Rose flower…

I dont know what love is…

I dont know how to differentiate between lust and love…because, when I look at a woman, I’m always in a conundrum. Since I do not know what to make of what this person I’m staring at makes me feel or what caused it and whether I should trust my judgment in describing that feeling.

I’m sexually attracted, I’m awed by how this lady looks like, how she talks, her presence is exquisite. But I have doubts as to whether the feelings that have developed towards that lady, are not misguided. Since if they were genuine, then why do I feel the same about 5 different ladies?

RICH In Word$

A Writer’s Block.

There is a force that is within me, it is so immense and refined, so pure like a baby’s heart. I guess i have caught what is referred to as “the writers dilemma.” I’m transfixed onto my keyboard, fingers dangling in the air waiting for me to type. Waiting for me, to embark on a limitless process aimed at producing an artistic expression of my thoughts put down into paper.

As I begin to type, an aura of silence kicks in, this silence is deep into my mind. So I as myself…”what should I write about?”…This question keeps repeating itself to a point where I actually note it down as my first line .Confusing as it sounds, its still something, its a step, a step that will be quite fascinating, quite hazardous to some as it will portray conflicts of the mind.

Needless to say, I know I have to write. I have to let this force take charge of me, because if I don’t, it will be Something that will irk me and wont let go. I might even be like a junkie, craving for a fix, that is the side effect and the anguish that exists within me. The urge to write, either I do it or die. Quite a conundrum I must say.

To be quite frank, Its been a while since i heard the clattering of my keyboard when i am writing a blog, that is not to say that i do not hear it when i’m playing a computer game, when “googling” about something or when im replying to a post in a social media platform. Its just that, i had missed that ticking sound that you often hear when you are writing about something and the more thoughts you have the more the urge to just release it. Hence the morale to type more and more and more, all to achieve a goal, that is to say ‘i wrote that today and i feel good about it.’

A writers block is a term that is used to explain a situation where a writer has nothing to write about. A terrifying time when your creativity disappears and hence you ponder ways in which you can receive any form of inspiration to lead you back to your type writer, or your notepad and just write about anything. This can be a state of emptiness, where you really try to get out of, but the morale is not there. Probably because there is a lot going on in your life that you don’t have time to write about anything.

Currently, we are faced with a pandemic, the Covid-19 has caught almost everyone off guard and well, as a seasoned blogger myself, i have had to make adjustments to my life just to cope with the pandemic. Its one of those events where, you do not want to find yourself in a situation where you’ll put yourself or the person next to you at risk. Times like this often a marred with a lot of uncertainty and paranoia; you could make it on Monday but Friday is not guaranteed. So with all the hullabaloo going on around the world, i strangely had the urge to type or just note down what was on my mind and trust me, it wasn’t a cake walk.

I tried recording myself and it at one point felt like if i needed to go see a psychiatrist, i even tried video tapping myself, but still it just didn’t feel right. I exercised, went out for a walk;still nothing, since social gathering is prohibited because of how the Covid-19 spreads, my limited interaction made things even worse. I read other people’s blog and still it felt like there is something missing; probably it was because i could not see what the writer was talking about or i was just looking for my own reflection or in other words looking to see who else is going through what i was going through. This is what made me write, because i felt that, if i did not do it, then no one else would.

So, in conclusion, whenever you experience the ‘writer’s block’, always keep this in mind, that no one else or rarely can anyone tell your story better than yourself. Take your time, do whatever you have to, regain that morale which currently is non-existence, know that you are not the only person who is experiencing or had previously experienced such a thing and finally take baby-steps to get you back into writing because what you posses, is something which is valuable and can’t be quantified.

As an artist and a writer, i believe you have to undergo all that, you have to conquer it. What you have within you is a skill which is God given but beyond it lies discipline,love,luck and most important, endurance, the endurance to complete what you have started because what you will have produced, will most certainly be a game changer. So write.

Gods speed.

August 2018, “THE MONTH WHEN KENYANS WENT FOR THERAPY….OR DID THEY?”

As i am writing this piece of literature, i find myself awed as i go through the tweets, Instagram photos, Facebook posts and oh yes, the chitchat in Whats-app groups. Almost everyone is/was raged over what is/was happening in our neighboring Country to the West, that is Uganda. To be specific, what a young 36 year old  chap by the name of Bobi Wine, also known as Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, was/is going through in the hands of both the Ugandan Police and Military. Whereby as per the reports and posts in the aforementioned social media platforms not forgetting both local and international media reports, Mr. Kyagulanyi was illegally arrested, charged and brutalized while in detention.

