KAMA SI SISI SIONI

The lover of music I am, you expect that on the groove awards Saturday I was glued to screen to watch to get every detail of the event. The event could only be christened godly because it was perfectly planned and executed. It flowed well with one thing leading to another; performance to performance and award to award. The event had come hot on heels on the Chaguo La Teeniez (CHAT) awards that had happened roughly a week or two before. Of course you expect I watched that one too beginning to end but the emcees and the flow left a bad taste in mouth. It was a total disappointment with those running the show not even sure of what they were supposed to do. The sound was disastrously bad and the audience a handful; very poorly attended. The two made it clear to all and sundries that gospel music had now taken over; officially.

However, the proceedings of the Groove awards event kept a knot in my stomach the whole time just wondering whether my greatest musician of all time would scoop any award. My tension eased when he won the best Hip Hop song of the year with his Hit single, Hello. Deep down my heart though, I knew that was too little for him coz he’d done too much for the gospel scene. I thought he deserved more. Then came time for the Male artist of the year; arguably the biggest award in that event. I got tense just hoping it would fall on my man. The announcement was a little ‘not too good for me’ when Daddy Owen was given the hat. I respect daddy and have always considered him the dad of Kenyan gospel music. That was kinda acceptable to me but Juliani would be my choice anytime. When Daddy Owen went up the stage to receive the award, something shocking and unheard of before happened. He took it and said that he’s giving it to Juliani. My NTV channel went off the event immediately making me miss my man accepting the Male artist of the year award. I’ve never understood to this day why NTV were displeased with the happenings but it was obvious that Daddy thought and so did I that Juliani had done more than him over the year.

Juliani released his second album a few months ago and that one, I can’t get enough of it. He has also gone around the country’s varsities with his campaign dubbed Kama si sisi tour whose aim was to sensitize the youth of the need to take responsibility over their lives and to be agents to initiate the much needed change in the society. And he does well coz his performances are electrifying and inspirational. He does it with breaks to allow his audiences understand his lyrics and breaks to throw a word of positivity or the gospel of Christ to his audience. I call him the prophet of our time and have joked that if he was to start a cult, I would be his member number one.

One interesting thing about God is that he gave us freewill and ability to manipulate our minds. This power has done great things to humanity with technology changing every day and thus our lives. Christians however have received extra ability to spread morality and total dependency on God as an obligation of the whole human race. And Thus Jeremiah 1:10 “ see, today I appoint you over nations and Kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant. ‘’ The power God has put in us as agents of change is immense and unimaginable and it’s high time Christians learnt to use our powers. Kutabadilishwa na nani kama si sisi? Asks the prophet. Kama si sisi sioni.

THE COST OF JUSTICE

To my own statistics, I feel 95% of Kenyans would be at pains defining the word justice. Injustice seems to make more sense to us than the former. And this is how it goes; somewhere in 2008, Truth, justice and reconciliation commission (TJRC) is established by an act of parliament with the aim of investigating the gross human rights violations and other historical injustices in Kenya happening between independence and the commission’s inception. The goal here was to contribute towards national unity, reconciliation, and healing. Talking of historical injustices calls to fore many ugly scenes including still unresolved deaths of high profile individuals like Gama Pinto, Tom Mboya, J M Kariuki, Robert Ouko and the list is endless. Politically motivated or otherwise, the killers remain in hiding. A much more ugly scene was the Wagalla massacre where our security forces went wild and slaughtered fellow Kenyans in the name of finding a final solution to the Somali problem. And when the TJRC was preparing to go out to seek the truth and bring healing, it’s chairman then, Amb. Betwell Kiplagat was said to have been involved in the killings and this paralyzed the TJRC for sometime.

Our history as a country is so ugly that we would rather keep quiet about it. There are many guilty people walking free and going about there businesses like innocent people and the law seems too slow to catch up with them. On the other hand, there are so many innocent people serving long sentences in prison for crimes they never committed. I watched lockdown on citizen TV some days back, of prisoners on death row, and some stories on innocent people already over 10 years in prison was heart rending. We can only hope that the man with the earring, Dr. Willy Mutunga, the nominee for chief justice would bring a magical adornment into our justice systems.

This week, Kamukunji electorate was set to elect their new MP after justice stripped one Simon Mbugua of that seat months ago. The number of MPs who’ve lost parliamentary seats through court process now stands at 10 in the current house. That sounds good for justice but some rulings the courts have done of late leaves less to be desired of the justice system. The latest was the court injunction stopping Kamukunji By-election just 2 days before the planned date draining the taxpayer around Ksh. 40M of course not counting all the monies the aspirants had already spent on campaigns. This was supposed to be justice to one aspirant who’d went to court after being barred by the IIEC from running. I just wonder whether justice for one party is justified if it means injustice to other parties. Just picture this; How much on average does it cost to organize a by election? 50M on the lower side. Multiply that by 10 (number of MPs who have lost their seat through electoral petitions). That means 500m Kenyan money. That makes me look at my pay slip and it’s painful that I pay more than 10K every month, money that easily  goes to waste in such wanton ways. That money, Half a B cash is enough to get ALL IDPs out of camps. We thus need badly some individuals to straighten our crooked justice system.

