Mum & Dad

 

An Adaptation of Philip Ochieng's Article - I ask Blomfield: Who gave God to whom?

As if in reply to Massie Blomfield, the Dalai Lama once said: “We Buddhists are atheists”.

From the head of the world’s largest confessional movement, this must have perplexed the Judaeo-Christian world in its perennial claim that “atheism” is absence of “spirituality”.

For I know no religion more spiritual than Buddhism.

Yet — since “atheism” is such a dirty word in Western religiosity — “non-theism” would perhaps have been more tactful. Definitely, it is more accurate.

Buddhism is simply “non-theistic”: it does not worship any deity who exists apart from human beings. It teaches that divinity lives in every human individual.

The non-theistic object of worship is like Paul’s Jesus: He reveals himself “in me” (from inside), not “to me” (from outside).

The Gnostic religion of my Nilotic ancestors was akin: God’s mind was writ large inside his creations. To discover the God, then, one must study the internal structures of such bodies.

The Greeks called it Gnosis (“knowledge”). Today we call it “science”. Among my ancestors, religion and science were indivisible.

We owe today’s rigid dichotomy between them to the much more recent rise of Aristotelian metaphysics in Europe.

Before that, knowledge of the human body — the acme of God’s handiwork — was the height of worship.

Thus, such Greco-Roman converts to Nilotic religion as Archimedes, Democritus, Epicurus, Euclid, Leucippus, Lucretius, Plato, Solon, Pythagoras, Socrates and Thales — all trained at the Sais Temple in the Nile Delta — taught that self-knowledge is the godliest of all things.

To “Know Thyself” — as Socrates admonished — was possible only through introspection

Through it you automatically came face to face with the deity’s supreme commandment — namely, individual goodness to other individuals.

Though the teachings of all churches, synagogues and mosques subsume this self-commitment to humanity, the assertion is embarrassingly spurious.

It is a mere lip service through which, like “charity”, the priesthood seeks to assuage its guilty conscience.

Yet, when genuine, such a supreme individual self-effort is what proves our humanity.

Spiritually and morally, such a self-initiative — which only non-theism can teach you — is superior by far to the doctrine that only a third party (the discrete deity) can compel you to be good to other human beings.

Of course, morality is also possible through that route. I have great admiration for those — like Father Dolan — whose statements (in non-religious contexts) are completely in line with their premises about God.

But the personal lives of most of those who shout the loudest about God sharply contradict their fulminations.

Edward Carey Francis, my high school headmaster, daily condemned his fellow missionaries for the “mere piosity” of their lives.

Mohandas Gandhi said that what India needed most was Jesus Christ minus Christians and the Church.

The Aborigines, Afghans, Amerindians, Indo-Chinese, Iraqis, Kosovars, Palestinians, Saracens and Tasmanians would have agreed.

So would the victims of apartheid, the Black Hole of Calcutta, the black slave trade, colonialism, Lari, Manyani, Sharpeville and Europe’s own “Inquisition, Witch-hunt and industrial tyranny.

In all this, England’s “God-fearing” upper-classes were the number one culprits.

Yet, in Kenya — week after week — a racist and colonial diehard called Massie Blomfield uses our own newspapers to eulogise England as “God’s Chosen People”. Anybody who criticises England for these historic crimes against mankind is criticising God!

Why? Because — listen to this! — England was the race that gave “God” to us. If you are “God’s Chosen People” — a title which the Anglo-Saxons long ago grabbed from Semitic Jewry — you must be infallible and above criticism even if it was through your “God” that we succumbed to your racial bigotry, political tyranny and financial filth.

But — I ask Massie Blomfield — between the Nilotes and the Anglo-Saxons, who gave God to whom? That is a question I hope to answer decisively.

