Mommy why do you hate us so much?

Did she break down? Is that pain I heard from her voice or was it regrets? Ohh, I might never know what she goes through everyday but my prayers are certainly with her!

I tuned in to today’s Classic FM morning conversation, hmm I rarely do that, partly because I believe if I continue listening to their daily conversations, I might never get married coz the things they talk about, the things that married people call in to say are definitely out of this world and I kind of had this feeling that maybe their conversation might have negative influence on me and therefore I stopped tuning in altogether, but today for some reason I tuned in and keeping with their trade mark they were talking about family issues- single mothers and how badly some treat their kids.

Many people called in to rant about what they went through in the hands of their single mothers, but this woman’s call stole my heart- did I shed a tear,…hmmm God of peace kindly grant her peace.

From the first seconds of her call, I could tell she was struggling to find her balance- to tell her story as calmly as she could without breaking down on air and at the same time, the magnitude of her guilt, pain and hurt just wouldn’t let her. This is one woman whose marriage didn’t work out after getting two kids who apparently were their dad’s copyright, so they separated and remained with the kids, still holding the bitterness with which the husband treated her, she resorted to beating the kids really bad whenever they erred, in her heart of hearts she knew she was beating the dad not the kids. So one day the eldest son of around 10 yrs- after the thorough beating asked the mom why she hated them so much, the mother, in a state of bitterness retorted that because they looked so much like their dad who had caused her so much pain! I don’t how much that kid understood but replied in obedience that ‘they were sorry they reminded her so much of their dad’ and somehow they hatched a plan which according to them was to help their mom but which has become her nightmare every waking day of her life!

So one day she left for work and left the kids with the house help- that’s the last time she saw her two boys alive. They bought ice-cream, sprayed it with poison and licked away their suffering, misery and pain the best way they knew how, a great sacrifice they took to ease their mums pain of seeing their dad every time she saw them and with that her kids were no more and so was the start of her nightmares that not even counseling could soothe. She lost her kids because she passed down her failed marriages’ frustrations on her kids who were brave enough to ease their mums’ pain by committing suicide. So now, she is 39 yrs old, no husband, no kids, no job (because in the state of her psychological torture she couldn’t perform and therefore quit her work) but above all no peace but guilt and pain of having betrayed her kids, of not becoming a good mother that she thought she would become.

This story reminds me of the life of Constance Briscoe otherwise known to her mother as Clear, one of the first black women to sit as a judge in the UK, she is well known for the suffering she endured in the hands of her mother that almost drove her into attempting suicide by drinking pesticide that she believed would kill her because according to her mother she was a germ- and she knew that pesticides were used for killing germs,….her book, UGLY and BEYOND UGLY (her mum kept reminding her at every available opportunity that she was ugly hence the book’s title) she documents her life and the kind of life she led- this book moved me to tears just like this woman’s’ story.


Parents out there, what kind of parent are you? and mothers out there, do you mistreat your kids because of their dad'a mistreatment of you? This woman's story is a lesson to all of us- parents and all the wannabes that it can be tool late to reverse some of these mistakes and that kids and their fathers are two distinct people so treat them differently.
And as some musician ones sang- Mtoto si nguo utaomba mtu- kosa lnagu mi nalia sana (a child is not a clothe you can borrow from someone, and my mistakes I regret so much)

Stay hungry. Stay foolish- RIP Steve Jobs

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Allow me to mourn a fallen heroin- Prof Wangari Maathai

It’s almost 1 AM and for some reasons I can’t sleep, I can’t sleep thinking of you I’m trying to find words which can clearly explain how I felt when I learnt of your death through facebook and near no one to verify or refute the sad news, how I would have loved them refuted as crude joke but no, in my frantic effort to ascertain the then  inflow of traffic from other social network users with more or less shortened updates of RIP Prof, I had to make a call but no my call’s recipient hadn’t received the news yet and so couldn’t dispel or ascertain my fears but somehow they were confirmed and I gauss it must have taken several hours before the news sunk in.

So Kenia as Kenya is popularly known in the global arena is united in mourning one of their own, just the same way we were united in mourning the 1998 bomb blast victims, same way we were united in mourning the Sinai fire victims plus some other prominent leaders that have gone before you, but we are going to mourn you differently because your death is not only felt by Kenyan’s but internationally because your work, sacrifice and commitment did make us proud. You will not be mourned only by human beings but I have a weird feeling that plants and other wild animals will even mourn your death with paining sincerity because you were their mother and their mortal protector who gave so much for them and to humanity in general.

