I LOST MY JOB: I SUPPORT MOTHERTONGUE

I am tired of teaching languages to people who just don’t understand, so I am in full support of teaching of mother-tongue in schools. It is not like I am poor at teaching. No! You see when I was a music teacher, I managed to hit my target: To make my students sing better than Raila. Having said that, then I can proudly tell you that I am the one who advised one of my students, Duale to quit singing and try comedy [and you can see he is doing well].

In my several years experience in teaching, I have found nothing so hard to teach like these two foreign languages: English and Kiswahili. So I advice, that going back to mother -tongue will really ease things for language teachers.

 I had this student that I was teaching Kiswahili. We had successfully covered ‘ngeli ya Ki-Vi’ and so I decided to give an exercise; but the answers I got made me think thrice about teaching that language again. I had told the student: Wingi wa chakula ni vyakula, chetu ni vyetu,  cheupe ni vyeupe and so on and so forth.

Anyway, this was the exercise and the answers I got:

Andika sentensi zifuatazo kwa wingi:

• Mama amechoka – Wamama wamevyoka
• Chatu amekunywa chai – Viatu vimekunywa vyai.

I asked the headmaster to change my classes so that I would be teaching English, which I was very comfortable in. My request was immediately granted. Soon, we were told that there would be experts from the Ministry of Education who would be coming to supervise our teaching. I am a smart guy. I told my class in advance that when the supervisors come, I would be teaching on adjectives since we had learnt adjectives the whole of the previous term.

When the D-Day arrived, I wanted to prove to the supervisors that I was the best teacher of English alive and if they had any doubt I would prove it by selecting one of my poorest[am avoiding to use worst] student to write a grammatically correct sentence in  on the blackboard, and so I chose Khadija Mohamed. Khadija walked confidently on the board and scribbled:

I MATE MY TEACHER WHO WAS LONG, BIG AND HARD.

This was probably the biggest mistake of my life. I had warned Khadija severally that the spelling of mate was met and that those adjectives are not the best to describe a man, especially a teacher  but apparently she was determined to prove me wrong. I tried to explain to the ministry that she meant that I was tall and tough but it made things even worse.

To cut the long story short: I lost my job and so I support mother-tongue fullstop [oh, sorry (.)]

MEN ARE THE BEST MARKETERS

First, allow me to begin by excusing myself. In this writing, I will endeavor not to show how exemplary I am in the field of Sales and Marketing by using relevant and contextual words, but just so you know I know, I will explain some of them, lest you think I don’t know what I am talking about:

• ·         Return on Investment – This is what you get back after you have heavily invested on something. E.g Dowry. The perfect example is this though, when a man spends all he has in his wallet to buy a lady drinks, he is actually targeting the return on investment.
• ·         Market penetration – Market is an open place where things are sold. Penetration is ‘going into’. Putting the two together, Market penetration is the process of going into a market. E.g When a man pays a ‘hooker’ for services; you say he has penetrated the market.
• ·         PCV (Product Category Volume) – This is the confusion of PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride) E.g If a campus boy has a carpet at his place, rest assured it is PVC or PCV, whichever.

Well, at least now that we have looked at the definition of terms, we could go to our main topic. Our thesis statement here is: Men are the best Marketers.

Over years now, men have demonstrated their power of using the tongue to convince, which is the whole logic behind sales and marketing. So if I am to start a company that would require such services, then all my employees will definitely be men. I have all the reasons to believe that they are the best.

