THE TALE OF UGALI

Once upon a time,there was a land called Kenya.People loved eating and eating maize at that.They ate maize on the cob(boiled,roasted on a charcoal grill and rubbed red with a lemonhead dipped in achari),maize as popcorns,maize as free seeds mixed with beans etc.But the best kind of maize was that which was ground into flour then systematically worked into a paste under heat.That was not maize,it was ugali. Ugali went well with everything,except the things that did not sit well with ugali.Ugali fish,ugali beef,ugali terere,ugali matumbo-golden rule is to never mix your ugali with another starch form.Some liked it so soft,but never the mashy form cooked down south of Africa.Some liked it so hard that you could be charged with assault for hitting someone with a piece of ugali.

A good wife knew how to cook your ugali right.It was the litmus test if you were not these borntown boys who abscond the blade by the river for that of the clinician. It has been postulated,though not empirically proven,that the quality of ugali is to blame for marital strife(a quote borrowed and modified to edify the urban pizza hunters & gatherers).
Now ugali spiked the demand for maize so high that it became the staple food of Kenya.To qualify as a breadbasket,acres and acres of Zea mays had to be witnessed.Man(in the strict sense of gender) shall not thrive on rice or cereals at breakfast,he shall thrive on ugali the whole day.Unless you work in a mjengo,ugali at lunchtime is a sedative that renders you unconscious.
Then it happened.People politicised ugali.There was talk of famine,there was talk of drought-silos had no cereals to sell. The price of maize flour scaled to Yego heights and it became unaffordable to cook ugali. Can you imagine serving 3 packets of spaghetti to attain the satisfying value of 1 packet of ugali?People talked and grumbled,it was 2017,an election year in Kenya. The Gvt & opposition ping-ponged the issue,their armies on the ground did likewise.
Then the Gvt subsidised the price and the consumption as well.1 packet per household?Might as well serve tea for dessert too. Sugar and milk prices high too?Eish,they have finished us.The end is here.
If you thought things were worse,brace yourself. Soon there was no maize flour at all...GOK or baller's version. My child we ate chapatis until we developed an allergy. We formed cartels with supermarket attendants,as soon as a new shipment arrived we were in the know before it ran out of stock in 15 mins. Each family member bought their separate packets at 90/= Kshs and we secured enough for the week. Those were hard times that brought out the worst in us. Imagine some supermarkets had funny rules like"spend 500/= to get 1pkt of unga" or "buy 2pkts and we will ship it to you at a cost of 400/=". 
That is the myth of ugali,our long lost friend.

TALITHA KUMI

This July has been mildly cold.Unless you come from Nyahururu where Game of Thrones fans wanted to migrate for the upcoming premier of "Winter is finally here".Thankfully,it was not snow,it was sleet or hailstones.
It is a fact that during the cold we lose more people to the afterlife,especially the old.The names are out there by now. But this cold season we have reversed the order. There is Mama Rosa from West Pokot,the most recent miracle( 22 or 23rd/6/2017)as witnessed by the Repentance & Holiness Ministries. Cheparten village in West Pokot had their Talitha kumi command via texts from the Prophet Owuor but loyal bishops in the locality of the miracle verified the claims,some of whom are doctors.Death took 2hrs of the victim's life and gave her sleepy village fame.
Next comes Mwingi,Mbondoni village(17/6/2017) where a 1-month infant heard her Talitha kumi 3 days after she was thought dead. No prophets this time,just a cough to alert the women dressing her. The death phase had not been confirmed by any medic but the people around rightfully presumed a cold body and no breath signalled death. It was just in time for the child who was minutes away from her burial.
In Gakwegori mortuary(March 2017),there was a failed resurrection when the Eagles Wings Ministry did not soar high enough to Talitha Kumi the pastor's wife. Here was a medically confirmed death from TB treatment that forced congregants to ambush the morticians and lock them out until prayers and and anointing oil yielded nothing. Did they think the similar attempts of
Nakuru's Kingdom Seekers on their departed pastors two years earlier were amateurish?It seems morticians have more to fear outside the morgue than inside when mobs lock them out to tongue-lash death in prayer. Unless you count the case of that failed suicide attempt in Naivasha when the corpse ingested enough insecticide to slow its heartbeat and woke up alive in a morgue (8/1/2014).
What of the presumed dead who show up alive & kicking? I CAN'T,,,,,how do you demand a refund on the emotional turmoil such news can cause. Death is unfair,challenging it is futile unless you are rooted in the eternal God.Rest in peace our beloved,safiri salama.

