You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February, 2008.
No I didn’t turn 40! I am currently a mere fresh and young 20 year-old (OH HOW I WISH!). Anyway a cousin of mine did turn 40 yesterday & her husband & sisters organized a very intimate surprise luncheon in a lovely garden setting. It was a nice way to spend the day with family & friends but woe unto those that were on a certain 7-day detox diet. The food was to die for and while queuing on the line I planned to serve white rice & veggies; but that thought quickly flew out the window. I non-hesitantly threw some chicken & beef (all the things I’ve missed in the passed week) on my plate; but sadly only managed to nibble at the chicken once it touched my lips. I guess that diet went on and turned my tongue against me! But the ice cream and cake was taken in with glee… the guilt however drove me crazy and I passed on dinner in the evening. Had my celebratory glass of white wine which went to my head instantly and blacked me out for the weekend. BUT my body does indeed feel lighter & cleaner. Up next is my “Skipping-Rope” exercise routine starting in March. Wish me luck.
Today is one cup of rice, 6 tomatoes & 12 glasses of water day! I think I had my breakfast too early starting to get a hunger headache. Meanwhile the passed few days were hard! I’ve been weak esp in the evening and as soon as I eat I fell asleep instantly. My jeans are getting a bit loose on the thighs. I’m not all out on severe weight loss, just the flabber around certain areas. The weekend means this diet is over… phew!
Today is an all fruits day. So far so good… but I don’t know if I imagined smelling some roasted chicken… hope not.
One might ask why I would blog about a diet when the country is in all this trouble. My answer is life has to go on plus it’s getting really depressing reading the newspapers and listening to the same old news on the radio or TV. In any case the lockdown at the beginning of the year was a good excuse to eat depression away while one kept abreast with what was happening across the country.
As someone who loves to have fun, you may think it’s a total waste of time to engage in any exercise that isn’t fun. As a result, you may enjoy a variety of activities, which is great in many respects. Having so many interests may give you a leg up because you’re good at a broad spectrum of activities and can always find something to do. You’re also able to work your body in different ways to avoid boredom and overuse injuries.
Where you might have difficulty with is sticking with any type of exercise schedule. You may exercise for a week or two by playing tennis, inline skating, shooting hoops or walking with a friend. But then, if the weather’s bad or work gets busy, you may not do anything active for several weeks. What makes exercise enjoyable to you — the freedom to do what you like when you like — may also be your downfall as you fight to follow some kind of routine.
Best Exercise for Your Personality
The good news is, you really can find activities that are fun for you while becoming a bit more disciplined about your schedule. Some ideas:
Join a Walking or Running Club
The social aspect of these kinds of clubs may appeal to you and having scheduled workouts you need to show up for, with the support of other members, may get you moving. You might also enjoy training for a future race or event with a group. Having something to work for may also keep you motivated.
Dance or Fitness Classes
While the gym may be a bit regimented for you, most clubs offer a variety of group fitness classes that may appeal to your need to have fun while you exercise. You might prefer circuit training, which moves quickly and keeps you on your toes, or classes that combine activities like cardio and strength training. You might also enjoy taking dance lessons, signing up for community activities like cross-country skiing in the winter or canoe trips in the summer or more free-floating activities like hiking or rock-climbing.
Playing Games or Sports
Part of having fun for you is having a purpose for what you’re doing. Running to nowhere on a treadmill may not make much sense to a free spirit like you, but being an active participant is something you can relate to. Think active video games, basketball, raquetball, tennis, or any activity where you can engage your mind and your body for a specific purpose.
How to Get More Disciplined
To get the most of out your fitness program, you may need to reign yourself in and require a little more from yourself. If you join an exercise group or class, you’ll have a schedule to follow on a weekly basis. But, for your other workouts, you may need to start scheduling them in your calendar to make sure you make time for them.
- Schedule more of your workouts. You can still be a free spirit — just a free spirit with a calendar.
- Give yourself reasons to exercise. Not every workout can be fun, so remind yourself that being consistent, even if things get a little dull, will help you have more fun later. If you keep your body strong, you’ll be ready for those fun and unexpected activities like skiing, hiking or inline skating.
- Commit to regular activity. Even if your group isn’t meeting this week or the weather’s bad, you can still get in some activity. Be prepared for those times by keeping great exercise music handy for a treadmill workout or some exercise videos you enjoy doing.