See, I am not that kind of person that you call very handsome, well because a few of my friends have severally commented that I resemble Julia Ojiambo. To add insult to injury, rather, subtract hair from my head, I have this al shabaabs who have my head under siege and are responsible for the speedy loss of my hair. Now, my friends believe that I am not so clever. They say “brain is hair” [akili ni nywele] and so my encroaching bald screams the level of foolishness in me. My teeth are not really the best but I won’t complain [it is not everyone who is blessed to have teeth that are almost white]. My tummy has constantly been a disappointment. The four cubes that I once had have successfully coagulated and collaborated to form an OPU coalition. Now, for my brothers who understand me, they know that a political opposition ONE PACK UNITED hanging right below your chest does not auger well with pretty ladies, maybe average ones. This has led me to a general conclusion: Lucifer was somewhere around distracting The Almighty with funny stories when He was busy creating me. He must have cracked a joke like: “Eh Mungu, mbona usipatie huyo mtu mapua kama chimney!” The Almighty must have definitely found it funny… funny enough…it is like He followed the advice. Now I am stuck with a nose that looks like a range rover’s exhaust pipe. In conclusion, I have only two consolations left:

• ·         The Bible, which assures me that despite my physical appearance short comings, I am frightfully [I have forgotten the actual word] and gorgeously [I am sure about this one] made.
• ·         Women. Ever since my last home science class that reminded me that I had reached puberty stage, I have never been single.

It is this second point that has made me arrive to my fact, men are the best marketers. In a society where competition is very high with an abundant supply of similar commodity yet demand is for the best commodity, an average looking human being like me must have perfect marketing skills to sustain your value in the market. Unfortunately, you are your own salesman. Remember you are also competing with products that are not readily available like: Chris Brown, Trey Songs, Alejandro Lombardo and so on and so forth. Putting this into consideration, it is my tongue that has sustained my value in the market. I have been quite able to confuse several women that I am the perfect choice commodity available in the market. I have wittingly convinced them that my pot belly is an artificial cover to some six -pack hidden in there. Somehow, I have also managed to prove to them that in as much as I may be a Julia Ojiambo look- alike, I smile better that Atwoli and that has made me popular. Though recently, I met this customer, who I told, “You leave me breathless”. She looked at my nose twice, gave me a horrible sneer and walked away. Point is, there are times business is also not quite good but you learn from mistakes. I will work on some marketing strategy for my nose to make me entirely hot potato or is it hot cake. That depends with your preference, I like hot potato.

So now you know that I am not the only man with these marketing skills. If you are a lady in a relationship, your man is the evidence to this because I can bet that every time you tell him, he is the hottest man in the world to you, you are actually lying to him. Someone may also argue that how can a man be the best marketer when it comes to dealing with men customers. Mmh…I had thought about that. You don’t need to convince him, convince the WIFE.

I ALWAYS OUTSMARTED UNCLE MARK

I almost made a grievous mistake yesterday of blaming God for giving me such an uncle, but as I always say and I will repeat, I am a smart guy. So instead of blaming God, then I find myself in hell-fire in future [With uncle Mark], I shifted the blame to one of my relatives that I don’t quite know very well; but somehow he/she misbehaved or rather messed up and now I am stuck with one Mark as an uncle. All could have been smooth, if at all I didn’t meet Uncle Mark, but somehow my being smart landed me at FSK…and BOOM! The accident…..I met Uncle Mark who henceforth insisted that I should never call him uncle but ‘Sir’. I almost laughed at that joke, until I discovered that he was actually serious. But even as a tiny Form 1, this was the only teacher who apart from a defiantly protruding belly, he was my size. At this point I must confirm that I found it easier to call one Martin Kitong’o ‘Sir’ but it always seemed like an intimidation using the same title for Uncle Mark.

Anyway, I am a smart guy and soon I knew I would deal with Uncle Mark, the Drama Club Patron then. Rumours had it that the man had been very hostile to my brother, who had also gone through his hands [I mean, in class and drama club…don’t allow your mind to be derailed]. So even as I joined the club later on, I was 100 steps ahead of Uncle Mark. It’s like preparing for a battle with an unsuspecting woman. I was on a mission to revenge.

