THE ADVENTURES AND MUSINGS OF A CRAZY PROFESSOR

  I was nearly recruited into jihadism. Well almost. This story is not for the faint hearted. If you like short quick ones, stop here. Go make yourself a cup of coffee. Or stand outside your balcony and shout hello to your neighbors. The rest of you come along. Let's test your concentration span.  We just had to talk. The man had a Michael Jordan shave. I keenly watched his greying goatee as I tried to figure out his accent. Distinctly not South African. He fitted my stereotypical ideal of an Alqaeda operative or a member of a Zimbabwean cult living in Nairobi. Clean shaven head and a long goatee. We were stuck in a small electronically controlled space regulating entry and exit out of a small local South African Bank . We should have entered the space one person at a time but for some reason we stepped in at the same time and the doors locked. It felt like being in a cattle dip track, doors securely locked behind you and with only one possible direction for movement. He had j...

Lake view Hotel announces itself in bold letters. You only learn later that the lake is artificial and you are hard pressed to find it. Unable to locate the lake in the expansive Peking Univeristy in Beijing China, I decide to take a walk down the street and look for goat head soup or mutura aka African sausage. My Okuyu brains tells me it doesn’t make sense to buy food with fancy names from a 5 star hotel at three times the price opposite the road. Minus the fancy names. And it’s more fun fending for yourself out there among the average folk. The common mwananchi. To experience real life on the ground. I am conscious that i will face linguistic challenges here. The workers at the 5 star hotel hardly speak English. I don’t expect greater competence in the streets.  The first thing that hits me in the streets is bikes. There are bikes everywhere. Scooters. Motorbikes. Motorized bicycles. Tricycles. All kinds. New. Old ones. Some in repair shops. Others in second hand shops. And some...

I have been writing a letter to God to ask why the season of madness in Kenya has arrived    early this time. Nearly two years in advance. It’s the season when reason departs Kenya. Its that time when you wish life had an individual pause button. You would pause yours and let all the idiocy ebb way. Why? This is the season when suddenly even professors experience a mental block.    Cognitive incapacity. They can’t think beyond tribe. Even the clergy are not spared. Pick    any contested political    issue in this season. Randomly! Give me two professors or two members of clergy and don’t let them open their mouths. Just give me their names. I will predict their ethnicity with more than 99% accuracy. That is    not their fault. My next prediction is their fault. I will proceed to predict on which side of the divide they fall vis-a-vis the issue at hand, without hearing a word from them. And I will be 99% accurate. You don’t need to be a s...

  I have asked Okombe to stop inciting me to engage in seditious activities. We were watching news when I made up mind. First exhibit was Mike Sonko, a man whose first name I share. That is all we have in common. Then our ways part. In a huge way. While I have to work my ass off, I am still looking for better words to say it, my namesake just punches walls, screams and bites people. And somehow, he has tonnes of money.  I watched him looking like he had wet his pants with fear. Apparently now he is a terror suspect and has to be kept as a guest of the state.  This man has been a walking vault teaming with gold. Rings, “bling blings”, shoes, caps, and teeth: all Gold. At home he walks and sleeps on gold. If the man can suddenly be made to look as human as chang’aa brewers and weed peddlers, who am I?    Going forward, no seditious word will proceed out of my mouth. I am told that things are so elephant that even the National Cohesion and Integration Com...

Make no mistake about it, if caning is re-introduced in Kenya this will only be for children of hustlers. Dynasties don’t cane their children. As an experienced educationist and a hustling son of a hustler, am willing to stick my neck and declare, the cane is simply a tool of terror.  It might deter a few from some devious activities, but it does not inculcate morals. I was a victim of the cane right from primary school to high school. Teachers were really cane-happy. This is one reason I would not support giving teachers guns as has been suggested by some. There is no telling what trigger happy teachers could do with a gun.  I suspect some of my teachers used the cane “kutoa stress” ama “kutoa lock” as the imbibers of Chang’aa and other toxic brews are wont to do. This is the only way I can explain a teacher waking up at 4.00am so he can be at the school gate to cane kids who had walked barefoot for kilometres, probably having had no breakfast, and braced mist and f...