• If you are not careful, you will find yourself in a lot of poverty generating activities, either from external or internal pressures.
• Take time and make informed choices, that it is glittering does not mean it is gold.
The other day, I had a chance to attend a political rally. My first time ever.
Aspirants were given all of three minutes to speak since they were so many. Many did not get to use all of that time because they were heckled and booed off the stage. As much as I felt sorry, even embarrassed for some of them, I wondered whose idea of a sick joke was it to even “allow” some to consider running.
They used to tell us peer pressure is worse as an adult. I did not believe it until, of course, I was an adult. As a child, I could easily tell my friends that my mother would burst my knee cups and instead of ridicule, they would sympathise with me.
I can just imagine some of those aspirants were pushed into running by a few friends. Sitting at some local bar somewhere, he had just been paid for a tender or gig. He orders a bottle of some whiskey in its late teens. You know the way we behave when someone is buying the good stuff. “Omera, if you stand, we will vote for you. Kwanza I will mobilise all my friends, and nani too. “Hiyo kiti ni yako! You are taking it early in the morning!”
Unknown to you, your woes have just started. You will use all your, your family’s and some fool’s money attempting to campaign. You will not get it because no one other than your five friends at the local, your brother-in-law and your wife know you.
That is Nairobi though. If you are not careful, you will find yourself in a lot of poverty generating activities, either from external or internal pressures.
Take for example an announcement made recently on the many homes being auctioned. I am sure many people did not need to buy those homes. You really do not need to buy a home in Nairobi no matter how badly you want to.
Unless you can buy it cash or pay it off within a year. Most of us take out mortgages in our forties and expect to pay it for 15-20 years. We want to leave our children an inheritance (nothing wrong with that please ).
You will toil and probably die early because of pressure-related diseases. Then your rascals will inherit your precious house, sell it, divide the money amongst themselves and make merry with their spouses or and girlfriends that you would have hated had you been alive.
Life can be so hard that when I see someone leaving their jobs (voluntarily) to go into business, I shiver. Many times I want to blame motivational speakers and the so-called entrepreneurs, who do not give simple people the true picture. Essentially, an adult makes their own choice.
You will now find one grown person whose parents sold their cow to educate them. This cow, sorry person. The cow was sold. (Only they sold a cow to educate another cow!) This person after listening to some clichés will now decide the only way he can be rich is to go into business.
This person will now be threatening people how they are going to shake the economy. Not knowing the only one “shook” will be them.
By the way, do not get me wrong. I am not saying do not stand for that seat, I’m asking, is it your calling? We are not all leaders. Do not waste your life and money thinking the only way to be someone in this life is to be a ‘Mhesh’
Buy the house if you can afford it, but it is not the right if the passage. You can rent and then at your pleasure, build something cosy or grand at home or in another county. Why struggle with a mortgage you cannot afford for a few years only to have the house auctioned? That money you wasted trying to keep up with Nairobi, you would have spent on holidays even.
We are not all businessmen or women. You can still be rich and employed. Yes, they said, “if you don’t build your dream someone will HIRE you to help build theirs.” Do not be bullied. Did they ask what your dream is? Maybe you can build it employed.
Take time and make informed choices, that it is glittering does not mean it is gold. It is easy to move with the flow and succumb to pressure, real or imagined.