A SPEECH TO THE GRADUATING CLASS OF 2013

“It is a cold, wild world waiting for you”

By Abuta Ogeto

Congratulations to the graduating class of 2013. I don’t know between your lecturer and aunt Google, who should take the credit, but I will let that pass.

I know you all wish we could skip to the part where we call your names; you throw your caps up, take pictures and go for the party. You will need that party, it is probably the last you will have for a long time. So I will cut to the chase and tell you what those professors and others on the dais earning undeserved honorary degrees will not tell you.

First, I do understand the certain and expectant attitude of those who have been in blue-chip courses; the medics, lawyers, engineers, planners and architects. I can feel the insecurity around those in business, economics and their unrealistic expectations in the job market. I can sense the palpable anxiety of those in Arts and Anthropology who are wondering where they will find jobs. It is only natural.

The first thing you will learn in the next few weeks is the depressing gap between fantasy and reality. Start by forgetting that Ksh 80,000 job you have been dreaming about. It is for the extremely few and the luckiest. Luck only favours a certain minority, and the least you expect. So you will have to periodically adjust your expectations. Soon or later even a Ksh 20,000 job will be good enough.

Another thing you are about to learn is that some of your female colleagues will never have to work hard in their lives. Their beauty and voluptuous bodies will guarantee them good jobs, instant promotions and generally good lives. Such is life, deal with it.

So start by regulating your expectations. Higher expectations breed more disappointments and disillusionment. If after a year, you don’t have a job, self-loathing and reproaching will set in. This often coincides with HELB reminding you to repay that loan, that they are fining you Ksh 5,000 monthly, anyway. Some will have to stick with bad and unsatisfying jobs. Some will quit. Life will be harsh on you so much you will wonder why you were born bright. Your colleagues who went to tertiary colleges or joined the military are buying houses, getting married and having a life. You soon discover we don’t author our own lives.

The excitement you have today will wane as days go by and you realise no one is calling you after dropping your CVs in 103 organisations. It will take them so long to get back to you until you get the point: they don’t make more jobs today than they churn out graduates. Most of you will know what it means to be an adult and broke. For men for instance, having date will become a luxury, unless you have a very understanding girlfriend. Good luck with that.

For men, today, don’t impregnate a woman or marry too soon after college. Family and children will blackmail you to conform with societal expectations, essentially sticking up with a bad job, because bills have to be paid. A married man who borrows money to pay rent is a sad case study. Don’t be intimidated by societal norms, peer pressure, pressure from your girlfriend or anyone. Be your own man. Nothing stifles creativity than conformity.

For women, timing will be crucial in all your endeavours. That Masters, that child, that marriage will give you nightmares in the short run. Those from poor backgrounds or without means will find marriage an easier option. It is an experiment that proves wrong when motherhood slows down personal progress. You have to be careful on what you give in to first. Choices have consequences. Don’t be complacent.

Don’t compare your life with that of your friends. Comparison is the death of contentment. From here, life will play much more differently. Out goes the herd mentality, in comes the capitalist individual. Some are coming back for their postgraduate in the next intake. Some will move into business and be rich at a miraculous speed. Some will get plum jobs. It doesn’t matter. Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead. Sometimes you’re behind. The competition is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Times will be tough for the majority. But don’t lose your cool. Be calm. If you lose your cool, you harm yourself. Some will take longer getting that dream job or any job at all. Or even getting into business. But eventually, with hard work, belief in self, things have a way of turning around.

Those who will succeed, remember to be humble. Life is short. Be good to those around you. Reward those who make your life easier every day. Your spouse, your shopkeeper, your newspaper vendor, your mechanic and your security guard. Anyone. Remember relatives who are less fortunate and pull them up. Education serves its purpose when we all do good to make our society more equal and equitable.

The theses you have written, the highly esoteric term papers and your erudite arguments that you hold daily count for zilch if they don’t bring any good to the less privileged.

