Short Cut Culture

I lived in Nyalenda for two and a half years. For those who have no idea where Nyalenda is, it is a ‘suburb’ in Kisumu city. I intentionally use ‘suburb’ to avoid calling it a slum as it is referred to by those who classify living standards (or lack thereof) in an area. My sweet little house was made of baked clay bricks finished nicely with smooth plaster on the inside, and keyed joints on the outside beautifully sealed in with varnish. My house was different from some of the common but not so classy mud houses which most people would associate with Nyalenda.

In spite of the disparity in living standards in our vast ‘estate’, the people of Nyalenda had one thing in common. They were warm hearted and friendly to a fault. Within the first few weeks of my residence there, I had several friends. I would therefore often find someone to walk with as I went to work in the morning and back home in the evening. Each of these friends would show me a different shortcut, short here being relative because they always seemed longer than just using the main road. The shortcuts were also complicated in much like finding my way through a maze. You see, in most of Nyalenda, homesteads had no fences and you were literally walking through people’s compounds who, instead of accusing you of trespassing, always greeted you cheerfully.

Always an Alternative

My life in Nyalenda taught me an important lesson about Kenyans. They believe there is always an alternative way of doing something. This alternative is considered quicker and more effective in reaching a destination or attaining an objective. A lot of Kenyans take an inordinate amount of time trying to discover innovative ways of doing things. This has become the new normal and those who stick to orthodox ways of working are considered to be not so bright (or just plain stupid).

Get-Rich-Quick

Our ancestors were stupid. This is the belief of many with regards to ways of making money. They ask, “Why wait for years to get rich when you can do so today?” I know people who are on the verge of developing business plans in the area of gambling and betting. It is now considered a legitimate way of making a living and placed alongside trading in stocks and other high profile investment options. Pyramid schemes are now openly promoted and people always fall for them.

Instant Dating

I can vividly recall the day I went to my wife’s father and asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage. It took a lot of courage to do that but earned my marriage respect and legitimacy. Things are now different. People are cohabiting without as much as informing even their immediate neighbours. Even close friends are learning of some ‘marriages’ when they break up. Welcome to the world of instant dating. People are meeting on Facebook and moving in together within a few weeks.

Quick Sale

Whenever I look at classified vehicle ads, I can’t help but wonder what people mean by ‘quick sale’. It is possible to see a car with superb specs being put up for sale and the effect getting spoilt by those two terrible words. What do people mean by quick sale? I always get the impression that the car has some serious flaws and the owner wants to get rid of it quickly before it falls apart on him. It is a kind of passing the button of trouble to some unsuspecting buyer.

Instant Food and Drinks

I used to be sent to buy premium coffee in Java for use in the office when we had many Europeans working there. I would buy freshly roasted Kenya AA coffee beans and have them ground to medium consistency. I would then carry the sweet smelling packages in the car but during the short drive there, I would have enough caffeine in my body to last a week, just from the fumes! That is how portent the quality is in premium coffee. However, most Kenyans prefer instant coffee. They like instant everything. Those things you get from colourful packages and just ‘add hot water’.

Forget the Information Age; we are living in the Shortcut Age!

P.S. A long time ago before people in my village could afford instant coffee, there used to be coffee that had to be boiled for hours known as ‘Kahawa No. 1’. I wonder if it still exists.

Men – The Endangered Species

For some strange reason, I can’t pronounce the word endangered on first try. Even when I eventually do, I say it in a weird way. Some people might interpret this to mean that I have a strong point. I agree with this particular reasoning. I think that the difficulty of pronouncing this word exposes the sheer danger that we as men have to live under. If you ask me, I think it is a miracle that men have not become extinct yet. I guess we have more resilience than we are given credit for.

Seriously Stereotyped

“All men are dogs!” says many a women at the back end of a broken relationship. Whereas you can hear of different types of women ranging from composed to outgoing, it is not so for men. Men are all lumped into one group irrespective of all our obvious and distinct individual differences. A man making a mistake does so on behalf of all men but a woman errs as an individual.

