HAS MOVED TO WORDPRESS.

Dear reader,

The Sanctum, which has changed its name to 'The Synctum' has now moved and can be found at wyndago.wordpress.com. Any inconveniences caused is highly regreted. But really the new location is just a click away so you know what to do. Catch you on the other side.

Yours sincerely,

Wyndago.

NB: If you have The Sanctum on your blogroll, it will be much appreciated if you made the necessary changes. Thanks!

MOST WANTED

In the hood, you can see my portraits on the street walls and the poles of electricity, sometimes even on the trees. It’s like every other corner I take they speak of me, in the salons, in the barber shops, in the ghetto, in the suburbs I’m most wanted, I’m a fugitive. In the local precincts of the northern as well as of the southern parts I’m listed as a missing person but I don’t want to be found. The women sought after me the most, some of them hot some of them not. They pray to see me in their dreams, some that I may fall straight from heaven into their world. They send me tons of letters and write about me in their journals, they say “Mr. Right, where are you hiding? Come rock my world, marry me! I won’t quit waiting for you”. Now that’s sweet, but I’m just one guy. Shall I clone myself? But thankfully, I have imposters claiming to be me, I appreciate that. They wear a mask and try to walk like me. They buy new clothes but it just won’t change them. Act smart, but their swag ain’t like mine. I feel sorry for the women who fall victim, but I can only belong to one of you at a time.

You may say; Mr. Right, you are not fair! Why are you hiding when we need you? You are like the love Superman, the Spiderman of romance, come save us before it’s too late, before sexy becomes extinct! I brought sexy back once; a guy named Justin Timberlake took all the credit for it. He fooled many ladies into thinking he was me. I don’t think the ladies fell for his cheap imitation of me that much; it’s Jason Derulo who is pulling it off. Back to why I’m hiding, it’s why they call me Mr. Right. I don’t fight, I love. I don’t break beautiful young girl’s hearts, I don’t lie, I don’t cheat, I’ll be there when you need me, I will listen, I will hold you, I will wipe off your tears, I will make the most passionate love to you, I will kiss you, I will tell you that I love you, I will hold your hands when you want me to without you having to tell me, I will let you watch your soaps, I will surpass your expectations, that is why I hide! I hide to protect you from a heartache, please wait ‘til your turn comes, if it comes. I beg of you to be patient, I hate to see you waste your love on dudes who don’t deserve it!

I’m immortal, I will always be here. My heart is unbreakable, I’ll be exactly who you want me to be. I’m tall and dark, I’m handsome. I have brown eyes and a long nose. I work out so I have a cute six pack and huge biceps (and you know what else). I’m black, and Latino. I’m short. I’m intelligent; I have a fat bank account. I’m white and I have green eyes. I’m funny; I can have you giggling like a pig! I’m Chris Rock, I’m Russell Peters, see? You have nothing to worry about; I will pass by your life at one time even if I don’t get to marry you. We don’t always get what we want, I was given this world but I didn’t make it. I received all your lovely letters, all of them from since you were a teen. I try to read all of them. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to reply to any of them, my boss cupid won’t let me have time for myself, always has me on an assignment, but I hope reading this helps to ease your frustration in your quest to finding me. You don’t have to search for me; I will find you, sweetheart.

Message To The Fellas: You can’t cramp my style you bastards, the sooner you learn that the better! Ask Cassanova, little punk forgot who the immortal one is. Tarnished my name the most, look where he’s at now! What’s wrong, you can’t come up with your own swag? Using your name, ain’t your name good enough? I’m only proud of one man so far- Romeo! He’s the one I’d wish to be. Taking his life for love, so deep! I witnessed it with my own eyes. Michael Jackson stole my line- I’m not a fighter I’m a lover. He went ahead to shamelessly make it a song! Look, I don’t mean to be harsh on you. I’m just saying get your own act! Phew. My shrink was right; I feel better having let it all out!

VICES AND VERSA'S

It’s never my intention to either directly or indirectly reveal the nature of my character in this blog but sometimes it just doesn’t seem like such a big deal. This is one of those times and as I’m writing this I’m hearing a voice in my head echoing the words- write now, regret later. That doesn’t make sense to me now but let’s give it time and see if I will comprehend the meaning. Hear from you later, voice, I’m getting down to writing it!

