Gone but not ‘Gotten. we miss you, Daddy.

after seeing my buddy, Anish, driving his dad’s pick-up in Murang’a, i was suddenly bitten by the Car bug.

this was just a month after i had done my O-level exams.

“Daddy, i want to learn how to drive,” i told my dad.

“you haven’t gotten your I.D. yet,” he pointed out.

“but Anish is driving and he’s at least five years younger than me,” the argumentative lawyer in me rejoindered.

” wait until you get your I.D.”, he said.

“then teach me how to drive,” i pleaded.

“i don’t have the time for that,” he responded.

Dad may have thought that this was a passing whim of mine, but i was determined.

blessed with one of those minds that when i see something done twice or thrice, i can quickly do the same (a knack i proved to a scared nurse who had come to work Locum Tenens at my dad’s clinic in Murang’a, when i performed an Uvulaectomy procedure on a child brought by his father, because i knew how to go about it as i used to be Dad’s assistant, and Dad had travelled to Nairobi and there was no way i was letting Kenya Shillings five hundred and fifty go away to “maybe” come tomorrow when the doctor himself is there. it went off without a hitch, although i wish i was as ambidextrous as dad, when wielding the forceps and the sharp-pointed scissors.)

trust me, i always had guts since i was little.

so, i was determined to teach myself how to drive.

i already had the Standard-H manual gear down pat and now, whenever dad and i used to go driving (shotgun seat was always reserved for me when mum wasn’t there. who says being first-born doesn’t have its privileges?), instead of looking out the window at the passing scenery, i used to closely watch the routine of his hands and his feet as he drove.

i already knew that steering was easy: turn the wheel left to go left and turn it to the right to go right.

it was how to manage three pedals with two feet and a gear-stick lever, too, that had me stumped.

and slowly but surely, i learnt.

i used to experiment when Dad had travelled on one of his numerous trips to either Nairobi on Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims business (he was the treasurer for the Murang’a District branch) or one of his continuous-education seminars as a doctor.

that car, a fire-engine red 1969-manufactured Datsun 1600 Super Sports Saloon (S.S.S), made me sometimes sing with elation or cry with frustration.

an ex-Safari Rally Chase car, it had an M-2 engine with twin carburetors (which took six hefty men to push to jump-start it when it was throwing a tantrum) and an unmuffled “through pipe” exhaust system, which announced its coming from ten miles away when at full throttle.

everybody in our vicinity knew my dad’s red car and its registration number, KDR 281. 

i digress.

during my stolen moments, there were times things went smoothly, if you overlooked the car’s jacking, as i changed first gear to second gear, because i hadn’t yet mastered the clutche’s loading point and how to balance the accelerator with the clutch.

first thing i taught myself is that the clutch should be depressed all the way in to avoid that horrible gears-meshing sound.

the problem came about when it stalled and one of the carburetors had a gas overflow; it couldn’t start even if you cranked it from now to Kingdom Come, unless:
(a) the overflow mysteriously sorted itself out.
(b) the mechanic had to be called to look at it.
to cut a long narrative short, my dad busted me driving when he returned from Nairobi much earlier than i had anticipated, and i’d gone to pick up my baby sister, Azzurah, from the Murang’a College of Technology Nursery School.

when he’d learnt from the nurse who was doing Locum at our clinic that i’d picked up the keys, whistling merrily to myself and told the nurse that i’d gone to pick up my sister from school, Dad almost had a heart attack.
(a) i didn’t have a driving license.
(b) i didn’t know how to drive (according to him).
(c) i had gone to pick up my baby sister, his precious daughter in a house with two ruffian sons.
(d) i had to pass outside Murang’a Police Station to get to Murang’a College of Technology Nursery.
Dad had to flag down a public service shuttle, explain the situation to the driver, and follow me to town, all the while praying that we were ok and that i hadn’t had an accident.

when i was returning home with my baby sis riding shotgun, i see this shuttle flashing its headlights at me and the driver flagging me down.

when i stopped my car and Dad came out of the shuttle, i thought to myself, “oh my gosh! i am so dead!”, but Dad was just too relieved to be angry.

he just let himself in the backseat, and told me to drive home.

after that little incident, i was banned indefinitely from:
(a) driving.
(b) looking at the car keys in a manner likely to suggest that i had an itch to drive.
how he later taught me how to drive and one day let me drive solo (this time officially, still long before i went to driving school) is a story for another day.

suffice to say that as somebody who had owned 8 different vehicles in his lifetime, the lessons like how to change a tyre, how to use the clutch as a brake when your brakes suddenly malfunction and your parking brake is out, how to do the drift at 70km/h long before THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS was an idea in somebody’s mind, have still stuck with me to this day.

i taught my younger siblings how to drive.

i pray that i live long enough to teach my first-born how to drive and the various tricks and stunts seen and done in movies.
i miss you, Daddy.

