Shaking off the 'leave' hangover :)

"The challenge of being employed, in my perspective, is that it is a cage. It is cyclic; you get a hang of what it is that you need to do. And what you need to achieve, it becomes comfortable, a routine you whine about, but yet too afraid to leave. I guess those who really live life, are the ones who dare to do the things we all dream about. I have been thinking a lot lately about skydiving and learning the Argentinean Tango."--Rose Ondeng

Sorry for the intermittent postings over the past two months. I have been on leave. But now, the hiatus is over and I am right back.
For some reason, after the promulgation frenzy, I just went off newspapers and stuck to the good old radio and, sometimes, TV. But it is sad that when I read the newspaper, after all that time, it’s like the politics hasn’t changed. It all sounds “background” to me.
It is stuck right where I left it: the politics of who sit in what committee; the International Criminal Court and Kenya’s Government stand-off; the noise about vetting of judges, and now, also the choice of a government whip.
Sometimes, it’s just interesting to watch news. At other times, it is depressing. And to any newsman (and woman) who wants to “off” his mind, please, keep of news.
You might just end up watching a dark, famished, hungry Turkana woman slaughtering a dog (and this is not Korea or China), skinning it and roasting the meet, so that her children have something to eat. All these happening because the World Food Programme has some terrible political misunderstanding with the Red Cross and therefore wants Action Aid to distribute relief food.
The government and local politicians want the Red Cross. There is food, plenty of it in the silos, but then, its distribution is zilch.
Caught in these petty life-threatening and simply bad politics, the hungry have to eat. Something has to be in the stomach, and if the cattle and goats aren’t there, well, then, a dog isn’t a far-fetched option.
Now that’s how depressing it can get.
Then you get a revelation that a person voted in overwhelmingly by his constituents was once a jailbird. And this comes shortly after the guy’s bodyguards assault a radio dj. Damn!
Then you hear that the National Hospital Insurance Fund has won a case to continue taxing me 2.4 per cent of my income for “outpatient treatment”. Then there’s some agency fee to the Kenya Union of Journalists’, this after paying Sh2,000 for annual accreditation by the Media Council. Darn!
And now it’s back to Parliament to listen to the politicians speak. Ouch! Let them speak, we’ll listen. I just hope they have some sense to add value to the debate.
Don’t get depressed. The new Constitution, we told people, heralded a new beginning. We can’t expect the goodies in one day, we said. Fine. Tutajivuna kuwa wakenya licha ya hayo yote. Au sio?