Without dilly dallying on what “Bobi Wine” was/is going through in Uganda, allow me to draw you back to what awed me earlier. Which was the level of outrage that quite a bunch of Kenyans had with regards to what was happening to him. I knew that the matter was well digested by my country men when i went get groceries  from my local “Mama mboga” (a local name given to our neighborhood grocery shop owner/seller). Who after a minor chitchat, for the first time ever, asked me in swahili dialect,”Kwanini huyu Rais wa Uganda anadhulumu huyu Mbunge namskianga anaitwa Bobi wine?..si awachane na yeye, si vizuri vile anamfanyia ama nasema uongo?” To translate, she was asking me why the Ugandan President was abusing  a member of parliament known as   Bobi Wine with brutal force(i exaggerated the translation a little bit but i know you get the drift by now).I just smiled at her and replied,  that it was not right. However, i knew for a fact, that if she knew about what was happening to him, then almost everyone in Kenya knew about it and also, mind you, this lady, whom i have briefly known. for over 3 years now and have briefly spoken to, she had never talked about politics or anything that has to do with or is in connection to it.

Personally, what a majority of my country men were/still are doing, was/is, by far one of the many acts of hypocrisy i have  ever seen, since the spread of Christianity by the Europeans in Africa. It felt like if i was staring at a multitude of individuals who were( and i believe still do have episodes of) suffering from a mental disorder commonly known as Schizophrenia. Whereby, their tweets and posts seemed delusional and full of hallucinations. At some point, i must admit, i almost thought i was the one suffering from it and i say this with a lot of humility. Almost everyone, in so far as the posts i saw that were shared, and the retweets were concerned, portrayed a nation that had a common “revolutionary” spirit, which gathered a force for change. A force i last saw in the year 2002, when the retired President of Kenya Mwai Kibaki was elected. All this was too hypocritical for me because we, a year ago and also even before ‘Bobi Wine’ was arrested, we had our own ‘Bobi Wine’ by the name of Dr. Miguna Miguna. 

Dr.Miguna Miguna was abducted from his palatial home in  an estate known as Runda by people whom he stated that did not even identify themselves as police to him. They detonated a grenade at his house and upon arrest he was taken to all manner of locations around the country. The predicament that fell upon Miguna Miguna, is quite similar to  what ‘Bobi Wine ‘  is going through, one might even say even  worse. What baffled and still does surprise me,  is why Kenyans then (some Kenyans) were not as united as they are now regarding what Bobi Wine is going through in Uganda? Why did “Mama Mboga” not talk about Dr. Miguna Miguna and decide to  talk about Bobi’s?  These questions sound rhetoric but they are the  basis of why i call my country men hypocrites or to sound less barbaric, men and women who suffer from what i refer to as negative altruism.One might also defend “Mama Mboga“, by stating that she is innocent and wasnot priviy to what had happened to Miguna Miguna, but i will refer to a quote by one famous writer,poet and activist the Late James Baldwin, who stated  that  “It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.”

A chilly example of negative  altruism, is when (  if you are lucky or unlucky enough, depending n how to deal will stress and pain)  you notice, that your parent or guardian, always has, simply put, a “profound and an extraordinary degree and desire to save the life’s of other people or care for the affairs of other people who are, at some degree total strangers to them.” It is negative because, you ignore those close to you, those who know you, broke bread with you for instance, someone whom you can resonate with or even share a common history together. Because, one would expect, a black-American to easily relate with a Black-Man from Africa because of the bond that exists between he two or the fact they share common identity . As compared to a Black-American with a white-European.

So my countrymen/women, it was hazardous for me, to see how, we were and still are, united towards condemning, protesting and also conducting concerts in the name of “Free-Bobi-Wine” yet when it often than not came to one of our own, we ignore and hide  in our tribal cocoons or political affiliations. I was shocked when i saw Kenyan Artist (musicians to be specific) and even comedians, a bunch of them for that matter, condemning what was happening to Bobi-Wine. When last year, during this month and also when Miguna Miguna was put in incommunicado, all we heard were silent wails and if you were lucky enough and could tolerate, songs and messages of peace.

It was easy for my country-men to chant words like ” an injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere” while dawned in their red colored t shirts, in their Facebook posts and Tweets but to what extent. Does such sentiments end when it comes to our own people? The answer to the above question is a resounding yes as far as some of my country men are concerned. I was shocked when i saw, a friend to my elder brother, who  a year ago, was vehemently supporting the brutal murder and torture of protesters who were affiliated to the main opposition party, after Kenya’s General election. Which coincidentally took place just a year ago, in the month of August. The old chap was busy sharing posts of freedom and chanting against what he referred to as ‘Museveni’s dictatorship and oppression.’ Up to now it still is shocking and i am eagerly waiting for his schizophrenia to end or was he just like some of my fellow Kenyans are suffering from what i refer to selective amnesia. What i mean by his is,“when one decides to recall certain things and forcefully decides not to remember others out of their own will. So i wondered,  could he have decided to support the protests against Ugandan President Museveni and forget that what he is against, that is acts of the political regime in Uganda, is exactly what he was supporting a year ago in his country? The answer is YES!”

