Dear Sunshine............

Dear Sunshine,

I write to you on behalf of all Men from our corner here in Eastern Africa. It not like they elected me their sole voice, but I know many will agree that my plea to you concerns them too. Anyway, I know we haven't gotten along all that well in the past. I didn't cause the sunburns, but I could blame my forgetfulness for not carrying my hat knowing what you are capable of. It wasn't me who scorched the succulent young plants that a family depended on or caused droughts. Anyway, I am no angel either. 

I know you have been hiding from me for a while now and I guess the lesson you wanted to teach me about needing you has sunk. Absence makes the heart grow fonder they say. On a few occasions when you have shown your face for a short while, I have embraced you like a long lost friend. And indeed you are just that. I don't know why you are playing hard to get. It may be that you and your Mum Nature don't like our part of the world much, it may be something they call Global Warming or it maybe  its some mysterious cycle that mortals like me may not comprehend.

Whatever it is, Sunshine, and whatever you are planning next; please understand that in our part of the world we have no idea how to deal with your teeth-chattering, dull grey and shiver-inducing replacement. We were born with a sturdy skin pigmentation, a sense of adventure and a love for the great African outdoors. We were not born with a gene that tolerates being indoors too long, the hearth and fireplace  were meant for cooking not warming our limbs.

Remember that our days are regulated by a slight morning chill, just enough to keep our senses sharp, day long sunshine and warmth that is retained in our mud walls and woolly kinky Afros, our early evenings are warm and suitable for a few hours outdoors to allow the chicken pens refill, women finalize their culinary duties and put the young ones to bed. We were not made for huddling in the house in full sight of children covered head to toe, sniffling and eagerly waiting for the wife's broth. This cold is making us look bad.

When the morning comes, we are expected to be first out of bed as soon as the cockerel  announces a new dawn, but lately we cannot afford that luxury and our role as breadwinners and hunters may be questioned for

we are now wont to hang around the bed and house too long to allow the day warm just a wee bit more.

Remember that from our youth we are taught not to be anywhere near the fireplace. We were admonished by the elders that sitting astride the three stones is not for men who hope to keep the family safe from oblivion. There is nothing to warm there. Our mothers too won't allow any young man hanging around the hearth with his sisters and exposing his loins and their chance of being proud grandmothers to the vagaries of the smoke and heat of the homestead's hearth.

I hope you now understand why all men are missing you so much. We have lived with at least a month or two of dipping temperatures every year, but not what seems like half a year. Didn't they say that it will go on well past August?

Seems like every new day is  worse than the previous. The weather man and all his technology and gadgets doesn't seem to know if and when we will be reunited and my anger and impatience is now directed at them.

I suspect your absence for so long is not something they are able to explain to me and all the suffering African men.

If nothing else, just remember that the indoor fires in stoves, heaters, whether they are driven by firewood, charcoal, electricity and so on are all meant to "dry out" or kausha our loins and thereby cut our supply. Please do come back sooner dear Sunshine.

A Concerned  African Man

Image Courtesy of http://chimptrainersdaughter.blogspot.com/ 

Photography Runs In The Family......

I have always loved and practiced photography and in my school and early days in employment I did a bit of photography moonlighting shooting wedding and all manner of events. I have always had a camera at hand having invested heavily in my passion. 

As technology improved and went the digital way, the business side of my passion died and I no longer invested in seeking new markets, but I continued taking photos of my travels, family, friends, events and so on. In the meantime, photography has become localized and we now have young and awesomely creative photographers who are not only earning a handsome living from their cameras but also splashing the digital space with very creative images. 

I am therefore not so surprised that my children have taken an interest in the art  and are proving to be better than I am. Of course my son  Gregory is using a host of editing tools to come up with very creative photos especially of the macro genre. He is a big fan of the Kenya's leading photographers like Mutua Matheka, Kitoto, Mwarv, Emmanuel Jambo and many others. When the time is right I will introduce him to one of the leading lights for mentor-ship and training. 

I recently encouraged him to start a blog where he can post any of the photos he thinks are worth sharing with the world.  I us some of his photos as my screen savers for my electronic gadgets. Here are some he has taken using a phone camera. 

