Where Is The Green

A car park with a solitary groaning tree. Not the most magnificent specimen of it's kind this one. It oddly looks forlorn and lonely. 

Forbiddingly derelict, it labours under the yoke and choke of dust; urging by it's mere sight to be left in peace. A closer look would probably reveal that it's yearning, earnestly thirsting for water, yet with little success. Not too green a space I suppose.

I walk on. I come to a bridge. Down below a yawning artificial river trickles by. It is as if it is ashamed to be, for it's raison d'être, the rainy season, has come and gone. 

The fury of this residential drainage contraption, the pride and gusto of it's torrential flow, has long since petered out. Utterly weathered dry to little more than muddy broth. 

The bridge above though no bigger than a modest footpath, stands imperiously - domineering and impetuous - laughing down at the wiggly smudge of a river that occasionally licks it’s foundations. 

Besides these two antagonists, right there on the river side, a welcome shock of exuberance resonates. Lush, green grass grows wistfully, waving to all caring passersby, swaying with every gentle kiss and whisper of the wind.

Without a care in the world and tucked within the grass, unseemly weeds burst forth with boastful flourish.  Undisturbed by either grazing herds or diligent mowers, they too grow joyously and resplendent. 

But alas! Modesty has no room on the river bank. Abundantly nourished the plants too seem to proclaim their ascendancy on the dying dehydrated river.  Yet these are no more than mere weed and rogue grass. They are unwanted, besieged and utterly insignificant in this wilderness of residential flats. This is green space too - I suppose.

Detached by the daily runs for the mundane exigencies of existence, I pretend I have no relation to these green blots and their daily play for survival. I own not the landscape plants nor do I plant the wily weeds which grow of their own accord.

Road side bush and woefully ignored decorative plants, is what I dourly enjoy and have for green space.

M Wycliff,

Nairobi.

PS: This incomplete piece of writing was actually something written out of context - I was meant to write something completely different. Instead of killing (by deleting) this orphan article of mine - am giving it transcendent immortality in this here humble blog.

The Wailing of the Wailing Wailer: Humble Pies Require Crappy Recipes

After a year's hiatus from FX (forex for all slow people), it was with slight apprehension and uncertainty that I embarked again into that uncertain world of jaw smashing risk, quick returns and a tantalizingly El Dorado like surreality. 

My apprehension was borne out of the fact that in a year's time I had hardly transacted any trade. Could I do it as fluidly as I could a year ago? Will it take me another couple of painstaking weeks to get back the innate understanding of the rhythms and cycles of the unforgiving market?

These were the questions playing on my mind. Eating away at an already severely depleted self-confidence. But alas! Riding a bicycle was as far a remote aphorism as I can think of to describe the natural re-entry I enjoyed. 

But that is getting far ahead of ourselves. 

There were, to say the least . . . on a psychological level, ego-murdering hiccups. To begin with I opened a completely different demo account to the one I initially intended, which belies the troubling premise I no longer knew even the most basic of basics!! I could not remember which account was for what!!

Since it was a demo account, after realizing my mistake, I decided to go along with it. It is the validity of analysis rather than account fritter features such as leverage, capitalization and minimum lot size that I was most interested in.

 But loe and behold, my first two trades went completely awry, I had completely ignored everything my very own charts were telling me. Or even more troubling, perhaps I no longer knew what the heck I was analyzing. 

To make matters worse I had executed spot transactions on the spur of the moment, I always use . . . and my entire repertoire of strategies depend on . . . pending orders!! Silly silly silly damn hubris laden mistake!! 

If nothing those two fairly painful trades, although not catastrophic quickly jolted me back to seriousness. I had to prove to myself or else call it quits!! 

The next two trades were methodical, rationally executed and mercifully - they swiftly (swiftly on a 30 minute time-frame is more like 10 hours of waiting, and 3 hours of pre-entry analysis) went profitable hitting and surpassing my own profit targets!!

 I was born to do this, I know it, I have proved it yet again, I humbly told myself, tired and battered but elated. The surging of the blood with exhilaration in my veins after such a long time evoked so many similar moments in the past. If it told me nothing, it reminded me how I immensely enjoy doing this, given that no real money was even involved!! 

I had been immediately hammered by the market, yet quickly managed to refocus and achieved what still thousands of people across the world are spending countless hours trying to get right. All in a little less than 30 hours. 

Watching the first two trades recouping the previous day's losses got me all emotional; the sheer mental exertion very nearly made me breakdown and cry. It was like some perfectly orchestrated symphony by Bach or Mozart. The icing on the dessert came soon after . . .  other transactions executed like clockwork . . . based on my own tearfully eked prognostications. 

