Numbering

Rain is to Kampala what a snow storm is to Washington, DC. Yesterday the heavens opened around the time most people head home. As you can imagine, traffic was horrible. For those like me who don’t drive (yet, I’d like to imagine. Kidding, I have a chauffeur-not! Well, matatu, taxi and boda bodas drivers). I figured if I called my regular cab guy to come pick me and drop me off at home it might take as much time as it would have taken to walk to City Square and board a matatu to my hood.

Trouble with matatus here is that they are not numbered. You know only know it’s going your route if the conductor is shouting the name of the place that’s in the general direction where you are going, or and pointing right, left or straight ahead. In most cases, shouting and pointing. Pretty confusing if you are new. For instance, if you are standing on Kampala Road, a conductor pointing straight ahead may be going to Bweyogere/Mukono/Seeta or Bweyogerere/Kireka/Banda. Left indicates Nakawa/Ntinda while right indicates Luzira/Bugolobi. At the matatu stage in my hood, they straight ahead is for to the new Park/Kampala Road/Fido Dido. You have to be keen with this one because they can take different roads there, but rest assured, you’ll at least get back on Kampala Road at the Esso Corner – does Esso still exist? The ones going to the Old Taxi Park point left and shout as much.
So jana after work, I went to City Square. The place was over-crowded, with very few matatus, all full. Most were going to what I then christened my rival hood. I walked up Kampala Road towards King Fahd Plaza and took shelter near Shell. And that’s where I was till my matatu caEventually, my matatu came, and charged us 1UGX 1,500 instead of the usual 1,000, which I understand because I think they make fewer rounds when it’s wet. I got home slightly after 9pm.

Watching and listening to what direction the matatus take has got me thinking; it wouldn’t take long to designate route numbers to all the Kampala neighbourhoods and get matatus to adopt.

On the other hand, Ugandans are way ahead of Kenyans in terms of street numbering. Most plots in Kampala are numbered. When you need a physical location, you write the Plot Number and the Road. E.g. PKW Ltd, Plot 2 PKW Road, That Hill, Kampala. Not so in Nairobi. It’s more like, That Road, opposite that Petrol Station, next to that Church, at the intersection between these two Roads, behind that Building, formally known as that other Building etc etc. Pretty confusing.
Today I had a bit of trouble locating an office because the plot numbers were pretty straight forward till the one I couldn’t find the one I was looking. There was 215-----211 then 165. The business I was looking for is not easily recognizable. But it didn’t take long to get to them-I called the guy and he told me to go up the road from the Police Station that is at an intersection.

Kampala can teach Nairobi a thing.

'SERVANTS'. AND THE CLASS THINGY

Yaani it’s been long since I blogged. Nsaba munisonyiwe bambi (Mtajuaje? Naringa). Wacha I see if I can do a post a week. Also look out for one of mine over at Raymond Chepkwony’s place. Hebu we see if I can do stuff his style.

Leo I want to talk about ‘servants’. It’s in quotes because am referring to actual employees, some at the places where we work, others that are employed at home. Maybe it’s because we didn’t have any when I was growing up, but the whole arrangement does not sit well with me most of the time.
Let’s start with the time I was working as a ‘servant’. I’ve written on this blog that I at one point would baby-sit some neighbours’ and friends of friends kiddos, do laundry, and clean house while doing an unpaid internship that gave me the kind of experience I was looking to put on my CV. And, I consider myself lucky as I had more indirect financial support than anyone I can think of. While job-hunting post-grad school, I waited on wealthy folks who paid top dollar for the smallest portions I’d ever seen people pay for. The point here is not to tell you nilipitia njia mrefu. Let’s just say that I have been in the ‘service’ industry, but with a better package than most locals here. Case in point: If I worked more than 40 hours a week, I was paid 1.5 times my hourly rate.

When I eventually started working my desk job, there were no servants. I would often bump into the president of our organization toasting his bread or microwaving his lunch at work. At one point when it was apparent that the economy was headed south (even though I believe these were actually not bad times for the firm), they announced budget cuts, sending an email that you needed to clean after yourself in the kitchen because those services were not being paid for any more. Some guys would only come by after everybody had left to clean office and pick up the trash.
Fast forward to here and now; I’m talking E. Africa. Thanks to the high official unemployment rate, there are plenty of ‘servants’. With it, the class thing is alive and well. I bet you, you can walk into any office and get a general idea of who’s ‘big’ depending on how waited on they are. I’ve been to places where the biggest person gets served tea with spices in a special flask with a colourful cup, the big people are served in special flasks at their desks, and the rest fetch their tea in a common room or in a kitchen somewhere. It all seems totally acceptable, almost expected.

