The Power of Words

Hello. How was your weekend? Mine was...eventful. I'm still recovering. I'm sleepy and tired and behind in my work. Also, I haven't been paying any attention to you because I haven't had the energy to spare.
Does that happen to you too?

Sometimes you have just about enough energy to keep breathing and that's it. Ugh, speaking of breathing...I'm not doing that so well either.
Anyways, so I want to talk about words today. Words have power. They can cause revolutions, break hearts, change minds, elevate the spirit, or depress it. Kill. Hurt. Heal.
And yet we use them so carelessly every day, don't we? We fling them about like confetti, letting them land as they will without thought to consequences or impact. We're just talking, just joking, just being honest...

On Sunday my son and I went for dinner at a nearby hotel because we were too lacking in energy to cook. When we got back home, it turned out that my son had left the house keys at the restaurant. I'm sure many of you are familiar with that surge of irritation that happens when someone else is careless with our stuff. What do we tend to do about it?
Berate.
Belittle.
I was reminded of (spoiler alert) Jamie Fraser when Claire got lost on her way from a birthing. Her horse threw her and then disappeared so she was alone in the forest in a major downpour and with no way to get home. Anyways, bish bam boom, Jamie, and Ian found her and took her home. And as he was giving her a bath, he tells her that while he's aware that it wasn't her fault, he still feels like giving her a scolding to relieve his feelings. So Claire tells him to scold her in Gaelic because she'll only understand about half the words anyway. And that's what he does.

Back to my son.
So he says he left the keys, and I feel that surge of irritation. But just as I'm opening my mouth to tell him what a careless buffoon he is I pause. And I ask myself, who would you be helping by shouting at him? The deed is done. You can see by his face that he's expecting the word vomit you were about to pour on him. So instead I just held up the 100 bob I had in my hand and said: "Well go and get it."
I was still irritated so I called him a whole bunch of names in my head. Then I settled down and waited for him to come back. Just by his posture, and the way he moved fast to do anything I asked of him that evening and the next day, I could tell he was...relieved? that he hadn't gotten The Lecture. And it took me back to my own childhood and the endless lectures about every little wrong thing I ever did. And I resolved to always think before I opened my mouth, to anyone. Because what could be relieving feelings to one person might be a lifetime of trauma for somebody else.

Do you think Kevin Spacey thought about the impact of his words when he wrote that struggle apology? I think that he did. I think that he was thinking that if he said he was gay people would hesitate to come for him about Anthony Rapp because they would be scared to be labeled homophobic. And for sure, most news outlets led with the "Kevin Spacey comes out" part of the story and not the "Kevin Spacey molested a 14-year-old boy."
I have been Anthony Rapp and the way he says he feels even now was so familiar, I was like yeah, that is exactly how I would feel if I came face to face with that guy again. You're transported right back to that age, that level of fear, that level of helplessness. I'm glad I haven't seen him again. I can't imagine how it must be to see someone's face on TV every day. But back to the power of words; Kevin knew just what his words would do; he was trying to take the wind out the sails of Anthony's words. I'm glad people didn't let him succeed.

My son told me that three boys in his school were expelled for homosexual behavior. So I asked him "if they were caught having sex with girls would they have been expelled?" Because seriously, people being denied their education over their sexual orientation seems a bit harsh to me. And to think that gay people already have all these problems and Kevin Spacey is adding to them by saying, "Oh by the way, when you're drunk and you're gay sometimes you molest small boys" is just not helping.
So watch your words. Think before you speak and all that jazz.

Speaking of using my words, the National Gay and Lesbian Human rights commission could use your help. Whether you subscribe to the idea that gayness is wrong or right, surely you can see that to suppress someone's human rights because of their perceived immorality is not only hypocritical but just plain wrong. Hopefully reading In Search of Paradise will make you see that people are just people, regardless of who they love. Pre-order period is winding down. Three days and it's awverr. See you on the other side.

The Spoils of War

Book Launch for Charity is winding down. We're on like the last seven days on what has been an epic journey of learning and getting the hang of an aspect of writing every writer hates: marketing. I want to thank you for sticking it out with me bombarding your inbox almost daily with my ramblings and musings.
Thank you for your time.
I've been thinking about writing a companion piece to In Search of Paradise. My ableiest of able beta reader asked me a number of questions while we were reading through the manuscript. She was curious about some things which I took for granted as obvious. Things which maybe only Kenyans might understand. Now I put in footnotes to explain those, but I feel like I might just take the time out and flesh things out. What do you think? Should I do that?

