Team New Life

I had always been seeing #teamnewlife on my timeline and whatever it is that killed the cat got the better of me!  It all began with the usual enquries when you bump into something new, fun and interesting and from those curious tweets @HexHeizzy and @caroledee certified me a new member even before I knew all the basics! The welcome tweets by @MarlMarly, @Chiira @Wilki_Nyabwa meant I had to be there at Sunday and no excuses as I had been contemplating!

Sunday 2.00pm it was but by then nobody from the team was on the TL, again the thought of giving it a miss dances in my head luckily Hector is online like 24/7 so I hit him up and replies immediately, that’s one cool tweep. He tells me everyone has the ‘African timer’ bug so I add some 30 more minutes to the meet up. Goodness I love Sunday traffic, I actually keep time, I get to Aga Khan walk and tweet to Carole telling her to wave and the whole crew did a Wiper wave! Lol 😀 We wait for the other ‘African timers’ members and head to New life home in Kilimani. It’s not far away from the stage, at the entrance I see a note ‘If you have communicable diseases like colds, flu, etc please do not handle the babies.’ That shows how they are keen in keeping the babies healthy. We get strapped in aprons and head to the crawler’s section. One baby jokes says, ‘When I was born I was too stunned I didn’t talk for one and half years!’ Well yours truly is stunned since it’s first time handling them! The best I ever done was smile at babies before this, Wilkista tells me she’s a pro at it and she sure is… One of the aunties tells me that babies love being held and shown love and thinks it’s noble thing we are doing. So I meet Darrius a nice little fellow but today he is not smiling, I don’t know why. He gets amused when I push him the riding toys but that smile fades when I stop. I try tickling mmmhhh no smiles either, serious guy I presume. Feeding time I am taught how to feed the kids, another new feat! My arm gets tired while at it but I can’t complain kumbe taking care of babies is this hard? We get to feed them and I get to learn, I am told I am too slow and need to give them food continuously since they don’t chew! Hadn’t thought of that!! Another feat covered. After changing I get Emmanuel who seems jovial he is always holding my fingers and wants to have my specs. I guess he thinks they are a toy or something… at five thirty the babies have to sleep, I put Emmanuel on his back and tucked him to his neck like grown ups do, showing how inexperienced I am but Carole tells me babies have to sleep on their stomachs after eating, where do you learn all this and how come I haven’t got a clue? Lesson number three I guess. Next time I bet I will be the one inducting the new members…

 

 

Friends come and go, but like diamonds some are forever!

Trust an idle mind to wander into those depths you never even thought even existed, I am thinking of starting a meditation session where I can look deep into my soul every once in a while. Last week I was on a break from the daily hustle and bustle, so there I was bumming 8 hours a day, before coming out to run few errands or catch up. During one of those couch potatoing sessions I started thinking about friendship. New Webster’s dictionary defines a friend as “someone on terms of affection and regard for another who is neither relative nor lover || someone who freely supports and helps out of good will || an acquaintance || an ally”  and friendship thus; “a relationship of mutual affection and goodwill || the state of being a friend or of being friends || harmonious cooperation.”

I have had my fair share of friends the hit and run ones and the diamond ones, I call them hit and run because these are the people you meet and acquaint during those one off occasions but after that, there is nothing left, you go your separate ways maybe you’ll meet again on such an occasion again. The occasion might have been a wedding, a holiday, business trip, a hike, a party the list is endless, since this means you share a common interest acquainting is not that hard, the probability that your usual crowd is not around also encourages the process. But soon after that occasion it is back to business as usual, business cards are displaced, names and emails are also lost. These are people you give your number to, but on a follow up call will always ask ‘who is this’ ‘ni nani?’ and soon you forget about them.

Then there are the diamonds, these come up in different situations; there are guys you grew up with, childhood friends the ones you played house with, bano, went for excursions with and a bunch of other childhood stuff. These were guys who came to your house and you moulded plasticine on the walls, your parents knew each other well, you could sleepover at their place, when they were cooking chapatti you could just drop in and you would be welcomed with one!!! I still wonder why the neighbour’s food seemed tastier than ours even when we were having the same thing! Maybe it’s a childish thing anyway these friends could narrate your first fight, escapades and how you mother is no nonsense 😀 and you could do the same for them.

