8-4-4, The Salient Tragedy; A Mockery

Heeeey…. Think this is a bit early? Well, Yeah… Let’s say I’m trynna make up for last week or just maybe, actually to say the truth… its excitement! So I’m going to say this once, because I’m not so proud of it but I enjoyed every single second of it… If anybody is just about near 4^th street, kindly call 911 or is it 999? Coz I just hit 8-4-4 in the nuts! And she collapsed…. That quite really got me surprised!

Yes, you guessed right, I just finished school…you can imagine, 20 years of my life has been spent in school! You could say my happiest, sour and bitterest moments have been in these years. And Hell yeah, I will treasure them, remember them… I fell in love, broke hearts, antagonized, worshipped even, impressed, got disappointed, regretted but also got a shot at self-discovery within these two decades.

I think High school was the epitome, there was this ‘game’ we had christened ‘Kuchek Logo’, (I must seriously attribute this legendary term to some dude called Chura or ‘Frog’). You see, where I went to school, there were endless funkys ranging from sports and drama to musicals, which spanned the better part of the weekend. As such almost every other weekend the school was throngs of oestrogen-hoarding beings, this augured well with the testosterone-infested mortals whose default impulse was to ascertain the logos of their presumably picturesque patrons were in place. You realize where the school logo is usually placed right? Good, now you get it? Oh boy, those were real good times.

Some older friend even told me that it was the best period in my life! And I would agree, I have made a great deal of friends in the last two decades that I think making better friends than they would be utopian, dreamy even.  

They’ve been good times, aren’t they? If you still at it I bet you might be highly inclined to lash out at me… like this last exam I casually handed back at my don. Man, I thought first class was a possibility… I had this overwhelming feeling that I’d be crowned, (I know what you’re thinking, like

this overly ambitious idiot! It’s an illusion boy) but you can’t really convince me that you’ve never thought of yourself as the best in something! As in, that time you couldn’t shake off that feeling that you are so good at it, or rather have put so much effort at it, or it comes naturally to you, or like Mwangi, whose ego screams at him “you must be the best”. All am saying is that, it’s perfectly normal to want that shining crown of perfection even if it’s in the most obvious thing or undervalued skill, like playing a game of draughts!

How one exam can change things? Spending virtually a whole day summarizing a thousand pages of pdfs, benchmarking with several ‘mobile revisions’ from classmates and sending the vital good luck prayer from above only to walk into the exam room and find the quick-witted, self-proclaimed Aristotle fellow lifted questions from a space fate-probability prototyping lecture from Mars. I was screwed from the offing.

“8-4-4 is no joke” some common purported infallible wisdom has it. Quite agreeable to the casual onlooker this is. To the student drowned in the murk that it presents, this is a grim reality that is inevitable and source of untold disquiet and to quite a number, terror. I remember some friends in high school who had perfected the art of doctoring their result slips. Man, the creativity that goes on in that level, is astounding, or should I call it bravely, or maybe ‘daredevilness’, well, clearly there isn’t such a word. 

One managed to sneak into a teacher’s office and plucked a couple of pages from the results register, the other easily got a rubber stamp of the institution made and the most valuable was the calligrapher (and they were quite many), he almost effortlessly duplicated the lecturer’s handwritings and signatures producing exact replica of result slips save for elevated performance of the clever would-be-scholars! Wait, I forgot they also did the same with the permission chits, allowing unlimited number of outings into town. Problem arose when the enthusiastic careers master introduced an academic ‘clinic day’ for teachers, parent and students to review progress. But that’s a story for another day.

Whoever came up with this gobbledygook idea that administering a sitting examination is the best way to determine who asses the internalization of taught skill must have been high on some seriously illegal stuff. Why should a two-hour engagement be used to declare me excellent, good, fair or poor at something I have something I have been learning for over three months? Or in the case of lower levels eight years and four years respectively? If the aim was to test memory they our brainy educators have tremendously succeeded. But then, really, where does memory count in execution of real tasks, save for stage plays and recitations? Even best-selling movies involve several rehearsals, dry runs and multiple takes. Hell, even newscasters read from auto-cues (some haters actually call them run-of-the-mill screen-reading bimbos!)

