STONE COLD HAVEN

• “My lady is waiting”

  Posted: August 23, 2009, 3:04 pm by Darius Stone

  If there’s one thing I envy about living back home, it’s the options available to any working family to get an affordable house help or maid, more popularly known as a mboch. Having a live in house help out here could easily cost you the better part of your salary after tax – and for most of us, we have to make do with tackling those oh so unwanted chores , come rain shine or snow.

  You see, some of the most drama generating issues for any couple are the mundane things like who does what in the house from washing the toilets and changing diapers, to mowing the lawn and scrubbing the pots and pans. They say it’s the stuff relationships are made of, but in the same token, it’s most definitely the stuff drama is made of. Of course, it doesn’t help that you’re both probably busting a gut at work to make ends meet, and there’s a small matter of kids who might not see things as you see them when it comes to being reasonable.

  So once in a while, you resolve to lighten the load for both of you and sub-contract some of the more straight forward chores. A live in house help is most definitely not an option, so the natural thing is to pick up the yellow pages, and look for the locally advertising domestic cleaners, who can pop in once or twice a week. The truth is, doing most of the work yourself for the simple reason that it saves money is a false economy. For the sake of sanity, investing in external help on occasion makes perfect sense.

  I thought finding a cleaner would be easy. Back in my bachelor days, it was most definitely easy. I found a nice lady on the other side of the phone, she came with a cleaner on the first day, we laughed and chatted, haggled on a price, and I gave her the spare key, and that was that. Twice a week, I’d come home from work and my apartment would look like a million bucks.

  I didn’t have to worry about much, and even if I wasn’t able to leave a few bob under the biscuit tin when I was broke, I could always square things on payday. They were even flexible enough to pop in on an additional day to do a spring clean if I was expecting a booty call (a sparkling clean house never harms your chances of wooing and convincing an undecided chick that panty removal isn’t such a bad thing after all)…but I digress.

  I had a bad feeling about this one from the get go. The first sign should have been that a man with an annoying voice answered the phone. His response to my simple question about how much they charge per hour was delivered with an air of disdain that only Ugly Betty would expect from the pretentious, back stabbing colleagues on her first day at Mode magazine.

  “I need to arrange an appointment to come and view your house”, the Pratt kept insisting.

  “I don’t think you need to see my house to answer a simple question about your hourly rate. Does it change depending on the number of rooms I have?”, was my simple riposte.

  “Oh no – sir, we have to follow a certain procedure and make sure that everything is right”.

  I should have hung up and just left the fucker out to dry, but I needed to get someone in to do some regular cleaning, and I really didn’t have time to call around left right and centre. And so I gave him my address, and told him that either ‘er indoors or myself will be at home at a certain time, and that he should call before he gets there to make sure that someone is at home.

  I found the freak waiting up front 15 minutes before he was due to visit, and his blunt excuse was that he had other appointments so he thought he might turn up early. This was a clear red flag that I ignored (maybe I’m getting soft in my old age), but I decided to just get it over with.

  The dude reminded me of a former college lecturer who was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. His arrogance oozed out in everything that he did, how he moved and his appraisal of the living room as he entered the house. Now, every parent with a toddler will know full well that a living room looking like a building site with all manner of toys and implements is a normal state of affairs. I don’t know if he was more pissed off at the fact that Pepper Pig, a popular kids TV show was playing on TV – and clearly, it didn’t make any sense to him (not that it was ever supposed to, it’s a kids show, or the state of the living room was not up to his standards. I would have normally said “sorry about the mess”, but considering I wanted them to clean the mess regularly, I figured it was appropriate that he had an idea of the intensity of the chore.

  He started by giving me a history of his company, to which I responded by cutting him off. I didn’t have the time for niceties and I had to go back out again. And so the ridiculous started.

  “I have to look around the house and then describe it to “my lady” who will be cleaning. They usually clean from top left to bottom right.”

  “I wouldn’t expect anything less”, I responded, “but it still doesn’t answer my question about how much it costs per hour. I’ll only agree to it if it’s a reasonable cost”.