Let’s starting with the day I was seated in an office with a big person. She sends the cleaning guy for a plastic cup of water from the water cooler. The guy initially gives her an odd look, but then proceeds to go fetch the water anyway. But not before she has specified her order ‘wait! I want a mixture of hot and cold water. No, wait! Bring it in two separate cups, one hot, one cold” The guy goes, comes back with one cup, saying it was the last at the cooler-plastic cups. She hands him the one she had been drinking from, asking him to go get another one. The guy obliges. We stay for been about 10 minutes and she hasn’t touched the water, eventually going out the door. I’m thinking, the water cooler is in the general direction of the door, ma’am.

There are those tea people and cleaning people. These guys do more physical work than most of us in a day. More often than not, they are the first to get to work, and the last to leave, and most likely the least paid. Halafu people give them the most mundane tasks. ‘J.,take my food to the fridge. G., go get my food from the fridge and warm it up for me. Go get me lunch. No, I said I wanted groundnut paste, not beans’ –which is offered in only one restaurant that is like a15 minute walk, sometimes in the sun. It’s pretty sad when you realise they are buying and warming everyone’s lunch but their own-because hawana. ‘Buy me air-time’. I asked one why they do all this when clearly, it’s not in their job description, and they said that their JD clearly describes their duties and states that they are to run any other errands assigned to them. Talk of going an extra mile.


Mbotch

I won’t repeat what Shiko from Msa said about domestic servants. But banange, if some made my entire family's food and I had to leave them with my child/ren all day, I’d handle them with care. I onceI carried out an informal survey-if you call asking one question repeatedly a survey- about how much maids are paid. The mode was UGX 30,000 (like Ksh 1,200) per month. Answer to ‘why, that’s kidogo!’? ‘That’s the market rate’. Free markets at best? Yeah, you could also argue that there are market rates for slaves. Even more amusing is when the ‘employers’ will be ‘poverty professionals’: apparently when you need a domestic servant, gender balance, women empowerment, education, making poverty history yada yada yada don’t start at home.

It's Not Me, It's You

Today is Valentine’s day, in case you missed it. I’ve read my card, but not yet touched the chocolate or sparkling wine. That’s for later. Yes, no, we couldn’t be together.

The thing is that I’m already thinking of how to end it with the Man, because I don’t see his clan bringing goats and cows (actually these days it’s their equivalent in Kenya Shillings) to mine in exchange of me. We had agreed that the walk down the aisle can be done several years down the line, or even never, as long as the legal thing had been done so he’s not left free to ‘buy’ as many wives as he can afford. We had even set dates for the initial unofficial Meet the Family visits last December, before I suggested that we postpone for a later, unspecified date.

Now, in my gut, I almost know the Man is not the one I want to spend the rest of my life with. I’ve told him as much, got back the few things I had at his place, but he doesn’t seem to get it. I kinda am at peace with my decision. But there is a problem. Maybe up to four problems.

A man features prominently in my 5-year Strategic Dream. Not sure why I place him at number 2, while ideally, he would contribute to number 1. Well, there was no particular order.

Also, there is the fact that I’m 32 this August, and I think, over here at least, there is a fat chance that the probability of meeting the one you want to spend the rest of your life with gets slimmer as the numbers go up.

Now, I’m not sure I want to pray about this Man issue anymore. I feel like God has probably given me many chances already, but I seem to always have a reason why not this one (like passion, even). That is, when I’ve not been the one being given the boot. Which reminds me of my friend in college; B. B once told me and her room-mate at one point to “Shindeni tu hapo mki-date machali. Wakati mtapata malaika, mkuje mniambie ‘B. nimepata malaika, sasa nataka kuolewa!’”. Loosely translated: ”Go on, just date for fun, when you meet angels, come back and tell me ‘B. I have met an angel, now I want to get married!’”. Which would be my mum’s take too, though hers sometimes seems to border on the justcloseyoureyesandgetmarriedifhenotabusiveorjustgetababyalready! school of thought.


So, in the past few days, I’ve been thinking more in the line of how I’d live my life as Single PKW, if it comes to that. Or, by method of elimination (like, ‘he lacks passion’. Really), how to eventually settle for Mr. Good Enough if/when he comes along.

MONOPOLY

Tuesday was Liberation Day here. We were observing the day the National Resistance Movement, led by M7, captured (that must be the right word. I've heard that Kenyatta would get offended and verbally insult you if you said that 'we' were granted freedom by the Brits. "Tulinyakua Uhuru" was right-er) power in Kampala after 5 years in the bush. I forget from whom the country was liberated. M01 was also around, pushing forth for a 4th term of the M7 presidency. Elections are early next year.


When I got back into town in the evening, I got together with some friends and we played Monopoly. It was a first for me.