I hate average, I seriously detest that term. And to think that some average (pun) mortal would label me as such, more even in a document that is supposed to assure my survival in this twisted, unfair and super-competitive world of job seeking is seriously sickening. That the very system that is used to tag me such is based on a flawed assumption of the normal curve and the more appreciable notion that hierarchy is inevitable is so very unwelcome in my world. Media talks of the average citizen (mwananchi), we talk of the average girl (in terms of beauty), average height, wealth, health and even the cliché preposterous average life! An defective concept that continues to serve the egotistic interests of a few effectively playing off our capabilities, egos, aspirations and our cherished albeit subtle needs for recognition and self-achievement.

Even more depressing is the fact that we have fallen four-fold for this indoctrination to the extent of becoming hapless tools of its legitimation. Whoever said that you are an average citizen just because you do not a position of power and influence in government? Or because your bank statement reads far below $100? You are actually exceptional, incomparable and outstanding (never mind that these words might actually mean the same thing!) but the point is, you have influence, among peers or even your kids, you have achieved quite a lot that nobody has cared to document and even those instances that you feel like shouting ‘Serikali saidia’ you still muffle it up and find a way out. Ooh, not to mention you’re unpredictable! The difference between you and the glorified ‘extra-ordinary’ pseudo-leaders and tycoons is that you chose to remain incorruptible and honorable (we actually call them that!!), or they had some situational advantage that didn’t come your way. Calling you average is sheer insult.

I won’t talk about average beauty, the unjustifiability is too obvious.

So, 8-4-4 dear, I hope (honestly I don’t) you are safely recuperating at the asylum I recommended, that is if they got my message. Don’t worry, they will patch you up just fine. Kindly, don’t take this personal, don’t you try to get emotional, it’s not your fault, blame your very implementer (FYI, he was high!).

It is such a pity that after attaining sovereignty, our so respectable forefathers chose to adopt the colonizer’s education system and in some way hoped that it would work for us, as if we had no history! Before they came we had formal teaching system of soft skills and apprenticeship for blacksmiths, iron smelters and other specialized skills like wine-making that was actually more relevant to our needs.

You see, when Europeans introduced formal education in Kenya, or generally in Africa it wasn’t really that they were generous. It was a means to achieving their selfish end of training Africans in manning local administration at the lowest ranks and to staff private firms owned by Europeans. Not only do we continue to train our youthful population in largely literary professions that do not reflect our economic needs but our very ‘learned’ people continue to scramble for employment opportunities in foreign owned firms like Deloitte and PWC (Yeah, I too have applied for internship). At this, I must regrettably say Europeans are quite a clever people!

The tragedy is that Europeans and other Continents for that matter (and from wherever this insane system was borrowed from) don’t train there students in a style even remotely similar to ours. Their children abilities and interests are matched with their training such that one can become a successful athlete or football without giving a heck about what hydrocarbons mean. It is unheard of that one is prevented from pursuing an engineering course because some Agricultural course, history or religious education course lowered his mean grade!!

Indeed the colonial afterbirth is what we are grappling with.

Oops! I realize I have said too much…..but then I confessed I’m wordy here (click)

I’ll be sending you the E_vites to my Screw8-4-4 bash soonest (how we always find reasons to party)…. Just follow this blog via email… I could just book reserve for you that VIP seat!

Don’t forget to leave your reactions here

Here's to Unpredictable!

So, am late? I know, and believe you me this is not my making, yes I started the blog, no coercion at all and I was enthusiastic yeah, and still am. Am blaming this on some serious goddess somewhere called inspiration, this weekend she’s really having a field day eluding me.

Now you know, and you will be forgiven to not expect any mind blowing insight or a pseudo-fact. But here’s the catch. Yesterday I had my first article published in the leading daily and I have been frenzied, well for the better part of yesterday’s evening. 

Man, you can’t imagine how much impact such little approval can have on your ego, motivation and actually inspiration, so to speak. I might have sent quite a load of texts to literally all my contacts (they had to know, or is it deserved) and even bought a newspaper for the first time in like six month. Some friend actually suggested I laminate it. Haha! Hilarious, right? You will be surprised that I already have!

When the Future talks to you

How fast can time pass? I mean we are already in the second quarter of the year, just like that! My super awesome niece, Claire, is just about five months in this twisted world, and she's so grown. I think the enthusiasm of all these new experiences is really psyching her up. Can you imagine, every single thing that's happening in your life is new? Not routine......awesome, right?

But for you the only sure thing I fathom is that by now you’ve broken most of your year’s resolutions or as you might as well, want to put it; you’ve ‘amended’ them a couple of times to ‘suit situations’.