Unreasonable Expectations

A man is expected to have a good job or a business by his mid-twenties. He is then expected to marry and have children by the time he hits thirty, failure to which he will be branded a selfish brat who wants to ‘eat’ all that money alone. All these achievements are expected of men and yet they have to go through childhood and youth with almost no guidance from their parents and society. They literally have to bring themselves up.

Different Measure of Success from Women

From academic grades to sports cut-off points, men have to attain more to get the same opportunities as women. They have to make more money so as to cater for their often extended responsibilities to their families and society in general. This is often in total disregard to their own personal needs and desires.

Pent-Up Feelings

Society expects men to be strong on behalf of everybody else. It is for this reason that men who display any negative emotions are frowned upon. This has led to many men learning to keep a brave face in all situations including those where they are seriously worried on how to come out of. Statistics have shown that men are more suicidal than women due to inability to release pent-up feelings of anger and depression.

Population Myths

Contrary to popular belief, the population of men is roughly equal to that of women. It has always been assumed that there are more women than men leading to the impression that men are more empowered. Some opportunities may have been availed to women based on this myth further disadvantaging men.

Scary Look into the Future

I recently read somewhere that the continuing evolution of humans will endow women with the ability to reproduce asexually. For the Laymen, reproducing asexually means that an organism contains all the ‘equipment’ it needs to reproduce, internally. This takes away the need to need to mate and consequently, the gender that traditionally mates is rendered redundant. If (or when) this happens, it will only be a matter of time before the ‘useless’ gender vanishes from the face of the earth because nature has no apologies to make for exterminating ‘joyriders’.

Fighting for the Boy Child

I know I have lost a lot of you (particularly ladies and Christians) along the words above. However, let this not be construed to mean that I am fighting women. I am only saying that some effort has to be put in fighting for the boy child. It is true that women have always been disadvantaged and continue to be so. Affirmative action and advocating the rights of the girl child have achieved a lot in improving the lives of women and affording them opportunities that would hitherto have been considered impossible dreams. It is also true that a lot remains to be done in bringing women to be at par with men. My worry is that if the boy child is not considered alongside the girl, he will slide far back and it will be a case of reversed roles when he has to be brought back up. Let us not allow it to reach that point. Let’s all fight against the endangerment of the male species.

Going Gaga Over Raw Data

Big Data

I have seen a lot of IT companies advertising services to do with big data. Being a Layman, I often have no idea what they are talking about, but it sounds really cool. My little research efforts have yielded an inkling about what is happening. It turns out that many professionals, both individuals and organisations, have been collecting data that is meant to help them gather useful information about what they are doing. Unfortunately for these people, data does not necessarily readily provide information. It has to be carefully analysed and interpreted before it can be of any use in decision making.

A New Form of Laziness

It has become fashionable for Kenyans to spew all sorts of statistics when they are telling stories of what they have witnessed. It is seen as some kind of authentication when an otherwise far-fetched story is accompanied by numbers. Everybody agrees with the saying that ‘numbers don’t lie’. While it is true that figures give a story more substance, they don’t replace the need for creative storytelling and the interjection of beautiful prose. It is this flashing around of ‘facts and figures’ that has given rise to a new form of laziness. People no longer want to package the information in an easy-to-understand form. They can just throw in a caption-less picture and bar graphs on their social media pages. Nobody will read these pages but the authors will go home convinced that theirs will be the next ‘viral’ post.

Actuarial Uprising

A few years ago, I heard that there were less than 20 actuarial experts in the country. For the Laymen and Women, rest assured, I have not gone berserk. Actuarial science is not a Greek term. It refers to a field of mathematics (or science, I’m not sure) dealing with measuring and managing risk. The growth in this field has corresponded with a similar growth in the areas of betting and other forms of gambling. Insurance has also become a major industry. The people involved in both insurance and betting rely heavily on information provided by actuarial experts. This is not so for the thousands who consume these services. These just do it blindly and the only ‘evidence’ they claim to have is the handful of winners who have walked away with millions. There is a new breed of ‘expert’ who claims to be able to help players place winning bets. They say they have analysed mountains of data just to help you win. Whether or not that is true remains to be seen.

