Is Corruption Bad?

After a too long hiatus from blogging, I delve into not so tasteful questions…

Antoine Dodson

was at the BET hiphop awards!!! If you don’t know who Antoine Dodson is, it’s time for some Wikipedia, some Youtube, some more Youtube (the cover at the end is atrocious if you ask me) and last, a visit to Antoine’s website. For those of you who are in the know, this isn’t news. I personally don’t trust the news; I like things old and archived, when supporters and detractors have had their say and the dust has settled.Then it’s time to write a fat, money-minting, quasi-historical novel.However, not every piece of ancient history is worthy of attention. The Dodson phenomenon is.

Would all Antoine Dodson fans please raise their hands. Great, but why the hell are you laughing? It’s hilarious (says one fan, chuckling and gasping for air.) Pray tell, which is hilarious. A)The interview, B) the Bed Intruder Song? If A) do you think Antoine Dodson was trying to be funny? Not to me. He was being downright serious. As rape victim himself, he was venting his anger and refusing to act as a victim. Did he go overboard? Some of his neighbors seem to think so–see wikipedia. Apparently, “people like him” (let’s discuss people like him below) shouldn’t be on T.V. embarrassing the community. Okay, I’ll cut the crap. I laughed too the first time I watched that interview. His gestures, his word choice, all that was pretty rib-cracking. But let’s get this straight, I didn’t think Antoine is dumb, and I don’t understand people who think that of him. Perhaps that’s because calm, solemn interviews are the exception on Kenyan T.V. People jostle each other to get five seconds in front of the camera. Some for the fame, some to tell their story. As for the Gregory Brothers’ song, if you don’t find it funny, eeem, get some humor. Am I the only one who thinks Antoine is a natural-born lyricist?

People like Antoine Dodson? What do you mean, Mr. Dodson-detractor? Several answers to this one. The first, alluded to above is that Dodson didn’t play his part as prescribed by society. Victims are supposed to be quiet and ashamed. Second answer, also aforementioned, is that snobs think Dodson hasn’t got brains ‘coz he’s talking all street. Third category haters are the racists. The ones who think that Antoine’s helping promote the stereotypes of his race and the ones who think he’s proving a long held belief about his race. Fourth comes the homophobes. Yes, he’s gay, thank you! Moving on, moving on. Fifth place is for sad, sad people who display all the above symptoms (shit!).

Coda: Antoine Dodson is a remarkable guy, I think. Once a laughing stock, now a home-owner who continues to enjoy his fame in flashy, “feminine” outfits. Deal with it!

Check this out

Finally!!! my first real entry under Books Conquered.

AUTOGRAPHS
A first-read reflection on Zadie Smith’s “The Autograph Man”.

Coming-up next on the main page: Antoine Dodson.

Conversations with Nyayo:

Questions for our benevolent ex-dictator

His ex-Excellency Daniel Toroitich arap Moi a.k.a “M” “O” “1″ a.k.a Mtukufu (His exalted one) a.k.a. Baba and Mama of the Nation ruled Kenya from 1972 to 2002. Upon inheriting power from the founding father, Mzee (the old man) Jomo Kenyatta–who’s own motto was the now world famous Harambee–, M.O.1 declared that he would follow in the footsteps (Nyayo) of the first father, thus providing us the first of names we were to evoke during public expressions of undying love:Nyayo. Raising his rungu–the miniature roundhead mace he still carries (seriously people, I recommend Swahili classes)–he said Harambeeee and we bleated Nyayo, shaking the one index finger high above our heads. Ah, the good old days. Just kidding.

But there are some Kenyans who are not. You’d be amazed how many times I’ve come across web posts calling for the return of Moi. Who can blame us? Those were days of order (Mtukufu was always watching you from his perch at the front of the classroom, right next to naked and crucified Christ) and you knew for sure there would be no election disputes and therefore no near civil wars.