You are probably realizing that some of them were unrealistic, or needed some better timelines. Better still, if you are the kind (I included) who live life as a free-fall of events banking on your flexibility, you might be thinking you ought to have had a few resolutions. So it’s quite some good time to do an audit of how productive you’ve been this year.

Hold that thought. And consider this;

What if you had a glimpse of the future? For just a few minutes you see yourself six months, one year, or say five years from now. Fancy that?

The future is agreeably uncertain for all of us and as such you might find yourself successful, you got

that dream job, your own company and a beautiful family but it’s also possible to find yourself miserable, jobless, divorced, broke or even in jail or dead!

That kind of information would surely be invaluable to your present life. Especially if you are aware that your future is a dark one you would make all efforts to change the possible causes of your failure and just maybe change it (since there’s no such thing as what people call, destiny). If it is indeed good and rosy then you’d probably want to accelerate things although some would just sit back, relax and wait for things to happen. For instance if you realized that you’ll die in the next five years (in your flash-forward you read your obituary) you’d definitely make drastic changes to your long term goals and a host of many other things top among them ways of avoiding death.

The dashboard console of the time-travel
vehicle in Back to The Future movie

I know this all sounds wishful thinking and a result of too much time-machine movies like my personal favorite Back to the Future where this nerd scientist invents time-travel and he is able to manipulate events across the two time divides; future and past. In a hilarious twist of events the scientist kid friend travels into the past and his alcoholic mother falls for him altering his future. If his parents don’t meet then he has no future. Something called the Grandfather Paradox!

But the more thought-provoking one is FlashBack where the whole world falls unconscious for two minutes and each person has a vision of himself six months into the future. The anarchy that follows makes you realize how uncertainty is quite a gift!

I will agree with you if you think am sounding delusional and having deliberate affront to common sense, but interestingly physicists have actually made significant milestones in developing the time-machine that one Ronald Mallet, Professor at the University of Connecticut predicts that humans might have the means to travel in time by the end of this century!  (Don’t take my word for it, click on the blue links learn more).

Now go back in time (pun very deliberate) and rewound that thought you were to hold. If you were to go back to New Year’s Eve am sure you would have made some very concrete resolutions. And am positive there are many other junctures in your life that you wish you had acted wiser, or decisively.

Well, that’s just about it. In the present world as it is, the future is the most realistic thing that we can think of changing (if you don’t believe in destiny) or more accurately look-forward-to influence. It is undeniably unnerving, terribly worrying and in essence the very reason why we exist; work, love, go to war and even pray.

I remember the very first break-up I had. I hear they say there is no shame in admitting you were dumped, but naah, I won’t say. It was some terrible infatuation that we had drowned into and by the time she was being given CPR on the shore I was still fighting lilies and kissing bedrock. If somebody had told me that I would be this happy at that time I would never have understood. If I had known for real that it would be insignificant in the near future I probably would have missed the whole process of reinventing myself.

But the predicament am facing today dwarfs the relationship trifle that I was grappling with at that time. In exactly four weeks from now I will no longer be a student. While that might be something to celebrate, for me it means that exactly one month later I will be on my own. My very practical dad had casually said to me when I entered college that this was the farthest he would hold my hands, he alluded to the fact that his own parents had barely seen him though high school, that he had worked his way through college to employment on his own; this was a favour. I must have been too enthusiastic about college at that time to realize how blunt he was at the time.

On January as I left for school, he was quick to confirm if this was my last semester, apparently he never gets it right. Before reiterating his weaning-out agenda he was kind enough to ask “What exactly is that course you’re pursuing about?” I mumbled a few things and left. Now it’s gradually dawning on me, how I wish these scientists can fast track this time-travel project!

Am looking at a profession where competition is inordinately high with an ever appalling increase of non-professionals. Comedians rather and all manner of mediocre fellas thriving at the very core. Am sure some of my ‘advisers’ who were adamant I pursue education (because it’s safe) even before I completed secondary school are watching me in cynicism.

Securing an internship position alone (with no pay) in a serious media house is a real nightmare. A friend of mine a month ago had to furiously delete and blacklist the number of a former acquaintance who he had been counted on all along to ‘connect’ him for an internship position at a leading paper only to be asked to part with a whooping 50k!

Am almost certain that am not the only person who’s wary of the immediate future, a job interview that’s coming up, maybe your just about to become a dad, you’ve invested some bounty in the stock exchange, your university hasn’t accredited your course or even the simple issue of being caught up in the rain and your running short of fare.

