How about everyone aborting the very idea of having an abortion?

JUSPER MOINDI asserts that something ought to be done about abortion. And fast.

In my daily scrutiny on the female gender at close quarters, I am always compelled to digest and accept things the way they are. I know we all have our own flaws that might have placed the cat amongst the pigeons, but to be precise with some ladies, their asset column has done so badly on their balance sheet. You may choose to be at odds with me, but that’s welcome.

Pick my brains on this and I will tell you where the dog died.

Mark you; I have no personal vendetta against the female gender and am not cultivating the sense of bigotry here. Mine is to undress and cascade their most vociferous antics. So please, put this in your pipe and smoke it.

When I tell people of this day and age that life nowadays is a journey to Damascus with thorny passages and contrived corridors, most of them say that my presumption is for the birds.

Instead of being vigilant of the perils imposed therein, they choose to move at a different orbital. You don’t need a degree or a certificate to understand this.

In your daily rounds, you must have seen a good number of full-fledged chaps and ladies in the jam-packed pleasure of life. What if their mothers decided to destroy them in utero, robbing them of all their experiences in this world? 

I know if I try to run this flag of abortion up the flagpole, most ladies will not salute to it. I know most of them will not embrace abortion but paradoxically, if you go to their circles, abortion stories will always hit the headlines.

Most ladies have opted to set sail on the ocean of love but alas, most of them have been wasted in the desert! Their dignity has been discolored in the sea of nameless faces of men who knock at their door of love, take advantage of the fruits falling from that ‘tree’, and then end up leaving them in blues.

A little bird was telling me that, if you bump into a lady who has gone through campus life and has not done an abortion or stewed in her own juice of unwanted pregnancy, then that lady deserves a cookie.

With due compliance, give credits to that lady because, while others are sketchily “opening legs” and busy doing abortions, she has chosen to tack in her deeds, nature the pregnancy and take care of the child.

The other day, a fully-grown fetus covered with a polythene bag was found dead in the dustbin near the female hostels in Moi University. I was engrossed with the way people acutely lamented on this abysmal skirmish of an innocent creature.

All and sundry squeezed out their ire against this “callous ghost” that killed an infant, and as if that was not enough, she chose to throw him in a dustbin. Probably, even the lady who did it, under false pretenses, was remorseful to the “Jezebel” that robbed the life of that innocent child.

Folks, it’s ill-fated that an archetypal lady, a prospective wife and mother, can choose to be that heartless and cold blooded. I’m afraid, if crocodiles decide to eat their own eggs, what would they do to the flesh of a frog?

Indeed, a budding criminal that has really harvested gigantic proportions, is the frequency of abortions. It’s typical for people to cohabit. No strings attached. I know people like sex and it is a basic need to some. But why can’t we be wary of the dangers tagged therein and own responsibility when the rain falls? Day in day out, abortion stories make the headlines.

At least you will hear it daily that an idiot somewhere has done antenatal murder. Why should you elect to destroy the life of thousandth-of-an-ounce embryo? Ladies, I loathe on the type of culture that we are cultivating.

Well, to some extent, I can give ladies a benefit of doubt. There is no woman who wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or Porsche! She wants an abortion as an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg. She wants an abortion because she has no option especially when “her man” fails to be responsible of the pregnancy.

The other day, a lady friend attacked me that ladies don’t get pregnant miraculously. They don’t get pregnant through the Holy Spirit. That only happened to Mary, the mother of Jesus. It’s the men who make them pregnant and then ignore to take responsibility.

Well, that is logical. If men were equally at risk from this condition, if they knew that their bellies might swell as if they were suffering from end-stage cirrhosis, if they knew that they would have to go nearly a year without a stiff drink, a cigarette or even an aspirin, if they knew that they would be subject to fainting spells and unable to fight their way onto the commuter trains, then am surefire that unwanted pregnancy would be classified as sexually transmitted disease and abortions would be no more controversial than emergency appendectomies.

