Munene, the journey...

We spent most of new year's eve in transit. We left Ibis Styles Hotel at 10.30am, got to Jakarta international airport, got our tickets to Denpasar (in Bali) and left for Bali about 2.30pm (about 30mins late due to air traffic density at the airport) In transit at Jakarta Airport domestic departures; after check-in on the way to Denpasar Photobombed by Tom Hilde and Tom Jones We arrived in Denpasar around 7pm, where we met with Sunday who had arranged our transportation to Ubud. It took us the next hour and a half weaving through ever narrowing roadways towards Ubud, which is our home for the next six days. The driving in Bali immediately reminded me of Nairobi. Traffic wasn’t too bad, but driving a car involved checking both sides of the mirror because scooters, mopeds and motorbikes weave in and out of lanes at breakneck speed, with little warning or caution. Further, while passing huge vehicles like buses and lorries, our drive honked twice to let the other car know...

With Renuka at IAD before departure for Doha Our journey began at IAD at close to 3pm on Dec. 28. I met up with a couple of my fellow travelers at the airport, including Renuka, Tom Jones, Noah, Jackson. On transit in Doha We got to on Dec. 30 Indonesia about 7 am, on time, aboard the Qatar Airways flight 958 from Doha, Qatar. Duty free cars in Doha! Passport control, baggage claim and passing through customs was a breeze. It took us no more than 20 minutes to alight the aircraft and meet Matt Regan, who had arrived a day earlier, to prepare the way for us. And prepare he did. A section of Soekarno-Hatta Airport di Jakarta Matt gave us the brief on what to do, and how to do it. We withdrew cash from ATM (Matt recommended 1 million rupiah!!!). It felt like a lot, but it turned out to be about $74 bucks (with the conversion being $1 = 13,500 rupiah). The notes were in 50,000s or 100,000s crispy ones. We then got into taxis a...

I first heard this saying, during my second visit to Nigeria. This time, I was in Edo State visiting my in-laws' home town. When food was served, my family, as normal asked for water to wash hands and cutlery to eat the food. Jay, my outspoken brother-in-law, laughed at the request, thinking we were joking. When Jay realized that we were serious, he casually said, while laughing, "Oga, be yourself and use your hands! 'They' are just trying to make money from you by selling anti-bacterial hand washing soap…" I later learnt that my brother Jay meant no harm. In fact, this has almost become a family quote. We use it to remind one another when any of us gets out of line and begins pretending and 'not being ourselves'. No one knows us like family, and this is the best place to be reminded of this. Authenticity in our living is that one thing that we all agree we need more of, yet no one has a generally acceptable principle on how to achieve it. We a...

I recently completed an assignment for an International Economics Policy class which entailed designing a carry trade. A carry trade is a financial transaction that involves borrowing (short) in a low interest currency, and lending (go long) in a high interest (yield) currency. For instance from Bloomberg 's rates for bonds, this would involve borrowing in Swiss francs (rate is -0.15 percent) and lend in New Zealand dollars (rate is 2.83 percent). All else remaining equal, the carry trade would yield a rate differential of 2.83+0.15 = 2.98 percent. Note: this is an unusual case where the interest rate we are borrowing from is negative; usually, this would involve subtracting the first interest rate from the second. For instance, borrowing in Japanese yen (0.04 percent) and lending in Kiwi dollars (at 2.83 percent) would yield 2.79 percent as profit. My carry trade in this case involves borrowing in USD at a rate of 2.33 percent, and buying bitcoins. But, what, you may ask, is the...

Never underestimate your opponent. It's better to be overprepared than underprepared. Therefore, prepare, learn your competitor's tricks, weaknesses and tactics and use them against them. It is highly likely that the Jubilee side leaked to the NASA side about the hacking of the IEBC servers knowing full well that NASA would lap it up. NASA presented "evidence" based on MSSQL architecture, while the IEBC says that its database runs on Oracle. Whatever the case, the NASA side presented a weak case that has not convinced many stakeholders. Invest in your team and FULLY prepare your agents. Perform your trainings thoroughly. Run a tight ship. Have no room for leakages or moles or people who are easily bought. It is said that a lot of NASA's agents at the various polling stations were bought and did not protect RAO's votes. Ensure that you pay your agents well, and let them know that there's more rewards for their loyalty. Have no time for infighting, let you...