If I haven’t mentioned it on this blog before then it done took me a long time to announce it to you that I used to have a bad temper, but thank God it’s in the past now although Brenda doesn’t want to believe that. As skinny as I am it was only for my own good that I took care of my always very justified but exaggerated anger. My poor sister (not Emily, the other one- Norah) did fall victim of my wrath one too many times during the time when I used to get attacked with those spells of uncontrollable anger. Please note that this was a fairly long time ago, back when I was a teenager, so please don’t judge. That was that. Oh, you wonder who Brenda is? I know who she is but it’s complicated who she is to me, you understand? That’s another story.

Now, a little advice to sinners out there, I’m sure that pretty much covers everyone. I, having gone through and tried a variety of vices, can confidently tell you that you can posses any number of them you want but please be sure that once you have chosen to have bad-temperedness then skip impatience and vice-versa (ha ha, VICE-versa, these words have a way of coming back to me). Bad-temperedness is even too strong a word, let’s just say anger. It’s funny, I can patiently wait four years until I graduate, I somehow can patiently wait until when I make my first million, I can even patiently wait for Friday to come but I CANNOT patiently wait queuing to be served in a bank! My mom sent me to pay the electricity bill one day, I went back home with the money because the queue was too long, little did I know that that very day was the deadline. Mom had to go back and make the payment by herself :( ! I am not proud of that, mom was so mad she refused to even let me go back for her. So if you want to meet me somewhere, don’t keep me waiting for too long or you will be more than disappointed. This leads me to what happened yesterday, which is sadly something that has happened with me several times before. A case of same script, different cast but same star- me.

See, I’m impatient like that. Remember that female from the bus? Let’s name her Mary. She turned out to be a very interesting person. It made me think that sometimes we are just uptight for nothing; good things do sometimes happen outside the boundary of our principles, like in this case talking to strangers and even calling them on the phone. This may be true but don't take my word for it, I will not be responsible for any loss or damage you incur for taking heed to my word. Please, do this at your own risk. Anyway, the only time I have free during weekdays is home time- time when I go home in the evenings; she had been out of town all week, she came back yesterday so we planned to meet… at home-time o’clock. I do my routine and the time comes, I make that call and she no go pick her phone oh! I de try again ten minutes later and still nothing, anoda ten minutes and still notsing! Then the fourth time she picks up. I try to talk but she just won’t quit saying “halloooo?” Then she puts me on hold. I hang up and call again; I make sure she hears me clearly so I ask “Can you hear me clearly?” She says yes. Then I’m put on hold. ****! I had been waiting for about twenty minutes and she puts me on hold? Furious! I send a text to deny her any excuses like- I couldn’t hear you. This is how it read exactly,

Screw it, am tryna ask u wea u at!

If this blog post were a video and these texts were the words of a narrator I’d freeze this part and zoom in on the text to give it a dramatic effect. That right there, that I call anger, very much justified if you ask me. But it was dangerously mixed with impatience, threatening to create imbalance in the mentality of a young man as me (I’m not sure what this means). An impatience that tells you there can’t be any credible explanation for what happened. An impatience that tells you are right and they are wrong and time spent to listen to any more of that crap is a waste of precious time! When you are annoyed and impatient to know the reason behind everything, you might end up losing many good things because when you are patient you just might understand that you are being silly.

What went down after that is irrelevant for I feel that I have accomplished the mission of demonstrating what a little anger and impatience can do to you. Moral of the story is that either you be angry or be impatient, never both. Get angry but wait ‘til she arrives or leave but don’t get angry. I choose to be impatient; it doesn’t take too much of your energy that one. Well, I try, even though sometimes I do get carried away.

For the curious lot: I will always cater for your needs; you know I will never let you down! Mary and I did not eventually meet, I was too impatient to wait and she was too mad to call. Note, we’d known each other just about four days at the time when I sent her that text. I promptly and sincerely apologized. I think it is important to also note that she is the one who called way later to protest about the text. It didn’t make her happy to say the least.

NB: Mimicking how Nigerians speak does NOT by any means imply that I watch Nigerian movies or that I’m associated with any Nigerian(s).

CHEATER!

