I have been diagnosed with a deadly disease once in my life. It was breast cancer. Even though my body seems to have been cleared of it now, I’ve been told that I had an aggressive strain that is known to return in more patients than others. So I kind of have a clue about what it means to look at death in the face. On the other hand, when I read the sad story of the panic, riots and misinformation that have plagued particularly Liberia and Sierra Leone following the Ebola outbreak, I know that mine is a totally different experience.

Ever since I was told that I needed to be tested for cancer, and as I waited for biopsy results, I thought through what confirmation of having the disease would mean. Two major questions were on my mind:

I feel so great to have listened to this TED talk by Susan Cain because - and this may surprise some - I don't and have never liked limelight. I hate administration. I don't like to turn to my neighbor during church service and whisper some thing the pastor wants us to repeat. 

I do play along, but only because I want to be part of a community. Or better, I want to get things out of the way so that what needs to be done gets done. For me, there are only two things that need to get done at work - facilitate students to learn, think and innovate, and protect my colleagues from the shenanigans of no pay and work overload so that they can maintain their dignity and can grow as academics. Because Africa needs ideas. And there can be no ideas if the people trained to think are hassling instead. Everything I do at work boils down to those two things, but my attempt to get things done is misinterpreted as my apparent "talent" for administration, my supposed promotion, and God calling me to "leadership," because Oprah and a whole host of other motivational speakers think that leadership, changing the world and other dramatic stuff is the only way to be human.

I actually like silence. I like quiet prayers. My favorite passage of the Bible is 1 Kings 19, where God did not appear in the earthquake, the wind or the fire, but in a small voice. I like to read and think. I love beauty, color and ordinary moments like a smile, a touch, a thoughtful text, or a good poem. I do express my opinion a lot, but it's not because I want to be clever. It's because much of the stuff I comment about is what I consider an obstacle to enjoying ordinary moments. We cant have a good life when politicians are wasting money that should go to public services like transport, healthcare and education. We cant have genuine relationships when love and intimacy have been distorted by commercialization and an omnipresent, hyper-sexualized media. We cant work in dignity and live harmoniously when people are obsessed with power instead of placing focus on people. Ideas can't flourish in Africa if the institutions that are supposed to encourage them are more focused on money, power and conformity. If these evils din't happen, I would be happy to spend quiet days, marveling at God's creation, writing poetry and mentoring the young people who pass through our corridors as they blossom. Yes. I'm an introvert.

My favorite quote from Susan Cain's talk:

Enjoy.

In this age when the buzzwords for dealing with youth unemployment are “developing talent,” the Parable of the talents in Matthew 25 provides interesting lessons about what talent actually is, and what it should do.

Three of those lessons are that

1. just like in the parable where the talents were given by the master, talent comes from God

2. to make the talent bear fruit and multiply, one needs to work. What distinguished the first two workers from the one who buried his talent was not what they received, but the work they put in

3. talent is for the benefit of people other than one’s self – in this case it was for the master, and  in a socially conscious society, talent is for the service of others. Remember King David, for example, whose musical skills were for soothing King Saul, or Dorcas who had made garments for people in the community. If we serve the people, we serve God as well. Remember what Jesus said – those who will enter the kingdom are those who feed the hungry, heal the sick and visit those in prison.
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So from the parable, one can say that there’s no such thing as “talent development.” And everyone has a talent. Some have several different talents, while others may have fewer which they use to make a great impact. So what matters is that one is in a context where the talent becomes evident, and usually that context involves a collective project at church, in a class or elsewhere. Usually, we get to find out our talents from how people respond to the work we do.

(Presented at the AIC Jericho Men's fellowship on March 24, 2013)

Once again, it is a great honor for me to speak to my fathers and brothers about this journey called manhood. By inviting a woman to speak, you are proving the African proverb says “if you want to walk fast, walk alone; if you want to walk far, walk with others.” Great manhood is the one walked with others – with God, with our wives and families, and with society.

But we all know that since we were last together, we Kenyans have voted to walk alone as tribes. We decided that what mattered are our personal interests, or the interests of our ethnic group; not the interests of our children, our neighbors, our workmates, or of future generations. We did not vote for the dream that Muoki Mbunga so beautifully expressed not only for his children, but also for his neighbor's children. We did not vote as fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers of everyone - as our African culture tells us to - we voted as family of a few.

But I would like to believe that Kenyans did not vote out of malice. We voted with great love for our country. We queued in the hot sun for hours, and we have all decided that peace in Kenya is more important than anything else. So how can there be such a contradiction? How come that love did not translate into our choice of leaders?

(Presented at the Men’s Fellowship at AIC Jericho, 24th February 2013)

I am so honored to be a Kenyan woman who is invited to speak to Kenyan men. I am a daughter to Kenyan men and a sister to Kenyan men. Men and women have always shared common ties, and that’s why we greet each other as “dadangu,” or “ndugu yangu,” or in my community, all men my father’s or my son’s age greet me “wakia maitu” (my mother) and I reply “wakia awa” (my son).

If we refer to one another as sisters, brothers and parents, even if we are not blood relatives, how do we explain the violence, hatred and selfishness that have divided Kenyan women and men? We hear news reports about men killing their wives and children before committing suicide. In the current campaigns, few women are running for seats other than for those of women representatives. Women are still own less than 2% of the property in Kenya, even though they produce more than half the country’s wealth. Even though we see many unfortunate women struggle to raise children alone, we also hear women like Margaret Wanjiru publicly insulting the fathers of their own children, and hear women despair on men and deliberately choose to have children without getting married, and improve themselves economically, rather than be heartbroken and exploited.

When Kenyans discuss these problems, the most common response is that the men have become useless because women are now getting educated and earning money, unlike long ago when African women stayed at home while men brought home the food. But did that era really exist?