If Writing Be The Food Of Life, Write on........

 I have not been here for a while and it really bothers me that amongst all the things that I love doing, I am not able to create time to come here for a sessionful of venting, sharing, preaching, bragging, condoling, conversing or debating.

Between my miserable attempts at earning a living, parenting, having some "me" time, reading, travelling, staying healthy, giving back to society, educating myself, investing, farming, fighting, loving and generally surviving, I seem to have run out of time and I cannot be able to find adequate opportunity and space for my beloved blog.

Blame it on all the other competing activities in the same alley like Facebook which I actually enjoy,twitting which I dont enjoy doing but love following, writing for work, reading numerous genres ( and I enjoy this too  or writing money-making proposals that never see the light of day, it seems like all the juices are sucked out of me and I have nothing left in me for the blog.

But wait a minute, why the heck do I seem to get time for just about everything else and not the one thing that makes me feel good. Writing is therapy for me, makes me feel good when I churn out a good thoughtful piece however small it may be. Even a phrase with the right choice of words in the right places makes me feel good. I know there is pleasure in writing because it is creating, it is sculpting, molding and giving form where none existed.

Seeing that writing means so much to me, I am resolving to do it  more often and make it more meaningful. I want it to be focused and not aimless chatter and commentaries on just about everything under the moon. I want to write more about my experiences, my observations, lessons I learn everyday, my proposals, my ideas ( and I have very many and wild ones ), my passions, my pet peeves, parenting, relationships, my fears, my aspirations, my projects, my travels and travails, my reviews and my society.

I will ask God to help me stay away from politics because our brand of politics is just too distressing. I have no problem with our politicians, but I think there is everything wrong with our politics. Should I get carried away in my writing and end up touching on politics, I pray that I will not be partisan but objective in my opinions.

This new journey starts tonight by forcing time and prioritizing and ensuring that there is at least some 30-45 minutes every evening before bedtime for some writing. So help me God!

Images Courtesy of www.ziglar.com & www.loesje.ee 

Opportunity - Mirfat "Susan" Musa's Chance For Fame & Mullah

The story is now a week old and very well known. No need going into the details.

My take is that should Susan be known to someone more brighter than she is, here is an opportunity that can make her a "celeb" and maybe some dough while at it. Kenya finally gets a person who is famous for being (in)famous. This is our own homegrown answer to the Kadarshian Sisters, the Hilton Sisters and Nicole Ritchie all rolled in one. Our girl Susan is famous for no talent at all. she is famous for being rude, domineering, nasty, ill-mannered, class-worshiper, pretender, ignorant of the world around her, vain and owner of zero-eating etiquette.

So how does she go about it? It is obvious the girl has no counsel around her because as soon as the backlash started, she was on her twitter page saying that the show was scripted and that the person she so ably depicted is not real! Bad move! Take advantage of the swelling public interest girl!

There are many marketers and owners of products who can pay a tidy sum of money to use her as an ambassador or magnet to pull crowds. Imagine the organizers of the Mingle event daring the bravest of Kenya's young men to date her? Imagine if she was to make a presentation to the thousands of women who hate men on how to deflate a man's ego in the shortest time! Imagine if she joined a cause that is counter to her personality and totally ignored the public's perception of a man-eater.  No, not the jiggers- that is crowded and already well known. How about sanitary towels, anti-rape, anti-blindness or any cause looking for a heroine to take it to the next level.

Imagine if she advertised as the answer for domineering mothers-in-law. Imagine a badge or t-shirt endorsing a product saying that with product X, you can date Susan and come out alive! How about a fencing match with Susan? How about selling barbed wire and fencing posts with dear Susan as ambassador? The good people at the Rhino Ark can use the girl to market their latest initiative to fence the Eburru Escarpment Forest. How about Visa and Mastercard? How about sellers of general knowledge books? Imagine a spin-off show by Tujuane producers as Kenya's search for the male equivalent of Susan. The list is endless. 

Over to you brave marketers.  

Opportunities- Posta Sleeps Through The Revolution!

Postal Corporation of Kenya (PCK) ( aka Posta for brevity sake) is one example of organisations in Kenya that have slept while opportunity and her sisters were knocking very loudly at the door. What do I mean? 