Fear

Am afraid of the future…
I don’t know what will happen tomorrow…
I am afraid to lose the things that I have or fail to get the things that I want…

We might not be saying these phrases directly but we sometimes feel every thought in these words creeping up on us, even at times when we appear most confident. How many times have you worried about the future or felt Afraid of it?

David Cain, a lifestyle blogger in article for thoughtcatalog.com says that if you look at almost any fear, ‘‘it’s always a specific moment you are feeling’’. A moment with awful feelings in it – awkwardness, pain, shame, guilt, horror, shame, angst. He opines that life unfolds only in moments and as such our fear of the unpredictable future is based on fear of moments that you believe will force you to experience feelings that you really don’t want to experience.

Basically, whatever drives us are two things; the appeal of feelings we want to experience like love and the fear of feelings we don’t want to experience, like failure. This means that whatever we fear is actually something that we have already experienced, we wouldn’t fear it if we hadn’t.

As such David staunchly cautions against dismissing entire categories of events and decisions from our lives just because they have the potential of evoking moments with acute feelings that we’d rather not experience again. For example giving up on marriage because you were hurt in one relationship.

Since it’s not possible (yet) to travel back in time or into the future it’s imperative that we learn to conquer fear of the unknown. One fact that should get you started on this is that, no matter what unnerving or terrifying scenario you are picturing in your mind, this is not the way that it will actually go down.

For instance that phone call you have been postponing, you’re thinking the interview won’t go well or your requests won’t be proved; you realize that when you finally make the call it definitely turns out a bit different from the horrors you had imagined.

 The real bad stuff isn't going to be something you had the foresight to worry about anyway.

“The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.” – Mary Schmich

So relax, it’s never that serious.

Easter Cocktail of Real-time friends

Quite a long weekend ahead, huh?

Yeah, it’s Easter again and y’all want to have a good time, maybe travel home, visit a park , like the little-known Chaka Ranch or take this exciting road trip with friends to some countryside, recover on lost sleep or mostly catch up with friends.

I bet you will receive a text from some contact in your phone that spoke last with on New Year’s Eve. There’s this unwritten rule that one is allowed to stay quiet most of the year as long as they don’t forget to text during the holidays!

This reminds of days when I (and most of my friends then) didn’t have a phone and I had this sim card that I carried with me. I would have to wait hours late in the night to use the only phone in our dormitory which used to be charged through very risky means. Chance was really at play here, since the girl I was calling had to be not only awake, but also near the available phone. Patience, that was. I actually had half the phonebook off-head!

Then I bought my first phone, the awesome (still is) Samsung e250i slider, and by then there was this 2go app that we christened ‘dark-room’ due to the crooked things that happened in the ‘rooms’. Once, I literally spent the whole night chatting some chic with a really kinky pseudonym.

Then they introduced sms bundles and communication became less costly. Now I could comfortably talk with virtually all my contacts without making a call for almost a week. Keeping up conversations with in the living room became quite a big deal with all these texts flooding my phone. Poor mum, she couldn’t understand.

But then came the mother of all idlers, WhatsApp, she even made it cheaper to text and now you even could tell when they are ignoring your texts. This Easter they’ve upped their efforts of assuring your redundancy by introducing free calls. Oh boy! Today alone, calls I have received are double those of a week. In fact the WhatsApp status of one of my friends reads “don’t text, I will call you” never mind that this is a dude operates on 20mbs a day!

The love people have for free things is astounding! So marketers and spammers took advantage of this and quickly came up with a link which they purport once you invite at least ten groups or contacts from a user’s phone would activate the feature in his account. Truth is you are giving away people’s contacts to advertisers. I have received like thirty of them this week and counting. How resending a message activates a feature I can’t tell. But then its faith. The most circulated one is that which promises to continue making WhatsApp free (people believe this!!)

But the most hilarious one yet is when I received this long text where at the end there are several balls and the promise was if I forward to twenty people the balls would start bouncing!!

My online friends.

The couple of years I have been on social media I certainly have made intriguing ‘friends’. People I would definitely never have met in real life and a good majority that I haven’t met yet and a great deal who I’ll never meet beyond the precincts of my 5 inch screen.

The online ‘friend’ in reality is an acquaintance, since it’s a verifiable fact that you don’t actually know these people personally. You met virtually and what you interact with is a manufactured version of them.

