HIV/AIDS AND MY PEOPLE.

Who’s fault is it? It’s their fault- them! They are the ones who went sleeping around with random people and failed to take the simplest precaution of using a condom. That’s plain stupid and ignorant, it’s their fault!!




To begin with, they KNOW. They know it MAY have been stupid, they go through a lot of trauma by themselves and they don’t need anyone else to add to their psychological burden. It does not necessarily make them stupid or ignorant and the rest of us are more or less like them by virtue of being human. We make mistakes, we all tell lies, how can one redeem himself and claim he’s a saint? Tell me, are you saint?



It really does not help to point fingers, it’s my fault or it’s his fault, you think it would make the virus go if at all it wasn’t the fault of a HIV/AIDS patient that he/she has it? Time has come to fight in the right battle, kill in the right war, recruit in the right army and to march in the right direction to deter the human race from entirely being pervaded by this virus.



I’ve seen it first hand, it was right in my backyard. My mother’s sister was infected with AIDS and I didn’t need to be told, I called that woman my aunt. She was my family. She got so sick, she got so thin. No, she lost all meat because all that was left were bones, she looked like sticks. To look a little normal she had to wear more clothes. I wondered how she walked. When I looked into her eyes, she looked ashamed. I was just a little boy, some things I just couldn’t ask. She died, you see? She left two baby girls, the little one is sick too. She got infected during birth, you see how it doesn’t matter who you blame?



Most of my friends are jack rabbits, it’s a fact and I can’t hide it. Listen, it’s not perfectly safe but at least have a rubber on when you get to humping. That’s how real the threat is, you see? Sometimes we tend to forget, or we choose to forget until something tragic happens close to where we are standing. Or a little later when it happens to us. Then we scream “NOT AIDS!!”, and we wonder how it happened. Not a single person is immune, it could happen to me just as it could it happen to you.



People with the virus are an obvious target for stigmatization. It may not mean much to you as to why they should or should not be stigmatized until it happens to someone you immensely love. Then all over sudden it will become so senseless, you find yourself asking questions like; why do people do this? Infected people are not deprived of brains, they are not handicapped. They won’t unexpectedly just drop dead due to their condition. As far as I am concerned they do not fall under any special group of people. Not unless they themselves put themselves in that box, and even then it would be a hoax!



My High School English teacher is a heroine. She taught me English literature too, the Lord knows I did enjoy her lessons because when she spoke I’d wish she never stopped. She had these interesting stories that had beautiful endings. She had more to share with us than what was written in the books. You see, she is positive. I mean HIV positive. I heard the rumours then, but I didn’t pay attention to them. But my teacher Mrs. Nindo is a heroine, I saw her on TV talking about HIV/AIDS. The stigma she went through, the fact that she’s still here is proof enough of the amount of courage she possesses. My teacher is a good woman, and a very great one. I am very proud of her.

A NEW CONSTITUTION AND REFORM.

Nothing will bring us change, not the law, not the international community, not even The Hague, but ourselves. For that reason I do not expect any change in ourselves as individuals making up a nation to arise due to the enactment of any law or set of laws because we are a corrupt people. Therefore expecting a new constitution to magically transform this whole nation by creating a whole new political platform and eventually making our intricate problems or challenges a little solvable is absolutely dreamy. As much as the current constitution may have erroneous laws, or laws that are unjust, we should ask ourselves about the remaining ‘sound’ part of the current constitution, does it serve us any good, equally without discrimination, does it protect us and preserve our rights? On paper it does, but it is us who contaminate it with corruption and greed. A new constitution may be a good thing for this country, but it won’t bring any more change than itself- a new constitution, if we don’t change as well.

Some Kenyans consider a new constitution as the starting point, the first step to change or reform but it shouldn’t be. Having this notion evokes the feeling that if we as a nation fail to acquire a new constitution this time round then we wouldn’t be able to move on. Not to undermine the importance of the constitution, but it is just a document written by individuals to depict how power is going to be shared and how the country will be governed, period. Whether or not it works for us does not entirely depend on the document itself but also on us. We decide. So in the end, change comes from within us.

At the core of all our troubles lies tribalism. Some assert that it can never ever be solved. But we owe it to ourselves and to prove to the rest of the world that we can be big enough to solve a problem of this enormity and not just kick it by the side to avoid facing it. Intermarriages could serve a great purpose to that effect but it may not be the best option because it MAY mean dissolution of the tribes, which is something we don’t desire and it also it would constitute kicking the problem by the side so we won’t have to actually resolve it. The cause of tribalism is not the tribes themselves but the people of the respective tribes. Tribalism can be eliminated, it can be done faster and sooner than we’d like to think, it can be done tomorrow! There is no reason to wait a another decade or century. Only we can bring change, and it begins right when we start seeing each other as partners, from there greater positive change will come.

