Posts filed under 'Mental'
My name is Daudi. Easy name. Daudi. 20+ years ago today when I was born that is what my parents decided to name me. Why then do so many people have issues with it? It has made for some ridiculous moments. Comme ca:
I was in the UK just after Princess Diana died and for a while a lot of people thought that I was related or connected to Dodi Al-Fayed. Yeah, Daudi = Dodi!
Then for a while many thought I was connected to or trying to imitate the Scottish International Doddie Weir, a guy whose first and last name are pronounced almost exactly as my first and last name. I lost count the number of times I would make reservations for something and turn up to find they had spelt my name Doddie Weir. They would expect a huge Scottish second row and instead get a smaller Kenyan loose head prop.
The most ridiculous moment connected to my name happened at the first day in a new job while I was in Manchester. My manager walked up to me, fixed me with a steely glare and stated in a loud voice, “David, you’ve spelt your name wrong on the form.” I leaned back and looked at her and asked her, “Just what type of a muppet do you think I am that I would misspell my own bleeding name, you cartoon.” Ok I wish I had said that. What I really said was, “My name is Daudi, not David. I do not misspell my name.”
She was British and perhaps you can understand why she would confuse, or prefer, David with Daudi.
What I find strange is that Kenyans equally have a problem with Daudi. There are many people who insist on calling me David no matter how many times I tell them my name is Daudi. Then there are those who when I protest at being called David announce to me, like it is breaking news, that Daudi is the kiswahili version of David.
Yes. I. Know. That. Believe it or not.
No one goes around calling David Daudi so why do they insist on calling Daudi David? In fact no one goes around calling Dawit David or Daud David or Dawd David. They just have a problem with Daudi! One time I had to renew an official document and the mad people behind the counter went and changed my name, in my official documents, to David! When I protested they said they were (and I quote exactly), “doing me a favour” ARGGGGHHHHH! And it is Kenyans. Tanzanians have no problem calling me Daudi, Ugandans have no problem calling me Daudi, all other Kiswahili speakers love to call me Daudi. But Kenyans, David, David, David!
I am attached to the name Daudi. It is my name. As in most societies around the world those who named me did not just pick a name out of the blue. Daudi was my father’s father. My grandfather. I am named after him and I consider that a massive honour. So when you call me David and I flip a little bit, be easy and understand where I am coming from.
Hehe, yeah I’ve waiting to get that off my chest for a while now - indulge me this once!
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Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 12:20 PM
Well it has finally happened. The amount of attention this article has been getting means that I shall forever be tied to this domain and this blog:
I liked the separation between Mentalacrobatics and Daudi Were but hey it was time anyway.
Some advice if you want to remain anonymous as a blogger.
- Never ever go for a blogger’s conference/meet up/gathering. Those places are like show rooms for digital cameras.
- Do not talk to the main stream media, your name will come out eventually!
My only regret: that I never got around to finding a way to write a post with a link to goatse on this blog. Now that I have to be sensible, I probably never will.
(By the way http://goatse.cz/ do not open, don’t, just don’t, and do not OPEN. DO not, DON’T. NSFW! Just leave it alone, leave it, and don’t even think about it. Just smile and wave, just smile and wave and walk on by. I didn’t even hyperlink it so you’d have to cut and paste it, which is just sad. Just leave it, you’ll thank me for it. hehe.)
So that’s it, from now on, all sensible. I remember when people used to think that I was the other Daudi in the blogosphere. They would stay stuff like, that’s where you write your sensible stuff and Mentalacrobatics is where you mess around. Ha! The cheek. Especially when you consider that 90% of the people who read this blog think I am waaaaaay to serious for life.