Talking of justice; we’d gone astray, our thoughts, deeds and actions always evil. God chose the blood of lambs to redeem us but we squandered the system and did business at the temple of God. The poor with no animals were to die in iniquity leaving forgiveness of sins a reserve of the rich. Only priests could go before God for other peoples’ sins. Then God thought of need to overhaul the whole justice system. He sent his only son, who’d take on our sins and guilt and as ‘sinner’ he was mistreated, persecuted and finally nailed on the cross for our sins. The result; we can now go directly to God and get forgiveness for our sins. If justice was to be done, we would have come to destruction for our sins but our loving God found a better way for us. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says that ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’

Thus we are made righteous coz justice over our sins Jesus took upon Himself.

Jesus waz here

I’ve always thought that every human being desires immortality and will express the desire in someway through their actions. That explains why when you go to any school; you’ll find endless graffiti on desks, seats, walls of classrooms and even toilets with individual’s real names and  nicknames going something like; Maskadudu was here, Jaymo was here on 16/04/1995 and on and on. I’ve not seen this at my workplace and that makes me wonder whether desire for immortality is more in youngsters than adults. Another day as I walked through Hell’s gate National park, I noticed endless graffiti on the valleys, gulleys and caves therein all trying to say ‘waz here’. One sure thing though is that deep down the heart of every human being is the desire to be remembered by future generations more so for the contribution we’ll have made to humanity during our tenancy on earth. The sad truth is that most of us know quite consciously that we are doing very little or no investment towards our immortality or posterity. We only have hope to do much in future, a thought that is always at the back of our minds. What we forget though is that life passes fast and before we realize it, that day we do not know, we will be out of this world. That’s why  Hebrews 9:27 puts it this way, ‘Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment’ Once someone dies, and that is anytime, there wouldn’t be chance to consider immortality.

In the mood of Easter celebrations, it’s wise to consider ‘Jesus waz here’. It is said and truly so that no single man has had greater impact on the world beyond Jesus Christ. For that, let’s consider a little of his biography. Born to carpenter Joseph and Virgin Mary through the power of the Holy Spirit, at 12 he was already involved in deep Biblical discussions with Pharisees and teachers of the law. At 30, he began his public ministry. After baptism, he did miracle No. 1 ‘controversially’ changing water to wine after which he literally drove hawkers out of the Temple of God; overturning tables, freeing doves, goats and cattle, scattering their coins to leave the temple clean (John 2).  Within 3 years the bible says He did So many miracles were they to be written, ‘the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written’ John 21:25. To cap his ministry were breathtaking events summarized in the Pain He went through; meaning of which was salvation to humanity. As he prayed on the mountain, He considered the pain ahead and prayed, ‘Lord, if it is your will, take this cup (of suffering) from me. However, not my will but your will be done.’ Luke 22:42. Before long, Judas betrayed Him and he went the painful shameful way of the cross to cavalry where he hang between two thieves. He was sinless but he had to nail our sins on the cross. ‘Then at the sixth hour there’s darkness over the whole land for 3 hours up to the ninth hour and the curtain of the temple was torn into two’ (Luke 23:44) signaling all humans’ ability to plead their own cases before God and get salvation at will. When he was buried, a rock was rolled onto his grave. They forgot He was too powerful to be held by the grave and that He’d already conquered hell and Hades.  When those women came to look for Him on the third day, the rock had been rolled away. Immediately, Angels appeared to them and asked, ‘Why do you look for the Living among the dead? He is not here; He has risen!’ (Luke 24:5-6) . All these sufferings He went through sinless as he was so that He could save us from sin and death. For that reason he says "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’’ John 14:6. Yes! We won’t get to eternal peace and joy after our death unless we believe in Jesus. Our failure to believe will only earn us eternal death of fire in hell. Thus the formulae to a happy immortality is scripture that says, “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. John 5:24.  

It is thus pure truth to say that; for our salvation was the only reason Jesus waz here

King in waiting

King in waiting

Since the post election violence, I have always believed in my heart that the appearance and trial of the post election suspects at The Hague would be the best thing that will ever happen to Kenya’s justice system, a belief I’ve savoured to this date. However, on the two days that those Kenyans appeared at the ICC court, I felt shameful that we had finally been forced to wash our dirty linen in public.  I felt like we’d allowed our citizens to be humiliated before the whole world. Excuse me!!! ICC is not for Kenya; it’s a court for warlords and guerrilla fighters from countries that went bananas years ago. We are a good to do country that is able to run its own affairs without external interference. But the cacophony and attention The Hague episode received from Kenyans quite became of interest to me. And my conclusion; Kenyans are eager to identify their King in waiting.