It is a wonderful feeling to be so privately right again.

M. Wycliff,

2nd May, 2013

The Curious Tale of the Tiger General and the Rabbit General: The Fall Of Singapore WWII

The Japanese were led by General Yamashita, known to his troops as “the tiger of Malaya.” The British and Commonwealth troops were led by General Percival, nicknamed “the rabbit” by his troops.

The tiger general practically 'ate' up the rabbit forces in 2 months with 30, 000 soldiers against the enemy’s force of 130,000 men; who initially were mostly relaxing and holding picnics supposedly behind impenetrable defensive positions.

 All was not lost though - as there were some survivors for the rabbit general.

These were the servicemen who surrendered and were all taken as Prisoners of War - including the rabbit general himself who had to lay down his arms and surrender. Many of the Commonwealth soldiers taken prisoner would never return home. Thousands were shipped on "Hellships” to other parts of Asia to be used as forced labour on projects such as the Burma Death Railway

The rest, including those undergoing surgery in hospital were summarily butchered by the Japanese; sick and wounded enemies were still enemies. Although a little useless and cumbersome.

The Australian, General Bennett (who made a daring escape on a boat and floated all the way to Australia hungry) later said: "The whole operation seemed incredible: 550 miles in 55 days – forced back by a small Japanese army riding on stolen bicycles”.

Hubris, pride, fatuous bluster, exaggerated bluffs, dependence on useless allies and underestimation of the resolve of opponents results into only one and only one possible fate... ignominy. 

Yet even when the battle is ignominiously lost, the war must still be concluded.

Like Admiral Yamamoto (the chief planner and executioner of the Pearl Habour Attack) who was hunted down and blasted out of the sky by American fighter pilots, Gen. Yamashita (the tiger general) did not live long enough to write memoirs of his victory. First he was demoted due to factional intrigues in the Japanese military High Command.

Then 3 years later hundreds of miles away from Singapore where they had first battled, he ironically had to surrender to Percival (the rabbit general) in the Philippines in 1945. He was given a show trial and quickly hanged by the vengeful Americans as a war criminal.

It is never over . . . even if it may be a spectacular start.

Irrelevance of Thought: Don’t Think Too Hard, You are Not That Important

Ever done something and wondered why the hell you did it in the first place or if you are still doing it why in the world you are still doing it? 

The funny thing is that the things we most regret having done are actually not done on the spur of the moment as we like to lie to others that they were.

Hard, cold thinking went into it... it being the perpetration of the nefarious thing you did or are still doing... most times conscious, objective thought played some part. That is, thinking arduously to do some stupid thing that is innately and irrevocably stupid but you figured you must do this stupid thing nonetheless. 

Like for me it would be the writing of this blogpost and keeping this blog public in general. As a friend once said, 'If you are too open-minded, your brains will fall out'. 

Am wary of the fact that people might actually start thinking Greyhorn (who is me when writing this blog) and the plain simple me are one and the same. What an appalling thing that would be! Every pleb (plebeian) can then claim that he/she knows what the bloody hell am thinking . . . bullshit. Half the time I myself don't know or am baffled ... totally confused . . . by what I'm thinking.

Going on about thinking . . . other times though the reasoning is subliminal... a subconscious mental process that craves stupidity and compels you to do the stupid thing. Whatever the case, you still DID think.

Many a time I have thought and thought interminably about various sets of problems that as any normal human am faced with in this journey through life.

Brand them challenges, call them situational obstacles, karma being a bitch etc. and after thorough thinking and analysis of the problem and of course identifying the requisite set of solutions... I still usually end up doing the idiotic thing.

Frustratingly I would do this unintelligent thing over and over again... albeit in different styles and flavours... all those clever things I had spent such a long time thinking about would sit on the kerb while I frolick obliviously and in total ecstasy with the only stupid thing one can do in such a situation.

Does this mean me, you and everyone else on this retarded world is . . . well, stupid? Absolutely! The harder you think to only end up doing nothing or the thing you deem foolish then I would have to say in this ad hoc stupidometer of mine you really are dim... as in dimwitted.

Jokes aside I think this particular self-deprecatory strategy of dissing myself and you could be annoying but it is the truth ain't it? Anyway since you are the reader I think it only appropriate that I should insult only you hereinafter, I have a feeling that if you are not sufficiently insulted by now you'll keep reading. 

Why do we procrastinate, ignore, modify, assume, ridicule (yes some sick people do ridicule their own ideas), mutilate and refuse to implement our own plans? 

