it's hot out there

It’s hot out there

With scattered trees; most of them leafless

There is not a lot of green

Brown mostly

Dried grass and dried trees

A lone anthill

A fallen tree right outside the hockey pitches

It’s vast too

It stretches beyond view

It must be hot out there

I would not know

I look from the 2^nd floor of my library cubicle

Air conditioned, well lighted

Tiled floors, glass doors

A work of art really

Fine smoothened study table and chair

Mahogany I think

I open the glass window

It’s slightly covered with dust

Someone should attend to that

It must be hot out there

Because in the distance I see a gleam

It has stopped…the gleam

Oh there it goes again

There is a figure too

Oh yes, it is a man…or a woman

Too far to tell

With a slasher

Slashing the dead dried brown grass

Swing swing swing

His or her swing is constant

Musical in a way, poetic

He stops every now and then; or she does

Places his or her hands on their waist

I can only guess that he walks around

Sweaty face, dried lips, for shade; or she does

There is none, not anywhere close

For the trees are scattered, and dry, and leafless

Without shade

‘He’ bends holding, holding his knees with both arms

One hand on each knee

Without putting down his slasher

Abit later ‘he’ raises walks one, two, three steps

Gets back to his slashing

I get back to my tiled floor, and glass doors

Air conditioned and well lighted

Smooth table and two chairs

I have two chairs I notice

It must be hot out there

Dirty Blue Socks

It was raining when I left for work

It was raining and it was still dark

As I left my flat,

A girl was dropped in a fancy car

And another girl

Neighbors, students about my age

Probably from many of the nights out in town

And I walked away in the rain, slightly ran

With my head bent, not to wet my face

Thinking of the irony

Public transport is good

Sometimes unreliable and chaotic

But good

So that I caught a ‘matatu”

Not long after

Sat at the window like I always do

In no time, from the hills of mathare

Men walking upwards to the town

They are in files, disorganized files

Their hands swing in synchronized motion

They have their trousers tucked in to their blue socks

There is no telling how far, most of them have walked

But you can tell where they are going

To some low paying jobs

To cater for their unworking poorly educated wives

To provide for their malnutritioned babies

It’s dark

It’s windy

And it’s raining

The men hold umbrellas in their hands

But they do not open them,

The rain splatters on them

Drips down their arms

Down their umbrellas

And the wind blows the drops

From the hanging tip of the umbrellas

So that the men keep walking despite the rain

And the darkness covers their sweat

And their blue socks are dirty

Public transport is good

So that I get to town long before,

Long before the trekking men

It’s too early I’d complain

And it is, it’s still dark even

But not for the two old ladies

The two old ladies in reflective clothing

The two ladies sweeping the street

The two old ladies with beat up faces

More beat up than the wheelbarrows

That they collect their trash in

Our trash in

I don’t know who to ask

But am sure if I did ask

And I got the answer

It would go something like this

The girls have to ride the fancy cars

Someone has to ride them

And some don’t

So they walk in the rain

With unopened umbrellas

And dirty blue socks

And there has to be malnutritioned babies

And someone has to sweep the street

It just has to be that way.

God says yes to me

It seems of late anything i try to write be it an article, short story or script ends up being a poem. as such, I'll just flow with it. i have a lot of unfinished pieces and it gets boring to try and finish them. so in such times i read my other finished pieces and those by others that made an impact on me.

This following piece is one of my all times favorite poem. its tittle is "God says yes to me" and its by Kaylin Haught


And no i am still not religious. its simply the simplicity of the poem. if you will notice it is about the freedom of contemporary poetry writing...what do you notice about her God?

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic

And she said yes

I asked her if it was okay to be short

And she said it sure is

I asked her if I could wear nail polish

And she said honey,

She calls me that sometimes

She said you can do just exactly

What you want to

Thanks God I said

And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph

My letters

Sweet cakes, God said

Who knows where she picked that up

What am telling you is

Yes Yes  Yes                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

                                               

no ordinary college kid

Every so often I loose faith and trust in what I do.