Also, what is so unique about “Bobi-Wine” that i not the same as what Dr.Kizza Besige (Uganda’s most prolific opposition leader) who has by far, gone through worse forms of torture in the last decade? Why are some of my country men splitting heirs.

What is happening to Bobi-wine made me  believe that my fellow country men, were undergoing  therapy. The purpose of it, is/was to cue them from hypocrisy and negative altruism. It is therapy because it  made many who were hiding under the bus to come out of their comfort zones and condemn  the brutality that the Ugandan Member of parliament is going through. However,  one has to wonder and ask, whether it is all ”for show” or plain blank honestly? I am  deeply inclined to believe that it was the former. Seeing both Artists and Kenyan politicians e.g members of parliament from all the political divide  speaking out in loud tunes against Bobi’s political problems/misfortunes, made me conclude that we in  danger if we end up being a country that cares the most about the ills of another country and ignore our own.

There is group of individuals, men and women, who have ever since time and memorial, spoken against any form of brutality and infringement/ injustice caused by political regimes towards individuals, men like former Kenyan  Chief Justice Dr. Willy Mutunga and Activist Boniface Mwangi, but i wonder whether they are surprised when they see Kenyans unite in protest against President Museveni’s regime. Is this the way things will always be in our country, where artists and a bunch of individuals, decide to be comfortable and remain silent when our own political regime that is in power, infringes on the rights of Kenyans. But choose to march on the streets when a non-Kenyan, in a foreign sovereign land is undergoing torture and worst forms of discrimination known to man? Surely not, but who am i to dictate what the thoughts of my country men are? Surely what that amounts to is hypocrisy and if we are not going to deliver ourselves from it, we are doomed.

Also, what my fellow country men should be cognizance about, is that, in Uganda, there are men and women, who are affiliated to President Museveni’s Political party. Men and women, who are supporting what is happening to Bobi Wine and because of the momentum and the attention that the issue has gathered, decided to remain silent. So ts just the same as what normally happens in Kenya during such times of injustice. Just as one former american slave once said, “its the same plantations everywhere in america,” meaning the same acts of hypocrisy exists everywhere, be it in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania or in Rwanda for instance. Where an opposition leader by the name  of Diane Shima Rwigara, is as per the “tweets”, “Facebook posts” and “whats-app chit chats”  not forgetting  Rwandan and international news, was illegally arrested and still is in jail .

Ms. Diane Shima Rwigara, is a  vibrant Rwandan opposition leader,  who also was barred from standing against  the country’s incumbent President, one Paul Kagame during their 2017 election. She was arrested  along with her mother and sister, on suspicion of forgery and tax evasion (keep in mind she was Kagame’s main competitor). She once gave a very famous quote that states, “Rwanda is like a very pretty girl with a lot of makeup, Perfect teeth, perfect hair, perfect everything. Rwanda spends so much time on the image because they know the inside is dark and dirty.”  Could she be also referring to some of my country men/women no forgetting our country? You decide.

In conclusion, i would like to categorically state, that it is  always a good gesture whenever i see my fellow country-men/women taking part in progressive social/political activities such as  protests and demonstrations against any form of  oppression or injustice caused  by any political  regime in the world. My worry is, i hope in the process of doing so, we do not behave live mental patients who are under schizophrenia and look retarded,whereby  when it comes to oppression in our country,  we  behave like mad-men and stand divided even when what is before us is an injustice.

Gods speed.

Kimanzi Edward.

Can I ‘live-leave’

An anonymous writer once wrote, “to be or not to be that is the question.” Quite unfortunate if you ask me, what I think should be the question is to live or not to leave and i am taking a firm decision on the use of the latter word ‘leave’ because it is my assumption as a writer that words can be used in any manner whatsoever so long as they aim at achieving a particular goal . In this case, I chose to intertwine those two words ‘live’ and ‘leave’ because the two ,though mutually exclusive, some way and somehow explain actions which all human beings make.Whereby ‘live’ will mean to exist and to occupy a certain area or place, whereas ‘ leave ‘ quite frankly means to abandon.

Ladies and gentlemen, I live in a patriarchy society, a Kenyan society or more broader, an African society that is deeply rooted with customs, believes and traditions which often that not exist as comfort zones to many. In my country for instance, those three tenents, that is customs,believes and traditions, are all contained and mixed into one crucible known as a tribe. To which, by my own personal assessment, is the deal breaker, the colossal juganut in all, or let’s say most of the decisions that many Kenyans make are affected in one way or another by it. That to say, if life was a map, the question on tribe was a compass and each parts of the compass was the various subtribes that are in our country, 42, to be exact. Hence,that is why I pose this question to you my country man or reader, can i live or leave this spectre of a society?