#ForeverInOurHearts.

#GoneButNotGotten.

J.F.K . – the untold truth.

“for we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence – on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day.

it is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly-knit, highly-efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.

its preparations are concealed, not published. its mistakes are buried, not headlined.

its dissenters are silenced, not praised.

no expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.

it conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.”
i firmly believe that was the speech that signed the death warrant of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, America’s 35th president and one of its most beloved ones.
in my Facebook Bio, i describe myself as a historian. i’ve always been fascinated by history throughout the ages and have been an avid student of it.

i’ve always believed that if we don’t learn from the past, we’re condemned to repeat the same mistakes in the future.

i’ve also been described as a conspiracy theorist because i also believe that there’s no such thing as coincidence.

no, i’m not and never have been one of those people who’ve been an alumnus of the Central Intelligence Agency. its just that there’s always some truth behind every rumor or conspiracy.

i’m just an ordinary Kenyan trying to solve one of the world’s most famous murder mysteries.
i’ve always loved JFK, although he’s a man who was assassinated decades before i was even an idea in my dad’s mind. looking back at America during this tumultous period, we can only marvel at how well he managed the affairs of his country, not to mention bearing the burden of being the leader of the free world.

on the one hand, there was the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union’s Nikita Khruschev sneaking intermediate ballistic nuclear missiles in Cuba and what was happening in Central and South America. he had Cambodia and Vietnam was just beginning its first stirrings.

at home, there was the Civil Rights issues to deal with.

people like Medgar Evers and three little girls who died during a bombing while attending Sunday School at a Baptist Church in Alabama.

Dr. Martin Luther King and his agitation for equal rights for blacks before the law.

i say that despite the problems that he had to deal with and his other weaknesses, JFK was basically a decent man who tried his best in indecent times and certainly didn’t deserve to die the way he did.
Donald Trump has ordered that documents pertaining to JFK’s assassination be released to the public, documents which have been kept Top Secret ever since the assassination and the Warren Commission report.

however, certain information has been withheld, “in the interests of national security”, they say.

really?

what are they hiding?

whom are they protecting?
well, among the names that were released, there are several missing, and one of the most prominent ones is one George H. Bush.

oh yes, THAT George Bush.

we all know that he worked in the C.I.A. during President Kennedy’s tenure, eventually heading it, long before he jumped ship to politics, the vice-presidentship and eventually the presidency.

why am i focussing so much on that particular name?

because the coincidences are just too many to be normal and i don’t believe in coincidences, remember?
in every murder, there’s always the Method, Opportunity and Motive to consider. we all know the Method. long gun, fired from the Texas Book Depository and/or the Grassy Knoll; we’ll never get the full details.

as for Opportunity, why not invite the would-be victim to a visit to your state and ensure that he is touring in an open car, making it easy to set up the hit.

Motive? well, that’s a murky one, but with Motive comes who was the most likeliest beneficiary of JFK’s death.

and the finger points straight at Lyndon B. Johnson, JFK’s vice-president.
there was no love lost between the Boston Brahmin Kennedys and the vice-president who hailed from Texas and whom the refined Kennedy brothers, Jack and Bobby, looked down as somebody just a notch above a redneck.

the Kennedys were urbane and suave political operators and they considered Lyndon B. Johnson as being loud and abrasive, somebody whom they kept at arms length.

its no secret that both the President (Jack Kennedy) and the Attorney General (Bobby Kennedy) usually kept things between themselves when it came to governance and only involved the Vice-President when it was necessary.

there certainly was resentment there.
anyway, JFK makes a speech condemning a mysterious cabal that he didn’t name but we who live in the 21st century know all too well.

