I continue answering your questions. Today, it’s all about Kelly. So shall we begin:
kelly asks:
When do you plan to come back to kenya?
What will you come back to do, like specifically?
My Answer:
For the last 5 years, any time I was asked that question, my answer was always an unequivocal yes. I would return as soon as I was able to support myself materially to either:
a) Work on deep social change at the grassroots level or;
b) Make a positive contribution to people’s lives at the grassroots level.
Whereas one would think that starting this blog would have given me even more motivation to stick to that mission, it’s actually had the positive effect. Allow me to explain:
There is So Much to Learn
I LOVE LEARNING! If you want to bribe me, buy me tickets to a Jay Abraham seminar or Anthony Robbins seminar or tell me about the equivalent of the Alfred Deakin lectures and I will be there. Over the course of this blog, I have come to see so much that I want to learn about so many areas, relationships, health, business, music and even grassroots acitivism. Now contrast that with the fact that:
We are a Very Negative People
I hope that since you are a reader of this my most personal work, I can be very honest with you, as I always am. We, African people, to a large extent are a bunch of whiners and crybabies and if not very negative people who like to hide behind any form of material or intellectual success we have.
Now, as I have fallen deeper and deeper in love with all that I can learn in this world, I have reflected more and more and more on how much negativity I would have to put up with working back home. BUT I did make a committment to myself that I would do it and it is of course the noble thing.
So my answer is Yes, I do intend on going home eventually. Where I am currently confused is how and to do what but its definitely to work on improving the state of the country.
Some of the Ideas I Have Had
Long time readers of this blog would probably know about my plans to work in media, I dreamed for the longest time of owning African media and using it to put out positve messages. I have also thought about:
a) Buying my own constituency, as one would a business, optimizing it and then using it and presenting as a model for how to develop.
b) Going back home as a speaker to young people who are about to immigrate
c) Give talks on controlling sexuality and sublimation so as to eliminate rape as a social ill in our society.
d) Start up a church for young African men.
With many other ideas mixed in there. At the moment I am just focussing on optimizing this blog and trying to get to the point where I can support myself online. The ideas are there, not only to go back home, I’ll decide once I achieve my goal of supporting myself what to do next.
kelly asks:
You seem to like marriage a lot, at what age do you envision you will be married?
My Answer:
When I am sure I will be a good partner and husband. In short the most important part of this is how exactly I will ensure that I won’t cheat on my wife and will have the mental strength to see my commitment through. I have a number of ideas as to how to deal with this, and I intend on investigating this a lot over the coming years, but I have no date set yet.
Something Sad I Realized
Again, I speak to you as I would among friends. I like a lot of people, male or female, I lust after many women but I am mentally drawn to very few. You know that stereotype of someone who turns you on mentally……doesn’t happen to me. Now it could be that I hang around the wrong folks or I have very weird standards but either way…..just something weird I realized this week that I also must deal with.
kelly asks:
When you say men don’t feel love like women do, what exactly do you mean?
My Answer:
I must put a caveat on this and say that I definitely need to investigate this area much much deeper. Me thinks the best person to give advice in this area that I know is Julia, after all, she does this for a living.
Usually when I say that, usually half-jokingly, I am referring to the fact that I have known or heard of very few men who need romance or any complex gestures from their partners to be happy, though those would be nice.
A lot of the people I know and have heard of, as long as the woman is happy, they are fed, they have respect as a man and the sex life is good and the man is fine. No need for mink coats or dinners or weird get aways and cruises, all those are for the woman: food+sex+peace+respect= Marital bliss 😛 but as I said, Julia is the best person to talk about this one.
kelly asks:
What would make a man stay in a relationship that’s no good for him, when it’s so easy for guys to walk away?
My Answer:
There is a theory that all human behaviour is motivated by two things, a pleasurable or desired feeling/emotion or the need to get away from a negative feeling/state/emotion.
Now if we view life through that lens, then there appear many reasons that someone would stay in the situation that you have just described. I will list a few below:
Positve
1) They made a commitment and want to see it through.
2) They view any temporary moments of discomfort as a part of the game.
3) They have a solid friendship with their partner.
4) They need their partner for some emotional reason or another and their partner needs them.
5) For the children.
6) For harmony
7) The security of the institution
Negative
1) They don’t want to be alone.