  “Well, this type of house we would charge x and y per hour, and it has to be a minimum of z hours”, he answered with anger as if I had twisted his arm and slammed his face onto the wall.

  “And you couldn’t tell me this on the phone?”

  “No sir, we have to agree on the terms and conditions”.

  “What do you mean – it’s a cleaning job, I’m not asking you for a loan”.

  “Well sir, we usually sign a contract with clients, and then we go through a check list of issues. I have to examine the house for health and safety and for insurance purposes to satisfy that our liability insurance will be met.”

  By this time I was rolling my eyes and wishing this fucker had never walked into my house.

  “I also need you to sign a direct debit mandate and we normally collect payment 3 months in advance for the first payment as a deposit, and then a monthly payment in advance”.

  “For what”, I cynically asked.

  “It’s our policy”, the freak says.

  “It’s a cleaning job. Why would I want to do something as stupid as sign off a direct debit to you? Besides, I haven’t agreed to it yet”.

  He still insisted that they had to take the first deposit and payment in advance and by this time I was already pissed off enough to try find a way to get him out of my house without drop kicking him onto the front yard.

  “You see Mr. So and so” I calmly said, “Where I come from, the only people who get paid before a job is completed are prostitutes. Unless “your ladies” are coming here to regularly get laid for a fee, I really don’t see why I should even contemplate paying in advance”.

  That clearly got him as he stormed up and suggested that I need to think about it then and give him an answer.

  To which I responded, “don’t call me, I’ll call you before the end of the week”….which was clearly a mistake. I should have perhaps said, “fuck off”.

  A few days later, ‘er indoors hands me the phone and says “your friend is on the line asking why his lady is still waiting”.

  Lo and behold, the dude had the arrogance to say that he had been waiting for my phone call, and that he needed to respond to his lady as she was waiting to know when she can come and start and to organize her schedule to accommodate me.

  “I thought I told you I’ll call if and when I decide to go ahead with this”

  “But my lady has been waiting”, was his persistent response.

  “Then tell her to stop waiting”, and with that I hung up.

  Did I mention that he insisted that I needed to buy cleaning materials for his so called ladies? At the hourly rate they were charging you’d think that they were hiring a cherry picker to clean the windows and roof.
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• A day in therapy

  Posted: August 11, 2009, 10:23 am by Darius Stone

  So once in a while, I do something crazy and confide in some old geezer about the occasional territorial battles in my head as my better angels shout down my resident demons. I’m reliably told this pissing contest is a natural state of affairs, though unchecked, the demons are known to surprise the best of us by yielding undesirable results that play out in our thoughts and actions.

  This old geezer is an OK fella actually. He’s long retired and has been around the block more times than he would want to recall. I started working with him some years ago as a mentor – supposedly one of them pearls of wisdom, an old sage so to speak, that personal development gurus (these guys who call themselves gurus really need to get a real job, honestly) thrust upon us as a solution to keep our sanity in check. You know, an outsider who can be your confidant, someone who sees things that you don’t, and someone you pay to wake the sleeping dogs in our psyche that we’d all rather let lie.

  I can’t recall exactly when, but I think the boundaries of my mentor/mentee relationship with John got blurred some time back – well, I once told him to fuck off, but I guess that particular day, my resident demons were in charge of the situation room. He didn’t seem to mind this, and actually encouraged me to express myself if I felt the need to, prompting me to ask whether he had outlived his usefulness. Nevertheless, catching a pint with John once in a while is something I have time for, and it’s usually after a session when I wonder whether the fact that he’s offered to mentor me as a freebee (I’ve collected some serious air miles with him over the years) gives him the divine right to play the role of a shrink that I never asked for – of course, he’ll say he’s just listening, but I fail to see how John’s M.O is different from a shrink’s modus operandi, suffice to say that its happening in my office.

