X files

I write this blog in the memory of Anita (not her real name and no she is not dead). She is an X-file. An old one that dates back to 2003. She is in my blog now, because like other long lost shadows, we linked up on facebook a year and a half ago.

Yours truly is not exactly Mr. Gadget (though I surely think my 8 year old thinks I am), or am I? I will gloat here (where else, I know none will ever read it!), but 95% of my age mates in Kenya never dug into internet. Besides a workplace email address, the majority, rarely go into the internet for leisure. For that reason, I am indeed way above average. Thats just another facet of my extrovertedness led inquisitiveness, and the marketers itch in me that seeks to know what is cool about now, but I digress..

Anita deserves mention, because she is one of those girlfriends who though long gone, a man yearns for. This, likely to happen when he finds himself, especially on a Friday evening, seated at a late hours bar, watching the dance floor, no intention to dance,not in a hurry to go home. He could be a traveler, far away from home and home sick, or he could be plain sick from home. It’s the gal one wishes would emerge from the dance floor, or miraculously drop into the seat adjacent, again. Am I talking to someone?

That is the girl that kept the trophy, relegated as she was. You still wonder why exactly you broke up, never call her, for you still kick yourself when you think of what you could have done different in that relationship. Among the most memorable choice parting words she said to you were ‘you only know how to make booty calls’. She stormed off your flat in a huff, slamming the door behind her, or worse, left it open to the corridor, and yours truly sans dress square on the doorway.

No, none of that happened between me and Anita. We just sulked up on one another, and the next time she met me in the church I attended (because I expected she would be there) we were both stubbornly adamant and un apologetic;

‘How have you been?’

‘fine.’

‘what are you up to nowadays? (Read who is laying you of late?)
‘I went to choices last Friday and did not see you. You changed hang outs?’  (Needy?)

I knew she was making inference to me avoiding her and not  wanting her to see my new date, I swear. I bite off my next sentence, and instead ask her to join me for lunch.

On her end she must have realized the more she seemed interested in my recent life the more she appeared to be groveling to me. And being the stoic lady she is, she checks her watch and goes oh my God! I must go!

‘Why, what’s the hurry?’

‘I am meeting this new group.’

“New group?” Asks yours truly, in a suspiciously envious tone. In the last month I have been miserably blue, preferring to lock myself in my Forest Apartment room, smoking one Embassy Lights after the other, watching 24 season 2 over and over. Did I digress again? Don’t worry, I am filling you in, I am the party that I want you to sympathize with at the end.

‘Oh, I should have told you I went ahead to register with this UK visa processing assisting agency’

“You did?”

‘Yes, in fact if all goes well I will be flying out in three weeks time’..

Oooh no!!! I wanted to scream, please baby! Wait! You did? No, you are pulling my leg. Please tell me that you are trying to make me feel jealous. Then it hits me. She is dead pan serious!

“You are serious, right?”

She does not answer the question. She rather leaned forward and kissed wooden me.

‘take care!’

‘Mumble bubble hubble blandah.. Must have been what I said to her squared back. And you wonder why I never called in the next 4 weeks?

And then we met on facebook, and two dozen weekend international calls later, emails and FB messages, I have been able to piece together her life in the past seven years. She got married to the father of her son, who turned abusive, and unnecessary, and she moved on. She has custody of the five year old son. The childs father pays upkeep, and gets to see the child. She admits that she has "found herself thinking of me". Then she asks about missus. That takes me back to ground zero, but I will stand by my  woman this once. I will not desert her. And so I am Mr. perfectly married man to Anita.

Deep down I know like most married couples I am just trying to be stoic, having to make it work. It’s only later that I will find myself on that bar stool, at Oxford Street,  Bywels to be exact, down town Accra. Surrounded by ladies of four nationalities, in our group of seven, but only thinking of my college flame.

Did I lose you somewhere back there? Hope not. The big deal is, she is coming back to Kenya for the December holidays. We have an open lunch date on the 16^th of December. She will be bringing me the phone of my dreams, as a Christmas present. I cant wait to lay hands on it. May the god of marriages (who is the current one by the way?) intervene on this day.

Sorry gals if I lost you throughout. Ask your man what I was jabbering about. I hope he is not the smothered type.

I promise that you will be hearing more of Anita soon. Keep tuned. Karibu!

so long a journey

As I write this its 19 months since I came to West Africa. I feel like a survivor, and rightfully so, I must say. I arrived at Kotoka International Airport one very hot Sunday morning, the 15^th of March 2009, apprehensive and somewhat eager to stay the course. The West African heat and the hatmattan were the first things I had to content with. I stayed in Accra for one week, feeling like I was slowly and surely skewing over a coal fire.