The day I saw the "error" in "terror"

ABU OKARI describes a moment in Nairobi that set his mind rolling on matters of dying for 72 virgins, ethnic profiling and the terrorism question

I couldn’t help admiring the man’s guts.

He approached the matatu slowly. It was parked, waiting for people headed to Nanyuki. We had taken our seats but were waiting outside for it to fill up. The streets were busy and it felt like everybody was travelling at once. And downtown Nairobi is the epicentre on upcountry travel. We were at Tearoom.

His beard was dyed light orange, the hue of the sky when the sun is on its very final moves down the horizon. He wore a fairly decent pair of trousers, a shirt and a half coat that is very liked among the Somali community, at least the ones that I see.

He approached the kange and the driver who stood at the front of the matatu, and had a chat with then.  Then he approached the matatu, a laminated document at heart.

He said his name after a hello. I didn’t get it, I was interested in the story, the details.

 “I am a refugee from Somalia,” he continued, raising his laminated document. “This is from the UNHCR and the Kenyan government, proof of my refugee status. And these here”, he turned the document over, there were black and white photos of ladies in hijab, “are my daughters”.

“We have no eaten in three days because we cannot come out as the government wants to send us back.” He paused, I think for effect.

I wondered where he had done this severally. Although he broke sentences unexpectedly, and picked up from anywhere, he was pretty eloquent and comfortable in his little speech. His English was accented in the way Kenyan comedians like to stereotype the way Somalis speaks, “r” sounds showed up where you never expected them and he sounded as though the speaking was forced, but not anybody.

“If you have anything, maybe a hundred shillings, or fifty shillings to help me buy unga for my family, God will bless you.” He paused. The inside of the matatu was quiet for a while.

Will the reaction of the people in the matatu mirror what I had heard expressed elsewhere? I wondered.

At one point, I willed him to walk away before someone said something nasty.  I looked and waited. Then someone at the back seat thrust his arm forward with a hundred shillings.

I was surprised. But soon, more hands replicated the act, a hundred shillings here, and fifty shillings there. He stuffed them into his pocket.

“Thank you very much.” He said. The “r” in very vibrated and stretched a bit. “Have a happy Easter.” He added before walking away. I was awed by the people’s act. But being in Nairobi, I asked myself whether whatever the guy had said was true.

But it didn’t matter.  Whatever his motive, the outcome of the whole interaction said a lot about our society — that we are a surprising people who cannot be defined by one category. I was sure my Easter weekend was going to be happy, surprising and undefined.

The whole episode got me thinking how the blogosphere scares me, especially when the country breaks into two parts over an issue. Tribalism disguised as politics is one of those keg powder issues, another one that has come up recently is religion. From the moments the first shots are fired, there is no lull, human being after human takes to the blogosphere to express their feelings.

Some of them are ridiculous and callous. Take the recent crackdown on illegal immigrants in Eastleigh and a few other parts of the country. The government said it was looking for terrorists. Others, especially the Somali community and the Muslim community felt they were being targeted and profiled. And they made their thoughts known, the leaders on mainstream media, and the rest on social media.

And this is where the hot mess was. How people exchanged insults! How they spewed forth filth! How they let it be known what they thought of the other! 

Others made light of others beliefs. Of particular interest was the commonly used line that one of the gifts of those people who die for Islam is a gift of 72 virgins in Jannah. Also, the question of being fully Kenyan (sic) or half Kenyan (sic) was widely discussed, but not nicely. 

On several occasions, I asked myself what if some people act on these feelings. I heard stories (unconfirmed) of people alighting form matatus just because someone in Muslim garb boarded it. Then I realized people’s thoughts had moved into feelings, and wondered if this was a common thing. The blogosphere makes it sound like people are about to pounce on each other.

That is why, my heart momentarily stopped when I saw the daring man over the Easter weekend.