Secret of Three

The argument was delectable, or at least it was from my side. She’s busy nailing me to the cross whilst standing there with an imaginary halo hanging over her head. I break this halo into pieces when I ask her “Did your source tell you what was in it for them telling you this?” Perturbed ain’t the word to describe what this evening has become. Like the calculated tocks of my mind’s Big Ben, I knew somehow one little trickle of information will come back to haunt me. Or vindicate me. You see, in this place, this place I’ve come to loath, the walls have supersensitive ears.

Being sly she says is like a cook who thinks they are the best until they go to France. Nevertheless, being sly has become second nature to me. For the same reasons that are cooking this drama I’m caught in. You get so many people in this world who would do anything to get what they want. That includes grinding you over with the meanest Caterpillar truck they can find and still smile and say “Sorry, friend!” It includes ladies who would go miles over their “friends” just to get to a man who isn’t interested in them anyway. Forget that the said lady has a man herself. That creates one very hot pot of backstabbing drama. That’s where slyness comes in. Slyness brings the scum of this group of people up to float like foam that you wash away from your life with but one swift blow. You lay a trap, they take it, you swing back and before they realize, it’s done.

I listen to her telling me she’s so disappointed in me, having believed that I shared “our secret conversation” with someone else. Never mind that the walls here hear. Never mind that she’s already concluded am guilty and that I’ve neither defense nor trust to my name. She says she wouldn’t trust me ever again. Fair enough, after all, I don’t trust myself too! I however question myself, what’s trust in this whole situation? Is trust the convenient part of the court you decide to play in when it suits you? Is trust trusting what you hear over what you know? Is trust believing someone who has conflict of interest written all over them? Is trust believing the little scraps of info you receive without sifting through them first? Is trust not being able to stand by what you believe and instead jump and cling onto someone’s bull crap? What’s trust? I confess, I have failed to understand. If trust is all these, I might as well be guilty of no trust.

I once heard information is knowing and knowledge is power. The best part of this whole thing is the third piece of cake still left untouched. This third piece is mine. If I throw the fork and knife at it, I bet it will create more stickiness. Too much sugar my mum warned me is bad for my health. Still, I’m a sucker for my sweet-tooth. So am gonna shelf it away for another day. And Lord pray, when that day comes am going to have me one big piece of pure niceness.

Modern Day Slavery & Livery

*

Mista Ri is on stage rapping away punch-lines so sick, AIDs will be scared. “Nikienda Kisumu na wewe and you had a t-shirt dissing Raila, I’ll still be more stoned than you!” Another goes like “Mimi ndo role model wa role model wako”. And so was the flow of the 14^th WAPI to date this past weekend.

I’ve stated times before that WAPI – Words and Pictures is a great forum for expression, what am concerned about though is if it’ll get to a point you see a real difference in the lives of its participants. For one, most of the underground MCs that rock mics at WAPI come from the hoods – Mathare, Kibera, Eastleigh and Kawangware among others. They seek a dim ray of hope – that of bursting into the murky Kenyan music limelight. Their ticket there - a couple of sharpened rhymes and one mic. It is this dim ray that brings them to such forums. Being the 14^th event, I reflected on how far it had come. Slightly over one year old now, it should be an appropriate time to evaluate the differences this event has made. It’s nearing maturity and a stage where sense of direction matters most. That sense of direction should be driven with the knowledge that it will serve to enhance the lives of these artists in one form or another. Skill development, networking, peer-to-peer review or even the exposure that was starkly missing from the arts in Kenya.

I must say that the topic Modern Day Slavery was exhaustively discussed this time round, to the detriment of those who come to the event for only the music! Some seemed bored and left although when afternoon came around, the place was teeming with crowds.

Graffiti was not impressive. I had the chance to be among the graf judges and only three pieces really struck me as good. When we announced the winner, there was uproar – mostly out of ignorance. Most people seem to look at graffiti on aesthetics’ point of view only forgetting things like relevance to the theme, execution, creativity and originality. Some graf artists were creative, they went an extra mile incorporating gold and silver sprays into their works while others went typo-pictorial. The winner went further. FACT – a group of four had a pictorial-typo-symbolism-within-type graf. And hit the nail on the head regarding the theme. It was a superbly executed collaborative piece. If I judged it thrice, they’d have won thrice.