I left Kenya when the short dry season was just setting in. The temperatures over there were 28 degrees Celsius, 10 degrees cooler than Accra! For the first week I stayed at the Byblos Hotel I never had to contend with the hot West African dishes as the Byblos hotel serves a varied Lebanese menu. Besides not wanting to leave my air conditioned room for long, I remember not venturing out much. My old Nairobi instincts being that since I was alone it would be easy to make me out anywhere, and that I may stray into the wrong streets without knowing. Each time I stroll (almost) anywhere in Accra now I look back at those days with a smile!

The real journey into Ghana, the 17 hour bus journey from Accra to Tamale via STC (State Transport Corporation) was a further eye opener into what I had simply got myself into. I remember those first days talking to my wife back in Kenya in that tone of voice that reminded of my first days in boarding school, and almost cursing myself for getting myself into volunteering and trying to be brave at the same time. I had to continuously remind myself why I decided to volunteer in the first place, and what good, to self and the world this portended. It was not easy-o!

Once in Tamale I joined a Canadian colleague who arrived a month before, and two others with whom I should have got in with in mid February. It was somewhat a relief to meet up with new colleagues who were also adjusting to the environment.

There was at least a ‘social scene’ with the Tamale vols and I soon had something to look forward to, - the weekend. Not only would there be probability of other volunteers coming into town from neighboring regions but there was always an excuse to get together and have a drink, or for the odd cooking lesson from Rhona and Flora, two Phillipino colleagues. This came in the wake of realization that my ultimate placement was not ready, since the partner could not accommodate two volunteers at the same time. I remember getting this news from my Programme Officer and almost asking him ‘are you for real?’.That would have contravened the priciple of flexibility that codes my organisation. I took a fund raising role for a collapsing NGO for the next six months in Tamale. I recall that around this time I was looking for about any reason to quit, and and only the prospect of going home with no good memmories deterred me. 

The temperatures at the end of March were into 40’s. I would take up to 5 showers in a day and drink 4.5 liters of water and still have to content with more sweat and thirst. The ceiling fan would drone on, wheezing as it cut the dense air until I had to turn it off. My main delicacy was rice and fried beans, for almost 5 months. I could not bring myself to buy the open air market meat, or even imagine eating the cooked one, with the hair singed off. The spices and the heat were sure enough to get my sweat dripping again. Generally the soups and over boiled vegetables were yuck to me. I remember on that first weekend in Tamale Issah from the Bolgatanga office taking me around Tamale to see the sights and then to a fufu ‘chop’ bar. The soup was as usual curried hot (it was light soup, the colour orange red) and the ball of fufu, well cold to the touch and mouth too. It was a strange sensation, trying to swallow this smooth cold morsel, without chewing, dipped in the peppery hot soup! I persevered only because Issah sat across from me. Well, I thought that was hot pepper, but that was before the day I finally tasted Banku and fresh ground pepper soup! Its not actually a soup. Fresh red pepper with at least one tomatoe is ground per serving of Banku. Fried fish is the accompanying meat each time. Hot.

After two months I transferred from Will’s to live with Fred and Tim. Fred was a Kenyan, Tim British. This was indeed the best part of my stay in Tamale. The ‘Hygiene’ house, so called because of its proximity to the Tamale school of Hygiene, was also opposite the infamous Hygiene spot. It served as our living room, leading onto our kitchen, before retiring to bed. There was also this old hammock strung between 2 Indian almond trees that simply rocked on a hot day, and night!. That must be how I got the mosquitoe bites that gave me my first ever bout of Malaria in my first four months in Tamale. 

Tim and Fred were the easiest people to live with, entertaining with their knowledge of world history, how stuff works and generally easy going. The idea of a drink was always a suggestion away, and the discussion only got more interesting, when Freds Star and Freds Club flowed!


I chanced into blogging courtesy of Tim, who for long ran a blog aptly named Tim in Tamale. One evening as we sat in our ‘sitting room’, Tim reading his paperback by the dying afternoon sunlight, seated under the street lamp next to the gutter by the road Tim looked at me and in a Star induced inspiration prescribed blogging for me. It would be nice to have a blog from you, an African volunteer. It would give a unique perspective of a homegrown take of things, and there, voila! the seed was sown! Everytime I pen off I should sign off; with apologies to Tim Little!

I must admit I started entertaining the thought and belief that I could survive the two years placement. During this time I also discovered my old passion for reading, generally and cycling. I have always taken to reading like therapy. Books have this way of transporting me with them. At times when I have 2 or 3, I will read them consecutively, travelling up to some point in one, and taking the other. During such times time becomes of no consequence. Give me a book any day! Thats what discovering reading at nine years has done to me. It gives me a high, like nothing else. I love it. I aim to write a book some day. Who knows, this is my journalism school!