If you mess things up, you have to pick up yourself. Whether it is at the workplace, in relationships, family, anywhere. Ladies don’t stick in toxic relationship. Men avoid women who might ruin your life. But should you fall, hold your feet on the ground strong. Cry. Regret. Move on.

Remember the world can run without you. Osama bin Laden is gone. Hosni Mubarak and that other dictator from Tunisia are gone. Muammar Gadaffi, for all his supposedly noble Pan-African ideas, is gone. Mugabe will go. Putin will go. Nothing lasts forever. We are all dispensable. And yes, the world can run without you.

Nothing is definite. Nothing is guaranteed. Nothing is given. All you need is preparedness to deal with whatever life throws at you. It is a cold world out here. Just find your way and whatever that brings you happiness. Be patient.

What will be your place? Wherever it is, find it. And be patient. God’s time is the best.

WE NEED LOLLIPOP DIPLOMACY

The American Ambassador is an irritant who should either shut up or ship out. Or should he? I have some thoughts. One, we are a very proud nation; a proud people. And when an alien lectures our leaders, we get violent.

More so if the alien is right. This ambassador guy is right, but his approach is naïve. He is bullish, patronising and eager. Or maybe he is following orders from cousin Obama? Zero! This man has misadvised Washington. He must have told them that “mukoras” in government understand only one language: The whip. On this, he is wrong.

Naive approach

He is like this South African farmer and his young labourer in Grahamtown. One morning, the farmer woke up to find the labourer down with an axe lodged in the middle of his head. He kicked the poor fellow twice to see if he was alive.

To his surprise, the chap responded. Unbothered, the farmer left for work. After all, he reasoned, the labourer could not survive. When he returned home late that evening, he kicked him again to see if he had died. Amazingly, and hours later, the fellow was still conscious.

Shocked by this, he decided to have his evening beer first. Later that night, he took the labourer to hospital. They extracted the axe from his head and the man made a full recovery.

What is the moral of this story? Two things. One, no amount of pain will put a nation down. Not Kenya. In December 2007, we had an axe lodged in the head. It is still there. In fact, Mr Raila Odinga went to New York with an axe on his forehead. And we share in his pain. Especially the ridicule and humiliation over the Barack Obama luncheon.

In my view, and like the African labourer, we will survive the pain. Two, and in the meantime, we must ignore irritants like this ambassador. This is why. As we wriggled in pain in December 2007, President Kibaki was sworn in at night. We were in shock.

But the good ambassador was the first alien to acknowledge the false victory. Like the Boer farmer, maybe he did not care. Or maybe he lacked in judgement. My hunch? He has poor judgement. And because of this, he has misled his government. Issuing threats to our leaders can only turn the public against the Americans.

Because of his actions, we are even prepared to tell cousin Obama to take a walk. On this, I could also be wrong. This is why I will flip my argument now. Maybe this “ambassador guy” is right. And maybe our leaders are “mukoras”. What is more: they have no self respect. This brings me to my second thought. During President Obama’s inauguration, we were not invited.

But our Foreign minister insisted on going to Washington. Then he attended a disgraceful ‘‘street party’’ next to the ‘‘real party’’ at the White House. We were embarrassed beyond. We looked disparate and jilted. We forgot. Now Mr Odinga has revived the memory. His desperate attempt to meet President Obama was pathetic.

First they removed his name from a list of guests invited to a luncheon at the White House. He was not embarrassed. The brother persisted. Next, I believe he ‘‘cornered’’ cousin Obama on some corridor at another luncheon. They exchanged niceties, took a photo and that was all. Now his media spin doctors are telling us that they held “discussions” over Justice Ringera and sundry. I do not believe them. The Prime Minister is being cheap.

No dignity, no pride, no shame. And if this is true, allow me to make my point. When you lose your self respect as a nation, you will be treated like dirt. But there is also a lesson for the ambassador from his boss. When it comes to our leaders, the ambassador uses “cowboy diplomacy”. He is tough; he is rough. What President Obama used on Mr Odinga is “lollipop diplomacy”. It is superior; it is soft power. He made Mr Odinga feel important, not threatened.