One friend told me he had once grabbed the number of a girl from a mutual friend and they had these awesome conversations on WhatsApp until they agreed to meet. Luckily, she hadn’t photoshopped her profile pictures and neither did she have what my lecturer calls ‘a face for radio’ but the conversation wouldn’t take off to the level of the online chats. It was quite un-exciting and slowed-down. Funny enough they still chat but meet up no more.

Here are a few archetypes that I have encountered, and most definitely you have too. They map into real life acquaintances.

The newscaster friend

He’s the tweep who incessantly posts interesting links on a hoard of events that happen all over. You can bet that he spends considerable amount of time on gossip sites like ghafla, and all categories of gutter press (they prefer the label alternative media). He seldom posts personal info but will gladly inform you about any other thing including his immediate neighbour’s yester-night squabble. You’d want to ignore them and sometimes you contemplate unfriending them but you don’t. Sometimes they are useful, they give you a heads up.

The Avoid-a-friend

It’s either that ex who wants to keep tabs on you, or that friend you pissed off in a past event and they can’t stand being around you. But they still want to keep abreast with what you do, so maybe, just maybe they can find a chance to get back at you.  The ex wants to confirm if they ‘won’ the break-up; if you have a new girl, a new job, new style or you post messages targeting them.

They would rather not meet you in real life, but they have some unfinished agenda with you, so by keeping the online connection and employing discretion they can grill you.

The friend collector

He’s obsessed with numbers. He will accept any friend request with relish and deliberately look for new ways to increase his followers but still ensuring that he follows very few. Credit be given to this friend since he takes time to post catchy and well-thought posts to keep his followers engaged but seldom replies on the comments he gets. He prides in being a mini-celebrity.

The friend of a friend

I like to call her the distant-friend, more like that distant relative. She showed up on a mutual friends list and because you wanted to increase your friend list you added them. It’s some kind of a long-distance relationship since this friend at times is a friend of a friend’s friend and the chain can go even farther. In the least it’s comforting that someone on your list knows them, but in reality that friend who ‘knows’ them might have friended them in the very same way. Apparently, these are the best shot at making real friendship.

The frenemy

They are nice to your face, praise you for milestones achieved and paint this illusion of good genuine allies. They track your online footsteps, like your posts and even retweet your witty tweets. But in reality they talk smack about you behind your back, are envy-infested and could jump on the very next opportunity to plot your downfall. But to do this they must keep you friends and try to impress. We all have them.

The show off

Social media is the best thing that ever happened in their lives. They are intrusive, change their profile pictures a zillion times and their status updates elaborate full of pseudo-sophisticate lingo. Instagram is home for them and are always keen to take photos with people who matter.  When they talk to influential or well-known persons even for a minute, they will not hesitate to let you know. Almost their whole life is laid bare on social media. When they buy a shoe, watch, have dinner, travel or even dump someone you will know.

The unfriend

People who you’d wish they never sent you that friend request or made you join that WhatsApp group. They are the moral authorities in your real life, when around them you ‘behave yourself’. But now they joined social media and they probably have favorited you that they receive notifications every time you post something new. That may your boss, auntie, big sister, your lecturer, pastor or even your parent! A friend of mine was forced to open a new account after his mum sent him friend request.

They make you feel like that protected kid all over again. But you cannot unfriend them, or put restrictions on their profiles, it will even make the situation worse.

The apathetic friend

He’s savvy, non-nonsense and takes social media as seriously as his day-job. He has no time to comment on links that you share on his timeline leave alone clicking on them. But he wants you to comment on his updates and retweet him.

When you send him that long inspiring or funny message on WhatsApp, he’s furious, he can’t read it. The best he can do if he’s in a good mood is type some brief vague reply like “he-he! Funny!” or “interesting” or just “Ha-ha!” Make the mistake of telling him to forward it to others and he won’t reply. He believes that Instagram should be a photographer’s exhibition point and not some selfie-archive!

The friend-in-need

He takes time to mostly click like on your updates and some occasional brief comments so you notice him. He retweets witty tweets from all and sundry in hope of re-follows and mentions. All this to build a base for this business he runs and will broadly ask you to share his links and visit his website. When he needs a certain service to get exposure, or has a new blog, a weekend offer or an event he’s organizing even your email won’t be spared.

Well, I will agree with you if you have more archetypes or even better names to brand these online creatures who keep us happy, sad, engaged and all the while online. Or for some on-the-line … (of something).

Think you fit in any of the above?

Better still this long weekend as you explore that colossal dream sequence at home and rejecting those unsolicited WhatsApp calls share that story of that rare online friend.