Happy days. There are some bloggers who enjoyed revealing my name to newer bloggers (like it was big secret) and urging them, I imagine in a silly sinister voice like Skeletor from He-man, to “Google his name”. That would make me laugh because up to last week the top Google for Daudi Were was this page, so the new bloggers would email them back and say, ” Wow Mental is a serious scientist!” which would irritate the perpetrators even more, and apparently induce serious hallucinations (usually centred around imaginary “hacking”). Usijali one day nitatoboa vibaya - complete with screen shots, transcripts and recordings like my name was Githongo 
Happy days, eh, happy days.
The end of an era. No more food for thought, no more coming out the closet, no more big red buttons, all sensible from now on in. Promise!
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Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 11:57 PM
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
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Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 9:43 AM
Yesterday I had one of those moments that you can only really experience in a place like Nairobi. A single question that could fill an entire term’s worth of philosophy, religious education, political science lectures.
I was sitting in a cyber café when the lady on the computer next to me, a complete stranger, turned to face me and pointing to her screen asked, “Excuse me, what does this word mean?” One of her friends had forwarded her a joke which had the word “heterosexual” in it; this was the word she wanted me to explain to her.
Easy peasy right?
Not quite, just try it now, how would you explain, in a couple of sentences what heterosexual means?
I fell into the trap of immediately going down the sexual route as I blurted out, “People who have sex with people of the opposite sex”.
“Ah you mean prostitutes?” she replied.
Ok clearly I wasn’t getting my point across. So I embarked on the opposites approach, employing the Law of Contradiction (or Noncontradiction if you prefer). I asked her if she knew what homosexual was. She wasn’t sure. Damn.
So now I am digging deeper, because she wants to know what homosexual is and I am not going to fall into the trap of defining everything by sexual intercourse again.
Forget sexual intercourse I had bigger problems as I now I found myself using words like “normal” as in, heterosexual are normal. Now do I really want to go there? Heterosexual as the definiendum and normal as the definiens for that definiendum? Or ‘normal’ as the prima inter pares in a series of definiens on heterosexuality? That implies, by extension, homosexuals are not normal. Isn’t that an abuse of the Law of Identity? Besides I feel that is not for me to decide for her, whatever my beliefs on homosexuality and heterosexuality are. One of my brothers told me, “The fact that you hesitated and resisted to using the word “normal” when describing heterosexual highlights that you have been living outside.” (Outside = outside the country and indeed the continent). Now that sparked of a whole new debate, but I digress. This lady and her question was threatening to take over my thought process for the rest of the month!
So try it now, explain heterosexuality without using the word ‘normal’ or referring to sexual intercourse.
Now you see what I mean about filling a term’s worth of lectures of philosophy, religious education, political science etc.
Later in the day as I shared this story with a friend she gave me her solution, I should have just told that lady to Google it. Now why didn’t I think of that!
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Friday, June 15th, 2007 at 1:14 PM
A Kikuyu, a Luhya and a Persian are standing outside Nakumatt Prestige at 8pm. Which one is selling popcorn, which one is eating popcorn, which one is watching?
I am an information junkie. I used to be one of those people with a million different email subscriptions flying into my email inbox each day. News lists, global security information lists, sports, technology, you name it I had it. One day last year I revolted and unsubscribed to all of them except two. Why? First of all it was information overload! Secondly the growth and wide availability of RSS feeds and other ways to get information means I no longer need to fill my email inbox to get the information I want. Now I am signed up to only two daily email lists on my main email account and both are vital reading and if you don’t have them you should get them!
One is The Global Voices daily digest (blogs) written by David Sasaki and his bunch of merry men and women. The other is The Fiver (football) written by a bunch of nutters in Fiver Towers. (OK I admit I do have one or two other weekly email subscriptions that such a pillar of society such as myself has no business reading, step forward Holy Moly!) What lists out there are worth a look.
So which RSS Feeds am I reading or do I think are worth reading, or do I feel I should be reading? All is revealed on the MentalGator. Yeah I noticed some of you noticing my site pulling your feeds and was bound to oust me before long so I might as well publicise it. It is quite small, I will try to keep it under 30 feeds, unlike the monster that is the KENYAUNLIMITED AGGREGATOR! It is rough around the edges, needs a serious css over haul and some options need changing but it will do for now. If this all works out then, I’ll change the software that powers the KenyaUnlimited aggregator to this one.
