An American B-29 bomber drops a deadly atomic payload on a Japanese port city dotted with military installations, ultimately killing 140,000 people(August 6, 1945: Hiroshima), Kenya loses one of its founding fathers (August 22, 1978: Jomo Kenyatta), terrorists detonate a bomb in the US Embassy in Nairobi causing the deaths of 218 innocent people and injuring thousands of others (August 7th 1998).

August is regarded by many as a dark month shrouded by death, misery and tragedy but it is also a cool month, an interesting month with some especially hip holidays, personal favorites being Grab Some Nuts Day(pun intended), International Beer Day – First Friday in August and International Hangover Day (click here for more on august holidays). Most importantly it is also the month the first black leader of the free world was born, Barrack Hussein Obama, 44^th President of the United States of America.

It’s been a while since I posted anything, I have been trying to put something down for a while now,  but I always get distracted, something important is always in the way or I always end up feeling sleepy, ok, maybe both.  So I decided to set a milestone, a post for my birthday, a gift of sorts to self, a commemorative article, a marker for the beginning of a New Year.

See, writing as a hobby is hard, it requires so much to sit and pen down something substantive, fun, something readable. It requires patience, the ability of the mind to bear the stillness of the body, it requires the right mood, the right attire –(sigh) I can never do any writing in jeans or tight socks- I can also never do any writing after lunch, there’s something uninspiring about a full stomach, ooh, also the right music goes a long way in setting the right mood- I write this while listening to South Africa’s Nasty C, Strings and Bling Album.

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August 9^th, I just turned 22, forever a Leo. There was no party for my birthday, it was a normal working day, only afterwards I passed through my favorite bar and ordered a double from the top whiskey shelf served neat, raised my glass to a stranger at the end of the counter, closed my eyes, and as the alcohol burnt down my throat, a rich taste remained at the back of my tongue and with that I opened my eyes and noted that the hand on my age clock had turned, my first drink as a 22 year old.

21 has generally been a good year for me, a lot of lessons learnt, a lot of experiences gained, met some really awesome people and made a few positive strides in my life. I have learnt that above all mental health supersedes physical health, I have learnt to walk away from situation that do not make me happy anymore, I have learnt that I need to be more selfish with my me time.

I have also gained a lot of weight (not and an achievement, haha all I had to do was sit and eat.)  21 taught me that whenever life hand me lemons, I can always make lemonade (literally bought lemons and made lemonade ).

21 might not seem like such a life defining age(it actually isn’t) but it was the year  I left school, a ‘fully-fledged light-weight adult’ equipped with nothing else but a university degree and an ambition the size of Mount Everest- ready to face the world, ready to make my first mark in the world, ready to challenge the notion that millennial are a lazy bunch of entitled degenerates.

It was a challenging year with both highs and lows.

The best part of the past year is that I realized I could write, rather  someone told me I could and that I should believe that I can, of which I did. Writing is about insecurity, finding them, getting to know them, overcoming them. Writing helps one discover how huge their ego is- I  once sent an article to a friend and they sent it back to me with highlighted sections, cancelled out words and side notes and the subject on the email read ‘you can do better’, I proceeded to read the recommendations with such disdain, anyway, what do they know?,, I mean, I can take grammatical and punctuation errors but suggesting I should have said more, that just ain’t right . But it’s only a fool who doesn’t accept corrections, so I replied the email with noted and a meager ‘thank you and God Bless You’. I have come to realize that I have this huge need for validation which isn’t healthy at all, but don’t we all? Is it not satisfying to hear someone praise your work? Whoever says otherwise is a liar.I hear it comes with the age.

21 helped me realize that there is a lot that goes into making a man and I am still molding, the shoes still don’t fit right but the feet are still growing. It is said that manhood is about what breaks us and that we are all broken. It is about realizing ones faults and working towards becoming a better person, a better man.

On the issue of gifts, all I got this birthday was the gift of life, a mini Bluetooth speaker I ordered from Jumia  and a hearty birthday wishes message from my mom.

22, I’m Not hanging around people who call me Kennedy anymore.

22, I crave change, I crave betterment of self, and life’s too short to be slacking off.

Note to self: Go back to school and Graduate

22 is going to be good year.

I wish to stop here, the article has started becoming lethargic, there’s only so much one can say about a 22^nd birthday.