Star-born and born of star light Born, yet unborn Living, yet not living Dying, yet infinite Seeing, yet unseen The subject and the object as ONE A soul, indescribable and indestructible A spark and ray of eternal consciousness The night and day as ONE The past and future as NOW Part human and part ALL A spark of infinity light Risen and rising still Knowing and yet unknown Been and being still A beginning without an end Transcending us while being us The master and the pupil, yet ONE The story, telling itself The drum, beating itself The wind, blowing itself The human soul

In 2016, Kenyans in the diaspora sent home USD $1.6 billion (about KSh. 160 billion). In 2013, Raila Odinga and Uhuru Kenyatta each spent an equivalent of about USD $100 million (KSh. 10 billion) vying for the presidency. This year, numbers are projected to rise beyond USD $200 million (KSh. 20 billion) in a "rematch" of the 2013 contest. And just as in the past, most Kenyans in the diaspora will be unable to cast absentee votes, even though the law says that every eligible Kenyan should be availed to vote. And that is where I think the diasporans [sic] should agitate for greater representation. Kenyans in the diaspora control enough remittances to be one of Kenya's top foreign exchange earners. If they wanted, they could form a movement to pool funds and finances a political party (KSh. 15 billion spending cap), presidential (KSh. 5.25 billion spending cap), and other county-level representatives (KSh. 433 million spending cap). In politics, in Kenya and beyond, mon...

It is that time of the semester when all the decisions of the last 3 months come to bear on a graduate student. 4 papers are due, exams are in 3 weeks, there's internships and jobs to find. It seems as if everything decided to become due at the same time. But that's not quite the case. For me, even getting to write this blog post took a lot of, well, procrastinating. Being in graduate school requires a great deal of what I call sensible procrastination. I am not advocating for leaving only 30 minutes to complete an assignment that requires 10hours, that's stupid. In fact there are things that we cannot procrastinate for too long without seeing some negative side effects. Doctors and other personnel who deal with matters of life and death also, may not have the luxury of procrastination in saving lives. However, even in these extreme scenarios, I think that we might have more leeway on some other matters than we let on. Another thing to consider is that eventually all ...

The premise of this book is that love is not a sentiment, but a productive process that requires effort and other qualities in the loving individual such as true humility, courage, faith and discipline. As Fromm puts it, "Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is it a pleasant sensation … something which one 'falls into' if one is lucky?" Fromm then describes the problem of our society as an endeavor to being loved and to be lovable, rather than that of loving others. And so, we toil to make ourselves successful, powerful and rich, to be attractive, with pleasant manners, inoffensive and so on in order to experience being loved . The second problem is the attitude that, "… to love is simple , but to find the right object to love is difficult i.e. it's not that we lack the capacity or ability or faculty to love, but that we have not found the 'right' person to love." Thus, the goal is to find the 'best'...

I do not particularly like networking events. Formal ones such as those organized by schools and are termed "career networking night" or "spring prom", are particularly abhorrent to me. The reason is that the end of the night is supposed to bring us closer to gaining employment, making connections to interesting things happening in our fields and so on. If we are lucky, all we end up with is a bunch of fancy business cards that we dump at the bottom of our drawers, never to see the light of day again, and of course a bloated stomach from all those nachos and chicken wings we consumed. image courtesy of goldenkeyhq.files.wordpress.com My main problem with these events however, is the premise for the event: highly intelligent people, who know themselves to a certain degree, are going to share some close quarters with strangers, in order to knock around ideas, connect and possibly plan some future engagements. What ends up happening, however, is that highly anxio...

Why do I believe what I believe? Why are my values what they are? Where do my thoughts come from? Are my ideals 'mine'? The question of thought, is a complex one, not least because thinking is so difficult. Many of us do not think, we take the thoughts of others and use them as the foundations, walls, or thatching of our mental structures. But we rarely think, and deep enough on important matters anyway. Thinking involves the admission that we do not know, an admission coming from a place of humility that we are ignorant and could do better. It does not, as is usually thought, have to be from a place of knowledge, even though knowledge can inform thoughts. If it was, then we would not necessarily be thinking, but just reorganizing previously known ideas. It begins with asking the question, why. Why do we go to school? Why do we marry and have children? Why do we work to earn money in order to buy things? Why do we elect leaders? Why do we go to places of worship and perfo...