I’m not sure if it applies to everyone but as far as I am concerned I can cheat the world but I can’t cheat myself. I used to be my own worst critic but that didn’t prove healthy so I gradually evolved into my own biggest challenger. Not quite a different thing but much more fun for me, if I overcome the challenges that is. I’m going to attempt to elaborate.

I’ll begin with FIFA, my all time favourite computer game. This should be on Ripley’s because believe it or not that game has the fundamentals of living a fulfilling life embedded in it! Playing the manager mode, FIFA teaches you to bank on the future, stick with old players and it won’t be long before you are left with either no players or a bankrupt club. Similarly, (and now I’m about to reveal the superficial me), whenever I see a woman, the pretty one mostly (‘pretty’ here refers to the whole package as far as physical eyes can see), my brain, upon my request generates probable images of how she would look like after her first child and again after her second… and perhaps another for after her third child if the images are still bearable to envision. This helps me to estimate the ‘use before’ date of a woman’s prettiness given the circumstance of pregnancy or pregnancies. Don’t you dare sneer because I’m serious. It’s all about peeping into the future. There are many other FIFA principles that can be applied in real life, but that is another post. All this, although irrelevant in the context of this post is quite significant to mention. What is relevant though is that playing as Arsenal on FIFA 2010 (never have I played as any other team), I have never won the Champion’s League. It sickens me! And you know how it takes days before you complete a season. I won once but I had to retake the semi-final match and that doesn’t count to me. I didn’t feel anything because I cheated the software, but not me.

I’m always challenging myself, sometimes, as I have come to realize, unnecessarily. For instance, I visited chiira’s blog and he makes description of places in Nairobi on this post. To date, it bugs me that I can’t figure out a single location but I wouldn’t ask or let anyone tell me because yes, it would equate to cheating! You know that game Spider Solitaire? It does have the option of checking for possible moves you could make, guess who doesn’t use that? You got it- ME! And sometimes I set a time limit for myself within which I should complete the game. If the time limit ends before I finish, I start afresh. Did I mention that I only play the difficult level?

This, my blog friends, may seem a harmless habit but not when applied in life and death situations, because that is what I unknowingly did over time until God showed it to me. It came to me in a flash, it couldn’t be any more vivid. This happened moments ago from when I’m writing this. Brethren, like everyone else I have my own demons to fight, I have my own flaws, I have my own weaknesses. When it came to matters of sin, it was etched in my subconscious mind that to truly surmount sin you should face it. That if you are struggling with adultery, bring home a whore and dare not to touch her. If you have trouble with porn, buy tons of it yet don’t use it! To me that would have been true victory over sin as opposed to running away from it by eliminating it from your life and pretending it didn’t exist! I was wrong, or maybe I was not but it’s putting excessive load on yourself. It’s unnecessary, but if you can do that then you are better off. I’ve been playing with fire, sin is nothing to challenge yourself with. I can’t remember praying to God to let Him help me with my battle against sin. My attitude was “it’s okay, God, I’ll do this!” because in my mind if God helped it would have been cheating! As much as I wanted to please God and say “look, no hands!”, I have learned today that it’s okay to let Him hold me to prevent me from falling.

So dear God I have a sin problem I can’t overcome on my own, please help me. If I should cheat sin or whatever then so be it. No more self-induced challenges.

FAMILY MATTERS

I have two sisters and one brother, we are balanced in our family, in every way you look at it... we came in the order of boy, girl, boy then girl again. My favourite of my siblings is the littlest of us all, so when they closed school for the holidays I was very excited (my dad decided to take her to a boarding school this year, something I silently disapprove- she's turning eleven in two days!) and looked forward to seeing her. Three months seemed like ages. When mom goes to visit her during visiting days, they must call and I would talk to her and the first thing she'd ask is why I hadn't gone... laziness :(. Well, I love that kid. And now I realize I should have made the title of this post Emily Matters, for I see this being purely about her.

Anyway, I kept wondering how big she'd grown, would she be taller than me now? (Oh, she's tall for a ten year old I think). Did them boobs pop up yet? She walked through the door with my other sister who had gone to pick her up and I wasn't far off, she's grown. But she's still flat around the upper abdomen part :). People do have a problem with the way I usually talk about my female family members, I hope you don't. I remember when a female cousin came over to visit us for a few days one time. I started talking about how cute she was with my friends and  I was told I was not supposed to say that due to the fact that we are family. I don't know, it's not like I want to have sex with her!! I'm just pointing out an obvious fact.