But one youtube comment got me thinking. I was looking for videos of the now defunct Redykyulas. Some background. Redykyulas was a weekly T.V. comedy show featuring Walter Mong’are, Tony Njunguna and John Kiarie a.k.a KJ, students at the time, who ridiculed a lot of ridiculous things happening in Kenya, including Mr. Moi. At the height of the 2002 election campaigns, they put together a skit titled End of an Error in which we watch Moi go to his presidential bed for the last time. He has a nightmare. Waving his rungu over a crowd, he asks “What do you want?” And we say “Rainbow” (a.k.a the National Rainbow Coalition that brought Mwai Kibaki to power). The comment below the video went something like “Poor Moi”.

Really? Poor Moi? Seeing our ex-dictator criss-cross the country this summer, campaigning hard against the new constitution, I was in awe of the man. I would like to sit down with him and ask him, “Man, how did you do it? How do you continue to do it?” Live with himself that is.

We would need an hour at least for this conversation (and I certainly would be shaking like a leaf in a thunderstorm–God, remember those primary school compositions). Having evoked his various titles I would ask Mzee,
1) what would you say was your greatest accomplishment for Kenya? And by the way,have you tried the New Thika Road super highway? It’s pretty smooth, right?
2) have you heard about the Goldenberg scandal? Someone called Kamlesh Pattni says he knows you. Like knows knows you.
3) tell us about the Nyayo torture chambers. Your ingenious plan?
4) how come the 8-4-4 education system, specially designed to help us youth help ourselves,  is making us quite retarded?
5) you are the professor of politics? Do you see your genius at work at all in any of the tribal conflicts going around like a flu?
6) is a corruption-free Kenya possible? Are you thinking what I’m thinking about these promises?
7) what did you say to God all those Sundays we watched you in church? Your Kingdom, my kingdom?
8] you remember the Dream Team? How exactly did Richard Leakey fall for that?
9) that public apology, Jamhuri day, 2002, “If there is someone I have wronged, please forgive me” was that it? Nothing, say packets of Maziwa ya Nyayo, orsome cooking oil or bundles of cash to soothe our sour souls?
10) despite all the small grievances we hold against you, how exactly have we ended up giving you a multi-million retirement paradise?

Questions for the Exalted one are plenty, of course, but they all boil down to “How does this guy live with himself?” Anyone got clues, let me know.

In the meantime, I recommended End of an Error by Redykyulass

Check this out

New entry under WANNA-BE-WRITERS:

ON BECOMING A KLEPTOMANIAC

Watch out for a trip through Junot Diaz’s short story Fiesta (under books conquered)

African, Black, Colour: the American Alphabet

“Black” was not a term I associated with myself until I got to America. I had been Meru, Kenyan and (sometimes) African. I was aware of the racial issues in America (thank you Hollywood), but those were American issues. Nothing to do with me. Well, until I found myself a member of the  Black Students’ Union at my new college.  A recent donation had allowed the college to enlarge its doorway for students from further afield. Places with shallow pockets and lots of  disadvantage (as per the American definition). As such, there was no African Students’ Union at my college and someone had decided that I would fit just fine into the BSU. Eeem, no, I’m not Black. I’m African. No, you’re Black because all the peoples of the motherland are black, said one Black Studies major (no African studies major either). No, they are not (trying hard to suppress my irritation). The Africans in that year’s class came from Zimbabwe, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. Nine in total. Two and a half joined the BSU, interweaving the burdens of the continent with those of the new World.

The rest of us Africans went through our undergraduate years un-unionized. We never quite got together to discuss our discomfort with “Black”. My own view on the issue was that to call an African Black was to generalize American racial distinctions. Black is firstly an opposite or opposition to White. If there were no white racism, there would be no African-Americans (old sense of the term. Check out Mr. Obama for the new sense of the term). That’s not to say that Black culture is only a reaction to centuries of brutal oppression. It’s a distinct American culture, different even from the African cultures from which it evolved (no, we don’t celebrate Kwaanza in Africa). My point is that it was born out of American circumstances and therefore the term Black could not be used to describe all peoples of African ancestry. If you got to have a name, then I think it should be the first ( i.e. existing before all this racial crap) name:African, said I to the Black Studies major.