Your death reminds me of how cruel death can be, how unforgiving the ground can be and above all it deepens my fear for cancer. Somehow I don’t want to imagine that you are somewhere lifeless, not moving and not doing what you loved most- planting trees.

You gave life to over 40 million trees, taught us how to be that humming bird who couldn’t  stand to see the whole forest burning down and do nothing about it, so despite its small bick, regardless of the number of trips it had to make and despite the loathing , demeaning and belittling remarks it had from other big animals like elephant who was capable of carrying so much water through its trunk to put out the fire, decided to just do its best- and as mother Theresa reminds us that it’s not God’s intention for us to be the best but just to do our best, I hope your commitment, sacrifice and love for humanity will propel us to always strive to do our best with zeal regardless of the hurdles that we may be faced with.

I join the rest of the world, other renounced leaders and fellow Kenyans in mourning this great heroin, a true lover of nature and human rights, a reformist who did not mind to be ridiculed nor embarrassed while striping naked at the infamous freedom corner just to highlight the plight of others who were then being jailed for no apparent reason.

May the frustrations you went through, your patriotisms, your commitments and sacrifice draw us closer as Kenyans, unify us as one and always motivate us to strive to do our best-always

Eternal rest grant unto her oh Lord, and may your perpetual light shine on her and may her soul rest in peace.

The power of information

People use internet for different reasons and so are social media platforms, I know of a young man who has literally transformed his farming through these platforms- facebook to be precise- an initiative that earned him an interview with the Google team through his ' Mapping fish ponds' project using the android IDEOS smartphone that is now selling like a hot cake in the Kenyan market.

Meet Zack Matera, a farmer from Eldoret Kenya who is demonstrating to the world just what internet can do for you.

And run you must from this social ill- just run away from it, I implore you!

I have dined with the high and the mighty so have I with lowly placed members of the society, I’m neither rich nor poor but I know what it feels like to be any of them none the less. Lately I have been engrossed in these two worlds, analyzing and evaluating them.

Poverty is capable of depriving a man of all spirit and virtue, it can compel you to take very many unnecessary risks with your life that if you had an option you wouldn’t, poverty dehumanizes, humiliates and limits an individual a great deal, and poverty as Mahatma Gandhi puts it, is the worst form of Violence.

The rich and the poor have different worries all together: when you are busy surfing the internet for scholarships to further your education, they are surfing the internet for all the different reasons- to read the profile of the best collages in the world where their kids can study, fee of course is never an issue.

While you waste your precious time in a restaurant mentally computing the total amount that you will part with after taking that meal, that is none of their worry, when they feel like having a proper meal, they check in a hotel and order that food without worrying about the price, later they swipe and just go their way.

While you are worried about going blind by taking an illegal lethal brew a.k.a Yokozuna, they start with tonic water as they order their favorite brands

While you are worried of whether  your makeshift house built on top of petroleum pipeline will catch fire due to some leakage or whether  the city askaris will demolish it while you are asleep because it is built on a road reserve or that it is near the railway line or whether the faulty power lines crisscrossing your  makeshift  in a slum will set your house ablaze, they are busy thinking of how to enlarge their dining room, how to bring in new imported furniture but more importantly they are thinking of how to get rid of you within their neighborhood.

No, they never worry about stray bullets, diseases like cholera, dysentery etc they just wonder why and how they still exist, malnutrition and hunger is almost an extinct vocabulary to them. They have better things to worry about than whether matatu touts have gone on strike.

When you are poor, you become so susceptible to so many things, not only diseases but also to ideas, just about everything is able to sway you, for instance you are the first person to reach KICC  or Nyayo Stadium for Pastor Ojigbani’s husband/ wife prayers, you believe without questioning Loliondo’s medicines, and you easily jump to any church promising instant wealth only to realize later that actually they are the ones milking you dry- just because you let them and partly because they understand your psychology and know just which buttons to press to manipulate you.