There’s not a doubt about how tribalism can be dealt with, tribalism is as a result of ignorance and ignorance can be reversed by only one thing- education. Not education as we Kenyans have been made to believe it is, as to having our heads cramped with so much information in our memories which we may not fully understand, but education as being liberal and independent in our thoughts and being able to form an opinion based on the facts and having the ability to dissociate our personal interests and emotions in our final judgment for the greater good of the nation or even in our personal lives. This education can happen both inside and outside classrooms. It is doable.

When we have a population educated in the sense described in the previous paragraph, change becomes inevitable. Everything would fall in its rightful place, because then we would give more consideration to the unborn children in making decisions of national interest. When it comes such a time when we can rise to reach the level selflessness in order to attain greater good for the nation, at that time there would be nothing to stop us. As it is now, we are our own worst enemy.

Revisiting the issue of new constitution, the draft constitution has renamed and scrapped off some national days. In my opinion this to some extent erodes that Kenyan sense of pride, because it seems like whoever changed it saw something wrong with the initial name, and therefore we may have been celebrating a lie all this time. The same can be said of holidays cancelled from the calendar as national days. It’s like renaming Christmas!

FRESH OUTTA COLLEGE.

Fresh outta college. Job seeking now.. internship, whatever. So I find myself at the doorsteps of the company I worked for about a year ago on attachment. I know his name so I spit it out when I was asked whom I wanted to see, right there at the gate by them uniformed watchmen- the human resource guy. How hard can it be to see a person without an appointment? So they called in to check if he was in, right from the gate. No he's not in, but you can wait, they say, pointing at the bench.

'Right here?!', i thought. 'It rained this morning, its drizzling, i'm freezing, i have only a shirt on, you want me to sit here on a wooden bench with you!' Haha, funny. What the hell is the reception inside for?

I just want to drop shit and I'm out. Convinced they let me in. Lie. But the other lie was on me though, at the reception I ask for Mr. Musyoka, that's the human resource boss, and the receptionist says he's in.

'Have a seat and wait.'

The stupid idiot didn't want to see me all this time! See, he told me last year that I could come back when I get done with college. Perhaps I should have made an appointment then. The receptionist did a good job though, bugging him every other minute about this young man waiting. 'Til he asked for me to be put on the phone.

'Hallo'

'Hallo, my name is Wyndago...'

'Yes?'

'..and I was here on attachment last year and...'

'SO?'

That 'SO?' just threw me off. I had to rearrange my thoughts.

'You told me I could come back so i...'

'I told you to come?'

'NO! ...I mean yes. No, you told me last year.'

Pointless.

They were nice to send me down a cute lady to talk to me. No space for me until maybe January. MAYBE. So now I'm looking at other alternatives.
This job seeking business is just something. That was just my first attempt and it was enough to make me want to do my own thing! Actually, no... I've always wanted to do 'my thing' ever since forever, today's incident just rekindled the feeling. But can one do his thing being fresh out of college? YES. I mean, it's possible, isn't it? No room for negative thoughts.

Anyway, before I settle down to doing whatever it is I'll end up doing, I'm open to work any where. Even volunteer work, perhaps I should start by helping to plant trees in the Mau. My aim is to gain experience in whichever field, and in interaction, handling and working with different people. Yes, I said whichever field. You can't believe how fast I can learn and perfect a skill. I mostly want to work for small time people, businesses that are trying to come up. You have a small business? Call me. E-mail me, shadywane(at)gmail(dot)com.

So what skills do I have? I can write. I love it, to write that is. Computers, I'm fond of these machines. I can network a set of computers and do lots of other amazing stuff with them. Currently I'm learning how to use CAD (Computer Aided Design). I can sing, everyone says I should have been on Tusker Project Fame and that both Alpha and Ng'ang'alito have nothing on me. If you got kids you can hire me rock 'em to sleep. Or even yourself. Another skill I posses is in motors. Those are tremendously awesome machines, people. They are applicable in almost every other machine system. I can go on and on, but I'll close this chapter by saying, I cook good too. A brother has skills.

MAKE YOUR BLOG MOBILE

Nothing is of great importance to bloggers as traffic. It's hard to think of another thing that would bring a serious blogger more delight. A blogger can probably win a few readers but to keep them coming back a blogger needs to pay just as much attention on the general outlook and simplicity (for lack of a better word) of the blog as he should on the content. Simplicity here refers to the conveniency of the site, readers should be able to find what they are looking for with ease. But most of all bloggers and indeed website owners should worry more about the ease of their site's accessibility, especially through the mobile phone. And especially bloggers from this region and the generally the East.