During this time I also got to know volunteer colleagues based in Bolgatanga of all nationalities, - 150 Kilometers away and eventually discovered the haunts of Bolga, as it’s popularly known. Many a weekend I would go up, borrow a few books from the library and have a drink with the gang before ‘crashing’ at a Charles’s place. ‘Mwananchi’, as we called him, was a Kenyan colleague into his second year of placement. He had studied in India for 7 years, been placed with VSO in Papua New Guinea and so had the most interesting stories to tell.

By September of 2009 I moved to my current station, - Langbensi, halfway between Tamale and Bolgatanga, 30 odd kilometers off the main road. You would think that I was done with culture shock, and the myriad new things I had to cope with, but you would be wrong. I thought I was equipped to live disconnected from support networks, but Langbensi was a lesson in self containment.

Langbensi is a village town of about twenty thousand odd inhabitants. The adults must be a quarter of that figure. Polygamy is practised here, being religiously sanctioned. Most men have three if not four wives.


Though the town is in itself a commercial centre, the biggest after branching off from Wale Wale on the main Bolgatanga road, and the nearest, compared to Gambaga, it is a far cry from any concept of a town most may have. For starters there is only a handful of cement and block structures in the town, the majority being mud walled. The spots, as drinking bars are called in Ghana, are mostly for selling hot drinks, the most favourite being akpetesh; African gin. Drinking is not a common past time, courtesy of religious beliefs, not a bad one, but that means that clubbing social life is nyet! A chap walks into a spot, orders his two tots, and downs it in what they call here flash. I am prone to digressing, excuse me. Charlie was however still around, though of course up to five pals I had met while in Tamale left around the time I made my move to Langbensi. If I started writing about Langbensi now this blog would never be posted. I will spare that for the next one!

Come to think of it, I should ‘catch’ a cold Star as I reflect on my next blog…why not?

The boy that made the man

I am writing this as much to myself, as to any reader who may be reading it. With all the changes that going away has had on me I need it. I mean, I sometimes find myself trying to relate that dude driving from the carnival at 2Am on a Friday night to this one here, and I go like ‘was that for real’? The guy here gets by on a Yamaha DT, is more likely to drink millet beer on a Friday, and needs a translator to pick a gal around, just for example!

And while I am at it I may just unburden my conscience about that boy. I was one of those drivers the lunatic matatu drivers opted to give way to; I guess I was just tired of people loading it over me. The fellow who bought the Ceres from me must wonder why traffic clears at the round bouts as he approaches! I cringe at some of the maneuvers I have ever pulled in a traffic jam, including the illegal U turns on Moi Avenue, and the token middle finger that I doled out once too often. You have to allow a salesman some leeway now, come on! I still can’t figure where all that booze went to, including the 2Am bottoms up at Pewa and Legend. Funny thing is, it felt cool, and I have buddies, who considered me a teetoler, for come 6.30Am I would be brewing coffee at the office coffee machine, preparing to go out to close a posh deal. Good that the boy grew up then, you can see. I may be a boring returnee to Jackson, Marto and Patrick, but come on guys; this boy had to grow up! I will be urging the girls who drooled over the boy to grow up equally fast, for this boy is now finally committed taken. It was just too good to last. No more threesomes, and no more booty calls. Ahem!

There were some memorable times too, good ones, like the boy spending a weekend with Loreen, Lavender and Betty at Ole Polos, taking dad for an outing and a drink after he came from hospital. There are the lazy weekends spend visiting with family friends up country, throwing an impromptu party for Betty that involved a grill, a bottle of Amarula chocolates and popcorn for the kids with my favorite bro, JK and a windows down easy ride back into Nairobi. I miss the latter and will certainly be looking forward to spending more time with my family.

Having realized that I have quite a handful to thank those who have made the realities I see, and that I can shape the bits that I don’t like, the man is now going to carry his weight (did I hear you say finally? Sucker!). I will even own up and carry that of the less able in my community. I got a leadership role to play (now that I have been there, done it and burned the T-shirt). I will still be the funky dude, not to worry. You can expect surprises from this man, for I still believe in working hard and playing equally hard. Best of all, I wont be trying to entertain you, so you better get a monkey to do the tricks for you.

Simply put, the boy grew into a man, ahoy!

The journey to another home

This has indeed been journey, to another home, both figuratively and in truth.

