Kenya has been running without a substantive minister for Finance for close to half a year. And why the hurry if the right DNA is in short supply among the present lot of parliamentarians. Amos Kimunya must be rubbing his hands in glee after refusing to die rather than resign.
There are government ministries and then there are REAL MINISTRIES. Finance ministry is the nerve centre of all transactions, legal and otherwise. Only a naive president would entrust such an important office to a holder with the wrong genes in his veins. Gate keepers of Kenyan Limited must be INDUSTRIOUS Kenyans capable of transacting REAL BUSINESS in first language.
Forget all the facade of trying to legislate against tribalism and cronyism. Only in Kenya are laws made exclusively to message egos with the principal intention to break them with all attendant impunity. We do not have our national butt kissing the bottom of the pit because of lack of good ideas and laws.
Transactions at the finance ministry were at the heart of last year’s election fraud. Some of the most lucrative businesses it handled during the 9th parliamentary session could not be forfeited on the strength of mere ballot papers. You don’t risk the wrath of the international community by acting as an arms conduit for Southern Sudan only to surrender the proceeds to less enterprising Kenyans armed with ballot mandate.
Realistic Kenyans better learn to live with the painful fact that the Finance ministry will remain vacant till Kenyans until we become immune to reigning impunity and accept the truth that the country has its owners. The passengers aboard the geographical entity called Kenya must are better advised to remain loyal to the principal shareholders. And lest you forget no life is sacred in this industrious pursuit of wealth.
Right DNA
If you doubt the temerity of these owners to auction Kenya, then just ask one Hyslop Ipu. The poor guy has corrupted DNA and consequently no clout neither does he belong. He provided the razor that shaved his predecessor oblivious of the fact that his own schedule with the TRIBAL barbers was booked long time ago.
Kenya is not an evil political society for lack of scheming tribal clerics. Instead the entrepreneuring men and women of the cloth populate every sector of our national fabric so much so that they suffocate us with cheap sectarian evangelism.
So here we go folks. Take an honet self-assessment, APPROPRIATELY translate your CV if you belong with the right DNA and RIGHTLY submit your application for any of the two positions above. My lady luck smile to the lucky applicants.
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15:57
The Hatchet Job
» Black Looks EB is the hatchet job If you don’t know better You would mistake EB for a goddess When you are not looking EB’ll stab you in the back EB will laugh. “Cant you take a harmless joke? You’re too sensitive, pet! BD turns her back & EB Pounces - the rabid cat: “You know BD don’t you, the same BD? & smirks BD didn’t miss [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "The Hatchet Job", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2009/01/the_hatchet_job.html" });
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14:40
the diet
» Kikuyumoja's realm New year’s resolutions are supposed to be made - and then quickly forgotten.
I can’t even remember if it was a new year’s resolution, but it’s January 2009 now and the wife (”she”) said we’d have to go on a diet. South-Beach Diet.
If you’re married or at least engaged, you’ll know that wise men never oppose a female decision (but instead wait for them to remorse on their own). This especially applies to those poor fellows who are married to Thatcheresque characters.
The painful truth is that she’s right. We both urgently need to lose weight - not because we’d been surviving on junk food only (she’s vegetarian anyways), but because food in Germany is just more than nutritious. Whenever I am in Kenya, I lose weight. But here in Germany, it’s just massive. And then all these sweets!
Sweets, dear readers, are one of the two fine reasons why I like German food (the other is Bavarian Leberkäse). And not only packaged Haribo winegums and liquorice, but also fresh cakes from a bakery:
Choice 2.0Now compare that with the usual “variety” of marble cakes as found in the average Kenyan supermarket. What a difference and sweet temptation!
Choice 1.0Ati? Do I hear you longing for the typical BlueBand (instead of butter) “butter” cream cake?
The strange Barbie cake found in Nbo the other daySee? That’s the dilemma now. Living in a country where the sweets section alone can fill up a whole supermarket and even provides a bigger variety than the usual and rather boring marble & butter cream cakes as found in ex British colonies (sorry, but I blame this heritage purely on the British inability & disinterest in cooking & baking), you’ll quickly end up eating too many sweets. Just because they are readymade food and can be eaten quickly. And of course because I love sweets.
Other members of the extended family already tested this diet - or let’s say: change of diet, and it worked quite well for them. You’re basically not allowed to eat any bad carbohydrates during the first two weeks, which obviously also includes sugar, bread, potatoes and so on. The list of the NO-GOs is actually quite long - the one of those things you’re allowed to eat rather short.
As you may know or not know: Germans love to have a sweet breakfast (e.g. bread with jam), so this diet requires her to switch to scrambled eggs and bacon instead (ok, this is what I like about UK kitchen at least).
As for lunch and dinner, we’ve so far prepared vegetable dishes based on chickpeas, eggplant, garlic and sometimes even meat (for me, not for her). The meat part actually is quite nice because I didn’t have a proper steak until Xmas and until my good old ex-vegetarian sister Zora recently informed me she’d switched to being a carnivore. @Zora - in case you’re reading this: see how your actions influence my life! :-)
A snapshot I’d already twitpic’d: looks like Githeri to me, bila potatoes and beans. That’s dal fry, actually. Lentils + onions + tomatoes + some chick peas + curry. Delicious!