  And so the recent session kicks off…

  John: How’ve you been kido, it’s been a long time.
  Darius: You do realise you’re old enough to be my granddad, what’s with the kido thing?
  John: How’s ‘er indoors and Stone Jnr doing?
  Darius: She hasn’t run away with the milkman yet

  John: So what’s on your mind?
  Darius: A lot, I guess I’m at that place where other things have to happen for me to feel that I’m moving on.
  John: Where are you moving to?
  Darius: (*with a cynical laugh*) my buttocks hurt
  John: You’re not onto that “going forward” psychobabble nonsense?
  Darius: You know me, I hate management band wagons and fine anyone in the office who says stupid things like going forward, joined up thinking and shit like that
  John: How much have you collected in fines?
  Darius: My beer fund is running low

  John: How is the work?
  Darius: If I went any faster it’ll be illegal, so I guess it’s fine
  John: So if work is fine, what about other stuff?
  Darius: Talk about beating bushes, what other stuff?
  John: Are you being a good husband and father?
  Darius: They don’t give prizes for that you know
  John: You’re avoiding my question
  Darius: She bitches once in a while, the usual, nothing out of the ordinary. Are you performance managing my marriage?
  John: Do you want me to?
  Darius: For fuck’s sake, you’re the one who asked about it
  John: So well – why does your wife bitch?
  Darius: How long do we have? You do know she doesn’t hold the monopoly on this one. I’m sure even in her late 60s, your wife still bitches like she used to when she was in her 30s.
  John: True.
  Darius: So what was the last thing she bitched about
  John: My son wanting money – and I gave him some.
  Darius: He’s in his late 40s, right? And keeps coming back to daddy for help
  John: It happens to the best of us

  John: Why was your wife bitching
  Darius: Take your pick – her having to remind me that dish washers don’t load themselves, or to take the trash out, or to sort out the guy who’s supposed to replace the front two tyres of the car
  John: Do the tyres need replacing?
  Darius: Yeah – we replace a pair each year – I did the back ones last year
  John: And why haven’t you replaced the front ones?
  Darius: Do you know how much they cost?
  John: Does she?
  Darius: She fell for the Kwik fit advert that suggests they have the bargain of the century for brand new tyres starting from £25. Recession busting they called it.
  John: That sounds like a bargain of the century.
  Darius: Yeah – from £25, they don’t tell you in the advert what Pirelli’s cost.
  John: What do Pirelli’s cost?
  Darius: Why the hell are we talking about tyres?
  John: Actually, we’re talking about bitching and why you’re giving your wife reasons to bitch.

  Darius: Hey – I also have occasion to bitch
  John: Like when?
  Darius: When she feeds an African man Risotto for dinner knowing full well that by 9 pm I’ll be hungry again
  John: What’s wrong with Risotto
  Darius: Nothing, I just don’t like the fucker, it does nothing for me

  John: What else do you bitch about then?
  Darius: Not much else, you know – Well, maybe the fights I have with my son over the ownership of my wife’s body
  John: You do realise that none of you own her body
  Darius: Tell that to the little bugger – besides, I have a different agenda with her body than he does
  John: When was the last time you took your wife out on a date?
  Darius: Don’t know – I think a couple of months ago when we went for dinner with J and H.
  John: A double dinner date with friends doesn’t count. When did you last tell her to wear her favourite dress, got the baby sitter in and took her for a romantic dinner, just the two of you?
  Darius: I guess I’ll have to do that this weekend then – and wipe that smirk off your face…(*he says with laughter*). I don’t want to get to the stage of her bitching that I only take her out to vote.
  John: I’m only suggesting ways that you could as you say, win your wife’s body from your son – good old fashioned romance still works you know
  Darius: Oh Yeah! When was the last time you got laid?
  John: When was the last time you got laid?
  Darius: You haven’t had some for a while, huh?
  John: That would be telling.

  Darius: So what’s your performance assessment of my marriage?
  John: As far as I can tell, very normal – garden variety as they call it.
  Darius: I guess I better find a restaurant I can afford.
  John: Don’t forget the baby sitter.

