The Layman’s Mum

In the last few weeks, and for the first time since I started this blog, I encountered severe writer’s block. This creative deficiency culminated with the sad demise of my mum on the evening of 29^th December 2016. My inexplicable lack of words (rare with the Layman), could now be explained.

A Special Lady

My mum is special (I am hesitant to say “was”). This is a feeble attempt to describe her because words can hardly do justice to whom and what she was. Right now as am writing this, I am seated in her house. I am at the dining table on my favourite chair. I like this chair because from here, I could see and talk to her through the food window as she would be busy whipping up something for me to eat. I have always commended her on how cosy and homely her house is. This morning however, something is missing. It feels a bit lifeless (actually not a bit but completely lifeless). This is despite the fact that everything is still as she left it.

The Look

Growing up, I can remember my mum’s guidance and discipline. Like many other parents in those days, she did not necessarily need to spank us when we did anything wrong. She had what I like to refer to as ‘the look’. The look had two major uses. It could be used as an indicator of oncoming discipline particularly if you had done something wrong in the presence of visitors (we were never punished when visitors were present). The other use of the look was as a deterrent. It was enough to make you change your mind on some stupid thing you had planned to do.

The Words

My mum had a way with words. She liked to invoke many proverbs and among those that have stuck to me is one where she would say, “Worth doing is worth doing well”. She would encourage us to give our best in whatever we chose to do. Another favourite was “A place for everything and everything in its place”. This ensured that her house was (and still is) always tidy and well-organised.

The Skills

My mum had amazing skills. In addition to cooking all sorts of amazing dishes and cuisines, she could knit, sew, embroider, grow things, and farm. She could make all sorts of exotic flowers and plants to grow seemingly effortlessly. Any animals that she happened to own be they cows, cats, dogs, and chickens, would multiply in no time. My best memories of her are when she was engrossed in her work which makes her a Proverbs 31 woman.

The Patience

Anyone who has failed as many times in life as the Layman; would know that it takes a woman of gold to support him. My mum has had amazing patience with us and it is hard to imagine how we would have turned out if she was not so. It was not a matter of second chances. Rather it was the availing of as many chances as one asked for with no limit.

The Fighting Spirit

Cancer has been talked about so much until it almost appears commonplace. This is not so. Cancer is such a bad disease that appears hell-bent to cause as much misery as it can to mankind. My mum lived with cancer for almost ten years. She fought the disease with superhuman resilience. She defied statistics and proved that cancer has a weak link somewhere. Every time I looked at her, I was amazed at how she had fought with a dreaded disease and smiled throughout.

Learning and Moving On

It will be hard for my siblings and me to move on without our mum. She has however left a part of herself in each one of us. We will therefore strive to live by her standards and impact our own children the way she did to us. We will nurture our respective skills and utilize them to make the world a better place. Since we don’t know how many years God will grant us, we will say, “Worth Doing is Worth Doing Well”.

Writing Our Own History

You may have read it somewhere that this or that person discovered Mount Kenya. You could also have heard that some man somewhere found an undiscovered lake in the heart of Africa and gave it the name of his Queen back home. You have been taught these things in school and reciting them as taught, enabled you to pass exams and opened up opportunities in life. You have been told these things over and over again until you believed them to be true. I am here to ruin your party and inform you that you have been living a lie.

How, you may ask, is it that what you have known to be true all your life can be wrong? I will answer that question by giving you a small assignment. Try to find out if anybody claims to have “discovered” anything outside Africa. You can for example try to research on who discovered the Swiss Alps, or the River Thames. How about who discovered the Niagara Falls?

A Writing Deficiency

Africa is reputed to have one of the richest oral histories of mankind. However, it is just that; oral! Writing is said to have originated from Africa. It is apparent that not much development has taken place after the origination. This has led to the death or severe mutilation of many African stories. The result of this has been the impression that Africans are primitive and have not come up with much in the improvement of mankind’s lifestyle.

Allergy to Reading

“If you want to hide something from a black person, put it in a book.” This quote by an unidentified speaker has been used repeatedly to depict the ignorance of black people. It is said that they can’t read if their lives depended on it. They are said to only read in preparations for exams and even then, they forget everything as soon as they graduate. Inasmuch as these assertions are unfairly stereotypical, they contain some harsh realities.

It has been illustrated in relation to some crucial documents that people choose not to read even when they contain potentially life-altering information. A case in point is the new Kenyan constitution that we passed in 2010. Some people, during press interviews on the streets, confessed that they had not read a single word of the widely distributed constitution. Instead, they waited for their leaders to read and tell them how to vote.

The Bible – Parallel to Traditional African Religions

It is interesting to note that there are a lot of similarities between Christianity and Indigenous African religions. Of particular interest to me is the creation story. I recently visited the shrine where my community originated from as narrated here; http://thelaymanspoint.blogspot.co.ke/2016/09/tracing-my-roots.html . I listened to the old men talk of how God created our patriarch and placed him there, which is a semblance of the Garden of Eden. 