In Kenya for example, the number of internet users is steadily growing and a large portion of these users use mobile phones for the internet most of the time, I being among them. I use Opera Mini to browse the internet, yes it helps to make PC websites 'fit' on a mobile phone screen but when the site is too large, maneuvering around it can be cumbersome and also make your phone slower. That is why I desired to create a mobile site for my blog and I was surprised at how there are so many alternatives to that effect. Left me wondering what I had been waiting for all this time. Having a mobile site for your blog or website has become so necessary. I being a thorough user of mobile phones for the internet can't help but avoid certain blogs which I know to be extremely large and save it for when I'm near a PC. On the contrary I'm filled with a lot of relief when I'm re-directed to a mobile phone version of site.

The most popular website for the creation of mobile sites is Mofuse. They do it for free and is unbelievably simple. You can have your mobile site running in under 5 minutes! I tried it. But I wasn't impressed with Mofuse so much though, but if you are using a mobile phone to view this, you can view the mobile site for this blog here.

First, for blogger blogs, people trying to access the blog cannot automatically be re-directed to the mobile site when they are using a phone, so you have to promote the mobile site separate from the PC version of the site. As for wordpress blogs, there's a pluggin that you can download and install in your site to allow for re-directing. Second, I could not find my comments in my mobile site yet that is one of the reasons why I wanted a mobile site- to make commenting using a mobile phone easy both for me and my readers. Currently I'm looking into the following other options...

And these are other websites from where you can create a mobile site;

1. Mobify.me: Mobify is a free service that makes WordPress, Drupal and other websites mobile-friendly. That is how it defines itself. Here you can design a mobile layout for your website and also capture mobile traffic from Twitter & Google. Not bad.

2. Bango

3.Zinadoo

4. XtGem.com: This website as I see it is just a mobile site builder and does not convert an existing PC website into a mobile one.

5. Winksite: This website allows you to mobilize your website, blog and twitter feeds. It also lets you personalize your mobile site with your own sense of style. In addition to that you start a mobile chat room, forum or poll. This I may like, moving on.

6. FeedM8 (Feed-mate): According to the site itself, this is a whole new way to get the mobile web. You can get your favorite blogs or feed-enabled websites on your mobile device. This means you get all the popular sites, top news, social networks, sports, celebrity and weather updates all on your mobile phone--anytime, anywhere. The content is designed for your mobile phone and it's optimized, so it's fast and uses very little data. Plus if you have a blog or a feed-enabled website, you can get it on FeedM8. Thus you can create a mobile site of your blog here.


7. MobisiteGalore

MAVUNO CHURCH

It is a very well known church now and it needs no introduction like it used to a couple of months ago when folks even demanded for it to be explained to them why the name Mavuno (Swahili word for harvest), presuming it meant a place where money is being extorted from the congregation in form of offerings. I don't know why the name Mavuno but it I sure come out that dome at Belle Vue every Sunday with a lot more than I came in with, spiritually. If you haven't already heard of these beautiful 'fearless influencers'(that's what they call themselves) cropping up in Nairobi ask yourself, in which cave have you been living in?

No kidding, the first time Mavuno came around, I was skeptical. Everyone in my neighborhood was skeptical (proud to say here that Mavuno is in my hood). At first we didn't even know it was a church. I don't remember how I began going there but now missing a sermon is something I can't bear to do! Ever my mother got into the mix! She was a sort of a critic. All my family goes there.. except for Dad but he never goes to any church. Perhaps we'll have to make him work on that.

Okay, now down to what they do down at Mavuno they are very friendly and sooo welcoming right from when you arrive at the dome. This is what I most like about Mavuno, the fact that, contrary to a misguided belief, it is for everyone!!! Not a group of people of a certain social class, or a certain age group... anyone would feel at home at Mavuno. The sermons; Pastor M and pastor Simon are doing a tremendous job. They will make God seem closer than we always try to put Him. They will make you see how God is relevant in your life. For most us tend to think, even subconsciously, that God was for Abram and Moses and that He wouldn't understand what we are going through because times have changed. I know God has blessed me a lot, before Mavuno I wasn't a church goer. My excuse was that church was far. Now its right at my doorstep, and its so amazing and no one can convince that God didn't have me in mind when he was showing these great people where to set camp.

Good people of Nairobi, come to Mavuno and let's change this city and the world together!

Disclaimer: As you can tell this piece was written when the writer was extremely ecstatic, just overlook the craziness and join him at Mavuno this Sunday!