Kenyan Humour

I was going to post last year's Madaraka Day's post but realized that you would catch me in my little plan. This is an undecided year - Yes and No. I thought it would be better to try to be crafty next year. I want to ape former President Moi in his gift of Prophecy and prophesy the following things concerning this Madaraka Day and probably give some suggestions that would save our future holidays. One, the Committee of Preparing Really Boring Entertainment has already swung into action and they will have choirs that seem like they have landed at the Nyayo National Stadium on UFOs from various towns in the country singing completely out of whack as if they are being controlled by alien beings from space. I suggest that on Public holidays, we can reinstate the KANU regime for only that day after which we can take over and go back to building the Nation. Two, as always, there will be a protocol issue between the Prime Minister and the Vice President. They will both be rushi...

Life has a way of disappointing us but it seems solely interested in me, most of the time. Just when I am thinking that I have covered enough ground in many aspects of it (life), it springs a new surprise. The surprise that I had the other day was of a disease called kleptomania which, if you have read the last two columns, makes me want to sue some people because they punished me for being sick. I hate to check words in the dictionary but kleptomania, as hard as I tried to figure it out of context was like trying to locate and swim in the Mississippi river in Kenya. As I have written in this column before, I don't like to use a word and later, when I check out its meaning, feel like an utter fool. This is how my dictionary defines it - 'illness that gives a strong desire to steal'. I immediately checked the calendar to ascertain that it was not April 1 or if you don't mind Fools Day. Several other dictionaries and Thesauruses claimed the same. The next action I ...

I went to town the other day and swore that I will not ride in a 14-seater matatu again. This is because even though the mat is tiny and slummed, it produces music that wouldn't be played in any of our major stadia because it would blow off both the players and the audience out of the stadium. The music started to play and it is the kind of music that you can't tell whether it goes into your body through the ears and on to the lungs and out through the heart. So I figured that my ventricles and whatever other ligaments and tissue that keep my heart in place would cave in and I moved to buses coz there I get to share the noise with four times more people and I hope I will extend my life by the same proportion. So I took a bus and I promise you except that it was rather crowded, it was quiet. I sat between two men and you will find out the reason I mention them. We rolled off town finally and just when I made sure that the two fellows I was sitting with were not likely to p...

SPARE THE ROD AND SPOIL A CHILD in our days meant that if you kept the rod in a cupboard and let a child run care free, he or she would get messed up and would not become a responsible citizen. Today it means that you actually keep the rod in the wall unit and take your kid out and spoil him which translates into spending money that can feed several Kenyan families for a year at some popular spot. It is in the 90s when whacking children became a word for the old fashioned, when parents started to behave as if they had been to school to learn parenting that they started to say that they would not use the rod on their children. They said this oblivious of the good results the cane had produced- them. Now their kids have evolved into dorm-burning goons and surprisingly they all agree that it is the Minister for Education’s fault. I didn’t know that one of his capabilities was child rearing! When I was growing up, strikes were unheard of in schools. This is precisely because actions w...

Last weekend I attended a wedding and just before I settled, a friend of mine who I will call George, because that happens to be his real name, sidled up to me and asked me to write a wedding column. Suddenly I was converted from a guest to a journalist and ended up having absolutely no fun. So, George I would like you to know that you ruined my day at the wedding and I will look for a day that you have set your mind on 'enjoy' and will pay you back with interest. That was not the first day my day at a wedding was ruined. I guess that weddings hate me because, before this wedding that George ruined, I had several go worse and it had been like eons since the last one I had attended. It happened that most of my friends were wedding and I was shuttling from one wedding to the next and finally, all my friends were coupled and amazingly they started feeling odd around me. So they started trying to hook me up and soon weddings started to sound like job interviews or TV auditions ...

Finally Mother Nature cracked up about being ignored and had us grounded. I could imagine her saying 'Just because they have mobile phones and the Internet they think they run the show? I will once again prove that they are not as independent of me as they have come to believe'. And so the Icelandic Volcano erupted and we, who lost our tails is it over a million years ago? were huddled at airports because an ash cloud had spread all over the first world. Hahaha. I don't know why but it gives me the kick to just write the first world. If I was saying it, I would have said it nice and slow. The (pause) First (pause) World. As if the Icelandic Volcano eruption was not enough, suddenly there was an eruption of experts too - Volcanists and Ash-cloudists. Just last week I heard on television that they had found another Homo- (didn't bother about the word that followed) in South Africa. With this latest discovery, me thinks it is time we stop digging dirt and think ab...

A month ago, I thought that I had penned the last word on the draft constitution. Now it won't go away and it is all I have gobbled the last week and so I am spluttering it out to you my fans. This is a debate I have come to abhor because it has no fodder for Kenyan Humour - sure check the top of this blog, it is Kenyan Humour and the constitution is not funny. It is a serious almost morbid book, draft, document, whatever. It is even more serious than the Bible. At least the Bible breaks into the Song of Solomon after every verse in the previous books (the Proverbs) has depressed you by confirming that you are not the wisecrack you have always believed yourself to be, and Ecclesiastes, in an attempt to lift your spirits, reminds you that 'Life is meaningless, a chasing after the wind'. The constitution gives you no such break even though right now our politicians are telling us that it is 'better'. The only better that I like is the one of 'Better a live ...

