Forever starts today...

I was gonna go to sleep, because I lost all need for sentimentalism and much ado about calendar dates. And as I sifted through my in-tray to make sure nothing was pending, I decided to write this poem. And I had to do it today. Because I haven't blogged in almost a year. In that time, I've had plenty of starts, plenty of drafts and unfinished thoughts, but never a complete post. So when I wanted to write right now, I wrote right then, and for the first time since the last time, I wrote in less than 20 minutes. maybe I was just lucky, maybe I was truly inspired, but hey, for whatever reason, I wrote a poem! A poem! A poem!

So I'll share my cliches and platitudes, because I have always believed that writing is evidence. And I must have this up before midnight, because I needed to finish it today. And no, it's got nothing to do with the calendar date. to me, it's just, well, TODAY.... :) :)

I PICK TODAY

Today is a new day,

Well, not so new, it’s almost completely done

But it just seems like today is as good as I’m ever gonna get

So I pick today

Yesterday was laden with self-doubt and questions

Standing before my those of my age set

And seeming to lag way behind

So I worried, and hid, and acted like it was all fine

When every night I cried out for a miracle

I hoped that He would see beyond this doubt and selfish ambition

And give me a story of my own to write

Sometimes when tears failed, I took matters into my own hands

But it never quite worked out how I hoped

Because, in the grander scheme of things

Nobody paints a Picasso better than Picasso

But even Picasso began somewhere

So I pick today

I pick my own beginning,

And I pick the end written out for my story

I pick trust and faith in Him who’s Word is true

Has He not said, and will He not do it?

Is there anything too hard for Him?

I pick my pages, and His truth

And I write out a new beginning for me
You say

Tomorrow is coming soon enough

So maybe I ought to wait for tomorrow

But look how much has been lost,

Waiting for the soon enough that never is

I don’t want any part in that

So I pick today

I pick my own journey of faith

I pick the people I shall chance to meet upon the way

I pick intercession for every one of them

I pick out-pouring of my spirit for the needs of my friends

I’ll start today, even though tomorrow’s a breath away

Because in that breath I can

Make someone smile, ease their burden

I can pray, even just two whispered pleas

So that when tomorrow is here,

I’ll have started yesterday

And all I’ll need to do is keep moving ahead
Occupy till He returns

 Just like I did yesterday

Because I picked today

Tomorrow is not mine to have,

So I pick today,

I pick today

I PICK NOW!!!

my dream and happily ever after

Everybody looks for so long for that moment of clarity, for that one moment you can say when you sat somewhere, or you stood somewhere, or someone said something to you, and voila! You began to live life just like that, Snap! Many are not so lucky in this regard. A few have that wonderful experience at some point in their lives, most do not. Most of us just start and restart and restart until you are either too tired, too broken or you make it. Then there is the euphoria that knocks you down when you discover something new, and just like that, you once again throw yourself into it hook, line and sinker.

That's what I'm doing, discovering something new, that maybe my life doesn't have to be the way I planned, that maybe I can have it all , maybe I can leave behind a worthy legacy, maybe I can raise myself and in turn help humanity, because the empathetic pat on the shoulder can only go so far. So I choose to believe it for what it can be, with more than a little faith, more than a little hope. My mother says not to put all these my eggs in one basket, but how many basket do I have? How many lives? Nonetheless, I know that I am not entrusting my dreams to these human beings, I am entrusting my dreams in my God, the One who CANNOT lie, and He says,

Write the vision down, and make it plain on tablets, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not tarry.

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart: and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.
A man's heart deviseth his way; but Jehovah directs his steps

Delight thyself also in Jehovah; and He will give thee the desires of thy heart. Commit thy way unto Jehovah; trust also in Him and he will bring it to pass. Rest in Jehovah, and wait patiently for Him...

What is impossible with man is possible with God... 

Not that making it King James'y makes it truer ;) :) but yeah, those are His words, Him, who declared the end from the beginning, Him who saw my end before I was conceived. 

 

I made my dream board slash vision board early yesterday morning as part of this programme I'm being taken through. It was exciting, like going back to being six years old and making cuttings to stick in my little scrap books,  of who i wanna be when i grow up... but also, you're like whoa! you know, you're not six anymore, you're all grown up, you know what the reality is like... isn't that too much? But He owns the cattle on a thousand hills and all silver and gold belong to Him, that is my Father. What shall i fear?

 

 

A vision board

 Me, I'll share mine when i think I'm officially done with it, maybe in a few weeks... it's crazy, but it's mine, like a child... you can't throw them away...

