Of Death...

Of Death

These last few days, I have been reflecting quite a bit about death. Two friends of mine have lost a sister each, my sons friends lost a father and I have just received the news of a former teacher’s death.  Therefore the thought of death has been in my mind.

I have had a fairly intense experience with death having lost both my own parents more that sixteen years ago.  And experiencing death at close quarters in never a pleasant experience, even the death of a stranger by the side of the road.  Death has a way of shocking us into a freeze, making us wonder what it must be like for the person who has died and for those who were close family and friends, whether they were in pain and how much pain, whether they had “put their affairs in order” or even whether they have gone to the afterlife.

However, my sense is that deaths greatest tool of fear against us is the timing…. Death has a sneaky way of coming when it is least expected… a way of keeping its mystic by never giving a time and a day when it will come … so it keeps us guessing… and then it suddenly shows up.  Even for those who are terminally ill, death sneaks around giving false hope for days, months, or even years… and then it sneaks in and strikes … we even use the word “strikes” to add to the drama even when someone has died quite peacefully …. And it every time shocks us into a freeze.

Incidentally one of life’s main outcomes is death. A favorite saying goes that “the key cause of death is life”. Everyone will die at some point or other.  The bible refers to a life expectancy of seventy years and anything beyond that being a bonus.  We seem to falsely think and believe that one of our main objectives of life is to live for a long time, even if in deep pain,  – even when we know that will still come to an end.  So we go into all manner of health, financial, insurance and physical investments to keep death at bay.  I recently read a story of a man who had stayed vegetarian all is life - to keep healthy- who was now well over a hundred years old, and was wondering whether it was all worth it.

One of the tools I have learnt of dealing with uncertainty is scenario thinking.  It allows you to think “what if” around various possibilities and think through what each of the scenarios would result in, and how life would look like in that scenario.  In the case of death, death is certain.  The only uncertainty is timing.  Therefore, if you could think “what if” with the timing, what would this result in?  What if I died today, or tomorrow?  What if XYZ (insert name) died today, or tomorrow, what would this result in?  How would life unfold in this scenario?  Or even what if I (or XYZ) died in forty years?  Or sixty?  This may sound morbid but it is not different with similar messages that tell us to keep our “I love you”s current, because you don’t know when you, or the person you love will be gone.  However in this case, scenario thinking about death removes death’s overbearing power of timing from us. In other words, one of the ways to remove deaths power over us, is to expect it any time, all the time.  Then we are free to go on with the rest of our lives.

So, the next time you hear that someone has died, ask yourself whether the shock would be less if you had thought through this scenario. Indeed, that explains why people in Quarter 4 are never shocked about news of death; to them death is much more certain and is less of a scare.

The Power of Human Interaction

I have recently been struck by the amazing power of human interaction. I guess it is part of what is usually referred to as being present or being in the now.  I sometimes sit back and watch people go about their business and observe as they interact with other people.  I sometimes also watch myself as I go about my own business and the interactions I make.

I watch myself and other in regular familiar interactions, with family, friends and colleagues. I see the instant recognition, warmth, affection, respect and all other emotions that can be seen.  Sometimes I also see the coldness, confusion, sadness and many others.  Because I am in familiar environment, I can relate a lot of the observations to stuff I know that is happening around the lives of those I interact with, be it positive or negative.  All these observations make for daily experiences that accumulate to life and relationships growth and improvement and is some cases decline.

I also watch myself in regular non-familiar-mostly-customer-supplier kind of interactions.  The kind of interaction you would have in a supermarket check-out or at a gas station.  These interactions are professional, polite and transactional.  The people I interact with will usually be employed to do what they do, and they are compelled by nature of their employment to treat me in a certain way, usually polite, respectful and also to get me to do something that fulfills their mandate.  So a security guard will politely ask to conduct a body search on me or a car search, and his objective is to get me to comply and then we are soon both on to our next action.  In the event that I frequent a certain service point, the nature of this interaction evolves from initially unfamiliar-professional to a familiar professional and may soon be on its way to a familiar friend interaction.  I have observed on several occasions when I interact, on a regular basis, with professional guards at an office environment.  When they later are transferred to other premises, and I happen to visit those premises, the interaction instantly becomes personal-friendly even though they are in a professional mandate.  The same repeats itself across many other professional interactions that graduate to friendship.

However the most interesting interactions that I observe are those of strangers.  These for me represent our wiring as human beings, which can manifest as extremely good to extremely awful and any other point in between.  The same individual when interacting with a stranger can be at one point very nice and kind and at another point be very rude and mean.  The individual who is a mean rude driver may be rushing to a church where she is a volunteer usher showing people to their seats.  The guy you strike a nice friendly conversation on a sidewalk could be the same guy leading a rough violent bunch of football fans. The polite lady you it next to in a bus could be the same person shouting and cursing at a luggage attendant at the station.

