Africa: Postponing her Success

Africa: Postponing her Success

The world has its own pains. All the acts performed in this world begin with imagination. We must dream. Dream reality not fantasy.  May be the only thing you have ever known is Pain. Because you have always felt pain, you experience is painful.  We become children of our own experiences, circumstance and forbearers mistakes that we were so lazy to correct because we were busy paying our usual bills and filing taxes. Nothing will change even after tax returns! It’s a cycle, an obvious vicious cycle. The economy is designed to keep us busy like robots. This way we can’t think, reflect on life or meditate on the present. In short the pause button has been far much removed from our midst. We have been hoodwinked that hard work is the only way to success. Incase no body noticed most of our African mothers are hardworking individuals. Ladies Can I hear some noise in the house. Indeed I can’t match the resilience of my own mom, fetching water from a 3 mile seasonal stream. Going to the fields to tend for crops after school, fetching firewood and finishing her homework as well. She must be a trillion rich ‘if hard work truly pays’.  But alas! She still cry’s for the trouble of knowing otherwise. Now she is asking for forgiveness. The world broke her heart.  Most of the today’s women they will melt and tweet on their way before drawing one bucket of water. Not because they are incapable but the modern world is promising something farfetched than reality. Updating your Facebook status is not success neither is it production. Not that it is bad but Its being busy for the wrong reason. We need to update our minds and equally our pockets will have some loose change to tip the waiter, and shine our shoes at the bus stops of life.  

I doubt very few modern overly ‘socialite’ men can have the humility to be stung by bees in pitch darkness just to harvest a bucket full of pure natural honey for the health of their families. That is hard work or what would you call it? It is HARD WORK Period. I am not trying to be funny but you know what, truth is always the first casualty of pure lies. The answer ‘lies’ in production. For All the ages, deliberate predetermined economics have made us slaves of consumerism. Tell me in present day and age how on earth Africa produces the finest Robusta and aromatic Arabica coffee but the populace in Africa can’t afford a cup of world class blend of coffee. Modern day slavery works like jigsaw, produce the raw material we make the finished goods, and we make you pay through the nostrils to afford the final produce. 21^st century global village economics of dignity assassination. You will spend hours juggling for options but without production your chances of survival are purely limited if not fast running out.

Africa must rethink its path of providing the world with raw materials, and then to be traded back as finished goods with exorbitant prices. Africa must produce her own finished goods for her people and sell the surplus to the rest of the word.  To attain success we must breath eat and talk production. Africa is the hunted bride we must become the hunter of the pride, prize and the lost glory for we have experienced for long the true feelings of post traumatic economic  stress disorder (PTESD) of the hunted. Over the ages Africa has been threatened, warned of dire consequences if she chooses a different more promising  political path and always been abandoned on the fire side.  Let’s not jump to the frying pot and fry ourselves with our own oil of ignorance and corruption. Africa has developed economic fever of takeoff. Nothing can stop Africa from takeoff; the rest of the world knows that but its plying the chess game while it’s already on check mate.

 We met this world rotating on its axis and it’s still revolving on her orbital path. We can’t change that to first pay our bills; sort our internal differences and regular social-political challenges. We can’t necessarily stop the sun so that we be ready for takeoff. Time is of essence and waits for no king. As they say today is the tomorrow we worried yesterday. The worst impediment it’s not we lacked but we lacked motivation to push us through tribulations for the hope of better tomorrow. We seek the easy way out to be comfortable for a while, as we postpone our tragedies.

 #‎Reinvent_Thyself‬ The future of this great continent is in our hands. We must protect her by all means, for the generations ahead. We have an obligation, a noble calling. whatever you do make sure it is leading you to a more cohesive united loving Africa for all global humanity. Its natural Africa shall rise. Njoroge wa Ngige

Original hard work production: By Njoroge wa Ngige 042315

Love: The new high @ 9:41 a.m

Love: The new high @ 9:41 a.m

Her big dolly black eyes rolled once. She then lowered her chin. She then covered the bright sun rays in lower sprawling Mathare valley nicknamed ‘Manhattan’. She majestically raised her right hand with sophistication twitching her both thumb and middle fingers to flicker off the fake Cuban cigar’s ash.  The rusty bridge she was standing on squeaked under her feather weight, as she bellowed dark heavy smoke that blotted the sunset like a full moon eclipse. Her sexy round nostrils that had inhaled more harm than life heaved under generational rejection as capillaries struggled to fight for polluted pure oxygen.  One would have mistakenly imagined a colonial train engine was snaking through Mtito Adei among the famous man eaters of Tsavo in the new Kenya standard gauge rail road.

