Sunday, November 01, 2009

Of The Grapevine & Stereotypes!

For more than two weeks now, i have featured a particular CD on my player. I compiled this one straight from the Internet and it has musical greats like Phil Colin's,Mike and the Mechanics and of course Teddy pendergrass. This is meant to tell you what kind of music to get me for a birthday or something for that matter and my birthday is not coming up anytime soon,mine happens to occur when the Christmas haste is yet to fizzle out.If you rush to me with Banjuka then you are as good as a lemon or toast if you like.

The most difficult part of blogging is to settle on a pickup paragraph to accentuate the real story and even harder is for me to decide on telling you what i would like for a birthday gift and worse still, the music i have been listening to. But its not really about the music,its how authentic we men can become in what we want.Most of this things we pretend to like have been here before some of us even new how to clear our noses but here we are pretending to be so elite and informed that we can now afford to state what we want but left on our own we have nothing for others to take from us,we are just snitches who caboodle for the show part of it.Its even worse we are Kenyans.

Firstly a grapevine is an unofficial news source,normally with a tinge of truth within itslef.It is very rare of me to blog on this day but it is because i have found myself with lots of free time and an urgent email to do. The mailing list has also had to change because i noticed i have lost my readership.How mean can you guys be,not a comment from you folks. Its one thing to write and indeed another to know someone read what you wrote and tried to reason with you. But wait a moment, i am not by any means trying to railroad you folks to read,am trying to make the best of my foolish but humorous side of life.I can't pretend to be a renown writer or something like that,coz we have many more before and after ourselves.Towards that end, i want to seek your attention in matters regarding stereotypes. So much has been said f us as individuals and as ethnic blocks.So today that informs my choice to delve into this stereotype thingy. I won't be able to finish them all but i will poke at one or two.

You have heard about this and that grouping of people being said to believe in in this or that myth.But many a times the opposite is true.What is said of that group is not necessarily true,its normally cheap pub street or idle gossip and that's it.But its very easy to gainsay the effect of some of this falsehoods peddled around,indeed they have influenced many a decision we make in our daily lives and probably to our own detriments.Take for instance my tribes men who are said to be night runners!Which woman would want to date a bloke whose clansmen are night runners? You guess clicks with mine,none.But since the last time i checked my mother sleeps from dusk to dawn and in some instances she oversleeps.I have heard some silly and frivolous decisions taken by our sisters from elsewhere in this land to the effect that they can't marry blokes from our clan simply because of the said myth about night running.Then one question begs if the guy you are marrying or dating is a night runner?

But not all of this are false by the way, how else would you explain the large number of my tribesmen marrying from yonder in Taita hills. The reasons are compounded by some of this stereotypes. For instance in our clan still,it is said that if your mother in law for some unknown reason showed up at your place and sneaked into your bedroom and relieved the contents of her rumens on your bed then that marriage is as good as dead and you will probably never find a steady man or marriage in your life and this is the reason most men from my area have shunned visitations from their mothers.They prefer to visit the parents upcountry and that ends there.For some reason if they don't find their son's choice of wife palatable,they deliberately take that action.To some extent i can confirm this to be true given the fact that i have seen living examples.I will hasten to add that this ain't meant to scare you in any way or manner but just so you know.In fact the men from our clan are rumoured to be the best in all facets of life except of course public relations.Otherwise horizontally,physically geographically they are fit as a fiddle can be.

Then we have our cousins from the central. This is one group that has everything going for them except horizontally.Let me expeditiously exhaust gender m from central Kenya.Firstly the grapevine has it that in whichever capacity they must keep a mistress or a concubine at the very least.It is also said that they rate poorly in matters horizontal,they are poor dancers and that slightly over three quarters of their thought process is mired in matters financial.Then of course the drill goes on about their dressing which to me is rubbish basically.Flip over to gender F from central Kenya. They too like their brothers rate poorly in matters horizontal but this has yet to be proved given their propensity to lie in that position first.In fact one crude blogger questioned why it is majority of them that work as CSWs.It is an embarrassing thing to think of them that way given that i have many lady friends from that part.I personally dismiss it as a matter of making personal choices and making the best of them.It is also said of them have high affinity for matters financial which is a good thing if you ask me,in fact it annoying that their cousins from clan are doughnuts when it comes to looking for their own dime and never mind they just discovered the biker,yes that undergarment that replaced the petticoat.You make the terrible but regrettable mistake of dating anyone of them and the first present she might desire from you is a biker.

A peep back to the lady cousins from central Kenya also reveals another confounding false but seemingly true stereotype.The grapevine alleges that it is categorical and mandatory for the lady cousins from Central Kenya to go horizontal with their fathers before and in marriage. Apparently this is aimed at blessing the marriage.I have to cases in mind and i will share.The first one is a former nominated MP who is rumoured to have been doing this with her father over and over until her mother couldn't handle it and she committed suicide.The former MP is a fly woman with all the looks that might make a Nigerian transfer his property to her name.I wont give much detail for very obvious reason but if you are lucky enough to meet me i can share the story.Another living example is told by another living example a former MP from a distant constituency in my area of origin.While he was a departmental head at the University of Nairobi,he together with a brother of mine went to pick his date only for the date to decline because her mother was not home and that she was taking care of daddy.Offers to pick her up later were flatly declined even though the dad was not sick,as it were it later emerged she was pregnant of her dads input horizontally. The last one is told of this man i happen to know that dint understand why his father in law kept visiting at very odd days and hours during the day.The wife could also rush home at this odd hours and as fate could make it happen,he caught them in the act.The wife confessed it was ritualistic.What would you have done?

All this are stereotypes and some are amazingly true but equally shocking.So today i have given you a sample from two Bantu groupings that are more or less alternating in mannerisms and somewhat close.As usual,i will save the other forty or so tribes or is it stereotypes for another day.Am tired for now and this is the beauty of story telling,you can stop it anywhere of course in the name of suspense a very strong tool in drama am told.Catch you another day! kindly Ignore the errors herein!