The Seychelles

August 8th 2011 was not any ordinary day, i will remember the day very well since it was the day i was leaving my motherland for the first time and it was also the  first time i was getting on a plane. the excitement was  from the fact or fear of leaving my family, friends and my ''life'' behind to start over in a new country and in a new job. i remember thinking on the plane rather primitively how the people on the other side looked like whether they lived ''normal'' like us in Kenya...how were there roads, houses, food and funnily i even wondered whether they had Games like football since i had never heard of them compete in any.


I had never seen a view of a country so beautiful from above, so much water everywhere and it was all green - water and the vegetation alike. well its now 4 months and i like the change, the people, the work culture, the governance style and social life. all a contrast as is back home. If only i was a  Kenyan politician or  if i could pull a politicians' ear as a voter i would whisper to him about the Governance style in Seychelles, a government so people oriented,  that the elderly ride free on public Buses, school children ride at half fares to school and all the wananchi can afford to ride the bus since rates are fixed to any destination. Every citizen has water and electricity and Alas! no one cooks in charcoal or paraffin, since all can afford cooking gas and its affordable compared to Kenya which has a refinery. 

Eden Island in Seychelles



The heat is unbearable though and i miss the paradise weather of Nairobi, at times its so hot you skin sticks and your gaze has to be squinted otherwise you may hurt your pupils. i cannot dress in my fancy jacket or my nice sweaters i brought from home just incase. wishing for a cold break here is like wishing to squeeze water from a rock.

Seychellois strike me as the race revolution that is already happening in the rest of the world only that here it has completed a full cycle, there are the real black African and then the entire 95% of the population is made up of people of mixed race, atleast more than half of the entire world race is represented here due to intermarriages and tourists who visit the Island and leave their wild oats to thrive on the island!

this is will be my first Christmas holiday spent far away from home and family at times i cant help but marvel at the dynamics of life, i had never imagined  i would be on the other side of the world with my family and friends on the other and that such a crucial holiday in the calender would be spent in a foreign land, it never even crossed my mind in the beginning month of January 2011, i remember i had even started saving for the big day in June but then again seems like someone else plans your life rota.

A BABY IS A EUROPEAN

 A baby is a European

He does not eat our food:

He drinks from his own water pot.

A baby is a European

He does not speak our tongue:

He is cross when the mother understands him not.

A baby  is a European

He cares very little for others:

He forces his will upon his parents.

A baby is a European

He is  always very sensitive:

The slightest scratch on his skin results in an ulcer.

That was then this is now

I don’t have new clothes for Christmas. Oh, how I miss Christmas clothes. I think the only thing I miss about the day are the new clothes.I would know it’s Christmas because I smelled new, I smelled like a shop. New shoes, new shirt, new pair of jeans, always complete with a tag hanging from it.

And, of course, these came with a new walking style because new shoes always somehow made you walk funny. Growing up has robbed Christmas of some of its novelty. Today, Christmas has become sober and predictable. It has grown up.

Only children can truly enjoy Christmas because it has an air of spiritual romanticism. It’s the bearded fellow who slinks down chimneys bearing gifts. It’s the jingles and carols.

It’s the flashy red and white colours and Christmas trees that blink in darkness. It’s the tenderness that your parents address you with. And it’s the food, lots of food. Plus they let you stay out late on Christmas. They let you become unruly.

Growing up, Christmas was mostly spent in the village. And nobody complained because it was fun. It was what I like to call an African Christmas.

Instead of snow, there was grass. We played on the grass and in the thickets, and we climbed trees, ate mangoes and watched the green hills.

Instead of reindeer, there were cows and goats. Family was big back then and family stayed together. Your uncles patted you on the head and asked you the questions you hated to be asked, “What position where you last term?”If you had a good grade, they fished for loose change in their pockets and handed them to you. If you had dropped, they would lightly remind you the virtues of working hard. Most of those uncles have passed on.

Christmas meant watching grandfather wobble on his walking stick to his seat under the tree where he listened to an old National radio.

Grandpa was the closest thing to Santa Claus with his white hair. But grandpa wouldn’t climb down any chimney, not in his clean pressed pants, shirt and tie. Back then, they wore ties to sit under a tree.