In 2006, I made a point of asking Uncle Mark for Ksh.500. My Ministry of Pocket Finance had all of a sudden run bankrupt due to the extremely hot conditions at the Coast Province that had made me misappropriate funds into buying sodas and ice-cream for my crowd of high school girlfriends. Well, to cut the long story short, I was broke even before the festival started. Uncle Mark however was not the understanding type. Basically, I use “I will refund” as a cliché when asking for a loan from a high profile relative. So I expected Uncle to understand that it was more like, “forget about it” but hell no! It dawned to me that Uncle Mark was not the one to easily let go a hardly earned ksh.500, when I found myself headed home for a suspension the next term….apparently for failing to payback. Anyway, usually suspensions took 2 weeks, but mine took 2 days, so let’s just say I won. I still returned the money, very bitter at heart of course.

Uncle Mark always seemed to doubt my potential in leadership and somehow I suspect he jokingly discouraged members from voting for me as an official of drama club wit statements like: “We want someone who is serious. Someone who can take you to the nationals. Someone who understands what he is doing.” Then when I am very optimistic thinking that I was that person, he would get to his punch line, “….not like Nakitare!” The Form ones [usually the majority] would laugh but the seeds of doubt had already been sown. I lost my target seats to smaller people like Dennis Liyai. What he failed to discover was that I am a smart guy and I eventually outsmarted them all. Somehow, I always found myself later on as an official, with or without their votes. In this one, I laugh at them.

I will never forget this time when Uncle landed 12 slaps on my handsome face distorting it with his fingerprints. Now, 12 slaps are far too many. They are especially abnormal if they are from a linguist punishing you for speaking ‘sheng’ language. Anyway, my friend Richmond Embeywa convinced me to forgive him for two extremely strong and understandable reasons:

1.       Maybe he thought when you said ‘unacheki hiyo solar panel inakaa kama parabolic reflector’ you were referring to his under-construction airport [ a respectful phrase for a developing bald]

2.       Or when you commented, ‘walai uyo msupa ana haga’ he probably thought you were making fun of Mr. Shitubi’s spectacles.

Well, these points were strong enough for me to forgive him for misunderstanding me but am still waiting for a financially-related apology regarding his slapping me right in front of his future in-laws. From this encounter, I knew Uncle Mark would have a problem with taking me to the national in the next season, no matter how good I was. And just as expected, something came up just before the nationals. We qualified to go for the nationals with a narrative that initially was made up of a cast of 15, but due to some reasons we had to reduce the number to 12. Ideas hit me quickly, that after the encounters I had with Uncle Mark, he would not think twice before dropping me out of the squad, so the smart guy had to act quickly and the INFAMOUS CHEMSHA event came in handy. While my friends Erick Shibweche, Graham Nduko and Euclid Shilaku went home for suspension[leaving a perfect figure 12] due to the involvement in the saga…the actual man behind the beginning of the whole CHEMSHA thing was in Meru, enjoying the nationals, Nakitare. I owe them an apology, but for now allow me say that I was smarter than Uncle Mark once again.

But one thing has returned me to square zero. After the Ksh. 500 shillings incidence, I didn't actually let go until I played my last cards. I had to make Uncle Mark believe in me a little. That I did and he found himself putting one of his very great narratives, BABUSSA, in the hands of a man who was set to make sure, the name Mark does not appear on the National Drama festivals that year. We had several narrators but funny enough he insisted that I was the one to narrate it, despite my deliberate strategy to lose my voice before the Provincial festivals performance. To cut the long story short…for the first time in many years, we flopped. I only realized my mistake when the Choral Verse qualified for nationals and so it meant that Uncle Mark would make a grand entrance to Nyeri town without his nephew. Uncle Mark also ensured that I did not attend the provincial galas in spite of all my begging and pleading. I even promised to help him push his car that always needed pushing whenever he started it, but it was all in vain. Lately though, Uncle Mark has made a point of reminding me of how chubby my cheeks are, and in creative ways calling me fat. I can’t help but go back in time and discover the description used for the huge fat african ladies in that script BABUSSA. With this I feel like Uncle finally has outsmarted me. It is like he is shouting into my ears, “It’s not like I believed in you to give you the script kijana, I was actually laughing at your looks in the narrative. It looked funny to see you foolishly describing yourself!”