Sometimes I forget why I do it

Work so hard

Times like now when I have not had an hour to myself in days

Times like now when I haven’t watched TV in 3 weeks

Times like now when my house has turned to a glorified lodging

Times like now when my days are planned on end

And I wonder why I cannot just be a normal college kid

No work, no responsibility just class and girls and bumming

No hard days and long nights and pressure calls

And mostly no work tomorrow…and the day after

But then I remember why

Coz making it for me is not an option

Coz I have known what it means to have nothing

Coz I have seen how people treat you then

Coz prejudice and injustice can begin at your own family

Coz it’s rarely about who you are

Coz it’s mostly about what you have

Coz I want to be self-employed

Coz I want to keep my hair long and dready

Coz I want to wear my jeans and my shells and masks

Coz I don’t want to ever suck up to anyone

Coz am a proud bastard

Coz I want to retire at 28 and die at 37

Coz am no ordinary college kid

i give you the game court

I have been meaning to write this piece for three weeks now. I kept procrastinating each time and all for a good reason (Which is not laziness). So now that I found a few minutes…here goes.

Rich dad poor dad

The best book I have read as of yet is Robert Kiyosaki’s ‘rich dad poor dad’. To date, it’s the only book I have read twice and I have a feeling I will be reading it many more times. This book is to me what the bible is to a Christian (a staunch one not like most of you reading this). I always suspected that I did not want to be employed but after I read this book for the first time about a year ago; I was certain.

Here are some random lines from the book that I found memorable and inspiring;

One dad recommended, "Study hard so you can find a good company to work for." The other recommended, "Study hard so you can find a good company to buy."

One dad struggled to save a few dollars. The other simply created investments.

One dad taught me how to write an impressive resume so I could find a good job. The other taught me how to write strong business and financial plans so I could create jobs.

Once a dollar goes into your asset column, it becomes your employee. The best thing about money is that it works 24 hours a day and can work for generations.

Financial struggle is often directly the result of people working all their life for someone else.

The mistake in becoming what you study is that too many people forget to mind their own business.

They spend their lives minding someone else's business and making that person rich.

I felt challenged with most of these and am not known to take a challenge lying down. I looked into several businesses and initially I was into generating ideas coming up with the body arts festival and Tuwashow junior media before that with Dexter.

Tuwashow has been a good teaching ground of persistence and hard earned and deserved money.

The body arts festival while a success, I discarded because the effort was not equal to the reward. Too much work and pressure and not enough money at the end.

After B.A.F I toyed around with the idea of opening a lounge around USIU; coffee board games and good music. However it had no defined product or service to sell hence no income. I put it on the shelf till I first visited trickstar an arcade that had just been opened at the city center.

Now lots of people in Kenya have play station joints but this one had gone the extra mile. Comfortable couches, large screens, good ambiance and a different charging scheme. I fell in love with the place. I took several of my friends to the joint and they became more addicted to the place than I was. For instance Zaydee whenever he had a few minutes to spare he’d rush to the place and play a game or two…or eleven.

So from there, the idea of the game court was born (who said you have to re-invent the wheel) initially I didn’t have the name game court; I toyed with zee lounge and Noey’s.

Another good business writer Tory Johnson in her article 7 tips for starting your own business says that most people worry too much about perfecting their business plans. About dotting every ‘I’ and crossing every ‘t’. They perfect the plan so much that they never actually do it.

With perfection out of the way, I jumped right into it.

Partners

1st step was to research and get as much information as possible. I went into supermarkets looking at electronics, to carpenters, to banks, government offices and of course the internet.  The second step was sharing the idea with Muchi and later on Dexter, Zaydee and Benson. 

First to be interested in partnership was Muchi and later on Zaydee so there I’d found partners.

Challenges

The first challenge was to find a suitable location…scratch that…the first challenge was finding any location. As around any university, space is close to impossible to find. There were simply no vacancies. The options were to either give it up all together or creatively work with what we could get. The 1^st idea was to put up a metal ladder leading straight on to a 1^st floor room upstairs to a building where the game court is currently located.