- Keep having fun. If things get dull, think of what you could do to spice things up — maybe taking some golf lessons, a scuba diving course or a bellydancing class. As a fun-lover, your friends may look to you to come up with new ideas for being active and having fun. Use that aspect of your personality and your confidence to constantly push your boundaries.
Yup it’s upon us again… but i wish that we all wore red to show the blood spilt on our country’s soil since 27th of December 2007… that sea of red across the country of lost lives that didn’t know their day had come…
Black color of the people – Red color of the blood spilt – Green color of our land…
This is a call out for entries into the sixth part of The Quarterly Colour Series of Poetry, Indigo Smoothies. The Quarterly Colour Series of poetry are a series of free ebooks, published by Al Kags every three months. The first five ebooks of the series are Gray Spots, Blue Smudges, Red Streaks, Green Piece and Brown Steps that read by over 185,000 people worldwide. The ebooks are spread virally over email as well as posted on different blogs and web sites for Download. Feel free to download them from http://alkags.wordpress.com or http://www.scribd.com among other web sites.
The rules are, that you can download them for free, share them, enjoy them, republish the poetry in there – literally anything you want to do with them: just be sure to acknowledge the author and the ebook.
The theme for Indigo Smoothies is dialogue. In many parts of the world – from Pakistan to South Africa to Kenya to the US, there are important fundamental conversations that needed to have been had. In most cases having these conversations – about discrimination, about class barriers, about racism and tribalism and all these -isms would result in lasting peace and prosperity for the people there. But these conversations must be cordial and positive – they must not be filled with hate and bitterness and they must be sober. We call upon poets from all over the world to submit their poetry of such conversations and engage the world in dialogue – positively.
Please send your poetry in a word document to poetry@alkags.com. Be clear about your name (in the case of Stage Name preference). The selection of the poetry to be published is entirely at the discretion of the Al Kags editorial team
All entries need to be in by March 1 2008. Thanks, all of you that have sent us your poetry, and supported the series by forwarding widely and we are glad that you all have pushed the poetry to such great heights.
Many Thanks
QCS
Nairobi, Kenya
tears running down my face
i’m saddened by the violence
escalating at an erratic pace
closing my eyes i imagine
long lost innocence
my country – no longer a virgin
trigger happy police cock gun
dramatically jumping from truck
scared men & women run
before their backs are struck
child’s lips speak despair
of lost family, singed flesh,
smoke still rising in the air
of politician’s narrowed scope
unquenched desires in their hearts
now the voter’s stolen hope
what do you mean division of power?
asks the man with the weapon
as he awaits the promised hour
but revenge leaves him desolate
chilling fear begins to devour
as in the bloody hands… he sees his own fate
A year ago Violas Iris was about my little personal whiny problems such as the state of affairs of my hair, relationships, general life confusion and office boredom. Now, I wonder whether my middle-class ass (as comfortable as it was sitting at the computer) was like an ostrich with its head buried in the sand while everything around it went to hell; because clearly a problem that had been festering for years was only starting to boil over. I remember at the beginning declaring that my blog wouldn’t ever address issues of Kenyan politics because at that time I felt what I envisioned Violas Iris to be was a journey of poetic self-discovery.
But now I realize that being a Kenyan is being political. It’s about discussing the going ons around us – whether in our homes, churches, schools, pubs… it’s about taking the political occurrences of the day to heart & debating upon them like our lives depended on it; and now in 2008 it’s about blogging and reading other Kenyans blogs to get the 411 on what the latest political opinion is from both the Kenyans at home and abroad.
As things settle down to some semblance of peace (remember calm is not peace) I realize that we are yet to discuss a whole lot of pressing issues before everything goes back to normalcy. We cannot allow ‘us’ to sweep anything else under the carpet – as we have done that for far too long. We cannot allow politicians to tell us that violence will be over in 7 days and we believe them – because if they had that power why did they allow 3 weeks of violence to carry on? We need to discuss the hurt & pain across the country at the smaller social levels – because if we leave it to the politicians we will give them more power than they deserve. We need to have truth & reconciliation barazas at the village level so that one can explain to the other why they raised a weapon against their very own brother.
