A dash of wisdom, a sprinkling of wit, and a heavy serving of bums

THANK YOU FOR COMING TO THE #FRONTROW! It’s been five months and 22 columns since I started writing this column.

If there is anything I have learnt in that period, it is that writing weekly for a national audience is one of the hardest jobs in journalism.

Even after all these years on television, I have earned a new level of respect for columnists who put out great material every week.

There are moments when I was too lazy, too sleepy or too tired to even put coherent sentences together and I still had to submit something worth reading.

I did three listicles (including this week’s main piece on the right), which represent the best and worst thing about writing on/for the Internet.

I have been inspired and challenged by many readers who took time to write in to critique or bring in new angles. I even wrote on planes and in three countries just to make deadline. Thank you for coming along!

A champion in the police service:

“This will cost you a fine of Sh21,000 if you go to court, so just go and prepare yourself with Sh5,000 if you want to be free,” a policeman told a speeding cousin in Awasi. He didn’t pay the bribe. And then, on Christmas Eve, we were driving in two cars somewhere near the bottom of Siaya County just after 9pm.

The car behind fell back and drove into a ditch, getting stuck. Two policemen in plainclothes had stopped their Land Cruiser to help. We immediately got our hands dirty in the mud, moving rocks around to try to restore its balance.

The two cops helped along, with the younger one — Chep — alternating between pushing heavy rocks and trying to drive out of the ditch.

After nearly half an hour and almost 20 hands, we finally managed to get the saloon car out. It is at that point it struck me that we had not been introduced with the officers. “I’m John Murage, the Siaya county commander,” he offered, to the shock of us all.

He had stopped on his way home to assist a citizen in distress. Thank you, Mr Murage, for restoring my faith in the police.

Our expectations for Cord were not low enough:

Just when you thought the parties that make up the opposition coalition could not disappoint you any further, they do.

Drama, chaos and general pandemonium have followed ODM and Wiper everywhere, from Makueni to Homa Bay, from Kasarani to Orange House and right into the National Assembly.

How do they expect to run a country ably when they can’t even manage the affairs of a party? Or should we expect furniture fights, violent evictions and disruptions as part of official government policy if they take over?

Our expectations for Jubilee were not low enough:

They don’t escape the blame for turning party politics into a circus.

Worst of all, the party’s politicians and busybodies have taken to being in government with such gusto you’d think it was their divine right.

Besides that, President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration has displayed streaks of intolerance for independent criticism and recent actions have solidified concerns about attacks on personal freedoms.

Maybe our expectations for politicians can never be low enough.

Considering the happenings of the year 2014 was, I would be remiss if I didn’t take a retrospective analysis of what we have all learnt as a nation.

From politics to pop culture and everything in between, we’ve had moments that took our breath away or left us shaking our heads incredulously.

They are presented here in no particular order, but I consider them worthy additions to our collective wisdom as a nation. What are your views?

Big homes hold big secrets:

Especially if the said homes are in Runda and are known to be peopled by Chinese immigrants.

Just three houses may produce Asian nationals that number in the upper 70s on close scrutiny. Or put it this way: the much-touted Nyumba Kumi initiative has failed spectacularly, people in suburbia like to mind their own business, not their Chinese neighbour’s.

The Lord works in mysterious ways:

There has been unassailable evidence of God’s goodness this year and how He looks out for those that do His work. The chemist, sorry, prophet Victor Kanyari immediately comes to mind. Then there was the hand of God in the collapse of President Kenyatta’s ICC case. May 2015 be just as instructive. Happy new year!

You can only burn mattresses for so long:

“The president took Joseph ole Lenku out of oblivion and has returned him to oblivion, hopefully forever,” said the self-styled modern-day sage, Ahmednasir Abdullahi. It was a year overdue and thousands of embarrassing memes later, but the foot-in-mouth reign at the Interior ministry is now behind us.

All dreams are valid, sort of:

Lupita Nyong’o rose from Shuga to Hollywood faster than you can say “Team Dark Skin”.

Then she won an Oscar and People magazine named her the world’s most beautiful woman. She has arrived in the A-list crowd in one season. No wonder it is easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than a Kenyan journalist to convince her publicists to avail her for an interview after that.

Big bums outweigh big brains:

This has been the year of the socialite... and the entertainment blog. Both are necessary for the other to exist in this warped self-perpetuating cycle.

It is the year that the insatiable Kenyan appetite for improbable gossip exploded into shameless click-bait and even outright lies for hits.

A little start-up blog called Ghafla! jumped close to the top of the most visited websites in the country and spawned an entire industry, copycats included.

Everybody speaks for the president:

Uhuru Kenyatta’s official spokesman, Manoah Esipisu, also heads the Presidential Strategic Communications Unit.

On paper, anyway, because all the other eight “senior directors” have been known to individually or jointly issue statements without the approval or knowledge of Esipisu.

Basically, anybody who works at State House can speak for the president.

You can get away with anything if you’re powerful enough:

The Karen land scandal implicated an impressive list of boldface names and they will likely get away with it without even a slap on the wrist.

At the Judiciary, the Gladys Shollei debacle and her exit from the Chief Registrar’s post would make for a gripping episode of a TV drama.

Pick your favourite scandal and figure out how many rich or powerful people are still enjoying the fruits of their bad behaviour.