When they landed home, the mammoth crowds that followed Uhuru and Ruto’s procession from airport to another obscene crowd at Uhuru Park just displayed how Kenyans are eager to anoint the King in waiting. What’s sad though is that Kenyans seem keen on shopping for a king from a wrong market place. If it’s not wrong market, then the PEV suspects cannot double up as kings-in-waiting- suspects and  If we keep shopping from wrong market place, then we may soon go Haitian way of picking a dancehall entertainer for president.

I also love to do some prophecies in this game of politics and though most of us hide our cards under the table, truth is that we love to play the same cards by keeping the same politicians in office term in term out.  Maybe it’s safer? Maybe that’s not the case but forgive me for thinking it’s political slavery where we sing for and shuffle around the same political kingpins year in year out. And that’s why Kibaki has been in the scene since independence. That’s why Uhuru and Raila are playing their dads’ roles and posing as the two most likely tenants of statehouse in  the hereafter political dispensation after Kibaki regime.

Come let’s play the cards a little bit. Think of Raila. Love him or hate him, he is one person who’s given shape to Kenyan politics as we know it today. He liberated Kenya from suppression and gave us political space unheard of some years back. And now we need to reward him with the presidency but wait; I think he’s failed to address real issues like IDPs with gusto and enthusiasm we knew him for. Think power has corrupted him, kiasi maybe.  Kalonzo has little to show for his many years in leadership but Kibaki’s kind of luck may probably give him presidency but you can’t bank on luck. I’ve no idea of why and how but Uhuru and Ruto seem to be commanding huge following of late and seem serious factors in the next polls. Karua and Kenneth are some guys we should be thinking about but we choose to ignore them coz our tribes need people who can ‘fight’ for us or why do Ruto and Uhuru command such a following?  We believe they fought for us whether guilty as charged or not.

Someone help me call some strange cards to the table. We need someone strong and determined enough to jump this queue of Kings in waiting by pulling an Obama version on Kenya. Where are you friend, Prof. Ole Kiyiapi, I heard that you are running for Presidency and waited for you to declare so I could campaign for you be it in my facebook wall. I am still waiting you to declare.

What then sayest we? When Christ is revealed, we shall reign with him coz if we believe in God, we are all Kings in waiting. And when they thought that a King could only come from the tribe of Judah, Saul, from the Benjamin, the least tribe in Israel became King (1 Samuel 9:21). Don’t you think it was time Minorities ruled? Only then shall we have matured as a democracy or what do you think?

The Right Angle: A COLOURFUL WORLD

The Right Angle: A COLOURFUL WORLD: "A COLOURFUL WORLDWe love rainbow nations like we have today where colour defines close to everything we do..."

A COLOURFUL WORLD

A COLOURFUL WORLD

We love rainbow nations like we have today where colour defines close to everything we do. Dark men choose to date girls of a lighter complexion; Sudanese girls’ desire a life with white men; just to weave a difference in the colour of their babies. Three quarters of my cloths are black, grey or blue coz I have a tendency of wanting to hide in the crowds. Artists attest to the fact that the choice of colours and the colour balance we create more so in our houses determines our levels of energy as we go out to face life and as we retire to our homes after work. Of course my cup of green tea has been as such addiction as Maskadudu’s glass of red wine. Talking of smart dress-down, you cannot beat my friends from Tseikulu whose girls do their yellow dresses and march well with their boyfriend in yellow shirts and orange  jeans definitely in-steps with their most famous son who adorns his popular shirt; red on one side of symmetry and green on the other side. No hard feelings though; I know he’ll improve on colours like my friend Kim who in our younger days would be perfectly dressed in a green trouser, blue shirt, white shoes and his trademark red socks.

It was one of those days Violet would rather forget. She arrived home lugubrious and blue that evening and felt like knocking her head against the grey walls of her single end room. This was after a day of white realities that had made her day so black that she could only cool off the anger by some smooth sounds of Blues from her silver radio system. She could hardly swallow the idea that her husband, all along had been a patron of the red light district, the more reason he was never home before it turned dark. It’s Hard to say but at some point, we’ve got to let humans be humans and show their true colours.

You have no idea how hard it has been for me to be a fan of a football club without colour. We’ve lost almost all important games and have since gone silent. That’s why am considering ditching the gunners for the reds, a team that easily brings the red devils to their knees and makes the blues see blue.

