I know. You can follow me on twitter and find out whether I get the hang of it.

So a few weeks ago while relaxing with some friends, I was asked to consider talking some sense into a dead beat dad – who for all intents and purposes, had left a poor girl at the traffic lights, literally holding the baby.

I guess I was only asked when it turned out that I actually went to high school with the said dead beat dad. You’ll be surprised how 6 degrees of separation can make the world smaller than it really seems.

I think we were talking about how kids change people’s lives – and one conversation too many ended up with the story of my former schoolmate. The said girl abandoned at the traffic lights is his ex-missus, so you can just picture where this conversation went short of wishing that she had actually been with us at the time.

I’ll plead the 5th amendment right here on going into the specific story of this couple for the simple reason that there’s a very high possibility that they will be directed to read this post.

I don’t consider myself a marriage counsellor, but for what it’s worth, I thought that this once, I’d provide a public service based on my experience and that of my peers. If it helps even one girl to make better choices in men – or convinces even one other guy to take care of responsibilities, then the post is most definitely worth my time.

It’s certainly easier than sitting down to talk sense to – you know who.

Girls, here’s 5 Stone Cold sure fire ways to identify a dead beat dad from a mile off.

1. Follow your instincts

God gave you instinct to protect you from the evil in this world. Use the damn instincts and save yourself from the world.

The best advice you can ever get is not to get yourself into certain situations especially when all your faculties are telling you that it’s plain madness. Your body is wired to be selective and to use any stimuli it can to detect what is inherently dangerous for you.

You have signs all over that only you choose to ignore – habits, what he says, what he does, the choices he makes, the risks he takes – even his scent gives you an indication about how dangerous the proposition is.

Let’s get one thing out of the way – you’re not going to totally avoid danger. There’s no such thing as zero risk. Everything you do is risky.

Even for a guy, looking at a girl’s ass is risky because it presents options not previously available. For a girl, the risks are different. I’m just saying listen to your instincts and minimize that risk.

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When news about the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti started filtering through last week, my first thought was ”watch the vultures ride into town”

Even my wife was confused by my perceived indifference and reference to the aid and humanitarian organisations as vultures, as they geared up for what is turning out to be the biggest peace time humanitarian disaster of our generation, save for the 2004 Tsunami.

The earthquake and its aftershocks have caused untold devastation and suffering to the people of Haiti. Lord knows they need all the help they can get, and in principle, I have absolutely no problem with a coherent humanitarian effort followed by a structural programme to rehabilitate the country’s infrastructure.

Inevitably with such situations, the ugly side of the self righteous aid and development industry bears its teeth. It’s a conversation many people in the aid industry don’t want to have as they bury their heads in the sand.

Watch the news now, and it’s more to do with aid agencies marketing themselves and fund raising than actually doing the bread and butter things that helps stabilize relief issues in Haiti. Every aid agency you can think of are in town from Red Cross to Oxfam, from the Sisters of Guayando to The Pillars of Christian Faith, from Handicap International to Doctors Without Borders.

The question has to be asked though? Are all these people working with a silo mentality really helping? Some of the aid agencies are already being accused of focusing on the marketing opportunities the media coverage is providing. If you work in the aid industry, you’ll be well aware of the potential of fundraising off such a disaster.

Aid agencies are even claiming ownership of the relief efforts by using slogans like ”Spearheading the relief efforts” or ”Leading the relief challenge” – as if it was a job that belonged to that agency.

The blunt reality is that the co-ordination of the relief effort is incompetent at best and tragic at worst. The people of Haiti are already feeling the impact of these uncoordinated efforts. Lives that could have been saved are gone, those who could have been treated have developed permanent disabilities because aid agencies were still haggling on the tarmac at the airport in Port Au Prince.

The worst part is that the agencies will still continue to play territorial games and have the overall relief work hampered by politics and hidden agendas.

Where I live, we’ve even been approached by several people purporting to act for NGOs that are sending relief to Haiti. One of them even left a threatening note demanding that we give something.
See
, I’m one of those people who get pissed right off with such nonsense. For one, the heifer who left that note saying she was coming back to collect anything from money to old clothes has no clue where I stand on this issue – or even what I’ve already done for that matter.

I actually happen to know how the money trail works within the industry so I’ll be well placed to know what to do if and when I decide that my conscience needs to do something.

These same agencies haven’t even cleared up the mess of the bottlenecks they caused after the Asian Tsunami – and believe me when I say too many cooks spoilt that broth.

We’ve got a long way to go with Haiti.

When chatting to a good friend on new year’s day, I asked how her daughter was, and at first, it seemed that the question had dampened her spirits.

“Darius, she’s in secondary school now”, was the subdued answer and it was quickly followed by a resigned “Dude – it’s official, we’re old”.

But even after we both cracked out laughing, the thought lingered and you begin to take stock. I guess that the main change in my life over the last several years is that some things have become more important than others and you tend to prioritize better and focus on what’s important. What hasn’t changed though is the ability for nostalgia to hit you hard enough to make you home sick especially with the sub zero temperatures and snow storms that box you in the house and makes you ask that dreaded “what am I really doing here” question.

It made me think of the good old days growing up and enjoying some of the simplest and most cherishable moments life will ever present.

Don’t know about some readers up in here, but there were times when 5 bob could take you a long long way back in the day. My dad used to give us 5 bob a day and that would cover bus fare to and from school, a soda and a snack of some sort (usually quarter bread bandika) for lunch, and you’d still have left over change to buy roast maize with pili pili or patcos to carry you through the evening.

Long before the advent of satellite TV with over 20 exclusive movie channels, local entertainment back then was fronted by public service open air movie services like Tazama Mobile Cinema pitched up in an open field once a month to bring to you the blockbuster of the day. They had this strange habit though, of commentating the movie as it went on in a manner that was as equally funny as it was annoying.

Speaking of entertainment, there were classic shows that would definitely be in my DVD collection right now – From Vioja Mahakamani and the comical antics of the residents of Matopeni, to Vitimbi and the real celebrities like Othorong’ong’o and Masanduku (forget all these latter day celebs who think they’re celebs because…well, anything makes you a celeb these days). There were shows like Tushauriane that were banned outright because they showed a couple embracing and the chap started unblousing the girl. Or even the days when we didn’t have mobile phones and you had to walk a kilometre to the nearest phone box where there was a massive queue of all manner of people – and you’d be mad when your ‘girlfriend to be’ plays hard to get and pulls that stunt of asking you to call later because she’s watching No One But You or The Rich Also Cry. The ungrateful heifer – after all those hours you’ve waited in line to make that call….LOL!

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