To all my acquaintances and friends who maybe thought I was younger or older, well I am not going to apologize for your ignorance, all you had to do was ask .

Time is wind guys 

My web journal just turned a month old last week with 11 published articles. I know this might not be much of an achievement but I just want it out there, for we do not celebrate our kids birthdays when they get to understand the concept of time, we celebrate them when they are too young to have cake let alone understand what it means to be older, like this journal here-coming of age.

To  immortalize this, I decided to write about a town that influenced me to start this journey, a city which is a vacation spot for many people, a city that has become my second home, a city that most people have misconceptions about, a city rich in cultural and religious diversity, Kenya’s real city under the sun, Mombasa.

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Let’s say you save up some money and decide to head down to coasto because the doctor said you need a vacation to relax since all the worrying and pressure from life is slowly killing you. So you pack up a suitcase and a duffle bag, call all your friends and let them know you are not going to be around for a week, you check in with the neighbor you trust and tell them to check up on your house while you’re away and promise to bring them coconuts from Mombasa because some Nairobians are just fascinated by them. Since as Mombasa is neither Narok nor Kariandusi, you decide you have to get to Mombasa in the right way- by train, you have to experience the hyped Madaraka Express. So you close up your quarters and uber to Syokimau SGR Terminus with your luggage and board your afternoon train to the sandy beaches. The journey is just surreal, despite the fact that you chose to ride the economy class, you get to experience the SGR puffery, you are not really a wildlife and green scenery person so you pull out your laptop and Google fun activities to do while in Mombasa, thousands of pages pop up and you spend the rest of the journey day dreaming. Long story, short, you get to Mombasa and check in to your hotel, the next couple of days you visit the beaches, you get to know the difference between south coast and north coast, you eat native Swahili dishes and you also get to see beautiful Swahili and Arab women who make you question your decision to quit the gym.

You get to Explore Mombasa’s Old Town, Visit Fort Jesus, Enjoy Nature at Its Peak at Haller Park, Photograph the Mombasa Tusks & Take a Stroll in the Nearby Park, Spend an Afternoon at Mama Ngina Drive, Relax on Pirates Beach and Enjoy Fresh Seafood, Go For a Boat Ride at Tudor Water-Sports and Restaurant, Take a Ferry Ride, Go Cruising in a Tamarind Dhow, Enjoy Great Food in a Fabulous Setting of The Moorings, Enjoy a Cocktail Drink at Forty Thieves Beach Bar. (Things to Do in Mombasa)

And when it finally time to go back home you leave with tales of praise and a thousand-pictures photo album  for instagram and facebook, (haha) and you don’t forget a couple of coconuts for your neighbour and watchman. For the next two weeks no one can stop you from talking about the marvels of Mombasa, you even develop a fake Swahili accents to authenticate your tales.

That’s Mombasa for a domestic tourist.

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Scenario two

You just got transferred from Nairobi to the coastal town for work, the notice comes in on Friday afternoon and you’re expected to report to work in Mombasa on Monday at Eight in the morning, You quickly go back home and pack up your house, you call your relative who comes to pick all your household items to store them for you until you settle down. You pack your clothes and by now you have already called your relative who lives in Mombasa and asked them if you could stay with them for a while you find your footing. You spend your Saturday finalizing matters  pending in Nairobi(i.e. documents, clearing out of your apartment etc.) and book a morning bus to Mombasa for Sunday. Sunday comes and you board the bus at 9 which leaves two hours later because very few travel to Mombasa during the day, let alone on Sunday. People will always tell you how great Mombasa is but they will never emphasize how long and lethargic the journey is especially. By grace you safely get there 10 hours later due to some road construction. The relative picks you from the bus terminus,drives you to their home and helps you settle in, after a few words you resign for the night  in readiness for a new life ahead .

And that is how you start your life in there.

When you move to Mombasa, everyone you know back in Nairobi or whatever the place you came from everyone starts asking whether you visit the beach every day, they imagine you live and work right next to the ocean, they think that both your office or bedroom window overlooks the majestic ocean, They also imagine you eat biryani every day and that you are accompanied by beautiful hijab-clad swahili women wherever you go. They wonder if the stories about ‘mapepo ya baharini’ are true (haha I also wonder about this).