Yet all he did at the “corridor meeting” and the photo shoot was to give the Prime Minister a “lollipop”. And this art of “political seduction” is what the ambassador should learn from his boss. Instead of “cowboy diplomacy”, he should try “lollipops”!

Allow me now to give my third thought. Generally, our leaders are charlatans and the world is laughing at us. What is more: they are confused. The Prime Minister told us that the US has a right to ban Kenyan leaders. I was shocked. Maybe the “corridor meeting” with President Obama mesmerised him. Now President Kibaki disagrees.

He has taken issues with the US for threatening our leaders. However, the disrespect we face and the “cheapness” of our leaders begs for a new vision. And this is my third thought. Across the entire nation, small groups are gathering to craft a vision and groom a leader, maybe a presidential candidate. To determine whether the emerging leaders are fake or not, I suggest we use the Nine Tests of Confucius.

According to this thinker, this is how we will know a servant leader: “… send him to a distant mission to test his loyalty. Employ him nearby to observe his manners. Then give him a lot to do in order to judge his ability.

Suddenly put a question to him to test his knowledge. Make a commitment with him in difficult times to test his ability to live up to his own word. Trust him with money to test his heart, and announce the coming of a crisis to test his integrity.

Make him drunk to see the other side of his character and put him in female company to see his attitude towards women. Submitted to these nine tests, a fool will always reveal himself!”

Impact of Video Games on Children and Adolescents

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, who is perhaps one of the most prolific writers on family matters and parenting has many points to put across, especially on video games. Besides the little good they may be having, there are many more pressing challenges that come with the addiction to video games. She comes out strongly against videos and has some pretty good points to support her claims.

The top effect of video games on children is the development of aggression habits that may eventually lead to antisocial behavior. This normally arises from the fact that most games have characters that act violently and willingly harm other actors in the video. By fourth grade, most children are said to be in love with violent games which further compromises the problem.

The fact that children become aggressive may spill over to their school environment and have devastating results. More disturbingly, the relationships with their peers and even teachers head south. Children addicted to video games are prone to fights with other students and even teachers. They are also more prone to spoiling school property and even their own belongings. This communicates the big problem that teachers have to contend with.

Drug and substance abuse is an enormous problem that has often been linked to the playing of video games and desire to identify with the characters in the videos. Youngsters who begin watching and playing videos as early as age four are likely to be abusing drugs by their teenage years. As soon as they start abusing this drugs, their find more solace in the videos and sink deeper into drug and substance abuse.

Since the rise of the video games popularity, violence against women and girls has hiked almost in equal measure. When boys, who play games more than girls, are asked to stop playing by their mothers, they tend to object and afterwards, resent the stance of their mothers. Later, they will have to look for a place to channel their anger and violent moves learnt from the videos. In most cases, girls and women are the victims. Acts of sexual exploitation especially among adolescents are experienced as well as violent acts like fights and beatings.

Racial discrimination also has roots I the content of the video that adolescents watch or play. In some videos, discriminatory acts are directed at a black, which sends a message that they are inferior. Another key element is the fact that sexual stereotypes are built in their minds especially if the content is sexually explicit. This will give a wrong impression of what a good relationship should be like when they eventually start dating. They will most definitely see their partners as sexual objects or tools of practicing sexual prowess as the videos suggest. A third common stereotype is that of gender myths. Women are communicated to be for home chores, babysitting and (or) being sexually submissive. Later in life, these thoughts may affect the way men relate with their girlfriends and even their wives. This eventually leads to strained relationships and marriages.

Did you know that foul language is influenced by excessive playing of video games and watching obscene shows or movies? Several studies have establishes that many obscenities that are seen in children and adolescents have their origin in the content and language used in the movies and videos they watch or play. More importantly, the fact that the actors are expressed as super humans and are influential worsens the situation. Even more painful, the frequent use makes them see it as a normal language which even affects their language score in class. Occasionally, the reprimand of teachers and parents of the language they use may have a positive impact but cannot be sustained if they keep watching still.