Lyndon B. Johnson flinching even before the sound of the first bullet was heard, as if he knew that somebody would start firing when the entourage was past a certain mark, say two women standing together by the roadside, one dressed in red and the other one dressed in black.

differing accounts on the number of shots fired and the directions from which they came from.

the ineptitude of the Secret Service.

the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald and his subsequent killing at the police station in Dallas by Jack Ruby.

the unusual behavior exhibited by the people who conducted JFK’s autopsy.

the non-involvement of testimony from some witnesses in the Warren Commission report.

the swearing in of the Vice-President, Lyndon B. Johnson, the Texan who made it good.

the omission, years later, of the name George H. Bush, another Texan who worked in the C.I.A during the Kennedy tenure, in the so-called “Kennedy papers.”

the very same George H. Bush, who became the 41st American president, who once gave a speech, mentioning the coming soon of “A New World Order.”
coincidence? really? what are the odds?
sure, we also have puzzles and murder mysteries in Kenya.

Pio Gama Pinto.

Tom Mboya.

J.M. Kariuki.

Julie Ward.

Robert Ouko.

Father John Kaiser.

Chris Msando.

and others. we can name names, point fingers and whisper innuendos, but in our Kenya, such acts lead to one getting a road accident, never mind the fact that one has been driving over twenty years, ten of them on that stretch of road the accident happens.

that, or being found dead, gunshot wounds in the body, and the police spokesman addressing the media in the ubiquitious “nothing was stolen, robbery was not the motive, we shall leave no stone unturned” yaddah yaddah, and just like that, you’ve become a Cold Case, another statistic.

“it’s a girl, 3.8 kilos and i need a thermos of hot tea, stat!”

it dawned normally on a day like this, five years ago, in Nairobi, Kenya.

my wife and i both got up and she began preparing breakfast for the both of us.

our first-born was due in two weeks time and although i had the nerves of the first-time father, i was also excited and anxious about the whole thing.
we’d never had a scan done because i’m not really particular of the gender of my kids, as long as the antenatal clinic visits assured us that the pregnancy was normal and everything was as it should be.

i worked with a civil engineering firm in Nairobi and the company had gotten a tender to do some work in Mombasa, Kenya’s coastal and second-largest city after the capital, Nairobi.

i had been deployed to Mombasa but what kept me in Nairobi, apart from my expectant wife, was a pick-up truck which was supposed to undergo the annual motor vehicle inspection and then i was supposed to drive it to Mombasa.
most of my colleagues had already left for Mombasa and at our site office in Nairobi, only a skeletal staff remained.

my immediate supervisor who was also one of the Resident Engineers used to give me leeway to leave work early because there wasn’t any work for me to do apart from waiting for that inspection to be done and he also understood about my wife’s condition.

as my wife moved around the house, a slight pang of discomfort passed her face.

“are you alright?”, i quickly asked her.

“i’m fine”, she answered me with a tired smile.

i then quickly made the choice to stay at home on that day and made a phone call to the Resident Engineer to ask if it was okay for me not to go to work but stay at home with my wife.

he said that it was alright because there was no work for me to do there, anyway, and i thanked him for his understanding.
we had breakfast together in our very small house then and afterwards, i took the utensils to the communal sink to wash them.

after i was done and we’d both showered and freshened up, i asked her if we could watch a movie together and she was up for it and we both sat down to watch EL GRINGO on the DVD.
after the movie finished, she quickly cooked a light lunch of spaghetti for both of us and we ate it and i did the dishes again.

when i was returning to the house with the clean dishes, i found her sitting on the sofa, looking uncomfortable.

“what’s the matter?”, i asked her, and she complained of a slight pang of pain that was originating from her back and coming all the way to her stomach.

“maybe we should go to the clinic”, i suggested, but she brushed it off.

she asked me what i wanted to have for supper and i told her that i had a craving for cooked beef intestines, what we call “utumbo”, in Swahili, a Kenyan delicacy.

she told me that we should go to the butchery and buy them early so that we could get the freshest ones and she could also have time to prepare them for cooking.

we locked the house and slowly ambled over to the butchery, talking about this and that.
we bought the “meat” and as we were about to pass the market and buy some vegetables for dinner, that pain quickly flashed across her face.