Things were rainbow as usual in Nikiso (True name withheld so as not to put the country to disrepute), a tiny country neighbouring the Banana republic to the north. People lived to enjoy their red plums, oranges and green apples. But One day, overnight, the country turned violet. everything turned violet from the sky and ocean and mountains to the trees and animals and people and from the tallest skyscrapers to the tiniest ant; the president and PM turned violet and so were the cups, spoons, bread, computers, briefs, stones, books, hair, candies, skittles and everything except for a single Blue Jay Bird who hadn't changed color and stayed the brightest blue. The smartest scientists in the world gathered to figure it out. They did studies and tests and analyzed and evaluated and debated and wrote article after article, but couldn't explain it. Some people said violet was now the most important colour in the country and some thought it of no importance at all because there was too much of it. They discussed, debated, joined clubs to debate and produced movies all aimed at demystifying the  violet country.Blue jay was all this time locked in a cage and people travelled from the far corners of the earth to see her. She nearly turned into a goddess and was always on their lips when they spoke.

Exactly a year after Nikiso had turned violet, people woke up one day and lo!! Everything had turned yellow except the blue jay. For the next two years, exactly on the day Nikiso had turned violet and then yellow, it turned new colours: first orange and then pink. Still the Blue Jay stayed blue, causing ever greater excitement until in the fifth year the whole world turned blue, like blue jay. Because the Blue Jay was a color like everybody and everything else people began to lose interest in her and let her lose so she flied away to some place people never got to know.

Like Nikiso, the righteous ones are so few today. In a world painted a single evil colour; of men who are lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious, gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; God has His blue jay birds moving swiftly spreading the Blue colour of the gospel of Christ. This will happen to a point like in Nikiso where everything will turn blue and the righteous will fly away to be with the Lord. That’s why the bible says, ‘And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.’ (Matthew 24:14)

What then shall we do? Let’s try a colourful ending to this story;"Come now, let us reason together," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. (Isaiah 1:18)

The irreversible deed mis’

The irreversible deed mis’

One lesson I never got to understand in my Form one chemistry was irreversible changes in states of matter. All along I’ve thought that science is at pains to explain the irreversible changes coz I don’t think such an explanation as this holds water, ‘When you burn a candle, the wax around the wick melts. If you pour this wax off the candle, it will solidify and become wax again. This is a reversible reaction. But if you burn the candle long enough the wax disappears. The heated wax becomes a liquid, then a gas. This gas combines with oxygen from the air to make water vapour and carbon dioxide. This change is irreversible.’ What if charcoal was as different state of matter as a wooden log? The explanation would be perfect coz you cannot change charcoal back to wood. What if we’d be able to return that mchele that’s already gone bad back to its uncooked state? Those heaps of wasted food would become history and all the street urchins who eat from those bins would all die and our streets would perhaps be clean again.

Almost all Homo sapiens have deeds in their lives they wish to blot out coz they keep nagging our thoughts and devoid of God in our lives, they can sap from our lives the energy we need to face the future. Sometimes it’s that close to amorous message meant for your partner that your fingers sin against you and send to your mother or aunty. You are there wondering how to tell them it was not meant for them and if you manage, the respect is gone. Then on a Saturday afternoon, you are Google those sites and bump into one with exciting opportunities for cash and all you need to do is provide your credit card number and you do. Next time your card statement lands, you haven’t used it for shopping but your credit limit is gone and there’s a huge bill to pay. And then, a friend of mine receives a message that she has received Kes. 4,000 via M-pesa from an unknown person. The guy calls her that it was a mistake and urges her to return the money. She goes to her M-pesa account and sends the 4K but later realizes that the message she’s received was from an individual and not M-pesa. She’s been duped and is all regrets. Look here!!! He sizes that beautiful girl selling loans from the bank and he couldn’t resist her. He applies a Kes. 1,500,000. He had no plan and ever since, it’s been painful paying for what he’s already squandered.

It was one of those rare days when I service my computers and I dismantled every component from power supply, cables, fan, memories, motherboard and processor. But when I assembled and ran the machine, it did for sometime then went blank. I later realized that I had fitted the fan upside down and thus the processor had smoked up. In another of the good days, you were all alone with your friend and begun to get close and by the time you realized it, you had broken your vow and lost virginity. And after typing your ten pages document the lights go off and oh my!!! You hadn’t saved a thing and you’ll have to do it again. Then your sister is all regrets coz when she got pregnant, the man who’d pledged never to leave her just walked on her when she told him she was pregnant. And the umbrella of all, we’d rather forget and always wish those misdeeds were reversible.

But there’s one sweet irreversible, Christ died on the cross for our sins and misdeeds. God loves us, certainly. So, if we have received his pardon, we can consider what he’s done and if you still guilty you still can join in this song, ‘Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits— who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle. (Psalms 103:2-5)

Shan’t all of us move in new strength?