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A Letter from a Kenyan Abroad (response to kenyans in kenya)

A response to Bikozulu's "A Letter to Kenyans Abroad" http://bikozulu.co.ke/a-letter-to-kenyans-abroa
The source: http://mkawasi.blogspot.com/

For a long time I’ve fought the itch to respond to blogs, tweets, status updates and newspaper articles from Kenyans at home that bash Kenyans abroad for their accents and attitudes. I had decided it’s too trivial. Until today when “A Letter to Kenyans Abroad” arrived on my wall, twice, then twice again, demanding to be read. And I did. Time to scratch that itch.

Bikozulu starts off well, then degenerates into a rant of castigating Kenyans in the diaspora for being o-so-obnoxious. Some Kenyans at home have taken to carrying around a big stick canning their diaspora brothers and sisters at every turn for defiling a certain doctrine of Kenyanness. Thanks largely to Bikozulu’s letter, I have summed up their ten commandments for Kenyans abroad.

1. You’re not allowed to have an American or British accent. 
2. Don’t criticize your country’s dirty politics. That’s the way it is.
3. Stop pointing out the crippling poverty in your motherland. That’s the way it is.
4. It’s sacrilegious for you to speak of a foreign country as “home.” It turns your ancestors in their graves.
5. Stop asking for quality time with us when you visit; we’re busy and we’ve moved on from you. 
6. If you want to make a difference, come to Kenya. Stop that diaspora rights nonsense.
7. You’re not allowed to use the phrase “when I was in…” or “back in…” with reference to a location in Europe or North America during conversation with a Kenyan at home. 
8. We are allowed to insult you for flipping burgers and scrubbing toilets abroad because… remind us, didn’t you go to get a PhD?
9. You’re not allowed to criticize a Kenyan at home for poor work ethic. That’s the way it is here, respect us.
10. No matter how long you’ve lived in Europe or the US, maintain an authentic Kenyan accent. (A variation of 1st commandment.) 

So let me start with the 1st, 7th and 10th commandments, by far the most irksome to Kenyans at home when broken. A year or so ago, there was a news item about a certain white lady who had lived in Lamu for only a year and mastered Kiswahili perfectly, complete with the Lamu indigenous accent. What was interesting is how so many Kenyans in Kenya, including the journalists, were awed by her effort and achievement, holding her up as an example for other Kenyans whose Kiswahili is questionable. But a Kenyan abroad speaking excellent English with a decent command of the British or American accent is considered arrogant, false and somehow a rejecter of his/her African heritage.

The stuff of inferiority complexes by colonized minds still amazes me. It is what I see every time I see reactions to Kenyans abroad speaking with some degree of a western accent. Yes, some consciously work at it, either because in their workplace they bear an obligation to be understood (I’m a teacher, language is my tool, and to be understood is my responsibility), or because it simply makes life easier to do what the Romans do while in Rome. Some acquire accents overtime, subconsciously, in varied degrees. That does not mean they lose your identity. It is true that Kenyans abroad acquire a deeper pride in their ethnic and Kenyan identity, some speaking Kiswahili for the first time, and those who were born here learning their mother tongue with pride while Nairobi kids could care less.

Now, some claim, with a chest-thumping, that they don’t have an altered accent after living abroad for decades. False. Even a Kikuyu with the heaviest Kikuyu accent somewhere in Boston will subconsciously slip in a “tomayto” here, a “callege” there, a “Canerricat” (Connecticut) too.  There’s nothing to it. And if while in Kenya you slip into your diaspora-acquired accent, don’t ever apologize for it to puzzled Kenyans ready to write you off as a fake. You are the sum of your experiences. Because I’m fully aware of this attitude, before I visited Kenya after a long period of absence some years ago, I warned my family, “my accent is significantly tainted.” I’m also able to switch back and forth between accents, depending on who I’m talking to. I know a lot of diasporans have this dexterity. Did you study Darwin?

And yes, Kenyans do pick up accents from other parts besides Europe and North America. I can point you to Kenyan friends who settled in India, Nigeria and Tanzania and came back with the various accents. But Kenyans at home just choose not to highlight it. Go figure. You don’t even have to look beyond Kenya. My Taita aunts, married and settled in different parts of Taita, now speak with accents from that part of Taita. But do we tell them they’re being arrogant? No. Only if they settled in America and spoke with an American accent, then they deserve our wrath.

As for commandment 7, it belongs to the same category of inferiority complexes displayed by those who think it arrogant for a diaspora Kenyan to speak of foreign (read, Western) places in conversation. See, I’ve told so many stories starting with “when I was in Kakuma refugee camp…” and tell of what I learnt about bravery beyond human comprehension from the “lost boys” of Sudan, and never once did I receive a judgmental look. But the minute I start a story with “when I was in New York…” Kenyan noses are squinted upwards, eyes rolling back into insular heads as if I just farted nerve gas. C’mon Kenyans.

Commandment 2, 3, 6 and 9. Reading Bikozulu’s repetitive tag, “that’s the way it is”, as in, you have no right to change our status quo, is really telling of the “outsider” attitude directed at diaspora Kenyans. Kenyans abroad criticizing Kenya is seen as insulting someone else’s mother. Get over it, Kenyans, we’re Kenyans too, and we too have a fierce responsibility to hold our politicians accountable and our fellow Kenyans responsible for conduct that builds a country. The corruption sucks, the poverty stinks, the matatu menace is barbaric, the roads suck (don't brag to me about Thika Superhighway, a mere 50 km stretch that leaves another 8,900 km of principal highways in need of similar upgrading, and 63,000 km of interurban roads crying for attention; we made one step in the right direction, don't act as if we've arrived).

The insecurity on city streets we once walked is still unacceptable, even more now that we have experienced greater safety in foreign countries. We want the good socio-economic experience we’ve had abroad to be available in Kenya too; uncongested transportation, social services for the poor, clean neighborhoods…and for the well-off Kenyans to care enough about the lives of slum-dwellers in their backyards. Yes, we will tweet and blog and status-update from our diaspora perches until you hear this. Even as we have in our own diaspora midst shameful incidents of tribalism of the worst kind, our failings and foibles do not allow you to exclude us from the privilege of being part of Kenya’s journey, in critical speech and action.

And while we’re on this topic of criticizing each other, there really ought to be a deodorant revolution in Kenya. Why is it that the minute you land in Kenya, the foul smell of human armpits hits you? You walk about the streets or ride a matatu and wish you had a gas mask. Or if an elevator full of people somewhere in the US is reeking of stale sweat, I'll bet you all my diaspora remittances the culprit is definitely the newcomer diaspora African at the corner. Our collective reputation is fouled up. Yup, I said it, yes I did. My African peeps, man. Style up. Please don’t tell me about poverty and choosing between soap and food. Dignity is important. Martin Luther King actually made such a call to his people, told them to stop stinking, that working hard for long hours with little pay does not mean neglecting personal hygiene, and to date, you won't find any black person all funky, even in the heat of summer, the poorest of black folk in America smell good! Heck, Richard Pryor probably said it best, “Don’t just wash you’re ass hole, wash your whole ass.” Let’s take care of the total package of who we are, not just one aspect.

On commandment 6: The world is now a kaleidoscope of each other’s influences, and claiming you don’t want “American” solutions is myopic while America itself seeks all kinds of ways to get stuff from Africa for its own growth, from culture to human and material resources (yup, they harvest human brain power through the green card “lottery” every year). The Romans built their civilization upon a borrowed Greek culture and a borrowed foreign faith that later became Christianity. So diaspora, go ahead with your exposed selves and influence change for the good of our country. And yes, Mr. Bikozulu, I can actually sit in Starbucks and effect change. It won’t come in one tweet, or one blog, or one electronic transmission of funds to Kenya from my cell phone. It will come from a concerted effort of using all the tools I have in the diaspora.  In fact, diaspora has contributed to change and continues to do so.