People respected themselves enough to dress decently. Christmas also meant going to Church and sitting for hours on end. And the truth is that church was boring because it cut into our play time.

We would fiddle uncomfortably in our chairs willing the time to pass quickly. But at the end of church, a big feast awaited. There was chicken and rice and rice and meats, and beans and cassava and vegetables and ugali.

It was a food festival and the whole extended family would eat and laugh together. And they would eat, not with forks and knives but with their fingers. I saw the biggest ugali being moulded into enormous lumps those days, a lump big enough to give you a concussion if it was hurled at your head.

But the feast didn’t start before someone stood up to bless the food, and that someone would normally be an ageing person who obviously wasn’t hungry enough because they would pray until the stew grew leaves.

The women would all be in colorful kitenges and the men in trousers and shirts firmly tucked in. Everybody was well-scrubbed. And people smiled a lot, even at strangers.

People reached out, they invited neighbours who didn’t have to eat with them, even if they weren’t dressed as nicely. And all this love was felt by the village dogs as well because apart from being well-fed from the left-overs, nobody kicked them around on Christmas dayThere was an air of generosity in the air. An air of togetherness. Christmas was that big then and we all looked forward to the day. Today, (maybe because I’m much older) Christmas is spent behind gates and long fences.

It is spent with family and sometimes friends as well. Alcohol seems to be the centre of gravity in such functions because perhaps that’s the only way people can enjoy each other’s company.

Children now ask about Santa Claus, not about grandpa and that’s okay really because it’s a different reality. The innocence is all but gone from Christmas because even when you are knocking back your whisky, there is always that niggling voice at the back of your mind saying, “Psst, school fees, school fees!”

Meditations

there are so many things that as we grow we think they were not meant for us, we see them as stars that are so far away that we in our ordinary mortal form can never reach them.

through and through the years experience has taught me that nothing is impossible all you have to do is dream, dreams get us places, dreams gives us wings to fly over oceans and high mountains, dreams comfort us because it is with dreams that we really get to know what we are worth.

i have seen so many paradoxes in life: people who are poor and of meager earnings tend to have successful and happy marriages as compare to the rich and wealthy, a student who heads to school on an empty stomach tends to work hard at school that one who has it all, one can be extremely leaned but still lucks education and socially acceptable skills. its because of this that the world we live in offers each of us fairness and equity, and as the Good book of Evolution says; Survival is for the fittest as we all have equal opportunities to fully exploit our capabilities irrespective of gender, race, sex or religious orientations. the other strange thing about life is that we can all not be the same in any case even our fingers are not the same!!

Experience through many years of reading and observing has also taught me that you don't have to have the highest education in order to make it in life, determination, self confidence and focus is all you need in order to make it. school dropouts are millionaires in this country and strangely enough some are our leaders......

its is said of God that he is  Omnipotent and Omnipresent, the more reason that we should know that we all have a purpose in this life no one is here by default.

The world that we live in

its the beginning of the year and its only now that it dawns on me that this is all a cycle.
we begin the year celebrate Christmas then new year, and again back to january. it can get disheartening at times especially when we don't meet the targets for the previous year.

i don't make new year resolutions but in its place i create targets for myself and what i need to accomplish before the year rolls over. i have been blessed to have a perfect job, a perfect boss and the best work environment now my only target is to create wealth this year for posterity, i want to lead the life that i dream, the life that is above the one i was raised on, a life suitable and appropriate for my children, the life that will not bring suffering and sadness to those i leave behind but a celebration of life.

this above will be my personal prayer that i shall be remembered for operating above the status quo and making a change not only in the life of my family but to those close to me as well.

its a new year and i yearn to look at everything about me in a positive and fulfilling dimension.

this is us in the village. as usual the village life is linear: eat, talk and play at any time.

my young cousin is quite a character i just had to capture this: he's is the know it all type, noisy aggressive, foxy etc he has all the character traits of a great kid.