Like most of you, I’ve also hit the ground running in this new year. The blind optimism and feeling of newness of yesteryears has been replaced with a sober realisation that a new year is not a new lease on life and resolutions can be as empty as the white spaces they were written on if they’re not backed up with a solid plan of action and concrete steps forward.

This year for me is all about more and more paper. I get my first year’s practicing certificate from LSK anytime now, then there’s that masters graduation, meanwhile there’s the job ladder to climb and looking out for more legal side-hustles.

The paper chase has begun.

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eNVy:

This is for everyone who thought I’d never make it.
I made it like the Chinese, go on and take it.
Skinhead at the barber’s, you can’t fade it.
When they fallin’, they leave, that’s when I rake it.
Skinny genes, Nairobi-born with the hunger,
You did a shitty job in a pot with a plunger,
so my words that crack bent over like a plumber,
but still a taser-gun, number one stunner,
I stick it to you like a drummer, bummer,
Sprung on Hip Hop like the season before Summer.
Cooler than the other side of the pillow,
Master the track when I whip it like Willow
I’m on top of the hill, armadillo
Marley missionary on a continental pillow
Top of the castle like Rapunzel at the window
Back in the 90s when I rob Van Winkel
I make ‘em smile at the expression, dimples
Face lines for the wise, wrinkles.//

Caught in the moment, I’m slapping her raw skin
A slave to the moment, I guess I was forced in
Pushed back inhibitions like foreskin
I’m all in, hands up at an auction
Competition down under like Auckland
Attractive with the art like I’m spittin endorphins
In the flow of the sharks, you’re a dolphin
Me and the beat go together, Olsen
joint at the hip…hop whilst I’m recordin’
answer my call like a plane that’s boardin’
I think I’m Big Meech, Larry Hoover
Had you swimming with the fish, barracuda
Even in a chicken coop, the flow prettier than a Mini Cooper
Connect the dots for emcees, sharp-shooter
Drop gems like a clumsy corner-shop jeweller
Drop the hot shit, grab a pooper scooper
Super duper, disturbing the peace, Luda.
the true measure of a king, I calibrate your ruler
On top of this metropolis, Lex Luther
About to blow in the biggest way, touba
Nothing below the belt I keep it clean, true sir.//

One thing led to another and I ended up writing my Extended Essay on Senghorian poetry exploring the famous concept he coined: “La Négritude”. The next year, I presented my work at a Conference held to celebrate the life and times of L.S.S organised at Alliance Française. To date, I consider that presentation and the warm welcome it recieved to be one of my most defining and memorable moments ever. At the time, I was doing two things which I considered to be of absolute importance, firstly I was paying homage to a great African scholar and public figure and secondly I was in a sense pledging my loyalty to that soil on the westerly most tip of the continent that witnessed my metamorphosis from childhood to adolescence.

Suffices it to say, I still feel a strong connection to Dakar. Quite natural, considering she was my first, in more ways than I can explain.

Sentimentality aside, the commemoration of 10 years since Senghor’s death for me is an opportunity to think back and reflect on the course my life has taken, while trying not to regret things too much.

I know the journey is far from complete so this is just a pause.

One of the dreams that I continue to silently harbour on this long journey is that of the Extended Essay one day sitting side by side with a Ph.D Thesis by yours truly… inch’allah.

Before I sign off, allow me to share one little poem by Senghor. A poem I crammed while in Junior High School just for the sake of passing exams but when I went back and studied it during IB and even now, I came to terms with just how powerful it really is. Senghor was a man who spoke fondly of his native Africa and his home country of Senegal, both when he was at home and more so when he was away in France or elsewhere. He relies quite heavily on personification as a stylistic device throughout his writing and in many passages, one finds him likening Africa and Senegal to a woman, a love, a wife, a mother, all wrapped in one. He speaks of Her ‘blackness’, Her beauty, Her warmth, Her eternal love for all, Her Culture, Her Civilisation, Her decolonisation…

Nuit de Sine

- Léopold Sédar Senghor

Without family, I am nothing. This one goes out to you. Keep on keeping on. We shall overcome.

“Back to Job-hunting and Adieu to a Thankless Government”

This week I blogged on DR about “Regional Balancing and the Bastardisation of Kenya’s Constitution” as my way of indirectly venting about recent events that make one regret being a Kenyan.
Kenya will always be home but what kind of home has this place become? My family’s relationship with this “Thankless” Government of ours started in the 70s when she worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before joining the teaching staff at the University of Nairobi. Fast forward to present day, that relationship amounts to nought in the eyes of the powers that be.

This leads me to question my own future in this f**ked up system. No one wants to be overlooked for promotions, benefits, conference trips, training opportunities or even a cup of morning tea because of their perceived identity or political inclinations. No one wants to be constantly embroiled in the goalpost-shifting and bureaucratic politics of government offices where some members of staff are more equal than others. Pro-bono legal work has been me for this entire year and it’s been an enriching experience but it’s time for me to really plan for my future and if her experience is anything to go by, a future with the government isnt it. I’ve alluded to this is a decision before and it’s been long overdue. The difficult decision in leaving is that I’ll have to put my passion for IP on hold as private practice rarely touches on IP and when it does, it’s the standard contract issue or registration stuff. That said, I need a change. I know the grass isnt any greener on the other side but now is probably the best time I have to move on and move forward.