After learning the rules, I bought some property when I could, refused to make early deals that would have seen me develop some from which I could have earned rent, or even allowed me to buy more, and refused to buy property I thought too cheap and in bad neighbourhoods. That you earned 200 bob every time you passed by sounded like a Mungiki-infested area.
The end? The guy who got the cheap stuff made a fortune, and was able to buy and develop other properties. Which made me broke because I had to pay too much rent. I had to mortgage my houses at half price, and ended up selling my properties to merely pass by. In the end, I was left with no property, was penniless and, I imagined, homeless.


I was shocked. Not because I lost the game (I can explain! It was my first time, and I was the second to go bankrupt, out of four people. The first loser was the mugaga-sonko-in an earlier game before I got there). I don’t want to live my life like that. We all started with exactly equal opportunities, but two of us were wiped out. Just wondering could life be like that?
In the next five years, I’ll focus investing for the long term, and on cash-flow outside my job in the medium term. Medium term is now through the next 5 years. God willing, and helping me. Starting........soon!


Ultimately I think Monopoly is a game of chance. But isn’t life? I think a more appropriate name for the game would have been Capitalism. Like, you are either going to eat or be eaten. You know, like the animals I saw on National Geographic at the same venue some time earlier. Because I’ve never been to Maasai Mara, neither do I have DSTV (who’s the other new Pay-TV guy after the death of GTV, R-TV? See, it’s a game of chance). Not until this coming weekend, anyway. Way to get that positive cash-flow, you know?

Seeking Balance

Part of this post might come off in classic Kenyan Reality style (See the last paragraph, white font here): scarcity of details and the only take-away is that things are a bit out of balance, in a negative way.

I only made New Year resolutions in early 2005, the same year I resolved to keep a diary from that year onwards. Then I lost the diary sometimes before June, and decided never to keep one anymore. In a shared house with no personal space, it was too risky to have the wrong pairs of eyes reading it. Because I wrote about my interactions with people, some of whom I was living with.

Learning how to live with people while minimizing conflicts has been a journey for me. I can't say what I achieved what year, and definitely don't remember 'resolving' to learn how to coexist with others peacefully.

Anyway, last week there was an in incident that led to a few awake-at-night moments. And there are two others that kept me awake last night. In one, I’ll my know my fate by Feb 9th. . Still, I need to come up with a plan B for the result because I have a deadline to meet by the 15th. The other is a process that needs a lot of my effort, and favour from God. The effort needed to resolve the first issue includes such things as: patience, resolve, mutual understanding, giving and receiving respect and dignity, and even levelling expectations. And of all things, commitment. No, the other party is not even remotely a romantic partner.


There was a time that I had so much faith in God that all I would do was give my best in whatever depended on me, pray, chill, change strategy whenever need arose. These days, I’m taking things quite personally. Even being a bit sceptical on God’s intervention (to use a trending topic, think the Haiti earthquake, His omnipotence, and their faith in Him). Only that it’s all been to my detriment. I would never lose sleep over stuff. I’m so going back to my former way of dealing with everything! It doesn’t all make sense all the time, but it works for me.

Here are some 20 easy ways you can reduce daily stress. I guess, in life, you can reduce stress by better planning and anticipating stuff. And for me, praying.

To Tell or Not to Tell? Or ask.

Would you ask or tell all of your 'pyjama time' stats? There's this guy who wrote to Love Letters . He's freaked out because he asked and she said she had it going with like 35 guys in college.

Then there's huyu who's afraid to share inexperience.


I prefer to not ask. But sure go for tests. Wewe je?

I'm Back

As my Zimbabwean colleague would put it, I’m bek to werk. That is, back to work. It was good to be home and away from UG for some time. The trip itself had kidogo drama, with my flights delayed both ways. I fikad at my house at 3am leo morning, and had to be at work the same day. But, I’m a KQ shareholder, so I won’t bash them much. Here’s a recap of my time away from my home.

Got to spend time with my family. My niece and nephew, those kids are growing, yawa! Even took it upon myself to tell PKW kadogo a few things about boys and sex . PKW kadogo is my cousin’s kido, and is turning 12 this year, and we are named for my cucu. My mum seems to be ageing a bit faster than I’d have expected. She complained that siku hizi watu wanaishi kama wazungu, with kids and gradkids away from parents and grandparents. Told her she can always come stay with me when she is old(er) and I have a family. And I mean it. It’ll be awesome, I think. Interestingly, seeing my family made me feel a bit old too. Imagine I saw PKW kadogo’s mum pregnant with her when I was 19, going on 20!


Time with friends fro seco. I think there is nothing like friendships za kitambo. You know, one of those when you haven’t seen each other for five years, meet up, and ongea, mpaka it feels like you were never apart? With one of them, we spoke mpaka the husband flashed her phone—aende akalale.