“we’re going to the clinic”, i told her, in a firm voice.
minor detour:
this was September of 2012. there was an ongoing countrywide Nurses’s strike, but since my wife used to attend the clinic at Kenyatta National Hospital, Kenya’s and East Africa’s biggest Referral Hospital, we’d been assured by the staff that was still working that we could go there in the event of labor. for minor things and examinations, we usually went to a clinic near our house and we’d developed a rapport with the owner cum practitioner, more so especially after he’d learned that my dad who’d passed away the previous year, had been a paedriatician.
so, we went to the clinic and while i waited at the Reception with our purchases, she went in to be examined. after a short bit, the doctor called for me to come in, and he grinned at me and said, “congratulations, my boy, these are the signs of the onset of labor.
i was confused! “its too soon!” “God, how am i going to get ahold of my younger brother to take us to the hospital with his car like he had pledged to do so, if he was already at the studio?” (my younger brother, Deejay Slim 254 is one of Kenya’s enterprising VDJs, with several awards for exvellence in his profession under his belt).

“the money hasn’t come in yet!” (i had been expecting some money that i had been promised and it hadn’t come in yet.

all these thoughts quickly flashed through my mind.
as we left the clinic and started going homewards, i wanted to get a taxi to drop us home, but my wife refused, saying that walking would be beneficial to her later during the labor process.

i tried calling my brother on his cellphone but couldn’t raise him and in desperation, i called my mum.

trust your parents to be there for you when you’re in a jam.

my mum’s house wasn’t very far away from where we were staying and she had relocated after my dad had passed away the previous year.
i got her and explained the situation and she told me not to panic but to go home and make preparations to take my wife to hospital while she got ahold of my brother.

when we got to the house, my wife quickly took another shower and after dressing, we sat down to wait for developments. her “hospital trunk” was all packed with the necessary things that she would need at the hospital, things like towels, diapers and the baby clothes. that trunk had been packed and ready to go for a month now because we both like doing things in advance and not running around like headless chickens at the last minute.
“i’m outside!”, my brother said on the phone and we quickly hurried out. in the rush to leave, i’d forgotten and carried the meat that was supposed to be for my supper with me.

my brother was in the car with his girlfriend and he quickly helped me to put my wife’s suitcase into the trunk. on the way to the hospital, my wife asked us to stop at an ATM machine and she gave me her ATM card and told me, “withdraw everything.”

it seems that my wife had stashed some money for that rainy day and hadn’t told me about it, meaning to have it be a Plan ‘B’, when the chips were down.
we took her to hospital and she was admitted. by this time, it was almost 7 p.m. and the personnel at the hospital quickly shooed us away. as we were driving home, my brother stopped at a take-away place and bought supper for all of us. we then stopped by my mum’s place and talked for a bit.

my brother patted me on the back, welcoming me to the Dad’s Club, something of which he’d been a member of since 2002.

mum assured me that it would be alright, and as i was leaving, i gave her the meat that was supposed to be my supper.
it was a very long night for me. i had tried watching a movie, but i was alone and i couldn’t concebtrate. nerves and worry kept me tense and i finally went to an uneasy sleep.

because this was my wife’s first child, i was expecting a prolonged labor process and i was anticipating The Call (definite article “the”) to come at around noon or slightly before.

i was woken up on 26th September at 8 a.m by my cellphone’s ringing and when i looked at the Caller I.D., it was my wife.

“hello?”, i said hesitantly, expecting all kinds of news, some of them grim.

“its a girl, 3.8 kilogrammes and i need a thermos flask of hot tea, stat!”.

i laughed with relief.

i cried with joy.

I WAS A DAD!
the office called a few hours later and told me that my deployment to Mombasa had been confirmed and that i would be leaving on the same night on a bus and wouldn’t need to travel with the pick-up.

when i got to the hospital with the tea and some cakes for my wife, she was resting and she had the most beautiful baby girl sleeping beside her.

i put the bag carrying the thermos flask down and we kissed and hugged and i cried again.

after we’d talked for a while, i told her about my deployment to Mombasa that night and saw her face fall, but she gathered herself and told me; “your duty calls. you have to go, for both me and your baby. you’re a father now.”
i stayed for a while and our baby slept through it all.

i took some photos of her, sleeping blissfully, not even aware that her daddy was there and who loved her so much and who felt like his heart was breaking because i couldn’t even get to cradle her in my arms because i was being deployed away.

we’d decided to name her Azzurah, after my sister, because it kind of felt funny naming her Zakiah, after my mum, especially since my brother had beaten me to the draw by naming his daughter after our mum.
before leaving, i gave my wife some instructions on what to do as per Islamic custom pertaining to a newborn: when to have the fetal hair shaved, when to be taken outside the house after birth, which kohl to apply on her eyes before being taken outside.

how my wife broke the “don’t take the baby outside the house before 40 days are over” rule and followed me to Mombasa three weeks later is a story for another day.