Vehicle Fuel Consumption

Like I have said before, I am not a complete Layman when it comes to the field of Automotive Engineering. I therefore found it funny when some years back I listened to the then Finance Minister (who is the President today) give a directive on the maximum engine capacity vehicles bought by the government must have. He declared that government vehicles must not have an engine capacity higher than 1800cc. For the Laypeople among you, cc denotes internal engine volume in Cubic Centimetres. All the big-engined ‘guzzlers’ were auctioned off in a fashion that I don’t want to get into right now.

The reasoning by the government then was based on an assumption that the higher the engine capacity, the higher the fuel consumption; and vice versa. While this may have been true two decades ago, it is no longer entirely accurate. Ground-breaking technology has made engine capacity almost irrelevant in the determination of rate of fuel consumption in a vehicle. So much extra data has to be analysed before an accurate figure of consumption can be derived. Other conclusions do not help much besides creating unnecessary sensation.

Conclusion of the Matter

What is the Layman rambling on about? You might ask. The only demand I am making, ‘uncategorically’, is that we all purpose to base our conclusions over different matters on accurate information that has been analysed and interpreted by knowledgeable persons. Let us avoid going all ‘Gaga’ over raw data!

Men in the Kitchen

A lady friend on Facebook recently lamented that men are disasters in the kitchen. This got me thinking. Are we being attacked for nothing or do women have genuine concerns here? Although my friend claimed to be asking for a friend, I got the distinct impression that her own kitchen had ‘suffered’ in the hands of a man. There are many instances where men are bashed by women with good reasons. When it comes to their wonders in the kitchen however, I believe they receive unfair judgement. “How can the Layman be such an expert on matters to do with men?” you might ask. Well, I have been a man all my life so you can say I am better experienced on men matters more than, say, the average woman.

Creativity Galore

There is no argument against it. Men are more creative in the kitchen. Whatever they do is based on constant reasoning out. A man will not let the onion burn before adding tomatoes merely because his mother and grandmother before him did the same thing. He will ask himself, “why let it burn” and, “why not let it cook just right”. It is this constant questioning of long running but unreasonable traditions by women in the kitchen that makes men more innovative in the sacred room.

Keenness

My own wife concurs, almost accusingly, that I make better and more uniform rosettes than her when we are

decorating cakes. Men are known to be sticklers when it comes to measuring ingredients and sizes of food items. It is probably for this reason that most professional chefs and food production specialists are men. For men, a pinch of salt is a vague measure. They prefer to work in grams and pints.

Utilisation of All Available Tools

This is one of the most emotional ‘accusations’ that men face in the kitchen. I have often heard women complain how their men ‘dirtify’ all the cookware during the making of ‘award winning’ cuisine. The women claim that the ‘mess’ men leave in their kitchen make it hard for them to appreciate any hard work and indisputable results men may have achieved in production of exotic and tantalising dishes. On behalf of all the men in the world, I would like to ask women one question, “Why are you so keen on buying (sometimes through specialised chamas) all those dishes if you never intend for them to be used?”

More Tiredness

Due to the above outlined keenness and creativity by men in the kitchen, it is reasonable to say that they get more tired after being in the kitchen. It is therefore impossible for a man, unless he is an undercover agent, to have the energy to clean up after his adventurous forays in the kitchen. I think any woman whose man is liberal enough to work in the kitchen should not complain too much about the small collateral damage (dirty dishes).

Mobilisation for Cleaning Up

Everybody has to agree that inasmuch as many men are often unable to clean up after performing their magic in the kitchen, they also seem to have the special gift of mobilising women to help them in this most undesirable activity. I know women will complain about this on social media but are probably secretly happy to be among the few whose men are secure enough not just to step into the kitchen, but also to produce amazingly tasty food. It is for this reason that at the particular time, they happily oblige their men by doing all the cleaning up that is needed.