Then there are friends you schooled with, these were thrust to you by the quest for an education. Due to daily goings on of school you find yourself falling into a group of friends, there are the noise makers due to the wrath of canings you find yourselves friends; there are the truants, the thrill of sneaking out and not being caught drives you to this recurrent adventure, there are the sleepy heads people who can’t help themselves from napping (hoping they do not drool, sleep talk or snore) these are the favorites for pranks, they woke up with chalk or some ink on the forehead or a sticky note on their back written ‘kick me!’, for the sleep talkers, that was used as humour in future especially if they were talking intimate or crazy stuff. One of my friends back then had the teacher come in and stand by him for ten minutes, then when he was woken he shouts a big ‘AMEN’ to show he was praying, we were left in stitches even the teacher just walked out smiling and didn’t punish him! There are the comedians, these always have you laughing and are of good cheer always, they spread the sunshine! There are the dependables those who always sorted you out whenever you needed help without complaining. There are the nerds, how could things be without these? We all know we have copied a due assignment when there isn’t enough time. These guys do not need to hear the teacher twice to grasp everything; so they make good friends if Es and passes are not what you want to see in those report cards. There are the Makmendes if you are a weakling, they sort out the bullies for you! The sporty guys amaze you by their stamina which most times extended even to books, they encourage you to join a sport and will follow up to ensure you don’t missing training sessions. These will later on psyche you to join that gym!! There are the networks, these seem to know everybody and are willing to help you get to someone, maybe a girl, boy you fancy, a contact, or just someone who would be able to sort your predicament out.

Diamonds are also found in church or places of worship, they will encourage you always in your spiritual walk. Places of work people who are genuinely interested in your career growth with no payback whatsoever expected. Then of late from social media, tell me of some one who is on twitter, facebook, myspace etc who hasn’t stumbled upon a gem called a friend! I have made a few and I bet if you on social media you have too! The important lesson I am still learning is how to separate the one-off hit and run types from the diamonds I encounter in my daily living. So what is your take on friends and friendships? I’d love to hear…

 

RETIRE AT 21

Zuckerberg, Peter Ward and a field of other young millionaires are guys who gained that status before they could regularly shave. We heard about them, they inspired us, and still do to many young minds. Just ask around and the thought of Bill Gates and Zuckerberg appeals to many, being able to drop out of college and hack it in this rough life. So why not try it too? Yeah why not? But then again we are in Africa, not being really techies here were Kash, Sule and yours truly brainstorming at how to get into this appealing world of business and investments, maybe we could pull a Richard Branson of some sorts. So there we begin our journey to retire early watch money ‘work for us’. There is this site retireat21.com where young millionaire techies are listed, maybe we could manage a Kenyan version of that too… so here were three ambitious young lads, we saved, borrowed and finally managed to start our little business, there were hiccups, OK that an understatement there were HICCUPS!!! But the dream kept us going, we were blinded by the future prospects that we ignored the early warning signs that bared themselves before us.

Time flew by, but we were still hanging steadfastly to a dream, a dream that after morning light would just disappear and all you do is try too hard to remember what was in that dream! We pushed on in our business (read Ka little shop!) if you looked closely in our eyes you could see the dollar signs like in the cartoons. Big dreams and passion I tell you can push a man to do not your everyday kind of stuff. I guess that’s what drove our own Michael Joseph to make Safaricom the giant it is currently. We believed that in a few years time we would have made a brand out of our business and the youth who were our niche would flawlessly identify with us. But there were stumbling blocks;

i)           We didn’t write a business plan we run on an ad hoc kind of arrangement, taking things as they came, mistake number one.

ii)         Though we were friends and a company would have been overrated at that time we didn’t write a partnership agreement, mistake number two.

iii)       There were divergent ideas on what business we were in and how to go about it, mistake number three.

iv)        We didn’t have enough time to run it personally, even though delegating is good, for an entrepreneur you have to make sure the business can stand on its own before you start delegating, not everyone shares your vision and passion, mistake number four.

Our baby didn’t live to know how a break-even tastes like!!! The good thing is we came out triple wiser and still friends something that hardly happens when things go awry in a project between people…

Sure 21 came and passed but now my sights are clear not everyone will be a Zuckerberg, Pete Ward or Richard Branson, better chew those books first and have many business plans ready, who knows you might get lucky and a venture capitalist oils your dream to make it a reality, like Nokia did to Virtual City. With more venture capitalists coming up am sure the future will be bright to budding entrepreneurs and maybe they’ll live up the dream and be millionaires before 21! Wouldn’t it be lovely to have that kind of story in the headlines, a young mind changing the way we approach business, our very own Zuckerberg, Gates or Buffet? Someone who in ten years time will be a classic tale retold everywhere? Maybe it’s my active imagination overworking, but i’ll keep the faith…