Faithful is HE who promised, who will also bring it to pass...

education, really????

For a while now I have been looking at the new Kenyan education system with much bewilderment. When my mother went to nursery school, for two years they went from eight to twelve to play and sing songs, and maybe learn a bit on how to hold a pen and stuff. The real education began in standard one. In my day, we went from eight to three, to learn how to write in the morning, then sleep and play after lunch waiting to be picked up at three. Now I get it that with the advent of civilization and development, carrying with it massive traffic jams and hence the need to beat them, we have to make a few adjustments. But what is the price we are paying – our children?

Picture this: It’s Tuesday morning. This family lives somewhere in Nairobi, it’s not important where; the difference more often than not is the same. The school bus passes outside the house at exactly 6.00 am, and hence Junior must be ready and on the bus-stop by then. Mum had to wake up before five to ensure that by this time she too is ready, having attended to the kids and dad so that she goes on to work as she drops off the child at the bus-point. Junior threw a mega-tantrum this morning, and who can blame him? He got home at 9pm last night due to the rains that resulted in unbelievable traffic hold up. He had homework which he had not touched, so he had to do that. Then dinner, shower, getting tomorrow’s shirt ironed, polishing them shoes… before you knew it, it was 11pm, and he was still about. I would be quite disagreeable come five am and the alarm, how much more this eight year old standard two pupil?

I grew up in an estate in Mumias. School was a ten-minute walk away, we came back home for lunch and actually had time to play. Matter of fact, I lost my shoes once, as we played on the way home, and my mother whose sense of teach-a-child-a-lesson-they’ll-never-forget was sharper than anyone I’d ever known, made me go to school barefoot. But it was easy. I woke up at 6.20 to be in school by seven, when we got older and it was 6.15, I woke up at 5.45. By 5.45 now, a child in baby class is at a bus-stop waiting for the bus. What then? Is it any shock we’re treating ulcers in six-year-olds?

 Don’t think that I’m recommending school mashinani, that we should all move from town. Even in the rural private school I went to, things have now changed. They now get to school by 6.00 am, for morning prep, then break at 5pm for tea and stuff, and then go back for night prep till 9.00 pm. Night prep, where a teacher comes to class and continues to drill more knowledge into their already saturated brains and then leaves them homework. To do at home, at 9.30 when they get there.  Education, no, slavery, maybe a little. I’m excited by the Mutula moves now, children need a break. But no, parents want to hire private tutors, transforming home into more comfortable school. So now, the child hates the holiday as much as the school term, home as much as school.

What is this you want to tell the child between 7 pm and 9 pm, that you didn’t manage to say during the day? Even if that child is a candidate. We want to hide behind candidature and the exams, when in essence all we are masking is poor planning. Don’t get me wrong, I am a staunch believer in the last minute policy, but if a teachers’ strike happens in 3^rd term and we are panicking that children will fail because of a three-week glitch, someone didn’t plan properly. I had the pleasure of going to a good public secondary school, where by the end of June all syllabi were completed, through holiday school and third term, we just did papers upon papers. And you really don’t need much from teachers; they are there to answer the questions we couldn’t. And they were not many.

I have nothing against teachers, or students, or the government (at this time ;))))) it’s the system. It’s okay if the ones affected are adult, we can manage, even though just barely, but our children, they are caught in the middle of circumstances too complex for them to understand and process, they have no say, they cannot speak out. We tell them to count themselves lucky because they are driven to school, that in ‘our days’ we walked 5km every morning and evening with no shoes on. They should not complain. But while their mouths are mum, a lot more speaks out to us, we can see the results. We see it in the infant mortality rates, despite the advances in medicine. We see it in the growing rate of childhood cancers and ulcers, in the increasing suicide statistics in children, in the college drop-out, truancy and delinquency rates.

There’s got to be a better way, surely, or else our future is bleak at best. Unless this crop of adults invents a way to live forever.

talk to my guns and my arrows...

Dear Kenyan politician,

You must think us to be so gullible, you must think we have no eyes. But I don’t blame you. While you were one of us, it is all you saw, and what son is a worthy son, except the one that surpasses all that his father ever was? And you have by all means surpassed your father. With every subsequent rebirth we see that you learnt the lessons, you learnt them well. And we, we let you carry out your impunity with heads bowed low, for as you told us, the reason we have you is because we don’t know anything, and we need you to defend our rights. And then you tell us that in order to love your neighbor as yourself, you must first love yourself. And love yourself you do.

