The Joy of Handling Stolen Property

Handling stolen property is a capital offence – according to the Law Books. It is however a minor misdemeanour according to many Kenyans. Some even consider it an honour and a sign of good judgement. This is because, in Kenya, you are only a thief if you are caught.

Mobile Phones

Mobile phones are no longer the status statement they used to be when they first arrived. They are now a basic necessity and few people can function without them. Mobiles are now available with a wide variety of functions and features. This also means that they range in price from a few hundred shillings to more than a hundred thousand. It is understandable that everybody would like to have an expensive phone. What is not so obvious to me is why someone would buy a phone that is likely to be stolen just so that he can show off its unique features that are completely useless to him.

 I have seen people telling some youth in their neighbourhood, “nitafutie simu” (find me a phone). My question is; where do you expect your young neighbour’s son to get you a phone when you know very well he does not own a phone shop? Aren’t you the one encouraging him to become a thief? You do all this because you are comfortable enjoying something that belongs to someone else irrespective of whether the owner is receiving a drip in hospital or biting cotton wool in a mortuary as a result of the extraction method.

Household Items

When I was growing up, entertainment was rare and was not considered a need. Most homes only had radios just for tuning in to the news but few had phonographs. For those too young to understand, a phonograph was the ancestor of today’s CD player and was used for playing music using what were referred to as vinyl records. Today, literally every home can boast of a colour TV and a DVD player. The demand, particularly of DVD players is such that when a burglar breaks into a house, it is the first thing he looks for. This, I am told, is because the demand for the gadget is so high that the thief is guaranteed of selling it on the same day.

The new owner of the stolen DVD will probably proudly show it off to his friends and boast of how cheaply he got it especially considering the advanced features it has. He will not care whose house was broken into or whose wife got raped in the process.

Auctions

One can get good items at auctions for extremely friendly prices. Auctions are supposed to sell items that have been repossessed by money lenders of one kind or other. The items are supposed to be cheap because their reserve price should be the balance outstanding from the borrowed money. Inasmuch as auctions involve a lot of tears for those who are being auctioned, they are perfectly legal. I have however heard that some unscrupulous auctioneers use them as (dis)honest fronts for quietly disposing stolen items. The thought that I could be buying stolen property in disguise makes me wary of auctions.

Dirty Sack-Laden Parking Boys (Men)

I have observed parking boys who normally rummage through garbage and carry big (and usually oily) sacks. I hear most of them are looking for waste things such as oil filters (don’t ask), paper, plastics, and wires, which they later go and sell to recyclers. That sounds innocent enough. I have also unreliably heard that some of them use the big sacks as camouflaged transportation for stolen items such as radios and other electronics. Don’t quote the Layman on this one, it is just a rumour – I have never inspected any of the dirty sacks.

Guns for Hire

I recently read about a policeman who lost his gun while on duty. This would have been bad enough as it was; only it was not. This was the second official firearm the same policeman was losing. It was considered to be a highly suspicious case and had more than meets the eye but I don’t know how it was concluded. There have been reports in the past that some policemen have hired out their official guns to thugs. The policemen are so comfortable with handling stolen property that they are willing to facilitate in its acquisition. God save us!

P.S. I have been thinking; corruption is still theft but by a different name and scale. It is such a joy for those who partake in it.  

The Folly of Idle Hands

Have you ever been in a training workshop where the food was extremely good but the topic and facilitator were boring to a fault? Do you remember how you used the provided stationery for the unintended purpose of keeping your idle hands busy? Do you recall the intricate patterns you ravished on the blank pages? Do you also see the way you thickened the outlines of your yet-to-be-defined artwork? Worry not. You are not alone. You are just one of the many Kenyans who occasionally or constantly suffer from the ‘idle hands syndrome’.

It is said that an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. I assume then that the mind is where all those evil ideas are formed. It naturally follows that these ideas need to be actualised. The hands are therefore the assembly line where the final products are released to the world.

Graffiti on Furniture

Before artists can get licenses from the City Council to paint beautiful graffiti on walls, they must have had the opportunity to practice and hone their art. They must have been a headache when they were in school because of filling every available inch of their desk surface with undecipherable graffiti. I noted that most desks in my daughters’ school are full of graffiti. Before I could ask where the children learn the bad habit from, I noticed similar, if not uglier, graffiti on the teachers’ tables.

I remember when I was in school; I could get corporal punishment (it was still legal) for putting a dot on my desk. As a consequence, the desks we used in primary school had been in service for over fifty years. They even had a neat round hole on top where the ink pot used to be inserted from back in the days when writing quills were still in use. That was long before fountain pens were invented.