On commandment 8: Kenyans go through a lot in the diaspora, few have it easy all the way. Don’t gloat over those who go through flipping burgers and scrubbing toilets while working towards their school fees or just to pay rent. It’s these very same Kenyans that send money home, haba na haba. Some have made a business out of it, no kidding. You can find Kenyans running cleaning businesses that have done so well they’ve bought homes. I speak of people I know personally. A Kenyan banker I spoke to recently left his “big” job for a taxi-driving business. Labor which Kenyans at home consider menial can be turned to gold. It's attitude that counts. It’s time Kenyans at home kicked the habit of equating success with white collar jobs. And yes, some of succeed, some don’t. Such is life. A little encouragement would go a long way.

Finally, a touchy one for me, is commandment 4. About calling a foreign country home. I’m a transnational citizen. Kenya is my home, my birth country, the land of my family, extended family and ancestors. I also have a home in the US (not a house, a home). I very easily and naturally, without skipping a beat, speak of “going back home” when I’m in Kenya, referring to the US. I have no apologies for that; I and millions of other human beings for whom the concept of home is not limited to your ancestry, the origin of your name, the sound of your accent, or a certain cultural definition of “home” that is held sacrosanct by your people. We know that in Kenyan cultures, even the cities are not your home, only your ancestral land qualifies for the title. I understand where Bikozulu's emotional but unenlightened chastising is coming from. Brother, some of us long released ourselves from the shackles of that cultural straitjacket that does not allow you to belong anywhere outside of your ancestral home or country of birth.

Kenya is still the abode of my constant agitation. I will care about what goes on there till the day I die. My spirit will continue to roam around the hills of Taita all the waking days of my life. Yet none of this stops me from staying active in my neighborhood committee in Baltimore. This is home. I seek solutions to crime, overgrown sidewalks and career opportunities with as much passion as I do for Kenya. This is home. I cared about the Trayvon Martin case, the Ravens winning Super Bowl, and wonder loudly if Mayor Rawlings-Blake really cares for inner city Baltimore. This is home. I take the train to Washington DC to teach, attend countless meetings and socialize. This is home. America has nurtured me, annoyed me, loved me, grown me. In most likelihood, I will be buried here. This is home. Don’t tell me not to call it home just because Kenya is home too. And should my family move to Italy or Rwanda or China, I refuse to live a suspended existence of non-belonging because I’m not “home”. I will plant and harvest the crop of my dreams there too and make a home in that country. That, my friend, is quintessential diaspora experience. I treasure it.

BEING LONELY ACTUALLY CAN KILL YOU

Sometime in the late ’50s, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann sat down to write an essay about a subject that had been mostly overlooked by other psychoanalysts up to that point. Even Freud had only touched on it in passing. She was not sure, she wrote, “what inner forces” made her struggle with the problem of loneliness, though she had a notion. It might have been the young female catatonic patient who began to communicate only when Fromm-Reichmann asked her how lonely she was. “She raised her hand with her thumb lifted, the other four fingers bent toward her palm,” Fromm-Reichmann wrote. The thumb stood alone, “isolated from the four hidden fingers.” Fromm-Reichmann responded gently, “That lonely?” And at that, the woman’s “facial expression loosened up as though in great relief and gratitude, and her fingers opened.”

Fromm-Reichmann would later become world-famous as the dumpy little therapist mistaken for a housekeeper by a new patient, a severely disturbed schizophrenic girl named Joanne Greenberg. Fromm-Reichmann cured Greenberg, who had been deemed incurable. Greenberg left the hospital, went to college, became a writer, and immortalized her beloved analyst as “Dr. Fried” in the best-selling autobiographical novel I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (later also a movie and a pop song). Among analysts, Fromm-Reichmann, who had come to the United States from Germany to escape Hitler, was known for insisting that no patient was too sick to be healed through trust and intimacy. She figured that loneliness lay at the heart of nearly all mental illness and that the lonely person was just about the most terrifying spectacle in the world. She once chastised her fellow therapists for withdrawing from emotionally unreachable patients rather than risk being contaminated by them. The uncanny specter of loneliness “touches on our own possibility of loneliness,” she said. “We evade it and feel guilty.”

Her 1959 essay, “On Loneliness,” is considered a founding document in a fast-growing area of scientific research you might call loneliness studies. Over the past half-century, academic psychologists have largely abandoned psychoanalysis and made themselves over as biologists. And as they delve deeper into the workings of cells and nerves, they are confirming that loneliness is as monstrous as Fromm-Reichmann said it was. It has now been linked with a wide array of bodily ailments as well as the old mental ones.

Ariel Lee

In a way, these discoveries are as consequential as the germ theory of disease. Just as we once knew that infectious diseases killed, but didn’t know that germs spread them, we’ve known intuitively that loneliness hastens death, but haven’t been able to explain how. Psychobiologists can now show that loneliness sends misleading hormonal signals, rejiggers the molecules on genes that govern behavior, and wrenches a slew of other systems out of whack. They have proved that long-lasting loneliness not only makes you sick; it can kill you. Emotional isolation is ranked as high a risk factor for mortality as smoking. A partial list of the physical diseases thought to be caused or exacerbated by loneliness would include Alzheimer’s, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases, and even cancer—tumors can metastasize faster in lonely people.

The psychological definition of loneliness hasn’t changed much since Fromm-Reichmann laid it out. “Real loneliness,” as she called it, is not what the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard characterized as the “shut-upness” and solitariness of the civilized. Nor is “real loneliness” the happy solitude of the productive artist or the passing irritation of being cooped up with the flu while all your friends go off on some adventure. It’s not being dissatisfied with your companion of the moment—your friend or lover or even spouse— unless you chronically find yourself in that situation, in which case you may in fact be a lonely person. Fromm-Reichmann even distinguished “real loneliness” from mourning, since the well-adjusted eventually get over that, and from depression, which may be a symptom of loneliness but is rarely the cause. Loneliness, she said—and this will surprise no one—is the want of intimacy.

Today’s psychologists accept Fromm-Reichmann’s inventory of all the things that loneliness isn’t and add a wrinkle she would surely have approved of. They insist that loneliness must be seen as an interior, subjective experience, not an external, objective condition. Loneliness “is not synonymous with being alone, nor does being with others guarantee protection from feelings of loneliness,” writes John Cacioppo, the leading psychologist on the subject. Cacioppo privileges the emotion over the social fact because—remarkably—he’s sure that it’s the feeling that wreaks havoc on the body and brain. Not everyone agrees with him, of course. Another school of thought insists that loneliness is a failure of social networks. The lonely get sicker than the non-lonely, because they don’t have people to take care of them; they don’t have social support.

Ariel Lee

To the degree that loneliness has been treated as a matter of public concern in the past, it has generally been seen as a social problem—the product of an excessively conformist culture or of a breakdown in social norms. Nowadays, though, loneliness is a public health crisis. The standard U.S. questionnaire, the UCLA Loneliness Scale, asks 20 questions that run variations on the theme of closeness—“How often do you feel close to people?” and so on. As many as 30 percent of Americans don't feel close to people at a given time.

Loneliness varies with age and poses a particular threat to the very old, quickening the rate at which their faculties decline and cutting their lives shorter. But even among the not-so-old, loneliness is pervasive. In a survey published by the AARP in 2010, slightly more than one out of three adults 45 and over reported being chronically lonely (meaning they’ve been lonely for a long time). A decade earlier, only one out of five said that. With baby-boomers reaching retirement age at a rate of 10,000 a day, the number of lonely Americans will surely spike.

Obviously, the sicker lonely people get, the more care they’ll need. This is true, and alarming, although as we learn more about loneliness, we’ll also be better able to treat it. But to me, what’s most momentous about the new biology of loneliness is that it offers concrete proof, obtained through the best empirical means, that the poets and bluesmen and movie directors who for centuries have deplored the ravages of lonesomeness on both body and soul were right all along. As W. H. Auden put it, “We must love one another or die.”

Who are the lonely? They’re the outsiders: not just the elderly, but also the poor, the bullied, the different. Surveys confirm that people who feel discriminated against are more likely to feel lonely than those who don’t, even when they don’t fall into the categories above. Women are lonelier than men (though unmarried men are lonelier than unmarried women). African Americans are lonelier than whites (though single African American women are less lonely than Hispanic and white women). The less educated are lonelier than the better educated. The unemployed and the retired are lonelier than the employed.

Ariel Lee

A key part of feeling lonely is feeling rejected, and that, it turns out, is the most damaging part. Psychologists discovered this by, among other things, studying the experience of gay men during the first decade of the AIDS epidemic, when the condition was knocking out their immune systems, and, as it seemed at first, only theirs. The nation ignored the crisis for a while, then panicked. Soon, people all over the country were calling for gay men to be quarantined.

To psychologists trying to puzzle out how social experiences affect health, AIDS amounted to something of a natural experiment, the chance to observe the effects of conditions so extreme that no ethical person would knowingly subject another person to them. The disease came from a virus—HIV—that was neutralizing all the usual defenses of a discrete group of people who could be compared with each other and also with a control group of the uninfected. That allowed researchers in a lab at UCLA to take on one of life’s biggest questions, which had become even more urgent as the disease laid waste to thousands, then tens of thousands: Could social experiences explain why some people die faster than others?

In the mid-to late ’80s, the UCLA lab obtained access to a long-term study of gay men who enrolled without knowing whether they were infected with HIV. About half of them tested positive for the virus, and about a third of those agreed to let researchers put their lives under a microscope, answering extensive questions about drug use, sexual behavior, attitudes toward their own homosexuality, levels of emotional support, and so on. By 1993, around one-third of that group had developed full-blown AIDS, and slightly more than a quarter had died.

Steven Cole was a young postdoctoral student in the lab itching to move beyond his field’s mind-body split. At the time, he told me, psychology was only just beginning to grasp “how the physical world of our bodies gets remodeled by our psychic and conceptual worlds.” When the UCLA researchers started trying to figure out which social factors sped up the progress of the disease, they tested obvious ones like socioeconomic status and levels of support. Curiously, though, being poor or lacking family and friends didn’t much change the rate at which an infected man would die of AIDS (although being in mourning, as gay men often were those days, did seem to weaken an infected man's immune system).

It eventually occurred to Cole to try to imagine the world from a gay man’s perspective. That wasn’t easy for him: “I’m a straight kid from the suburbs. I had stereotypes, but I didn’t really know the reality of these people’s lives.” Then he read a book, Erving Goffman’s Stigma: Notes on the Management of a Spoiled Identity, that tallies in detail the difficulties of “passing” as someone else. He learned that the closeted man must police every piece of information known about him, live in constant terror of exposure or blackmail, and impose sharp limits on intimacy, or at least friendship. “It was like walking around with a time-bomb,” says Cole.

Ariel Lee

Cole figured that a man who’d hide behind a false identity was probably more sensitive than others to the pain of rejection. His temperament would be more tightly wound, and his stress-response system would be the kind that “fires responses and fires ’em harder.” His heart would beat faster, stress hormones would flood his body, his tissues would swell up, and white blood cells would swarm out to protect him against assault. If this state of inflamed arousal subsided quickly, it would be harmless. But if the man stayed on high alert for years at a time, then his blood pressure would rise, and the part of his immune system that fends off smaller, subtler threats, like viruses, would not do its job.

And he was right. The social experience that most reliably predicted whether an HIV-positive gay man would die quickly, Cole found, was whether or not he was in the closet. Closeted men infected with HIV died an average of two to three years earlier than out men. When Cole dosed AIDS-infected white blood cells with norepinephrine, a stress hormone, the virus replicated itself three to ten times faster than it did in non-dosed cells. Cole mulled these results over for a long time, but couldn’t understand why we would have been built in such a way that loneliness would interfere with our ability to fend off disease: “Did God want us to die when we got stressed?”

The answer is no.

What He wanted is for us not to be alone. Or rather, natural selection favored people who needed people. Humans are vastly more social than most other mammals, even most primates, and to develop what neuroscientists call our social brain, we had to be good at cooperating. To raise our children, with their slow-maturing cerebral cortexes, we needed help from the tribe. To stoke the fires that cooked the meat that gave us the protein that sustained our calorically greedy gray matter, we had to organize night watches. But compared with our predators, we were small and weak. They came after us with swift strides. We ran in a comparative waddle.

“The very fact that [loneliness] can affect the genes like that—it’s huge,” Suomi says. “It changes the way one thinks about development.”

So what would happen if one of us wandered off from her little band, or got kicked out of it because she’d slacked off or been caught stealing? She’d find herself alone on the savanna, a fine treat for a bunch of lions. She’d be exposed to attacks from marauders. If her nervous system went into overdrive at perceiving her isolation, well, that would have just sent her scurrying home. Cacioppo thinks we’re hardwired to find life unpleasant outside the safety of trusted friends and family, just as we’re pre-programmed to find certain foods disgusting. “Why do you think you are ten thousand times more sensitive to foods that are bitter than to foods that are sweet?” Cacioppo asked me. “Because bitter’s dangerous!”

One of those alone-on-the-savanna moments in our modern lives occurs when we go off to college, because we have to make a whole new set of friends. Back in the mid-’90s, when Cacioppo was at Ohio State University (he is now at the University of Chicago), he and his colleagues sorted undergraduates into three groups—the non-lonely, the sort-of-sometimes lonely, and the lonely. The researchers then strapped blood- pressure cuffs, biosensors, and beepers onto the students. Nine times a day for seven days, they were beeped and had to fill out questionnaires. Cacioppo also kept them overnight in the university hospital with “nightcaps” on their heads, monitoring the length and quality of their rest. He took saliva samples to measure levels of cortisol, a hormone produced under stress.

As expected, he found the students with bodily symptoms of distress (poor sleep, high cortisol) were not the ones with too few acquaintances, but the ones who were unhappy about not having made close friends. These students also had higher than normal vascular resistance, which is caused by the arteries narrowing as their tissue becomes inflamed. High vascular resistance contributes to high blood pressure; it makes the heart work harder to pump blood and wears out the blood vessels. If it goes on for a long time, it can morph into heart disease. While Cole discovered that loneliness could hasten death in sick people, Cacioppo showed that it could make well people sick—and through the same method: by putting the body in fight-or-flight mode.

A famous experiment helps explain why rejection makes us flinch. It was conducted more than a decade ago by Naomi Eisenberger, a social psychologist at UCLA, along with her colleagues. People were brought one-by-one into the lab to play a multiplayer online game called “Cyberball” that involved tossing a ball back and forth with two other “people,” who weren’t actually people at all, but a computer program. “They” played nicely with the real person for a while, then proceeded to ignore her, throwing the ball only to each other. Functional magnetic resonance imaging scans showed that the experience of being snubbed lit up a part of the subjects’ brains (the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex) that also lights up when the body feels physical pain.

Ariel Lee

I asked Eisenberger why, if the same part of our brain processes social insult and bodily injury, we don’t confuse the two. She explained that physical harm simultaneously lights up another neural region as well, one whose job is to locate the ache—on an arm or leg, inside the body, and so on. What the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex registers is the emotional fact that pain is distressing, be it social or physical. She calls this the “affective component” of pain. In operations performed to relieve chronic pain, doctors have lesioned, or disabled, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. After the surgery, the patients report that they can still sense where the trouble comes from, but, they add, it just doesn’t bother them anymore.

It’s tempting to say that the lonely were born that way—it’d let the rest of us off the hook. And, as it turns out, we’d be about half right, because loneliness is about half heritable. A longitudinal study of more than 8,000 identical Dutch twins found that, if one twin reported feeling lonely and unloved, the other twin would report the same thing 48 percent of the time. This figure held so steady across the pairs of twins—young or old, male or female, notwithstanding different upbringings—that researchers concluded that it had to reflect genetic, not environmental, influence. To understand what it means for a personality trait to have 48 percent heritability, consider that the influence of genes on a purely physical trait is 100 percent. Children get the color of their eyes from their parents, and that is that. But although genes may predispose children toward loneliness, they do not account for everything that makes them grow up lonely. Fifty-two percent of that comes from the world.

Evolutionary theory, which has a story for everything, has a story to illustrate how the human species might benefit from wide variations in temperament. A group that included different personality types would be more likely to survive a radical change in social conditions than a group in which everyone was exactly alike. Imagine that, after years in which a group had lived in peace, an army of strangers suddenly appeared on the horizon. The tribe in which some men stayed behind while the rest headed off on a month-long hunting expedition (the stay-at-homes may have been less adventurous, or they may just have been loners) had a better chance of repelling the invaders, or at least of saving the children, than the tribe whose men had all enthusiastically wandered off, confident that everything would be fine back home.

And yet loneliness is made as well as given, and at a very early age. Deprive us of the attention of a loving, reliable parent, and, if nothing happens to make up for that lack, we’ll tend toward loneliness for the rest of our lives. Not only that, but our loneliness will probably make us moody, self-doubting, angry, pessimistic, shy, and hypersensitive to criticism. Recently, it has become clear that some of these problems reflect how our brains are shaped from our first moments of life.

Proof that the early brain is molded by love comes, in part, from another notorious natural experiment: the abandonment of tens of thousands of Romanian orphans born during the regime of Communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, who had banned birth control. A great deal has been written about the heartbreaking emotional and educational difficulties of these children, who grew up 20 to a nurse in Dickensian orphanages. In the age of the brain scan, we now know that those institutionalized children’s brains developed less “gray matter”—that is, fewer of the neurons that make up the bulk of the brain—and that, if those children never went on to be adopted, they’d sprout less “white matter,” too. White matter helps send signals from one part of the brain to another; think of it as the mind’s internal Internet. In the orphans’ case, the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex—which are involved in memory, emotions, decision-making, and social interaction—just weren’t connecting.

There’s a limit to how much we can poke around inside lonely humans, for obvious reasons. That’s why a great deal of research on the biological effects of a lonely childhood involves monkeys. Last year, I visited a monkey lab in the rolling farmland of rural Maryland run by a burly and affable psychologist-turned- primatologist named Steve Suomi. Suomi conducts his experiments on rhesus macaques, adorable little creatures sometimes called a “weed species,” because they, like humans, thrive in most environments they’re thrown into.

Suomi is building on research begun by his teacher and mentor, Harry Harlow, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin notorious for experiments in the ’50s and ’60s. Harlow subjected newborn rhesus macaques to appalling isolation—months spent in cages in the company only of “surrogate mothers” made of wire with cartoonish monkey heads and bottles attached. Luckier monkeys had that and cloth-covered versions of the same thing to cuddle. (It is remarkable what a soft cloth can do to calm an anxious baby monkey down.) In the most extreme cases, the babies languished alone at the bottom of a V-shaped steel container. Cruel as these experiments were, Harlow proved that the absence of mothering destroyed the monkeys’ ability to mingle with other monkeys, though the “cloth mother” could mitigate the worst effects of isolation. Years of monkey therapy were required to integrate them into the troop. Harlow’s insights were not well received. Behaviorists, who reigned in U.S. psychology departments, held a blank-slate view of animal and human behavior. They scoffed at the notion that baby monkeys could be hard-wired for love, or at least for a certain quality of touch.

Times have changed, and Harlow’s conviction that nature demands nurture is now the common view. (Changing laws also mean that Suomi would have a harder time getting away with such experiments, which he’s not inclined to do anyway.) What Suomi has that Harlow did not have is technology. By shipping off monkey tissue to laboratories, such as Steve Cole’s, that have machines capable of seeing which genes are turned on and which are turned off, Suomi can show that loneliness transforms the brain and body. He can match the behavior of the lonely monkeys as they grow—what they act like, where they rank in dominance hierarchies when they’re introduced into a troop, whether they ever manage to reproduce—with the activity of genes that affect their brains and immune systems.

Suomi raises his monkeys in three groups, one group confined entirely to the company of peers (a chaotic, Lord of the Flies kind of childhood); another group left alone with terry-cloth mother-surrogates, except when released for a couple of hours a day to scamper with fellow babies; and the third raised by their mothers. What he found is that, in monkeys separated from their mothers in the first four months of life, some important immunity-related genes show a different pattern of expression. Among these were genes that help make the protein that inflames tissue and genes that tell the body to ward off viruses and other microbes.

Suomi was also excited about results coming in from peer-raised monkeys’ brain tissue: Thousands of little changes in genetic activity had been detected in their prefrontal cortexes. This region is sometimes called the “CEO” of the brain; it restrains violent impulses and inappropriate behavior. (In humans, faulty wiring in the prefrontal cortex has been associated with schizophrenia and ADHD.) Some of the aberrations were on genes that direct growth of the brain; modifications of those were bound to result in altered neural architecture. These findings eerily echoed the Romanian orphans’ brain scans and suggested that the lonely monkeys were going to be weirder than the others.

Emotional isolation is ranked as high a risk factor for mortality as smoking.

“The very fact that something outside the organism can affect the genes like that—it’s huge,” Suomi says. “It changes the way one thinks about development.” I didn’t need genetics, though, to see how defective the peer-raised monkeys’ development had been. Suomi took me outside to watch them. They huddled in nervous groups at the back of the cage, holding tight to each another. Sometimes, he said, they invite aggression by cowering; at other times, they fail to recognize and kowtow to the alpha monkeys, so they get picked on even more. The most perturbed monkeys might rock, clutch at themselves, and pull out their own hair, looking for all the world like children with severe autism.

Suomi added that good foster care could greatly improve the troubled macaques’ lives. He pointed out some who had been given over to foster grandmothers. Not only did they act more monkey-like, but, he told me, about half of their genetic deviations had vanished, too.

If we now know that loneliness, a social emotion, can reach into our bodies and rearrange our cells and genes, what should we do about it? We should change the way we think about health. James Heckman, a Nobel Prize–winning economist at the University of Chicago who tabulates the costs of early childhood deprivation, speaks bitterly of “silos” in health policy, meaning that we see crime and low educational achievement as distinct from medical problems like obesity or heart disease. As far as he’s concerned, these are, in too many cases, symptoms of the same social disorder: the failure to help families raise their children. Heckman believes that the life of a child at the lower end of the U.S. socioeconomic spectrum is starting to look more like the life of one of Suomi’s lonely macaques. As nearly half of all marriages continue to end in divorce, as marriage itself floats further out of reach for the undereducated and financially strapped, childhood has become a more solitary and chaotic experience. Single mothers don’t have a lot of time to spend with their children, nor, in most cases, money for emotionally enriching social activities.

“As inequality has increased, childhood inequality has increased,” Heckman said, “So has inequality of parenting.” For the first time in 30 years, mental health disabilities such as ADHD outrank physical ones among American children. Heckman doesn’t think that’s only because parents seek out attention-deficit diagnoses when their children don’t come home with A’s. He thinks it’s also because emotional impoverishment embeds itself in the body. “Mothers matter,” he says, “and mothering is in short supply.”

Heckman has been analyzing data from two famous early-childhood intervention programs, the Abecedarian Project of the ’70s and the Perry Preschool project of the ’60s. Both have furnished ample evidence that, if you enroll very young children from poor families in programs that give both them and their parents an extra boost, then they grow up to be wealthier and healthier than their counterparts—less fat, less sick, better educated, and, for men, more likely to hold down a job. In the case of the Perry Preschool, Heckman estimated that each dollar invested yielded $7 to $12 in savings over the span of decades. One of the most effective economic and social policies, he told me, would be “supplementing the parenting environment of disadvantaged young children.”

If you can’t change society all at once, though, you can change it a few people at a time. Cacioppo and a colleague, Louise Hawkley, have been developing programs to teach lonely people to get along better with others. At one point, the psychologists thought of designing a mobile app, a sort of electronic nagging mother, to help people break bad social habits. (You’d check an item off the list, say, if you remembered to talk to anyone that day—a store clerk or a librarian.) But they didn’t get funding for the software, so now they’re focusing on a simpler and more low-tech fix. It’s a seminar with an instructor and a pointer and a screen in which students learn to read faces and interpret voices and also to stop making the assumption that lonely people seem prone to make, which is that every person they meet is judging or rebuffing them. What they’re learning, says Hawkley, is the art of “social cognition.” Her goal is to show people that they come at the world full of “assumptions about human nature, about social mores, that aren’t necessarily accurate.”

Cacioppo and Hawkley have been testing their social-cognition curriculum on Army bases, holding classes to hone soldiers’ social skills and teach platoon leaders to spot the lonely in their ranks and help them fit in better. The results aren’t in yet, U.S. Army psychologist Major Paul Lester told me, but he has been receiving reports that suggest that people who have gone through the training fall prey to post-traumatic stress disorder less often. Lester insisted that I add that the Army hadn’t agreed to spend $50 million a year for this experiment only because it’s worried about suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder— although if loneliness training brought down the number of suicidal and dysfunctional soldiers, so much the better. The Army sees the classes as essential training for coping with military life. The best fighting comes from soldiers who interact well with other soldiers, said Lester, and soldiers’ lives are full of social disruption—transfers from base to base and so on.

These are patch solutions, obviously, though it’s appealing to imagine a social-cognition program filtering down and replacing the vague platitudes usually taught to elementary- and middle-schoolers in their human growth and development classes. And it would completely transform a child’s world to have a teacher trained to identify the lonely kids in her classroom and to provide succor and support once she’d found them. Naomi Eisenberger pointed out to me that, while schools take physical pain very seriously, they usually trivialize social pain: “You cannot hit other students, but oftentimes, there are no rules about excluding another student,” she said.

Cole can imagine giving people medications to treat loneliness, particularly when it exacerbates chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure. These could be betablockers, which reduce the physical effects of stress; anti-inflammatory medicine; or even Tylenol—since physical and emotional pain overlap, it turns out that Tylenol can reduce the pain of heartbreak.

At a deeper level, though, loneliness research forces us to acknowledge our own extraordinary malleability in the face of social forces. This susceptibility is both terrifying and exhilarating. On the terrifying side is the unhappy fact that isolation, especially when it stems from the disenfranchisement of the underprivileged, creates a bodily limitation all too easily reproduced in each successive generation. Given that we have been scaling back the kinds of programs that could help people overcome such disadvantages and that many in Congress, mostly Republicans, have been trying to defund exactly the kind of behavioral science research that could yield even better programs, we have reason to be afraid. But there’s something awe-inspiring about our resilience, too. Put an orphan in foster care, and his brain will repair its missing connections. Teach a lonely person to respond to others without fear and paranoia, and over time, her body will make fewer stress hormones and get less sick from them. Care for a pet or start believing in a supernatural being and your score on the UCLA Loneliness Scale will go down. Even an act as simple as joining an athletic team or a church can lead to what Cole calls “molecular remodeling.” “One message I take away from this is, ‘Hey, it’s not just early life that counts,’ ” he says. “We have to choose our life well.”

Judith Shulevitz is the science editor of The New Repub

What the Bible Says About Money (Shocking)

Most people know Sean Hyman from his regular appearances on Fox Business, CNBC, and Bloomberg Television, but what they don’t know is that Sean is a former pastor, and that his secret to investing is woven within the Bible.

Perhaps that can explain why, despite his uncanny ability to predict precise moves in the stock market, Sean is often laughed at for his unique stance on investing.

For example . . . a few months ago Sean appeared on Bloomberg Television. At that time, Best Buy (BBY) was dropping to all-time lows of $16 a share. Sean predicted the stock could go down to $11 a share, and would then quickly rebound to $25 per share, and after that would rally to $40 per share over the next year.

Another commentator on the show actually mocked Sean for his stance, saying “$40 on Best Buy? If that’s the case Apple (AAPL) is going to $1,500. That’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard!” (Editor’s Note: At the time, Apple was trading at $650 per share).

Within a few weeks, Sean would receive the last laugh.

Best Buy dropped down to $11.20 a share and has since rebounded to $30 a share, continuing its path to $40 . . . exactly as Sean predicted. (Ironically, Apple has dropped down to about $400 per share).

During a recent private dinner with Sean, once he’d blessed the food, I wasted no time asking him what his secret is for investing so successfully.

I expected Sean to say that it was his years of experience at Charles Schwab or perhaps one of the complicated algorithms he uses for timing the stock market.

So when Sean responded that his secret to investing was the Bible, I was thoroughly shocked.

Yes, I knew Sean was a Christian (anyone who spends more than 1 minute with him will pick that up!). However, people usually keep their faith separate from things like . . . investing.

But not Sean.

For Sean, the Bible is his FOUNDATION for investing.

He explained to me how there is actually a “Biblical Money Code” woven into Scripture.

Sean says it is this Biblical Money Code that took him from making a mere $15,000 a year to now giving away up to $50,000 a year. Sean also credits this code with helping him turn his father’s $40,000 retirement account into $396,000.

Certain investment titans, Sean says, such as Warren Buffett and John Templeton, have already used this code to amass billions.

What Sean had to say impressed me so much that I asked him to put a presentation together that reveals how anyone could use this “Biblical Money Code.” (Click here to watch it now)

I’ve personally watched this presentation several times and it is already spreading virally.

During the video, Sean uses the teachings of King Solomon, Jesus of Nazareth, and the Apostle Paul to show how anyone can get out of debt . . . make sound investments . . . and morally build substantial wealth.

Sean even reveals a “debilitating ‘financial sin’ that blinds many . . . and could be costing you up to 41% of your life savings at this very moment.” What’s so deceiving about this sin is how innocent and safe it appears at first.

And at the end, he finishes up with his “12-12-12 plan for investing.” This is a simple step-by-step plan to go from being a saver, to an investor, to a philanthropist.

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.moneynews.com/MKTNews/Financial-bible-Hyman/2013/07/08/id/513894/?promo_code=141BA-1#ixzz2dA0tURBm
Urgent: Should Obamacare Be Repealed? Vote Here Now!

Man tries to sell girlfriend's baby online

You can find a lot of things on Craigslist, but a New York man is accused of trying to sell his girlfriend's baby on the site.

Paul Marquez, 23, has pleaded not guilty to endangering the welfare of a child and other charges after police say he posted ads to sell the 2-month-old baby of the woman he was dating, New York TV station WCBS reported.
He told police he became upset because the 19-year-old woman wasn't paying as much attention to him as he wanted.
As revenge, he posted the ads on Craigslist, according to police.
His post, riddled with spelling errors, read:
"Heyy I have a 2 month old baby...she loves to play nd have her little fun but there is only 1 problem, the doctor said that she has asthma nd if she turns a certain way she can stop breathing, she's really getting on my nerves nd I don't want her Please email me"
The baby's mother called police after someone called her about the ad.
People who know Marquez are stunned by the allegations, telling WCBS he has a 2-year-old child of his own.

Read more: http://www.koco.com/news/national/man-tries-to-sell-girlfriends-baby-online/-/9844074/21367284/-/h6yuux/-/index.html#ixzz2d9qZGBxG

Papa wemba- Rail on

mwananchiDigital: Zazie (playlist)

mwananchiDigital: Zazie (playlist)

J'envoie Valser - Beautiful French Song Subtitled in English

Zazie (playlist)

Woman Wakes Up From Coma to Find Out She Is Three Months Pregnan

Webpage
 http://thestir.cafemom.com/
In an amazing story out of England, a woman woke up from a coma to discover that she was 12 weeks pregnant with a child who managed to miraculously survive the moped crash that put his mother in the hospital. Now, her baby is 12 weeks old and despite massive head injuries that left her unable to remember the previous three years of her life (including who the father was), Gemma Holmes is thrilled to have a healthy son.
The details are almost too grim to believe. Holmes was tossed from her moped into a lamppost and was not expected to survive the traumatic crash. Her mother was told she was 12 weeks pregnant and advised to make the decision to terminate. But it was not a decision her mother felt comfortable making.
Miraculously, Holmes pulled through and was able to continue the pregnancy and give birth to a healthy son through C-section. She named her son Ruben Miracle. The reasons are obvious.
"I just thought that if this little baby inside me had managed to survive the awful crash then he was meant to be," Gemma told The Daily Mail. 
It was not an easy pregnancy, either. She was unable to take high dose pain killer for her accident because she was with child so she endured a lot of pain because of it. Still, she persevered.
I will never complain about pregnancy again. Both she and her son are so lucky, but I am in awe of a woman who was so brave and did so much to bring her child into the world. Good for her.
It is also amazing that her mother kept the faith and believed enough not to terminate the pregnancy. She is a huge part of the reason baby Ruben exists. It takes an awful lot of faith to make that leap, but what a good decision.
I can't even imagine the pain she might have felt upon waking to hear she was pregnant and her mother decided to terminate. This story is a true miracle, something we don't get to hear every day.
What an amazing little boy.

just for laugh

Extraordinary Woman(I love this)

 

Husband and Wife were
watching TV when Wife said,
“I’m tired, and it’s getting late.
I think I’ll go to bed.” She went
to the kitchen to make
sandwiches for the next day’s
lunches. Rinsed out the bowls,
took vegetable out of the freezer
for morning, checked the cereal
box levels, filled the sugar...
container, put spoons and
bowls on the table and started
the coffee pot for brewing the
next morning. She then ironed
a shirt and secured a loose
button. She picked up the game
pieces left on the table, put the
phone back on the charger and
put the telephone book into the
drawer. She emptied a
wastebasket and hung up a
towel to dry.
She yawned and stretched and
headed for the bedroom. She
stopped by the desk and wrote a
note to the teacher and pulled a
text book out from hiding
under the chair.She signed a
birthday card for a friend,
Addressed and stamped the
envelope and wrote a quick
note for the grocery store. She
put both near her bag. Then she
washed her face, put on her
moisturizer, brushed her
teeth…..
Husband called out, “I thought
you were going to bed.” “I’m on
my way,” she said. She put
some water into the dog’s dish,
and then made sure the doors
were locked. She looked in on
each of the kids and turned out
their bedside lamps and
radios,and had a brief
conversation with one kid who
is still up doing homework.In
her own room, she set the
alarm; laid out clothing for the
next day. Said her prayers, and
visualized the accomplishment
of her goals. About that time,
Husband turned off the TV and
announced to no one in
particular. “I’m going to bed.”
And he did… without another
thought.
Anything Extraordinary Here?
Share this to phenomenal
women today… they’ all love
you for it!
And Forward this to as many
men as you can so that they
know why women are so
special……!!!

Every woman wants a man.

Every woman wants a man who respects her for her values,  virtues and ethics. She wants a man who is proud of her strong character and her unique personality. A man who can support her unconditionally and stay connected to her soulfully. A woman who
loves you truly will never ask you to buy her expensive gifts or take her to expensive places. She won’t ask for diamonds, rubies or a promise to bring her a world of luxuries. She just wants your  love, care and attention. She wants you to spend a lot of quality
time with her and appreciate her for all that she does for you out of love and affection. Every woman is unique in her own way and she wants to be the most appealing woman in her man’s life. A woman’s heart is so full of love for the man of her life that she
just gives it freely even for the little he does for her. She doesn’t  want commitments and promises she just wanted to be loved to the core.

HILARIOUS LETTER TO THE DIASPORA(KENYAS LIVING ABROAD)MUST READ

Dear Diaspora. (Kenyans Living Abroad) There is this time I walked into this shoe shop in Tokyo, Japan. It was winter and cold as a hyena’s snout. I had on this hoodie with “Safaricom” emblazoned on its front in green. So, there I was checking out these shoe when I heard someone ask, “Wewe ni Mkenya?” I looked up to find this grinning miro guy. I said, yes, I was Kenyan. Boy, was he happy to make my acquaintance! He bear hugged me, which is something I try to reserve for the opposite sex. He then rattled on, asking about home and how it was “back there.” Asking about politics and things. He told me he watched Citizen news online most of the time, but that still left him shelled with homesickness. He lived in Northern Ireland, which is really next to the end of the world, and he is probably the only black guy for thousands of miles before you run into a Nigerian. I asked him when was the last time he was home and he said 11years ago. That depressed me more than the weather. I asked him what he missed most about being home and he surprised me by saying, “attending funerals for close ones.” He said he had missed his father’s funeral (it was cheaper to send money for burial), something that seemed like a monkey on his back. In fact, he had missed tons of funerals for close relatives. And he missed Mukimo (he was okuyu). On a light note I asked him if he had a kiosk in Belfast and he laughed, that distinct Kenyan laugh that starts from the diaphragm and doesn’t leave it. We chatted for a bit, in Swahili, mine markedly tattered. I remember feeling such gutting sympathy for him when we parted. Him, out there, in that bleeding cold that makes your nails pale and your tongue blue, so far away from home, wondering who else will be buried in his absence. Wondering when he would next feel the balminess of the African sun on his forehead and the warmth of our own soil under his feet. It must be tough, this life in absentia. I would die of depression. No really, I would. It’s easy to feel sympathy for fellows living abroad, right up until they land at JKIA, then the bottom falls off. Let’s first talk figures before my spiel. Do you know how much guys living abroad ploughed into the economy in the first five months of this year? Ksh45 billion! That’s a lot of dough, about 10% of what Kamwana is bringing back from the East! And we appreciate this contribution, guys. We could use every yen, dollar and rupee we can lay our hands on now, especially during these trying moments that some of our governors have decided to conduct county matters from plush hotels where they live. But your financial contribution notwithstanding, we need to straighten out some issues, guys. It’s about your conduct when you come back home for vacation. First off, please don’t whine about how nothing works in this country. Nobody wants to host a whiner. Thing is, traffic cops will control traffic at traffic lights that work. That’s just how it is. Service in eateries might not be as swift as it is in Toronto. That’s just how it is. Matatus are a law onto themselves. That’s just how it is. It’s illegal to burn music for local artists, so don’t ask us to. Oh, and Kalamashaka doesn’t sing no more. Secondly. You know, we love having you back home. And we don’t mind taking you to look for artefacts at Masai Market. But can you imagine that since you left life also happened to us? Hard to believe, I know. We got and changed jobs. We dated and we got married. We got kids. Most of us grew up and that came with different priorities. Life is a moving wheel. I know it might seem like we have lots of time on our hands back here but we don’t. We can get very busy between spending time in traffic jams and Facebooking. And because there is work and there is school and there is family we can’t take you out partying on the daily. And just because you are back in the country after 10 years doesn’t mean all these things stop and we have to lay banana leaves on your path to Mercury Lounge. Or fetch you coffee. You are on holiday, we aren’t. If we have time, we will take you to do your rounds. But it’s not your right, so don’t sulk and brood and feel unappreciated. Secondly, the legal tender of Kenya is Kenyan Shillings. Not the dollar. Not the Euro. Don’t go to Mama Oliech’s for fish and when the bill lands you ask the poor waitress if they can accept dollars! That waitress is from Kochia, the dollar is a currency she isn’t well acquainted with. And FYI, the only people who accept dollars or rands are the forex bureaus. Talking of going out. A few years back my cousin landed in the country from Jersey (you should have heard how he pronounces “Jersey”). This time I took him to Havana in Westlands and he kept asking the deejay to play some song by T-Pain. I wasn’t that acquainted to T-Pain at that time because he was new-ish in the scene and I’m not exactly hot for that genre of music. You should have seen how after harassing the deejay he would come back to the seat complaining how the deejay wasn’t with it because he didn’t have a particular song by T-Pain. And so the whole whole night it was T-Pain this, T-Pain that. What a royal pain! And guys, if you are going to have the deejay play your favourite jams at least buy him a drink, will ya? And be sure to use Kenyan Shillings, if that’s no trouble. Then there is politics. Isn’t it flattering that every guy in diaspora has a solution to our political problems? And this is only because, I suspect, they have read Obama’s “Audacity of Hope.” Guys, like Mikhail Gorbachev once said, if you really want to change things back home, you got to go back home. You just can’t change things during your tea break at Starbucks. I‘m afraid it’s a bit more complicated than that. This animal called African politics needs time and energy, not a quote from Malcolm X. It’s not like we are sitting here allowing the politicians to shaft us without as much as dinner first. It’s not that we have become so politically numb and inept. No, we make noise. On twitter. We stoke Boniface Mwangi’s fires on Facebook then we go on Youtube to see if he survived the fracas. We have realised that the only way we can fight these politicians and their endless plunder and greed is through the mighty power of Retweet! So don’t judge us, not until you walk 140 characters in our tweets. I’m overeating? Just look at the Facebook pages of Kenyans in diaspora, with their breathless streams of political consciousness, tinged with Machiavellian teachings hoping that will change the political panorama. They won’t, guys. Because politicians don’t read. And the few who do don’t care. Your tweets will drown in the churning sea of social media melee, never to be seen by them. And their social media tools are managed by busybodies that only retweet comments that favour them. And so the most they can do, in response to your Facebook updates is to poke you. And you don’t want a politician poking you, trust me. And if you don’t believe me, ask… And why are you guys shocked at poverty in Kenya? Poverty is the same as you left it. Poverty is still spelled the same way you left it. This is Africa; some folk eat only one meal, yes, even here in the city. And they aren’t on a diet; they just can’t afford to eat square meals. Fast food? Do you know that KFC is a luxury back here? Yes, back here it’s the hoity-toity who throng there, with their iPhones and their monstrous Guci shades coifed in Gussii-land. Poverty is part of this social fabric, even the middle-class are poor, only their poverty is the worse kind. You know what we secretly laugh at behind your backs, dear Diasporas? When you come visiting and you tell us smugly, “ You know, back at home…” Back at home? Excuse us. United States of America is not your home, son! Your home is Nyansore, South Mugirango. Isn’t that where the remains of your dear mother lies? I’m sorry, was your grumps buried in Brookhaven, Atlanta? You are called Moguche, how many native Londoners are called Moguche? And please don’t ever say “you Kenyans,” That’s just racist. And here is one of my favourites. I had this retarded conversation one day with some diaspora. Kenyan from Texas (KT): Biko, I want to go to the Barclays in Loita Street, is it safe? Me: What is safe, Barclays? Yes, it is. KT: No, I mean Loita Street. Hehe. Did he just ask if Loita Street is safe? Tell me, how can I be so wrong about my friends? No, I told him, Loita Street is not safe. Get police escort. Hell wear a Flak jacket and lower your hat to your face in case they suspect that you are a foreigner because your eyebrows are different from ours. Hire security if you can (but not G4S). Loita Street is very dangerous. People get killed there every day, especially Kenyans visiting from abroad. And don’t wear your fancy cologne; it might draw attention to yourself. Doesn’t that just make you sad? Here is a guy who grew up in Umoja and shopped at Mutindwa scared of being mobbed in Loita Street. A guy who lived in Kenya for 27yrs – taking matatus and eating roasted maize by the roadside- before he flew out. A typical Kenyan. This is the same fellow who asks you if Loita Street is safe because he now has an iPhone 5? While odiero backpackers are fearlessly trolling downtown Nairobi this guy is debating if he should leave his damned wallet at home before venturing into town?! If he should remove his watch before going to Kimathi Street?! Do they imagine we are super humans not to get killed by the numerous, mines, IED’s and snipers outside Loita Street? Do we, as Kenyans, have a special contract with God? One last thing. Let’s be honest. We know you aren’t as loaded as you once was. No, we do. Central Bank Of Kenya told us. The diaspora remittance to Kenya declined by 9.4 per cent in June from Ksh 9.66billion to Ksh8.75billion in May owing to inflows from North America, Kenya’s biggest source of the dollar injections. Life, indeed, is hard everywhere. If Detroit declared itself bankrupt, really, things are hairy. Europe isn’t any better financially as we speak. So no need to keep appearances. It’s unnecessary. When you come down don’t drag us to the champagne bar at Sankara and get mild dementia after one look at their menu. And don’t call Sankara thieves. They aren’t. Sankara isn’t McDonalds. Shit is expensive there. This city has its owners, mate. They dine at the Tribe Hotel and sleep in Laikipia. They never look at the bill after their meal and they can put three actuarial science students in a room with all their money and those kids will grow beards before they finish counting that cheese. So Sankara guys aren’t stealing from you, it’s just a different pond for a different kettle of fish. Try Tamasha, they have a happy hour. Look, we are just happy you are home, we don’t care much that you can splash money because we know it wasn’t handed to you easy back there. And one last thing. You couldn’t have schooled in Durban, South Africa and picked an American accent. It’s unfathomable and ludicrous. We can understand you having an Indian accent because Durban has the largest population of Indians outside India, but they don’t speak like Americans last time I was there. And if you came back to Kenya from abroad more than 3 years ago you can’t prefix all your statements with “When I was in the UK…” It negates everything you will say after. I love Kenyans in diaspora because of their uncanny ability to summon amnesia. You guys forget fast. You forget so quickly where you came from. You forget how the machinery back here runs. You forget that this is motherland and no matter how broken this place is, this place still remains your place.
By Benjamin 

