How to Win the Rat Race

In my culture, a rat is a pest. It is not a pet. The only rat that I have seen having any usefulness is a lab rat. Any other rat is a menace. It is something to be trapped or poisoned and killed. It is therefore only because of belonging to the information age that I have come to know of pet rats. I have seen pictures and movies of grand cages that form the homes of these members of families in the west. These rats are adored to the extent that when they die, funeral services are performed in their honour by the families to which they belong.

I have seen the healthy diet on which these “lucky” rats are fed. Specially developed food specifically meant for rats is well-packaged with high-gloss pictures of happy rats contentedly gnawing their delicious pellets. The cages in which they live are spacious with all the necessities (and luxuries) any rat would dare to wish for. Of particular interest to me in these cages is a large drum wheel suspended in one corner of the rat residence. This is equivalent of a gym corner (or more specifically, a treadmill) for humans. It is in this wheel that a rat can run all day, or get as much exercise as it needs.

Frantic Movement on the Same Spot

The expression, “Rat Race”, is derived from the activity undertaken by pet rats on the wheel in their cages. They can run for miles (or their equivalent in rat units) but they remain on the same spot. Scientifically speaking, no work is done because the mass (read the rat) has not moved an inch, irrespective of how much energy has been expended. It is this analogy that is used to describe a person who works extremely hard but after a long time (measured in years or lifetimes) has nothing to show for it. That person is said to be stuck in the rat race.

Stopping to Rest and Going Back

All employees, me included, look forward to weekends, public holidays, and leave days. This is because, one can get a small rest before he goes back to the frantic search for more money to pay bills and clear debts. Looking at it critically, most people would give up and stop working because it appears hopeless. However, most people have faith that if they work hard enough today, they will not need to do so much tomorrow. It is that faith that keeps them going even as the future looks bleak to the “naked eye”.

Eating to Maintain Energy

For the rat in the cage to find energy to keep rotating the wheel, it needs a lot of food. It gets this from continuous eating (refer to healthy diet above). The same applies to a working class person who has to expend a lot of energy and other resources just to remain in the same position. This is the reason why the rat race is considered futile. It uses up entire lifetimes of people without them growing or improving in any way. If anything, it is almost as if their descendants are also assured of taking over the same race and ending as hopeless as their parents (if not worse off).

Spectators Having Fun

People who keep rats as pets like to sit at the cages and watch them run in the wheel. Watching the rats making fools of themselves is the main reason they keep them. They love the endless entertainment the rats afford them but this is only possible as long as the rats remain in the cage. If a rat escapes from its confinement, you will experience the weird scenario of grown people standing on sofas and shaking in fear until they are assured that the culprit has been recaptured or killed.

Getting out of the Rat Race

The first step to the solution of any problem is acceptance. For you to get out of the rat race, you have to accept that you are trapped in an enclosure. You also have to realise that those who are outside looking in are enjoying watching you making a fool of yourself. The energy you spend rotating that wheel (read overhead expenses) should be preserved for breaking out of the cage. Once out, you have to remember that people will be afraid of you and will be working hard to recapture you and put you back in your enclosure. You therefore need to completely get out of that house and go far away where possibly, in the future, you will have rats of your own to watch and have fun.

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Encounter with Serial Killer

He pounced on me with a two handed overhead swing of his four-foot hoe-stick. It landed squarely on my forehead. There was no pain, just shock. He landed two more in quick succession and I fell on my back. He stood over me and continued bludgeoning me on the head. I couldn’t see his face but his dark silhouette was imposing against the moonless sky. I suddenly found my voice and could hear my guttural scream of impending death coming from somewhere deep in my throat (and heart). It dawned on me that this was the serial killer who had been terrorising the villages around my area for the last few months.

There was a blank darkness where his face should have been. He had not uttered a word and I couldn’t hear him breath. I have a strong sense of smell but I couldn’t pick any scent from him. No perfume or sweat. He could as well have been a ghost. I must have disappointed him because I didn’t pass out even as he increased his tempo. Instead, I matched his speed with the intensity of my screaming. I must also have been violently kicking out because I picked the smell of the bushes at the site whose branches I had slashed away. I still shudder when I smell that particular kind of bush.