  John: What about other stuff – do you get time to see your friends?
  Darius: Once in a while, I probably talk to them more on the phone
  John: You still go out of your way to avoid drama
  Darius: I don’t do it with intent – but I guess a bit of drama doesn’t hurt.
  John: You’ll still have drama in your 70s with the few friends you’ll have
  Darius: Tell me about it

  John: Summer must have been depressing for you with the football season closed.
  Darius: 8 days and counting – can’t wait for kick off at Goodison park
  John: How do you think the Arsenal are going to do this season.
  Darius: I have that feeling I had at the beginning of the 2007 season. Everyone wrote us off, but we bitchslapped the whole league until Martin Taylor decided to break our star player’s leg.
  John: What does that feeling tell you for this season, why do you think you’ll do well
  Darius: The team have been trialling a different format of Wengerball. Our problem last season is that teams predicted us like a nonsense and parked the bus in front of their goal and we couldn’t do anything about it and we were also bullied off the park by some unsavoury tactics.
  John: What will change
  Darius: Wenger is employing a playing system based on pace and depending on the clinical finishing of Arshavin and Eduardo to terrorize defences.
  John: I like Arshavin, I think he’ll do really well for you and will probably be the best player this season
  Darius: Yeah, I think with the new system of unleashing attacks at pace from our defence, we’ll spend less time pushing around the ball in midfield and have a better chance of terrorizing the unsuspecting defences, and even if it doesn’t work, the football will be played in their half and the pressure will make opponents panic and we love that.
  John: You’ve got it all figured out, huh?
  Darius: (*laughing*) if only Barnet could play like that
  John: Hey – don’t knock Barnet, I’ve been supporting them long before you were born

  John: You do know football is too emotional an outlet for most
  Darius: Tell me about it
  John: It’s good that your passionate about it and Arsenal, but what else do you do to keep yourself in check
  Darius: You mean if I have the time
  John: I’m suggesting you make the time to do something that helps you deal with undesirable energies
  Darius: What now, you’re my shrink?
  John: Does it matter?

  Darius: Well, I watch some favourite shows on TV
  John: What are you into at the moment?
  Darius: I’m watching the last season of NCIS and re-runs of Spooks, though I’ve also managed to get round to watching the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. My wife and her friend used to have phone conferences to discuss the show and they’ve been bugging us (the husbands) to watch it.
  John: And what did you think of it?
  Darius: Actually, I think it’s a very good show – I haven’t finished all of them, but it’s very African. My only disappointment is that Jill Scott (who is a lovely person and actress) played the lead role yet there are hundreds of thousands of capable young African actresses…
  John: The African activist in you is coming out, huh?
  Darius: LOL

  John: What else do you do? I mean on Darius time
  Darius: I blog
  John: This is this internet thing where you just write to folks out there in cyber space?
  Darius: Yeah, something like that – but the lonely people out there actually respond, it’s not like radio where you don’t even have a clue if anyone is listening
  John: And what do you write about?
  Darius: Anything and everything – whatever my demons or angels tell me
  John: Essentially – what’s in the agenda in the situation room
  Darius: Something like that
  John: Does your wife read your blog?
  Darius: You know what – I have no idea, we’ve never really had that conversation – “sweetie, do you read my blog?”
  John: Does she know you have one?
  Darius: Of course she does, she chose the design and layout, and it’s right there on my Facebook profile

  John: So do you ever think about doing fictional writing?
  Darius: Does it pay well?
  John: I don’t know, I’m not a writer
  Darius: Then why do you want me to do it?
  John: You write well, I’ve read some of your stuff – maybe your readers will enjoy reading your work
  Darius: What’s in it for me?
  John: You get to spend your time doing something therapeutic. It’s good for your work life balance.
  Darius: There aren’t enough hours in a day
  John: I’m not talking about writing a novel. You could write short stories
  Darius: Maybe.
  John: Think about it, it’ll give you an outlet that you could use your strengths in.
  Darius: Are you suggesting I need to release some steam?
  John: You said it.
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• Stone Cold Memo

  Posted: August 6, 2009, 9:00 am by Darius Stone

  One thing that riles any boss, especially during times of economic hardship, is providing unnecessary concessions or time off to their most expensive resource, their staff. It’s the age old battle of an employer who tries to get the most out of an employee at the least possible cost, and an employee who is determined to get the most reward for the least amount of work.