Ofcourse to do this we needed the land lord’s permission and we simply could not get to him. It took close to three weeks of pestering to finally have the care-taker trust us enough to give us his number. We finally met the landlord and thanks to the bad reputation that the Kenyan youth and youth all over the world have been able to gunner; he did not trust our intentions. The only space he was willing to give us was open, concealed, next to a smoky restaurant and made of old tattered wood painted in peely black and white paint.

He was not willing to give any other space and simply shooed us away to go think about it. It was a Wednesday evening and I was headed to a photojournalism exam right after. I can’t remember ever being so distracted (but I got a B+ in the paper so it’s all good).  Now in some of these situations you either have to work with what you got or walk.

Again I remembered a line I had read in my bible (the one by Kiyosaki of course)

If you can't make up you mind decisively, then you'll never learn to make money anyway. Opportunities come and go. Being able to know when to make quick decisions is an important skill.

 I called the landlord after my exam and told him we’d take the space.

What followed was hours spent staring at the former 5 5 bar trying to think of ways to make it work. If you know me then you know that once an idea creeps into my head I spend days thinking, talking and dreaming about it.

Drawing mental pictures, searching for artists, metal workers and carpenters to do the work and etcetera etcetera.  On 18^th of august 2011 work officially began.

katumo at work

I have to thank one short and very hard working man named Katumo for putting all of his heart into the project, an always drunk mkokoteni guy called captain for ensuring the supplies were delivered even defying the USIU guards and passing by the VIP lane on the graduation day. And a welder called Karanja for buying me beer right after I’d paid him…good man.

Finances

Anyone who has ever started a business will tell you that the hardest part is getting anyone to put their money into your business. Unfortunately for me I didn’t have an easy time as my partners did in getting the money. Being the proprietor though and having invested a good amount already, there was no backing out at this point. If banks were girls lets just say I’d be quite a stud by now because I did get into quite a number of them.

And I cannot thank enough one Benson Mbugua. It would take several life times for me to return the favor.

Benson pretending to be a workman

Government offices

Now you would have to try and properly register a business to understand why corruption in Kenya is a very hard war to fight. Take the registrar of companies for instance…normally it should take three days for a name search and ten days for the registration certificate…but this is on paper. Without a bribe, it will take at least a month and that’s if you are lucky. Ironically with a bribe, it takes less than 24 hours. I tried to go the right way but after several trips and a lot of frustrations, I bribed. What we had to loose was greater if I did not.

6^th of September with a few thousands parted in bribes I had all the licenses and a few contacts ranging from the city council to the ministry of information and communication (so ukishikwa na kanjo nipigie)

I hate myself for it but I hate the system more for making me do  it.

The game court

Two days later on 8^th of September 2011 the game court was officially open

All too often, instead of trusting their inner wisdom, that genius inside of them, most people go along with the crowd. They do things because everybody else does it.

 Well, not me.

Here is a poem by Robert Frost that is also featured in Kiyosaki’s book

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler,

 Long I stood And looked down one as far as I could

 To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

 And having perhaps the better claim,

 Because it was grassy and wanted wear

 Though as for that the passing there

 Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

 In leaves no step had trodden black.

 Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads onto way, I

 Doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence;

 Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by

, And that has made all the difference.

Legoooooooooooo!!!

Take me to the crematorium

I don’t want to be buried when I die

Because I have never liked small spaces
And coffins are not that big
Because I have never liked people who stink
And when you rot you stink
Because am a little afraid of heights
And graves are kind of deep
Because I have never really liked dust and dirt
And that’s what they bury you with
Because am bound to get lonely when everyone leaves
And am left rotting in a small box in a deep hole covered in dirt


I want to be cremated when I die


Because I have never liked small spaces
And ash can spread in the world
Because I have never liked people who stink
And I figure they’ll perfume the ash
Because I am a little afraid of heights
And ash can fly
Because in ash form I can go camping
And won’t even need a tent
Because I figure ashes don’t rot and they don’t stink
They just fly in the wind and roam free
Reading poetry and swaying to good music


I want to be ash.

