In tough times, try a chicken pot grenade dinner
Posted in: FunnyMan, Memoirs | Comments (1)
A (lady) killer recipe guaranteed to make any lazy, broke bachelor lick every bit off the ceiling.
If done right, a chicken pot grenade dinner can turn into a party only those haters from the Fire Department can break. Photo: Kalebdf/Flickr.
INGREDIENTS:
1. Some eggs (most likely expired).
2. A little pot (utensil, not herb).
3. A smoke detector (comes installed in most apartments).
4. Natural, crystal-clear water. (Alternatives like wind-generated water, solar water, electric fuel cell water, etc. will ruin the authenticity).
5. A girl you have a crush on. (She doesn’t have to know).
6. A cell phone. If you are still holding on to a landline because it reminds you of those sweet years of your boyhood when you heard that your neighbor’s kid, Alexander Graham Bell, had invented something called a telephone, make sure you have a handset on the nightstand. Otherwise, use the cordless phone your fifth ex-wife installed in the living room.
[A WORD FROM THE SPONSORS OF OUR COOKING SHOW]
Please consider getting a cell phone. Our plans have unlimited usage during nights – the ideal time to prepare chicken pot grenades. And, come on! Even Africans! Cambodians! Mongolians! have cell phones. Only they call them “mobiles” (moh-biles). Call us. It’s toll free from your rotary phone.
DIRECTIONS:
1. Gently place the eggs in the pot.
More on page 285
Edwin @ May 9, 2009
Sweet Home, Obama wins Webby Award
Posted in: Governance, Kenyan Politics, Media, Memoirs | Comments (6)
Thanks to your votes and the votes of the people you told about my film’s nomination for a Webby, “Sweet Home, Obama” is now the People’s Voice Award winner for best individual episode documentary.
Sweet Home Obama by Edwin Okong’o
I feel very honored that my first-ever film has received overwhelming approval from people across the globe. There is more where that came from, and the support that “Sweet Home Obama” received gives me confidence that people will appreciate stories that take some home and give others new insight.
Edwin @ May 6, 2009
Why my mother should wear pants
Posted in: Memoirs | Comments (1)
An excerpt from my work-in-progress memoir.
EVERY TIME I heard my father talk about the fancy schools he wanted me to attend, I wondered how he – a poor, untrained primary school teacher, father of six and still going – planned to pay for my education.
I knew that I was not going to any of his dream schools, not even if I passed exceptionally the high school entrance exam. I didn’t know how much money he made. He had no bank account, let alone savings. Every end of the month, he borrowed money for bus fare to the bank in Kisii, the nearest town, to get his salary. The government deposited the payments of civil servants who did not earn enough to hold savings accounts into a special bank account. Workers went to the banks at the end of the month, provided identification, and received cash.
Click here to vote "Kenya: Sweet Home Obama" (Online Film & Video, Documentary: Individual Episode category). Polls close April 30.
Many a time the corrupt government failed to deposit the salaries. Other times people stood in long lines for many hours only to be told that the money their employer deposited was insufficient to cover everyone. Teachers like my father who lived in the countryside without access to telephones went to get their pay, only to return empty-handed. On such occasions their children and students had to be careful not to irritate them, lest they be flogged.
Looking back, I understand my father’s anger, since anyone who works should be paid. But in fact, we didn’t need money to survive. We had plenty of corn, bananas, vegetables and milk. Avocados fell from our tree like cluster bombs.
Edwin @ April 30, 2009
Cupid, Kenyan style
Posted in: Memoirs | Comments (4)
A true story of drunken lust and a Kenyan weapon of single destruction (WSD).
YOURS TRULY, the Kenyan Cupid, wanted to shoot a girl with his arrow. I found her at a New Year’s Eve party in San Jose, Calif., and immediately charmed her with my good looks. Or, was it my sense of humor? A few weeks later, she was spending nights at my apartment.
Click here to vote "Kenya: Sweet Home Obama" (Online Film & Video, Documentary: Individual Episode category).
Girl, twenty-two and living at home with parents, loved to drink. “Motherfucker, the only reason I sleep with you is because I’m a drunk,” she said to me one night, as I attempted to lecture her after she wet my bed. So, it wasn’t the good looks.
I should have left her then, but she came back with new beddings from the store in the mall, where she worked. After owning just one set of 250-thread-count sheets – which I took off the bed only when I did laundry – those softer and fancier linens changed my heart. She was also gorgeous and the sex was great.
I can change her, I said to myself. Really, if I show this girl love, she will quit drinking. What I didn’t know was that the Cupid’s arrow I would shoot her with was going to be of the kind my grandfather’s generation used in tribal wars.
Photo: Teemu Kammonen
It seemed like a genius idea to ask my cousin Nancy to bring me a shield, a spear and a bow and arrows from Kenya. I wanted something to remind me of my boyhood, hunting deer and rabbits in the Rift Valley. Or the memorable day my late cousin Phillip – a self-trained marksman of unbelievable accuracy – pursued a cobra that had killed our puppy and pinned its head to a tree.
Nancy brought back the right shield, spear and bow, but the wrong arrows. They were vicious war arrows – a very dangerous type – with two layers of barbs. The shaft is designed to fall off when you shoot the enemy to make it difficult for him to pull the metal blade out. To remove such an arrow, the victim has to either undergo surgery or have someone push it through. I carefully laid them behind a printer in my bedroom, where I thought no one would ever go.
Edwin @ April 26, 2009
Vote my ‘Sweet Home, Obama’ for Webby Award!