In all honesty I can’t say that I exactly recall how it felt when the first thought crossed my mind and the point where I opted to stand up and be counted.

To live with a people, waking up in the same realities, living in their situations, grieving with them, partying even, exchanging skills, and learning’s, all the time unaware that you are indeed touching each others life’s; well till you realize, now, theirs is a different way of doing it but it works! Does open your eyes.

You stumble into the realization these are people like my people, all looking for solutions in their own way, in their own context, and you begin to like them. This is exactly what happened to me. Un knowingly they began to mirror my own people, my own home; just the same ball game in a different pitch.

As I spend my last month here, I have found myself in the process of reconciliation. At least I did not go native. There are bits that I have swapped for good. Others that I have reinforced, and yet, chunks that I have chucked out the window. It is sad that the chunks have been things that I was willing to hang my pride and honor on before, but no longer hold water. Others have been attitudes and beliefs that made a once solid foundation to a house of cards. There are mountains that I have had to acknowledge were mole hills now, and molehills that now loom ahead as mountains. Most of these were in most cases, related to shared positions.

It does feel a little like standing on the edge of the rift valley, and looking out to Mt. Longonot. That’s a major ground I have gained, for while I was at the bottom of some, they looked more like cliffs, but now I am able to soar with the eagles, to the clear blue skies, as well as glide onto the floor, over the crater of the volcanic mountain below, without fretting.

I can make the journey, any time. I would volunteer overseas again.

Thoughts a flung

OUR perception and interaction with the surrounding affects not only our choices but also what is available for evaluation. Sounds diabolical but its pretty simple; we manufacture our reality, and it in turn moulds us. This translates to what potential we perceive, and that which we actualize.

It has been said rightfully that whatever poverty a community like ours faces is due to choices we make, or fail to make. I want to state that our interaction with time is actually the mindset that facilitates this alchemy.

We often perceive time to be made up of the present- sasa, and zamani, a long time ago. We often do not see the future for what it is, as a continuum from our past. We choose to cross the bridge when we come to it. By so doing we fail to employ the lessons from yesterday and today to prepare for tomorrow.

Africa is to a great percentage in a time wrap that places us on the receiving end perpetually. At worst, its like a race between a donkey in Lamu against a formula 1 car on tarmac. At its best the formula 1 car is racing against a reconditioned Toyota.

Information and knowledge acquisition, the ingredients of know how, and thus ability or its potential is learned behaviour. We can all sit in a class and cram information. The researcher will be puzzling how it so happens that with all the information it’s like society has this humongous black hole that just sucks it up! Ask the National Aids Control Council people. The difference that having information makes is only possible if the recipient decodes the message, pre-supposing that the two have learned the same symbols, and the recipient has the desire. That desire is only possible when the recipient, in interacting with the environment has in person determined the pattern of cause and effect! The play of what has been observed, confirmed, what is, and what that portends for the future then tips the scales. A learning society is what it is called.

The reason it is called a learning society is that as a whole, or the critical mass of it shifts perception and behavior in tandem. Social change is not an easy thing. There is basic stuff around us that has taken a hundreds of years to mould. Take racial prejudice, apartheid and the fight for gender equality.

Even when we do, we often think of the past as a far flung era. We may have grand parents who lived it , - the era when things happened differently. A time when expectations were less in some areas, and more in others. A time when it was possible for people to do manual feats that we now look at as myths. It would come as a surprise therefore to discover that in truth, the future is made up of a titration of the past and the present. It requires us to unlearn what we have held as the geographic north, to realign our compass and purpose. It needs dialogue among, and between individuals and groups. It requires us to develop a caring side,- social responsibility. Capitalism, the present economic order fosters competition-, information is power. The hapless easily become the haveless. We may think that natural selection is a debate ended in class. We have another think coming then. Who can imagine the potential disparity between a 14 year old teenager who first went into the internet at 7 years, and a counterpart who will first encounter the computer at 25 years? The African may never surf the internet. How does the world look like to the two? What realm of possibilities do each see? Who between the two is likely to be looking forward to international travel and jobs? How do their current status affect their other choices in life? How will their current status affect their children? If information is truly power, then a polarized disparity is immediately created.

The above phenomena only becomes a reality, albeit a social one, when we compare our society to others. We have previously refused to do this on the grounds that we are different, we should not be compared. Truth is, it should be clear by now that in as far as existence, and its quality are concerned, they are directly proportional to the amount of information, resources and power we wield. There has never in time been a time when resources, natural and otherwise were at a greater demand. It is competition time. The survival of the fittest.