We need to talk (much like the Celtel & PSI campaigns tell us to)… we need to keep communication channels open. We need to implement non-political civil education to explain to all & sundry what having a vote means, what voting (as a national duty) means because many across the board have been disenfranchised. Many cast their votes knowing that it meant change for their situations… but that freedom that right was taken away from them. We need to return that right to the individual person… the right to be a Kenyan… the right to talk about politics, the right to live wherever they want… the right to heal… and I – Violas Iris – intend to be a part of that.
When you find yourself talking with several guests of the morbid situation of your country during the wedding of one of your friends, you quickly realize there is something wrong with your country. When your National broadcasters show men being dragged out of public service vehicles and hacked to death by a mob of young men who do not even hide their faces from the police a few metres away, and such scenes are repeated more than the advertisements and commercials, then your country is doomed. When you hear that people are chased from their homes into a church for belonging to a particular tribe, and then followed into the church where women and children are locked inside and then burnt alive, my friends, you are no longer in a country, you are living inside hell on earth.
The Swahili (oh, that language that was supposed to unite us and now has been rendered impotent in its intended super-glue powers) – the Swahili say that when you see your friend being shaved with a razor, start wetting your hair in preparation for your shave too.
I do not intend to go gently into that dark beyond without saying a word of goodbye. Friends, (and those who consider me an enemy because of my tribe or lack of it), being of sane mind and in charge of my mental faculties, I bid you goodbye. I chose to write you an orbituary, which you should read as a love letter to my country that has died in that critical moment when its dreams were giving birth to a beautiful bouncing future.
I know not the hour of my death, for no one knows the hour of their death in this country anymore. That man on Naivasha, who was dragged from the car and his speech as he answered questions betrayed him as belonging to a tribe the highway blockers were hunting down, he did not know his death. I have seen myself trying to run from the mob the way he desperately tried, machetes raining on his back, and yet he ran on, three desperate steps, before his body disintegrated into huge chunks of human flesh and fell down. Upon which they cubed him. I too, my friend, am about to face the same death. My tongue, when I try to speak, shall definitely betray me as a targeted tribesman when the mob does come to me. For I do not belong to any tribe.
My sister, Rozi, called me yesterday trembling with fear. She lives in Western Kenya, on the Eldoret/Kakamega border. They had taken a patient to Moi Referral Hospital Eldoret. On their way back, the ambulance was stopped by youths bearing all forms of crude weapons. They demanded to know which tribes everyone in the ambulance belonged to. The driver was of the local tribe, so he was told to step aside. As the others showed their National Identity cards, my sister realized that all around them were corpses of human beings freshly chopped to death. Her turn came and she said she was Luhya. They told her to speak in Luhya, but my Sister doesn’t know Luhya. “I really can’t speak it because my mother is a Taita!” she pleaded. She had to desperately show a photocopy of my mother’s National Identity card which she had in her purse, a photocopy my mother had given to her the previous week to use as a referee for the bank account she was switching to. That photocopy saved my sister. The only language my sister can speak, apart from English and the National Swahili, is Gikuyu. The tribe the youths were targeting.
My friend, I know no tribe. I only know languages. My mother is Taita, my Father is Luhya, and we were raised in Kiambu among the Gikuyu. It has never been important in our family to know which tribe we should belong to, my sisters and brothers have names from both sides of our parents communities. In this chaos, if the hunters of fellow humans were to find us in our house, would they really believe we are brothers and sisters from our names?
If I say am Luhya, the Gikuyu with whom I have lived and now am engaged to one of their daughters would kill me as they have gone on a mission to revenge the deaths of their kinsmen in Western Kenya. If I flee to my parent’s home in Luhyaland, the neighbours will barbecue me alive for I can’t speak their language and of course my mom is from a foreign tribe. Not to forget that the guy who sold us that piece of land where my mom and Dad saved so hard to buy is known to come and insist on grazing his cow on our compound claiming “my cows used to feed here, buying the land doesn’t mean I don’t own it!”
Now in this Nairobi where I stay, I am wary of my neighbours. The guy opposite my flat is a Luo with whom we argued amicably during the pre-election period on which party we supported. Maybe now, given that friendly neighbours have been the ones killing each other, he might remember our political chats over my litres of coffee and come chop me up?
That is why friends, I have decided to write this obituary. I know not my tribe, I have only known myself as Kenyan, and others as fellow Kenyans. In these times, belonging or not belonging means not being dead or being seriously dead. What chances does a person like me have?