Speaking of sex. But wait. I need to sadly tell you that Emily didn't do well in her end term exams. No, she did pretty bad! I guess boarding school doesn't mean better grades. And my dad, yes he's concerned but I'm surprised he's not making the noise he used to during my time. I used to do fairly well but it was never enough! What, did he lose his voice?! Okay. Okay. Having said all that I can now bring in the sex part. I have been volunteering to offer Emily home tutoring when I get the time. She came home with sample test papers from her school which we would go through together after a little lesson. Now these science papers are filled with so many reproduction questions with a penis diagram here and a vagina there, talk of sperms here and ova there (ova there?), what's a brother to do? I did what I had to do, I provided a little sex education and funny enough she felt most uncomfortable. For some reason my favourite part was the part where I explained to her what menstruation was. I must admit I was a bit (a bit) uncomfortable too so I kept it strictly formal. Sometimes I just feel I'm the wrong person to be teaching her these stuff, where are the parents at?! But she knows these things. Going through the female reproductive parts, I asked her what the uterus is. She said its where the baby grows... I was proud :)

And my thirteen year old brother, the quiet type, still sucks his thumb, you can find him doing it 90% of the time. I let him play Fifa on my laptop the other day (I know, these 'other days' have become one too many) and he missed to score by an inch and he went "fuck!". What can I say, he just might have picked it from me. As much as parenting is tough, parents you need to be involved in almost every part of your kid's life! The woes of being a first born... you become a parent before your time.

TRUE STORY

I'm breaking records in my life, let's begin with the rather conceivable ones. Today, okay it's past midnight so I really mean to say yesterday, was the day that went down in history as the day I spotted the highest number of expectant women around town! Wasn't an unusual thing in the college I went to... hell, half the people we shared a room with became accidental dads (2/4), but for some reason the same scenario on the streets of Nairobi alarms me. From the looks of it, the state of the economy done not depress any progress in that department :)

Nowadays I can smell an expectant woman from twenty miles away and I can pinpoint just exactly when this ability began to develop inside me. I was eighteen years old (them good ol' days) and very naïve, or maybe not... depending on how you look at it, sometimes emotions can cloud your judgment. Then there lived a beautiful female that I got so strongly attracted to, let's give her an innocent name as Mary. We were in the same class for a short course in a certain institution, she was my neighbor too so we walked home together everyday, making my moves on her slowly but surely. In my head I remember saying, "She's okay except for that potbelly, but that we can fix"

So one morning when the boys in class gather up during recess to talk, Mary's name pops up. Nobody knew my intentions with her, about how I fantasized about her every night. It is my principle to not reveal the prey to friends until the prey becomes a victim. Them boys hated on her, and to pretend I was on their side I innocently added, "And I don't think she's even serious with life, seen how she keeps leaving the classroom all the time?" Then one of them blatantly tells me "That's because she's pregnant!" I still stared at the young man with a blank face waiting for further explanation for I still couldn't see the connection- morning sickness! Long story short, I now can identify a two day pregnant woman if I hang around her long enough. True story! And to the curious lot, no I did not proceed with my quest.

Last week, a rather uncanny series of events occurred in my life. Never happened before in the history of my life. I hop into a bus and sit next to this good-looking chic on my way home. Describing her as just good-looking seems a description so inadequate but I'm going to fight the urge of wanting to describe her any further than that to protect her privacy... or whatever. Yes, so I thought she was cute, she alighted at her stop, that's right before mine and I alighted at mine and went home. Following day, around the same time, I arrive at the bus stop, I get into a bus to go home, I look for an empty spot near the window which leads me all the way to the very back seat. Ten seconds later, I see the same chic coming and sitting next to me! I don't know about you out there but I have never sat next to the same stranger in a bus in two consecutive days, in this case nights. As soon as she sat down these are the exact words that I said to her "What are the odds? We were together yesterday!" She smiled and pretended to recall, then she said yes. And the rest is history. Lets just say that that was not the last time we saw each other.