I'm also thinking about what next. In about seven days, In Search of Paradise will launch, the price will rise, we'll know how much was made on pre-order and give that to the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Hopefully, the book will have gained some momentum and I might turn to something else. I am dithering between finishing Cinderella By Any Other Name which is a forced marriage story, and Child of Destiny - Marcus Devereux in which we finally meet the Child of Destiny. Both of them are somewhere about midway or thereabouts. Which one to finish next? Shall I put a poll on my facebook page? What's the best way forward?

Meanwhile, +Rihanna did a shoot for Vogue Arabia where she channels queen Nefertiti. Which is only right since she has Nefertiti under her boobs (as a tattoo). Anyway, I was looking at one picture in particular and it was giving me SPOILER REDACTED vibes for In Search of Paradise. There is this one scene in which seriously if there was a visual representation, she in that outfit would be it...okay I'll give you a slight hint. It involves Zawadi, but it doesn't.

Either way, +Rihanna is the only true ruler I acknowledge. The - fake - ruler of my country just sent his thugs to beat up people and kill them in a slum neighborhood of Nairobi. I think he wants to provoke chaos and blame it on the other guy. Only, the other guy isn't playing those games. I can't believe I'm saying this but I think I've officially joined the resistance. Is this a worldwide thing now? Is it something in the atmosphere or is the apocalypse truly upon us? Anyways, maybe I should pack a small bag of necessities and keep that ready.
Just in case.
Question: What does one pack for the apocalypse? Apart from toilet paper that is...

What's Up With Y'all and Sex Trafficking Kids?

Hi! Tired of me yet?
Visited my book page yet?
Today I want to talk about human trafficking and human rights. In the last two years or so we've been talking about Nigerian girls abducted by Boko Haram. And now just this past week, we've heard about the epidemic of missing black and brown girls in Washington DC. At last count (that I saw), 28 girls are still missing from as young as 12 to about 28 and their cases are yet to be resolved.

You notice how their pictures all look like mugshots? Is that an accident?

According to police, it's not that there's been a rise in missing girls but that they're now using twitter to highlight the issue and therefore it seems like there's more. But some of the cases are old. There are also boys missing. The number is much less ( I counted five) but still, they deserve to be mentioned.
These are of course not the first girls to go missing. When I was in Uganda at the turn of the millennium, Joseph Kony and his rebels regularly took girls from their homes. It was a well known fact and nobody was the slightest bit moved about it.
Y'all the girl child just means absolutely nothing.

I also saw that movie/documentary about how girls are abducted from Russia and Ukraine with the promise of a "better life in America" and then they're trafficked as sex slaves. In India, girls as young as twelve are "married off" by CATHOLIC PRIESTS to sex tourists. When the guy is tired of the girl he just simply abandons her. The worst part is that, it's their parents who sell them off.
+Jada Pinkett-Smith did a documentary with CNN detailing how girls are trafficked inside the United States by men who lure them away simply by giving them the attention their parents or guardians can't give them. Of course I can't relate to this because I'm an African and African parents just don't do attention. That's what you have 2000 siblings for.

So, now that we've established that human trafficking is a worldwide problem and that slavery is alive and well, what are we going to do about it?
Human Traffickers are not ghosts, they live somewhere, store these girls somewhere, use someone's transport, get these girls across borders somehow...And their clients - they find them somewhere right? Jada's documentary showed that a girl's "pimp" had as many as 50 people in one day coming to take their turn with some hapless thirteen year old who thought he loved her. Where and how do these 50 people A DAY hear about this girl? Why isn't there a whole unit in every police force dedicated to going undercover, getting these girls out and finding them somewhere to go; hope for the future?
It's just a question.

but I'm asleep tho...

I feel like sometimes the obvious answers are in front of us but we choose to ignore them in favor of some convoluted nonsense that serves somebody's interest but is clearly bullshit. I saw on twitter that NYPD officers were arrested for being pimps...(Imma just leave that there as a point to ponder).
Speaking of things that are obvious I saw today on CNN that Saudia Arabia is financing the war in Yemen which has been going on for three years. That country flies under the radar huh? It seems to be involved in every little thing that's wrong with the Middle East but nobody ever turns the spotlight that way. Also it never features in travel bans...it's really what's-wrong-with-this-pictureish.
Okay that's enough politics for a Sunday. What you all up to?