As the killer continued raining blows on my head, hitting only my forehead, I was trying to shield my face with my hands. It was at this point that the stick landed on my open right hand and I clasped it. This was more of a reflex than a planned move but my tight grip made him lose his balance. He fell on my legs and I now grabbed the stick with both of my hands and disentangled it from him. He ran off immediately and left me on the ground still struggling to get up. By now I was really scared and when I got up, I scampered to the main road a few metres away to where I had alighted from a matatu a few minutes before.

By the grace of God, a friend was dropping one of my neighbours at the road so that he could also take the same path along which I had been attacked. They had actually heard my screams but had initially assumed it was a drunkard until I showed up. They rushed me to hospital where I was attended to. I got four stitches to close that gaping gash on my forehead. The physical injury is now healed save for the obvious long scar on my head. However, that killer took away my courage. I am now extremely afraid of the dark and have a problem falling asleep at night.

Lessons from the Ordeal

When I approached the crouching attacker, I had assumed it was a sweater thrown on the bushes. By the time I realised it was a person, I was too close to him and he didn’t waste time pouncing on me. I should have turned back without waiting to confirm if it was a person. Now I know.

Profile of a Serial Killer

Save for his face, I noticed a number of things about my attacker. He was dressed in a sweater with blue and white patterns. He had medium hair that appeared well combed. His lack of a smell described above could also point to the fact that he is a clean and well groomed person. In my mind, I see a person who probably has a family and a regular job. He had left his wife preparing supper at around seven in the evening as he went out to get his kick. He then went back to check his kid’s homework. The kid innocently asked him, “Daddy where have you been?” to which he coolly answered, “Just stretching my limbs a bit”.

Kissing My Landlord Goodbye

I have just ended 2017 on a high note. I move to the New Year without a landlord to call my own. I am not homeless. It’s just that I have put something up. It is what a lot of people would call a shack although I prefer to call it ‘My Beautiful Cottage’. It is not anything fancy. It comprises of one room with iron sheet walls with separate pit latrine and outdoor bathroom (the kind you have to visit with a basin and towel around your waist).

I have been living here for the last one week and while it has required some getting used to, it has the perfect ambience. I no longer have to listen to youthful neighbours play their cheap and noisy sound systems late into the night. I also don’t have to neighbours’ wives brawling with their husbands’ resident lovers. My lullaby now comprises of the rustling of grevillea, wattle, and eucalyptus leaves. I wake up to the singing of myriad birds. If I listen keenly enough, I can also hear tiny (and other not so tiny) insects scrambling out of their hidden burrows on the forest floor.

It is an exciting move although the journey has been rather strenuous on the pocket.

 

This is my former front door where my identity had been reduced to a number.

This is my new front door (the only one).

This is the scene I would see whenever I walked into my Landlord’s compound.

This is what I now wake up to every morning.

I would love to invite you for a meal in my beautiful home. However, you need to give me some time to restock my kitchen. As I have told you above, the move was not cheap.

The Long Ride Home

So yesterday I decided to travel to Eldoret to spend the Christmas holiday with my wife and children. I woke up and left the house early. I was in Nairobi CBD before 6 a.m. I proceeded to my usual terminal for North Rift Shuttles. The scene resembled a political rally – with only the politicians missing. There were hundreds of people some with small children and all carrying or dragging some form of luggage in different sizes, shapes, and colours.

It was obvious that today was not going to be a luxury trip in a spacious ten seater shuttle. It would take several days to ferry all those people out of Nairobi and I was not willing to wait that long. I decided to go for the one option that has never failed me in my quest to travel upcountry. I walked through unusually crowded streets (for that hour) to the busy Country Bus Station (at one time it was referred to as the Machakos Airport).

As was to be expected, the scene at the noisy station was bursting with humanity. Fortunately for me, there were many buses there parked in the respective sections depending on their destinations. I went straight to the Western Kenya section and targeted this beautiful Scania Bus that looked brand new judging from the registration number and gleaming paintwork. It was aptly christened “Sweden Special” owing to the fact that Scanias are manufactured in Sweden.