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Well, some might be this lucky to live like that but for most residents it’s harder. After the excitement dies down, which is usually after a month, swimming in the gasping waves stops floating your boat, the suns heat no longer radiates against your skin, it burns. On days that you visit the beach, you do not walk along it, you do not go and play in the sand, rather you sit in the car or under a palm tree watching the mesmeric beauty of the ocean, realizing that it is its own master, kindling its own unfinished symphony and that the wind is the midwife of the seas, serving a different master. Coastal dishes are reserved for weekends only.

The beauty remains but you also start to see the scars, traffic is horrible in Mombasa, Matatus are very uncomfortable, good houses for rent are rare, temperatures are unbearable  before you get used to the heat and the smell is just horrible in some parts. But that’s what makes it what it is, it gives it character.

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When I moved here, I realized I had a lot of time on my hands but that is after binge-visiting all the nice places, I needed to find something to do during my free time, so after a couple of trials and errors (six months)I decided to settle on this.

Coming Of Age

When I started this small blog I had promised myself an article a day. The first few days were easy, ideas were running wild in my brain- you know!, excitement was at an all-time high, I could dish out even two articles in a day but then  life happened, my creative juices run low, the articles became fewer and fewer, I got busy – or  rather I use my work as an excuse. It has been days ever since I did an article and my baby is hungry so I did what any smart man would do, I reached out to a long-time friend, she is always hinting she writes and asked her to do an article for my blog.

For her like it is for me, writing is a way of expression, some people scream, some people go online and become activists, some sing, some book a flight to Malindi for sky diving, some even change their eating  habits to those of a rabbit but for people like us , we pick a pen and paper or open up a word application and get down to business, pouring our hearts and souls, never reading through our materials after we are done- because our clerical errors show how much our hearts were bleeding as we wrote. Most closeted writers write because it’s the only way to make sense of this senseless and violent world, some write because it feels safer to write than to talk, some like me write to ease the noise in their heads.

Writing is an art, you see, and like any form of art there are different styles to it and every style comes with its own set of critics and fans but at the end of the day what matters is if the creator/ author really feels that their work is good enough to them, furthermore its 2018, it’s very hard to fully satisfy anyone.

Well, (drum rolls) join me to welcome another budding writer, (also I hear it’s her first time sharing any of her original literal material so be polite, no misbehaving, no?

Remember when you were young? You thought that life would be a smooth ride, you had this perception about life that you would go to high school then campus and after that you would start working… You had no idea what awaited you on the outside world. Innocently, you depended on your parents for everything. You would wait for your mum to bath you, dress you and maybe feed you of which you would fall asleep before you even finished your meal and you would be taken to bed.

You would get angry if you found no food in the house or if they prepared what you didn’t want to take for dinner on that particular day. You never thought of the struggles they had gone through to even put that food on the table for you. You never had the time to even think of such a thing right?

Being a kid is such a fun stage, you did not have to worry about anything. You did not have to worry about how your day will be, what to eat or what to put on. The only thing that would probably stress you is that friend who threatened you just because you refused to share your “chapatis and “beans” the previous day, well, you would know how special this meal was especially if you attended any public school.

You remember that first day that you stepped in a public school well having coming from a private school it would be hard for you to adopt here.you would understand me if you happened to go to a public school…..

Now you are all grown and you are now insecure, insecure of your dark thoughts and your ego. You know have to work for yourself and believe that you are good enough ‘why do they always have to wake up this early for work? ‘This is the question you would ask yourself while you were young right? Well, you do not need an answer for it now. You know that life awaits you, you have to make it or make it.

You’ve now tasted life outside school, you now understand what it means to be broke, heartbroken and what life is all about really…

 The End

 Signed Margaret Kimani

Well, like most millennials she decided to do her article at the last minute that’s why it a little over five words, after all, (British accent) procrastination never hurt anyone, ei?  (rolls eyes).  Well, dear guest writer I felt like you had a lot to say were it not for the fact that you were in such a hurry to submit your work two hours after said deadline also you now have an audience, might not be many,  but we all start from somewhere don’t we?

Hip-hop is a musical genre that started from humble New York cities to become a worldwide phenomenon racking over hundreds of millions of dollars yearly worldwide. Most people attribute hip-hop to rapping (rhythmical delivery of vocals paired with a soundtrack) but hip-hop itself is an embodiment of an entire subculture which includes elements of fashion, lifestyle, rapping, table-turning, dancing, graffiti’s etc.