Posted in: Media, Memoirs, Obama Inauguration | Comments (0)
I like to think that America elected my cousin Barack Obama because my FRONTLINE/World documentary “Kenya: Sweet Home, Obama” went online the last weekend before Election Day. 
I’m willing to bet that what swayed the vote was the man dancing in Kisumu while chanting, “We will trounce – completely – McCain!” (Some argue it was the scene of me, a grown African man, crying).
Repeated efforts to make my case to Obama’s transition team and possibly get the White House Press Secretary job got nowhere. Like all my relatives do when they get successful, Obama abandoned me. I think it was because – like all relatives – I used to tell him that he’d never amount to [expletive].
But luckily for me, the Academy at the Webby Awards – the Internet’s equivalent of the Oscars – has nominated my story for Best Documentary: Individual Episode. The Academy picks the winner, but there is thing called People’s Voice Award. That is where you, my dear friend, come in. PLEASE VOTE FOR ME.
All you need is an e-mail address to register, log in and pick Kenya: Sweet Home Obama from the “Select Nominee” drop-down menu at the top right of the page. Hint: When in the drop-down, hit K until Kenya … appears highlighted.
Edwin @ April 15, 2009
‘Mike ya KISS iko na kifafa’
Posted in: Governance, Kenyan Politics, Media | Comments (0)
I have been telling my American journalist friends that Africa is not just a continent of great suffering — AIDS, Malaria, rape, civil wars, pirates, pirates in government. There is also political maturity, exhibited here by Kenyan ministers resigning* when they feel like the all-powerful coalition** government has failed to implement reforms agreed upon to end the post-election bloodbath that began on the last day of 2007.
But most importantly, there is comedy — not just in how uncharismatic and disingenuous the resignation ceremony was, but also in the way one Kenyan journalist tried to catch the action. The KISS FM reporter’s misfortune at the press conference prompted a Kenyan YouTuber to say, “KISS FM’s mike is having an epileptic seizure,” hence the Swahili headline of this thread.
Hilarious, just absolutely hilarious!!!
Have a laughly moment.
Edwin @ April 9, 2009
Kenyan Fires: Odinga prescribes ‘divine intervention,’ Kibaki dons mask?
Posted in: Governance, Kenyan Politics, Legal Robberies | Comments (1)
Poor Kenyans!
Two separate fires within days of each other have killed more than 100 of their compatriots and left dozens more missing. And the only remedy Raila Odinga, Kenya’s prime minister, could think of is “divine intervention?”
Odinga admitted that the fire that decimated a downtown Nairobi supermarket and killed at least 21 people was embarrassing, given that the supermarket was “a street (block) from our fire headquarters.” But when four days later an oil tanker exploded killing more than 100 people in Molo, northwest of Nairobi, Odinga — that wealthy champion of the poor — saw that as an act that could not be explained and therefore required God Almighty’s blockage.
Edwin @ February 11, 2009
Obama’s ‘friends’ strategy should include new Americans
Posted in: Governance | Comments (0)
One of the multiple ways President Barack Obama’s journey to the White House made history was its ability to awaken a new breed of the American voter: foreign-born U.S. citizens. Before Obama’s candidacy, most of these new Americans – an estimated 15 million strong – shied away from U.S. politics although, like their fellow citizens, they held jobs, ran businesses and contributed to the building of America.
A 2008 U.S. Census report analyzing data from 1996 to 2006 shows that in every election year, more native citizens than naturalized Americans registered and went out to vote. For instance, in the 2006 election, 54 percent of naturalized citizens registered to vote, compared to 69 percent of American-born citizens. In the same year, 49 percent of native citizens reported voting, as opposed to 37 percent of foreign-born citizens, according to the report.
As an immigrant from Kenya, I can testify that before Obama, most new Americans from my home continent saw themselves as having neither the need, nor the ability to change anything in the United States. They were more involved in the politics of Africa, mainly because they still had families there.
More on page 216
Edwin @ January 30, 2009
It’s official: President Obama is not a Kenyan
Posted in: Governance, Kenyan Politics | Comments (0)
On Sunday night, while performing at the African Inaugural Ball, I joked that we’ll know if President Obama is Kenyan if, after his second term he doesn’t change the U.S. Constitution to allow him to run for a third term. That fear intensified when I saw Obama in a bling-bling motorcade – bullet proof Cadillacs and all – comparable to those of Kenyan leaders.
Thank goodness, we don’t have to live with that fear anymore. On his first full day at work, President Obama froze the salaries of his top aides at the White House who make more than $100,000 a year.
“Families are tightening their belts, and so should Washington,” said the president.
Let me paraphrase that: Obama is asking his staff to eat peanut butter and jelly for lunch and rice and beans for dinner like millions of poor Americans. More on page 211
Edwin @ January 22, 2009
A salute to President Barack Obama’s father
Posted in: FunnyMan, Memoirs, Obama Inauguration, Satire | Comments (9)
As I headed out the door to witness the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44Th President of the United States, I thought about his late father. Much of what we’ve heard about the president’s “Old Man” has been from the president himself and others who knew very little about him. But the elder Obama’s is a story of the African immigrant — a story of a people who come to a new country and learn so fast to become the most educated group.
What follows is an except from my stand-up comedy set performed on Sunday at The African Inaugural Ball in Silver Spring, MD. Part true, part fiction, the account is based on my life and the stories of other African immigrants in the United States. Knowing what I know about the Old Man – and having grown up in the same area as he, I have no doubt he would have appreciated the humor.
Don’t hate; Inaugurate!
FOR MOST OF US, the story begins in a little hut in rural Africa and ends in a big white house in America.
Edwin @ January 20, 2009