Cold feet

This year has been the coldest for my feet so they say...i must say its been transition after decision after definition.I don't know if they sat down all of them and said lets get married, but most of my friends really have been on a roll this year in that sector.

so when i sit back and think about it i feel like i am not ready to do it and my immediate thought is that am having cold feet. but wait a minute...i don't feel that since the sun rose today and guys decided to wear green pants then its wrong for me to be in my yellow shorts.

I have come to learn that at times its good to define yourself and not let everyone else define you, or a circumstance dictate your flow. I believe that a situation is true only if you say it is.

I have come to realize that when i want to do something i will do it out of my own voalition and not peer pressure. If they label my decision cold feet then be ready for damn freezing year.

Nothing Really

Doodling comes to mind right about now...

For some reason when one takes the carpet off your feet and you run out of steam nothing seems to makes sense anymore- at least not until you figure out where to get another carpet or where to find wood to get more water to generate steam.

Well for us Kenyans that's proving to be a daunting task considering one stima hamna ya kuchemsha maji wala miti Mau ya kukata again there's like drying rivers so no water no rain its been a drought stricken land for a while now.

In fact the drought is so severe its affecting elected leaders. I choose to call them elected coz then that helps me understand why they behave the way they do.

Leaders are born and made better but elected ones have a way of giving birth to themselves and deluding themselves that they made themselves leaders and hence have all the right to be greedy and funny. Most of the time follow their own selves.

As in for real i have nothing in particular to write but when i sit back and see all the opportunities that are coming around Kenya its amazing how the whole world is focused on Kenya apart from the Kenyan leadership who have to argue everything from the point of view of who is a bigger tribal king than the other.

We have a chance of propelling Kenya to the heights of technological development. Rather than fight to create a conducive atmosphere to support that we still fighting over who has the right to own which piece of lands illegally, who to be credited for bringing peace in Kenya and which tribe are you? during census.

yaani nimechoka.

Them Funnies

Its funny how at times you get wierd answers for questions asked, or services requested. Take for example you walk to an ATM and it cant give receipts so it displays this message: SORRY THE SYSTEM IS UNABLE TO ISSUE RECEIPTS, WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONTINUE?

I found myself speechless or actionless at this point coz am wondering what else would they rather I do, stand there stare at the screen of course i would like to proceed.

Ok may be unlike me you understood this to mean do you want to proceed to other services.

Ok that still makes no sense coz am yet to meet someone who likes receipts that much to just go dispence a receipt off the ATM...

Ok how about this from Zain Uganda: SORRY WE CANNOT COMPLETE YOUR CALL DUE TO LACK OF MONEY... ok on whose part...what a way to tell a guy he has no credit.

And I have often heard the term "You sound like broken record" and never really understood the magnitude of the annyance until i sat next to this guy whom i believe is the actual record who lamented continously about Fabianski as a goal keeper and why Arshavin scored all Arsenal goals ... ok normally this would not really bother me...but the fact that he was incesantly on my ear on and on ...was very annoying...leave alone the fact that i hadn't a clue of what he was saying since he did so in Luganda...cept the occasional broken english

Oh I accidentally steppled by fingers today...now that was not funny

An Interesting article by Lilian Kithia

So what if I can’t cook!

By LILLIAN KITHIA Posted Friday, April 17 2009 at 18:23

Allow me to start by requesting all the sisters out there who can not cook to please raise up their hands; I will feel much more at ease pouring my heart out in this column when I know that I do not belong in this category alone. Just for the record, my concern here is far from feminist.

And this is not a piece about gender equality or any such thing. As a matter of fact, none of the issues discussed in the 1995 Women’s Conference in Beijing will arise in this column. You can call me ignorant if you want but I honestly do not have a clue as to the issues that were discussed in that conference. And If I ever go to China it will be because I want to learn how to use chopsticks. Yes, I am that archaic.

So when I write about cooking, I write, not as a liberal women’s rights activist - or anything close to that - but as a woman who simply cannot cook, appealing to those women whose gastronomic skills allow them to ‘rub shoulders’ with the likes of Martha Stewart and the ‘top chef’ crew to give ‘us’ (the women who cannot cook) a break.

It’s not my fault that I cannot cook! Yes, yes, I know this sounds lame and cliché-d, but how can it possibly be my fault that anytime I put unga (flour) and water in the same pot, I come up with something poisonous? Don’t say ‘making ugali can be a bit tricky’ because then you would have to explain why anytime I make my sukuma wiki (kales), somebody has to spend the night at the dispensary. Well, most time it’s me ending up in the ward because none of my friends would dare let me cook for them.

And no! Don’t blame it on hygiene because cleaning is one of the things that I do right. In fact, if you ask a psychologist, they will tell you that my cleaning ranks somewhere near obsessive-compulsive because I clean everything. Especially before I cook it.