What then do we make of all these interactions?  How can we as human being temper our interactions towards a more peaceful and loving world?  You have probably heard of the saying that friends are just strangers we have not met.  And the classic one that says: “They chap who cursed me and showed me the middle finger at the parking has just arrived for his interview – with me!”

Happy interacting!

My New Elevator Pitch

My Name is Moss Mara, I am from the Great Republic of Kenya,

·         Home to the Great Rift Valley, and the big five lakes of Turkana, Nakuru, Naivasha, Elementaita and Magadi

·         Home to the Great Massai Mara and the big five of Lion, Elephant, Buffalo, Rhino and Leopard

·         Home to the Great runners including the big five of Rudisha, Tergat, Kipchoge, Kemboi and Jelimo

·         Home to the Great mobile innovations including MPesa, Mshwari, MSoko, Mshamba and Pesa Pap!

·         And Home to some of the Greatest People who ever lived including Wangari Mathai, Jomo Kenyatta, Barrack Obama, Koitalel Samoei and Myself!

On top of the World - The story

It was dead quiet, freezing cold; but is was also beautiful, pure white as far as the eye could see, and the white in the distance merged with the beautiful pure blue of the sky in the distance.  It was the most beautiful place I have ever been to – and I have been to a lot of places!

 

I summited Kilimanjaro (Kili) on the fifth day of January early this year.  I was part of a small group of six that my twenty year old son and I had linked up with, consisting of a teacher, a student, a priest and a pilot.  It was a culmination of months of preparation, training, praying and thinking.  It was an achievement of a dream that had come up in a family conversation three years earlier, which from the look of things might well become a family tradition. We had discussed possible dream destinations and climbing Kili had come up, so when my son reminded me about it two years later, I asked him to figure out the logistics and pull me in when ready.  To his credit, he found a group and we were set.

Preparation for mountain climbing basically requires lots and lots of walking.  Regular walks of at least an hour each day for at least four days a week in the preceding four months before the climb generally gets you into the rhythm of the climb.  Besides the walk, one needs to climb smaller mountains in the region to build the energy required for the climb.  In our case, we climbed Longonot twice, Kilimambogo, and the elephant peak that is part of the Aberdare ranges. One also needs to train with the team they will climb with so as to build a good team connection.  As part of the training, one needs to “learn” how to consume lots of water because a hydrated body makes it easier to deal with height related issues on the mountain.  One needs to reduce consumption of dehydrating agents including alcohol and related cousins.

We climbed on the popular Marangu route which is a well beaten path and also has well developed accommodation infrastructure in the form of wooded cabins with bunk beds, mattresses and pillows.  Other associated costs are the costs of your climbing gear, consisting of layers of clothes, socks, caps and gloves that you will pile on as it gets colder on the climb.  The most important of these is a pair of good waterproof boots that are one size larger so as to accommodate extra layers of socks.  Luckily for the average climber, there are cheap sources of these items and one can also borrow from those who have climbed earlier.  You will build a network of climbers as you train in the local smaller mountains.

Our climb lasted four days upward and two days downward.  The routine basically consists of a hot breakfast, followed by an average of six hours of gentle climbing, packed lunch on the way, and a hot dinner at the next camp.  As the saying goes, the darkest hour is just before dawn.  The summit is generally done in the night for various reasons, mainly because you need to arrive on the peak to find soft snow which is safe to walk on.  Later in the day, the snow turns into ice and is extremely dangerous to walk on.  That night climb is the toughest and the steepest part of the climb.  You sleep early and wake up at midnight - It is cold, dark and tough!  You get to the rim of the crater (Kilimanjaro is a dormant volcano) at day break.  Then you realize you still have another two hours to walk on the rim to get to the peak.  This is the most discouraging part of the climb.  The air is thin, it is cold and worst of all you start experiencing the effects of mountain sickness – either yourself of on other climbers – and they are nasty! That is the time you ask yourself – What am I doing this for?  Why am I here on this frozen rock! Who cares whether I get to the top or not?  What if I died here?

The Kili climb is a spiritual journey.  There is plenty of time alone in the walk and also time to sit and talk with fellow climbers, including strangers.  This quiet time allows one to go through a lot of self-reflection and you get to know your fellow climbers much better.  In my case, I think it greatly improved my relationship with my twenty year old son, who has now become my good buddy. Also, you find climbers who make the journey for many different reasons, including fundraising for charity, family traditions or fulfilling wishes of departed loved ones.

On the drive as you approach the mountain, you can feel the excitement in the team, there are cheers as the mountains comes into sight.  There is a sense of an upcoming conquest – a “Yes we can” kind of feeling.  This sense grows and culminates at the Uhuru peak with the “we did it” feeling. However, as you retreat from the mountain, tired and with aching muscles, and as you look back at the unchanged snowcapped mountain peak, there is a silent recognition that you didn’t conquer the mountain, the mountain conquered you.  The mountain has a way of slowly wearing you down, forcing you to look inward breaking you down, and then putting you back together.  And then it looks down at you and calls up the next person.  And it has this attitude that tells you that it has done it to thousands before you and will do it to thousands after you.  It was there before you and it will be there long after you – and there is nothing you can do about it.  But having done it, you also walk away with a renewed confidence, that you can do anything in the world.