If you can (and you have the ability to) please, just run and run very fast- just run away from poverty run and find your freedom, coz with this freedom you will never be any politician’s puppet, you will be in a better position to demand accountability and transparency from your leaders, you will be in a position to say no to committing most crimes but above all you will never have to worry about risking your life unnecessarily just because you do not have an option, so dear brethren-RUN!

My wild dreams :)

No, I haven’t travelled widely, matter of fact I have been to only one country other than Kenya and that is Finland, though in my priority list right now is to leave the country preferably to pursue further studies, but if I could leave maybe on work related grounds even just to volunteer that would be perfect but as I am realizing it is much easier to volunteer in Africa if you are white than it is for an African wishing to volunteer in say America or in Europe reasons for which I believe are clear to you as they are to me. I want to visit different countries, experience different cultures, get the exposure that comes with living in a different country other than yours and ohh even get married to someone from a different nationality and even have an half-cast baby :P

My work offers me opportunity to interact with people from different nationalities, countries, backgrounds etc some stereotype, others reserve their opinions while yeah others are just fun to be around but this is nothing if I had the experience while say living in their respective countries.

 I want to travel the world, compare what we have and what other countries have in terms of governance, infrastructure, their education system, ICT and internet penetration, the people etc.  This maybe will enable me to appreciate what we have more and hone my tolerance levels and above all enable me to embrace different cultures and know how to deal with people of divergent opinions and ideologies and give me the fun of just knowing what it feels to be roaming the wide world.

Just my wild dreams J

Internet as a catalyst for development

"If they mess with the internet, I'll mess them up" that's a friend of mines political ideology when he was asked about his political views, a view that am sure most of us share especially those whose daily activities revolve around the internet.
Internet is quickly becoming an integral part in the day to day activities of most people: entrepreneurs, businesses, academia etc its lack therefore literally stalls/messes up these activities. It holds the key to so many benefits: knowledge, education, employment, political activism and the promise of a better future and a means of empowerment, it is also the link that gives our children access to high quality educational resources; it helps our entrepreneurs and small businesses compete and grow; and the internet holds the promise of better health care and a more affordable entertainment.

Computer literacy and other aspect of computer technology are prerequisites for using internet technology, a fact that has greatly lowed internet penetration especially in rural and slum areas because majority of these people are mostly computer illiterate and are either ignorant or simply don’t know the benefits that can be accrued from the internet. This can also be attributed to the fact that in most rural or slum areas, we have poor infrastructures in terms of power lines etc which thus discourages the use of gadgets like computers which requires electricity to operate.

Internet is quickly curving a niche as a great tool for catalyzing development initiatives, it has a direct link to social, economic and even political developments and therefore the Kenyan government directive that IT be a compulsory course for all students joining public universities is a most welcome move but I would rather it be compulsory right from high school if not primary school to give our young-stars an early start of computer literacy which as I have indicated earlier is a prerequisite for using internet technology.

Development-I believe-is directly proportional to the degree of internet penetration, granted, internet has its disadvantages but dwelling on these disadvantages without looking at the bigger picture is like simply refuting the benefits of computers because it leads to ‘loss of jobs’, a so backward argument that you can only be forgiven because you know not what you are saying!

So what can that poor woman or that poor kid do with internet back in the village/slum yet they don’t have food on the table, shouldn’t they be worrying about better things other than Internet?

Long time ago, we had three main basic needs: food, shelter and clothing others were simply luxuries if you wish, but today, computers, phones and internet are necessities if not needs. You talk internet and you talk information, that poor woman can learn a lot from the internet- from what type of crops to plant during dry season, from how to carry out a first aid of snake bite to save her baby before she can take her to hospital, from how to find market for her produce and sell them at fair prices etc. That poor kid who can’t afford to buy books, can get all that materials from the internet and compete fairly with that boy whose parents can afford, he can learn new programming languages, can learn how to hack, can learn how to play guitar and loads of some other stuff, who knows he can even show the world his musical prowess like Justin Bieber did- see where he is right now.

