The Bahatian

  My name is Isaiah Kagiri Waititu. I teach geography and business studies at Gatero Day Secondary School in Laikipia County and has been to the abysmal depths of alcoholism and back. I grappled with alcoholism demon for close to 20 years. A duration in which I would get employed and abscond duty, or get sacked, from 10 private schools! I would get in and out of two relationships in the process in addition to doing immeasurable disservice to scores of secondary school students. Today, I had since been rehabilitated and I am a staunch anti-alcoholism and drugs crusader working with several organisations.   I began sneaking out of school to take chang’aa and other cheap brews while I was in form two at Leshau High school in 1993. You see, I hail from Leshau area of Nyandarua County and therefore knew the school’s backyard well. A glass of the killer brew was retailing at ten shillings then. Surprisingly, I managed to score a B- (minus) of 66 points in the KCSE. ...

  I can say that we unofficially launched our gospel ministry during our wedding day in November of 1988. I had met my wife, Lydia Indeche Were, during our student days at the Kenya Technical Trainers College (KTTC) and ours was love at first sight.   There was one thing we shared in common, we loved singing. We were active members of the college’s Christian Union and were also involved in worship and praise activities as well. However, music is something I traces down in my family line.   I (George Mwaura Ngotho) was born in Kipkabus in Kerio Valley in Eldoret to a polygamous father. He had two wives and seventeen children. I come from his first wife who bore him ten children. The other mother had seven children. The old man was ingenious in that he saw great potential in his many children. He took scriptures seriously in seeing children as a blessing and a heritage from the Lord, and the one who had a quiver full of them was blessed indeed. As a sign of g...

That the communal spirit of the yore is no more in the once closely-knitted African societies is not an understatement. Individualism spirit has become a new norm that it is not surprising one can pass their next door neighbour with hardly a greeting or an acknowledgement of any sort. Gone are the days when a community would rally behind their own like during making of houses (the traditional types), with individuals left to figure out how to put up houses on their own nowadays.   It is no longer fashionable to drop to your immediate neighbour’s home for a chat unless it is vitiated by urgency or you have booked an appointment beforehand.  

Making New Year resolutions has become our pastimes if not a hobby on each New Year day. Hardly do we achieve any if all of the resolutions or attain the set goals. And in most instances, some of resolutions are carried over from the previous years.   Given that old habits are difficult to break overnight, it is not difficult to see why most of us will be in similar situation perhaps indulging in some of those vices we have tried to break to no avail. It gets worse, however, if addiction to something moves to the next phase making it hard to quit.   But why is it success rate of quitting a habit lasts for a few days before one relapses to old ways again?   Some of the resolutions made may require help from others other than going alone. Everybody, so it seems, has a strong willpower to do a thing but lacks the courage to do so. A lady who was an alcoholic for thirty years tells me each succeeding year, she would make the vow to quit the bottle and concen...