PS: Big shout-out to Willpress, a learned friend and fellow blogger, as he sits his Bar Exams. See you on the other side!

“You aint gotta get the frame, ma/ I know you get the picture…”

In other news, I’ve hung up my undefeated Scrabble gloves and now I’m dishing out free cans of whoop-ass at Badminton and table tennis. Come one, come all. lol!

Last thing, Phonte’s first solo album: Sheer brilliance. Peep game:

I’m bad with deaths. Does that sound wrong? Does it make me seem cold or heartless? Maybe it does but it still doesn’t change the fact that I’m bad with people dying. I wouldn’t know how to comfort you, I wouldn’t know what to say or not to say. Kenyans have lost loved ones through the fire, poisons, car accidents and now cancer.

In the case of the late Prof. Maathai, I’m glad to see people focusing more on keeping her legacy alive by actions rather than endless platitudes.

As for those who poverty has pushed to the edge of desperation, I feel both fear and compassion. Ask yourself, if someone is so desperate to survive that they live in clearly hazardous areas and would risk their lives to siphon fuel, what would such people do if incited to turn on the privileged lot that has ignored them? If someone is so desperate to escape the crushing reality of poverty that they would take to drinking ethanol-concocted brews, what would stand in the way of such people leading a bloody revolution in this country?

As someone put it: “one day the poor will have nothing left to eat but the rich.”

Drake – “Club Paradise”

A rare moment of dopeness from Aubrey. For me, this one efinitely ranks up way up there with the likes of The Resistance, Light Up and 90% of the “So Far Gone” mixtape.

Notable quote: “How did a pile of kush become a mountain of truth?/ how did a bottle of wine become the fountain of youth?”

Phonte – “The Good Fight”

It really feels like Mr. Coleman was talking to me through this track. I’m still fighting the good fight, glad to hear I’m not only one.

Notable quote: “If you thinkin’ bout quitting you should probably wait/Cause everybody gotta do a f*ckin’ job that they hate…”

Tehn Diamond – “Grown up kid”

My boy Tendai is back in Zim and is making music. It’s a feel-good track that shows off Tehn’s potential to make it big without having to wear a suit and a tie (unlike some of us). Looking forward to hearing more music from him.

Notable quote: “I only go where I’m needed and by “needed” I mean go where the green is..”

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For the last two days, the Judicial Service Commission in South Africa has been interviewing the presidential Chief Justice* nominee Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng who is set to replace Justice Sandile Ngcobo at the apex court of the land, the Constitutional Court (Concourt).

I picked up on a key distinction between Kenya and South Africa vis-a-vis key appointments to government. For example, the person nominated to be CJ in Kenya can only be appointed after parliamentary approval. South Africa’s constitution gives the President the sole discretion in appointing the CJ and his nomination does not have to go through parliamentary approval. This simple fact, I believe, illustrates Kenya’s traumatising history with the powers of the Executive. Whereas South Africans have never had to deal with an Imperial President who hires and fires at will and is accountable to no-one in the manner in which he runs the country. However, I know that apartheid South Africa had to deal with an Imperial Parliament that was majorly white and enacted the most oppressive and racially motivated laws ever recorded in human history. Therefore it is clear that the stance taken by the post-apartheid constitutional drafters was to remove a lot of the powers vested in Parliament and provide for clearer limits, checks and balances among the three branches of government.

Whereas here in Kenya, every single person that has been involved in the constitutional-making process, from Pre-Bomas to our Committee of Experts, recognised the urgent need to decentralise the powers of the President and make the Executive Branch of government more accountable to Parliament and more open to judicial supervision and guidance.

But I foresee a problem.

It seems like we have now given the Legislature waay too much discretion in second-guessing and questioning the decisions and proposed actions of the Executive. This problem is prominent especially now where parliamentarians are able to hold the Executive and Judicial arms of government at ransom. MPs, as we know them are a self-serving lot that have proved time and time again that exercise of their constitutional mandate is up for sale to the highest bidder. Parliament is now able to prevent the Executive from living up to its political pledges by dragging it’s feet on enactment of enabling laws or even by blocking the appointment of suitable Presidential nominees.

If you ask me, Parliament is the biggest beneficiary under the new Constitution deliberately because of the decades of mistrust and misuse of prerogative powers by the Executive under the aptly dubbed “Imperial Presidency”. However it is important to remember that these powers have been donated to parliament by the great people of Kenya therefore it is up to us to ensure that parliament exercise their new-found powers in strict accordance with the wishes of the people.
Thus, it was probably in the CoE’s wisdom that a Right of recall provision was included in the Constitution to empower the voters to chuck out their non-performing area MPs.

As we enter the second year since the promulgation of the constitution, I would urge everyone to familiarise themselves with their social contract with the state and cascade that knowledge to others so we can foster a more informed and more participatory democratic culture.