ONCE I WAS A FEW YEARS OLD

Once I was nursed, washed, weaned and wrapped in diapers with my excreta constantly spewing next to my tout baby epidermis. I could not tell a minute from a second and my communiqué was gurgles, coos, giggles, wails, pouts, drools and wiggles. First there was Mother then Father then people whom I forgot as soon as they left. I crawled then stumbled whereas now I walk.  Once I was a few years old.

I wore my sandals the other way round: it felt so right. I ran up and down church pews, so confident in my Father’s house. Inside-out, outside-in; what were those? Right, left, back, front, mauve, purple-I did not care for complications and just wanted to be. I ate what was served although I craved the sticky sweet affections of confectionary. I was told when my own stomach was full or when my brain was empty. Once I was a few years old.

I was made ready for everything and everything was made ready for me. The calendar held no meaning for me. I was told its Sunday when Father travelled, Monday when Mother wore her lab coat and Saturday when I slept in. Christmas was heralded by crepe paper everywhere and New Year was a countdown I screamed out. Diwali was a sky-lit horizon and Ramadhan was not a strict fast for me. Easter was a puzzling crucifix that horrified me at the memories of movies behind it. Once I was a few years old.

There were emotions to be felt, understood and later managed. The endless retinue of friends to be made, fights to pick, tantrums to throw, falls to bandage or walk off, songs to sing, words to learn, adults to respect, tears to dry out, chores to do…how did I do it all? I morphed so fast yet so slow that I fail to grasp the twelve years that slipped out of my expected eighty. Once I was a few years old.

Pimples, menarche, pubarche, adrenarche, crushes, rebellion, self-consciousness- juggling all this with school, passage rites and the unclear dawn of adulthood. Was it the allure of make-or-break decisions? Or maybe the daunting dare to finally be all I had imagined or more? Now I was more than a few years old, less than what I needed to regret being my age.

AFRICA YO AFRICA YO YO YO

Ki dir, as they greet in Seychelles Creole. I am searching for one Africa,heir of the vision of Queen Nziga Mbande. I hear you now hold the horizons that she saw as she fought against the beasts that scrambled and pierced our virgin lands. I hear that her greatest treasure was her people,hidden in plain sight of racists as they mined for gold, diamonds and whatever name they have concorted for our minerals. The tongue she is named after, is it Vai or Ethiopic? This Africa is a new one,they tell me. She teems vibrantly beyond the borders carelessly used to wrench her children from each other. This Africa reaches her hand out for friends, to forgive and forge on.

Idhi nade,as East African Luo would ask you how the going is. Would you preen your ears for the knowledge that flowed from Timbuktu? Would you rejuvenate the fountain of literacy like the medu neter hieroglyphics of Egypt, the proto-Saharan of Nubia,the Dogon rock art,the Tamazight tifinagh or the pictorial Nsibidi? These gems might be lost to many of my kinsmen but to the future we aim; our heritage of literacy is the arrowhead adventure and a curator of our past in the future.

Naka nga def,as they say in Gambia. Could I borrow your sight to envision the Pan-Africanist banquet of Nyerere, Nkrumah, Machel,Mandela,Mboya, Sankara and Gaddaffi?That the blood of the pioneers before them may gush through  AU,SADC,EAC,ECOWAS,CENSAD,COMESA or IGAD. May it gush more exuberantly and perpetually than the Nile or Volta,clean the rivers of blood desired by some evil regents. Let her children inherit the vision built on their kinship.

Lumela? U kae? I pass the greetings of Sesotho. Touch the exquisite grain of the rich mural that is woven by our culture. Culture is too daft a word to encompass your dance. Culture is too shallow a term to comprehend the rhythm of your anthems and too bare to cover the breadth of our existence. Dance to the tune of the nyatiti,balafon,makhoyane,daghumma and tbal. 

Wet your palates for the best from Africa's kitchen and grazing fields. Her children have ben toiling in the fields and are eager to entice your tase buds. Shall we state with Feijoada (pork and bean stew) from Sao Tome? Or perhaps sweet Makroudh and Baklava from Tunisia? Please sit for Djibouti's Injera ,Harira or Niter Kibbeh. Snack on the Gajak and Mazavaroo.

Waft the sweat of success, because that is all Africa is about.We may fail but we will make our way through the jungle of life. The scents and stenches are part of our journey so we should not fear. Our noses can never fall off track as we know what we want. Dream and it shall be. Africa is ripe for the winning.