Kenyan Humour

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...