  I first came across this memo from an employer to his employee years and years ago, and hadn’t seen it again until this week – and thought it was still an excellent piece of diplomacy. I must remind myself to use it some time.

  MEMORANDUM

  From: Team Leader

  To: (Enter employee’s name here)

  Subject: Your request for a day off work

  Thank you for submitting a request for a day off work. I’m concerned though, that you haven’t looked at things from my point of view, so I think it’s important to examine what you’re asking for.

  There are 365 days in a year, and out of these, you only work during the week, leaving us with only 261 available working days.

  Out of these 261 days, you are only theoretically available to the company for at most 8 hours a day. If you take the rest of the 16 hours a day as a whole and calculate them into days, then you don’t work for another 174 days, technically leaving you with 87 working days in a year.

  If we then subtract all public holidays and the period between Christmas and new year when the company is not open for business, you will see that you only have 74 working days.

  We haven’t even considered the time that you have off for lunch, tea and coffee breaks in the morning and afternoon, and the down time that you have for chit chat and office gossip. Take all these in totality through the year, and you effectively have 52 working days left to offer the company.

  You will also be aware that the company has a policy of setting aside 1 day a month for staff training. Add to this, the time you spent travelling during the day to and from company clients, and we clearly see that there’s at least another 24 days down time through the year, technically leaving us with 28 working days.

  Now, I’m reliably told by the folks in the IT department that on average, you spend 30 to 45 minutes a day browsing websites that have nothing to do with why we employ you. We don’t want you to consider us anal, so we normally overlook this sort of down time for most employees, but give or take, I suggest that this leaves us with 26 working days in a year.

  Apparently, the government requires that we give you a mandatory 25 days off work for annual leave, leaving you with only one working day in the year.

  I’LL BE DAMNED IF THAT’S THE DAY YOU HAVE IN MIND!
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• I’ll be damned if I’m coming up front

  Posted: August 3, 2009, 8:32 am by Darius Stone

  You’d think that by this point in my life, I’d have mastered the art of shall we say, getting out of tight situations unscathed. I’m not talking about some closer shaves of a misspent youth that brought out the Hollywood stuntman you never thought was you.

  You know them tight situations when a father comes home from work for lunch unexpectedly, and the biggest problem isn’t that his daughter hasn’t prepared lunch yet, or doesn’t look like she’s anywhere near preparing anything edible. The biggest problem is that you happen to be naked and firmly anchored in between his teenage daughter’s legs – and as he calls out for her, you’re traumatizing about whether to complete an exercise in coitus that is a justified reward for the time and effort that you’ve clearly invested your whole school holiday in, or jump out through the second floor bedroom window and take your chances with the unsuspecting neighbours who you’re about to grace, truth be told, with what you can find of your clothes in one hand, and if you’re not injured – trying to cover a rock hard penis with the other hand.

  No, no – this recent close shave wasn’t as dramatic, but nevertheless, a gentle reminder about why it’s important to keep alert and avoid “sitting duck” situations. So while with a friend of the family, we bumped into some folks from the church that the friends go to, and the chit chat and nosy enquiries started.

  “So are you all from the same country?” “Did you know each other before you moved here?” “Do you speak the same language?” “Do you live locally?” – you know the usual check list.

  “Hey P, why don’t you invite your lovely friends to church this Sunday, it’ll be really lovely, we’ve got a really worthy theme this Sunday”

  And before I could process where all this chit chat was going, P turned around with that “Sure, you guys can come right? You’re not doing anything this weekend…”, and turning back to the friends, assuringly concluding “don’t worry, I’ll make sure they’re there”.