It’s not that I don’t try. I do! For whatever it’s worth, I’ll have you know that I took home science as one of my subjects in high school. But something dangerous still happens between the time I light a cooker and the time I switch it off. And every time I try to cook, I get a clear reminder that this just isn’t my department. AT some point I just had to accept that I cannot cook and give it up.

That is why I feel violated when any woman - or man - goes on and on about what they think of women who cannot cook. Do not get me wrong; I personally have nothing against women who can cook. As a matter of fact, I was raised by one. Yes! I’ll go on and brag about it. My mother’s cooking can get you a gate pass into the heart of any man.

But just because some of these culinary skills did not rub off on me – despite all of her efforts to ensure they did – does not make me any less a woman. And when the time comes, it won’t make me any less a wife or mother.

Let’s be realistic here. There are lots of other ‘female’ things that I can do amazingly well and with very little effort for that matter. For example, I can rock any baby to sleep and clean particularly well. I’m not very bad with a sewing machine either.

So why should I – or anybody else - keep obsessing about what I cannot do while there are things I can do pretty well. I want to be allowed to blow my trumpet where I excel and never to be made to feel guilty where I fall short!

So at the risk of ruffling the feathers of everyone reading this article, I will ask the million dollar question. “Is there a brother out there who doesn’t mind cooking for two?”

Theory on MIGINGO

Doesnt it strike you as strange that the 2 heads of states are rather quite as far as the island dispute is concerned...I have a theory to explain the silence.

During the post election violence Ugandan army was acused of meddling in the kenyan affairs and killing many supporters of ODM. This was strongly denied by both "leaders". But if you remember kibaki desprately needed an ally then, and he found one in Museveni.

History would teach us all that Kibaki has a way of renaging on his promises and dishonouring MOUs could this be a reminder to him of a promise he made and is now not honouring or did he give it away like the now LAICO regency?

Just a theory.

Here I am

life has a funny way of re-inventing itself. I have for a while now been feeling like there's something a mis in my life and well the answer is here...

I have had so much passion in everything i do and for a while now been inspirationless just moving with the days as if nothing really matters...well here I am having been reminded that a small thing I did to a friend a while back has grown to be the one thing that has pushed her through some tough times so hey why not...i got my muse back a poet would say...

I had a conversation with someone about how she and her boyfriend were handling their relationship and a simple question like if you took one element out of that relationship say sex what remains...do you still see someone you want to be with?

well as for me wondering if i took the one attribute that makes me me...will I still be me?

Andas for that I am back here for all you who need me...a pillar when weary, a smile always when you cannot afford one and ears when all around you is noisy, a song when that is all you can survive on...A friens always

My Dream for Kenyan Leadership

The law of the lid dictates that a group can only rise to as far as the leaders goes…

“In the first law–the law of the lid, John Maxwell intended to tell us that there is a lid on a person’s leadership ability and this lid determines his level of effectiveness. The lower a person’s ability is to lead, the lower the lid on his leadership ability, and the lower his effectiveness. On the contrary, the higher the leadership ability, the greater the effectiveness. Your leadership ability always determines your effectiveness.”

This intrigued me and made me try to find why this would be so…
So I decided to look at it from this angle; if you are to lift a weight you can only do so for weight that is so much your body size. So how do you get to carry this weight? There are two possibilities, you can either get some muscle or cut the weight that you have to carry. Now cutting of the weight seems like an easy alternative but in leadership it’s not always the case.

Now gaining some muscles is a little bit complicated because it is more or less a natural phenomenon, it involves putting in extra time in exercising, it basically just involves work which most of the time we are lazy to put in.

So we back to shedding off weight…this is either involuntary or voluntary. Voluntary would be where you work on your package and kick some weight off it; involuntary would be where as you lift or as you go on your normal business some weight just falls off your package. Now for as leader that’s just challenge right there…selecting what weight goes and what remains.

But have you for a moment thought what if that weight had a destination and it had to get somewhere intact? What if the weight was a whole unit you get it all delivered or you mess up the whole project? What if the weight was a nation in dire need of change and direction?

I put it to you in order for the package to be delivered we simply need to develop muscles as leaders, we just have to get off the bad diet get rid of our favorite food of corruption, nepotism, tribalism, any other …ism that would mess up the goods on transit.

But then again what if the weight knew its destination and could therefore determine when and how to get there? What if we as a people decide not to be so dependent on the leaders and chart our own route leaving them as mere guides and not ultimate truths?
What if at the grass route level we decided what we want and drove the agenda to the leadership rather than let them decide what’s on the agenda? If we delivered the agenda what that means is that we give them the road map to our destination, to our future, to our plan for Kenya.

My Dream for Kenya
By Norman Ondego, for Kenya