“extinction is the rule, survival is the exception.” – Carl Sagan, THE VARIETIES OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE (2007).

life on this planet has always been a balancing act – a complex web of interconnectivity that’s surprisingly fragile.

remove or even alter enough key components and that web begins to fray and fall apart.
such a collapse – or mass extinction – has happened five times in our planet’s geological past.

the FIRST struck 400 million years ago, when most marine life died off.

the THIRD event hit both land and sea at the end of the Permian Period, wiping out 90% of the world’s species, coming within a razor’s edge of ending all life on earth.

the FIFTH and most recent extinction took out the dinosaurs, ushering in the era of mammals and altering the world forever.
how close are we to seeing such an event happen again?

some scientists believe we’re already there, neck-deep in a SIXTH mass extinction.

every hour, three more species go extinct, totaling over 30,000 a year.

worst of all, the rate of this die-off is continually rising.

at this very moment, nearly half of all amphibians, a quarter of all mammals and a third of all reefs balance at the edge of extinction.

even a third of all conifer trees teeter at that brink.
why is this happening?

in the past, such massive die-offs had been triggered by sudden changes in global climate, or shifts in plate tectonics, or in the case of the dinosaurs, possibly even an asteroid strike.

yet most scientists believe this current crisis has a simpler explanation.

HUMANS.
through our trampling of the environment and rise in pollution, mankind has been the driving force behind the loss of most species.

according to a report by Duke University released in May 2014, human activity has driven species into extinction at the rate a THOUSANDFOLD faster than before the arrival of modern man.

the Black Lad McCrimmon and the Banshee – a Scottish legend.

it appears that the fairies were excellent musicians, and that their choice of all musical instruments was the bag-pipes.

often did the wayfarer hear its sound coming from the Fairy Knoll, which happened to be in his path, and often did he feel its sweet music tempting him to walk in, and lift his foot in the dance with the fairies.
this art which they possessed they are said to have taught to some men for whom they took a liking, and who are still remembered in tradition. among these was the Black Lad MacCrimmon.
up to the Black Lad’s time, the MacCrimmons were not better than other good pipers in the Highlands. he was the first of them who rose above all the rest in fame, and who was commonly called, “the King of Pipers.”
he was the youngest of three sons, and the least thought of by his father.

when his father would take down from the back of the crooked stick the great bagpipes, which he called the Black Gate, and he himself would play the first tune on it, he would hand it to his eldest son, and when his eldest son had done with it, he would hand it to the second son; but when the second son had done with it, the Black Lad would not get the honor of blowing so much as one blast into the bag. he was also kept down by the rest, and left to do every piece of work that was more slavish than another.
on a certain day, his father and his two brothers went to the fair and left him alone at home.

after they had gone, he got hold of the chanter, and began to play upon it.

and in the midst of the playing, who should come upon him but the Banshee from the Castle.
“thou art busy discoursing music, lad,” said she.

he answered that he was.

“which wouldst thou prefer: skill without success or success without skill?” said she then.

he answered that he would rather have skill without success.

she pulled a hair from her head, and asked him to put it round the reed of the chanter.

when he had done that, she said to him: “place now thy fingers on the holes of the chanter, and i will lay my fingers on thy fingers.”

as soon as that was done, she said: “when i shall lift my finger, lift thou the finger which happens to be under it. think now of any tune thou pleasest, and play it with me in the way i have told thee.”

he did so, and played the tune skillfully.

when he had finished the tune, she said: ” now thou art the King of Pipers. thine equal was not before thee, and thine equal shall not be after thee.”

she then bade him good day and departed.
as soon as she had gone, he took down the Black Gate and began playing on it.

there was not a tune he could think of which he did not try and which he could not play with ease.

before he ceased, his father and brothers had returned from the fair.

and when they approached the house, they heard the music, and stood to listen.