Wow, wow, wow, slow down people (this is me four years later in an African lit class). The professor has just asked if J.M. Coetzee is an African writer. Hell, no, said I, the man says he’s not an African writer, but a European one; I am not going to argue with him. This discussion took place after a reading of Coetzee’s Boyhood in which he recounts in  third-person (raise thine eyebrow) his childhood longing for European (i.e. British) ancestry as opposed to Afrikaner ancestry at the beginning of Apartheid. They are lots of white and coloured (mixed-race) people in the book but a single native (read African). Such terms as white-Africans, coloured-Africans and black-Africans floated around the class, and I cringed. I hate those hyphens (heard the line that only white are American and everyone else is hyphenated?). We quickly slipped into a discussion about what it means to be African. Now what kind of a question is that? Like me, of course. You mean someone with your skin type? asked person sitting across the table. (Cheap trap. Ha ha. African is my identity, mine, mine, mine). Well, no, not really, said I, it’s about ancestry, about connection to the… (I tasted my tongue for the right word) the earth, the soil. And 400 years of Afrikaner settlement is not enough? (Please, you kidding me, woman. My people have been there for forever. Cradle of life, hello?)

I left that class horrified by my own jealous possession of “African” identity. I’m still not Black. I’m still uncomfortable about groups of people who don’t wish to be associated with Africans being called Africans. But whatever. Anyone who thinks he is African, let him be AS LONG AS he dares not hyphenate me. Only one term now annoys me. This people of colour. Haiya! Let’s move away from a black-white binary to a white-everyone else binary as though those people of colour are harmoniously sitting around waiting for their good share of white racism and not quite passionately cutting each other down. Where do people find these terms? In a garbage heap?

Check this out

New entry under Wanna-be Writers:

REWIND, PRESS PLAY, REREAD

Check this out

New Entry under Wanna-be writers:

Writers’ Block: Two teaspoons of FreeWriting

America sucks

at two things.  First, this complicated business of phones. Try landing fresh from Kenya and understanding what they mean by “contract”.  Sounds like something involving the sale of your kidneys. I know. But it’s just the term for forced fidelity to one mobile service provider for two years. In exchange for your fidelity, you get to pay as low as 40USD for a given number of talk minutes and texts and something else. Oh, but you can’t get a contract, little foreigner. We need some identification. How about my national ID? What’s this (asks the salesperson as he squints at my heat laminated Kenyan kipande. Lord, and the way your heart stops when a karau asks, msjana, wavbi gipande?) No? How about my passport? This thing is gold, I tell you. I had to wait a few prayer-filled months for it. (He inspects the passport.) Mme we need American identification. But I’m not American?? You can get a state-ID. Easy. All I need to do is go to the DMV–no idea what that stands do for–the place they get driver’s licenses.

That was all back in Massachusetts some four years ago. I never got a state ID (for reasons discussed below). Instead, I got a pre-paid phone with AT&T. Go as you pay. No, pay as you go. I wasn’t planning on calling anyone unless in an emergency, and dare you call me…Kenyans are serious confused here, I know. Who would hate to have someone else call them? You would if you had to pay both ways. Call, you pay. Receive a call, you pay. Text, you pay. Receive one, you pay. Now that is what I call corporate greed.

So a few weeks ago, when I got to New York, I thought it would be best to get a contract phone. At least find out where the DMV was situated. Oh, no, we don’t need no identification in NYC. Just a “credit score”. Another American invention. The banks need to make sure that their borrowers can pay so they came up with the credit score. Get a credit card, get some debt and let’s see how fast you pay up. Oops, are those interest rates? Did we forget to mention that part? Oh, says the salesperson, if you don’t have a credit score, just give us 500USD. We’ll keep it for a year then give it back to you. Haiya!!! And what will you be doing with it for a year, sitting on it and laying eggs? I’ll tell you what AT&T will be doing with it. Investing it, making astronomical dividends and then in a year, they’ll give you back your 500 USD , only it won’t be 500USD. In a year, standards of living will have gone up. So on top of making a pile of money on your money, AT$T will take a good bit out of your 500. And all you’ll have gotten are some talk minutes, texts and a locked phone (worth like 50 bob in Kenya) that they will disconnect in another year unless you sign up for another contract term. Waa, and you thought Safaricom was a leech.