  I should have said something. You know when you get those moments, those split second situations where a “no” may sound really cold, but it’s so much better for everyone. Well, my no moment passed and come Sunday, we found ourselves looking for a free parking zone (parking attendants out here get paid on commission for the number of cars they clamp, so even on Sunday, I was taking no chances)

  Side bar here. I’m not averse to attending church – really. It’s just that since I left my mother’s house many years ago to go to boarding school, my perception of things have changed and the rest is complicated (at least for the scope of this post). Before then, it was a cardinal crime in my mother’s house to miss church every weekend, and I do respect and appreciate why she took this stance. But she also gave us the freedom to decide what to do about attending church once we were older and could make that decision ourselves.

  I even had the privilege of being one of the chapel wardens during high school helping the Chaplain run the school chapel day to day – and got involved in everything from organizing the cleaning (first form rabbles did it of course), to helping coordinate regular services and managing finances, and on a couple of occasions, being very proud to be one of the wardens on duty when the chapel hosted the funeral services for two fellow students who passed away while we were still in school.

  The long and short of it is that it’s a very long time since I went to church, the only two exceptions being my brother’s funeral service several years ago, and the wedding of our close friends (to each other), both of which meant a lot to me in different ways.

  So when my opportunity to step in and say “no, we actually have plans” faded past amidst the “great, we’ll see you Sunday” byes and hugs, I was left with that “what did I just get myself into” feeling.

  ‘Er indoors is fine with it and attends church very regularly, but there’s just something about these local churches that even she finds unnerving. We have a small church less than 400 metres from where we live, but that’s just gossip central. My neighbours and folks in the surrounding area don’t go to church to know the town gossip, they just go to find out and confirm whether the local paper printed out the version of the story they had heard. Drama central describes the culture of it much better.

  So when we entered this new (for us) church as they were singing a hymn, the deacons and ushers sat at the back scrambled to make space for us to sit together, and we just calmly slotted in and assumed the necessary by joining into the chorus. I must have heard this hymn somewhere but I didn’t know the words so I just sang what they were singing only a second or two late – it works.

  As we sat down, I thought I’d readjust my chair only to be put in my place by my son. I’m sure he totally didn’t mean to embarrass me (kids his age will say the darnest things), but shouting “don’t be silly daddy, sit down” in a church with pin drop silence doesn’t normally achieve that desired “I didn’t mean to” effect. After the laughter, I knew I was fodder.

  My wife’s attention was caught by something else on a projector screen and it was only when she turned around and whispered to me in Swahili did I register her disappointment at the semi-naked starving boy from Liberia that they had on the screen in your now classic International NGO “give us your frigging money for poor African’s” mode.

  If you read my post Cynicism in its true colours – Well!, they’ll say they’re saving the world , then you’ll clearly understand my lack of enthusiasm for all matters innately patronizing.

  I thought we were coming for a church service not a frigging fundraising event. For the sake of expediency and acceptance that I can’t afford a law suit, I’ll refrain from naming the organization involved, but this was a new low.

  I’ll come back to the “give us your frigging money” story in a second, but I digressed when talking about my project of sitting down without any more embarrassment. The next speaker at the pulpit then pronounced the dreaded phrase – “I understand we have visitors today – We’d like them to introduce themselves!”.

  I don’t know if I can aptly explain how that call for visitors in a church evokes certain feelings in my being that freak me out. Maybe it’s the conditioning I got as a child every time we visited the grandparents in the bundux and when attending the local church with them – they couldn’t pass the opportunity to show off their neatly dressed grand children from “the city”. We had to stand up, wave and smile back at everyone, and I guess anyone in a church who says “we have visitors”, triggers those raw emotions.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not afraid of crowds or speeches for that matter, far from it. I’m actually quite good at it when I’m in my element. It’s just that being paraded for everyone like a dairy cow from Athi River about to be sold at an auction is not my style. A couple with three kids quickly came to our rescue as they made their way up front. What a relief, but then again, I was busy trying to figure out where P and her family were. I just thought it would be useful, while we have the breathing space to just remind P that I was not averse to breaking legs if I had to – and I’ll do it if it’ll stop me from being cajoled into standing up and walking up front like the couple and their 3 kids.

  Apparently though, these folks had been debriefed and they were only being introduced as they were new folks who wanted to become members. For some reason, I thought that churches let any Thomas, Dickson and Harrison walk through the door, but maybe I’m mistaken. What I wasn’t mistaken about is that I wasn’t about to fill any membership form.