People we have been duped! We have the worst draft constitution in the whole wide world and we are being told by experts, to quote Prof. Yash Pal Ghai, that in the circumstances it is the best which means that Kenya is in the pit and that all hope for a good constitution is lost. I sensed this hopelessness when the Periodic Selective Conformists (PSC) who are now using the euphemism Parliamentary Select Committee on the Constitution went down to Naivasha and came out in agreement. You do know by now that when our politicians agree on anything it has to do with allowances. No wonder they could not wait to go back to Naivasha but their colleagues wanting a share of the 'cake', blocked their return to the capital city of Happy Valley and so they all agreed to troop to KIA to go introduce all sorts of amendments only to withdraw every one of them last Thursday in Parliament, after sitting in the House into the night and interrupting all TV programming. Finally they have agreed o...

I have a war that has been going on in my mouth for a fortnight now. This is because a section of my dental formula is tired of being treated like dirt. My teeth have decided that their primary duty is to chew food. They started protesting the other day after years of being soda openers and breakers of everything the hands couldn't and they now won't even chew a piece of bread soaked in tea. One of them is so furious it won't even go to sleep. It works fine during the day but at night when it senses that I am in the usual sleeping position, it starts to ache, at first not too sharp and then the pain crescendos and before I know it I can't even sleep and nothing is at peace anymore. So I tried sleeping standing the other day to fool the tooth but after about 30 minutes my feet almost buckled. This tooth has learnt that the best way to teach me a lesson I won't soon forget is to ache during the hours I am trying to catch some sleep. Once the alarm goes off in t...

There is a woman whose grey and white matter I don't mind seeing splattered on the four walls of her living room. Oh, you think that is violent? It doesn't sound as violent when an 'endocrined' - What the hell is wrong with this computer????? Why is it putting a red line under 'endocrined'. This word originated with Mrs Esther Timberlake. Surely she can't be wrong. Forgive me . I am just on the warpath and I don't think I am quitting soon. I was saying that you feel this violent when an 'endocrined' woman shows up at your doorstep shouting at the top of her lungs that you have been grabbing food out of her six months old baby's mouth because her charitable organization type of husband paid for your fare. So I went to open the door for the woman who was already set on Tigress and she grabbed me by the hair, which was just as well coz I slipped through her hands coz nowadays I wear my hair short. I obviously locked her out and she pou...

I received the news of the death of Dr. Kulundu with great shock especially because I learnt about it on Monday morning in a 'mat' because we didn't have power on Sunday evening and all the other passengers looked at me as if I had just emerged from Lake Naivasha where we understand there is scarce oxygen when I gasped at as ancient history as 9pm news of the previous night. Here is a column I wrote when Dr. Kulundu had the famed clash with US Ambassador Ranneberger. MR AMBASSADOR SIR! I want to echo our politicians for the first time, (note: it is for the first time!) and tell the US ambassador, Mr. Mike Ranne-whatever, who from this point I will refer to as Ranne because his name is difficult to spell, to put up and shut up or ship out! His behaviour is off-putting. First, he takes up the onus of giving us advice on whom we should elect to office. Just as a reminder, in case Ranne has forgotten or is unaware of Kenya ’s history, we have been electing someone to office ...

I am 'PROUD TO BE KENYAN'. Really. And it is not because this adage originated with Dr. Alfred Mutua. No, I really am proud to be Kenyan. Who wouldn't be with all the democratic millions of hectares that we are enjoying compared to the tight rope we were walking a few years ago. Today, you can stagger right out of a bar with all your pockets hanging out, knees knocking while you are trying to hold onto anything that your hands can find or walk from a church with a weird name like 'Finger of God Ministries' and announce that you want to be the next President of Kenya. If you are lucky and a journalistic ear happens to be around, you join the Raila, Martha and Bifwoli Wakoli bunch and you will be on television as a news story which goes 'Another Kenyan joins the (rat) race'. The most fascinating thing for us who have eaten a lot of salt is that the President, going about his business, will occasionally remind the guys who want his job that 'job iko na ...

We are soon going to lose Alfred Mutua's 'I AM PROUD TO BE KENYAN' and be proud to be East Africans. I have been wondering whether this is good or bad. One, we shall stop fighting over Migingo island and losing sleep over whether the fish we are eating is either Ugandan or Kenyan. Second, our dressing, our food and every other thing that makes us sooooo Kenyan, like being loud mouths and rude and stubborn over nothing will be watered down by Tanzanians. And just last year we had a parliamentary debate in Uganda where the MPs were vehemently opposing wearing of miniskirts. Now these MPs should get busy like Kenyan MPs putting their fingers in the coffers because once we go East African, they will never be elected to parliament. I was afraid that the MPs would banish the miniskirt wearers to Kenya and my reaction was 'Oh My God! They will come to muddle our already muddled fashion waters'. Later, I was relieved to realize that what Ugandans call miniskirts are ...