It’s been a while since I shook with laughter while reading a blog post but Greg Black got me laughing and holding my head at the same time while I was reading this.
The guys at Very Sawa Technology Studios are on to something with the launch of Jahazi. When you have White African, Kobia, JKE, and the Skunkworks crew all ooohing and ahhhing over one of your products its time to start thinking about an IPO.
And finally
KBW exists. And KBW exists primarily because its members want it to exist and contribute to help it exist in various ways, not because Mentalacrobatics started it or the KBW Admin Team helps sustain it, although those are factors as well. If KBW members do not want KBW to exist it will not. It really is a simple as that. That is why, at the end of the day, my opinion on each and every attack on KBW is not that important and why I will not comment on each and every blog post that mentions KBW negatively.
If KBW loses credibility then bloggers will simply leave KBW and no others will join. In the same way, if the Admin Team can not be trusted then KBW members will simply stop conferring with, contributing to and indeed trusting that Admin Team.
I can tell you honestly that when I fire up Thunderbird each morning the KBW admin email address is the most active of all the email addresses and of those messages new member registration and new members requesting assistance take up a healthy number. Do not take my word for it, look for yourself.
KBW does have its share of yahoos. What is healthy is that we all have different opinions on what constitutes a yahoo, and believe me I have my opinion as well. I can take the personal attacks, they stopped bothering me a long time. (When cartoons email your parents to inform them that their son is confusing the youth of Kenya on behalf of StateHouse and should be arrested – you learn to laugh at life – otherwise you can go mad).
This does raise interesting questions on the issue of ownership of the Kenyan blogosphere. Methinks I have just found the right topic for my next podcast.
I was talking last night with another veteran of Kenyan online communities and we were reflecting about the back-in-the-day days. If it is beef and “online war” you are after let me tell you right now KBW is the wrong place to look. We are but a bunch of amateurs.
In 1997 as an innocent 1st year undergrad I joined an online community called KenyaOnline. Walalala. VITA! This was just before the 1997 general election and I tell you MPs, aspiring MPs, their cronies, even MINISTERS (apparently writing anonymously – remind you of anything) were all throwing, what the KOL community called, online rungus at each other. I must admit I found it brilliant to start of with.
By the time 2002 had come along and those same wazee, wabunge and wamweshimwas were still throwing insults at each other it had become tiring. However things mellow out and KenyaOnline is still going strong in its current incarnation on yahoo groups.
Any of you who were around for the drama on mlevi.com, rcbown.com – remember when rcbowen was THE Kenyan page on the internet – if you weren’t in his guest book then you basically didn’t exist online – and even at the height of drama on mashada.com then you know that KBW is a relatively stable place and actually quite quiet in comparison.
There many who like to cultivate a them and us mentality about this whole online thing. The KBW Admin Team is always accessible, if you have any concerns then you know where to find us.
With our numbers growing and our membership diversifying, with the power or blogs increasing and recognition of bloggers growing day by day I am confident, as I always have been from that day 1 when I was the ONLY member of KBW, that this project that we are all involved in, is here to stay.
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Sunday, May 13th, 2007 at 5:53 PM
On Monday I tested your brain juice with some teasers. Here are the answers. For all the questions with the original pictures check out this post.
Question 1
I asked you what the man was doing lighting a fire in a straight line in the middle of the night.
Answer
SIAFU also know as Safari Ants. We found a line of ants between two buildings when we got home. They had already started attacking livestock and people walking between the two buildings. The fire was to stop them in their tracks or rather to scatter them. Stopping Siafu is almost impossible as we found out one month back in the day. But that is a blog post for another day. Just to prove that “Kakamega chickens are the craziest” check out these kuku feasting on the left over ants in the morning. Siafu can kill cows, horses and even (very drunk) people but in Kakamega our chickens download them like maize.