She was of dark color a lean neck and rounded full lips with a flashy white smile.  Her chest was at right angle with her firm breasts standing like the noon sun sandwiched over ground zero twin tower nipples. The curved back gave her an average voluminous behind with a prominent edge positioning like a small bouncing castle. The local boys always knew she had been sculpted from God’s rare woods of creation. In short she was gorgeously beautiful in every breath of life. Her scanty see through wire mesh knee dress revealed lovely sexy contours above her smooth thighs.  Any living creature in form of a man would have walked straight in to the mine field or be willing to be stung by bees naked just to kiss her crispy rugged lips. If Lucky thereafter wishing to tighten his grip buried alive in her warm tight escapement of the Olkaria hot springs.

As She stood on this very bridge today, She wished one day she will die together with her lover as they made love to escape the sorrows and the pain of rejection in couple’s multiple orgasms. She had waited for this day for many nights and days. She had meticulously planned it and knew with no sense of contradiction that the day had arrived. She squeezed her left hand…a protruding brown tube with elongated sharp edge was revealed!

The previous night she had visited the unmarked grave of her dad. This man had inspired her in their short interaction before succumbing to the stub wounds in brawl in her mother’s  illegal brew den commonly known us ‘changaa’ den. She loved him and missed him a lot. She knew deep down in her heart that the dry bones of a man laying 6 feet under was a legend and her only protector when the world closed her eyes of  intolerance. She as well knew it takes a village to raise a child but now it was opposite. The whole village had turned against her very own. The whole village that proclaimed sermon on the mountain suddenly had grown cold feet. A city slum where new ramshackle makeshift  gospel salvation ministry churches of hope outgrew the number of pit latrines while increased the flying toilets. She wondered loudly in her head how on earth for Christ sake the slum had so many churches and other pseudo religious outfits imagined or real yet hatred, tribalism, corruption and thuggery of souls mercilessly continued unabated. The only solace as she grew up was the regular warm soup she frequently received at the Roman Catholic parish in the dusty neighborhood. The parish was a center of hope for hopeless and tired of life. Many became followers of Christ and professed Christian faith not because they knew who He was but because they had a personal rare encounter of compassionate love of sharing in the ‘soup parish’ as it was commonly known. She knew then the God the Parish believed in and faith professed must have some truth and life in it. The parish never asked questions, The parish never knew who she was but a street urchin who needed rehabilitation more than salvation.

The Mathare slum (Loosely associated with a mental hospital nearby) where she grew up and occasionally visited her mother was ungoverned government in its own rights. It Was a Nation within a Country. A nation founded on biting poverty the only unifying ‘value’ of patronized patriotism.  Hers was a village yearning and yawning for peace. The real experience learnt in this slum (Ghetto) was empty pangs of hunger, broken families and robberies of intent in as many needles of coronary cold turkey and thrombosis of countless rape and gang bangers. The past was dark rejection; the present was unbearably painful while the future was hopeless. 

In her 27 years on the globe she never had experienced orgasmic rejuvenation of love but only until she had met Omosh. It was a rainy day she remembered vividly. The young couple had met in one of the many orgy’s  of brown sugar (Heroin) escapades and smoking weed. She didn't have a joint for the day. She knew she must get her fix quick to stop painful anguish of withdrawal (commonly known us Cold Turkey). In her life of addiction Nyambura A.K.A ‘Nyambs’ feared the cold turkey than death. She had heard many harrowing stories of how addicts in India sold their organs and pints of raw blood for a dope. She knew no body will want to buy her ‘rotting kidneys’ and overcooked lungs. Her feminine Fallopian tubes had long run dry she thought; owing to the countless backyard abortions procured by illegal herbalist who preferred sex on the floor first to measure the ‘depth and chances of successful operation’. It was a ritual she abhorred yet she kept running in to it with dried tear ducts. She was desperate, she knew Syombua never made it, Nafula succumbed from excessive bleeding and Sofia woke up insane after the first ejaculation.  Many vulnerable slum girls had died because they never received legal post abortion care after countless illegal abortions. The national constitution prohibited abortion unless in circumstances that endangered the life of the mother. In this case a baby endangered the child. A tragedy.