Social isolation can also be a big problem. By spending a lot of time on the gadgets, a lot of time for studies and socializing is wasted. The first and major result is a withdrawn person who cannot initiate and sustain relationship. Later in life, they have difficulties getting partners and normally have poor relationships. Another key effect is that the self esteem is ruined since they spend time away from their family which may have boosted their self esteem a great deal. Thirdly, they may not have time for their hobbies or any other activity that builds their capacity and skills. This results in a poorly skilled person who cannot tackle the realities of life constructively.

One can be wrong to conclude that obesity comes from consuming junk food only. Children who don’t engage in physical exercises by spending all their free time playing games can become obese or overweight. After accumulating a lot of weight, they develop weight related illnesses like diabetes, high blood pressure and other cardiac diseases. Later, they become unable to perform simple chores or even walking long distances. By the time they are in Middle Ages, their diseases cost them dearly in controlling them.

School grades are perhaps the most affected by the multi-billion dollar industry. Having discovered that the students love their games, they devise every way to make sure they access the video as much as they want. Spending a lot of time on the videos robs the students a chance to concentrate on their school work and even assignments given to them by their teachers. They also lack time to read. The overall effect is a generation that doesn’t have time to think of knowledge. The quality of education is thus compromised a great deal. As much as teachers may insist on having their work done, they have a challenge controlling what they do at home. Parents are thus very critical in determining how their children fair and score academically.

Parenting and violent entertainment are two interrelated things. When entertainment having violent messages is on a spiral increase, parenting becomes harder and harder. Worse still, messages passed from the videos make the youngsters more deviant to instruction and are prone to disobey their parents easily without care or worry. In light of this, parents need to be keener on the time their children spend on videos as well as the content. More importantly, a stricter supervision is also recommended to save their children from the monster of violent and explicit content in the videos. Also, parents should establish close relationships with their children so that they can be able to explain to them the need to study and avoid video game. A key point here is that the issue will be tackled from a more friendly and understanding platform. Teens and children listen and accept correction faster when they have an emotional connection with the person correction them.

Life is Hard, Life is Difficult

My message today is titled Life is hard” and it’s about how to live a great life despite the fact that life is difficult.
Everybody wants to be happy in life. We all want to live a perfect life. We want that great job or a successful business. We want to be married to Mr. Right or Mrs Perfect. We want to have great kids. We want to have friends that stick by us come rain or shine. We want to be able to have all the material things life has to offer and have all our problems just disappear.
Everybody wishes for good life. It may be at different levels. One person may define a good life one way and another may describe it another way. For one person a good life may be just having three meals a day and a roof over their head. For another it may be having a huge mansion and a couple of million dollars in the bank.
There are different levels and meanings to what a good life is. But whatever you definition of it, there is perhaps one thing that you may have in common with many other people. You might want that good life stress free. You would like to have it without having to work so hard or struggle so much for it. That is a normal human expectation. Nobody likes to struggle through life.
Unfortunately, that is also what may be stopping you from having that great life. The thought of all that work, all that planning, overcoming hurdles and resistance is enough to make a lot of people give up before they even start. It can all seem too overwhelming, and for many it all just doesn’t seem be worth it. It’s like being drained of energy just at the thought of running a marathon. Before you are even at the starting line the thought of all that running just scares you and tires you so much mentally you just decide not to go for it. It’s just too hard.
One of my favourite books is titled “The Road Less Travelled” by M. Scott Peck. The first sentence in the book is:

“Life is difficult.”

Now, if you pick up a book and the first thing it tells you is “life is difficult” you may just think “is this book going to get reassuring and encouraging after such a start?
But, as Peck goes on to explain, once you accept that life is hard, it no longer becomes an issue that it’s difficult. He says:

“Once we know that life is difficult- once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult.”