I set out to write about a young hiphop rapper who is no longer with us, XXXTENTACION, a 20 year old Florida based rapper who landed his first Biilboard No.1 album with little promotion, minimal press, no mainstream hit single and serious felony abuse accusations hanging over his head, for those who do not know who this is then  you’re either too old or you do not listen to the same music I do. Here’s a sample mix

About a week ago when the hashtag #ripxxxtentacion emerged on my twitter feed I could not place a face to the name. I usually stream my radio shows from mixcloud and every once in a while I will shazam a nice song, one day it happened to be a song from the rapper. I googled the name and his name was included with other new-age, famous sound-cloud rappers, most of whom I listen to on occasion (lil pump and other lil’s).

So I listened to his albums and mix and this is what I came up with:

Yes, from those wondering, he was shot, robbed of life and yes he lived a controversial life but that is never a warrant for the untimely and cruel way he went.

For those who like dark trap type of music, xxxtentacion album -? is a masterpiece. I particularly recommend ‘Sad’, ‘Hope’ and ‘Moonlight’

When listening to this album, you need to understand you’re dealing with a 20 year-old star who rose to fame for his distinct brand of aggressive rap.

In ‘17’ and ‘?‘  XXXTentacion  gave us a glimpse into his mind, and anyone who makes music will know that sentiment. Music bridges the gap between the things we think and the things we say. It allows others to feel some of the complex emotions we do, but is our work independent of our actions outside of it? Maybe. I don’t know, WHAT DO YOU THINK?

On “SAD!” X laments about the struggle of letting go of a loved one and the feeling of depression that follows.

He details emotions of uncertainty surrounding a specific relationship. He is insecure and heartbroken due to the fact that his girlfriend had left him, bringing about a melancholy vibe.

He also brings up suicide, a subject often discussed throughout his discography. For example, in the song “Jocelyn Flores” from his 2017 album, 17, he raps about a friend who suffered from depression and ultimately killed herself.

X had and will still continue to have a loyal fan-base, he might have come up as a villain rapper but his last albums and his topics of choice he explored are what his fans will always remember.

REST IN PEACE X

I have this file folder on my phone named CREATIVE NOISE, it contains all my half baked articles and ambitious ideas that I have not come around to finish, I got this concept from one of my favorite bloggers-Biko, the composite pit from where stories grow or sit for ages without seeing the light of day. Well, I keep this little ‘black book’ because most of my brilliant and overly ambitious ideas come to me when I’m riding in a matatu– Ok I know what you are thinking, this guy has a loose screw in the head or something- most writers will go on camping trips, hire a cottage in the woods, book a trip to Zanzibar,  just to get the creative juices running and matatus are not particularly known for their comfort or ability to inspire especially not matatus from the side of Kenya I come from- noisy, old and carelessly driven by fluent swahili speaking, miraa chewing drivers.

Well, I hate public transport as much as  any other budding-low-income-middle-class-citizen with ambition, I live for the day I will get myself at least a half decent car but since that day is neither today nor tomorrow, public transport will have to do. This hate helps me slide into some sort of creative zone, a comfort zone where I lock out everything and everyone and start narrating stories in my head, off course I will barely remember these tales once I get to where I’m going and decide to put them down on paper and this is where my folder comes in handy, just by writing down a single sentence or a short paragraph I am able to remember most of what I was thinking about, some sort of a random access memory. So every once in a while I will go through my folder looking for inspiration or stashing some more articles for a rainy day.

Last week I did not really get around to posting anything on the blog not because I did not have any creative ideas to put down but because (haha, wait for it) I was suffering from performance anxiety –no it’s not bedroom related angst for those of you wondering. Well, I just got my first comment on my blog and now every time I sit to write something, I question every sentence that materializes on my screen- they simply feel inadequate, they suffer from esteem issues. I must have started more than twenty or so paragraphs and locked them prematurely in my creative box. Look, before the comment I never knew anyone read my barely dignified journal, I always figured that people I shared the link to would just click on it and when they found out it wasn’t anything really interesting they would quickly close the browser and go back to whatever they were doing before my rude interruption – you know how you react when people share unsolicited links. Now there is evidence that someone has been reading my work, its kind of scary and exciting, I feel like I have to mind what I write. But writing is an expressive art, you put down what you think  what you feel no matter how contemporary your work is.