Time with my friend that I met kwa mtandao. Kasichana, thanks for inviting me to the Kenya-Cameroon friendly match on Sato. Thanks to you,I can now be counted among the people who have seen Etoo, Song (? The guy who plays for Arsenal) and Congestina live. We lost. 3:1. Wana-Cameroon waendelee hivyo hivyo especially kwa finals za World Cup in June. Woi, I hope at least one African team will get to the semi-finals. Gosh, I hope the stadium is going to be ready.

Not enough time with the Man, but every second was well worth it. We even had a mini-crisis which we kinda created by failing to plan, and got through it intact.


Became increasingly aware that depression is a terrible disease. A relative of a friend, whom I knew, committed suicide in ’08. She was 30. Second time I was hearing this in the last couple months, though the other friend’s dad committed suicide in the early-mid 90s. I think many people, including me, are never aware when they are depressed, thus never seek help. And what you think is your support system can be your biggest detractor. It may be hard for people to support you if they don’t know you’re sick and don’t even recognize a disease in the first place. There is a case for mental health awareness in Kenya.


Had conversations that made me to (more seriously) think about retirement. Yaani, gone are the days when people would retire and go grow sukumawikis or have a ka-kiosk huko shagz and that would sustain them. These days, some maybe lucky to be in the village sinceyour expenses may not be as high as those of townfolk. Luckier if your kids are doing well enough to take care of their kids and take care of you. Not many Kenyans put retirement living into their plans. We have a lot of young people to take care of, and it’s a matter of time till we have a lot of old people to take care off. I used to hate nursing homes with a passion, but now.....someone better think of expanding that business model.


Matatus: I ride them all the time in UG, they are called taxis. Cabs are called ‘Special Hires’. Over here they are white, with a broken blue strip, not pimped hata kidogo. In Nairobi, they come in many colours, music and DVDs. I rode in many ‘SMS ONLY’ matatus. Yeah, the music was that loud. And Tanzanian music seems to have taken over. But then matatus went on strike last Monday.As my sister-in-law put it, watu wa matatu ni watu wa njaa, hawawezi enda long. Sure, they were back Tuesday night. I really hope we don’t get as many bodabodas in town. Ama they outlaw their operation in the CBD. Kajini they are doing a great job between where the matatus drop people off and homes in shagz. Made a new friend. A broker, can imagine that?


M-Pesa scare. Sent 10K to someone by mistake, using 0710, instead of 0720. You should have seen me running from Maggie’s to the Safaricom Customer Care Centre on Moi Avenue and dialling 234 at the same time. I ingiad the Maggie’s kitchen while looking for the exit. Luckily 234 went through real quickly and they reversed the transaction. But I couldn’t re-send or use that particular amount of money until after 72 hours. Apparently, people had gotten into the habit of buying lots of merchandise, paying through M-Pesa, and immediately calling Safcom claiming they sent the money by mistake. Then discard the SIM card and get another one. Kinda makes SIM registration sensible, when I think about it. J.N., the guy I’d sent the money to by mistake, asked me to send him 100bob air-time sababu hakutumia pesa yangu vibaya. I didn’t. M-Pesa’s real cool. I even M-Pesad the mama who did my hair the fee.


Rain, rain came our way: a lot of Kenyans had prayed. It poured. Yaani, in my village it rained every day. When I went back to Nai, I M-Pesad my mum enough money to plant 100 or 125 trees. Also realized that forest land at the small centre not far from our ka-market on the way to town has been demarcated and settled in by, I think, previously landless people. Used to be a forest 10 years ago when we moved there. Also, wonder of wonders, wells in our village had dried up during the draught. Imagine that, and we don’t have rivers. Potatoes, which we;ve sold for as low as 200bob a sack, had hit 5K bob.

Real estate (flats and houses): I think now that the roads are being repaired, real estate value in some places is shooting trhough the roof. Was last in Kitengela in December 2004, and now people have built up the place like no one’s biashara. Nyumba poa za kuishi. It’s becoming a well established town with all the social amenities. Was in Kajiado, and some guys actually commute there daily from Kitengela. Then I met this guy who told me that he’d bought 2 parcels of land for 70K each in early 2008, and just sold one for 500K. Then again, some people in Central Kenya will quote millions for an acre, even though they can’t justify that. I think it may be a bubble. There are flats coming up almost in every direction you drive from Nairobi. I should be a shareholder in one of those cement-manufacturing companies. Or HFCK, or the other banks financing the developments. I also imagine that it may be better to buy than build a house. Saving me the hassle of building from scratch. Just a thought.

Other resources (cows, land). I think the Maasais, at least the ones I interacted with, are a very rich lot.


I feel rather excited about 2010, like it has great things in store.
I wish everyone a happy, health and prosperous (for real, not just because that’s what people say) 2010. May God guide you and help you accomplish your plans in 2010 and beyond.