Thursday 20 December 2012

My Koko's Lovely Post

My sweet Koko surprised me and did a post about my admission to the Bar.

I want to share what she wrote here.

Don't you simply adore her!!

Here's the link:



~

To you, Koko, you have taught me two things: one, UBUNTU. And two, LOVE FOR ANIMALS. And for that, I am very grateful.




Thank YOU for being there for ME this year

This year has been a great one for me.
Here is a list of my blessings for this year:
1.      I was lucky to serve my pupilage at the Legal Department of Kenya’s National Assembly for six months from February to August this year;
2.      I was able to successfully finish my Post-graduate diploma in law in August;
3.      I was able to serve internship at the Law Society of Kenya from September to December this year;
4.      I got admitted to the Bar on 10th December this year, a dream which took me 6 years of study;
5.      My brother graduated at the Kenyatta University with magna cum laude in Economics and Statistics;
6.      I was able to board a plane for the first time in my life on March this year;
7.      I stayed in a five-star hotel—Serena Beach Hotel—for one week in the month of March as part of the team that was working on the Standing Orders of the Senate and the National Assembly;
8.      I have been lucky to be to Sarova Stanley Hotel, Hilton Hotel, Crowne Plaza, Sarova Panafric Hotel, UN Gigiri and Intercontinental Hotel;
9.      My mum stayed in Nairobi for a week, the longest time she has stayed which was very fulfilling to me;
10.  My Sister Lizzy had the opportunity to stay in Nairobi and learn so much in terms of ambition something which I could have never done with mere talk and advice.
Tororot has been very kind to me this year and I have achieved a lot. I have been humbled by these experiences. Soon, I will be going to the village to re-unite with my family, relatives and friends. I am very excited about the year 2013 because this year has been more about personal sacrifice. All that I have done will lay a strong foundation in what I will achieve next year. I must say that I have set very high targets for myself next year. They are those targets which will fundamentally alter the course of my life forever. The good thing about it is that I have already put things in place for it.
Fellow pilgrims, as we draw near to Christmas and Happy New Year, I want to thank you so much for the support you have offered me. Today, I want to say that you are very special in my life and that I am today what I am because of you. We are all inter-connected. Yes, “ubuntu” guides all of us, a la Archbishop Desmond Tutu.






Monday 26 November 2012

Safety in Numbers


C) Google
Crossing the Mara, the wildebeests’ safety

Lies in their number

By sticking together, not many

are devoured by crocs

The Sun-duel


C) smashmaterials.com
 
When I was a small child,

I used to stare at the sun

After some time, blinded by it,

I would see nothing and got worried

 

Many years now,

I don’t stare at the sun

Because I have been fashioned to believe

That they are not good for my eyes

 

My eyes could stare at the sun

Eye-ball to sun-ball, you might say

Not afraid of the illumination

And though tears formed, I was brave

 

I want to stare at the sun some more

Look at it again, unafraid of its rays

I want to be blinded by it again

I need light, I want to brow-beat the sun

I care not what the doc says

I want to challenge the sun.
 
 

 

Monday 5 November 2012

Kindly, I Will Not Take That Award!

Sir,

I am a small man of small means

If there was a stampede of gazelles in a park,

I will be the grass to be trodden upon.

 

Speaking of grass, sir,

They too can whisper a song,

A tune which the trumpet of the elephant can’t drown

Most times they wither, dry and die

But, almost certainly, with slight drizzles,

They resurrect, emboldened with a new vigour

 

I have lived in this savannah 40 years now

There was a time a fire burnt everything here

For almost a year, the smoldering smoke never left my nostrils

The animals we lived with lay in the fields, burnt to death

Never had a horror visited me as it did then

 

To appease my scorched conscience

One day I walked in the savannah and begun watering it

Death gripped the soil, the air was choked,

Birds moaned above, even the boisterous wind

Gazed forlon— the savannah was a graveyard

 

Day by day, we grew in number,

To restore life where death had stepped

Though we were hunters, we ate akoretee leaves

We passed an edict to protect the savannah

For we realized that the savannah was our existence

 

So, dear Sir,

Though you mean well, I hesitate to take up your award

When the wind blows in the savannah, it does it of its own accord

I don’t own the spring in a lion’s run, I have no clue to hyena’s frolics

Even the vulture’s swoop—trust me—I can’t glide that much

In the darkness, I might have a hint, but savannah’s mysteries I can’t fathom

There are many who did well than me, never for a moment moved for awards,

They lived in obscurity and greatness, in alignment with the savannah

To reward me is to spit on their graves, to honour me is a travesty!

 

Sir, if you be moved,

I would rather you tell your people that

It is not fair game when they talk so much of their privacy

Yet to the animals they pry with cameras and gleefully (with a straight face you might say)
 
Distract animals mating.

With human beings like that, who needs enemies?
 
 

Friday 26 October 2012

the echoes may be quiet now, but they still reverberate


I wish to relay my sincere apologies to my faithful readers here for my continued blog absence. This is uncharacteristic of me. Over the past two weeks, I have been fully engaged in my professional responsibilities which have usually left me drained at most times. But I hasten to add that my mind is fermenting something and I have been making some curious observations lately. I want to assure you that I am well and that I miss you a lot. I will be back in a moment.

Sincerely,
echoesofthehills.

Sunday 14 October 2012

A Little More Love


It was her pained expression that drew me to her
The knots that tied up her happiness
Her eyes, unable to trust, darted warily
Her stomach, as if on mortal fear, rested like a slab
A slab of broken, forgotten pavement of a haunted house
Her fingers, trembling, had no certainty
Her being was in turmoil, her essence was in flames

Distrusting, she let her eyes sear me
As if by the baleful look I would retreat
But I didn’t
Every part of me was apprehended
By the weight of this woman’s sorrow
Whatever she carried, I guessed,
No soul could barely lift
If she wanted me to go back, I couldn’t tell,
But I stood there, our eyes communicating
Me, a timid pilgrim,
Her, an equally timid pilgrim,
Somehow I believed that there was a middle ground

“I roam the streets,” she tells me,
“I know pain, I know bitterness, I know what cold is”.
I don’t know what to say, so I remain quiet.
She tells me her children eat from the garbage
One was knocked down by a speeding van, a year ago.
She was raped by her father, infected with AIDS,
Chased from her village, forced to fend for herself
“This street is my home,” she says flatly.
Then she just ignored me and suckled her month-old baby
I thought to myself, “Despite the dirt, her baby gets the love”
As I rummaged through my pockets to help her
She still maintained that pained expression and the distrusting eyes
And as my palm rubbed upon hers, a part of me died
Perhaps all this woman needed was a little more love.

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