Eggplant/Aubergine with Turkish cheese and garlic + sesame. Grilled in the oven. This really is a perfect dish anyone can prepare within a few minutes.
Some kind of steak I’d cut into pieces because I wasn’t sure about its age (@intelligensia see “Rost and mboilo”, p.46 , “How to be a Kenyan”). Next time I will just choma this kabisa in the grill. Love the fresh broccoli though, very al dente (mushy food is a no-go except for Irio). I shall have even more meat during the coming weeks. Yay!
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Other, food related matters that are worth mentioning and actually require their own post is Vegefarm - a vegan/vegetarian restaurant opened by very good friends of mine in Bremen - a city in Northern Germany.
What they do is serving special dishes that almost taste like real meat or fish, but are purely based on gluten, tofu and shitake mushrooms and probably also other vegan ingredients. Quite SE Asian - they used to have a Chinese restaurant (already serving vegan dishes back then) but have since switched to this cuisine only. And best of all is that you can order these fake meat and fish balls based on Tofu & Co. online. I’d seen them importing these directly from Taiwan some years ago, so it’s extremely nice to see them coming up with a full restaurant these days that only serves such dishes.
Those dark green “leaves” on the image above are algae from the sea - and since I grew up on Japanese food, I really, really love the taste of this green seaweed.
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Yes - that’s about it so far. From seaweed to ugali na sukuma to sweets. And there you go wondering why I’d gained weight.
Interestingly though, and the intial reason for blogging all of this: it seems that if you want to survive on staple food only (starch), you’ll pay much less. Try to find decent (!) vegetable during winter season in Europe and you’ll quickly realize that the only place where vegetaboools taste like having grown under the sun (and not in some artificial greenhouse in Spain) is among Turkish supermarkets, next to those Afroshops downtown.
Of course, once I’m done and have lost my targeted 10kgs (hey..easy!), I will have to start my Leberkaese business idea in Kenya :-) Serving tasty meat snacks to commuters - how’s that for a change?
p.s.: I consider this post part of my lifelong Bantu-food-bashing-meme which aims at spreading Swahili food culture from the Kenyan coast to all parts of Central Kenya. Eh!
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7:38
Gutter or the mainstream media? What do you read?
» Hapa Kenya One evening when I was 6yrs old, my dad came home carrying two things, a newspaper and paper bag with lots of goodies. To his surprise, as my little sister was struggling with the candy bag, I went for the newspaper. I sat there for about 15 minutes perusing the paper, what the headline was then, I can’t recall. A week later, I heard my dad bragging to his friends how at 6yrs of age, I was able to read and comprehend the content of the newspaper. His pride and braggadocio made me very happy and there on I fell in love with newspapers, and for a long time I became an ardent reader of Nation.
Now that am older and wiser, I no longer read papers, other than for the Job Adverts and the full page Zain/Safcom offers, there is nothing to look forward to. Kenyan newspapers have become so parochial so much that they no longer excite, truth has become minimal and their stories cannot hold any water. The news are so imbalanced, 90% being bad news out of which 70% is political. Hopelessness that is so evident in the faces of many Kenyans is as a result of Kenyan press that is so full of hate material. Journalist have lost their touch, the so called news are half full of history. Flashy headlines with no content, the two mainstream papers have degenerated to gutter, where the news ends at the headline. Picture this … “KIBAKI COUP!”........ But no content!
Strange enough, two journalists from the two main media houses will cover the same event and come up with two conflicting stories on the same subject matter. This has gone on for so long so much that, The Standard is easily aligned to the ODM side while the Nation to the PNU side.
So what do I read? The problem with the Nation & the Standard newspapers is the temptation to believe their stories, only to find out later that much of what you actually believed wasn’t true. On the other hand, if you picked the Citizen Weekly from the streets and fed your self with the utter nonsense that fill it pages, at the end of which, you still have almost similar content as to what is in the mainstream papers, only that this time, there exist not the temptation to believe. That is why every Monday morning I buy one of the Citizen Weekly, read it for an hour and my newspaper session is done for another week. After all why buy Nation & Standard daily only to be fed with gibberish when you can fill yourself with the same claptrap once every Monday?
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Senegalese court jails 9 for sodomy
» Black Looks Senegal which is one of the few former Francophone countries to criminalise sodomy has sentenced 9 men to an eight year jail sentence despite the judge’s recommendation of 5 years. The concern in this case is the violation of the rights of the men who were arrested in the home of Mr Diouf, who [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Senegalese court jails 9 for sodomy", url: "http://www.blacklooks.org/2009/01/senegalese_court_jails_9_for_sodomy.html" });
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3:45
Time Off, Hot Cars and Break Ups
» My part of the world....... Today The Acolyte calls in sick instead of going to work. I have never called in from work just for the sake of (or at least with this job), so this is a new experience for me; playing hooky!