In life you will have difficulties getting anything you want. It is very rare to get anything in life without some degree of effort. Only if you win the lottery will you have everything without effort, and even then you would have had to go out and buy the lottery ticket anyway so it’s not free at all.
Life is hard – your boss will not always be the nicest person in the world. Your job will have challenges that you did not foresee. Your workmates will sometimes be a pain. You won’t always get the salary and recognition that you want and deserve at work. Your clients may not be the nicest people in the world.
Life is hard – your kids won’t always be the ideal kids you want them to be. Your wife or husband may not be as perfect as you thought they were when you married them – in fact I can guarantee you they are not. Your home may not be the ideal place you would want it to be. You may not the perfect wife or husband that you once thought you were.
Life is hard – running a business is not as easy as you thought it would be. No one is lining up to bring money to your business, even though you are a really nice person and your business has great products to offer.
I could go on and on with these examples, but the bottom line is that “Life is hard.”
I don’t mean to say in all this that you don’t deserve a break. I am not saying that you are not justified in thinking that you deserve more than what you have gotten from life and the world to this point.
I am not saying that you are not justified in feeling the way that you feel. I know you have had it tough at times. I know that at times you feel that it’s all very confusing and just too hard. I mean you have worked very hard. You’ve done all that you possibly could in your life whether it is at work or at home. But things just don’t seem to have worked out as well as you had planned or hoped. It all just seems to have gone wrong and you don’t know or understand how or why.
But that’s okay. It’s normal. That’s what being human is all about. That’s what life is all about. Life is hard. Accept that.
Once you do, you will feel better about your circumstances. Then you won’t think of your situation as anything but what is common to every human being. Then you will think of your situation as a part of life. You will no longer beat yourself up about how bad things are or how you are not doing so well in one area or another. You will realise that you are only human. You make mistakes just like everybody else. You are not perfect just like everybody else.
But don’t stop there. Accepting that life is hard does not mean that you accept every circumstance and simply go with the flow.
You see, there are two sides to this story. There is another side to this coin. On the one side of the coin is where you have the words “life is hard” inscribed, but if you turn that coin over you will five very small but powerful words. They read:

“You can make it better”

That is one of the beautiful things about life. You can make your life better. You have total responsibility for what you do and how you respond to the fact that life is hard. As the now cliché saying goes:

“If life hands you lemons, make lemonade.”

Accepting that life is hard comes with accepting that you have the responsibility to make it better. Not only do you have the responsibility to make it better, you have the ability and the power to make it better.
You can make it better – become a better employee and someone worth giving more responsibilities at work. The promotions and the better pay are sure to follow one way or another.
You can make it better – learn how to raise better kids and have a happier home. Become the good husband or wife you would like your spouse to be.
You can make it better – learn how to turn that business around. Gain the extra skills you need to run a successful business.
You see, the only person you have any control over is yourself. You cannot change other people. Let’s take the example of marriage for moment. Notice that I did not say you should turn your husband or spouse into an ideal spouse. I said you should become the ideal husband or wife you want your spouse to be. Then, once you become such a person you may have several choices as to how to relate to your spouse.
Firstly, once you are as near perfect a spouse as anyone can be your husband or wife might see the difference and also decide to change for the better or they may just change naturally as a response to your new attitude. Secondly, if they don’t change, perhaps you will have reached a level of maturity where you are content and satisfied with who they are and their faults no longer bother you. Or thirdly, in some cases, such as in abusive relationships or in relationships that are a risk to your health, you may reach a level of self acceptance and courage where you are able to leave that abusive or unfaithful partner.
Whatever the case may be, this example illustrates one other important fact about the fact that life is hard and taking responsibility. That is:

“You always have choices”

No matter what situation you are in, you have a choice. No matter how bad things are, you have a choice. No matter what you think you can or cannot do, you have a choice.
Now it may not be an easy choice, by any means. It may be a very difficult choice and the road you decide to take may be a tough one. It may push you way out of your comfort zone. It may mean that in the initial period your life may get even harder than it already is. But it is a choice nonetheless.
A lot of times you will actually find that the choices are not as hard as you thought they were. You may just have shut off your mind from seeing those choices and possibilities because you thought you had no choice. Once you become open to the idea that you are responsible for your life and that you have choices, you will find that you are no longer stuck just because life is hard.