But the challenge is, if they cannot afford to put food on the table, who will take care of the internet bill, who will buy them computers coz internet and computes go hand in hand? This is where the government should come in, to ensure that every sub location, market place, public school has a library equipped with computers and good internet speed, maybe restrict the time per sitting to say 30 minutes per person but offer the service free to encourage many people to use computers and internet and tap these benefits, the government should have its own innovation hubs and organize events where these people can show the skills acquired from the internet, by so doing, the government will eliminate the worry these poor people go through of how to pay these bills but at the same time foster  an information rich society where people can gain skills to do plenty of stuff without just sitting back and waiting to be employed in a society where jobs are becoming a scarcity, they say nothing is as dangerous as a wounded animal who knows it can survive, I say nothing is as motivating to the poor as knowing they can improve their situation! And internet holds the key to that.

Africa's underdevelopment-could population be a factor?

Over the past few months, media has fed us with several images of desperate children, women and men dying of hunger due to famine which has been declared as the worst to have hit the Horne of Africa in 6 decades. Refugee camps are overstretched with people looking for relief. Kenyans have particularly come together to help their own under the umbrella initiative dubbed 'Kenyan4Kenyans' which raised a whooping over Sh 500 million in just less than 2 weeks after its launching to help the hunger stricken fellow Kenyans starving in Turkana 

Hunger is not a new thing in Kenya and in Africa a s a whole, several projects have been proposed to curb a repeat on this but it appears that the government is either not so keen at implementing them or has other reasons up its sleeve. But all in all, these images have kept me wondering why the Kenyan government cannot feed its own, why Africa is always in a state of dependency- Why Africa is not as developed as it should be.

Several theories and books have been written explaining why Africa is not at par with the rest of the world in terms of development

• Economist Ntahan Nunn argues that slavery is the main culprit. "without the slave trades, 72% of Africa's income gap with the rest of the world would not exist today"
• Oxford University and ex-World bank Economist Paul Collier attributes it to environmental factors such as being landlocked, existence or lack thereof of coastline, being resourceful or resource scarce etc,
• Zambian economist and Ex-World bank consultant Dambisa Moyo in her book "Dead Aid" categorically blames it on foreign Aid
• There is of course the largely unspoken view that the problem with Africa is Africans- that culturally, mentally and physically Africans are innately different. that, somehow, deeply embedded in their psyche is an inability to embrace development and improve their own lot in life without foreign guidance and help
• We also have historical factors like colonialism, the continent's disparate tribal groupings and ethno-linguistic make up has also been blamed, other factors such as absence of strong, transparent and credible public institutions like civil service, police, judiciary etc have also been apportioned blame as part of the problem

What about unregulated population?

Though may not out rightly be the problem, I have a feeling that Africa's constant population increase could also be another contributing factor why we are still scrawling in this development sector.

Take for instance, the Kenya's case where Kenyan population was reported as 38.6 million in 2009, compared to 28.7 million in 1999, 21.4 million in 1989 and 15.3 million in 1979, an increase by a factor of 

2.5 Over 30 years, or an average growth of more than 3% per year.

Kenya is about 580,000km2 in terms of surface area compared to let's say Finland- the 8th largest country in Europe in terms of area at 337,030km2- though relatively small compared to Kenya- in 2000 its population was about 5.2 million, in 1990 the population size was about 5 million. Since the mid 1990s the annual growth has remained under 20,000 persons averaging at about 5.4 million now. 

Though this might not be a perfect comparison, compare their growth rate to Kenya’s and you will notice a very big difference.  Interestingly, regardless of the growth rate, the resources remain constant which means these additional number of people will have to survive on the already limited available resources,  this in my view leads to high poverty levels and makes it even harder for the government to take care of its citizens.

As much as it is the responsibility of the government to take care of its citizens, people should also just give birth to the number of kids that they can comfortably take care of and by so doing developing themselves and the country as a whole

Just how long can you live on hope?

I remembered a friends’ facebook status that I saw some months ago that “It sucks living on hope” and today I have been thinking about that very statement because for some time now, I have been living on nothing but hope-hope that things will turn out for the better and I must admit, sometimes it sucks holding on to hope especially if nothing seems to be working out.