My friends have their tribes mates to protect them. The cosmopolitan Nairobi has now been balkanized with residential estates being exclusive reserves of certain tribes. Complete with murderous gangs imported from up-country to protect their own. Mungiki for the Gikuyu, Chingororo for the Gusii, and the Baghdad Boys and Taliban for the Luo. Where, pray I, is the estate Balkanised for those of us of mixed heritage who know not their war cry of their tribal warriors? The only two tribes I can run to don’t have such armies. And claiming my Dad’s Luhya identity, and a Bukusu at that, is problematic in itself. The Gikuyus are hunting them down claiming they voted ODM together with the Luos, and the Luos are hunting them down too claiming they voted for Kibaki together with the Gikuyus. So such is my fate for my father belonging to this tribe that voted 50-50!
My friends, I have prepared myself for my death. I don’t know how it will be, but since as a Film and TV drama person I believe in rehearsals, I have rehearsed all possible scenarios so that when my moment comes, it won’t be so hard to take it. Chekhov’s method acting manuals are no longer needed. I just turn the TV on during news time or read the papers, and from the several images of people who have been killed in various ways, I choose one to dream and perfect that night. I have dreamt of being locked into a church or building with several others and torched alive. I have smelt the petrol fumes as its being splattered through the window onto our bodies and then round the building. I have seen the flash of the matchstick being lit, and smelled my flesh burning to ashes.
I have rehearsed how I will smile when I am dragged out of a public vehicle and hacked to pieces by the marauding youths who pop up in our numerous roads. I want to die smiling bravely, but just like the guys I see on Al Jazeera and other International TV channels, the moment I get to that part where a red eyed bearded man pokes his head into the bus and shouts “everyone wave your ID cards in the air!” I wet myself and start screaming for mercy, instantly easing their work of identifying foreigners for the blades to work on.
I have rehearsed how best to gasp when a barbed arrow strikes my chest. Or a club smashes my brain out of my skull. Or a spiked plank of wood is driven through my mouth. I have died so many times, my friends, that now I must be immune to the real death when it comes.
I used to laugh at tourists buying maps of Nairobi. I bought one recently. It is stuck in the wall of my bedroom where small pencil marks indicate all the escape routes I will try to walk in to get out of town once the mayhem knocks on my door. Unfortunately, to the west are roadblocks where my Luhya name will mean instant death. If I go Mombasa Road I might run into a roadblock where Kamba’s and all coast people are being cubed. To the North I can’t even dare. To the south I might pass, coz I can speak Gikuyu, but my name would be my passport to the grave yard. That map, my friend, directed me to writing this obituary.
Maybe if I was a famous poet I would go down in history alongside Chris Okigbo, the Nigerian poet who went to Biafra seeking to actualize his poetry but found bullets instead. My friends abroad are asking me if I am safe. Maybe if I had been bright of mind like they were I would have faked a bank account statement immediately I cleared my o-levels and fled to the United States to wash toilets in between my degree courses, but no. When they told me America is the land of dreams, I swore to them I am an Africanist, a believer in the African dream. When they filled scholarship forms to get away from this dark continent, I laughed at them. Now my faith in my country has faded faster than the newness of the news year.
So, friends, some of us never really thought that our tribe was that important. Simply because we were from the tribes that make up Kenya. Some of us have lived in every province of this once great nation and learnt the local languages, drank the local brews, danced the local songs-so well that the locals even gave us the names of their tribes to fondly call us by. I have been called Kamau, Mwanganyi, Wambua, and even Bayelsa in Nigeria. (I should have known, when Dudun told me that Bayelsa is the troublesome state of Nigeria where the Delta is, that it was a premonition of the war in my country.)
I have nowhere to go. No tribe to run to. No tribes men to protect me. Except the grave. Which is what my fellow country men are intent on sending all those who don’t belong to their tribe. Goodbye, friends.. Seeing that all fast food restaurants have a notice ‘pay in advance’, let me take the cue and say Goodbye in advance. When you see a pulp of human flesh in the tarmac with youths dancing round it waving their bloody matchetes, look closely. That ear might be mine. That grinning upper lip might be mine. I loved you, my fellow countrymen. I loved without thinking of your parental lineage. I loved Kenya. But look what this country has done to me: sodomised my sense of humanity and pride.
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