Later she had come to learn indeed her dad was step dad.  That her mother never revealed this truth to her she had no idea. The man who had continuously sexually molested her was her real father who had raped her mother and threatened her with dire consequences if she revealed the insane ordeal to anyone. He was a thug, he peddled drugs, and was loose hit man murderer sniper at best. He loved guns for evil. He had been unceremoniously sacrificed at the altar of corruption as a novice junior officer.  His world headed south. Him and three other accomplices at large were the only alive witnesses on the run and on rogue intelligence radar.   He was a policeman at the crack of dawn and a seasoned thug at wee hours of the night......

The handwritten crumpled note protruding from underneath her bra showed a sign of haste and urgency but revealed a deeper expression of belonging and longing under the ripe cleavage………

To be continued  by Njoroge wa Ngige 041515

Diaspora Kenyan Churches dividing Kenyans.

Diaspora Kenyan Churches dividing Kenyans.

The say you can take a cow to the river but you can’t force the same cow to drink the water. Similarly you can live in a city with a village mentality in you and vice versa. I am not here to please you. I am not here to say what you want to hear. Simply because I don’t want to repeat what you already know. If I were you I should have clicked the button and left this article because I have already been insulted. Yes my primary mission is not that but you are close home because am here to rub you the wrong way and not rob you the right way. Do not make a right turn we have demolished all the roundabouts and now bare with me because am about to make legal left turn to decongest traffic of your sermon Kenyan way speaking. I promise to improve your spiritual heartbeat seventy time seven times. That’s forgiveness in case you left your Bible in the car.   If you are still reading, then this article will speak to you in ways that will leave your mouth wide open and your mind shattered. It will demoralize but in essence will set you free, free indeed in your imagination. Haven’t you been searching for freedom all this long?  I am not a consecrated priest so do not start an online confession, I just happen to belong to the royal priesthood of God’s inspiration. This is the reason why I love God and fear religion.

Question: I have several Christian friends, but we all seem to believe different things! When it comes to things like creationism or even using cuss words, we just don't agree. I always say, "Well, what matters is that we agree that Jesus is our Savior." Secretly though, their different beliefs bug me. What can I do about this frustration?

Answer. I understand your frustration. Why do we have to be so different? Why can't we agree on everything and decide conclusively what's right and what's wrong?

I don't have an easy answer for each and every issue that Christians disagree on. But there's an old saying that goes, "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity." Applied to Christians, this means being united in believing Jesus Christ, God's son, died for our sins. That's essential. But in matters that aren't directly addressed in the Bible (like politics, worship styles, etc.), we should give each other some liberty. And in all cases, we should extend grace and love.

Jesus said, "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:35, NIV). Disagreements like you've mentioned are the proving ground for love. It wouldn't be hard to love your clone. But when you can show love for those who don't believe what you believe (even people you're sure are just wrong!), Jesus says it's a sign you're one of his true followers”. Marshall, a former pastor, is editor of Leadership, a magazine for pastors.

I Love God’s people. I love Creation. I am wonderful and fearfully made. If by now I have not scared what the ‘hell’ in you then you must be baptized by fire and dipped in red sea for 'your sins' are as red as crimson. I am not judging now I am preaching before I teach.   I was brought up as Catholic by African parents. By default or natures design I became a Christian. If my parents were Buddhists I will be a monk holed up in a desert somewhere in the oriental East chanting my destiny. At one point I thought I will become a priest. Catechism was ingrained  in me. I admired catholic priests and the whole Roman Catholic traditions. Part of my growing up I used to live somewhere in the Kenyan Great Rift valley. In the far flung remote side of Molo south precisely in Sundu River sublocation.  We used to hold our mass in classroom. We had no Building structure that we could call church. The closest church was at Murinduku village 6.5 miles from my nest I called home then. The leader of the Parish was Fr. Cavanagh (pronounced Gavana by the locals).  He was an Irish Roman Catholic priest, a mystic figure 6 feet tall broad shoulders priest. He boasted he fought in world war two as a teenager. I had no doubt he had miraculousl survived the worst in his life confronting the Nazi Germany or the Third Reich (Nazi Germany or the Third Reich was the period in the history of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler.)  With the ways his eyes roved with piercing look he had seen it all in Europe war front. He was heavily bearded with eyes rocketing from the sockets that made you confess your sins  before he whipped you with go say 10 Hail Mary’s and five Our Fathers. Me with the rest of Alter boys used to wait for his rugged colonial Range rover that arrogantly defied time and weather to hike a lift to the once a month liturgical mass at Murinduku church. Occasionally we visited Kamwaura Parish after crossing the infamous Doinate and Stoito forests. Every year we made our local pilgrim journey during Easter time to the mother Parish.  The palm and fingers of Fr. Cavanagh hands would squarely fit in my small skull of an Alter boy as I carried his heavy suitcase full of Holy Sacraments, chalice, wine, Holy Water and other Godly Kingdom material ready for the Mass. This was when life used to be innocent, I for once thought. I was living in Biblical Canna of Galilee. Truly Jesus's Sermon on the mountain of verily I Say unto you had reached the very end of the Earth.