Simple Bird--for winnie

2007

“This is how to rule your book” you said
And then we got to talking and never stopped since
When I gave you that porn CD and you left it in your machine
When you took my Billy-boy and did heaven knows what with it

That trip to maria-poli and the sneaking out to booze
You serving me at the table coz I was too drunk to
Texting all night on borrowed phones
Cheesy pick up lines from me on your desk-daily

Keeping my hands warm and our own secret coded writing
The first kiss and never stopping
Until they almost expelled us for “practically doing it in class”
The fish pond and that little fishy for your birthday

Sitting on the roof of my cousin's flat at midday with the blaring sun
Playing with my little cousin and her toys
My birthday as your pin and you ignoring it anyway
Coz you were mad at me

2008

A different chocolate for you every day
Back seat of the bus to and from school
Our own little world…making each other jealous
Competing for grades and hijacking class arguments
Feeding me during lunch and fooling around at every corner
Making out at the staff room, head offices and janitor’s room
Stripping in the dinning hall and that crazy day at the theatre

 That date at my cousin’s when I said tongue and lips…no teeth
And you cried…and we sat there hugging…silent for hours
Fish burgers at southern fried- the one they tore down
And our initials surrounded by a heart on a tree in upper hill

We had a late lunch date on the last day of school
Unlike the rest of the girls you went home…
And then that magical November afternoon
On my aunt’s couch- then we discovered our own little lake

Both of us trying to find jobs here and there
Feeling darn proud when we got em
Me laughing coz of your bridging at IAT
The few freaky stolen hours in between college and work

Black and gold thongs from enkarasha
Making pop corn that we were too busy to eat
That afternoon we spent at the archives
When you had on that horrible yellow trouser



2009

When I joined college and you were all I had
The full days spent in my empty house
Lying on the flat mattress staring at the ceiling
Covering up in towels to go chase Lee from the door


You at Rosa and Gilli proposing
Buying Yu lines so we could chat all night
Planning out the week to spend lots of time together
Opening your heart to me and me sulking like a baby

And that night when we were role playing on phone
And then the tears and drinking and smoking and hurting
And not talking to each other for the rest of the year



2010

That day we ran into each other at wasanii
And physically sending text messages
And Dexter couldn’t believe the two minutes it took
Before we were all over each other
Leaving Felix perplexed as hell when you left with me

That valentines you got me the expensive watch and
I got you an empty box—it was funnier than it sounds
Walking round town looking for a rose
Having githeri on my floor—our idea of a romantic dinner
Sleeping with the lights on and you lying on the phone.

That morning you came knocking on my window after you got robbed
Making you tea and coffee and juice…and just about any damn drink I could get
Telling you it was going to be okay

The mornings you left home to go to church
And rushed straight to my place
And was back home before 10 a.m.

 My tattoo and how it infuriated you
You touched it, had half a beer and left
How we took it more maturely that time
How you never really left.

That day we were meant to be translating
And I left to go get my girlfriend
And I came back to find you in nothing but my t-shirt
How lucky I was she hadn’t come


2011

All those times you sat me through the salon sessions
You moving out on your own
Getting your hair just how I like it
Hooking up for coffee in town and ending up at my place
Waking you up super early so that you wouldn’t be late for work

That night you decided to surprise me and found 2 naked girls at my house
Grabbing my hand and having them leave so we could eat pie and juice
Laughing at me when I got a damn girlfriend-and when she apparently got cancer

Stealing you from minister’s party and not staying a minute after I came
And stealing you from the Rwandese on your way to the bar
Cold showers in the middle of the night
You stealing my spliff that morning and blacking out for hours

The monthly meetings that turned into weekly ones
That month everyone was too proud to call the other
Though you still checked up on me through your sources a.k.a Mary-ass
That bottle of vodka that you said “haileweshi”
Breakfast at the balcony with your un-ending flask


The two liter cokes and fries that you always brought over
And the late nights you came in just to keep your word
The purple-maroon shirt you always wear at mine’s
Crying to our song
The single item of jewellery you always leave behind


Now

Tonight you are leaving to experience the world
Greener pastures--I wonder what fertilizer they use…

They say apart from silence, nothing expresses the inexpressible like music

I hope life treats you kind
And I hope you have all that you dream of
I wish you joy and happiness
And above all this…I wish you love

Now fly away simple bird that feeds on grain and nectar…fly away!

I shall see you again…this side or the next…LML.