on the road

I’ve been busy. When am not working, am eating or sleeping. Not getting enough time to think though life and the motions. This happens. So now as we drive from a remote part of Kenya where the locals look at me like a foreigner, I write.

Life is very different here. It’s hot, way hotter than the city but there is a cool breeze that pushes your hair strands from your face and lifts your blouse up. And that whistle sound as you drive by…amazing.  Its beautiful here, sugarcane fields, green carpeted arches of land with streams of water running through them.  The sugar cane fields remind me of Dominican Republic. They use the sugarcane to make delicious rum which mostly goes by the brand name Brugal. I fell in-love with it. I can’t help but think of using this sugarcane for making some Kenyan rum myself. A day’s activities here involve few things; fetching water, cooking, cleaning …money here isn’t as highly placed compared to the city residents like me. They eat from produce from their fields, they marry their neighbors’ children and they work as a community. Here everyone knows everyone.  It’s sad how I don’t even know my next door neighbors. What is so different here? Do we get caught up in the city life that we don’t talk anymore? We are not curious anymore?

I will definitely knock my neighbor’s door when am back home just to say hi. It’s about time I knew who they were. Then I will serve myself a glass of Haitian rum and unwind.

Don’t get caught up.  We are first humans.

 

Truly, Jem.

You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

I took my car out of town a few weeks ago. It was a big risk. I had never taken it out of town before and I wasn’t sure if we would make it. My mechanic said it was OK, I was unsure. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to take the risk. I knew no matter what happened, we would make it to where we were headed.

Halfway through the journey, my friend presses on the accelerator as we climb a hill. Next thing we know the radiator blew! It took us hours to be on the road again and we made it. I just believed everything will be alright in the end. And it was.

Life gives us options, we can choose to be optimistic or not. We can take the risk or not. In the end, you will either be comfortable doing something or regretting not doing it in the first place. We have a tendency to look at the cons in situations. “the car might stall, the dress might tear, he might break my heart…..” they start to sound like excuses. And fear feeds on those excuses.

I learnt something this year, I want to always be uncomfortable. The moment you don’t inspire more, the moment you get comfortable with where you are, then you never want more. You never work as hard. I never think as much when am comfortable. So I want to be uncomfortable, to be taking risks, to be pushing myself beyond what I can perceive. I remember wanting to see Cuba. From Kenya that’s a long way. I didn’t know how, but I wanted it.Somehow I got to see Cuba. Somehow things just worked out.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

You don’t have to see the whole way, just know where you are headed. Keep your eye on the prize and you will surely get there.

Jem

Motivation day -article by PAUL HUDSON

Motivation day

Paul Hudson tells us we need to stop letting life pass us by and live it. I wouldn’t have said it better. Enjoy

Lost ones

Am reading Emergency sex and other desperate measures. I practically have balancing tears half the time. Am angry and frustrated. Am angry with humanity, angry we have so much power. Am frustrated because no matter how angry I feel, I feel powerless.The irony.

800,000 people died in Rwanda. The UN was there and they Evacuated.  6 million Jews died during the holocaust and that is just what is commonly known. Let me push the needle deeper; Bosnia: 200,000 deaths, Cambodia: 2 millions deaths, Armenians in Turkey: 1.5 million deaths. Genocide is defined as a deliberate and systematic destruction, in while or in part of an ethnic, racial, caste, religious or national group. I was there when around 1500 Kenyans died because someone had to gain power in 2007-08. I was scared and I was shaken. I was surprised just how fast a neighbor will lift a machete at his neighbor so that someone who he will never meet gains power. I am still overwhelmed writing this but I feel an urgent need to continue writing.I feel I need to explain to you just how lucky you are, how it could always be worse and how you need to do something good in your life.

Do you feel safe? I do. The illusion of safety is big here in Kenya. We can complain but it could surely be worse. I have questions still, how does one person take the life of another so easily? When did it become the usual to hear? what part of us is so messed up that we can live with it? King Henry VIII chopped off people’s heads by his command like it was nothing. Power is surely a dangerous thing to own. It makes us hungry and selfish. It takes us away from what matters. I might not be able to change the world but as Gandhi said, I will be the change I want to see. I will do my part. I will make it a priority to help someone, I am just too lucky. I am too blessed.

I cant wait to meet the maker of this universe. I cannot wait to have answers, to settle my heavy heart.

I feel for those who have been tortured and killed because of association, religion or any other grouping. I feel for the children who did not get a chance to see life. I pray for the women in Somalia who have gone through the kind of mutilation that is unimaginable. I pray for the survivors who have to live with the memories. I pray for humanity. A part of me believes we might end up destroying ourselves in the end. That it will be our own doing. I pray that doesn’t happen.

I have decided to light a candle once in a while in remembrance of those souls. So that I don’t forget, as a simple reminder to be grateful.

Be the change you wish to see  in the world.Live to feed your heart, give to feed your soul.

with gratitude, Jem.

Short Poem by Gideon Wainaina

Words remain unspoken,

feelings bottled up at the bottom of the ocean,

the tunes run deeper into my mind than the roots of my hair,

art comes to life on silent solemn nights with cities lit up.

Finesse from the boulevard off Miami beach almost like chasing mavericks,

simple yet so confusing how she runs her fingers through her hair,

art lives in the souls of men who are dimmed liberal but see the beauty in their cause.