Plans that we took a considerable amount of effort in coming up with in the first place? Let me paraphrase: why do we love to embellish stupidity? What is the purpose of thinking so hard to come up with solutions only to end up choosing what is not even in the list of solutions or continuing with your old habits anyway?

Is it an inherent need for self destruction? Hubris perhaps i.e. I have thought of every possible thing, so if I could think it then it is solved already... lesser beings would still be grappling to come up with such brilliant ideas and strategies, am still ahead... and so on and so forth. 

Vanity of vanities! Chasing after the wind! 

Greatness is the accumulation of all the things that you can actually motivate or scare the so called lesser beings into achieving for you. You are shit without the little stupid guys... ask Safaricom.

You can't be a great lawyer without some really scruffy, assuming and not so insightful lawyers to compare with. But more so the boys and girls of the Fourth Estate to keep harping of your great achievements. 

Greatness in darkness is... is there even such a thing to begin with 'Greatness in darkness'... it is like saying some absurd thing Buddha would mumble in one of his fatuous moments of 'enlightenment'...  such as The Plentiness of Emptiness...  I think what I meant is that you can't be nondescript and be great. 

Wait . . .  I really think I have just discovered some Universal Law or something. Repeat after me... YOU CAN'T BE A MEDIOCRE NOBODY AND BE GREAT... but curiously though you can be great for just being an overly visible, overtly loud-mouthed, excitable and pretentious buffoon. I know lots of those. Caroline Mutoko?

I have already disparaged the virtues of critical thinking elsewhere in this blog (Philosophy begets Stupidity) what I want to confine myself to in this post is actually this question: Is it worth your time to think so hard to be really good at what you do  while pandering, flattery and bootlicking can get you so much further? Social Engineering is what I think we called it.

You just work yourself into the bosoms of those who really matter then you create a persona and aura of effectiveness, efficiency etc and believe it or not (or so I believe) you become the platinum-eyed hot shot. That is from up above.... from down below it is often still extremely clear that such an individual is still a clump of mud or more aptly ... hot shit.

Thinking is irrelevant... particularly thinking hard about solving things. Perception on the other hand is king.  If one thinks you are busy solving something it matters not that you are actually seriously rubbishing someone on Facebook. It is even more impressive if you actually get someone to solve it for you and you take the cred. 

For instance it is not that you are farting... it is the perception of what you are farting that matters:  

Oh my... how wonderful... do you know so and so...  farts Rose-Petal perfume (as those in some exotic place in Southern France)... utterly delightful that fart is I tell you... exquisite. (Upper class laugh) ha ha ha ha.

Apparently it is only ordinary, mediocre people who think all fart is the same... they just can't perceive it right. Higher ranked people and seniors don't fart... they pass gas, inert and noble like Argon and Xenon. Anybody below you on the other hand is just a plain farter. 

Failures and mistakes take the same hue (or smell) as the above aphoristic fart. It actually depends on who is failing . . . and how. Damn Einstein, everything is indeed relative. There is no equity in either success or failure, that is should you be on the wrong side you will always get it bad... less accreditation for success and more of the blame for failure

Should you complain and bemoan your circumstance? Should you work harder? 

To the first rhetorical question the answer is absolutely not. Never moan and whine... not to yourself, not to fate, not to anyone else... ever! Especially if they can do something about whatever your grievance is... that is plainly gross. To the second ... you should also never work harder at what you are doing... you should be working harder on who you ought to be impressing. That is pandering ...  it is just bootlicking without the negative connotations. 

Am neither good at doing both of these things... and that is why am writing about them... so that they can somehow percolate into my consciousness and into my thick head. I always tend to complain a lot when I think am underconsidered or undervalued ... why? 

Because I would literally bring everything else to a screeching halt just to work harder at doing something that I deem important or necessary. Then you discover your effort wasn't worth an ounce of chicken droppings. Or the cred goes elsewhere. It's enough to make me want to tear off my moustache, listen to that disgusting noise they call punk rock and take a course on full time pandering. I tell ya' it is the only thing that fucking counts.

At some point... I think last year, I reached a point in my cynicism that I thought that I could never go higher than that. It seemed utterly impossible, anymore cynicism and I would stop talking for lack of belief that people actually know what the heck am saying or that  I would be misquoted due to the blithe diabolism of humanity. By the way this is not an original idea ... whatever an original idea might mean... prior to imperial Rome there was a dictator called Sulla this dude got so cynical that he would not even talk to his servants in case he is misquoted. 

Every single instruction he wrote down ... 

" Glutius Maximus my lowly slave, please pluck some soft leaves from the plants in the botanical garden behind the aviary so I may go relieve myself for it seems I have a dastard case of diarrhea.  