I was thinking to myself, these two stories developed independently thousands of miles apart, and by people who never knew of the existence of each other, but their similarities are striking. Still in line with religion, it is apparent that both Africa and the East developed elaborate belief systems which the West had to catch up with and adopt. It is also apparent that the only truly Western religion is Atheism.

The Death of African Systems of Government

From most of African history, we learn that the vast majority of communities were self-sufficient. They therefore did not need to interact much with each other apart from the occasional livestock raid when they brought in women for marriage in addition to the animals. However, for the most part, these communities were at peace with each other. It is the West, specifically Europeans, who disrupted this harmonic state of affairs through colonisation and lumping together of diverse communities to form countries. That effectively killed our own forms of small but effective governments.

You might wonder how all our systems died so easily. I believe it is because it was not written down. It was passed through word of mouth from one generation to the next. There was no record of it besides what was committed to a few people’s memory. If anybody died with some form of knowledge that had not been passed on, he died with that knowledge. It is now easy to see why Africa is perceived to be intellectually dark as compared to other continents. We allowed others to write our history. We need to change that and start writing our own history. It is the only way we can revive all the knowledge and wisdom of our forefathers.

P.S. In recent years, it has come to my attention that when people send Christmas wishes, they write X-mass. Even with my limited education, I know that “X” is not an acronym or short form of Christ. If anything, it denotes the cancelling out of something. Does this then mean we are celebrating a mass for Christ to which he is not invited?

Living and Letting Live

There is a Pastor cum Bishop cum Apostle whose followers fondly refer to him simply as Daddy. He has been trending on social media because somebody claimed that his “children” have bought him a private jet. A lot of “Christians” who are obviously not from his church are up in arms. They claim that he is living large at the expense of his poor adherents. They say that it is wrong of Daddy to be thinking of taking to the skies and yet his followers don’t even own bicycles. Well, you who is reading this and thinking that for once the Layman supports you. I hate to burst your bubble. If you ask me, they can go ahead and buy him a rocket and it won’t affect me. After all, it is their money and they are giving it out of their own free will.

My Dress My Choice

If there is one thing I love about our new constitution, it is the bill of rights. I like the fact that my fundamental rights are protected and nobody is legally empowered to take them away from me. Key among these rights is the freedom of expression and association. I can express myself in whichever way I want be it verbally or demonstratively. Much has been said about women dressing provocatively and how Un-African it is. I took the liberty of researching how Africans dressed before western influence. I was appalled at what I discovered. In the vast majority of communities, women walked around topless and, almost invariably all never wore underwear.

Sexual Orientation

I don’t know who assigns sexual orientation. What I do know is that it is hard to change. I have never heard of a homosexual who became heterosexual and vice versa. I have however heard of a homosexual trying to live a “straight” life so as to fit with societal expectations. I have also heard of heterosexual people trying out homosexual activities either out of curiosity or in a bid to make money through prostitution. I also hear that there are some people referred to as bisexual. This group claim to be attracted to both sexes but they claim they ascribe to only one orientation at a time.

Minding Your Own Business

This is one of the first expressions in English that was widely used in the village where I grew up. We were taught and constantly reminded to mind our own business. Gossip and eavesdropping were frowned upon. We were always told to pay attention to only that which concerned us. That is how we were conditioned until Hollywood happened and we had to know everything that the Kardashians were doing.

Tolerating the Intolerable

In Africa today, if somebody takes your rights away, he will have more defenders than you. This is the reason why you can be jailed for life for being homosexual while a fraudster who amasses millions of dollars of public money is celebrated as a hero. I was watching TV last evening and was shocked to learn that there are Kenyan refugees in Uganda who were displaced during the Post-election violence in 2008. I know some people will support their resettlement, and some won’t, based purely on which community they are from.

Defending the Undeserving

It has come to that time again. The time to reward those who have served us well for five years. The time to send home those who have failed to fulfil their promises. The time to put in their place those who hinder us from living our lives the way we desire and deserve. It is time to realise that inasmuch as we let others live, we have to fight for our right to live. It is the time to love others as we love ourselves by first learning how to love ourselves. The only person you should be defending is yourself; not some goon who views you as a mere election statistic. Do not defend somebody who wants to live at the cost of seeing you die or live a pitiful life. Do not defend the undeserving. Live and Let Live!

Two Sides to Every Coin

When I was in school, I used to love debate. I was a member of debating club. We would be given a topic and each side of the team could choose to either propose or oppose it. The prowess of a debater would be proved by how well he convinced the judges irrespective of the topic. In some instances, we would be swapped so that the opposers became the proposers and vice versa. Amazingly, the top debaters were always convincing irrespective of whether they were opposing or proposing a particular topic.