That guy speaks well, Dedan Kimathi must be turning in his grave, watching the independence he fought for so hard washed down to an even more severe colonialism at the hands of our very brothers… watching as you get up on national television and urge us to wipe out those invaders who are in our land, while you embrace and bump fists with their leader. Had Mekatilili known this was what she gave her life up for, to watch her people turned to donkeys, working three jobs to barely survive, while you dear politician decide that we must pay our and your taxes, we must finance your holidays, and increase your salaries because the work you do for us is so great, so vastly involving, that you have no time to appear and fight for legislation that would better our lives. You must think us so gullible. And we are.

Uliniahidi matamu sasa nanywa machungu,

You said that you would fight the corruption now you only fight each other

You promised me the sky, now I watch you while you fly away

You told me to live, then you came and took my life away

              Dedan Kimathi must be turning in his grave,

              Mekatilili must be turning in her grave,

             What can say to you

 What would you have me do

Now you just talk to my guns and my arrows

It’s a refusal to think, a sad delusion by which the mind creates an excuse to brand the skin black, the society backward and the political economics third world. Leadership thus becomes confused with might and vice versa. Lives are mortgaged to give rise to a mini Euro-Anglo-American suburb and the cries of the people are silenced by the promise of edible warm and nutritious democracy. Demokrasia itakayojaza matumbo, itawapa watu makaazi, italeta ajira na kuwapa watu umoja na amani…

Meanwhile we turn the other cheek. We call every reprimand aimed at you a bullet aimed at removing our people from power. And then we go to that neighbor of ours and burn his house down. Go and tell your leader to leave ours alone. The very next day, you shake hands, the beginning of a coalition between the two of you. Because two heads are better than one. No wonder you treat us like so, it is we who have slept on the job. No one is responsible for my rights, that’s why they call it capitalism. Look out for your rights and those of your people. Don’t entrust them to another who is also just looking out for their own rights and those of their people…

Paukwa pakawa, umesaidia vipi wenzako hawa, nalia,

Sahani ya mchele, wengine wafa njaa tumbo yako mbele,

Giza ya mwizi, lakini mchana twaogopa siku hizi,

Kiboko kwa mkorofi, maovu yako yanapigiwa makofi…

            Dua la mnyonge halimpati mwewe

Mwenye nguvu mpishe, kilio changu kisikizee

            Dua la mnyonge halimpati mwewe

Nalia, nalia….

But we are done. No more sleeping on the job. No more voting is for the old and grey. No more get out of my land you stranger, yet he too was born in the same hospital I was. Eventually, the chickens come home to roost. And no matter how much you postpone the day of reckoning, yours will come. And the voice that we have, the voice that you silenced, we shall use it then… we will dig further into our pockets to run our economy. We will work harder to see our children through school, and we will teach them to be one… and eventually, you will grow old, and so will your ideologies. Then you will be irrelevant, and you will be replaced… it will happen…  And I hope you live long enough to see it…

Yours,

Young Citizen.

a fork in the road...

When I was in campus I had these things that made life easier. When I left I gave them to some girls so their lives would be made easier as well. But then there are those I carried home, they were reminders for me of a place in my life, a stage I went through and came out of alive. I thought I would keep them for a while, maybe even until my own daughter (my mouth to Your ears Lord!!) was old enough to see them, you know… and then I had to let them go. And I finally realized that it was over. I am done with campus. I am, again, out there, the real ‘out there’ forget the one we always fussed about in high school. That ‘out’ was nothing. This is it. And it’s here.

I know countless people have walked before me along this road. Some have made it easy, some have made it through nothing short of sheer stubbornness, and some have tried and failed. And I wonder, how did they feel after campus? How did they feel when they sent out applications to any and every job advertised because any job at that point would suffice?  Were they as confused and unsure as I am? Today I watched this movie, this guy told this girl that the reason she could never find anyone who could make her dreams come true was the fact that she didn’t know those dreams herself. When you don’t know what you’re looking for, how do you know when you’ve found it? When you don’t know where you’re going, how do you know when you get there? How easy is it to decide the rest of my life based on my 20-some years worth of knowledge? What do I know about corporate affairs, and seven to five jobs… how will I feel if in 10 years I’m still doing what I’m doing now? Will I be satisfied, will I be happy? Or will I start counting the years to retirement with nothing to do but work on because the bills need paying? Should I take that course everyone seems to believe is the answer to a direct sure job? After I get there will I want to be in the field for the rest of my life?

Did anyone ever find one answer to just one of these questions? Some welcome to life…