Signed Your Boss Sulla." 

Many others since have followed his wise example (not writing a letter while you have diarrhea but his cynical ways).

But loe and behold, my cynicism got bettered by the indifference to the law of cause and effect that so flagrantly exists everywhere. Anyone, and I mean anyone... who works hard should get the reward that befits his effort and vice versa. Something else, utterly obnoxious to me is what actually exists (which underscores the naiveté and idealism I still perceive the world with)... The Law of Pandering and Promotion.

Most people would tell me that that is the Law of Pragmatism (which does not exist) and the other one called the Law of Attraction (which I think is a laugh because with a well padded account and some fake projection of class you can pretty much attract anyone... from low class thieves, high class prostitutes, philanthropists and tree huggers to renowned social scientists who theorize on nothing meaningful), but am too bruised to hear any of it for the next century.  

That is, in a hundred years I would say I I’ll be ready to rationally approach this subject since hopefully I'll be long dead . . .  ghosts don't give a fuck. I also hope at that time the world would be so opulent and boring that an Inquest would be opened upon the discovery of this blog post to the causes of my melancholy, lunacy and arguably untimely demise at the age of 89.

Finally to all those of you who are trying to read in between the lines ... there is nothing there... if you find something then you must be a greater nut than me. 

Honestly, I would like to meet you . . . so that I can laugh at you? No no am not that mean yet ...  I terribly need somebody to point at and say 'Here is a greater nut!'. What an inspiration that would be! It would certainly help in churning out some more satirical, pungent commentaries. Who else than a nut who actually reads my stuff to help me along?
M Wycliff,
Nairobi.




PS:
Glutius Maximus is the biological name of the butt muscle; I needed a 'cheeky' name.

Everything About Nothing: Why fuss? The World has Always Been A Shitty Place

The world is in turmoil. Or so I would like to think. My favourite nag subject . . . Somalia . . . seems so tantalizingly close to being 'sorted' into having some semblance of a central government after 21 bloody years of anarchy. Yet am not holding my breath, I resolved a long time ago (and even blogged about it) that the Somalis need not . . . and more importantly . . . they desireth not . . . the frivolous thing we like to call peace.

Just to keep in line with the subject at hand (and to do away with the mirthless optimism of the preceding paragraph) I do indeed think the world is an incorrigibly shitty place. The Somali tribal factions that the Al Shaabab  had pacified  with dogged single-mindedness (through bombings, shootings, stabbings, decapitations and deliberately engineered mass starvation) have once again began to re-emerge.

Frustratingly (haven't these idiots learnt anything yet) they are already impeding the prospects of the long fantasized peace by squabbling even before the Al Shaabab and their Islamist cohorts have been decisively routed out of their remaining strongholds in Central and Southern Somalia. 

I see no peace coming anytime soon in that wretchedly beautiful country. I feel sorry . . . mixed with a little bit of nausea, disgust, some pride and some peppering of anger. That we are losing precious Kenyan lives trying to square things out amidst what I visualize as a case study in humanity's innate need for self-annihilation . 

Somalia should be regarded as the devil's groin . . . nothing good can come out of it. Barring Mo Farah and the pirate investors at Eastleigh of course.

Right back here at home our own brand of genocidal tribalism is frothing with re-energized momentum as we get closer to the indeterminate polling day. The story is so old and lame . . . and so routine that one could easily mistake it for a devil forsaken natural cycle (God doesn't have anything to do with it, even he must have gotten bored at some point . . . the 80's perhaps?) 48 burnt and cut down in this part of the country, 50 shot dead in that other part . . . a little bit of fatal tribal fracas here . . . a little bit of farcical platitudes by the politicians here . . . some more unrelocateable IDPs . . . some hate speech everywhere. You know the script.

. . . .Someone distilling bootleg alcohol with ARVs for HIV/AIDS . . .

Regionally we are not doing any better... the two Sudans are itching for another round of 'necessary' needless war, the only thing that has changed after the secession of the South is that now Ethiopia is the country regarded as the honest broker rather than Kenya in that little eternal war.

On the other hand Ethiopia's dictator is dead . . . we all know what tends to happen when the ruthless big chief dies in Africa . . . without having deliberately prepared a successor or succession process in case of their own mortal transition. People fight . . . people fight hard. Byzantine intrigues give way to 'gorilla' tactics . . . fighting is the only legitimate recourse to  unrivalled dominance.
 