Talking about Safaricom, I was overjoyed to see them demolished this summer. Long live Zain. Ati eight bob per minute. Surprise, surprise people, two bob per minute is very, very possible. And let’s aim for the sun: 10 cents per minute.

Back when I didn’t know I was being milked, I used to miss Safaricom. Every time I was with Kenyans, we would long for “samahani, mteja hapatikani“. For what is easier than getting a phone in Kenya (whether you have money or not)? I had one this summer that cost me under 2K. I probably should be embarrassed about this, but, walai when it comes to money, you leave by your means. Just walked into a shop and got my phone. Then asked for a Safcom SIM card for 100 bob (I’m laughable I know, I could have gotten it for 20 bob in some vichochoro). Then I asked for a 250 bob scratch card. Was planning to spend that over a couple of week. But here comes in those don’t have cash. Two hours after my happy, uncomplicated purchase, some itchy fingers stole my phone, SIM and precious credit. Oh, my soul! But you can’t be a Kenyan if one or two of your phones are not borrowed permanently from you. It’s part of the experience. And once in a while, you’ll bump into someone down on Tom Mboya street who’ll say, “Madam, come I show you something”. And he’ll unleash, from the folds of his creased jacket, your phone with bite marks on the corner where your niece or nephew went to work on it.

Kenya one, U.S.A ZERO. Clearly.

America’s transport system also sucks. Okay, depends on where you live. In New York it’s cool. The Subway goes swiii and the bus system is very good, I hear. I hate on-the-surface transportation. I am a puker (god, you should have seen me on the plane when I decided I wouldn’t take my air-sickness pill…but that’s another story). New York gets a check, but let’s step out of the mega-metropolis. Once upon a time, I lived in a small town in Western Massachusetts. There was one transport provider, the PVTA, and at the bus-stop we would wait, freezing (literally) in the winter and frying in the summer, because if you were not there when it arrived, you still ended up waiting some 30 minutes to an hour. We lined up in an orderly manner, got in, sat on this cushioned seats with leg room and took 1 hr to travel a 15 minutes distance. The bus woobled like a boat of water and guess who got sick? But the PVTA was the only way for the car-less. And because America’s planners are such geniuses, I was on the PVTA all the time. First, there is the mall, where you could get clothes and shoes and stuff, but not food. And then there were places you always wanted to go but, nooo, the bus didn’t stop or go there. Like the DMV. Note that the PVTA didn’t operate on holidays and the eve of holidays so some poor African students starved on the good days.

But the PVTA was nothing. Try the Peter Pan. Alas, my friends, most places in this country have only one long-distance bus service. And the Peter Pan was our God-given service that took 5-6hrs to get to New York instead of 3. Mme, we only take one bag, sorry. But I just got off a plane. Okay, just pay 50 dollars…You who dream of American paradise, I suggest not raising your hopes too high.

Now I know that Kenya is a dot compared to the U.S. but seriously, what rocks harder than a matatu. Chak from your  office or coffee date and see one, just flag it down, wherever. As long as there is no karau being of service to all while wielding some ancient AK-47 or a club. The kangee says harakisha as he pushes your butt in and you almost lose a shoe. But you are in. All you have to do is not seat next to someone who likes eating raw garlic or too near the speakers (I’m assuming you have taste and have not thrown yourself into one of those lifeless mikoteni masqurading as matatus). Don’t take it too personally that the music blasting out of the speakers and from under your seat is objectifying women. Nod to the music and relax. No stress. The driver is speeding way above his speed governor, but he’s meandering through jam, getting the respect of personal vehicles which have something to lose. You are headed home, and if you don’t crash into the on-coming military lorry, you will arrive home in time to put your feet up and watch re-runs of the Philipino soap Pangako Sa Yo. Last time I was home, I even noticed that people were actually obeying those “No preaching, no hawking” signs so if you get on a Citi Hoppa or Kenya Bus instead of a matatu, you’ll get home, eventually, and without having heard that you are going to Hell. Which you are.