Question 2
I ask what signs are there in the picture that a major event is about to take place.
Answer
The banana plants (yeah the ones pointed at by the big red arrows).
The event that was taking place was a Harambee for a secondary school. We had asked for signboards to be put up to direct people to the school. When we got there in the morning there was only one signboard up, about a kilometre away on the main road. We asked where the rest of the signboards were we were told, “Didn’t you see the banana leaves along the route?” before they walked away muttering something about how city slickers are bleeding useless.
Question 3
I asked at what level of education does the owner of this desk study.
Answer
Secondary school. Not because the desk is big (you should see the size of some of the kids in Standard 8). There is one main clue:
The desk has a lock.
Primary school students, if they are lucky enough to have an individual desk, would not get a lock. Secondary students however, probably as a symbol that they are becoming more responsible, get their own desk with a lock.
Question 4
I asked at what level of education the boys performing the play study.
Answer
This was probably the easiest one. They are in secondary school. The trousers are the big clue. Primary school students wear shorts. (This must be all very confusing to people who went to “American style” schools where you can wear what you want all the time and uniforms did not exist. I remember being in a school where someone turned up for the day at school in a “Fuck the Police” t-shirt. I was scandalised.
School uniform is one of those things that you hate when you are in school but look at with pride once you leave. Some of my brothers were in Lenana School and a couple of years after they left we bumped into some Lenana boys standing at a bus stop with their shirts tucked out and ties loose. Man my bros jumped on those kids telling them that if they want to dress like that they should remove their school badges from their blazers so people think they go to Kabarak Boys (which apparently has the same colours as Lenana).
I remember bumping into some students from my former primary school and they were (and yeah this is shocking so you better sit down) the kids were wearing the Sunday uniform (white shirt, red blazers, grey shorts) WITHOUT TIES! I lectured them. For a good 5 minutes. In the middle of Sarit Centre. On a busy Sunday. Still it was their fault. If you do not want to wear the school tie then wear the “everyday uniform” (grey shirts, red sweaters, grey shorts). If you want to wear the “Number 1″ then wear the flipping tie ok!
Still on the subject of uniforms I was watching a Kenyan music video on TV the other day (what I can’t spend all my time solving the world’s problems) and in the music video, which was all about sex and smoking, the kids were wearing their school uniforms. I hope that those kids had all left the school by the time that video came out. Otherwise I’m scared to think what happened to them once they got back to school. I know the man we still THE Doctor would have finished us.
Question 5
I asked whether the girl guides were raising the flag or lowering the flag.
Answer
They are lowering the flag.
As any Scout or Girl Guide will tell you (and I speak as a veteran here; scout, Buffalo Patrol leader and later on Troop Leader (BDIS) of the 8th Nakuru Scout Troop) when the flag is being raised it is tied up in a bundle comme ca:
Congratulations to all of you who tackled the questions successfully. As for Mitzy, what are you? A brain reader or something?
An extra big thank you to all of you who responded to my SMS for contributions for the Harambee. I was touched by the response. I will send pictures of the event to your email addresses soon.
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Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 12:08 PM
Here is a simple set of questions to test your brain juices this Monday afternoon. They really are easy and you should get at least 4 out of 5 right.
Question number 1
Observe the following picture
It is the middle of the night and this man is lighting a fire in a straightish line from a building across a patch of grass. What possible reason could there be for this behaviour? A strange African midnight ritual, an arsonist at work?
Question 2
Observe the following picture:
It is obvious that there is a big event about to take place here. What is the main sign that an event is about to take place?
Question 3
Observe the following picture
This is a school desk. At what level of education does the owner of this desk study?
Question 4
Observe the following picture
These three school boys are performing a play. At what level of education do they study?
Question 5
Observe the following picture
Are these Girl Guides raising or lowering the national flag?
Answers in the comments please.
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Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 5:01 PM