Sheer brute is what you have to have . . . staring your enemies in the eyes like Miguna Miguna and giving them a 'come baby come' dare . . .  unlike Miguna though you have to mean it! An example would be Teodoro Nguema of Equitorial Guinea who hacked to death with a machete his own uncle to take the presidency. He didn't have to say 'come baby come' to his rivals ever again.

Am not so sure though if anyone is celebrating in Ethiopia upon Meles Zenawi's death other than the Ethiopian Ogaden and Oromo rebel leagues (they provide the Ethiopian army with these funny, sporadic battle fixtures). 

The diplomatically embattled Isaias Afeworki of Eritrea, former comrade in arms and personal friend of Meles Zenawi . . . turned bitter rival . . . turned external enemy number one, could be the only person who would be supposedly grinning. Although I doubt it, without a bigger than life nemesis in Ethiopia, he is a plain washed up former rebel leader now dictator mirthlessly wringing the life out of Eritrea. He had began to seem shitty a long while ago, now he risks not only seeming shitty, but also an expired nuisance to his hungry and abjectly impoverished Eritrean subjects.

In fact the continent can be said to be in no better political situation that it has ever been. Maybe only a little bit worse. Libya, Egypt and Tunisia are still convulsing with the deadly hangovers of the 'successful' revolutions of the Arab Spring. They are all staggering towards some sort of stability, some more badly than others. Hungry, oppressed Arabs in North Africa  and elsewhere in the Middle East did indeed 'spring' on their dictators, just in case you were in Mars or were not yet born early last year.

In other matters, well Africa is still a malnutritioned, disease riddled place. Who are we kidding, we can blame the International media for stereotyping this continent's problems and overlooking the good things... but heck you must be blind and admittedly stupid if you can miss all the far much worse stories about these 'stereotypical' problems in the local media. You can sugar coat shit, but it is still shit, ain't it?

Case in point . . . The DR Congo. When was the last time you heard that rebels voted someone out of power in that country? Think, take your time. . . 

I thought so . . . never! Well when was the last time you heard of some sort of rebel attack or conflict in the Congo? I thought so too . . . about yesterday. It has been so for eternity... Congo has more paved roads now than it has ever had in it's sorry history, but what is stereotypical and non-factual about the eerie fact that it is still a shitty place? Rebels have fought themselves into tattered ragtag armies over the spoils in the Congo and there is no end in sight. What keeps changing are the leaders, compositions and names of the militia. The modus operandi and motives remain the same.
 
Morbid, grimy stories make bigger stories . . . that is the simple truth. Paved roads as a story can't hold it up to mass raping of women and men. Yes, in the Congo child soldiers rape grown men too.

In fact the mother continent is changing . . . terribly so. I mean it, we are becoming more horrible. All these things about hurtling economic growth figures and technological advancement are simply as a result of the need to keep up at the tail end of the rest of the world.

More poignantly it is the accumulative result of the efforts of ordinary folk who just want to make their living some way despite the reprehensible misgovernance in Africa. We have as a whole less water (could this be a reason why our cities are also less clean?), less arable land, less forests, less mineral resources but more hungry people, more violence, more guns, more ethnic hatred and  more sectarian polarization than we had 50 years ago at the end of colonialism. The rest of the world, particularly the developed world is too saturated with development to make the kind of quick buck that medium sized investments can make in Africa.

It is no miracle. . . we had less to nothing of everything... they can give us the dregs and crumbs . . . and everybody, including them, end up having a wild ball out of it. You should be grateful and happy that you are living at such an auspicious time in Africa (am 'dying' with joy and enthusiasm for being so lucky, 5 decades earlier and I would have died a colonized bushman), where two cents worth of know-how and just a spit of cash can make you incomprehensibly rich. Obviously I don't have this 'know-how' (yayayai!) otherwise I would be incomprehensibly rich myself... overnight as a matter of fact. But there is (swallow) . . . hope?

Look at Nigeria . . . what's so different there than it is has ever been? Secessionist movements, venal officialdom, a retarded bureaucracy, a depraved political class, ethnic violence, soaring inflation and general thuggery. Pitiful... take out oil and Nigerians right now would be embroiled in a vicious civil war . . . fighting for food and firewood.

South Africa on the other hand is a classic example of missed opportunities that continue to be woefully missed. That country's black leadership and the new black elite are so engrossed in what can only be termed as post-colonial grabberry. Grabbing to their heart's content what they can from the cowed whites who fear a Zimbabwe-like insurrection that would herald a funny black take over of their properties . . . which I still believe is a danger that still looms large in South Africa. 