On enquiry, I was informed that the bus would pass through Eldoret as the first stop as it proceeded onwards to Bungoma. That was favourable information because I was now assured of getting home to my family. The other news about how much the trip would cost was not so sweet. It was going to set me back about two and a half times as much as I normally pay on a luxury shuttle. Anyhow, I didn’t have much of a choice so I paid, entered the bus, and took my seat next to a window.

As passengers boarded, a long string of hawkers streamed by selling everything from foodstuff to cosmetics and everything in between, including solar panels. I bought biscuits and some weird tasting yoghurt to act as my breakfast.  The bus filled up pretty fast and in less than half an hour, we slowly drove out of the congested station. There was some light traffic through town but we were soon cruising on Waiyaki way in the general direction of home.

We stopped at Kangemi to pick some people and as their luggage were being packed into the under-floor compartments and strapped onto the roof rack, a lady on the back seat started complaining that the bus crew was taking too long and delaying us. Somebody was irritated by this ranting and suggested to her that if she was in such a hurry, she should have left the day before. Another person suggested, to gleeful laughter by other travellers, that better still, she should have stayed on upcountry after Christmas last year. That made her quiet.

Soon enough we were on our way and although there was some more than normal traffic on the highway, it was flowing. The flow however, was short-lived. Just before Limuru, we started running from one pile-up to another. Consequently, it took us four hours to reach Naivasha while it usually takes about one and a half hours. We hoped (or assumed) that that stretch was the end of our problems. It was just the beginning of a slow and tiring trip to Eldoret.

It turns out that we had not been the only people to make that last minute trip upcountry. All matatus, buses, and private vehicles seemed to be headed our way. The town service matatus and house-to-office drivers had decided to test their long distance driving abilities using their usual around-town discourteous over-lapping skills. The result was disastrous gridlocks which fortunately (as far as I saw) did not result in any accidents.

Seven hours after we left Nairobi, we reached Nakuru. We didn’t enter the bus station and so we couldn’t access proper washroom or dining services. My lunch consisted of roasted maize sold through the high bus window on a pronged stick by a grinning trader on the road far below.

The stretch between Nakuru and Eldoret was not so bad and we managed to do it in four hours. Finally we made it to Eldoret after being on the road for eleven hours on a journey that normally takes six hours. I, and a few others, alighted and the bus continued onwards to Bungoma. I don’t know how long it took them to get there but they must have been damn tired. That was a long way home but I thank God I arrived safely.

Seeking the Spirit of Law

When we overwhelmingly passed the new constitution in 2010, we were hailed as one of the most progressive societies in the world. We expected it to change our fortunes for the better. Today, however, barely seven years after its promulgation, the constitution has not met most of our expectations.

After flashing back to how President Kibaki did wonders with the same constitution that President Moi used to oppress us, I have come to realise that maybe there is something more to a law than just the words used to define it. We saw a government working what appeared to be miracles in Kibaki’s first five years than we had seen for decades before. And this was through the same laws that had been in force before he came into power.

The Purpose of Law

A law is intended to be a guide for people to know what to do in different circumstances while ensuring they do not lose perspective of their society’s objectives and aspirations. An ideal law should therefore ensure that different aspects of the direction that a people want to take are effectively captured. In a democracy, the law is supposed to ensure that the power of the people is not usurped either by a small section (read leadership) of the same people, or delegated to outsiders (read foreign masters). The law must protect the people’s sovereignty.

Unlawful Law Keeping

The government has three arms namely the Legislature (Parliament), Judiciary (Courts), and Executive. The legislature, in which every citizen is represented through a member of parliament in the national assembly and a senator in the senate, makes laws (that’s why they are referred to as Lawmakers). The Judiciary is responsible for interpreting the law while the executive is responsible for implementing the law. Each of these arms of government is intended to be independent of each other, only that this is not always the case. There has been a lot cross-interference between the arms of government leading to situations of ‘’unlawful law-keeping”.

Dependant Independence

The only word more misused than ‘Independence’ in Kenya is ‘Love’. We attained our independence from Britain more than fifty years ago. However, we run to them with every small problem. We are like the kid who moves out of the parents’ house but has to run to them for rent, food, and general upkeep. We have bodies that are intended to be so independent that they even have the word ‘independent’ in their titles but they cannot exercise that independence even if the lives of their employees depended on it. They are dependent on the same people they are supposed to exercise independent authority over.