I was telling a friend about the cold nights we occasionally have and she suggested that instead of me bothering with a space heater or raising my gas bill, that I should buy an electric blanket. I told her that it seemed like a good idea and that I would most def look into it, but in the back of my head the first thought I had was of being electrocuted in my sleep because I broke a sweat or something. Yes I know the odds of that happening are slim to none, but a man is entitled to his paranoia.
Speaking of heat, time for a funny Acolyte story. You see the weather here can be erratic at times depending on the season, it'll be freezing in the morning then it'll get pretty toasty in the afternoon. So that was the situation one day when I was driving to work so I turned up the heat to make sure I didn't get to work with frost bite or something. So as the day went on it got rather warmer, evening came and I got in my car to drive home and felt the interior had become rather warm so I turned on the air conditioning to cool it down. As I was on the road I had the distinct feeling my car was getting hotter inside, to the point I broke a sweat. I then looked at the dash and realized one thing.........I hadn't adjusted the temperature of the air con so I had turned my car into a moving sauna!
A good friend sent me this video by Gnarls Barkley and I have to say it made my day.
Who's Gonna Save My Soul
What I loved most was the break up line and the soon to be ex-boyfriend's response. Nothing cracks me up as much as break up lines. The ironic thing is that some of them are actually genuine but still reek like a bag of 4 day old fish. Case in point see below:
"Yes, I thought we were getting to the point in our relationship where I might start to fall in love with you but your insecurities about how I feel about you have made it clear that I can never fall in love with you."
"I don't want the responsibility of someone else's happiness."
"You're great, but I have so much baggage, and right now I have more bad days than good days...it wouldn't be fair to subject you to that."
Since I'm wonderfully dysfunctional I don't even use break lines. I just go into hiding after acting the fool and await some dude with no morals (usually a friend) to pounce on the vulnerable chic. I then re-emerge to play the shattered cuckolded lover and proceed to dump her there and then. Needless to say some of them have not taken this lightly hence me moving apartments every few months to avoid them. I think I've said enough, don't want to spill my whole M.O. Oh well time to get ready for a nice day of sloth!
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2:35
Eldoret Dead Bodies Drama: Hilarious But Not Funny
» You Missed This I have been talking about our blundering government a lot in recent times (need I remind you that it is led by our dear beloved blunderer in chief who is commander in chief of all the blunderers and blunders).
If ink was something we used to make posts online, then I would have said the ink had not yet dried on my post when the President made an about turn on the Kenya communications bill he signed only last Friday and ordered the contentious parts to be looked into. managers please help us here with the following question. How much does it cost to make a decision and then make an about turn only a few days later? How much is this little circus costing us as a country?
Anyway the main aim of this post was to attract your attention to another government blunder in Eldoret where the government was caught red-handed trying to secretly bury dead bodies of the post election violence. What is hilarious was the excuse the government pathologist gave to grief-stricken relatives of the dead for his actions. My ribs are still aching in pain since I read this a few hours ago;
But Dr Njue said the measure was temporary, as the bodies would be exhumed once they had been identified and given to their families.
“This is actually not a burial ceremony, but a temporary resting place. The way we are doing it is not like a normal burial ceremony. Even the UN recognizes this as a legitimate way of holding bodies,” he said. Read the full story.
I have said time and again that this government has perfected the art of burying evidence especially in the form of bullet-ridden dead bodies and dead bodies in general. I stand by my figure for the total death toll of the post election troubles (well over 5,000 souls). While agreeing that it is not easy to dispose of thousands of bodies without trace, just remember that we are dealing with experts here and some of the tactics that have been devised include the following;
- Throwing bodies in the vast Nairobi National Park during a drought
- Taking bodies of Mombasa Victims to the Nairobi morgues and Nairobi victims victims to Kisumu.
- Digging mass graves like the one in Eldoret and burying dozens of bodies at a time.
- Other ingenious methods that we will discover with time.
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1:39
Where hither the Kenya Shilling?
» Rants, Raves & Reviews What do you guys/gals think where the Kenya Shilling will head versus the basket of forex currencies (USD, Yen, GBP, Euro)....
I don't understand the reason (except the 'safe haven' argument) for the strength of the US$... The US gov't (thru the Fed & Treasury & other agencies) will pump (since Aug 2008) in $1,000,000,000,000 (almost 6% of the USA's GDP) into the system by June 2009....
Whereas I do not expect inflation to be a problem since the 'extra' cash will be negated in part by:- lower interest rates on loans
- lower housing costs
- lower fuel/energy costs
- reduced salaries (loss of jobs or no more increases)
- discounting of merchandise/food
China is a wild card... or the joker?
Please provide your thoughts... and guidance... and ideas... -
Coldtusker is Twittering
» Rants, Raves & Reviews Just a fad or another tool? Or am I just a Twit... thanks to Ryan Shen-Hoover of Investing In Africa.
Anyway you can fine me twittering on www.twitter.com/coldtusker
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