  Fast forward to the service and we come back to the travels of the speaker (who I understood was a guest speaker) talking about his travels on behalf of a charity working in West Africa. I kid you not, if I had a brick, I would have thrown it at the dude with the precision of Andrew Flintoff trying to dismiss the batsman of the Australian cricket team. He wasn’t preaching for crying out loud, he was running a full length live infomercial with video props to boot.

  At one point, I wanted to storm out when they started showing a video of how they’ve helped poor Africans plant tomatoes or breed chickens. Clearly, this is something a population of over 850 million people from 52 countries wouldn’t know how to do, and only westerners running charities know how to “teach” the natives. My wife had clearly picked on my mood and as I got shifty in my chair, she stepped on my foot with enough to transmit her clear message “you ain’t going anywhere – sit down”.

  I had to endure another soppy story of dilemmas in life where the dude talking had to struggle to make a moral decision to give a pen to a child in the village. His dilemma apparently was that if he gave the child a pen, then every child would then want a pen, and considering that they can’t read and write, this was a big issue. This dude even ask the congregation to tell by a show of hands how many would have given the pen. It was so surreal I just had to lean back and look at the roof.

  And the moral of the story – as if it was unpredictable – “Give us your frigging money – we’re saving poor Africans”. If he would have just started with that 1 minute advert, it would have been less painful.

  I didn’t realise it was possible to go lower than the very patronizing daytime “please give us £2 a month, we need it to save poor people in Africa” advertisement screened every 5 minutes on cable and satellite TV. Adverts like this one or this one. This dude was actually pulling it off in church – and the congregation were all teary eyed and possibly contemplating their wicked shame of living without caring for the poor of the world – or more succinctly, what William Easterly calls “The white man’s burden”.

  If you thought that was dramatic enough, then you must have been as confused as I was. You see, churches out here have a small gathering after the service where the congregation mill around, share a lousy cup of tea and a few biscuits and cakes. It’s during this time that I got reminded how it’s very important to take things in context as the alternative is to get arrested for expressing your contempt about what is being said and the undertones it’s being delivered in.

  So while sitting at a table with P catching up, sipping the tea and biting into a biscuit, regular folks pass by, say hello and pull a chair, and the hits just keep on rolling.

  (Note to reader: The questions and awkward conversations are aggregated from different “well meaning” smiling people – And the answers up in here were the one’s in my head, but not what I responded)

  Q: “So how did you come to the UK?”
  My thoughts: A fishing boat
  Q: “I didn’t realise you had it that bad in Africa – do you know that village?”
  My thoughts: “Yeah, it’s just down the road from where my family is from
  Q: If you’ve lived for that long in this area, why haven’t you come to church like your fellow Africans?”
  My thoughts: What? It’s now a crime?
  Q: “Do you work? The economy is really bad – it must affect you?”
  My thoughts: Actually, I run a brothel from my basement during the day – pretty low key, only referral punters, and a different girl every day.
  Q: “Are you on benefits (welfare)?
  My thoughts: Do I have a frigging sign on my head saying – post office regular every Thursday to cash welfare cheque?
  Q:”You know the church is always here – if you’re ever in difficulty, you and your family must ask us for help”
  My thoughts: What the fuck!

  You get the gist anyway….

  This was as bad as the funky outfit in Kenya that got a group of my mum’s maendeleo ya wanake group hooked on their fascinating take of why the world was so troubling – got to admit though, they got my friends and I (see – the mum’s dragged all their teenage kids to such redemptions from evil) singing “Riswah” at every available opportunity – it was a ball….

  ….Or the shenanigans of a one Mary Akatsa, the prophetess of comedy – did I tell you that I had the privilege of visiting her and being prayed for to rid me of the demons of my misspent youth(this is clearly a story for another blog post)…

  …Or Kenya’s very own Mr. Miracle Baby, a one Pastor Deya, but that also ladies and gentlemen, is a story in itself.
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Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes