Just a little click is all it took to render me penniless

To all the followers of what I flippantly call my blog – all four and a half of you – my utmost apologies for not being more expressive on matters close to your heart – like breastfeeding, politics, religion, sex, money etc. (You brought it upon yourself; how would I know what you want to read about if you hardly comment or say much to show me you’re still there; acting as if the word interactive means absolutely zilch to you – after all, it is only just the main pedestal upon which the Information Age rests its big bottom, hello!) but my utmost apologies all the same, if only just because I just ranted at you in full hearing of my esteemed reader – your mind.

As for not being more regular, I have only one word for you: Go.walk.it.off!

Having thus dispensed with that, let’s now move on to matters of national importance. And that’s my earnest appeal to all of you to help in a battle to join the ranks of all these other bloggers who keep splashing mud at me as they pass by in their expensive gas-guzzling monsters which they claim to have bought through big cheques from Google and Google Adsense and other rich places like that, which by the way own blogspot.com and a few other Porsche-buying companies (for their directors; believe me, I’ve checked.) Anyhow, to cut a long story short, I’ll bite the bullet and spit it out: All you have to do is sign (by adding your name and forwarding) a petition confirming that I am  a total mohine; totally worthless in matters of blogging and web surfing for that matter; that many a times in the past, I have impulsively and mercilessly clicked on and subscribed to almost anything I found free on the web and some that are not (it is two years since Jobs In Dubai promised to refund my deposit after failing to get me a job - well, they claim to have hawked my CV all over the middle east and Canada with hardly any bites; I don’t blame them; all I want is my money back and they keep telling me to ask for it, which I do and they don’t  refund!); and especially that when I clicked on the few ads that appeared on my blog space while it was in its infancy, I didn’t know it was wrong and yes, I had clicked “Accept” on Terms and Conditions of  Google Adsense but not quite noticed that they prohibited me from clicking on ads on my page. 

That’s all really, thank you. I am not asking for much. If that doesn’t work, then I guess I have to ask Wanjohi wa Kigogoine how he does it without them rich buggers; then I can escape this pennilessness that’s literally caused by “just a click.” 

Send the completed petition to kreative@earthling.net 

PANIC NOW

//www.theeastafrican.co.ke/magazine/Panic+Now+Your+child+has+a+smart+phone/-/434746/1218586/-/item/1/-/eqjlyoz/-/index.html

Why Athi River is no place to bring up a young donkey

Early in the morning in Athi River, a young donkey wakes up, stretches his muscles by making a few hee-haws, trots a little way down the road, and digs in for breakfast; his meal of choice, a sprawling heap of garbage behind a block of flats. He has commandeered this particular heap and seems to have grandiose territorial plans for it. Every donkey, he seems to say, to his own garbage heap, and to hell with anyone who wishes to move in on mine, as if there were not enough garbage heaps in Athi River for each and every donkey, monkey and mangy dog worth his/her tail.

But there is no blaming the donkey for being a little selfish. Heck, you would be selfish about your breakfast too if you spent every working hour supplying hoof-power to an ungrateful Athi River Donkey-cart Driver and had no choice to either escape to the KSPCA stables in Langata or run off to the Animal Orphanage, where you can conspire with the wardens to paint your butt scarlet and exhibit yourself as a Doboon (donkey-baboon) right there beside the Zeedonk (Zonkey) and the Zoryx; anything to escape the daily bodily and psychological abuse that is supplying hoof power at the hands of the ruthless, greedy and super-fast donkey-cart drivers of Athi River, but more about that later.

In the evenings, when it is unsafe to be on the road with an unlit cart-load of water, the donkeys of Athi roam the grassy patches of the residential areas in twos or threes, browsing quietly on every blade of grass they can lay their maws on and every bit of garbage they deem edible. They roam the plains aimlessly, feeding, mating and generally enjoying their temporary reprieve until when it’s almost dark, time to form a single file, muzzling each other with their noses as they quietly trudge home, none ever daring to wander off.

“That’s what the beating does to them,” explains Hamisi, who has spent some time around donkeys in Lamu. ”It tames them, makes them obedient and loyal.”  

Looking at the donkey’s dark sad eyes as he digs into his garbage heap breakfast, it’s not hard to imagine the humble beast recalling something terrible about a tail but not quite putting a hoof on it, and - with a ruminative flap of his long ears –dismissing the thought altogether and putting his head down to continue chomping at bits of discarded diaper etc. He knows that soon, the young tout employed to run him will come hurrying like an MP who is late for a meeting about tax evasion and tie him to a blue cart full of plastic jerry cans for the next twelve hours. He knows he will need all the energy he can get. So, chomp, chomp, chomp!

            At this point, this story shifts perspective and stops being told from a donkey’s point of view – beyond here, it would not be a good idea for the human reader to continue to imagine being a donkey in Athi River; not with the perennial water shortage, it is not. 

“Sometimes I think the shortage is artificial,” says Hamisi in his coastal Swahili. “The water sellers and the transporters may all be working together to hold the residents hostage,” he adds bitterly.

Further attempts to get more specific statements from him and his buddies at the water kiosk quickly degenerate into the usual vague pronouncements about shadowy civic leaders and village elders and their strategies of making things scarce so they can make money out of them. It becomes, in other words, political– not good.

Quite curiously, it also calls to mind a depressingly desperate but unrelated case that took place a long time ago in the village where I grew up, when the community water taps suddenly went dry after we had spent a lot of money to ensure they never would, and we suspected a rich and respected elder of diverting the water to his coffee factory and other water-intensive projects to the detriment of everyone downhill– a good thing to call to mind, but also political, so not good either.

So let’s not talk about who owns the many tankers of “Clean Soft Water” delivered every day in the dusty little place that’s not exactly a town but a collection of little dwellings (and a few big ones) and cement factories and steel plants and railway crossings; neither digress any further and discuss a certain trusted church elder in a village far away (even though our suspicions were later confirmed by his children when we all grew up).

Let’s instead finish the story about the trouble with being a donkey in Athi River.

And the vicious ways of the wickedly ruthless, greedy and fast donkey-cart drivers that run their lives.

You see, the faster a donkey-cart driver, the more jerry-cans of water he delivers, the more money he makes – just like a matatu driver on any busy route. Unfortunately for the donkey, the donkey-cart driver knows no other way to be the fastest and richest on the circuit but to clobber the donkey harder and harder. So, the faster the cart, the worse the beating the donkey gets.

In actual fact, only last year, one of the fastest donkey-cart drivers beat his donkeys so much that he not only split both ears of one but clean chopped the tail off the other. Ask anyone in Athi River Makandara where the two donkeys are frequently sighted to the horror of residents and visitors.

(Authours Note: For the sake of all the hardworking donkeys of Athi River, we can only hope that Jean Gilchrist is still at the KSPCA and is reading this.)

Nostalgic Thoughts of Mafaranga Menshi

A sunset on Lake Kivu

          Less than a month since yours sometimes took to much needed rest in the Mavoko Municipality of Athi River, there are still aspects of my country of refuge that I miss dearly.  Except for the dust, which is just that, and the heat, which we’ve learned to adapt to, Athi River is great; so great you can describe it by paraphrasing a Mr Matthews who, when explaining to a National Geographic writer why Karen is so great, said: “From here, you can see Nairobi; but you can’t hear or smell it.”

Most peaceful too: During the 2007/8 post election violence, when chaos took over Nairobi, life here went on as if nothing had happened and Nairobians would come to shop in our supermarkets after theirs were barred against or destroyed by marauding looters. Here, donkeys, camels, cows, goats, sheep, zebra, kudu and part-time human beings are not just picture book illustrations for kids, but everyday realities that one actually shares a municipality with.

            Still, I miss the place that became my post-post-election-violence economic refuge. Most of all, I miss my friends from Kigali – both the +254 variety and the beautiful, gentle people of Rwandan extraction, whose graciousness is only equalled by their inscrutability.  I miss the sound of people addressing each and all in Chinyarwanda – with neither a sense of arrogance nor embarrassment – as if it were Swahili or some other regionally recognisable language (like, say, Kikuyu or Dholuo?); I miss the smooth, newly tarred roads; the jam-free vehicular traffic snaking its nevertheless slow way around the hilly city of Kigali; the unique architecture that seamlessly blends the traditional and the modern; the feeling of always sitting on one hill contemplating another; the gorillas; sunsets on Lake Kivu; the Canopy Walk in Nyungwe; the temperate climate that makes you want to burst into spontaneous applause as rainbows arch dramatically between one distant hill and another … But top of my miss-list is the word Mafaranga, which tends to become part of the background noise wherever there are people talking. True story: every few words in a Kinyarwanda conversation, radio or tv broadcast, political or motivational speech, are more often than not punctuated with the word.

            Now I am no gambling man, but I am willing to bet the hut that mafaranga (francs), Kinyarwanda for cash, is clearly the most commonly uttered word in the language. The casual observer quickly catches on that most of the time you hear the word, it is accompanied by the word “yange”(mine). Hence “Mafaranga yange” are the last words you’ll hear from an irate Rwandan before he/she calls the police or the Mudugudu leader on you for not coughing up what belongs to him/her cash-wise.

The word also regularly appears as mfaranga menshi (lots of money) which aptly describes the cost of items on sale that are more expensive because they come from Kenya – or the kind of money you are expected to command if you come from Kenya. Incidentally, mafaranga menshi is what you pay in fines if you are caught speeding (over 40 kph within city limits), or parked in a no parking zone. It is certainly not what you are expected to pay as entry fee for your car when you drive into the country; but it could easily refer to what you are likely to pay in fines if you don’t renew your foreign registered car’s entry permit once it expires, as I once learned the hard way.

            “You have not renewed your entry permit,” said the policeman who had waved me down. He was scowling at the temporary importation papers I had obtained at the border slightly over a month before, even though the permits used to be valid for only two weeks then. (The new EAC rules later made the entry permit free and valid for at least 3 months but were vague about thereafter)

            “But why,” I had asked, feigning confusion, “do I need an entry permit when I am already inside? I paid at the border. Entry…,” I demonstrated with my hands. “Please let me go. I am late for an appointment.”

            “It is expired,” explained the second policeman patiently like he thought I was retarded, “you are supposed to get the car out of the country. If you wish, you can drive it back in again.”

            “You mean pretend to leave?”

            Needless to say, I never made it to that appointment. The policemen, both from the Revenue Protection Unit, had boarded my little white car like two officially sanctioned pirates and ordered me to drive to a yard from which I couldn’t get the car until I had paid the mafaranga menshi fine and signed a note that came with it. Written in Kinyarwanda, the note simply stated that this offending car was to be driven back to its home (Kenya) within 24 hours. It did not go on to say “or else”, but you could be sure that the consequences of disobeying such a note would be even more mafaranga.  

By an unfortunate coincidence, mafaranga menshi also refers to the price of almost anything good that you would like to buy at the grocery shops or supermarkets or hardware shops or restaurants, in Kigali. When news from reached us from Kenya that riots were about to start because a bag of maize flour had hit the 120 bob mark, us Kigalians were quietly paying the mafaranga equivalent of 186.50 Kenya shillings for the very same bag of flour.

 Sadly however, the salaries of most people in the country do not even remotely resemble mafaranga menshi. But you won’t hear an Atwoli threatening uncle Paul with mass action; never. In fact I bet there are no Atwolis there. What you will occasionally overhear are the hushed tones of shrewd investors referring to the “low cost of local labour” as they sample delicate meats in exotic hotels with names like “Heaven” or “Republika” or Shokola. And as they chase the said meats down with expensive wines and tap their expensively shod feet to the piped jazz oozing out of hidden speakers, they explain to you how easy it is to make mafaranga menshi in Rwanda. In fact, many are the Kenyans who have done just that in the fast growing, hilly little country, whose capital city is characterised by an armed soldier/policeman every few hundred metres.

Yes, in the country of mafaranga, just like in Athi River, you can walk around unmolested any time of day or night as long as your intentions are good and you are not (in the case of Rwanda) within 100 metres of the President’s office – but that’s another story for another day (hopefully someone will pay mafaranga menshi for it.)

© Lloyd Igane, Nairobi 03/04/2011

visit www.kreativeoutcomes.net

The Kingly Well That Never Dries

A local pilgrim gets his dose of kingliness

Our discovery of the well that never dries up and its spiritual significance was some kind of side issue. In all the literature we had read and the lectures we had attended, nowhere had we come across the story of a magical well. Not even in the highly acclaimed Threatened Kingdom, The story of the mountain gorilla, a rather glossy coffee table book we had earlier received, compliments of our host.  In fact, we had only driven down here in Eugene’s SUV to be shown the lower entrance into the Muhanga Forest, where the traditional King of Rwanda is said to have spent his last night before taking office.


“We” is a bunch of us intrepid ad agency types, all foreign, crisscrossing the vast Rwandan district of Musanze, marvelling at the wonderful things that the International Gorilla Conservation Project (IGCP) have done with (and for) the communities in the gorilla conservation areas. Eugene is the mild mannered gentleman from IGCP handling the logistics of the trip and acting as translator/host. As we wait for the game ranger in charge of this entrance to the seemingly impenetrable forest, people keep coming down to some kind of hole in the ground at the edge of the forest, draw water in plastic containers of all sorts and disappear back into the village after staring curiously at us. If we paid more attention, we would notice the reverence with which they approach the simple task.

Speaking through our interpreter, the old ranger – when he finally turns up – tells us how so sacred to the nation of Rwandans this part of Muhanga forest was in the old days. “The new King would spend his last night here before being enthroned,” translated Eugene. “He would take that time of solitude to receive instructions from ancestral spirits believed to have lived here, and in the morning, he would take a bath in the magical water in that well,” he pauses, pointing a long index finger at the decrepit pit at which all those people continue to fetch little amounts of water…

“So that water has kingliness in it?” exclaims Dudu Thabede, our fearless leader from Jo’burg, SA, and starts to walk towards the well, “can we get some?” she adds, changing direction and heading towards the vehicle for discarded mineral water bottles.

 “Get me the biggest bottle,” jokes Sinty Zulu, “so me and these guys (he wryly eyes some of the scrawnier and more shabbily dressed people filing reverently to the open well) will be Kings tomorrow!” A  Zimbabwean, he is the next most foreign of us all and officially the office wag. Most things about Rwanda amaze him to bits; not least of them the ability of Rwandans or anyone to move that slowly. “So why doesn’t anyone bottle it and brand it and sell it?” he asks, suddenly thinking about branding in the middle of all this.

Yakub and I, the east africans awaiting the ranger

“Someone even tried to pipe it for distribution,” explains Eugene after some Kinyarwanda consultation with the old ranger. “But the well is said to have withheld its water. When the piped water project was scrapped, the water mysteriously came back.” 

Sinti and our writer pose with the local pilgrims.

Ugandan Yakub Ibrahim and I, the rest of the team, are fellow East Africans, and are trying not to sound too much like tourists as we crowd around the well, mingling with the regular pilgrims.

“She says it keeps her family free of common illnesses and promotes ubuzima – general wellbeing,” Eugene translates again.

“Not many people including Rwandans know the story of this well,” explains Eugene as we drive off, each clutching a bottleful of kingliness. “We hope that you guys will create communication that spreads the world.”

Dudu, fearless leader, with her share of the well

“We certainly will,” says Dudu, “especially after a daily morning sip of this kingly water.”

But as we drive back to Kigali the next morning, we can not help but think of how we are going to exist beyond the next day without the bottled magic from the kingly well that never dries up. This is because when we left our precious bottles in our rooms as we went for breakfast, the cleaning staff mistook our kingly water for old mineral water and replaced them with fresh, unopened ones!

©Lloyd Igane 2011; kreative@publicist.com

“BRILLIANT KENYAN PIANIST” LIGHTENS UP KIGALI

Kim Thuita connecting with his audience

“If you are in Kigali, ask me about Kim Thuita.”

-         Recent Facebook post by Anjichi David, an excitable thirtyish Kenya-Rwandan

Meanwhile, at Chez Robert Restaurant in the Kyovu suburb of Kigali, a tall,, dark teetotaller Kenyan pianist adjusts his trade mark little black leather hat that precariously balances on his almost-clean-shaven head, smiles at the crowd, hits a few bars on his electronic key board and croaks the words of a very old tune, like say, Fadhili Williams, or Frank Sinatra... The crowd roars in spontaneous applause and starts waving its collective drink-laden arms in the air; like worshippers getting carried away by the spirit during Holy Communion.

Mutsari Mrefu winging it gleefully

A few heartbeats behind the pianist, Mtsari Mrefu (long queue/long arrow?), a well known Rwandan entertainer joins in with his bass guitar. He winks at the crowd and garrulously wings some of the words as the song is picked up by the audience. The audience, consisting of relaxed middle-level and senior executives, cheers some more and soon, almost everyone – including those who normally sit in pubs and vegetate – is itching to dance; even those who, like me, don’t know much about jazz, rhythm and blues.

“It’s all about communication” says Kim Thuita, the tall dark pianist, with an entertainer’s easy smile, “Music is all about communication. You can sit there and play the best compositions and combinations in the world,” he adds, “but if you are not communicating and really connecting with the audience, you are wasting your time… and theirs. They can hear you, but they can’t feel you.”

 “People need to lighten up…,” continues Kim with passion (it’s not easy to stop him talking about music once he starts),“and the only way I can give that is through music.”

And from the way not only David and his young girlfriend, but also Beatrice of the Peace Rose fame and all the patrons at Chez Robert in general are getting down tonight, the people of Kigali not only feel this world class entertainer (from Kenya); they also lighten up quite a notch. All sorts of people who are normally stiff and officious during the day let down their guards and boogie to the rhythm of Kim’s piano.

Let’s face it though: my insistence on Kim’s Kenyan roots is and Anjichi’s sense of  ownership are, I realise, nothing to do with his having played in Kenya for almost 15 years before venturing out; more like a vain attempt to reclaim a brother who has done well for himself… At the Calle El Arsenal in Managua (across from the San Francisco Convent) where “reservations are appreciated”, he was billed as “En Concierto Kim Thuita (Hollanda), Jazz, Fusion and Blues – Fusion deSabores”. Never mind all the Latin – they think he is Dutch! This is probably because the Nicaraguans did not care to understand that a Kenyan pianist married to a Dutch diplomat doesn’t automatically stop being Kenyan.

Not that it bothers Kim.

“I just have to strike a good balance,” he explains, guiltily checking his watch as he’s getting late to go pick up his children from school, “between my family and my music.”

Wherever his wife’s duties as a diplomat with the Dutch embassy take the family, Kim just finds classy venues with bars in them and plays his music at them.

“Music is universal language,” he explains. And whether it is Maputo with occasional crossings to Cape Town and Johannesburg, or in Iran where the no-alcohol no-clubbing Islamic rules limit one strictly to the house party circuit of the diplomatic community; or in Nicaragua, where he carried on Nica Soul to reservations-only crowds; Kim has jammed with the locals and thrilled the patrons of many a classy joint. And in all those places, he went with an open mind and let the local tastes influence him.

“In the next four years,” he claims, I believe I will have found ways to tap into the Intore Dance Troupes. Oh, they are so graceful!” he adds with respect.

That, and to open a nice club of his own…

“Mozambique is the haven of Afro jazz while Cape Town is known for it’s jazz and Kwaito,” Kim is talking about the places he has been and how they have influenced him; you are where you have played! “Nicaragua with its Latin Groove, Mambo and Salsa, you know the craziness of Central America with all its influences… I have been blessed,” he confesses, echoing some of the origins of his musical career.

Although he made himself a name playing the piano and crooning to residents and guests at the InterCont and the Serena in Nairobi, his first public performances were at Valley Road Church (Jesus Is the Answer). As for the true genesis of his musical career however, Kim has only two words:.

“At home,” he says meekly and chuckles mischievously in afterthought. “It’s a family thing. It is in the blood. We all used to sing – my bothers, my sister, and even my mother who couldn’t hold a tune…” he breaks off laughing at his mother’s musical disability. Dad was the main influence,” he elaborates.

Dad, Charles Thuita, was a “musician, arranger, choir conductor and singer” of quite some note, it turns out.

So they all took up musical careers?

“Not really,” explains Kim. “But we ended up having something to do with music. My brother Andrew is the one who actually took up a musical career. He is a professor of classical Music in the US; Seth is an architect in the UK but he is an accomplished guitarist and singer. And my sister G Net Perez is a singer in Madrid – yes she married DJ Paco Perez of Club Boomerang”;

And Kim was the one that chose to be a bank clerk who plays piano at the church on occasion; then a bank clerk who plays piano at classy joints, and finally, a pianist who plays at classy joints, period.

“When I started to play piano at the Valley Road Church on Sundays, I never considered doing it full time for a living. It was only after I got a gig at the Serena, playing at the poolside Mandhari Restaurant that the thought of quitting my clerical job started occurring to me. But still, I didn’t quit until I got the contract with Intercontinental. My parents were mad at me for a bit until they saw how fast my lifestyle was improving as a musician as opposed to a bank clerk who only plays occasionally...”

Many years later, although Kim has played in all those countries, has three scheduled gigs a week in Kigali and invitations to play at almost every major social and business event in the hilly city, he still remembers with nostalgia, his days at the Intercontinental where it really all began.

““Originally, I was only playing during the high tea in the afternoon,” he reminisces, a slight whine in his voice suggesting boredom. “Then I approached the management and offered to liven up the evenings with a little jazz…”  To cut a long story short, Kim, and his buddies – Lucas on bass and JB on drums -  calling themselves Jazz Q, started the Jazz Nite at the Intercont Bar, and evenings at the hotel changed for good.             “When the hotel realised it helped them retain more business as airline crews and other guests (who used to take their trade elsewhere) now spent their evenings at the hotel, they supported the idea fully…They sent me out to buy better equipment and we were on a roll!”

Not much later, the Salsa classes began at the Intercont, setting the pace for Nairobi, as soon, everywhere you looked, Salsa classes were swinging into existence!

But that is all history now that only lives with Kim as pleasant memories.

Now when I tell him that people are describing him as “that brilliant Kenyan pianist,” Kim Thuita just chuckles self-dismissively and says, “I’m just blessed, I guess.”

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 ©Lloyd Igane 2011

kreative@earthling.net

Why Clutter Is Good For You

 For a long time, I have been mortified at my extreme ability to generate clutter. Now I am just amazed.

Leave me alone for a few minutes in a neatly arranged room with a laptop on top of a coffee table and chances are there will soon be no space on the coffee table for a cup of coffee. My space has always been a jumble of items jostling for space, not even pretending to be orderly about it.

And whenever someone else neatens it up, I tend to get lost in the neatness and keep forgetting where to find what! It’s not something am proud of, mark you. Heck, it’s not even something I should be writing about but such is the beauty of writing about writing. I can write about anything as long as it can be remotely connected to writing; any writing.  

My laptop’s desktop, like my actual one is usually so full of icons (that have given up hope of getting filed away somewhere) it sometimes has no space for more. Needless to say, the paperless office is still a mythical creature that creeps up on me every once in a while when I sit at meetings with important people like Nat or Ndirangu, whose squeaky clean glass-topped desks with only miniscule computers (i-pads?) and not a fingerprint in sight tend to freak me out.

Clutter is a phenomenon I (and my long-suffering house-keepers, ex-wives and other partners) have grappled with for years, until the day I faced up to the simple truth: that to be unapologetically creative is both a gift and a curse; and that the ability to thrive under the chaos of clutter is just one of the many forms of the curse!

Now I did not come to that conclusion entirely on my own steam, but rather, I have checked out other people’s experiences and read a few blogs on the subject as well – the latter being mostly about how to cope with clutter and interruptions by people who, I can only argue/assume, are unable to handle the heat and should stay out of the kitchen.

Sample this:

“I wasted time by reading emails whenever they came into my inbox. I noticed that once I had started reading the name of the sender, I read the first line of the text. Once I mastered that, I continued reading the entire message, and once I got to that point, I felt compelled to respond because there was no point in leaving an already half-finished task. Then sometimes I needed extra information to answer the message, so had to add other tasks… [I] often wasn’t making any progress with what I was originally working on – and in the end felt quite breathless and exhausted. I thought I couldn’t be the only person struggling with this.” 

~ Ulrich Weger, quoted by Lucy Tobin

The real clutter junkies don’t complain and offer no apologies. They just go with the flow and crush everyone who gets in the way. Andrew White, one of the best admen it’s ever been my pleasure to share a food-chain with – albeit from far way below – once fired his secretary for organising his desk while he was out for a meeting. “I couldn’t find a bloody thing on my desk,” he had complained later, still fuming at the frustration of it all.

 “They think they are helping you,” he added with an amused giggle on hearing how I wished I could have thrown out my niece for organising my home office and colour-coding everything. “Help, indeed, ha!” we both agreed like two gay men saying “nothing” in unison when asked by straight people what they were up to sneaking out together like that.

Seriously though, there is nothing quite like the thrill of reaching for a friend’s phone number (that you wrote on the corner of your long-unused desk organiser several fortnights ago) by first lifting a few volumes and magazines from said corner.

Yeah right, I hear the neat and the organised brigade say.

They are forgiven. How are they to even remotely suspect that these seemingly annoying interruptions offer the creative mind limitless opportunities to stumble into mind-bogglingly inspired new ideas. So, while most writers grapple with ways to avoid the phenomenon of “writer interrupted”, I secretly welcome interruptions even as I blithely complain outwardly. And many are those who wonder about my seriousness when I tell them they’ve caught me at a bad time, yet offer to drink tea with them and chat about their hobbies. And although it is argued that research can always prove anything you want it to, I tend agree with research findings claiming that creative type employees who are denied Facebook and loud music are less productive than those who are not.  

The puritans of neatness argue that a clear desk means a clear mind – I don’t doubt them. But a clear mind is certainly the last thing anyone needs when forced to consider several moodily lit pictures of toothpaste tubes and come up with a line that makes the carefully defined target audience (everyone!) believe that this new toothpaste is the best thing since Colgate… With dozens of half-baked ideas flying in and out at the speed of thought, each looking for something sensible to connect with, the barrenness of a neat, well-organised desk does not quite fit or help, does it? Neither does dead silence; or softly piped classical music. 

Jazz, however, with its constantly shifting perspectives, is quite a different proposition altogether. So is Rock; and clutter – my favourite sin. 

Charming tale of a modern Snow White

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/magazine/Charming+tale+of+a+modern+Snow+White/-/434746/1114076/-/item/1/-/4nhdujz/-/index.html

BOOK REVIEW: Snow White and the Seven Aliens

 ; 64 pages; Available at Books First @ Nakumatt City Centre, Kigali; Reviewed by Lloyd Igane;

Probably because of all the little love notes, little pictures and mementos she leaves me every time she can, I have always made it my book-shopping policy to browse the kiddy titles as well in search of suitable reading material for my seven (going on 30) year old daughter, Tami.

It could as well be my natural parental instinct stepping in to save my lovely minded daughter from the pitfalls of limiting her reading to Jack and the Beanstalk, Thumbelina and Snow White & the Seven Dwarves. It could even be my hope that by devouring such fantastic titles – from simple African tales by the likes of Frank Odoi and Tuff Mulokwa, to Ladybirds with fantastic fairy tales about enchanted forests and other not as much fairy (or kiddie) tales by the old master Roald Dahl (Boy, Witches, The Enormous Crocodile, Pig, The Rat-catcher, etc) - I may get enough inspiration to publish a credible children’s story - one day.

It could be a whole lot of reasons including space and time travel … but nothing quite prepared me for Snow White and the Seven Aliens, one of the best children’s books I’ve read so far.

Written (rather well) by Laurence Anholt – with dizzyingly hilarious illustrations by Arthur Robins – and published under the Seriously Silly Stories series by Ochard Books of 338 Euston Road, London, the book tells the story of a hapless (of course!) Snow White, whose dream is to be a pop star like her hero Hank Hunk of Boysong, whose every single is a bestseller and whose posters she plasters all over the walls of her miserable dwelling quarters. Although she has a beautiful voice, is a great dancer, and can write her own lyrics, one thing stands in Snow White’s way: her Wicked Step-mother. A once-upon-a-time famous pop star as Mean Queen, lead singer of The Wonderful Wicked Witches, her voice is now croaky and she is no longer a star, hence her extreme jealousy of her step-daughter.

“You will never be famous like me, she screams at a cowering Snow White. “You look too… ordinary. You don’t even have a band. And besides, your nose is too small!”

A seriously henpecked father doesn’t help much…

But the wretched girl’s luck turns when she – after a series of unfortunate events and a few coincidences – ends up as a cleaner at the Swinging Spaceship Night Club (no less) where she hooks up with a musical band of seven aliens (Scotty, Spotty, Dotty, Potty, Snotty, Grotty and Botty), whose singing repertoire is rather limited – to “hi ho, hi ho” to be precise.

Not to spoil the story for any seven-year-olds-going-on-30 that may be reading this, suffice it to say that the setting, the protagonist and the main characters of this story are more identifiable with in today’s terms than those of the original story (Snow White and the Seven Dwarves).

The story is also truer to life and is less insulting to the said reader’s mind than the old one: For instance, instead of the “magic mirror” telling the witch stepmother that “Snow White is the fairest of them all”, it is the henpecked husband that the witch forces to sit behind the mirror and speak with a shaky voice which he doesn’t have to fake at all. To say that he too is scared of his wife would be an understatement unworthy of Laurence Anholt’s and Arthur Robins’s efforts in conjuring up such a strong character (weakness-wise!).