Philosophy comes from the two Greek words philo meaning love and sophia meaning wisdom, ergo a love of wisdom. The famous Greek and Roman philosophers were therefore, in search of the wisdom to all sorts of questions, big and small. This is a good book for a number of reasons. It is a pretty easy and straightforward read. It's free of pompous language that makes people hate philosophy and thinking. De Botton has demystified philosophy to everyday life, making it accessible to us. courtesy of huffingpost.com He presents different philosophical ideas from six of the best thinkers of old: Montaigne, Seneca, Socrates, Nietzsche, Epicurus, and Schopenhauer. Each of these philosophers had unique experiences and different backgrounds that influenced their thought trails. Montaigne inherited an estate from his dead parents; Socrates was poor; Schopenhauer was lonely; Epicurus was full of life; Nietzsche could not find love; Seneca lived during the dangerous times of the murderous E...

Life is a mystery that we must solve with our hands tied at the back, and blindfolded, without sound. We must figure out life from the moment we are born from our own eyes and the eyes of our parents. image courtesy of michaelnewnham.com There will be no good old days that we like to reminisce about. Those days, are gone, forever. They will not come back, and we need to get over them. Yes, recognize that they happened; appreciate the lessons learned from them, and then look ahead, because that's where we are headed. A life lived in order to bring back the good old days is delusional. A government that brings out policies of the good old days will fail; coal jobs are gone from America (at least the vast majority); manufacturing of cars is cheaper in Mexico than in the United States. No amount of pouting will change these things. Things will get worse until we die. We start dying the moment we are conceived. Our days are numbered, literally, and begin to count down, unti...

I was born in Kenya; I even have a birth certificate issued by the government of Kenya. I was raised in Kenya, and my passport says that I am Kenyan. My parents are Kenyan, and my family is Kenyan. Naturally, everyone thought I would become Kenyan, and I must have passed off as one. Well, I think I have managed to fool everyone, because, well I do not think I am Kenyan. What have I become? photo courtesy of kyusho.com I have spent the majority of my last 5 years outside Kenya. I have traveled to various countries on the African continent, worked and lived there. I even passed off as one of the locals, with enough local language to get through daily situations. What I have enjoyed most though, is the diversity in the tastes and sounds: food, drink and music. From amala  in Nigeria to kenkey  in Ghana and sadza  in Zimbabwe, and Carlsberg Chill in Malawi, I have tasted life. But I partook in different cultures long before my traveling days. I listened to Rhumba mus...

So, on Monday my classmates told me that the impending snowstorm could mean that we would not be able to leave our homes for some time, even up to a week. There would be no delivery services for food, or ice cream and other good things. If I wanted to survive the snow storm, I would need to stock up on food and necessities and hope for the best. Needless to say, being the first "snow day" I would experience, I let them scare me. In the Mega Farmers market where I do my grocery shopping, there was a buzz. It was busy, busier than usual. People were moving around with a step of purpose; people were excited. I was taken aback. Because I usually do my shopping on Sundays, doing one on a Monday was a jolt. I did not think so many people shop here. However, I noted that people were a bit more friendly, courteous, patience. Why could this be? Perhaps it was because at that moment, we were all victims of an impending disaster, a snowstorm that would affect us all. We would all sh...

I have been in the US for 8 months now, and not once have I heard anyone fart. You know how you enter a lift (elevator) when someone is leaving it, and they have this embarrassed look because they know what they did? It does not seem to happen here. In my boarding school days, evening study was a time of unusually increased farting especially on days we had meals with beans and/or cabbage for supper. We considered it normal, and it was so common, we could tell by the smell, which of our classmates had farted. I know what you are thinking, "Gross". And I understand that. Farts ahead Apparently, farting is a normal biological function of the human body, just like sweating, salivating etc. In fact, "holding it in" may lead to bloating, discomfort and even abdominal pain. It could also indicate an impending problem with one's gut. Scientists also think that smelling one's fart could be good for your health! Who knew! Bottling up is an issue when it ind...

We are all in a rat race, whose beginning we do not comprehend, and whose end we cannot fathom. Therefore, in typical human fashion, we have invented systems that keep us sane, as we try to figure out what it's all about. We invented religions, economic systems, socio-cultural systems, political systems and so on, all to make meaning out of our lonely and short existence. But all this has fallen short of fulfilling us. We know we are on a journey, but don't know a journey to where. We do not know how we will know once we get there. Is it possible that the destination is behind us, but we have not recognized it? "Preposterous," we think to ourselves. Aren't we higher beings able to shape our own paths? Would we not know where our paths are headed? History does not agree. Every system that has been built seems to have been the ultimate one. Political & economic systems have struggled to lay claim to the title of the "best" and most "sustainabl...