In other news, from my impossible thoughts; as I was conversing with myself today yesterday walking home from the bus stop, I was struck by a thought I have never thought up before. I can't remember what I was talking about but it all started when I told myself that I'm only but human, insinuating that I am not perfect. Then I thought, if indeed it is in the nature of man to be imperfect then why does God expect perfection from us, we all fall short but that's what He would want from us. God's initial intention was for man to be perfect and sinless but man chose a different path. Again Jesus was human in nature when He was on earth, he experienced everything we do as human beings; pain, emotions, hunger and so on, yet He was perfect. Conclusion: we are not imperfect because we are human, its because we allow ourselves to slip. We are not weak, we are powerful! And it's the misuse of this power that proves detrimental to ourselves. Believe it, true story!

Bonus: Again last week, I listened to an English stammerer being interviewed on BBC radio. Never had I heard anyone stammer in English before. It was kind of hilarious!!! TRUE STORY.

NB: For those who thought I forgot, I did not. Part 2 of Strange Strangers is coming soon. Seems I have my mojo back, so I'm holding it back a little :)

LIVING TO THE FULLEST

I must declare it already, if you most beloved readers don't already know, that most of what I write in this blog (at least the ones that make the most sense), is inspired by other blog posts and this one here is not an exception. Too sad I can't exactly remember which one of the fairly numerous blogs I bother to visit did inspire this post but it certainly left bits of unfinished thoughts (because nothing in my head is ever resolved) etched in my mind and I have been meaning to put this down on paper print ever since then, about a month ago. So here it is;

The blogger in question was doing what we bloggers characteristically like to do- rant, yap, blubber, argue and "talk" about something with a passion that overwhelmingly supersedes the importance of the issue, yes that's us. If you write a blog, you know you are guilty. Pardon me, I'm getting sidetracked from the story. The blogger who was female (I'm not sure how this fact will help build the story) was complaining talking about how some common questions which people are so known to pose to each other are just nothing less than pathetic! Questions like, what's your favourite book or movie or colour? The argument was, why should anyone confine themselves to liking just a single colour? Fact is, she didn't know what her favourite colour was, she likes many colours and can't get herself to choosing just one! Plus, the answer varies at different times. Another one, if you were stuck in a desert... you know the rest of it. But the one that this post is mostly based on is the question; if you knew you had 24 hours to live, what would you do before you died. Her, she'd probably do the same thing she did the day before.

On that note, I feel the need to point out that I don't know what it means to live life to the fullest. So just when I begin to think that I might be living a boring life I tell myself, boring is the only fun I know. I like it this way and I wouldn't change it. At this point it wouldn't take a genius to tell that I probably would do the same thing the lady blogger would do if I had 24 hours to live, but a more accurate answer would be- I don't know what I'd do. My favourite quote right now (how ironic) is one that goes; if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. I'm sorry but in every argument I tend to end up at destination God, to some people that may be lame.

Sometimes I think we live too fast, its like a race. I should be married by now, all my friends already are. I should drink my ass stupid now, while I'm still young. Hell, where is the next party at? So we run around doing things because we compare our lives with that of others. We all want to go crazy and live to the fullest when in reality, when you live your life- that's when you are living to the fullest. If you are a party animal, get to dine with kings, eat your meals in different countries in a day and that's just your life, meaning it doesn't go against who you really are, then my take is that you are living your life full.

Sometimes when people talk about living to the fullest I get the impression that they take it to mean doing the things you don't to do on regular basis. Trying out everything to avoid missing out on anything or doing things just because you can to find out what it would feel like. From crazy stuff like dyeing your hair blue, or getting to the roof top of Times Tower and peeing from up there (men only) to simple and more acceptable things like camping and smelling flowers, literally. If it was upon me to define what living full means, I would define it as simply being true to who you are by doing things a you would actually do and being happy with that, period. No questions please. So if I had only 24 hours to live, whatever I do I'd make sure I enjoy every second of it, even if it's to just sit dumb and have a very exhilarating conversation with myself, which is something a Wyndago would do any day and come out as happy as Kanye with a VMA plaque.

NB: My apologies for not having posted anything for such a long time, especially to you lulu :-)