So, yesterday I sat down and decided I was going to start my week with an article, taking my ‘bull’ by its horns.

It is hard to identify as an individual for most millennials, anyone born between the late 80’s and 2000. Half of us suffer from failure to achieve ego identity (identity crisis), some knowingly, most unknowingly. We react to meeting different people in different ways i.e. meet me when I’m feeling insecure and you’ll end up thinking I’m a quiet person but when I’m all confident you’ll get to know another  totally different person and  then again my persona will also depend on whether I like you or not. It’s in trying to reconcile all this personalities that we get lost …we don’t know who we are … we feel fake ….we try too hard really.

We look at our parents and the generation before us and they feel stable, they seem to know who they are and we tend to think that’s how life supposed to be. In this age of emotional intelligence, most people have become aware of various mental health issues affecting us, issues that were apparently not discovered by the x generation. Childhood issues, Clinical depression, Anxiety disorders, Bipolar disorder, Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, Obsessive compulsive disorder, Post-traumatic stress disorder- these are all drawbacks of realizing our brains are much more than computer processors.

We come so far as race, we now have the freedom to choose what we want to be and there are no limits to what we can opt to become.

I started this post hoping I’d write more but I realize I haven’t really thought this through, it needs more research.

Lemmi leave this half cooked article here but  I’ll be back

Have a crazy weekend mates

You start a blog and promise yourself that you’ll be doing an article a day, well, except on the weekends(me time), you promise yourself that you’ll nurture your baby until it comes of age and is able to walk on its own. We all start somewhere don’t we? You read somewhere that perfect practice makes perfect, the first two days are easy enough, you chug articles after every few hours and post them. You don’t edit your work, at least for now.  Look, you’re not really a sucker for perfection, you want your baby to be rough around the edges, if it were a real kid you’d want it to be the easiest kid to socialize with on the playground, you want it to be the cool kid who has seen more life than the other kids. You want it to be the kid who folds his sleeves and tucks in their shoe laces instead of tying them like kids their age.

Ideas you’ve been stacking up for ages peter out of mind as soon as you grab your laptop to put something down, you blankly stare at the cursor blinking mockingly on your word document, as if taunting you to come up with something worthwhile that can fill a page. You are just from a weekend and you have not put anything down for days now yet you need content for your blog, by now you are trying to tap into all your brain’s willpower. Have you ever tried to come up with something creative? Tried to tap into your creative side and nothing comes to mind? And you just sat there, depressed, wondering if you really had a brain and why the hell would your brain disappoint you at such a scale. (Teeth grinding emoji)

An idea pops up and you try to quickly jot down a sentence hoping more of them will suddenly follow suit, three sentences down the line, you realize your article is headed nowhere and is as dry as they come, words stare at you like dry twigs, uninspired. You highlight the whole six sentences and hit the delete button on your button and continue staring at the blank word document, you can feel your baby already yawning with hunger or boredom(by the time I write this it’s had a total of zero reads/visits), you can see its ribs already showing. You must try and bang up at least 500 words for the day(talk of, keeping the bar really low)- you finally decide and write about your shortcomings of ideas, call it your writers block.

Three hundred words down the line you can feel that you’re already pushing your ideas beyond their limit, you’re nudging each word after the other hoping they form a sentence, discretely catching a glimpse of the word count at the bottom of the word application. Look, your blog is just a couple of days old, it’s still weaning, its yet to grow some teeth,  you will not allow your blog to face the same fate as your long deceased  passions,  you are willing to push this newly found love as far as you can, you try and lure more and more words into your article. Your baby is must survive, it means a lot to you.

You have been going through an identity crisis and you feel that words are the best way to express yourself, If your ‘creative well’ runs dry and your blog dies then you will have to look for another hobby and that takes time and will, the latter of which you will not have because all your past hobbies have suffered the same fate, death at infancy, low mortality rates. By now you are riding on a writers high, more like a runners high, your article has already surpassed your weak target.

It is ready to be served.

Discipline allows magic. To be a writer is to be the very best of assassins. 