Kenya 2, U.S.A. Zero.

Discovering Home

The first  character I ever crafted was a mixed-blood Zimbabwean girl. That story is safely stored away in an old box under my bed. Thinking about it makes me wince. I was pretty unaware at fifteen and at sixteen, seventeen (still counting). You should have seen me pretending to be knowledgeable among writers like Veronique Tadjo and Binyavaga Wainaina and Brian Chikwava. They indulged me, good people. Oh, youth!  Only later, four years later, did I begin writing stories based in the place I knew best: Nairobi. I was taking an undergrad writing class then and these stories were a hit; my American classmates marveled at the matatu especially. Haiya, I’ve been sitting on a goldmine all along, I thought. Only, once I began mining, I discovered hard, hard ground.

Living abroad has made me strongly aware of absences that I wasn’t aware of before. I grew up in Nairobi and when I was younger, I bragged  about this (subtly) to cousins who lived elsewhere. It was my city. Yet, now every time I am home for the summer, I feel an outsider.  Not because I’ve missed nine months of new sheng vocabulary, new dance moves and political disasters. No, more than that. I feel I don’t know Nairobi and that I’ve never known it. This is primarily the product of my growing-up mostly along Thika Road (far from the middle-class, cultural hot pots) and leaving Kenya just as I was coming of age and ” growing legs” as my mum would say. Sam Kahiga once said that Africa is full of unwritten stories and I can imagine tens of thousands of stories about Nairobi that are far different from my own. Nairobi 1990s culture was born in Eastlands for heaven sake, and I haven’t read or heard about a single story from that vibrant time when sheng was still a slippery, dirty word like virginity.

My missing links extend beyond Nairobi though. It seems to me that in Kenya there is a general disconnect between the past and the present. Looking back on my history lessons in primary and secondary school I feel cheated. What do I know about the music, arts, ideas and ideologies of the 60s, 70s, 80s or even the 90s? Almost nothing. Those things were not in the history books. No, we just memorized the  structure of the national party KANU and swallowed facts without chewing. My generation, I feel,  is completely cut off from the history of our country. We don’t know who were are or why we have become what we are.

So I have began looking for answers to my questions, reading everything and anything about Kenya. And already, I am making discoveries. Turns out Kibera is a derivative of the Nubian word for forest, Kibra. Picture the garbage, polythene bags, flying toilets, machetes and know that used to be a wooded hill. The colonial government settled the people we call Nubians there after discharging them from the King’s African Rifles in 1917 (didn’t want to send them back to Sudan probably, just in case there was another World War). But, trust the British, they forgot to give them titles to the land. After independence, the Kenyan government denied Nubians Kenyan citizenship (how the British going to dish out 4197 acres of our land, just like that?) and allowed rural immigrants to settle there. You remember those clashes in 2001, mmhuh… Check out www.nubiansinkenya.com

Another enigmatic group to me is the Indian community. This group fascinates me, why lie. Great businessmen, always a pleasure bargaining in those Tom Mboya-Moi Avenue shops though I’ve noticed that they are dwindling. However, in all my years, I’ve never had an Indian friend and have never shared a school with one. I’m a fan of Indian literature in general and I’m currently in-love with Kiran Desai’s “Inheritance of Lost”. I’ve had long affairs with “A Suitable Boy” (Vikram Seth) and “Hungry Tide” (Amitav Ghosh) and so I am amazed that although chai, chapatti and pilau are staples in my house, the history of Kenyan Indians is not.  Just discovered the fabulous Awaaz magazine (www.awaaz.magazine.com) this morning and planning on read especially the issues on Jevanjee and Pio Gama Pinto.

On with the ironic business of discovering home (the title of Binyavaga Wainaina’s similarly themed non-fiction story that won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2002 ).