My take on modern day slavery was simplistic. I looked at my life and thought of money and my mobile phone as my new masters. The fact that every day I have to wake up, money on my mind and my mind on my money. Everyday Hustling. The only breather I get is still occupied with thoughts of cash. The little innocent pod I call my life is surrounded by consumerism and capitalism. C.R.E.A.M - Cash Rules Everything Around Me, another good graffiti summed my life up. In this state, I try to escape to something more fundamental, something on a spiritual or emotional level yet stay trapped in the clasps of CREAM.

Some time back, I had no phone and life was sweeter. There were no problems with friends hooking up – somehow we still did. Now leaving my phone behind for 10 minutes is a No-No! I can’t live without it, trust me I’ve tried. It has become the centre of my CREAM world, its very heart. Even when I long to be still, it still thuds and vibrates to my dismay. I find myself fidgeting with it purposelessly. I’ve become a slave to its bidding, one cry from it and I swiftly beckon. After a time, a new version comes along and becomes my new master. It has polished and upgraded features that I cannot resist. Nor pronounce. Bluetooth, infrared, java-enabled entertainment, 5.5 megapixels of tempting camera, radio, Oh the pain! Modern day slavery is such sweet pain.

Honey-coated

Desperate’s the feel as musk scented envelopes peel
Then eager perusal of each letter scrutinized to the letter
Slightly pressed still no return address
Soft heartbeats next to every alphabet
I feel the electric smile romancing me across miles

The radio has long kept playing that one song
The one that reminds me of all those blind moments
When we could have stolen a kiss and basked in its bliss
And miss it all again when we heard that piece
Still acted like nothing cut until the distance hurt

Tearing scratches of life’s knife on my life and yours
Patching these emptiness tears with the wetness of happy tears
Receiving that message in a bottle with a floated massage
Warmly wrapped to calmly cool
the desperate feel engulfing my honey-coated zeal.

Copyright Maza Asad - 2007

----

Await the letter on email. :)

MotorShow...For Real?

this sato i was at the much taunted carshow, so i dragged myself there despite the grey clouds hovering, threating to pour down like revenge. i was so psyched up from friday that i'd get to see superbly done rides - the type you see in pimp-my-ride-like shows. Ole wangu! i paid a cool kshs. 350 to see some lousy s%^&! that didn't match to all that hype. Ati carshow? They need to change that name and just call it plain Not-So-All-That-Car-Display.

Mash Auto, the kingpins of car pimping were not there - you could almost tell they had beef with these organizers, their absence shouted! And its like all entries were from one Unity Garage! Alone! What diversity! Anyway, a few pieces caught my eye - the airbrushing on some of them was just too deadly.... like the orange and blue ladeis on the bonnets..... other than that, i think i saw much more impressive cars outside the show than inside!

Starting with these 2 beauties.....

Wyt Elefants!

Shuffling thru last month's newspaper, i get stuck on this one story.
The high court ordered Il Ngwesi, a community conservancy to pay a British woman 105 million (there's no typo there - 105!) as compensation for being injured by an elephant while she was vacationing there. Now that sounds like the highest figure ever rewarded to an individual in kenyan legal system. The community conservancy argues that this steep penalty will kill the spirit of conservation. I agree. But i also want to ask Justice Mary Ang'awa who delivered the ruling, would she have reached the same conclusion (read amount) if it were, say, a Maasai nomad injured by the elephant seeking compensation? Ati Justice is blind? Not around here!

Cause, enyewe, bila lies tena online, i know quite a number of people who are more than willing to have a tusk or two right up their abdomen if we are talking such moneys getting into their worn-out pockets. Moja wao mimi! I tell you, i can to that extra mile, coerce an elephant to trumple me while my buddy takes the snaps as evidence. Seriously though, is it coz she's a jungu that she gets 105 million? Na hata kama, kwani what kinda injuries were these seeing that she survived to sue the conservancy out of every little shilling they had gate collected.

I say, some things done in court nowadays! If you come to Africa and take the risk of going out into the wild, rewind, the wild, rewind again - THE WILD, you should not expect "compensation" when things don't go as you planned. Still on that topic, wonder what that particular elephant thinks of all this overblown issue. Am sure he doesn't remember shit!

I don't blame the lady though - i mean, if i saw that same opportunity, i could have wrapped myself round the trunk just to get it awarded to me! But, and i say this most reservedly, was the situation commensurate to the compensation? And would that have applied to any other skin colour? Somehow i don't see it (pun intended).