Their president is a venal polygamous pervert. While their police and slum rabble still seem to refer to the Apartheid procedural manuals for general confrontation and resolution of 'black' problems. The average black citizen in South Africa is still very much engrossed in the Apartheid struggle (mentally, spiritually and physically) for some imperceptible reason. What a waste of African resources . . .  who would have known South Africa would turn into such a xenophobic pit latrine it is today.

In Kenya we have gone a full circle and now we are selling back and inviting foreigners (Caucasians, Asians and Mongoloids alike) to come take whatever they can in the country. . . only that we have sanitized this expatriation to 'Foreign Investment'. We are still a trailblazer in Africa in many respects. . . even in selling the vague 'sovereignty' we like to chest thump about. Mind you that some of these acquisitions and investment sometimes end up costing the Kenyan taxpayer billions by the bucketful in graft . . . Triton? De La Rue? Anglo-Leasing?

But that is Africa . . . we are who we are. . . the rest of humanity can come help in helping themselves or simply go to hell (no offense since I only half-believe in hell . . . but nonetheless I fully believe there is a devil. What can I say, my belief system is a work in progress . . . not a bloody doctrinal pantheon).

Who is fooling who? The NGO's are not here to alleviate our misery . . . at least not wholly . . . 'Worst Drought in 60 Years', ' Humanitarian Crisis of the Millennium', 'Deadly new HIV/AIDS virus strain now killing trees in Sub-Saharan Africa', 'FGM depopulating Africa' . . . do you think the people who come up with these catchy phrases to wring money from their opulent governments and obese compatriots are doing it out of altruism?
 
Would you gross out and guilt-blackmail everybody in your home country for decades so that you would retire in a shack? That would be stupid. Changing places with the people you were supposed to help . . . utterly stupid. If you have never wondered how come they always live in the bigger hotels, drive the most expensive imported fuel guzzlers around and half the time they are at the sandy beach resorts 'writing reports' then you must be a good hearted imbecile.

Just before I strangle this lengthening blog post to conclusion I would like to talk about the turmoil in the rest of the world. If you live in Africa and you are black you must have noticed the exponential increase of Caucasians and other races . . . well they have always been here for centuries but the newcomers are tickling my mind. I was used to the tourist, middle-aged kind . . . now there is a new breed. Fearless, enterprising, young and utterly poor Caucasians.  You can see them virtually in every slum in Nairobi, even in remote unheard of villages. Their trademark is the dusty sandal, sweaty armpits, no car and a hippy disgusting look. 

Mind you these people are not the kind to heed the dangers of African slums, leave alone travel advisories. No one would dare mug them, they just have that funny look and feel that one would find a shilling or two (about 0.05 US dollars) in their pockets. In fact they could mug you back. The dreadlocked Rastafarian kind used to be a spectacle, nowadays no one bats an eye lid when they emerge from some dingy building and head straight out to the vegetable kiosk to buy just two tomatoes.

I once saw one in a cigarette booth in the CBD recently smoking a joint . . . the place was packed with smokers but the silence was deafening . . . we were all too proud to dash out after getting in and realizing he was smoking pot at 7.30 am in the city centre. Everyone was as petrified of being robbed by him as they were of what he was doing. All I could think of was that I was going to get robbed by a solitary white man among 20 male adult Kenyans. There is even a new slang term for them in Kiswahili . . .  Wazungu Warokoti . . . literally Throw-Away Whitemen.

I need not be convinced anymore that there is an economic crisis, not just a passing financial bubble in the Western world. What in the world would make a whiteman so rugged and tattered? For chrissake they have welfare systems in most of their home countries, yet they go hungry to buy a ticket to come to Africa.

 Is it a conspiracy to scare the shit out of radical youths and thugs in the slum? Perhaps an effort to keep them from moving to the leafy suburbs/resorts to mug and abduct the more usual rich Caucasians? I don't get it. 

A friend of mine once posted an update on Facebook that some Caucasian was hawking in the matatu that he was commuting on . . . I promptly asked if he was a Jehova Witness kind, we are used to these . . . he said no, Jehova Witness Caucasians bathe. Personally I blame Hollywood . . . they have romanticized the concept of being a down and dirty Caucasian in the heart of Africa . . . remember Blood Diamonds by Leonardo DiCaprio? 

How would white people feel if we in turn bought tickets for all the Mungiki, SunguSungu and other African vigilante groups to go carry their mirthless trade of decapitating people and extortion rackets in the affluent middle class neighbourhoods of the West? Caucasians are turning our slums into a circus . . . and am outraged. Apparently they love what we loath . . . very curious and rather fascinating wouldn't you agree? Inexplicable, odd actions . . . often have bizarre motives; do we arrest and deport them or do we cheer them on?