“whoever is playing, it is on the Black Gate,” said the father to his sons.

they went on, but the musuc ceased before they reached the house.
they went in, but none of them let on that they had heard the music till night came.

then the old man took down the great bagpipes and after he himself and his two eldest sons had played tune about, he asked the Black Lad to take his own spell of it.
“is it i?” said he. “i am not worthy of that honor. it is enough for me to be a slave to you all.”

“take the bagpipes, and thou shalt no longer be asked to do slavish work,” said his father.

he took the pipes at last, and struck up the finest music anyone in the house had ever heard.

“the music has left us,” said the father to the other sons. “none of us will come in the wake of the Black Lad.”

he spake truly, for the like of the Black Lad never lived, either in his own time, or since.

THE KISS HE GOT FROM THE KING’S HAND.
these lines were composed by MacCrimmon who, on being requested by the King to name his reward for playing before him, asked liberty to kiss the King’s hand.
[a kiss i got, a kiss i got,

 from the King’s hand, a kiss i got!

no blasts of breath in sheepskin blown

that got yon greeting; tis my own.]

MACCRIMMON’S SILVER CHANTER.
MacCrimmon got a silver chanter from the Banshee of the Cave of Gold on condition that he would go with her to the Cave at the end of a day and a year.

the following is a tune played by him as he entered the Cave:
[i shall come never! return i’ll never!

ere i come from the Cave of Gold,

the kidling flocks,

will be goats of the rocks,

and the children weak be warrior’s bold.

i am in woe,

under spells to go;

i’ll be for aye in the Cave of Gold.]

Alexander the Great vis à vis the Quran.

the Quranic and our medieval Alexander, Lord of the two Horns (East and West) is very different from him of Macedon.

the title is variously explained from two protuberances on his head or helm, from two long locks and possibly from the ram-horns of Jupiter Ammon.

Iskander was originally called Marzbán (Lord of the Marches), son of Marzabah and though descended from Yunán, son of Japhet, the eponymus of the Greeks, was born obscure, the son of an old woman.

according to the Persians, he was the son of the Elder Dáráb (Darius Codomannus of the Kayanian or Second dynasty), by a daughter of Phillip of Macedon; and was brought up by his grandfather.

when Abraham and Ishmael had rebuilt the Ka’abah, they foregathered with him and Allah sent him forth against the four quarters of the earth to convert men to the faith of the Friend or to cut their throats; thus he became one of the four world-conquerors with Nimrod, Solomon and Bukht al-Nasr (Nebuchadnezzer), and he lived down two generations of men.

his Wazir was Aristú (the Greek Aristotle) and he carried a couple of flags, white and black, which made day and night for him and facilitated his conquests.

at the end of Persia, where he was invited by the people on account of the cruelty of his half-brother Darab II, he came upon two huge mountains on the same line, behind which dwelt a host of abominable pygmies, two spans high, with curious eyes, ears which served as mattresses and coverlets, huge fanged mouths, lions’ claws and hairy hindquarters. they ate men, destroyed everything, copulated in public and had swarms of children. these were Yájúj and Májúj (Gog and Magog), descendants of Japhet.

Iskander built against them the famous wall with stones cemented and riveted by iron and copper. the “Great Wall” of China, the famous bulwark against the Tartars, dates from 320 B.C.

Alexander of Macedon died in 324 B.C.

regrets.

we all have some regrets in our lives. things we shouldn’t have said or done. things we should have said or done better. friends we should have appreciated.
i feel bad that my dad didn’t live long enough to see my kids. my mum has, so its still a blessing.

i feel bad that i’m forced by circumstances to work abroad and so far away from my family. my first-born sees me for two months only in every two years. and as for my second-born, well, i’m missing out on all his milestones: first smile, first tooth, first time sitting down, first word, first time propping himself up, first time walking. by the time i’ll be going for vacation, he’ll be one year old plus, already walking and looking at me with the puzzled face of “who the hell are you and why is my big sister all over you?”

i don’t regret marrying and starting a family late like i did. God’s time is the best and i suppose i was waiting for my soulmate to come into my life.

oh well, tech is forever changing and i’m always hard-pressed to keep up with it. i was just trying out my Microsoft Word App because i love writing when i have the time and sharing my thoughts and opinions.

the mythical Major Martin: the man who never was.

