When hobby to take our minds away from politics is welcome

A woman sips some wine during the Marie Pierre Wine Dinner Tasting held at the Stanley Hotel on July 29, 2017. PHOTO | FRANCIS NDERITU | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • It means you have to research a lot and get lots of tips about short-cuts and deals.
  • People who live off music but do not stock the simplest of wires.

This goes to all those Kenyans who, like me, are tired sick of politics, violence, education, cholera and other weighty issues and would want, for once, to talk about something, anything, that takes their minds away from the pain and contestations of the moment.

Part of the reason we are under-developed is because Kenyans do not indulge their hobbies. In some cultures, people eat out, experiment with taste, which creates a whole vibrant sector with jobs and profits.

Kenyans do go out – in their millions – but it is to experiment with roast goat, Tusker and cognac chasers.

WINE TASTING

This,  I can attest, is a most useful activity. But it is not enough; we must do more.

We need folks heading out to art galleries, wine tastings, stamp-collecting, train spotting, plane gawping and so on, and out of that entire industries supported by people spending a little money to enjoy their hobbies.

I am no audiophile, I couldn’t afford to be, but I like good sound. I like my bass to feel as if someone is pounding my chest with a sledge hammer.

I want when Koffi Olomide goes “Jackpot c’est tshatsho” in Chantou, I feel like someone is cutting my throat with tweeter razor.

When I listen to Handel’s Water Music, which I might do every couple of years, I want to separate each string and see each tune in my head.

I want the experience to leave my eyes damp, the same feat as a light shower in the Atacama desert.

Having a hobby is hard enough when all your money is going to pay taxes, Uber, school fees, dog food and the upkeep of distant relatives.

ASSASINS

It means you have to research a lot and get lots of tips about short-cuts and deals.

Which is okay because when your nose is buried in spec sheets and manuals and reviews, you forget the unpaid rent and the hordes of assassins looking to promote you to glory. That is what a hobby is for.

This week I was looking for an RCA cable, the simple speaker cable used for most audio equipment. Unfortunately, I needed a combined one, not the ordinary one used in pairs. I went to a big music shop at Westlands, where they sell sound equipment to clubs.
If there is a category of human being that I detest with fury, it is a person who is not good at their job.

That mechanic who can’t fix your engine competently to save his life, that plumber who can’t end the leak, that carpenter who turns up to build your staircase, the first in his nondescript career, having lied to you that he is normally much sought after by contractors to deal with “tricky staircases”.

People who live off music but do not stock the simplest of wires.

PASSION

People who do not have the discipline and the passion to learn their trade competently are a risk to the survival of humanity.

In that shop, I found people who have no serious interest in sound and who treated my inquiries with puzzling contempt.

They sent me away to find a fundi to solder what I needed. To suggest that the only good sound in our lives should be in a club, where there is more noise than music, is an insufferable affront and a shameless display of vulgarity.

An enthusiast, armed with a few thousand shillings, months of research and a compulsive-obsessive mind, can build a more pleasant sound system than what they put in clubs.

You may not have noticed it but the death of Nakumatt has left a huge hole in our lifestyles.

The other supermarkets have a million miles to walk to catch up with Nakumatt.

I went to three malls – Two Rivers, TRM and Garden City -- and walked the streets in the city centre looking for a simple, cheap DVD player. I know the DVD is dead but DVD players can do other things in a sound system, especially one which is not built around a TV or computer.

FOOD

I found that in some supermarkets, people do not go to shop, they go to eat ready food. Apparently, serving ready food is all the rave in supermarkets.

Anyway, in the supermarkets the DVD players are sold as a package together with speakers. I have very strong opinions about those speakers and those off-the-shelf systems, having used and been bored by them for years.

But they are a good starter pack. However, if you are not in the market for speakers, what are you supposed to do with them, eat them along with the ready food?

The solution to bundled supermarket stuff being forced down our collective throats, rude shop keepers and over priced fakes, is to be found in the bustling online market.

I was pleasantly surprised by the wide variety of top quality products available from small specialist sellers at a bargain. And they will deliver to your doorstep too.

All we need is a good, trusted customer review system to help weed out the good ones from the enterprising con men.

If all of us had a hobby, even a temporary one, it would take our minds away from politics and the desire to slice each other’s throats.

And it would be good for the economy to boot.