Hope-to desire with anticipation of obtainment- comes to play when circumstances are dire, when things are not going well or at least there is considerable uncertainty about how things will turn out, hope literally opens up and removes the blinders of fear and despair and allows us to see the big picture thus allowing us to become creative and have a belief in a better future…..Wikipedia

Hope has a way of keeping us going, of keeping us alive, of helping us overcome difficult times. A story is told of mother from famine stricken Turkana who could not stand to see her children lose hope in life and die of hunger, she herself new that there was  nothing she could do to avert the situation but she had to give her kids hope,  so she lit fire, put her gumboots in a sufuria, poured water and decided to cook, Kids oblivious of what their mum was cooking started being jovial and expectant that at least they will eat something , the ‘food’ took forever to prepare but when the kids prodded why this particular meal wasn’t getting ready, their  mum replied that it was one huge hard but delicious meal that needed a lot of time to prepare- and so  just when the ‘meal’ was about to be served, she diapered not wanting to see her kids' disappointment and that’s the last time she  saw her kids but at least she gave them hope that saw them through that day!

So today I was just wondering out aloud, how long can one live on hope or otherwise put how long can one live without hope?

                "We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope."

                                                Martin Luther King, Jr.

Do you ever listen to your conscience?

 Napoleon Hill in his ‘Think and Grow Rich’ book on page 180 says and I quote “There is plenty of evidence to support the belief that the subconscious mind is the connecting link between the finite mind of man and infinite intelligence. It is the intermediary through which one may draw upon the forces of infinite intelligence at will. It, alone, contains the secret process by which mental impulses are modified and changed into their spiritual equivalent. It, alone, is the medium through which prayer may be transmitted to the source capable of answering prayer”

Call it a hunch, call it intuition call it a feeling but it all narrows down to ones conscience or sixth sense. Every being has a conscience right from conception, and with this even without any form of schooling, someone is able to differentiate between right or wrong. Conscience as Von Gogh puts it is a man’s compass in life.
Some people tend to suppress that still little voice especially when they know the decisions they are about to make is wrong, or that the deeds they are about to indulge in is wrong, but even with high degrees of suppression, it will still be there wishing that you listened.

Most problems that we go through as humans are problems whose solutions we have with us, just as Napoleon says in the above quote, if only we gave our subconscious mind the right and enough stimulations and proper problems to work on and ‘trust’ it enough then it can give us the proper solution to that problem but seldom do we do this!

If only we can listen to our conscience then we would know when to walk away from abusive and unfulfilling relationships, we would know how to read the writings on the wall and act accordingly, we would know how to deal with fellow human beings and treat them as equals but most importantly, we would know how to differentiate between right and wrong but alas! We don’t listen to our conscience: we either ignore it completely or we listen but don’t take the offered precautions because God forbid, human beings are the only animals that sense danger and still move towards it.

 “Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune”
  Carl Jung

Things I would do different if I were to go back to collage

They say that we are better educated than our parents' generation (a fat lie). What they mean is that we go to school longer. ~Richard Yates

 I was having a brief chat with a student some days back, so I asked her whether she was enjoying her studies and the plans she had for the future, (she is yet to Join University) she told me she was so looking forward to joining university and would only be happy after graduating and getting herself a job- talk of being independent :)  somehow I felt happy for her but felt the urge to tell her to tone down her getting job enthusiasm a bit, coz apparently, that’s where happy life seems to end for most graduates.

I see students joining University with a lot of enthusiasm, with the hope that after graduating they will immediately secure their dream job and set their life rolling! (Which is perfectly in order only that there appears to be lots of challenges before you get it rolling) and the ‘better’ the course that you are pursuing the happier your future life looks. I remember we use to tease education students that they were waking up early just for 20 bucks (That’s almost the amount that Kenya TSC pays graduate teachers) coz somehow we felt that our course was a bit superior to theirs and therefore our starting salary was somehow pre defined :)

Most students realize that life is actually different when looking for attachment places but most importantly after graduation. That’s when they realize that real life is far from the imagined life after collage. We have heard of extreme cases where graduates tear up their original university certificates after failing to secure a place and others doing the unimaginable jobs. In some parts of the country like Nairobi, drivers and jobless graduate youths have entered into an informal arrangement in which the latter occupy seats to lure passengers so as to fill the vehicles quickly, for their effort, the job seekers get between Sh30 and Sh50.

I have nothing against being enthusiastic when joining collage, but I just wish I could tell them to tone their expectations just a bit, in that case, they would know how to fit and deal with real life after collage without getting extremely disappointed.

Just like churches have become a major source of income for some preachers, am afraid learning institutions are slowly turning into cash cows by introducing some courses that are not so relevant which they insist students must take. Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often young people are being given cut flowers when they should be taught how to grow their own plants.