ALL THE RESPECT TO MY FAVORITE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER: MR. MARK MUTALI CHETAMBE. I MISS THE FSK DRAMA SQUAD THAT YOU MOULDED. I NEED 12 MORE SLAPS, MAYBE I WOULD BECOME GREATER!

STAND UP COMEDY- MY GRANDMOTHER'S FOOT!!!

I have usually wondered why the hell a man would opt to get into the business of struggling so hard to look stupid or say some  extremely silly things with an intention of making people  laugh. Well, these strangely odd people call themselves, ‘comedians’. For one reason or another, they actually understand that they are idiots and an attempt to justify their idiotic stunts, they come up with quotes such as “To be intentionally stupid you have to be very intelligent” which to me it’s just like any other of Duale’s political quotes, if at all he has ever said anything important [I understand them though. Anyway, if you find me foolish, I will do anything to convince you otherwise].

Now, I have also never stopped wondering why these caricatures with uncouth mannerisms and making a fool of themselves would choose very weird stage names. With regards to this issue, I am particularly concerned with one friend of mine; actually no longer a friend, because it is not in my habit to keep friends with names like Prof. Chochi Celeb. They say your friends define you and if I keep this one, then am sure people would start calling me ‘Nakitas  te Tocta’. I have never in a moment thought about being a doctor leave alone tocta and now meeting a prof with names like Chochi Celeb, I don’t also wish to ever become a professor since the title is no longer attractive.

I don’t have anything personal about these peaceful hooligans, who crack your ribs without laying even a finger on you. But I have a problem with all of you who open your mandibles to laugh even when they make funny embarrassing comments about other people. My girlfriend somehow made a point of reminding me that I was handsome, but whenever I went to Prof. Chochi’shows, he always made a point of reminding me about the shape of my head. The audience got tickled whenever he mentioned that my head resembled a bitten apple. Now I understand why he has never allowed me to get hold of the mic during his show because he knew his head wasn’t any better and I would have made a point of remind him that God used a torn box to structure his head, if I make sense. But I feel people wouldn’t laugh at that [They only laugh at mediocre jokes].

But there is this day that God came to my rescue. I had attended Chochi Celeb’s comedy night at Moi University, which had actually become my routine every Friday evening. Those are some things people do for friends, because if I didn’t go, he wouldn’t have a head to make fun of. So as usual, the man called me to the front, to remind me of how unhandsome [for luck of a better word; coz I am not ugly] I was. This day, he actually spoke like a man who had experienced transfiguration. His definition about my head had grown worse but to the audience better.

“Sasa mkiona mtu kama huyu unashangaa, kwani Mungu alikuwa ameangusha avocado imeiva chini…halafu akachange mind akasema, wacha hiyo itakuwa kichwa ya Nakitare.”

Chochi spoke and the audience laughed. What hurt me most is to see all the 21 teeth of the lady I had invited to this show. I had planned to do some funny things with her later that night, but now I was certain that with this new revelation about the shape of my head, the self-acclaimed professor had ruined my chances. I went back to my seat feeling like I had just been slapped by Kidero, rather, received a love letter from Binyavanga.

But then came, the redemption time. I was hiding amongst the crowd as we left the show out of embarrassment, only to hear people still murmuring and laughing. Well, I thought they were still laughing at me but a few words that reached my ear reminded me of the perfect lunch that Prof. Chochi and I had taken; mixture or murram or maenjera or whatever you may call it to mean beans and very tough maize. I had the last laugh when I discovered that all that laughter in there was because of a notorious remain of our delicious lunch that had brilliantly stuck on professor’s teeth. So it wasn’t me they were laughing at after all. This discovery made me start looking for the lady I had invited but well it was too late. This was a Friday evening in campus and she was already swinging her hips in the arms of a Conjestina- looking guy hungry for human flesh! I am a smart guy, in as much as I know I could claim my lady back by punching this guy’s face, I knew there was a smaller guy I had left behind that I was to punch, Prof. Chochi.

If you like it…know that it doesn’t end here. It’s just but the beginning.