Sample this:

“Mirror, mirror on the wall

Who has the cutest

nose of all?” roars the wicked witch,

Terrified husband from behind the mirror:

“Mean Queen, you look

a treat.

With a nose as perfect

as a boiled sweet.”

That would bring her a lot of joy and she would cause a fracas and disturb the neighbours. But as Snow White continued to grow into a beautiful young maiden with a cute little nose, she got more and more disturbed by serious bouts of jealousy. At such times, she would stick her vuvuzela-like nose at the mirror and seek solace in its assurance:

            “Mirror, mirror, tell me true

Is my nose as long as a didgeridoo?

    That girl’s nose is microscopic.

What are your feelings

   on this topic?”

Dutifully, the “mirror” would respond:

            “If you push me, I must admit

Snow White’s nose is a perfect fit

But your nose, oh Queen, is

   really small.

In fact it’s hardly there at all.

This goes on for a bit – as such nasty things always do, propping up an unhappy marriage and making at least one child’s life particularly miserable. One night, however, the terrified husband decides he can’t lie any more when the witch demands to know:

“Mirror, mirror, above the sink,

Tell me what you REALLY think.

It’s time you started coming clean-

CHOOSE SNOW WHITE –

OR ME, YOUR QUEEN

With a thin trembling voice, the terrified husband grits his teeth in pent up anger, and hits his tormentor on the other side of the mirror with the full force of the truth:

Alright, I’ve really had enough

I’m fed up with the lies and stuff

     You are past it, old and sad,

    Crinkly, wrinkly - really bad.

Your nose is sort of long and hairy,

     Beside you, Snow White

       is a Christmas fairy!

And that, friends and neighbours, is the inciting action that sets off a series of events that build up to a blast of a happy ending – with little time for falling action, if any.

A real whirlwind of an adventure-romance-happily-ever-after read!

            Another reason I may have been so pleased with the Seriously Silly story of Snow White and the Seven Aliens is the blatant way in which it takes an old classic and modernises it for the 21^st Century and beyond. Something I’ve always wished someone did.

What next, you wonder?

Look out for Ali Baba and the Forty Politicians and Pinocchio and the Televangelist, to be published one day soon – before Tami and her little friends graduate to stories with fewer pictures, more words and no exclamation marks!

(Blogger's note: Buy this book for your child. You and BooksFirst can thank me later)

©Lloyd Igane 2011-01-26

kreative @earthling.net

DOING BUSINESS IN RWANDA: LOW-HANGING FRUIT AMONGST THORNS?

Judging from the increasing throngs of loud-mouthed Kikuyu and Somali-speaking businessmen jamming the airports and the bus termini with their excess baggage and incessant complaints, there is no doubt that Rwanda is fast becoming the East African businessman’s new Mecca, and has no shortage of eager pilgrims.

And as Meccas go, the “land of a thousand opportunities” has not only generously thrown its gates open to all friends and neighbours of goodwill, but done it in award-winning style: The country has been named the globe’s top business reformer by the World Bank Group’s Doing Business Report 2010; the World Economic Forum’s 2010 Competitiveness Award and the Commonwealth Business Council’s African Business Award 2010 - just to mention a few have recently honoured the little hilly country in the heart of Africa.

So what, one wonders, has made Rwanda so attractive to investors and professional types?

To begin with, Private investment is such a top priority for President Kagame, he has established a whole industry around it in the name of the Rwanda Development Board. Headed by John Gara, a lawyer, the RDB has the mandate to bend over backward to accelerate national growth through private sector development. The government has also pushed through major reforms, one of which is to ensure no sectors are barred to foreign investors and no restrictions are placed by the government on the percentage of equity said investors may hold.

Other major indicators of the country’s favourable economic climate are myriad. They include strong macroeconomic growth which encompasses an 8.8% year-on-year GDP growth rate, an 11.2%, controlled inflation, increasing government tax revenues, and stable exchange rates. The stability of government with a "CEO President of Rwanda Inc", zero tolerance for corruption,, and extremely low crime levels.

But these are just indicators of the country’s favourable climate. So what exactly, has made Rwanda Inc so attractive to investors and professional types. Why is it that everyone you ask tells you what a breeze it is to do business in Rwanda?

The government will tell you that the ease with which you can register a business is a major factor. Thanks to economic and legal reforms, what used to take several procedures over several weeks has now been reduced to two procedures taking no more than 24 hours. They will also go on and on about other reforms that have made it easier to register intellectual property, attractive incentives, and simple taxation, and how easy it is to do business with the rest of East Africa from Rwanda. Rwanda is also in the process of establishing an industrial park, a Technology Park, and a Free Trade Zone, and has started developing a robust capital markets authority beginning with the stock exchange.

While still on the topic of starting a business, they’ll tell you that online business registration is now operational. This means by simply visiting the relevant RDB website, you can incorporate a company remotely from abroad without going to RDB.

