Kenyans and Facebook…

Can you tell that I am ‘otherwise occupied’ with Summer fun? Let’s say that since the sun started rising at 5 am, I have been busy enjoying it to the max (and I have the sunburn to prove it!). Working on other stuff has left my blog to suffer (there there poor baby)! I’m proud [...]

Nobody Told Me ‘It’ Would Be Boring

We all knew it was coming. This ‘downturn’.
The government, the opposition, the pundits…even the Tweeters said it. Repeatedly.
We braced ourselves as though for a  Tsunami.
We cringed at the figures as they were bandied about:
Half a million jobs lost, three trillion dollars of debt, 20% capital loses.
Our vocabularies grew: Asset Backed Commercial Paper, Foreclosure, Debt,
Underwater Mortgages, Ponzi [...]

Kilifi or Bust…

It all started in early February when I moved temporarily to having more responsibility in the workplace…suddenly I found that I was expected to have all the answers to all the questions- even the ones which my predecessor had already nixed in the past. Soon those who shied away from taking on the added responsibility [...]

In Response To Your Email….

During the average workday how many emails would you say you send out, or receive? Before, my ‘official’ emails were crafted painstakingly, edited for clarity, brevity and typos. At times when I would click ‘Send’ I said to myself “that was a good one my dear!” Sadly, I quickly learned that many recipients would not [...]

More Swahili Banditry…

Say you were walking down a street in one of the seedier parts of Nairobi and some hoodlums descended on you with kicks and punches in an attempt to rob you of your fake Rolex and crystal ‘diamond’ earrings. Let’s say your attack was witnessed by a passerby who then rushed to your aid.
If said [...]

Where’s the Love?

A few weeks ago I read about a ban on mourning and reporting about/from assemblies of the parents of children killed in the earthquake that devastated Sichuan province in China. They were asked to cancel a memorial for their children (no doubt for political reasons). I sat silent, shocked that any person would tell another how to [...]

All Creatures ‘Great’ and Small

Two stories I have read today leave me convinced that before the internet my life was very staid and dull. How did I survive without stories that leave me chuckling or in most cases gasping for breath at their hilarity?  Honestly, my days are much brighter thanks to stories of camels humping their owners to [...]

Reception 101

Working as an administrative support/reception person is such an eye opener (temping is paying for my “Adventures in Creativity”)! Firstly, everyone assumes they are smarter than you are; secondly, all the higher-ups avoid answering their phones (much to my irritation!). You quickly learn that 90% of the time, 80% of the calls you field are [...]

Matatus: Method? Madness?

In my new home, I have come to notice some very interesting commuter habits that differ somewhat from those of my fellow travelers in my old home (which were surprisingly similar to those in Nairobi). In Montréal, we were masters of “kukaa square”…after lining up in -40 C temperatures, one is more likely to compassionately [...]

ATTs Matigari

In the 1980’s, in one of the numerous examples of Mo1’s paranoia/foolishness/illiteracy, he issued an order to arrest “Matigari”…a person that he’d heard through the ‘grapevine’ was agitating for truth and justice in Kenya. This is unremarkable except that Matigari was a fictional character in a book of the same name by Ngugi wa Thiong’o…so [...]