just for laugh

just for laugh

Shocking News: Mother who married her son, she is now 6 months pregnant

by Ambimbola Achebe

A woman and her son have done the unthinkable – they have fallen in love with one another. And now they want to marry since the mom, Betty Mbereko from Mwenezi in Masvingo, is six months pregnant and expecting her son’s child.
Mbereko (40), who was widowed 12 years ago, has been cohabiting with her first child, Farai Mbereko (23). She confirms that she is six months pregnant and that she has decided it is better to “marry” her son because she does not want to marry her late husband’s young brothers, whom she says are coveting her.
Betty stunned a village court last week when she said the affair with her son had begun three years earlier. She said after spending a lot of money sending Farai to school following the death of her husband, she felt she had a right to his money and no other woman was entitled to it.
“Look, I strove alone to send my son to school and no one helped me. Now you see that my son is working and you accuse me of doing something wrong. “Let me enjoy the products of my sweat,” she told the village court.
Farai said he was more than prepared to marry his mother and would pay off the ilobola balance his father had left unpaid to his grandparents. “I know my father died before he finished paying the bride price and I am prepared to pay it off,” he said.
“It is better to publicise what is happening because people should know that I am the one who made my mother pregnant. Otherwise they will accuse her of promiscuity.”
But local headman Nathan Muputirwa says: “We cannot allow this to happen in our village, mashura chaiwo aya, (This is a bad omen indeed). In the past they would have to be killed but today we cannot do it because we are afraid of the police.” He warned them to break off their marriage or leave his village.

They chose the latter and have left the village for an unknown destination.

Topics: mother, marries, son, pregnant

Shocking:Pictures of an 8 year old boy marrying a 61 year old woman

Manchester and Chelsea,head to head tonignt

Miracle money

World’s most expensive beer.

In one London restaurant if you ask for the most expensive beer you may get a shock, when they bring out a 12-litre bottle of Vieille Bon Secours ale and you will probably get even more of a shock at the £700 price! The beer, which has been stored for the last 10 years and has an alcoholic volume of 8 per cent, requires at least 2 people to pour it and has been described as having a complex taste.
Surprisingly the beer hasn’t been that popular in the past with the restaurant previously only selling 3 bottles, however executive chef Muir Picken at Belgo restaurant where the bottle has been sitting for 10 years would like to see the bottle be enjoyed by the restaurant locals saying “I would rather give it to our loyal customers than some city boys who sometimes walk in and say give me the most expensive beer that you have.” But with the price tag he is in a bit of a dilemma,” I don’t know whether to sell it or give it away to some of our locals and let some beer connoisseurs try it as well.”
But don’t worry if you can’t get to the Belgo restaurant in Holborn London as the bottles of this unique beer are available to buy online and come in blond, amber and dark. However if £700 is a bit too much to pay for your beer the next most expensive bottle is Samuel Adam’s Utopia which sells for £60 and is brewed by the Boston Beer Company, USA.
Picture courtesy of atul666

Strenghth grows when we dare

1..Strenghth grows when we dare. Love grows when we share and Relationship grows when we care... So live a life of dare, share and care.
. 2..Relationships should Have the determination like SANDAL WOOD Which never loses its fragrance even if it is broken into thousand pieces.... 
3..Days pass away leaving good & bad memories. Words remain in form of stories, but a beautiful relationship always remains in the heart like a heartbeat. 
4..Two Places Are Most Valuable In The World.. The Sweetest Place Is To Be In Someone's Thoughts.. N.. The Safest Place Is To Be In Someone's Heart...
 5..Adjustment and Compromise is crucial in relationships Adjust when someone wants to be with you & Compromise When you want to be with SOMEONE.
 6..Changes in life are good & neccesary. But make sure that, your changes dont take you far away from the people who like, love & Care for you.

Kenyan woman, two toddlers in Dubai evicted after husband abandons family

Dubai: A Kenyan mother and her two children are homeless in Dubai and have been evicted from their Sharjah apartment, after the woman’s husband allegedly refused to pay the rent.
Farida Salim said her estranged Tanzanian husband, who she married in 2009, abandoned them earlier this year to live in another apartment with his first wife, a Yemeni woman.
The mother and her two sons, aged one and two, says they were evicted last Monday because the husband, a salesman in a Dubai cargo company, had not paid the rent and gave cheques to the landlord that bounced.
Farida, a former bank collections agent in her 30s, said two women’s shelters in Sharjah and Dubai told her they only handle cases of domestic violence or human trafficking.
She also called the Kenyan embassy in Abu Dhabi and its consulate in Dubai for help but says she has not heard back from them.
A friend has paid for them to stay in an Ajman hotel from Sunday to Tuesday, after which they will have nowhere to go.
They have unsuccessfully tried to sleep in mosques.
They were also asked to leave a relative’s home who had initially let them spend a night.
She said she has no money for a ticket home and her visa — which her husband allegedly never sponsored for residence status — has expired.
Farida won a Sharjah Sharia (Islamic) court judgment that asks her husband to pay Dh4,000 a month to her, but he is not honouring the court order, she said.
According to a copy of the court ruling, seen by Gulf News, the husband is “obliged to pay Dh2,000 to the plaintiff on a monthly basis” starting from May 15.
The judgment, issued in June, adds he must also pay her another Dh2,000 “to be spent on her sons Mohammad, two, and Mazin, one, for clothing, food and drinks.”
It continues, the husband is “obliged to renew her sons’ visas upon expiry.”
The husband declined to comment when contacted by Gulf News on Monday.
“My husband doesn’t give me a dirham. We’ve been kicked out on the street because of his neglect. He has a two-bedroom apartment, at least he can take the kids in,” Farida said.
“I just a need job to stand on my feet again, I’m a hard worker. But I can’t cope without a place to stay and feed my children, all doors are closing on me.”
She said she used to make about Dh17,000 a month in salary and incentives at her bankjob.
“I used to pay the rent and expenses, even though that [was supposed to be] my husband’s responsibility. Everything changed after I quit to take care of my sons at home. He said ‘Why did you quit? I can’t support you.’ I used to get Dh50-Dh60 from him per week, but I’ve not seen a penny since April,” Farida said.
She added that her bank told her she cannot rejoin for a year as she left voluntarily, and there’s no opening. Farida is asking friends to circulate her CV in hopes of landing work again.
“I’m a respectable woman. I just need some help with a job or place to stay so my kids are safe. I’m not asking for money, I want justice.
“I was in love. I trusted my husband and forgave his faults — I made a mistake. People say no one goes hungry [during] Ramadan, but we did,” a tearful Farida said.
Farida speaks Arabic, English and Swahili.
Source: Gulf News

Kids dancing their hearts out,lol