They will also tell you about e-Regulations. A web-based information portal aimed at putting all doing-business procedures online, E-Regulations is currently under implementation by the RDB in association with the United Nations’ UNCTAD; It is an online step-by-step guide to all for doing business procedures; it brings total transparency to investment procedures and is also a truly one-stop concept, is the only one of its kind in East Africa.  Hence, for every doing-business procedure, e-Regulations offers detailed step-by-step guidelines (every mandatory interaction with a civil servant is considered a step) and for each step, a step sheet that shows what one should get from the civil servant at the end of the step; complete contact details of the civil servant in charge and of the person one can complain to in case of a problem; forms and other documents one needs to submit; and finally, time, cost, and legal justifications for the step. So far, potential investors can enjoy online access to all the steps necessary for Business registration, Business Licensing and Permits, Land and property; Business licenses and permits; Immigration; Intellectual property; and Taxation.

There are many other reforms aimed at making doing business in Rwanda a breeze, many of which one never knows until they check the RDB website. These include reforms relating to the ease of acquiring Construction permits, registration of property, getting credit, winding up, and many others. But most of all, they’ll tell you that, despite remarkable progress, Rwanda remains largely virgin territory with limitless unexploited opportunities in Agro-Processing, ICT, Infrastructure, Tourism, Energy, Mining Services, Real Estate, and Construction.

However, even as the loud-mouthed Kenyan businessmen and other investors flock to RDB to register their businesses for as little as 25,000 Rwf (slightly more than 40 USD), they quickly find out that these “low-hanging fruit” have thorns around them.  

“They said that Rwanda is open for business and they have made it easier, “complains a frustrated Kenyan businessman at Magerwa, the customs warehouses in Gikondo, “but they surely make it very difficult for one to make money!”  Like all Kenyans, he is frustrated by the slow pace of things in Rwanda compared to the fast-paced Nairobi. He is also frustrated that what he imagined would be only a five percent import duty for imports from Kenya (under the EAC) has turned out to be a lot more and has almost depleted his margins.

He is not alone. At the single-terminal Kigali International Airport, a bunch of Kenyan ladies scream at an airline staffer who has told them they can’t take the flight they want for they have reported long after the gates were closed and have to wait for the next morning’s flight. “Why,” screams one of the ladies, “do we have to pay for your incompetence?” To his credit, the airline staffer keeps his cool and slowly goes about his business of serving the airline’s customers. No muscle on his face indicates that these foreigners have just insulted him for just doing his job and unfairly lumped him with all the lazy local employees of service companies whose work ethic does not even remotely include the concept of customer service.  A case in point is the experience of a regional supermarket chain when they first opened in Kigali city more than a year ago and had to fire the whole lot of local customer service people they had hired and replace them with a more carefully picked, easier to train lot. For it is not unusual to have a bank cashier staring blankly at your passport clearly not registering what’s written on it; his/her mind clearly elsewhere, while you, the customer, stands there waiting for him/her to come back to the present and give you your hard-earned money. To a visitor from fast-paced Nairobi or Kampala or, heaven-forbid, New York, New York, most service people of local extraction always seem like they deliberately drag their feet with the sole purpose of rankling the customer.  In fact, Davie the former resident wag at the old CarWash once coined the phrase “the only person in a hurry in Rwanda is Paul Kagame.” This, in a way, was true because, despite the slowness of waiter service in most places, all government projects such as schools, roads, and such are done in record time.

Not all is lost though. Pockets of exemplary service are emerging and shining brightly. Having taken the best part of half a working day to open an ordinary local-currency savings account less than two years ago -  a dollar account would have taken longer – a writer we know was recently amazed to open one in a different bank, complete with SMS banking, in less than twenty minutes one day after work. (Yes, banks in Kigali are open till 8 pm on working days and are flexible about weekends too. And still the queues at most bank branches mostly overspill the chairs and queue outside. Again, yes, every banking hall in Kigali has many chairs for customers to wait in, which means you walk into a bank with a novel and prepare to read a few chapters. And while Rwandans don’t seem to mind enjoying this hospitality, the aforementioned foreign investor/ professional can’t help but wish this easy-to-do-business-in place could move a little faster.

The good news is that the “impatient” foreign investor/professional bravely soldiers on; a fearless agent of change – the service standards at the few foreign supermarkets in Kigali are, for instance, beacons of hope for all others to look up to.

To this end, there have been several GoR and pseudo-government efforts to improve service standards. RDB has been running outdoor and print ads aimed at dignifying a culture of service. The board has also supported the production of the widely advertised and most professionally done Service Mag, spearheaded several customer service training events, and – through its Human Resource development arm – set up several initiatives to improve the quality of the growing local workforce.

It is clear to the casual observer that the limitless business opportunities (low hanging fruit) available in Rwanda right now are a function of the ongoing long-term reconstruction efforts aimed at getting Rwanda firmly back on its economic feet after the ravages of genocide. But the question of what happens when Rwandans are finally able to manage on their own is never far from any forward-planning businessperson – and that explains the palpable apprehension of the loud-mouthed Kenyan businessmen and professionals even as they jam airports and bus termini with their wares and portfolios.

©Lloyd Igane, December 2010

kreative@earthling.net