Conversion of Text Books into Exercise Books

Any text book that has been used by more than one student will bear witness of any such students’ ignorance and cluelessness in their studies. How, you may ask! The said students will have made the text book into a note book where they jot what they think are the correct answers; but which will make you wonder who their parents are.

Again using my generation as a bench mark; I remember textbooks we inherited from those who had gone before us. The only reason we stopped using them was because East Africa went metric and the books became invalid since they were using miles instead of kilometres, feet and yards instead of metres, pounds instead of kilograms, and pints instead of litres. These books were still in pristine condition by the time they were ‘retired’.

Reorganising the House

Have you ever hosted a guest who wants not just to touch everything, but to also lift it up and inspect it closely? Did you also note that such a person was almost always clumsy and was prone to drop those particularly fragile and irreplaceable antique items you love to collect during your rare travels? I have hosted such people and the tension they create makes their visits seem longer than is naturally bearable.

Have you also noted that those ‘idle-handed’, clumsy, and ‘touchy’ people will never put things back where or how they found them? They will either place them back on a different shelf or if they place them back on the right one, they will do it in that irritatingly lopsided way. They also tend to place things back on edges in a way that even a small breeze can topple them over.

Resetting Mobile Phones

I am of the opinion that a mobile phone is not a toy. I therefore cannot understand why people give children their mobile phones to play with. A friend I had been trying to reach one time later told me that his recently acquired phone had died. On enquiring why, the guy told me that his baby daughter had drooled on it.

I have had friends whose phone settings had been tampered with so much by their children that there was no hope of bringing them back to normal. The kids have set up call barring to the parents’ boss’ number and others have called emergency services and given fake reports of burning houses and fighting parents.

Formatting Computers

I once lent a young friend my computer. I had bought that computer new and installed genuine windows on it. I had also saved lots of photos which I had taken during travels to such rare places as Mount Elgon and Dadaab. On getting the computer back, I got the warning on screen that my copy of windows might not be genuine. On further investigation, I discovered that the hard disk had been wiped clean and I had lost all those photos and may other documents.

That boy had not planned to tell me he had formatted my computer after crashing it. I had to squeeze it out of him. I hate to imagine what he had done to crash a powerful brand new computer. It was a typical case of chronic idle hands.

Dismantling Gadgets

When I was growing up, we rarely got shop-bought toys. We usually made our own toys and we took good care of them. On the rare occasions that we got new toys, we treasured them and they were handed down through the generations. Today, the life of a toy is measured in hours rather than in years as was the case in our days. Kids are more interested in knowing how many component parts make up a toy car than they are interested in how fast it can move.

P.S. While appreciating that this is a generation of idle hands, I can’t wait to see what standard one children will do with the promised ‘GK’ laptops.

The Redefinition of Poverty

Poverty Line

The World Bank has just reset the poverty line at $1.90 per day. The increase from the previous $1 has been necessitated by the rise in the cost of living. It is true I am a layman and my understanding of these matters is wanting. However, I know that it is hard to peg poverty, or deviation thereof, to a number. I believe there are many factors at play in poverty that many of the experts from the west (I can’t figure out the west of what), obviously can’t understand.

Monetary Value

It is true that not everything that is important in life has a monetary value. It is also true that some of the most valuable things in life are free. Health, peace, happiness, and love, to name just but a few are freely available to both the rich and poor. The acquisition of these things therefore does not depend on how many dollars one can raise in a day.

Who’s Reality Counts?

I have seen many people in this country who get the bulk of their food directly from their land through subsistence farming. They never handle a lot of money and they are well below the poverty line according to the World Bank. I would however hesitate to call them poor. I can consider them richer than some of the richest people in the world. They are completely debt free. They eat a healthy diet. They get proper exercise for free as they till their land. They live and work with their family members and are part of a closely knit society whose children are taught the unadulterated values of their community passed down over the generations.

Bottled mineral water now costs more than petrol. This is the same water these people have been taking for eons. They have been taking it straight from the source. This is strange because for any water to be licensed as mineral water, it has to be bottled at the source. Who’s richer now?

I once met a development worker and university professor from the UK who is deeply involved in poverty eradication. He is the one I heard asking some people he was training, “Who’s reality counts?” He was asking this in reference to donor organisations and the relationship they have with their beneficiaries in developing countries. From his study, it came out that a lot of this aid is ineffective because it is given on the premise of the wrong reality; that of the giver and not of the recipient. The professor is the one who came up with this “inverted” globe and asked, “Why not?”