But is this turmoil anything new? Actually it isn't. The world has had crises from time immemorial. Only that there weren't as many journalists let's say as during the time of Attila the Hun and his ravaging hordes or when Hannibal of Carthage invaded Europe. Problems were also a lot more localized.

Now everything is slightly different . . . problems are global and any instance of human tragedy is reported globally . . . to make the rest of humanity feel better about themselves I think. Besides this there is the fact that we have a lot more humans than at any other time in history. The Earth is groaning with mankind, some of whom I think we could do without . . . this also means there are a lot more human tragedies to report on. Thomas Malthus predicted this . . . he was already worried about food and hungry mouths to feed centuries ago. We are just living it, and getting to know about the tragedies he prophesied in real-time. 

Who would have thought that the Vietnamese and Cambodians would one day be more optimistic than the Americans?  Did you see how scruffy and disoriented some of the Occupy protesters in America were? The Dong (yes the Vietnamese currency is called the dong, penis in English colloquial use for those of you who threw away your dictionaries after KCPE, yes in primary) has taken a beating of late but the Vietnamese enjoy the kind of economic growth figures that make the dead American soldiers still immured there a lot more content with their gravesides.

 At least they are not buried in a broke country. America's public debt . . . the last time I checked,  was edging onto 16 trillion dollars, around 4 times the GDP of the US. America is comparatively more broke than Greece, I don't know why no one is making a fuss about it . . . maybe because the American government can still print as much as it deems necessary (Quantitative Easing) of the global reserve currency. They print the paper that materialism and capitalism are valued against. You can't beat that kind of leverage.

So the world is shitty, it will continue to get shitty . . .  more wars, more hunger, more unrest etc until we find a way better than the Chinese in controlling population growth more effectively . . . and as a matter of urgency. The problem with humanity, is that there is too much of it.

Every single human innovation has been designed to mitigate this problem without actually solving it i.e. feed more humans, educate, clothe and give more humans amenities rather than just reducing the number of humans in the first place and doing as best as we can with what is there.  What is the rush in birthing ourselves out of existence? We have finite resources, unless humans are declared edible we might just have to eat what grows on other humans.

 Think about it. You know unless we find an accurate method of teleporting ourselves onto distant galaxies, the Earth is all we have and all we will ever have . . . before the moon drifts out of orbit in a couple of million years leaving us, well . . . moonless? Multitudes of romantics would die of heartbreak, a catastrophe it will be I tell you. (A bigger problem would be what to do then with all those poems and lyrics with a non-existent moon and what-not.)

M. Wycliff
Nairobi.
PS> I don't hate white people and I have nothing against white people. But I do hate hypocrites in general . . . white, black, yellow or midget.

Corporate Conga Line: When Mavericks Dance to the Tune

Where to hold could be the question?

Loe and Behold! Greyhorn still exists! Given the paranoid tone of my last articles I would assume some of my readers (at the very least there being a pesky one who keeps reminding me I should write something in my twitter inbox) that I had been arrested for some of my more irreverent and let's say alarmist articles. Or I had been shot up (sic) by Mossad.

Well, sorry I ain't dead. In fact the reality behind my silence is rather drab . . . I got a job.  Another necessary detour in my inordinately frenetic and wildly vacillating life. Hopefully this time it will be a step closer to a fancied short cut to my destiny i.e. to be rich, independent and thoroughly impudent.

(Sorry poor people, you indeed are not in my future plans - am poor now myself, what would you have been doing as I work my neck off to get rich? Patiently sitting and waiting for me to get rich? If there were no handouts and poverty was equated to certain, speedy death am sure there wouldn't be so many poor people... at least that is what I think. Who would drink all of a meagre salary because of being sad and poor if one knew they would be instantly shot dead for being broke?)

I have had a few short stints in the corporate world before. And I was not impressed. I just couldn't figure out why I had to fit in to some shitty culture to survive besides having to work my denuded butt off.  This time fate gave me some pretty compelling cards to play with.

First I finally had a chance to brush up on my IT skills . . . an immensely gratifying thing for me. I would have literally worked for free just to work in the rarefied world of high end IT... that is I craved for a chance to play (and mess) with really, really, really expensive servers, cutting edge equipment and software at somebody else's expense. Being paid for it was a welcome bonus.

As if that was not good enough I got a cool boss. Really am not trumpeting, our department is the envy of the organization not so much because we are getting it easy in IT, but I can say it's to a large extent to the laissez faire attitude of our lead. We are often laughing and cracking jokes while under normal circumstances we would be sweating and shivering for dear life to find solutions to the endless batteries of mission-critical problems we are shot with in a single day. 