Having had a taste of life outside collage (real life) coupled with so many other issues, I came to the conclusion that if I were to go back to college, these are some of the things that I would do different:

• As much as I will learn the offered courses, my ears will always be open to what is going on in the job market, I will learn tones of other things that I feel will give me a competitive advantage over the others.
• Passing exams will never be my priority, I will instead concentrate on getting the concept
•  I will have fun and lots of fun, will enjoy my collage life to the maximum (coz apparently, this is where real life is!)
• I will network right from year one but most importantly I will focus on being the job creator rather than the job seeker because it is this jobseeker mindset that prevents most people from exploring their full potential
•  I will be flexible enough to do anything/any job (and I mean anything) with all the enthusiasm that I can master, provided I have my set targets and goal in life- which you must have if you are to go anywhere
  
  

Teleworking/Telecommuting

Sometime back I had a chat with a friend of mine on how terrible the Nairobi traffic had become, especially in the morning and evening, my friend attributed this to 8-5 work schedule of most Kenyan employers, this means that fare prices hike in the morning and evening and are relatively low the rest of the day. Most employers demand that their employees get to work by 8 AM and not leave before 5 PM regardless of the workload.  

I worked in an Electrical/Mechanical consultancy firm before as an IT support  fellow, sometimes I could go without work for days but still I had to be at my work place at 8 and not leave before 5.30- that was the rule and every employee had to respect that, the said friend of mine (Electrical Engineer) lost his position in this firm apparently because he did not report to work on a Saturday ,since he felt there was no work on his desk to be done on that Saturday only to be served with a suspension letter upon coming on Monday which was thereafter followed by a termination of contract (he is in the process of establishing his own firm and promises to give his employees  flexible working hours provided they get the work done satisfactorily  and in time)

With the advent of technology, you don’t have to necessarily be in the office to get the work done, though this also depends on the nature of work one does. If we can have e-learning, distance learning, e-court proceedings why not e-working (Teleworking/telecommuting) if the nature of your work allows it?

….Telework occurs when information and communications technologies (ICTs) are applied to enable work to be done at a distance from the place where the work results are needed or where the work would conventionally have been done…

Currently I work in an ICT oriented NGO and I am more of a teleworker, we do a lot of our meetings on Skype, correspond a lot through emails and exchange and share files through dropbox, my work also involves tutoring, I don’t have to be physically present in a class to give lectures, with the help of software such as camtasia, I can create very professional lecture videos and notes so that even people who are not in my country of residence can still attend my classes online.

I must confess more often than not I have to give a lot of explanations to the kids especially why I claim to be busy working yet I don’t ‘go to work ‘in the morning like their daddy does, this reminds me of a rather interesting scenario- this kid came over and was like “kindly let me use your computer to play a game” since I was very busy, I politely declined and told her I would consider her request once I complete my work. Her response kind of took me a back, she was like- “you pretend to be busy working yet you are not!”

  I have realized that it is not only kids who don’t understand this teleworking concept, but even grownups themselves, for instance my pals and siblings don’t take me seriously when I tell them am teleworking, the question that mostly follow is ‘Where are your offices situated?’. A lot of importance has been pegged on ‘going to work’ than the work itself

Having teleworked for some time now, I have got this to say:

Advantages

 

This article tends to summarize the advantages of teleworking: http://www.ventanazul.com/img/weblog/telework-people-sample.pdf

Drawbacks (I have these to say on drawbacks)

• With teleworking, you can easily become a workaholic, since there are no breaks typical of 8-5 work schedule, for instance I rarely realize its lunch time and most of the time I work well past midnight depending on the workload
•   You miss out on the social aspect of life; mostly you are alone in your room or virtually with people in chat rooms, so you don’t get time to interact with your workmates and even others. You can even take like a whole week without leaving the house.
•   If you are not careful, you can become unkempt, since your level of interaction with others is somewhat limited, therefore the taste of fashion and being smart takes a back seat coz most of the time you are alone anyway.
•   Hmmm, and am wondering if this comp will render me infertile :) , as usual ,mostly I work from my bed which means I normally place it somewhere on my abdomen- and am afraid of the radio active rays it produces :)
•   I wouldn’t recommend it to fresh graduates, in my view it suits those who have got enough experience and are rather established in their work.