Skip to main content

Featured

The struggle with many a rigid Logooli cultural practices

  The Logooli community is one of the deeply cultured societies – with near everything supposed to have been done as per custom – to allow another custom to follow. One example is that for a mature man (with a child or more) to be buried, there must be a house structure at home. Another is that a boy must be circumcised and nursed in father land. If maternal family decides to, the boy will have a hard time reconnecting with father people - a dent on his masculinity. There were two children who got burnt to death in a house in Nairobi. The single mother had left for night work. Elders were told that one of the children was Logooli. The other, the woman had sired with someone else. The Logooli family wanted to burry their little one and long discussed the do’s and don’ts. Of a man who died childless and the grave was placed as if he had died as a man with children. It should have been dug on the sides, the grave. A real thorn should have been thrust in his buttocks, his name go...

Every Citizen deserves a basic Pay

Most of the present day ideas approach the third world as a surprise. Majority of African initiatives are always in the middle of laying down the mat to sit before a crisis forces the mat to be coiled again and sojourn for another land. Yesterday for instance, a country that I’ve forgot its name outlined procedures of giving all citizens unemployed a basic income. The president should be shot!

Could you imagine the Kenyan middleclass populace without the help of slum people? Who would put their clothes in the machine? Their dogs would be fed by who? The pampers that their children put to waste…who would come to take them for only five hundred shillings a month? Who would ask for work in a construction site?

Income disparities bring up the inequalities we are experiencing as a nation. A good number of Kenyans live from hand to mouth, educating a child is a process of rubbing sandpaper on one’s thigh. Agriculture is our leading GDP venture. The poor people who toil in the stretches of wheat, rice, maize and flowers would hang up their boots as soon as something to support them is about.

No one is purely lazy. People find essence in work and different people cherish different types of work. Money and work is not directly proportional and hence money should not be treated as compensation for work. You would need money anyway whether you worked or not. And you would intrinsically work better without the thought of money in you.

The only jobs I have had so far have been volunteer tasks. There was no pay apart from facilitations in some instances. Wasn’t that work? The people I worked with while volunteering, all employed, never did better work. It was all work. When I could not facilitate myself, my legs punctured, I could not go to some venues. If I had a basic source of income that does not tie me to a chair wherever, I’d volunteer to the threshold.

It is good that the said country will not decide how the money should be used. Get your money and do whatever you want with it! It won’t be enough, I know but I will use it to be more stable and free. I’d chase my passions instead of reporting to an office or work place year in year out. I’d never find myself in traffic. I’d visit the villages for stories for I love writing. I’d request the government to increase the amount. I’d slave in no flower farm.

Families would be stronger. Couples would decide who to stay with the child at home and do the important chores. No innocent girl would slave as a maid, no households would experience extreme poverty, and there would be enough capital to initiate means of production. Projects would be sustainable. Fathers would again be called fathers and not watchmen, caretakers or soldiers. Theft, prostitution and other vices would be optional.


But you see, this is Africa where Doctors and Engineers become politicians. Not that they want to build a stronger and healthier democracy but because they kinda went to the wrong classes.

Comments