Fr. Cavanagh was a re-veered Priest (May God Rest His soul in eternal Peace). He was a missionary at heart and in deed. You had no choice but to pass his Catechism test in order to receive Confirmation Sacrament. In full glare of shaken faithful congregation he loudly called your name and blankly slapped you with ‘recite for me the prayer of St. Jude, The Perpetual prayer so on and so forth. Once you recited halfway he announced in heavy Sinaic loud voice..’Enda pale Umepita’….Next! Loosely translated you have passed cross over. His voice even today is so ardently clear between my ears and tends to think heaven echoes will be the same….Next!!  He was fluent in four local dialects namely Kalenjin, Kikuyu and Kissi.  He spoke KiSwahili Sanifu. Talk of Acculturated missionary priest.  He was of kind and of big heart, he clothed the poor, fed the hungry, educated the poor students in sponsorship program. Basically he lived the Gospel as I read in my tattered Bible. He did so many good things that as a Christian I knew for sure when appropriate time comes I wanted to be a Catholic Priest. He was a mentor and a spiritual Director at best. At one point he offered to buy a two acre piece of land after I diplomatically presented our plight to him. We used to stay in Thatched two room mud house offered by us by one wealthy community leader and entrepreneur so that we can watch over his vast estate.  This tycoon in SunduRiver that  I won’t name for respect of privacy and cardinal rule of kindness made sure I had a roof over my head. It is always good to have rich man in your village a wealthy man at heart will be a bonus. You never know when God of providence revisits his consciousness of kindness. May God bless him.  I grew up in poor neighborhood such that if I were to export Poverty as a commodity, the high seas will be full containers and loads of poverty. Nonetheless this did not deter us to become who we are today. If only it gave us the impetus to fight more and be resilient in our quest of fulfilling destiny, keeping hope alive.  Fast forward I will save that story for another day. Just for the compassionate love to break the yoke of poverty Fr. Cavanagh asked my mom and late dad to identify a suitable land he can purchase for us and build us a modest three bedroom house because in his very eyes we lived like nomads. When this ‘good news’ leaked to the rest of the Christian congregation it was greeted with pinch of salt and muted like ‘Koroboi’ lamp. In short we never got the land. We never got the House. Poisonous Envy, malice and hatred was peddled unsolicited by fellow Christians. The venom was too much too bare. The noble Project backfired. The Parish priest washed his hands in this matter. As ‘good Christians’ We forgave, never forgot and moved on.  We had to live within the tenants’ of the gospel. The following year our entire family of 8 relocated back to Kangemi-Nairobi where I repeated primary 7 because the teacher thought in his own ‘rare wisdom’ I was not specially gifted having transferred from a village school. Owe unto him I was among the crème de’ crème to uplift the name of the school in national exams the following year. After jumping nine chapters of my life I proceeded to Catholic University of East Africa to study Project management & Social Ministry in Mission. Later in the history of events as it may, fate, planned or otherwise some of the  Christians who opposed our token from a Kind nonpartisan  Parish priest were unfortunately brutally killed following the politically instigated tribal clashes of 1992. I read the stories; saw the pictures of their burnt homes and their harrowing agonizing deaths in the heights of genocide in local dailies. I was traumatized. I had lost childhood friends in both divides whom I treasure even today. I now understand the PTSD diagnosis even better so.  I thought Christianity had brought us together as one but I was wrong. Even today I am constantly reminded that I am Kikuyu, a Kenyan, and Christian in that ‘primitive’ order. I have now confessed all my sins of aptitude and ineptitude whom have I wronged to deserve this unwarranted prejudice? I ask.

Now as a Kenyan Diaspora in the United States I have witnessed growth of many Kenyan community churches. It is a good thing to see fellow Kenyans socializing and happily exchanging hearty laughter's and hugs. Nevertheless for the last 3 or so years I have been agonizing with what I hear and observe. I have attended many Kenyan Christian churches and the narrative is the same. Same sleuths of prejudice, haters, Gossip, pretenders and the know it all nay Sayers. My question is: Why should we be compartmentalized in churches or organizations that are skillfully skewed to divide us as Kenyans? There is a deliberate tendency among the Kenyans community here to associate only with the Kenyan comrades that they attend the same church with. They will gossip for hours, and entire time giving testimonies of how bad and twisted the other Kenyan churches are. Some of them have been members in all the existing churches in every state and locality they have lived in and emerge not contented. Now they are about to start their own. Do not worry they will also disown their own soon.

