Sheng and miraa: Two birds of an ugly feather

This week, I am going to defy my editor and do something he has always told me not to do, not out of disrespect, but out of need.

On many occasions when I am out with my sons, there is always one question they ask, and I always fail the test and either change the subject or the itinerary.

The reason I am confronted with this question is that I am trusted to know everything that they already know or do not, but since I have more rights — and responsibilities, of course — I just invoke my right not to respond.

Every time I am asked: “What did she say?” or “What are they talking about?”, I plainly tell them that if they cannot understand what is being said, it is not important. It is not something that will or can add value to their lives, because it has been said in Sheng.

That is how I am defying my editor; by mentioning Sheng again, just a few weeks after I was drawn, quartered and hung — in whichever manner — by some small fish in even smaller ponds who think Sheng is their surest way to Nirvana.

Cheapens relationships

Nothing cheapens the value of an item like Sheng. Immediately a salesgirl speaks in the language and makes my sons ask me what she is saying, the item we had wanted to buy loses value on the spot. We not only drop it, but also leave that point of sale and move to a different place.

Apart from lowering the value of items, Sheng also cheapens relationships. Anyone who speaks it when out on a date should be abandoned, banished to the hellhole of dislike and have all his or her contacts deleted from all communication gadgets with random access memory.

A lover who speaks Sheng is “that hapless, hopeless, mis-educated and untaught” man or woman your father said you should never be caught dead with, thanks to his or her poverty of ambition.

Such are the type your responsible father said you should never spend time with — or introduce to your family and friends — because they are complete airheads who will embarrass you with their vacuity.

Yes, they are the ghostly type with ghastly genes that will weaken your virile genealogy, turn you into a wreck and reduce your family tree into a useless shrub; an annoying weed that kills healthy plants around it and removes all the nutrients from the soil.

I am so fed up with being asked to decipher what these people say or mean and I have warned my extremely gifted sons to never hook up with girls who speak Sheng.

Few things compare to the vileness of a woman who speaks Sheng, but something that comes close is a man with swollen cheeks and green slime coming from the sides of his mouth — a person who chews miraa.

You can argue, rightfully so, that, unlike Sheng, miraa has commercial value, and thus should not be banned. However, isn’t there a better, or a more stylish way through which it can be consumed so that its local consumers do not look like herbivorous animals chewing cud?

I have heard all manner of stories claiming miraa helps people stay awake and alert, but whenever I see people whose mouths are full of the green twigs, their eyes are always glazed, making me conclude that the only reason they stay awake is because it is impossible to sleep when you are chewing, or chew when you are asleep.

No creative juices

There is no gainsaying that those who trade in these twigs are millionaires who work so hard and employ speed demons to ensure that their produce reaches the market in time, but that still does not make a mouth filled with green twigs, bubble gum, a piece of candy and soft drink nice to look at.

I want to trust that our creative juices are not flowing and that is why we have never pursued ways through which we can extract miraa’s supposedly sleep-killing juices, spice it up, make it tastier, earn extra cash and make consuming it in public places less offensive.

If we were creative, we would be processing miraa into a drinkable form and spicing it up to end up with different flavours like caramel, chocolate, vanilla or even cinnamon. But trust us to be comfortable with the basic methods yet we continue to spice our food with imported sauce.

It seems there is a miraa-chewing manual formulated in the bush which endorses the law of the jungle. That is why miraa chewers are ever impolite — just like the sheng-speaking women any right thinking man would warn his sons to avoid.

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Beware, the enemy is within

When the Constitution was promulgated in 2010, I wrote that “a Constitution is like a condom; it will not be of any help to us if not properly used”. I also warned that euphoria would be the death of us, and that those who voted for the new Constitution were overly excited about it all and did not understand what they were okaying. From the continued bickering over who should sit where and govern over whom, I am being proven right, even though I have neither political nor legal hair on my chest.

But this is not the point.

For several weeks, we have been bursting our nerves shouting ourselves hoarse at foreign governments and journalists, calling them all sorts of names and labelling them the enemies of our development. We spent so much time on them that we forgot that the real enemies of development were within: They are the 290 MPs who are clamouring for pay increase even before they have debated and passed their first Bill, or come to understand the Standing or Sitting Orders.

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Tourism is not a foreign concept

Talk is cheap, and it becomes cheapest when industry experts start yapping about Kenya’s tourism sector. These ‘experts’ love talking about Kenya’s tourism sector because they get opportunities to visit the world’s capitals and talk for the sake of it. They have been doing this for ages, then waiting for the slightest provocation in the form of travel advisories from Western governments to start whining.

Deep down, they know that tourists are getting tired of being sold the same things we have been “selling” to them for ages: wildlife (now dwindling, thanks to poachers) and beaches. Add poor service and deplorable customer care and you have a recipe for disaster.

In the meantime, other countries’ tourism numbers are increasing because they have added value to their God-given resources. Most tourist destinations are now selling more than natural resources and there is synergy and coordination between their different departments.

Unless these ‘experts’ realise that tourism is not a foreign concept, and that locals are their first and best clients, they will continue shouting their heads off at international tourism fairs with nothing to show for it, except Frequent Flyer Miles and vacant hotel rooms.