“You do not sit down and write every day to force the Muse to show up, you get into the habit of writing everyday so that when she shows up, you have the maximum chance of catching her, bashing her on the head, and squeezing every last drop of that b/@#h”

Lili St Crow

If your Wednesday was a person, how would you describe her (off course mine is female)? Well let’s try mine, we’ll call her Amani, flawless light skin, slightly large forehead, a beautiful mole on her upper lip and a golden smile- the window to her soul. For as long as I have known Amani, she’s always had a way about her, she has always been an enigma, never consistent. Of her siblings, she stands out the most, yet she never seeks attention.

She will either be elated, happy as a clam or will be suffering from a bad case of depression. There is never a middle ground for her, when she is happy, she is always over the moon, you will find her in a tiny black dress with  small, white, rounded prepster collars and cap sleeves with a beautiful red bow over her braids. A delicate silver bracelet will be hanging  on her right left hand wrist while a bold feminine gold watch  hangs on her right hand one, giving her a radiant look against her skin color.  She will come home after work all exhilarated, ready to get shit done, she will have the kitchen spotless, make dinner and watch a movie over a glass of wine.

When she’s gloomy, she is terrifying to be around. She will be moping about, not caring about anything wearing nothing but a long sweatshirt and a pair of her happy ankle socks, her long braids will be trapped under a lovely black duku head scarf. The tiny black dress will hung up in the closet, locked away not being able to see the day light.

Wednesday is a bit, well, how do we put it?…… Wacky? Eccentric?

Every day before I drift off to sleep, I lay in bed thinking- thinking about what I would like to become in future, wondering what the hell life means, picturing myself in scenarios that will never happen, trying to find inner peace.

There is always that one image that sticks with me just before the subconscious takes over. Call it a hypnagogic hallucination, Wiki defines it as a threshold consciousness, during the onset of sleep. In my recurrent lucid dream, I’m lying prostrate, hidden in a thicket on top of a hill, a sniper rifle scope against my eye- Haha! I know, very juvenile. A few hundred meters away I see what I assume is my target, a black SUV, tinted windows, monster tyres. It’s parked in an alley, dimly lit, smoke escapes from one of the slightly pulled down back windows. I adjust my scope to view the car better as someone rolls down the smoking window. I hear the flick of a lighter, I hear the sound of breaking glass over the low thudding music coming from a nearby night club. Someone is opening the door of the SUV, I can hear the door hissing as it opens, I adjust my scope aiming it at the opening door and    just like that the subconscious takes over- without warning- I’m now at the mercy of my own brain.

Most days when I am Idle I often think back to these moments and wonder why my brain drifts to that particular image. I always wonder why I’m always snatched away before I can pull the trigger. I’m I even supposed to pull the trigger? I always wonder why that particular car? Why that particular alley? Why the monster tyres? Who smokes in the back seat of the SUV? The thudding music always feels so familiar but I can never figure out where the hell I have heard it before.

 I have had this image for as long as I can remember.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s a trick played on me by my mind (I’m one of those crazy people who like to think of their mind and their self-consciousness as two separate entities), because in that moment right then and there I feel like nothing can hurt me, I feel safe, maybe it’s the only way it feels I’ll let myself let go.

I'm also one of those people who like to imagine reincarnation is real- Crazy huh? Well not so much... How do you explain Déjà vu? How do you explain bad luck? I always wonder if the image is a memory from another past, Yeah I like my imagination running wild (hehe borderline madness).

Anyway these are the simple things in life that always puzzle me not corporate structures, not balance sheets and gross profits but reincarnation, Déjà vu and the subconscious 

I read somewhere that an article a day makes a better writer and improves discipline, well, here are my thoughts for the day.

You have never been a morning person, always had trouble waking up in the morning. It takes you two cups of black coffee with lots of sugar to actually feel like doing anything constructive with your life. You just moved to a coastal town, traffic is lighter here, you never have to be up earlier than half past six in the morning. You have never experienced fairer weather in your life, the sun is always out before you are up. Cool winds blow against palm trees in the warm morning sun, it feels like spring. Ravens are already up going about their morning mischief, rattling and cawing. You do not cover up while sleeping, weather is just too damn hot, clean sheets and clean pillow covers are all you need. You never switch off the television at night before you sleep, you always hit the mute button, switch off the lights, turn your back against the T.V and drift off to slumber land.