My creative juices have migrated to my legs which means that I did more wandering than thinking about this column. Since this is where I get my daily bread, and got to eat, and can't fail to post a column, I decided to join the abortion fray which I hoped would give me enough word count for a column. It did not disappoint. I'll start with a lady from the NGO world who thinks abortion is the next most innovative idea after Albert Einstein's light bulb. First, I think she should have been aborted. Second, she is mixing up issues. She talked of aborting children that are a result of rape as if we can't solve this rape thing. What the constitution should propose to curb rape, is to use a farm implement that has an Italian sounding name - a burdizzo (Sorry you won't find it in the dictionaries because I forget the spelling. Check a Std 8 agriculture text book) and burdizzo one or two men and the rest will think twice before hopping onto an unwilling woman even und...

This week has been dry news wise, that is for those of us who no longer consider the constitution debate newsworthy anymore. So I got down to cleaning my house and changing the newspaper covers that have been in the cupboards since the Nyayo Era and I came across some articles which I thought that even though they are ancient history, they are still worth mentioning. I am not a proponent of AGEISM, but I am going to say something that will unnerve some of you in the reading audience and as always when I say something unnerving I don't give a rat's behind. Most of our Presidents should be in classes studying the Internet and mobile telephony. I came across this story which intimated that French President Sarkozy had been robbed on the Internet because he can't keep his 'user name' and password safe. It is possible that at his age and profession he doesn't leave many brain cells devoted to memorizing his personal details. Sir, that is why we carry cards to remi...

I am concerned about the rising number of hate mail that I receive every week from people complaining that I waste their time every week as they read my 'nonsensical' column on my blog, if you can imagine. The internet has jillion zillion pages and someone sits at his or her computer, stealing an employer's time, reads this nonsensical column and then writes me hate mail vividly re-writing the parts that did not please him. So I have decided to go back to school and complete what I began to study from the beginning which I believe had nothing to do with human beings. I want to take a Master's degree in Mosquito Psychology. Now keep your hate mail. I am not goofing on this one. The reason I am taking the course is first so that I may understand how a mosquito's mind has developed and hopefully anticipate how far it is going to develop before I finally get tired of this life and call it quits. I am saying this because today's mosquitoes are not the same ins...

Hon Mwakwere is an entertaining man and should this country ever need the Ministry of Entertainment we shall not need to look far for its Minister. This is a man who gets 'disappointed' when a ferry stalls and 'pleasantly surprised' when a ferry, purely by chance, belches people onto Mombasa Island or the South Coast. Speaking with a smirk on his face about the pleasant surprise of not seeing approximately 5000 Kenyans (a large proportion being his constituents) being turned into fish food within secs, he revealed that it would be no little thrill for him. Though for Mwakwere a stalled ferry only makes him a little disenchanted, the pictures that go on in the mind of a passenger on a stalled ferry can kill him (the passenger) even before the humongous vessel goes down. He imagines the middle part of his body in the mouth of a shark, a whale zooming straight for his head and a giant octopus wrapping its arms around his legs, making a nice little package of human legs a...

I love the apprentice show on TV and it is a high time for the TV guys to bring back the programme. At least it stimulates my brain to wholesome thinking, if you know what I am talking about. After being bombarded with local TV programs that to say the least keep me away from my box rather than glue me to it, we need something worth the while especially in a new year. I hope that those involved in the industry will see the point of sending some local programs to hell. I like watching the Apprentice show because it reminds me of when I was once a business management apprentice myself hahaha! That answers some of you who have been sending me insulting emails asking whether I have ever seen the inside of a classroom. Like many apprentices we see on the show, I was fired before I was hired. That is how I ended up writing a silly column. So we went to this apprenticeship- six of us straight from college. They told us that we were the best. That we would be trained to become business...

I have these insects that have erected their nests (or what do you call insect housing?) in my bed. They have decided that they are going to eat it down from below and when I discovered how they have been slowly sawing my bed, I was not just unnerved, I became hysterical! My mind raced through the options and the first one was to call Hon. Ruto, the Minister for Agriculture. I remembered that it is his Ministry that deals with issues insects. The most scary thing that came to mind was what they would do to the mattress and even worse to me when they start sawing through my bones. So I called the Ministry and when I asked to talk to Hon. Ruto, and explained what my problem was, the person who answered the call advised me to call the Ministry of Livestock. I forgot the name of the Minister but asked to talk to him anyway but I was told he was only dealing with pastoralists at the time. If I tell you that my heart sank, I will be lying. I was alarmed, worse because the government n...