fast car

Last week, a group of Kenyans on Twitter began a trend, #kenyainthe90s, where they recapped the typical Kenyan’s life in the 90s;a time when you were either Catholic,Protestant or SDA,a time you either sacked on a puru or koo,when kashata cubes and mabuyu seeds put you on another level,when you spotted bamuda shorts and Bata bullets,when you had a Sunday best;a time when TV had one horror series,Tahamaki, and one illusion show,Kiini Macho,I must confess,it was a wonderful trip down memory lane with everyone on board trying to outdo a previous tweet. The more we dug into the 90s archive, reliving moments that were,the more we saw things are not the same.The more we dug into the 90s archive,the more the saying,change is the only inevitable thing,felt closer home.

It is also said that with change is growth so we have no choice but to embrace it. I’m not sure about the latter but the tweets left no doubt about the former. They showed that even though today is tomorrow’s yesterday,they are all different,that even though today is tomorrow’s yesterday,they are independent. Every today we easier,faster,cheaper than yesterday.We are so engrossed in –erism that we forget there is always a flip side to everything under the sun. Our tlk is full of updates,blogs,sites.pages,walls and profiles(KBC imeacha kuwa nusu ya kuonana,tuko juu ya FB,Twitter na Google Buzz). We sleep to wake up to grab our phones,not to check the time but to give an update.We thanking God for the night that was and asking for guidance to the day that is on the same updates.What happened to intimate relationship with The Creator? We have become hommies to the extend of knowing how His FB profile looks like,knowing His Son’s ‘personal issues’(apparently he was a super-intelligent gay) ,knowing the Spirit would have better swag if christened the finger.

It is not just creator-creation relationship that has gone South,creature-creature relationship is on the same boat,giving social life a nip and tuck. The whole concept of hanging out was about physical contact,not necessarily physical intimacy but physical none-the-less but this is proving to be a vision illusive ranked closely under World Peace thanks to the ‘enabled’ phones and their smart counter-parts.

You got a fast car,

I want a ticket to anywhere,

Maybe we can make a deal,

Maybe together we can get somewhere.

Unlike Tracie Chapman,who needed a fast car to escape,escape from a drunkard dad,escape from a house without a mum,escape from lack,escape or die that way. Most of us do not need fast cars to save us from death for we are already in fast cars leading to our graves. Its sad that majority of the passengers do not know they are on board,the wind feels so good and they feel they belong.We are like surrogates,living perfect lives in pretty bodies,sculpturing words behind screens. We are the dial-a and instant generation, a people who know love is patient not as a way of life but as some Bible verse a teacher we hate to remember drummed into our heads. We have forgotten our yesterdays when we wrote letters page after page until we could write no more,the yesterdays when we waited faithfully for two plus weeks for replies,when we read those replies over and over like men after God’s own heart until the next one cme.

You got a fast car,

Is it fast enough so we can fly away,

We got to make a decision,

We leave tonight or live and die this way.

You and I,we got to make that decision,the decision that nine months down the line, when we will be in the 2^nd decade of this millennium,we will look back and say that was a life well lived.Regrets,wishes of changes to turn back the hands of time should be distant from you. Man made and natural disasters are all around us(Remember Haiti and Chile in a real prayer,not a random update) no one knows the day or hour and you need not be a believer to know that people lay in bed never to wake up,you need not to be a believer to know an eye sore can become the apple of the eye and the vice,no one knows,no one knows what things we hold so dear can do to us,we are mortal,here today,gone tomorrow.Where are we rushing to anyway? Get out of your fast car and take  walk,take time to make a real cup of tea as you learnt it in the dreaded Home Science class(key word-real),pick your phone and call someone to arrange a face to face meeting,scrap all that talk of ’are you online’ ’log into ebuddy’.And if you really have to get on that car,make sure it is automatic,that it will take you back to the middle once in a while,back to your soul,back to who you are suppose to be.