You who have gone before us Reminding us of our own mortality Keeping us on the straight and narrow Reminding us of the ticking clocks of time That our days are in fact numbered and known Our time is coming soon When we will join you We remember you We remember the laughter We remember your faces in the sun We remember the songs we sang together We remember the dances we danced We remember the times together We remember the silence We remember everything we left unsaid We remember the love we did not love We remember the kisses we did not kiss We remember the unspoken words We remember the unlaughed laughter We remember the unsung songs We remember it all We should have told you how we felt How you made us feel What you meant to us But courage failed us We were scared We are scared We are afraid But we trudge on Hoping to meet one day In another world Where we will dance again Where we will smile again Where we will laugh again Where we will sing ag...

Growing up, it was common for our parents to encourage us and tell us how we could be anything we wanted in life. "You can do anything you set your mind to do!" They would cheer us on. "Even the president?" We'd ask unconvinced. "Yes, you could even become the richest man in the world!" All this fascinated us. We vowed to ourselves that we'd in fact become people of substance who would be recognized in the entire world for our achievements. We'd ride in super-yachts like Abramovich and the rest of the mega-rich. We would produce life changing inventions, innovating our way to stardom. We'd become the next prodigy in music and sports. All this is well and good, meant to lift our spirits. Assessing our lives however, no matter how much effort we have put in to realize our dreams and visions, they have eluded us. We have become adept at doing other things though: commenting on FB posts, retweets, identifying the hottest political issue...

Shared on a WhatsApp group, these proverbs are succint and self-explanatory. 1. The anger of a penis doesn't destroy the vagina. (Zimbabwe) 2. There's no virgin in a maternity ward. (Cameroon) 3. A child can play with it's mother's breasts but not with the father's testicles. (Ghana) 4. The man who marries a beautiful woman and the farmer who grows corn by the road side have the same problem. (Ghana) 5. When you see a woman sitting with her legs open, never tell her to close them, because u do not know her source of fresh air. (Ethiopia) 6. He who says that nothing lasts forever has never tried Hausa perfume. (Nigeria) 7. The only woman who knows where her man is every night is a widow. (Togo) 8. An erect penis has no conscience. (Uganda) 9. If you go to sleep with an itching anus, you are sure to wake up with smelly fingers. (Kenya) 10. The day a mosquito lands on your testicles is the day you will know there is a better way of resolving issues without u...

This journey called life is both sweet and sad. Days are lonely and dark and cold, at the same time cheery and rich and beautiful. It is a paradox that we struggle with daily, faltering and then getting up and marching on. Music makes the journey more bearable. In that instance when you hear a song that connects you to the infinite, in a way you cannot explain, you transcend your petty grievances against your lover, forget your self-pity. This is one of the greatest gifts from the universe, ability to return to our Source even when we do not understand the words being sung. I do not understand what these two songs say, but they are transcendent.

The rise of the continent of Africa is imminent, it is ongoing and it is unstoppable. For a long time now, the land that is the home of the Black Man has been downtrodden, allowed only to eat the scraps, the leftovers from the white man's rule. This is changing. We are seeing more nations of Africa freeing themselves from the bondage of complete dependence and servility to nations of Europe and the Americas. Our people are standing tall. But this cannot be one man's dream. Nor can one nation go it alone in the process of gaining complete autonomy from the rule that keeps him serving the selfish ends of corporations. We must unite. We must unite not only to move forward, but also to survive. It is imperative that the nations of Africa see themselves as a brotherhood for the black soul. One nation alone will not survive the onslaught that is coming to anyone that dares challenge the status quo. We have seen what happened to those who dared go alone in the liberat...

Jane and Michael had always known that they would get married since they were young. But when they did get married, everyone was astonished, even though everyone had anticipated it. What shocked everyone really was the simplicity of their wedding. Jane's parents were wealthy and had bequeathed their only child a large portion of their wealth. "I do not need it mum, please tell dad to give it to charity," she had protested when her parents had announced they would name her the sole recipient of the wealth. "God is providing for us, we do not really need all that money. What would we do with it?" Jane's mum had cried on the phone for three minutes and protested at the injury their child was doing them. "Your dad will be heartbroken… Honey, don't do that to him, his poor heart will fail him." When her dad heard it, he had not talked to her for a week. When he did, his voice was pained, distance, "I do not like to see you and Michael li...