To answer the above rhertoric question, I will swiftly divert your attention to a story about Kapi. Kapi was an only child who was raised in the leafy suburbs of Nairobi. Lucky for him, while growing up he had both his parents and well they all provided him with the necessary tools for survival any child would want to have, from shelter,food, clothing and security, which not many children grew up with.

For example, he went to the finest schools, like his kindergarten for instance, milkshake was in plenty, the play grounds were safe, toys were in plenty for all the students and the teachers were quite enthusiastic and motivated them while they were still young to believe in themselves and that they could be anyone they wanted to be when they grew up. So Kapi, had it all.

At home, his source of inspiration was his father, who was an accomplished and well educated man, whom he silently worshipped like a god. For he would walk like him, talked like him if need be and even sit like him when he was around. His mother, existed only for him and not for anyone else, she together with his father were the custodians of the law, what they told him, their believes and understanding of the world was his understanding. So one can say, that Kapi was more like a reflection of themselves.

Kapi grew up adhering to his parents words of ‘wisdom’ all through his childhood life and one might say they were his first commandments. His parents protected him from certain ‘ills’ of the world by ensuring that all he wanted was provided,but one day, the world changed its axis and Kapi’s world change forever.

Kapi’s parents were separating and eventually got divorced. Kapi dived into a sea of confusion, his best weapon since childhood was silence Even at the age of 15, a teenager, one would expect Kapi to be rebellious as most teenagers are but not Kapi, he remained silent, because as a child he never questioned his parents and who can blame him really, would you question God?

So all that was happening in his life at that time, existed as a hazardous dream, a nightmare. He felt like if his world was crushing, yet still his parents provided him all that he needed but still one aspect of his life was not whole, his family. Which he looked up to, emulated and even talk about to his friends, was not as whole as it used to.

Kapi had to adjust to situations like having to see his father only over the weekends or holidays , where he would see his father under the embrace of another woman, and subsequently he would be seeing his mother engaging in conversations with other men so Kapi would assume too that his mother is also under the embrace of another man who is not his father.

Kapi, at the ‘tender’ and ‘delicate age of 15 had a choice, to either adapt to the new situation his parents were in, or not adapt and create his own illusion and his own comfort zone. By this I mean, either Kapi was to accept that his ‘dream’ family that he so cherished and admired was no more or assume that all that was going on with his parents was just a dreary nightmare which he would wake up from and that it he was experiencing schizophrenia.

Ladies and gentlemen, just like the above short story of Kapi, each of us ,separately not the same, have been to situations which often get us into a dilemma of enormous proportion. We live our whole lives, assuming that everything exits in a particular formulae and shock on us when things change or evolve and we are at a crossroad which seems imaginary but real in terms of action and in our decision making process.

So what I ask, is whether we should and I ask this with great humility, whether we should adapt to change or stick to what we truly believe in, with all our might, unbound and unshaken for it is our comfort zone.

To some, ‘liberals’ Kapi’s dilemma looks so easy, compared to a situation where Kapi was forced to choose either to be taken his mother or his fathers life but what they don’t know, is that all life’s dilemma’s are just the same, they are all dilemmas.

For If Kapi chose to accept and adapt to his parents divorce, he will have to explain to all his childhood friends whom he grew up with, his cousins and future dates or girlfriends or wife(s), about his family or he can choose not to and live a lie, I mean who owes him any form of explanation. Those two choices ladies and gentlemen sum up everyones life. You have a choice, to either explain or not to explain, all those choices have consequences and so does change.

As a country, I believe that we all have a choice, to either stick to our tribal cocoons and embrace that which is positive from it or choose not to subscribe to the traditions, customs and believes that our tribes have and by doing so, we would be creating or one would be creating his or her own subculture or subtribe that is dependent on the persons belief , customs and traditions which would come as a result of ones experience and interaction with people.

A good example is ‘Pop-culture’ .Which shady and strangely as it sounds, exists in all corners of the world. From America’s, to Africa, to Europe and Asia. Some might not like how it operates or what this subculture subscribes to, but to those that subscribe to it, find comfort in it, because it exists like a mirror, which reflects who they are and what they believe in, to others its freedom.

All in all, my own recommendation as an artist and a writer to be exact, is to suggest,in which I do, that we break all safety that is in our lives. Break the barriers if need be, because sooner or later, as the world evolves, change is inevitable and it would be a nightmare to any individual, just like to mammoths during the stone age(that is to assume that there really was a stone age) who were shocked that they would eventually be extinct and inoperative anymore. So steer the wave if need be and choose, to either ‘live’ or leave’.

God’s speed.

Edward Kimanzi.