2) They don’t want to stop being cooked for, picked up after and taken care of.
3) They don’t want to lose access to sex
4) They don’t want to lose their peer group
5) They don’t want to lose their trophy partner
6) They don’t want to feel rejected
7) The process of leaving would be too uncomfortable.
In short, I don’t know, the reasons are many. It depends on the person, what they are getting out of the relationship and what they are scared they will lose if they leave the relationship. Yet again, let me recommend, Julia…..she has a Masters in it too 😀
The Newsletter
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So please join, and give me feedback, by putting your first name and email in the boxes below:
Have a great day or night,
Mwangi
Tags: male female relationships, Pink Memoirs, Repatriating, romance, romantic relationships
My day and I’m first!!! 🙂
Thanks for comprehensively answering my questions. I don’t even know where to start. Will that church be exclusively for boys, or will it be a normal church with focus on developing responsible men? On the counseling immigrants thing, the business woman in me tells me there is real opportunity in that here at home, as most agencies will focus on getting you into campus, a VISA, they get their fee(which is paid upfront by the way), and you’re on your own. I think it would be god if you started something like this with focus on creating successful immigrants and making good money on the side.
About negativity, yeah, we’re one negative lot, but not to worry, when you’re back here, you’ll have support from us. Don’t let this make you postpone your dream even by a day.
You don’t connect with ladies intellectually often? That’s funny. You seem like the kind of guy who would be making intellectual connections all over the place! 😀
On men and love, I wasn’t referring to romance. Once or twice you’ve said that most African men don’t ‘love’ like we do. I took this to mean that most men love with their head rather than the heart, which is why most times we ladies are the fools in love. Hope I made sense there.
That was what led me to the next question of, if men love with their heads, why do some (the minority) stay in bad relationships? That one you did really well.
Thanks!! *off to celebrate my day!
I am insulted why? Me I think you shouldn’t say, ‘we Africans are negative…whiners…bunch of crybabies’. Labda jaribu ‘mimi kama mwafrika’ (Maybe try, “I as an African”).
I’m going back soon, soon, soon, like really soon…to do what? Catch up, make money, make a difference (‘difference’ allows me to get away with the vagueness)
@Pink M: First up, CONGRATZ on 100 posts. Remember the happy birthday song I sang on this blog when it turned 100 posts, right at ya 😀
In my fantasy, to be honest I have never really written it down or consciously reflected on it, its one of those images that jumps into my mind from time to time, it is a church for teenage all the way to young adult boys where at the end of every service we go into the community and serve somehow.
As for the immigrant counseling thing, watch this space. At the moment I am working on getting immi consultants, and if the 4 hour work week trial, or any of my future “material success” trials work, indeed I can actually create an all encompassing thing…..but its a brick at a time and I don’t know what ideas or plans I will have in future….so watch this space……….
No, I think I am marketing myself the wrong way online and hanging around the wrong people because it’s just one of those things that recently hit me…….the people I have the best “thinkers and action” based convos with are folks online, offline its just not my reality day to day….anyway I am sure there is a remedy to this, and I shall find it.
Hmm, tell me which article I spoke about African men loving differently and I think once I remember the context within which I spoke it will be clear what I was trying to say.
Have a great great great day and I am glad I answered your questions to your satisfaction.
@Proud Kikuyu woman: When I said that, it wasn’t with any sense of moral authority or superiority, there are very many unsavory sides to my personality – arrogance, rudeness, obliviousness to social conventions just to name a few.
However, I don’t think I am saying anything that we don’t already think and feel ourselves i.e. that as a whole, collectively,we are far to negative and critical to one another as opposed to encouraging and supportive.
This is far from unique to our community but its still there and its still something that makes me wary of returning when people in a nation like this, and I hear in Tanzania also, actually organized their society in such a way that courtesy is held in high esteem………
with regards to what you want to do in Kenya or in assisting other people — and i speak with minimal experience — you have to realize one goal / idea and pursue it relentlessly.
it seems to me that you have church, media, outreach, immigration assistance ideas which are all noble but I believe it would be difficult to execute on all. find out the one cause you are most passionate about then work on it first.
@3N: Agreed. I definitely believe in the principles of “single tasking” and “concentration of power” so I would definitely take it one project at a time. Just so I have a point of contrast, if it were you, what would you do?