Every family wishes to have a postal address rental box. I know for a fact that there is scarcity of new postal rental boxes and in some families, up to 3 generations are sharing one postal address as does extended families and whole neighbourhoods. Many SMEs also wish to have their own rental boxes, but demand by far outstrips supply. Bearing in mind the amount of space that a rental box takes, I cannot understand why Posta is not rolling out 10,000 per month! Every new shopping mall needs to have a subsidiary post office and you don't even need to take up expensive shop floors but a parking bay. Most of the expensive building are letting out their parking bays at between Kshs. 8,000 and 12,000 per month. One such bay can accommodate as many as 256 boxes at the front (assuming that its 8 x 8 ft) and the same number or more on one other side. With five hundred rental boxes from one parking bay, you don't have to be a genius to see how Posta can make loads of money. 

Some say that they may be broke and don't have the 2 million needed to put up the structure- 500 locks, 1000 hinges, a door and metal casing for the boxes, but they can start a subsidiary separate from the debt-ridden mother ship and with long term credit, many Kenyans will be willing to pay the Kshs.4,000/- it will cost upfront or in installments of Kshs. 111/= per month for 3 years!    

Many including Posta managers are always lamenting that Mobile telephony, internet and couriers may have taken over the express business and personal mails, but there is opportunity in traditional mail like shares, dividend, land registry correspondence, school certificates, etc I don't ever see registered mail being transmitted through text messages or emails. We all want to touch and feel the real thing. Isn't that opportunity for Posta to work with the conveyors of such documents. It is called captive market! 

For any serious transformation of the Posta to happen, they have to move their thinking away from the traditional Post Office set up. The colonial era post office will not do. Posta needs to outsource. They need to learn from the banking industry's agencies or the M-pesa agency model. I know being a parastatal, there are a thousand and one reasons why its not "doable". The biggest reason is that no other parastatal has done it before! With the recent enactment of the Public Private Partnership Act, I believe this is another opportunity waiting for a taker. So the model of post offices have to move away from the tradition.

The agency model can also see Posta utilize the home delivery model which naysayers may wish to say is an anti-thesis of the traditional rental box model! If you have devolved postal agencies some of the local agencies will deliver to homes of their customers. The same can be done for slums and poor sectors of society where one box can be shared by up to 20 families with the agency owner managing the mails received via a register. For a small fee, he will deliver your mail to your home. 

Kenya has not been left behind in the E-commerce & Online trade front. Many intra-city business are using the online platform to showcase their products and services. The trade is facilitated by plastic money, mobile money and cash on delivery. In my view Posta needs to get into the game and facilitate delivery via postal boxes. With increased efficiency, every purchase should be in the buyers post office within 48 hours (after all even long-service buses and matatus are "couriering" tonnes of goods across the country overnight).

Posta can also take advantage of the failure by physical address system project which would have seen the city gradually move to the delivery of mails going physical to homes and offices. Unfortunately since 2006 when the idea was mooted as part of the Afri-Cities beautification programme, not much has happened and no one has bothered link it to some use beyond security and assisting visitors find an address. The project has not worked and may not work because City Council as the implementer lacks credibility. Posta needs to go out and grab that project and own it. For the whole country to go physical address system, it will be another 30 years and since one of the benefits of the system is quick delivery to final addresses of mail, Posta has the biggest stake and interest in the project.

It is also possible that Posta could complement courier services by offering post offices as dropping zones with a requirement that out of town mails will be channeled through its system. Win-win situation they call it. Allocate the various couriers desk space in the various Posta banking halls and demand a minimum amount of business  per day from the couriers. Turn your perceived competitors into a complementing opportunity.

All these opportunities may need the management and board of directors to shed away all the organisation's history gathered over 100 years that the organisation has existed in different forms. They also have to operate like the box did not exist. It is not enough to think outside the box- imagine there was no box at all! Do not take study tours abroad to study other countries, come up with a home-grown solution. One for Kenya. M-pesa has failed to click anywhere outside Kenya. Think local solutions to our local unique and peculiar problems.

We are watching.