A Case of Jealousy

Methinks that women are needlessly jealous of men who seem to know their way around the kitchen. Complains about small messes in kitchens appears to be a flimsy excuse for those who venture into their hitherto unpenetrated turf. If men were to start frequenting kitchens with abandon, it would render previously popular stereotypes obsolete. In my small Layman’s mind, I can almost understand where women are coming from. I would however ask them to look at it positively and support more men to enter and do something useful in the kitchen. That way, their years of lobbying would not have gone to waste. But then again, I am just but an ignorant Layman, what do I know about the complexities of delegation of authority by unwilling women?

Plastic Bag Ban Bad for Environment

It will be illegal to manufacture or use plastic bags in Kenya from September. This declaration was made by the environment cabinet secretary, Judi Wakhungu. The government hopes that this move will help to mitigate against the harmful effects that the bags have been seen to have on the environment. I beg to differ. I think the ban will cause more harm than good to the environment.

Limited Alternatives

Back in the village where I grew up, there was virtually no plastic. Stuff like sugar, after being weighed, was packed in khaki paper bags whose end would then be folded neatly and stuck on the side with a paper tape. The tape itself was made of similar paper and the adhesive was made from a sugar solution applied and dried on one side of a rolled strip. The tape dispenser used to have a dam with a sponge soaked with water over which the shop keeper would slide the sticky side of tape so as to activate the adhesive. The whole process of weighing, packing, and taping up sugar was a ritual which we watched amazement every time we were sent to the shops. Then; plastic happened and as they say, the rest is history.

I don’t see us going back to that beautiful, ceremonial, and bio-degradable way of packing groceries. I also don’t see modern Kenyans, all full of swagger, carrying their woven sisal or straw baskets to the shops the way we did. If that were to happen, it would take more than lacklustre declarations by the government with dates on which everything would go back to the way it was thirty years ago.

Elusive Forest Cover

In 2013, the then Environment Minister, Noah Wekesa, claimed that the country had a 7% forest cover and not less than 2% as previously estimated. In February of this year, Judi Wakhungu, the current environment CS has claimed that Kenya has a forest cover of 7%, having grown 5.3% from a cover of 1.7% in 2013. The big question is; who between a Cabinet Secretary and a Minister is more likely to speak the truth on what the forest cover was in 2013?

This indeterminate forest cover is expected to provide the alternative to plastic in our vibrant retail and wholesale industries. Every village shopkeeper and hardworking mama mboga is supposed to have a stack of environmentally friendly khaki paper bags to pack our groceries in. I foresee a serious problem of both an inadequate supply of paper and high cost of such packaging to the extent of it competing with its own contents.

Depletion of Forests

The expected sharp increase in demand for paper will obviously have a negative effect on our ‘uncertain’ forest cover. It will make it harder for the government to grow it to 10% as required by the constitution (this constitution thought of everything!). The only other alternative to cutting our own trees to make paper is importing from those countries who took their environmental issues more seriously. In that case, there will be a serious depletion in the pocket cover of our treasury.

Peculiar Kenyan Habits

It is properly Kenyan to throw away those things that we no longer have the use of irrespective of how long we have had them. We throw smoky wrappers after taking the last bite which is only second from the first and takes place two seconds after buying the smoky. This results in a garland of plastic wrappers around every smoky seller’s trolley in town. There are also long ropes of plastic lining every road in the country, thanks to motorists who, in the interest of keeping their cars clean, throw their trash out the window. This habit will not die with the ban on plastic. It will take an environment conscious dimension. Kenyans can now proudly tell themselves, “At least it’s bio-degradable!” as they continue littering their highways, footpaths, and other open spaces.

A New Kind of Criminal

When something gets banned, it does not disappear. It changes status from legal to contraband. There will probably be a big black market where you will be able to get your beloved plastic bags. If you get caught, you will probably land in the same cell as a person caught with bang. At the stroke of midnight on some day in September, majority of us will become the latest kind of criminal. Police will search our houses for hoarded plastic and soon afterwards we will be raising our clasped and cuffed hands and declaring, “If you want my plastic, you will have to go through me!” to which the police will readily oblige.