Needs vs. Wants vs. Luxuries

If you ask me, I think Africa was doing okay before the Europeans ‘scrambled’ for it and divided it amongst themselves. There were functioning systems of governance and economics. There was sufficient technology and knowledge in all areas of human life. People could grow food and make their own forms of clothing. The Europeans changed our definition of needs and wants. They also added the element of luxury which does not appear to have been an important aspect of life here.

Electricity and piped water have almost become a matter of life and death. The same applies to sewerage systems. Whereas all the food we ate was both nutritious and delicious, the western concept is one where food is divided into healthy food and junk food. Healthy food is that which everyone knows is good for the body but nobody wants to eat while junk food is that which is known to contain certain death but is taken as a treat when people are in a celebratory mood.

Having What You Want vs. Wanting What You Have

It is a popular modern philosophy that the pursuit of happiness is better than the attainment of happiness itself. We are taught never to be content with what we have and we therefore have to be on the constant quest for more. We are engaged in fierce competition with each other as individuals and as groups. The poverty index is just one of the many indexes that we have to try and live up to. Our lives have been reduced to numbers that we have to try and attain. Probably for the first time in history, human beings think they can turn infinity into an actual achievable number. Maybe mathematicians will eventually attach a value to ∞. Let’s wait and see.

P.S. "Money isn't the most important thing in life, but it's reasonably close to oxygen on the 'gotta have it' scale" - Zig Ziglar.

The Demise of Self-Control

“I regret to announce the passing on of Self-Control. Until his death, he was the guiding mantra in the lives of human beings. He leaves behind a world full of chaos where people can do whatever they like without feeling guilty.”

Excuse the silly eulogy. I was just trying to find out how it would feel like to think of self-control as a mortal person who can undergo death. Seriously though, mortal or not, self-control is dead in very many people. It is so dead that the lack of self-control is the new normal.

An Inability to Say No

I have learnt that every single addiction or indulgence is brought about by an inability to say no. I recently wrote about the power of “No” because I also realised that I was saying “No” fewer and fewer times even where I really needed to.

Recovering alcoholics recall that very first sip of beer they took and they wish they never did. Smokers tell of the first teary eyed-choking-coughing- inducing puff that ushered them into a life-long bondage, and brought them to death’s doorstep through possible lung cancer. People like to talk of how every prostitute was once a virgin. Each of these people who are stuck in a habit or addiction they can’t untangle themselves from, wish they said “No” when they had the chance. They lost their self control and it is going to be a tall order to try and reclaim it now.

Parenting

People say that parenting today is harder than it used to be during our parent’s time. I beg to differ. I think today we teach children that it’s not important to exercise self control. Instead, we tell them that it is good for them to follow their hearts (in this case meaning what they feel like at the particular moment). Children are on free fall as far as self control is concerned and the same applies to their parents. What used to be special privileges when we were kids are now referred to as inalienable rights.

Gluttony

According to the bible, gluttony is considered a sin. For those who may be sinning unknowingly, gluttony is eating more food than the body needs. We have many foods today that are hard to say no to. Just one more bite! It is that one more bite that leads a person to become overweight and eventually, obese. We all know where this ends up – lifestyle diseases that either cost a bomb to treat or lead to an early grave.

There is a field of medicine known as Bariatric surgery. It is concerned with helping obese people lose weight by surgically reducing the size of their stomachs and thereby their “healthy” appetites. Most of the specialists in this field are convincing people who are morbidly obese that there is no other option to control their weight unless they undergo either a gastric bypass surgery, or the insertion of a gastric band to reduce their food intake capacity. Self control is all but out rightly discouraged.

Sex

The newest addiction in town is that of sex. It is not helped by the media and advertising where they say that sex sells. The number of women a man has slept with is considered more of an accolade than as a cause for concern. Women, particularly young ones, do not want to be considered sissies for having very high standards. They are therefore willing to disrobe for any man who shows the faintest interest in them. It is surprising but true that many of them don’t know that they can actually say “No” and still be cool.

Just like addiction to drugs, food, or alcohol, many people don’t realise they are addicted to sex until they are too deep in it. They are unknowingly financing a multibillion shilling industry that is involved in producing pornography, sex toys, and trafficking in staggering numbers of women for prostitution or sex slavery. Those without the means or motivation to display their addictions openly are busy “wanking” away in the bondage of masturbation.

Blame it on the Genes

Research is at advanced stages in the field of genetics to prove that all those people addicted to food, drugs, alcohol, and sex, are genetically predisposed to be so. I may not know what causes us to be addicted to various habits and substances. Some of us think it is because we have failed to nurture a culture of self control. Some experts, as seen above, say we are born that way. Whatever the cause, it is up to every individual to do what they can in order to control their cravings.