The Pursuit of the Unnatural

The last few months have witnessed significant pressure on Africa to accept and open up space for gay and lesbian people to exists and express themselves, as part of enjoying their human rights.  Let me at the outset say that same sex unions of whatever nature are in my view unnatural.  It seems to me that there is concerted pressure around the world to redefine the natural and sneak it in as normal under the guise of human rights.

At home, a Kenyan novelist recently shot to immediate social media fame when he confessed to having been gay for a long time and this brought a whole new momentum to the push for recognition of gay and lesbian rights in the country.  In neighbouring Uganda, the government’s hard-line stance to make gay and lesbianism illegal has met with serious international condemnation, including withholding of economic support that the country has been receiving from various western governments.  Nigeria has in the past also received international wrath because of its laws against gay and lesbian practice.  In his most recent visit to the continent, American President Barack Obama kicked off a fuss when he lectured Africans on the importance of gay and lesbian rights.  What was worse is that he chose the wrong place for his lecture – Dakar-Senegal, home to majority Muslims – where his advice was least welcome – and the Senegal President, Macky Sal, promptly told him as much.  Many thought that he had accidentally switched his speeches and given the one for his next stop – South Africa – where his lecture would have been probably better received. 

Interestingly, this pressure on Africa comes at the same time when the eclectic Kenya Marriage bill has made a comeback and is making huge waves in the country.  While the marriage bill is about many things, the biggest waves are about whether men should marry many wives, and whether they require the consent of their existing wife(ves) to marry a subsequent wife.  I personally do not think much about that debate – I think it is more a quarrel between married and unmarried women, one side wanting to keep what they have and the other wanting to have what the other has.

My bigger interest is however around the pressure to accept the unnatural while frowning at the (uncomfortable as it maybe) natural. At the risk of censure from my Christian colleagues, I think polygamy is natural while gay and lesbianism are unnatural.  In a recent article, journalist Phillip Ochieng asserted that monogamy was initially a western culture that predates Christianity, and was sneaked in to keep women in check. (Wow).  While polygamy is well entrenched in African history, I am yet to hear of any African traditions that dealt with gay and lesbians.  While sodomy is well documented as a sin that was prevalent in Old Testament cities, polygamy was is well documented in the Old Testament palaces.  Most Africans today have a polygamous ancestry.  While my great grandfather would understand a polygamous conversation, he would be totally lost in a gay and lesbian conversation.  While I am probably pushing it – polygamy is clearly natural among the lions on the Mara and the wildebeests of the Serengeti than gay and lesbians will ever be.

Africa has been a net recipient of culture, from religions, to colonialism, to western and eastern cultures.  Christianity came to the continent bundled together with colonialism and western culture.  The departure of colonialism did not take with it the other influences and five decades later, Africans cannot remember what part was Christian and what part was western.  Worse still they cannot remember which part was their own.  The current debates around there gay and lesbian rights on the one hand, and the polygamy debate on the other needs to bring us back to the question – what really is OUR culture?  And more importantly, why are our ‘friends’ out there so insistent on the pursuit of the unnatural?

The Pursuit of the question

This blog has been quiet for a while – ever since I Summited Kilimanjaro.  I suppose the experience was so profound that I had to sit back and reflect a little.  Unfortunately, unlike Moses of old who went to the mountaintop and brought some tablets, I did not bring any.  Many friends were already queuing for tablets of the Samsung and android types.

I have referred in a previous blog about the one thing.  This is about constantly asking ourselves what the one thing that we need to do at any one time is, that unlocks everything else.  It is about the one action that will have the Domino effect on all the other things that you need done.

Human learning overtime has been driven or influenced by asking questions.  The early philosophers and scientists built the early understanding of the world and the universe by asking endless questions, which when answered continued to build the world of knowledge that we now enjoy.  Young children, as soon as they learn to talk, build their understanding of the world by asking endless questions.  If you want to know the power of questions, hang around a four year old.  Questions are a key part of thinking.  Indeed, questions are evidence of thinking.

It is instructive that a big part of the teachings of Jesus was in response to questions, especially by the experts of the day, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The constant banter between Jesus and these groups demonstrated much of the understanding of the day, and key lessons were built around this banter. It is also instructive that the show stopper in this banter was a question that Jesus asked that neither the Pharisees nor the Sadducees could answer.

I am constantly learning to ask the right questions in order to get the right answers.  The old adage still holds – a stupid question gets a stupid answer.  I recently spend an hour with a business person who confessed that the reason she had not been making progress in her business was that she was not asking the right questions.

So – What questions are you asking?

On top of the world!

Once in a while, we get this "on top of the world" feeling.  But usually it is just a feeling.  But once in a while, we do get on top of the world - quite literally!  Like I did earlier this week when I got to Africa's highest point on the Majestic Kilimanjaro!  It is simply heavenly!

 

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