Before the alarm goes off you’ve already been up for the last thirty minutes watching the local news channels. You never read newspapers, they contain old news, yesterday’s occurrences, so you always prefer to watch the morning news shows and read the online newspapers. The alarm always signals it’s time to hit the shower, you lazily stretch before jumping from the bed, straightening out the sheets, grabbing your towel and jumping in the shower. Unlike Nairobi, there are not a lot of instant showers around, there has never been a need for them since the water is never that cold. You quickly finish your business in the bathroom-shower-dry self-groom (deodorant and lotion) and grab your clothes from the wardrobes.

Look- you are 22, it’s your first job earning decent money, a guaranteed salary so the only thing you’ll be grabbing are some ironed khaki pants, a shirt, some boxer shorts and a clean pair of socks. You never wear a vest because your dad never taught you to wear one (story for another day). You hastily dress, right leg first then the left for the boxer shorts and the pants, then comes the shirt as you quickly button it and tuck it in, next comes the socks as you quickly scan the room for the location of your only belt, you grab it by the laundry bin and tie it around your waist. You stand in front of your dressing mirror (came with the inbuilt wardrobe, cause real men don’t own mirrors), satisfied with yourself, you grab your shoes switch off all the gadgets in the house including the TV where some local leaders are busy discussing current issues giving out brilliant ideas which no one will ever implement- douchebags.

7.00 am, you are out the door of your bedsit, a servant’s quarter you rented from a nice Arab family in a porsche neighbourhood, you never see them much, you have your own small gate away from the main gate which you share with your neighbour- a fellow bachelor who works at DT Dobie, nice chap, always has the best Motor magazines.  He always leaves earlier than you do. You lock up the gate, plug in your earphones and start your daily routine, walking under the huge jacaranda trees, past the huge gates, huge electrified perimeter walls, the houses all look deserted except for the few gate keepers and drivers rushing the Who's Who of Mombasa kids to school, mostly brown Arab and Indian. Yellow buses from Ivy League schools wait at designated bus stops for more kids, there are more road signs around than in the capital business district, talk of privilege. Public Service Vehicles are not allowed on all roads, some – those that lead to the public beach- but not all. European machines zoom past, 10 minutes later you get to the public roads where public service vehicles are allowed and board one to town.

7:15am Traffic is easy, Maina of Classic FM is saying something, you are not paying attention, you lean your head against the glass and stare outside. A siren rings from far, few minutes later an ambulance is racing on the pedestrian sidewalk, the person seated next to you says something, you don’t talk to strangers before your morning cup of coffee so you adjust your earphone are politely smile to acknowledge whatever the hell they just said. By now you’re racing over Nyali Bridge, the water looks calm, a few fishermen throw their net in the water, you stare at them long enough fascinated by the difference in lifestyle. You still think of them long past they’re out of sight. It must be very calming to be in the middle of the sea so early in the morning. Passengers start alighting at different stops, they distract your train of thought. You finally get to your stop, you are one of the few lucky people who get dropped outside their office gate.

7:45am You’re the second person to clock in after your line manager, you drop in his office for a quick prattle-he’s a cool boss. You then walk over to the office kitchen to make yourself a cup of coffee and settle on your desk. The coffee warms your well famished stomach and your blood rushes as the caffeine hit the right nerves, you’re finally alive. At this point no task is hard enough for you to handle. You lazily go through your twitter feeds liking and retweeting, trying to be funny or political, everyone has a political stand on twitter. Twitter is the only place you can give the ruling class a piece of your mind, attaching a harsh-tag to it and if your tag is relevant enough it will be retweeted by twenty of your loyal followers. They always retweet and like your tweets but they also expect the same from you.

8.00 am Enough of twitter, you’re done with your cup of coffee, time to get some work done.

For as long as I can remember, I have always had a way with words-written, not spoken. I have always liked  reading. I have always liked the potential that comes with it -you get to picture the characters, picture the scenes , give characters different voices- all from your head, fascinating right? Thing with books is that we can all read the same book but none is able to picture the scenes nor the characters same as the other no matter how good the authors descriptive capabilities are. 
If the author describes a beautiful woman, I will always picture mine with a small mole on her upper lip and she will always show her soul through her smile -to me that's true beauty, to another person they'll look totally different, that's the power of reading, that has always intrigued most.  



The millennial hub is a project, no call it a hobby, a means to an end-to hone my skills as a writer and to improve my view of the world.


Look around, explore, a comment will be appreciated.