Although what we debated in school was purely hypothetical, in a way it prepared us for the real world. I have consequently come to learn that most situations in life provide us with two options. Some examples of binary choices include good against evil, old against new, left against right, top against bottom, and now against later.

Lawyers Vs Judges

There is only one course of study in law. On graduation however, one is either admitted to the bar or the bench. These two groups will spend their lives trying to outdo each other using the same law. It is this eternal conflict that makes me find law sagas in books and movies to be so interesting.

Police Vs Criminals

Criminals are always on the lookout for opportunities to break the law. Police on the other hand, are forever devising ways of effectively enforcing the law. They will go to school and study criminology and the ways of combat. They will learn how to use firearms effectively and condition their bodies to withstand extreme conditions. This will ultimately help them to either stop criminals from carrying out their acts, or accost them when they do.

Criminals will go to the black market and buy guns. They will then get somebody to teach them how to use these guns. If they can’t get somebody knowledgeable enough to train them (possibly a rogue policeman), they will teach themselves in makeshift shooting ranges in some forest and test their skill on an unlucky or uncooperative victim.

Government vs. Opposition

The presence of a government and an opposition is considered the hallmark of a democracy. The government does what it promised to do while the opposition questions it when it fails. These two sides provide us with enough noise to last us the whole period between subsequent elections. They also occasionally provide us with some comedy breaks.

Men vs. Women

Most men are on the lookout for the ideal woman either to marry, date, or just hit on. Being a man, I may not know exactly what women are looking for. I am however relatively reliably informed that a lot of them are looking for suitable men to date and marry, or otherwise be in a long-term relationship with. Apart from homosexual attractions, men generally seek women and vice versa.

A World of Choice

As can be seen from my examples, life often provides one with choices between two things. In most cases however, either choice does not portend any immediately obvious adverse effect on eventual outcome. This then means that the main effects of the choices we make are more on our frame of mind at the time we make them and not so much on their consequences. This applies in most everyday choices we make. The exception to this generalisation is when one is involved in a life or death scenario such as would occur in the average brain surgeon’s diary.

Celebrating Evil

It started with a couple of suspects rising to the highest office in the land. Well, maybe that’s not where it started but it was the first most glaring example of what we had become. It seems to me that for anyone to make it big in this country, he has to do something outrageous or at least outstanding in an evil way. If he can’t do it himself, he has to condone or encourage it in others. If all that fails, he has no option but to fake evilness until he can amass enough of the real stuff.

Just as it has been with all societies in history, the young learn through example from the old. However, in Kenya, the old do not seem to have good things to teach the new generation. Since a teacher can only teach a student what he (or she) knows, our elders have been teaching us the ways of corruption, tribalism, greed, and hatred.

Hero’s Welcome for Nandi Quack

We were all appropriately shocked – in that impersonal way we have perfected as a people – when we heard about a guy who has never set foot in college performing surgeries on real people. It had our tongues wagging as we discussed the catastrophe in hushed tones, saying how the world was coming to an end. What we said, it turns out, was not what was in our hearts. We secretly admired the young mid-wife (he had even been performing caesarean sections) and wished we had the guts to do what he did.

When he was released from custody, he went home to a hero’s welcome. His relatives and fellow villagers know how to welcome heroes. They receive many of them every year as they come home after defeating other athletes on race tracks all across the world. They were therefore able to prepare a garland to place on the young dude’s shoulders. His grand homecoming would definitely not have been complete without a gourd of that cool and delicious mursik.

Herald into Politics

Although it is no longer the biggest scandal (in terms of amount of money lost), it is still the most emotive one on our waggy tongues. It is known by the infamous title of “The NYS Scandal”. It comprises of the stuff which Hollywood movies as made of. One of the key players in the scandal, owing to her being the Cabinet Secretary at the ministry in which it happened, had to bow to pressure and quit. Her apparent humiliation was however quite brief. She is now back in all her glory seeking to become a governor in next year’s election. I hate to be the devil’s advocate but I don’t think she can afford to run for elections. Those things cost a lot of money and she has just been a mere technocrat earning peanuts all her life.

Amazing Normalcy

Our two major national examinations have just ended. They have been hailed as the most credible in the history of our country (since independence). One man has done what he promised to do (and is paid to do) and we are all amazed. We are wondering why he kept his promise when he didn’t need to. He will soon be in trouble for making others look bad. He will also be in the bad books of an apparently powerful group of people going by the vague title of examination cartels. I hear that these elusive but influential people were behind the spate of arson in schools a few months back. They are said to have been trying to make the man of the hour go against his oaths and do nothing just like everybody else.

While we may laud the man for earning his payslip, we do not realise the anguish he has caused some parents who had saved, borrowed, or stolen money to buy the exams for their sweet little angels. These poor children will have no chance against academic brutes from poor families who place their feet in basins of cold water in a bid to ensure sleepless nights of study from borrowed or handed-down dog-eared text books in the flickering flames of barely-parafined korobois.