crucial

I've been following quite a few African bloggers lately. That's because I'm going to Africa, I'm tuning in and I want to meet real people, not just people who's profession it is to hang out with tourists. Kenya/Uganda is the plan so far.  Kenya is touristic which I hope to mostly avoid (though I might just climb Mount Kenya).  I've been told Uganda is really friendly.  A well travelled guy told me its his favorite country in Africa.

Predictably the afriblogosphere concentrates often on internet tech (http://www.techmasai.com/) and politics with a mix of music (http://moproblems.wordpress.com/). I'm looking for more literary peoples. Tips appreciated, drop them in the comments.

Potash is intelligent and obscene: a mixture I aspire to myself. The post below will catch your attention (and he does carefully hit those attention buttons), but he's usually more of a poetical, erudite motherfucker.

Today's short story [note the use of "the other day Potash is saying that..." ] (http://potashke.blogspot.com/2010/03/pobo-4.html):

IX. Do You Write (or Read)?

I wish I could say, yes, I write checks. Like P. Diddy. But me… me I am a cash guy. Hihihi… if I wrote you a cheque you best treat it with the same dharau you reserve for your M.P’s cheques. The big difference between that M.P and me, really, is that I am a businessman servicing a need while he is a make believe civil servant who robs the needy.

Honestly, who sleeps better, the guy that stole the poor man’s unga or the guy that sold some bangi? To a bunch of American exchange students for crying out loud. Yaani, to a bunch of mzungus who come here, get arse, get ghanja and get out. Go home and get therapy… N.M, in his Mongo-speak would say, ‘no Africans were harmed in Dinda’s ghanja plantation. 

I am not a slave driver, that is the fucking muhindis…Me I am the good guy.

The other day Potash is saying ati I am like a Mombasa beach hotel, I do not like doing business with Africans, what the hell does he know about business. Who has got some ethics here but me? Me, I do not sell drugs to people who don’t have health insurance. How does that make me a bad guy? 

Busia Gold is a fair trade product. 

Let us save the rest of the bull for those who know nothing about being a business man out here in Africa. Business, I mean, not biashara biashara…kuhustle, kuuza nyanya marikiti.

Me, I have been on the Highway, some chick shooting off my dingila and two Johnnies sitting at the back looking like Big Ben and his twin. Tucked away, at least for now, are their British Army issue pistols. 

The Johnnies are driving a hard bargain on a stone of Busia Gold. They are acting like this is 1954 and it is their place to tell an African what to do including what to charge for his crop. They acting like mzungus after they have been in Kenya long enough to say ‘Tusker baridi.’ You know how they play: Oh, my cab guy can get me more than that for five hundred bob… sijui my colleague is with some NGO in Ethiopia and he is bringing me Shashamane. Well, you know what I say to that shit, ‘my stone is 20 large, that is why I am pushing a VX and not driving you around in a taxi.’ 

So I am saying to the Johnnies, ‘I am told the weed in Europe kicks arse something, but how good is it to you when you are planting landmines and chasing Samburu arse in Kenya?’

Between them Brit falas they have like five thousand Kenya Shillings. But they have British Pounds too. So I hit them and more- like twenty Kenya Shillings on every Pound. 

Soon they are handing me Pounds and Shillings. And I have to count them, do the math and fold them. The Malaya wants me to smack her in the arse but I think it is silly and feel inclined to tell her to stop using me in her sales pitch to the bloody Johnnies. I want to tell her to get her mind back to Kenya where she lies on her back and I hit it- simple! I smack her arse, anyway, coz it feels good to do it with a fistful of money. Do it like a Jay Z no one has heard of yet. 

Long of the short is that if you be playing on anaa level, you’ve got to know your money. Live it. Feel it.

Bitch slapping the critics in 2007:

I have been called a fraud. A child of privilege trying to pass himself as the voice of the scions of the Proletariat- the herald of Nairobi’s dispossessed majority. A product of Kenya’s most elite academies- the best schools in the Republic- claiming to be an alumnus of the Streets; a self made pseudo-intellectual. That and many other things that remain the inconsequential opinion of The Few who suddenly finding me holding my own in their circles desire to drag me into the exclusive folds of their glorified embrace. They endeavour to claim me as one of their own but first, as they say, I have to drop my bullshit stance and face up to the stark realities of my yuppiness.

How do I make them understand that I come as a package; that what I bring with me is not mere baggage but the sum total of my heritage?

Yet in other circles, the circles of the Insignificant Others where I cut my teeth, my name is no longer praised but spat out like last night’s tuksin. “Behold,” they chide, Potash the sell-out riding shotgun in the cream SUV and the exotic bitch not seeing her stick shift for that self publicising dick. But the dick cannot see beyond the bottle of Jack Daniels.” Maskini hapati…, they murmur to each other punctuating their snide vitriol with gut wrenching gulps of Napshizzle …na akipata… si unamuona!