Change for the Sake of Change

We have been unable to obey our own law which we wrote ourselves. We now want to change that law to match with what we have been doing. Election laws have already been changed. There are talks of changing the borders of our country so that those who don’t like each other can belong to different countries and not be forced by law to live together in harmony. People at the coast want to be on their own because our ‘wonderful’ and ‘progressive’ law has not managed to make them feel ‘Kenyan’ like the rest of us. We all want change – not to be better, just to be different. Our new words in Kenyan vocabulary are ‘secession’ and ‘self-determination’.

Appeasement of the Disgruntled

None other than the National Council of Churches in Kenya (NCCK) through their ‘white-whiskered’ cool, calm, and collected General Secretary, Reverend Canon Peter Karanja, have made calls for a change in our amazing new constitution to create the office of official opposition, as well as a Prime Minister and two deputies as consolation prizes for election losers. This, they claim, is ‘for the sake of peace’.  

Understanding the Law

There are two aspects to every law. One is the word of the law represented by the words used to describe it. The second is the spirit of that law which is the actual intention of why the law was written in the first place. If the spirit of the law is not felt by those who the law is supposed to govern, then changing the words will not achieve much besides generating frustrations. I say, let’s seek the spirit of our laws before changing a single word – Gospel according to the Layman.

God Does Not Vote

Before I tell you why God does not and cannot vote, I must clarify which God I am talking about. Kenya today is polytheistic meaning we worship more than one God. The God each Kenyan worships is determined by which community or consortium of communities he comes from. By extension, it is also determined by which political party or coalition one supports.

We currently have two dominant Gods in Kenya. One “blesses” the Jubilee Party while the other one “uplifts” the NASA coalition. Christians are praying, fasting, and laying hands in the names of their respective Gods. Meanwhile, Atheists, whose number is fast growing in Kenya, seem to be the only ones practicing the impartiality that is being so emotionally preached by Christians.

“Good Leaders are from Above”

This was the phrase Kabogo (former Kiambu Governor) is said to have used every time he arrived at campaign rallies in his helicopter. The words are however used by many Christians after elections, to endorse politicians “on behalf of God”. They will go about in a frenzy blowing whistles and dancing on the streets claiming that God has given them a leader. This is notwithstanding the fact that they queued in long lines well before dawn to cast their vote for the new leader whose victory they now attribute to God. Supporters of the losing candidates will on the other hand be mourning the blockading of their leader’s descent from above by “agents of the devil”.

“Our God is Better than Yours”

Elections in this country always lay the stage for what I request to call the “Grand God Showdown”. They present an opportunity for various adherents of the different Gods to showcase what their God can do. The measure of these Gods’ power is in how many votes their God garners above those of the “visiting” God. The children of the winning God will tauntingly call out to the children of the lesser God asking them to do the “Christian” thing and cross over to the one true God’s side. The children of the losing God will reply, “Over our dead bodies!” and the winning God’s children will say, “Okay, that can also be arranged”.

The Third Dimension

I recently read an interesting article by a Bishop whose name and church I will not divulge (just to spite the stereo-typists amongst you). He was talking about how Kenyans think in two dimensions of “Us” Vs “Them”. He called this the dichotomy and described how dangerous it is. He then introduced the third dimension, which is the God dimension and called it the Trichotomy. The gist of the sermon is that God does not take sides. He is above all. 

Whoever you support politically is unimportant to God. All he needs is for you to know him and obey his commands. He will not vote on your behalf or tell you who to vote for. You will just have to use your common sense to do that.

The Supremacy of God

All candidates and voters belong to God. The earth and heaven belong to him as well. The politicians who we tend to love to the extent of worshiping them will still raise a bible as they take their oath of office. If they go to court for their petitions they will still raise their bible and ask God to help them. That God who these leaders stand in awe of, the one who speaks to their consciences as they plan to engage in corruption or unjustifiable war campaigns; that is the one true God and the one this Layman ascribes to.