at 0430 hours on the misty morning of 30th April 1943, the British subamarine, 

HMS Seraph, surfaced a mile off the mouth of the Huelva river on Spain’s south coast. crewmen struggled to bring on deck a bulky container marked ‘optical instruments’.

they opened it, and took a man’s body from the dry ice preservative.

an inflatable lifejacket was strapped to it and blown up.

then the body gently slid into the sea, followed by a rubber dinghy and paddles.

the submarine submerged.

the final step had been taken in the curious case of the Man Who Never Was.
a fisherman found the body later the same morning, and handed it over to a Spanish naval patrol.

the British embassy in Madrid was informed of the tragic discovery, and given the personal effects of Royal Marine Major William Martin. they included an identity card Number 148228, £8 in notes, 5s 10d (29p) in coins, cigarettes, matches, a bunch of keys, two theatre ticket stubs and a receipt for a six-night stay at the Naval and Military Club in London’s Piccadilly.
his pockets also contained two letters from a fiancee, a snapshot of her, and a bill for £53 for an engagement ring.

there was a letter from her father in North Wales, less enthusiastic about the forthcoming marriage, a letter from Lloyds Bank demanding prompt action over a £79 overdraft and a note from some solicitors, confirming instructions for a will.
the embassy accepted the belongings while the body of Major Martin was buried with full military honours at Huelva.

but a few days later British diplomats made alarmed protests to their officially neutral Spanish hosts.

a vital attache case Major Martin had been carrying was missing.

the Spanish government promised to investigate.

on 13th May the case was returned.

inside were important messages addressed to General Alexander, commander of the Eighth Army, revealing Allied plans to attack Cape Araxos in Greece, and to General Eisenhower and Sir Andrew Cunningham, Admiral of the Fleet.

in the latter two letters, Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten mentioned future campaigns and joked about sardines – a veiled reference to an assault in Sardinia.
in London, spy chiefs and scientists carefully examined the envelopes containing the messages.

they discovered they had been opened. through friends in Spain, the Nazis had learned the next target of the Allied armies now in North Africa.

or had they?

the German High Command were convinced they had.

forces were scattered in Greece and Sardinia to suprise the invaders.

and when the full might of the Allies smashed ashore in Sicily on 10th July, only one Italian and two German divisions were waiting.

losses on the beaches were light, and a path into Europe had been carved out quickly and efficiently.
Sir Winston Churchill had said, “anybody but a damn fool” would expect the attack to be in Sicily.

the mythical Major Martin made fools of the Germans.

his mission to North Africa, and the supposed plane crash which deposited his body off Spain, were all figments of intelligence imagination.

the meticulously detailed ploy had worked to perfection.

but even in their moment of triumph, British spymasters kept their promise to the heartbroken parents who courageously gave permission for the body of their 30 – year old son, a civilian who had died of pneumonia, to be used in the scheme.

his identity has never been released.

counting off the days.

working abroad has some perks, i’ll concede that.

but the cons far outweigh the pros, in my opinion.

i was there when my first born entered this world; a beautiful daughter.

my world shifted for a moment on its axis; i was a dad.

i’ve always loved kids and all those years of toting around cousins, nephews and nieces and finally, i had a baby of my own.

it was a learning experience for me.

learning how to gently carry this bundle of joy and how to cradle her head, which seemed to roll all over like it was on a ball bearing.

learning how to change a nastily radioactive diaper.

learning how to burp her after she fed, and anticipating the eruption of milk that came with it.

learning how to soothe her when she decided she wanted to exercise her lungs and oh yeah, Azzurah was a screamer. she once cried at the top of her voice for two hours non-stop, a feat that even Chester Bennington would be hard-put to best.

i was there for the first tooth and the first time to sit down on her own.

i never crawled, so i’m told. i went from propping myself up to tottering on my feet and Azzurah faithfully followed the trend.

i can still remember my wife’s excited phonecall when i’d gone to town for some chores; “Baibe, she’s walking, AZZURAH IS WALKING!”

i was there for most of my daughter’s milestones.

unfortunately, i had to go seek work abroad when she was one and a half years old.

she’d just started stringing words together by then.

i knew there was a downside of working away from your family when i came for vacation two year later.

my daughter, the apple of my eye and our everything, didn’t recognize me at all.