Challenging it is but pure ecstasy it has been for me, many a times the entire team has been pushing to the verge of collapse yes (the hours occasionally do get crazy) but when I go to 'die' in my bed it is often with a smile. Can you beat that, dying happy everyday!!

Nonetheless despite this rosy picture the fundamental problems that made me hate so much the corporate world unfortunately (and to my growing chagrin) can also be found to a lesser extent in my new company. 

I have been able to skirt them for this long because luckily for me am on the night shift and I have been deluding myself very convincingly that am practically bossless. 

Oh what a wonderful lie this has been, if only I could un-invent emails and for sure I would have been self-employed. Imagine that, self-employed in somebody's company. Then my bosses would just be one or two amongst a number of important nagging clients that I have to deal with now and again.

What are these problems you might wonder. First and foremost is the issue of meeting quantifiable objectives and targets in a support role. In essence everybody wants to know how a useless supporter you can be. And I can tell you from practical experience it is rather difficult to prove you are actually not useless... even if you know... and they know... that you must be doing something day to day worth your head in the company.

For instance how do you quantify crimping cables? (I crimped 1067 times successfully this month ... so? Did any client sign a check or give an award for that?). Try having just a single critical network cable not working properly and alas! you get wild calls and menacing demented looks from your affected co-workers.

How about chasing down a virus in the servers in an epic digital struggle and heroically killing it before it did any harm? Everybody knows a virus can be disruptive when it hits them but who cares if a crazy looking IT guy spends a whole night in the server room fiddling with a keyboard? At this point you are as helpful to them as a beautiful monkey on a magazine.

Then try to imagine when the network goes down (which it often does and can for a bewildering number of reasons) few would actually care that serious frantic work went to get it up and running again... you would get angry feedback for taking that long!! 

Seamless operations require consistent and vigilant effort ... but try and quantify vigilant, consistent effort. Most of the time when asked what the heck you do in the company anyway understandably what an IT guy can only give is a dejected impish face and limp off to rile in some geek forum about why God created non-techies so silly in the first place.

But these are clearly operational issues that mainly occur due to the natural lack of understanding about what the guys in the other departments do. (Forgive my language, the other imbeciles in the other departments do ... it is -- after all-- my damn blog). Every rational being somehow is inclined to think that no one else can conceivably be doing much more than them. That is, until you get to wear the "sluggard's" shoes

There are other more general aspects of the corporate community that instinctively puts me off. For instance it is a rule of thumb that you must be nice and endeavour to cultivate positive productive relationships with people that you might and might not necessary be working with on a day to day basis. Why? Am not anti-social but why the heck do I have to make this awkward silly small talk so that everybody else does not think am a tall snob? 

Creating a conducive environment from my perspective does not in any way include complementing my sharp elbows and me reciprocating by decoding the ugly dress a colleague might be wearing into some wonderful thing.

It is utterly impossible for everybody to like everybody else, then why do we have to keep pretending that we are all good and nice to each other, if I won't deliver I would be fired anyway whether or not I like somebody am supposed to work with or not.

Fortunately in my new company (and job description) there isn't a dress code (phew! what a relief, I wouldn't know a dress code even if I was hit with one on the head. I usually dress to work as if am going to buy bread at the local kiosk). Nonetheless people tend to notice that since you got employed you have never bought a new pair of shoes. "Mmh, how many problems can this guy possibly have, he is already half-crazy ... but he is so young."

Which is often the reason why I 'remember' to make subtle, progressive changes . . . I do this really, before somebody feels compelled to buy me some Chinese knock-off snickers out of this weird thing called 'corporate social responsibility' . (By the way isn't this CSR thing conceptually a bribe? Giving people things they don't deserve so that some other people can view the company favourably, that sounds like a bribe to me.) 

There is nothing wrong in looking presentable only that afterwards I feel like I have been bullied by the 'corporate culture' to buy the damn shoes. Am a thinker not a peacock, I would gladly go to work naked with a sandwich if I could.

In conclusion I have come to realize despairingly that no matter how wonderful a company is working in a corporate environment anywhere is like a mandatory chant in a Conga line. The gorillas in the front are the bosses and the hierarchy cascades to the back of the line. 

You have no say but to sway and dance to the beat and growls of the primates at the front, getting out of the line also means instantly being clobbered back or being kicked out into the crocodile infested lake of joblessness. So I have picked up my percussion rattles and Mexican hut, am gonna chant, vigorously shake my tutu to the beat from the front and see where that leads. Yeleleleeleiiiiiiiiiii !! Na-na! uu! na-na! uu!!

M. Wycliff,

Nairobi.