Thursday, October 30, 2008

only in Nairobbery


Kirinyaga Road
 
My pal lost his light in traffic. Another lost a windscreen. The other one lost a wheel cap..You get the drift....every other peson loses a part of their car every other day.
 
So what do you do?
 
You walk/drive to Kirinyaga road to look for the missing spare part.
 
The folks of Kirinyaga road sell the part that was orignially yours only at a lower price
 
No defence
Cries that said spare part belongs to you is met with blank stares They could ask "Do you want the spare part or not?"
 
 

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Guest Writers

If you would like to guest write on this blog please email me girlinthemeadow@gmail.com.
 
Generally
You have to be a girl
 
With an interesting life (or ability to turn a mundane life to an interesting one)
 
And fresh like the woods.
Diaries would be appreciated.
 
 

ANOTHER MONDAY ANOTHER WEEK


HuH, is it just me ama this year is flying. I am trying to account for all the things i should have done and really some of them are not still done.
 
1. Getting A driving license
 
I once read Tony Mochama's articles that though he owned a car, he couldn't care to drive it. I don't know how you attend two driving schools and still not get a licence. That it is me. I have this weird thing going on in my head that must have emanated from Nonini's
"ushaichotwa na gari"  . Anyway my goal is to get a licence within the next 3 months, so help me God and if next year this goal shows up, shoot me please.
2. Lose at least 5kgs
As Gishungwa would say "I have been jogging daily since January, mentally that is" Good intentions! good intentions!. Anyway, at least sometimes i jog, just not seriously.
 
3. Read my books
I have a goal to read a book every week. I developed a love for literature and classics but somehow i get derailed by a books with blonde names like Bombshell. How can you resist a book called Bombshell? Well it eats into the time i should have read my classic. But how do you look at the shelf see a book called Bombshell and walk away to pick The Great Gasby?
 
4. Make chapattis
This has been in my to do lists for 3 years now, it is time it got crossed.
 
But there are good things i have learnt to do
 
Learning how to save
Saving in a consumer world is HARD. Only after you have had a pay vacuum do you realize the need to save for a rainy day. Heck, saving is important.
 
Putting my interests before others
The real christians may not agree, but you have to love yourself to love others. I used to waste a lot of energy on other people's problems. Now, i have realized other people's problems are not my business and i do not have to solve them UNLESS i have the competency and of course if we are good friends. I tend to solve my own problems without burdening others, i should also resist being burdened.
 
Achieving my CPS
Going back to school is not easy but somehow i went to school, missed half the classes and passed the exams.
 
THE UB40 WILL BE IN TOWN SOON. That is something to look forward to.
 

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Simple Pleasures


I decided to visit my home town this weekend to visit a few relations. Obviously, it is something that shocked everyone because such visits are things i hardly do. All the same i can confirm that life in Nairobi is too hectic and once in a while (may i say every once in a while) one should drop everything and head to a place that is quiet and life is not as fast.
 
There is one thing you notice; in Nairobi everything is so fast. There is one way to pick out a person who has lived in Nairobi, the desire to have everything done as fast as it can be done. Another thing is Nairobian chics tend to hang on to their handbags because life really depends on it. Ask me, the last time i lost my handbag, i slept at a disgruntled neighbour's house. Who else checks on their phones 24-7, of course a Nairobian. I made a conscious decision to lose the habit of being obsessively addicted to my phone to the extent that i can stay without it for 2 days without going into a panic attack, after all there is really nothing that can't wait and on top of that there is hardly anyone who just knows me that if they were in trouble and didn't reach me, they would be done. I now switch off my phone when i sleep ok that was because certain idiots call at 2p.m and start storos ati coz Michael Joseph's calls run to Ksh. 2.50 after midnight clearly!
 
So i really enjoyed time off the town. You walk into the town, can count the number of cars and those on mobile phones. People stop to gossip. Village life is funny though, everybody's business is everybody's business, who got married, who got drunk and peed on the road, who died, who bought a new car, whose daughter is pregnant he he he. Though i love technology, i hate the overload that comes with it.
 
So somebody got ill and i decided to take them to the general hospital because i love free things. There was quite a line. So i went paid for the card and while i was going to get my number to queue a certain lady calls me and tells me not to form the queue they are going to sort me out. I was convinced angels are everywhere though i knew it must be she knows someone of my relations which is not so evidently hard to tell.
Then i decided to take said person to have shoes polished. The shoeshiner goes like you are from the family of so and so..i am like yeah. Ooh glorious life, in Nairobi nobody recognizes me you know. Until he goes like " i always know my relatives" and then proceeded to give me our long history or relations of course it got lost somewhere in the your grandmother was....All the same my relative still charged me for said service, i thought such things should be free for relatives!
 
NOKLA
Just when you thought the Chinese guys were through, i found with my friend a certain kind of phone by name NOKLA. These guys yaani should win awards if for nothing else cheap imitation. Anyway somebody came from China and brought me a phone with the following things Tv, MPeg 4, dual sim, camera.I love China me.
 
Confession
I have had really nothing to write on my blog because for a very long time, the blog ceased to be mine. So i read this post and decided to write here every other 3 days because it is really my blog and i started it to offload my thinking until it became hard to write because of you know "political incorrectness" figuratively and literally. Now i will just write because i like to do it.



--


"We could learn a lot from crayons; some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, while others bright, some have weird names, but they all have learned to live together in the same box."

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

BLOG ACTION DAY

October 15 is Blog Action Day and this year's theme is Poverty.
 
What to do to eliminate poverty must be the thing that taxes many people (ooh and earns them a lot of cash:) ).  This is what i have always thought;
 
1. Education;- I cannot say enough about this. An educated populance will seek to get themselves out of poverty. Not necessarily by getting a job but by looking for ways to better their life. Education gives people ideas. What you can do today;
 
When is the last time you donated books, library materials, contributed to the building a classroom in a local area? Think about it.
 
2. Health;- A person in good health cannot be a poor one. Invest in more available hospitals, medicines, research....A diseased nation is surely a poor one. Contribute to building a local dispensary or something.
 
 
3. Food;- We cannot live without food. The more persons are encouraged to plant more food, the more healthier we are hence in a way elminating poverty. Uprooting all those non performing foreign exchange earners (coffee, tea, pyrethrum) and concentrate more on consumables. Tea and coffee are fetching extremely bad prices and if you think about it, we consume the finished product. Concentrate on tourism as the foreign exchange earners and plant more food. Enough said
 
4. Ignorance has to go. Read point one
5. Affordable Shelter- Housing in Nairobi is a nightmare. It is expensive, expensive, expensive. For a poor people affordable housing is necessary.
 
There is my 2 cent contribution to end of poverty.