Of the pious religious lot

It remains to be seen when coronavirus pandemic is declared contained worldwide, places of worship will be same as before. But given the way many Kenyans are religious to the core, there’s no doubt pews will overfill and aisles overflow as majority throngs the churches.

There is also no denying that majority of worshippers do not attend churches because they have faith in God or other deities out there in the pantheon. From time immemorial, Africans have been deeply spiritual before the advent of white man and missionaries to the continent which, after successful brainwashing, saw the converts becoming too religious – and this is the scenario we’ve today.

Book show how the west owes Africa more than an apology for colonialism

The recent death of black American, George Floyd, under the hands of a white police officer has seen protests spreading across the world demanding for racial justice. And there is a witnessed pulling down of statues of mostly whites who were deemed as racists. And when it comes to reporting about Africa, many western writers and reporters portray a negative picture of the continent. To a westerner’s mindset, Africa is a continent bedeviled by internecine tribal wars, poverty, diseases and inept and corrupt governments.

Reawakening the literary passion and the negative ethnicity

For long, I’ve been an avid literature lover. Back then, I could read huge tomes as a pastime. Books and I were constant companions. That was long before the advent of smart phones that seems to have slowed the pace as I shifted to consuming digital content – mostly which had little to do with digital books with much of time spent on social media.

  Then came migration to digital television content and I was much of a couch potato especially at weekends glued to the screen following European football leagues with movies in between as a premium cable TV subscriber. In short, the books that made me an armchair traveller including visiting and touching distant galaxies became a thing of past. I had lost interest in smut stories, which, anyway, were imaginations of authors behind them, and had switched to watching reality and documentaries in science channels.

And It Is My Birthday!

Before we adopted the Western ways of life, celebrating one’s birthday in the African tradition was unheard of. Whereas we had age sets groups then, it was not hard for the elders to follow on the growth and development of the youngsters, until they were initiated into adulthood and became integral members of the society. How they kept track of seasons, without a calendar, in knowing one’s age is still a puzzle.

   The scenario is different today.

  Birthdays are marked with much fanfare that they’re a kind of mini-ceremonies if not full-fledged, elaborate and lavish ones. Notice the layered candlelit cakes with bottle of champagnes to mark such occasions!

Why Are Banks Shying from Offering Moratoriums on Loans?

In normal times, the government would be looking for avenues to tax us to death to fund the new financial year budget which will be unveiled later in June. It seems that the outbreak of new coronavirus disease (Covid-19) will make it hard to milk extra taxes from the overburdened citizenry given the slump of business activities as companies have downsized or closed shop altogether.

  And given we’re not in ‘normal times’ with this outbreak affecting almost all sectors of the economy, it is succinct to say there is less cash flow in the economy. And as such, it is a struggle for many, especially for those living from hand to mouth, to put food on the table.

Of Unsolicited Advice from the Know-it-all Kind

Sometimes, circumstances may force us down to that level we were at a certain point in life. I like the Kiswahili dictum that states that he who scales up the literal ladder scales down the same. And, figuratively, we too scale up and down life’s ladder one rung at a time. It is not in contention there are lucky ones who, upon scaling up life’s ladder, remains at the apex until they take that worldly final bow. Not so for a majority in a given population who either climbs up too fast, stagnates midway, before crashing down in a cataclysm of dust or begins that slow but painful down climb.

  It shocks when those who see your sudden humbling down or fall from grace celebrates. To some, it is like witnessing Balaam’s donkey speaking!

When Your Best Laid Plans Go Wrong

Anything can go wrong when you think you’ve everything figured out to the last minute detail. And when you’re having that feeling that you’ve dodged a problem or avoided a bad situation, you suddenly find yourself in thick of same, or somehow being confronted by it, rendering credence that even the best-laid plans sometimes do not work out!

  My effort to evade public transport, or any mass transport system for that matter, came a cropper and I found myself using the same means I had done my utmost best to avoid! With the coronavirus out there, you don’t know who may sneeze or give a wheedling cough and have all passengers contracting the virus – provided it has spread this far.