On the pulpit Why can’t we preach sermon on the mountain as we all knew it. Some of us have studied theology but we just keep quite by utter shock of how things are done in the name of God. Give me a break good God’s people, this is earthly business. Heaven is just but a promise for those who believe. Me being one of them. { I hope I will meet Fr. Cavanagh…Next…..}. We know when the true spirit is moving among the people, there is no hatred and vitriol of malice, pride and confusion. Only calmness of eternal bliss.

The diaspora churches are dividing Kenyans; it’s no secret it as crystal clear as flakes of snow.  Why do we have all this churches yet we are still holed up in our tribal cocoons and psudo kitchen cabinets peddling lies. Why a midst all these 'good' churches, Kenyans are day in day out growing apart and cold from one another. Picture this for instance, some Christians will not come to your funeral or Maombolezi of your close family member simply because you don’t go to their church or even worse you are not a member of a particular church.  Why should we bring such divide and tribalism in this far land of Americas and beyond? When you took your visa were you asked whether you are a Christian or Kenyan? In my humble submission I strongly believe we are all Kenyans before anything else. Religion aside. I tend to believe that the churches in Diaspora should be uniting Kenyans not dividing us. We are already divided at home geopolitically speaking. How Biblical is it to export the vices here and you still demand our overtime tithe and weekly Sadaka?  For God’s sake, We demand more we deserve more pure niceness of your preaching and teaching. Your sermons should draw not always withdraw.  The churches in diaspora are behaving like our political prodigal sons back home Devide and rule. They justifiably ask for our hard earned wealth with little to show. We must as ‘Christians’ interrogate, ask the hard questions of these shenanigans and machinations of pseudo abracadabra. I know a multitude of Kenyans friends and fore’s alike who go to the local Kenyans Diaspora churches out of the sheer fear they will be left behind when the time of need comes. Because of spiritual vulnerability.  I forewarned you to read the bold prints not the fine prints at the bottom because I knew from on set you will be pissed off and am not here to please you, or plead with you for mercy. I am forthright say it as I see it from an observer and a protagonists perspective. I have often wondered the moment your official name and not of your church rings bells than honks more in the mouths of ‘believers’ and ears of ‘non-congregation’ members; then something is liturgically wrong. You could have gone ahead and named your church entity after your name anyhow.

The recent terrorist events in our country notwithstanding, apart from prayers offered in the so called Diaspora Christian churches nothing else beyond that. I rallied a spirited campaign on line to all Diaspora to come together and support their own. Apart from the usual sporadic anger and emotional ventilation on twitter and Facebook nothing else. But if you post a ‘nyamchom’, Birthday party, wedding, Baby shower  or a Sunday best worship snap on your Facebook page or Twitter handle you will attract viral traffic and likes you have never met in your life time. Both fore’s and haters alike. Pretenders are much worse than sinners.

No church in Diaspora convened a press conference even after 147 students Christian majority in Garissa University College were mercilessly mascaraed by Al-Shabaab Terrorists. Not even organizing a fundraising platform to support a bleeding home front.  They only talked about it in harsh tones.  It’s demoralizing to say the least if this is the trend we are following. Churches in Diaspora have failed to unite Kenyans and instead fueled the blind fatalistic tribalism card of doomed ‘salvation’. I am not part of it. I refuse. However, all is not lost.  After all said and done Diaspora churches can do better than brewing division among the congregation.  It is a good thing and sense of pride to have a local church with Kenyan roots. One feels closer home and networking among friends becomes easier. Lets not also forget we have a growing population of our children who look upon us to emulate what we portray. The diaspora churches in my opinion have a very good platform to preach the Gospel as well as inculcate deeper values of unity and collaboration. I am Ready to be persecuted, crucified with Christ as St Paul says, but alas it will definately take more than three days for me to rise from the dead because I am not the Son of God Jesus whom we worship. However, Calvary Triumphs anyway for I am a firm Christ believer with faith of reason.  Glory be to the Father and to The Son and to The Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end. Amen.

Original Thoughts Expressed and Written by:

Njoroge wa Ngige.  040815