It is a sad moment when a would be contender is disqualified at the start of the race. Africa is often disqualified even before the day, granting the west the gold automatically. Sometimes we realize this when reading history books! Sometimes we just realize it when talking to a stranger, a foreigner who has researched on us. The moment when the puzzles fall in place is too late for meaningful action. Things happen at our door step, but since our cultures have ingrained in us a mechanism of dealing with it, we forget. Stuff that happens behind our house but does not make it in the 7 o’clock news is no news to us. We do all the reading we need for life in school. No wonder we leave it to teachers to teach our children everything. The often valid issues these teachers have are not our concern.

Often life as acted on the big stage of life can also be unfair. The person in China, touching the trunk declares it round. The Indian has a story to tell about its tusks. The Burmese sitting on it talks different. We sitting in its shade are not even aware that this is a large animal, and that it moves. Travel often helps to see the other side of the fence. To experience a different way of life. The traveler stands a chance to have a ‘they’ experience. So does the highway traveler who notices its tusks reflecting light in a lonely country road. The sad thing is that the ingrained vulnerability binds us from taking a decision so we take refuge in numbers, religion being an example.

The situation is worsened because when we go to school, we read subjects and books written for other cultures and realities. We do not build on any body of knowledge from yesterday. We learn to shun it. The language of instruction is foreign too, and so vital meaning is lost as we grapple to take up the foreign information! This type of education dis-orients us and only succeeds in driving us further from our communities who should benefit from them. All over Africa its principally those in the law, medicine, architecture who get to influence society, and often not professionally. The teacher, the artist, the social scientist, don’t, or at least no one acknowledges them. Albeit this is not per se a chosen option. However, as said above it is sad when you realize that the choice was made for us while we were not even aware. By ‘failing’ to make a choice we actually endorsed one!

In the reparation campaign and debate, no one knows the claim value. At least not on our side.

Adult learning only becomes possible when we can unlearn what we already know. It’s a honest soul searching and soliloquy. They say that best learning takes place after the teacher leaves. I reckon the best learning takes place where there is no teacher. Its often a painful lesson though. Costly and time consuming. Often it’s a reinvention of the wheel. It is more endearing though, and the lessons are likely to be handed over to future generations. Steeped as we are in our misplaced beliefs, cut off by the channels of communication, ever becoming more and more poor, in Africa we continue to attend the school of hard knocks. Unless we change, Africa never will.

What are you doing/going to do about it? Will you stand to be counted with the solution providers or with the problem?

From this position

I have felt, in the last one and a half years, a profound change, both in myself and my understanding of the world. I continue to feel and harbor, telling this story, - not because it doesn’t need to be told, or that it’s not engaging, worthy or relevant, but because; from this position I keep asking; how could I not have known? I have sat and watched as puzzles, big and small fell into place. Simple learning’s like we all have a story to tell, a kingly relation to all; science and religion considered, that it all serves a purpose, whether we see it or not, whether we like it or not; - we are puzzles ourselves, and parts of bigger puzzles!

I will try, through this forum, to share a few, and indeed, for even now, you are also part of the big puzzle, hopefully read and see some, from you.

The whole idea, simply is that we are bridges from one generation to another, in all senses; biologically, religiously, politically, economically, name it! We are neighbors, however big the distance from my house to your house. See what happens to exclusive neighborhoods. Others the wannabees and invariably, the slum follow in tow. Whatever status they occupy in the world, (which is their world too!) they are human beings, and hate or love them, they have a right to be there as much as you do! You see, we are all motivated by what Zen and the art of motorcycle repair calls; - quality! We may not see it at first sight, but in the slum a ceaseless struggle to overcome, and climb the social ladder obtains, just as furiously as it does in the affluent society, if not more. We all face the same obstacles in life. The difference is that our state of prepare, and abilities may differ. The quest to learn is not entirely impaired by the lack of formal school. Learning is universal. Just like processor speeds in this computer, education sort of increases this. We therefore absorb more secondary and tertiary senses, compared to the un schooled. They however muster so much about their arena of life as their environment permits. This explains why learning away from home gained favor with most psychologists, and HR professionals. New environments trigger curiosity, adaptation, imagination, capacity and competitive edge to survive, or indeed thrive in. That’s why the urbanite is perceived to be ‘street smart’, compared to the rural based farmer (hence the butt games, including the Welsh ones…!).

We are still agrarians to some varying extend. Its no more than 500 years ago, seven generations ago, that most of us ‘moved out’. We are all privileged more than we ever get to find out. We have the greatest potential to reach out, and giving, which invariably leads to a feeling of richness in life. We can build a human bridge by reaching out to the next person. We are all needy, at different levels again. We need one another. That is my view from this position, which I realize of course, is relative. What is yours?