i spent that vacation rebonding with her and rebuilding that precious father-daughter relationship.

i know how important it is because its on the basis of that relationship that will determine the dynamics of her relationship with men.

i will be the yardstick of comparison she’ll be using to calibrate those relationships.

and here i am, back abroad again, and now, our second born, a son, has entered this world and i wasn’t there for him.

sure, his mum is there and she’ll do an excellent job, as always, of raising him, but it means that i’ll have missed all the major milestones when i go for vacation.

i’ll be meeting him for the first time and he’ll be meeting the person behind the voice and video-calls for the first time, too.

i don’t know how that meeting will turn out, but if its going to be like the one i had with my daughter, everything will turn out just fine.

i can’t wait for the day to come, insha’allah.

after all, everything’s in God’s hands.

strike three, i explode!

​i’m a jovial guy with charming manners, an out-of-whack sense of humor and an endless supply of jokes.

i can always see a humorous thing in every situation.

most of the times.

but i do have a bad temper when it is aroused and i do like to be given space and a wide berth when i’m in a foul mood because i will not be held responsible for what i say or do.

those who are my intimates know the warning signs: short, rapid breathing, low-pitched voice, terse and short replies, looks that are more glares than thoughtful stares and when i’m about to blow my top off, an ominous silence.

to those who don’t know me very well, when they come across me when i’m in that mood, i usually tell them; “i’m in a bad mood right now. please leave me alone.”

and just in case you’re thinking i’m a sociopath, you should try walking into my shoes and be in my situation, before you go off half-cocked about me, when you really don’t know what’s going on.

18 hour work days, most days of the week.

fatigue that only goes away for a few hours when you’re sleeping, and comes back with a vengeance when you’re awake.

constant tension from driving in a highway with some people who make sudden stops, don’t signal when they turn, and generally behave like they’ve never fully made the transition from camels to cars.

welcome to Saudi Arabia.

then there’s the situation at home in Kenya which is keeping me tense.

doctors are on strike for the 74th day.

no, i’m not a doctor, but i did leave behind people who need a doctor’s attention, one of whom is past her Due Date and can’t seem to find a hospital where they can induce labor because there might be complications and yeah, you got it; the doctors are on strike.

now, i’m here in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia’s capital city), parked somewhere waiting for my madam to emerge from a coffee restaurant and chatting with some fellow drivers, when one of them hurriedly begins to go away.

when i ask what the matter is, all i can get is “the Haiya are coming. its Dhuhur prayer time.”

for those not in the know, the General Presidency of the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vices (abbreviated CPVPV; Arabic: هيئة الأمر بالمعروف و النهي عن المنكر ‎‎), also informally referred to as Hai’a, is the Saudi Arabian government agency employing “religious police” or Mutaween (مطوعين), to enforce Sharia Law within that Islamic nation.

the number of police is estimated at 3,500 – 4,000.

members patrol the streets enforcing dress codes, strict separation of men and women, salat prayer by Muslims during prayer times, and other behavior it believes to be commanded by Islam.

they are known for having full beards (sometimes henna-dyed) and for wearing their headscarves (ghutrah or shemagh) loose without an agal—they often wear a besht as well—and for often coming from Saudi Arabia’s lower classes.

i know my Islam very well, having studied Fiqhi and other subjects in madrassah from the age of three until i reached puberty.

when you go to the mosque to pray, you’re praying for your soul’s benefit, not anybody else.

that guy who is forcing you to go pray won’t be admitted to paradise on the strength of your prayers.

neither will he be consigned to hell because of your sins.

i know where the mosque is, but i’m sitting where i am, because if my madam comes out, doesn’t see me, doesn’t see the car, calls me and starts yelling at my tardiness, will that Muttawa guy be there with me when i’m having my head handed to me?

i already have work tension and home tension and i’m supposed to run away like i’ve committed some crime when i’m within my rights?

no. i continued sitting there and stared at the Hai’ya SUV through my Christian Dior sunglasses as it came towards me, praying that it would stop and one of them would berate me so that i could get an excuse to vent my spleen on somebody.

but they didn’t. they stopped for a moment and one of them looked at me, sitting there, staring at them, not running to get inside my car.

just sitting there.

and they wisely left me alone.

when my dander is up, i stand my ground and take on all comers.

i DO have an attitude and i DO know how to use it.