That moment when church is nuisance!

Not everyone who calls Him “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, our saviour once admonished. Apparently, a few people heard this and thought: “Well, we must make sure we call loud enough, otherwise tutahata ride ya kuenda kwa sir God!!.”

The result….
Brutal noise: Noise that charges into your windows and grabs the sleep out of your head and flings it out into the darkness, noise that then proceeds to stamp on your head for all the hours until dawn.

Local pharmacies and bars register abnormal orders for Valium and Vodka every time they hear that the local church is having an “overnight prayer” aka “Kesha”, aka “Nuisance”.

Those Days: There was a time when we would hear our local churches from our homes and think: “Oh, how sweet the songs of praise I hear as the faithful offer up worship unto the Lord. I ought to go and join them, that I may meet the Lord, too.” 

But now? Now we say: “Lord, make it stop!” When people say they are mostly taking the Lord’s name in vain, but still, they genuinely wish the Lord would make those jerks actually stop praising Him, or at least stop praising Him so loudly.

Think of it: The service only needs to be loud enough for the person in the back to hear, right? Anything else is excess. Superfluous. One might even say greedy, selfish and inconsiderate.

So, what makes a person who only needs 50 metres of sound decide to instead buy, activate, fuel and power a kilometre of sound? Is it love, charity, kindness, compassion, thinking of your neighbour before yourself as the Lord prescribed?

Not at all. They have applied flagrant conceit, callous meanness, run-away vanity and have decided that their neighbour can go screw themselves because they want to have a loud party and do not care about anybody else.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO NEMA AND THE NOISE POLLUTION LAW?

On any given night: You know that there are people in there who need to rest. People reading for exams, people who are ill... At the very least, there are babies.

If you walk into a room where a baby is asleep and shout “PRAISE GAD HALLELUJAH! CHIISAS LOVES YOU!” at the top of your voice, you will not be called pious and devout, you will be called a stupid, selfish jerk. And that is waking up one kid for a few seconds. Now, imagine waking up an entire neighbourhood of kids for a whole night? Damn! I need me a Vodka too!

So what do you suggest? I suggest we continue to suffer as victims of these Pharisees. I suggest we put up with it. Just allow. Swallow. Suffer locally. The Kenyan way. Kaa kijeshi!

Or: Or if you have the courage and are ready to be as much of an ass as they are, you could consider the exhortation from Luke 6:31: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Clearly, they want us to do unto them what they do unto us, so let us become as much of a nuisance to them as they are to us.

Perhaps begin by dumping our rubbish inside their church. That is a strategy I read about on the internet once. Worked in Nigeria. Though I would be more partial to going to the pastor’s house when he is taking his nap (to rest after his all-night service) and singing “…am dundaing” underneath his window albeit off-key… but still doing unto him as he does unto us!!

You don't have to rob a bank for Christmas!

The holiday spending frenzy is here! Pssst! Did you know that you don’t necessarily have to turn up broke in January? Here are tips on the how;

1.  Set limits for total holiday spending - be realistic about what you are willing to sacrifice by developing new-and-improved spending habits. 
2. Make your own "naughty" or "nice" lists - Santa has to buy presents for the whole world, but you don't 
3. Give your time - Mom and dad (or other far-away family and friends) might love nothing more than a visit from you. Give small gifts and large hugs. 
4. Give personalized gifts instead of expensive gifts 
5. Organize group volunteering instead of holiday parties - You'll get to spend quality time together – plus, you'll come out of the day feeling proud of your efforts rather than suffering from buyer's remorse, and anyone can benefit from volunteering

The Bottom Line

Don't let your debt become the Scrooge that robs the fun from your holiday season. Spend time with your friends and family, base your gift buying on sentiment rather than currency value, and avoid giving yourself a year-round debt headache. If you can follow these tips, when your holiday bank statements arrive in the New Year, you'll find yourself singing "Joy to the World" all over again.

UCHUMI: The walking dead.

The Kenyan Government always does a poor job at rescuing financially-distressed companies. Currently, on the deathbed is #Uchumi, a national brand that used to be a selling outlet for more than 80 per cent of locally manufactured goods.

A few years ago, we witnessed the mess that became of management of the insolvency that hit Webuye-based Pan African Paper Mills! You all remember the case of Nakumatt: The elephant on its knees?

In a period of hardly one year, the National Treasury has pumped a whopping Sh 1.2 billion into Uchumi in the name of supporting a turnaround plan. All indications are that the experiment is not working. The home of value is now a true case of the walking dead.

The much-touted turnaround plans have turned out to be exercises of closing branches and disposing of assets. All indications are that the billions of taxpayer shillings that the government has pumped into rescuing Uchumi Supermarkets will go down the drain.

The messy manner in which the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the National Treasury have handled the Uchumi Supermarkets came to light the other day when the State-owned Kenya National Trading Company (KNTC) closed the headquarters of Uchumi Supermarkets in Nairobi’s Industrial Area over rent arrears.

For a whole week, Uchumi was not able to operate because of the action by KNTC which it owes some Sh43 million in rent arrears.

A CASE OF GOVERNMENT HARRASSING ITSELF;

Yet as we all know, KNTC and Uchumi Supermarkets are both State-owned. And, they are both parastatals under the Ministry of Trade and Industry under the charge of Trade Cabinet Secretary Peter Munya and principal secretary Chris Kiptoo. It was a perfect example of the right hand not knowing- or even caring about- what the left hand is doing.

Are we still to believe that the administration of President Uhuru Kenyatta is committed to rescuing Uchumi Supermarkets? Is it still important for us to recover billions in shareholder loans that the government pumped into the company last year?

I found myself reflecting about the history of government investment in commercial undertakings especially in the wholesale and trading business in general, but more particularly in KNTC itself.

THE KNTC HISTORY;

There was a time in the history of this country when KNTC was king, the biggest importer and distributor of consumer goods, and owning a network of depots and godowns in most of the big towns in the republic.

These were the times when we were deep in the period of the ancient regime of price controls, powerful commodity marketing boards, import licensing controls, and an exchange control regime that required you to queue at a window at the Central Bank of Kenya for an allocation to allow you to purchase an air ticket.

The tiff at Uchumi over rent arrears made me come to terms with the fact that some of these old parastatals of the command –and- control regime did not die even after we transited to a liberalised economy. So, I read from KNTC’s website that it is still involved in the distribution of a variety of goods the most absurd of which include-, barbed wire, wheelbarrows(Is Bungoma listening), chicken wire, chain links and pipe fittings.

The corporation also leases godowns and canteens to the private sector. To which I ask: why should the government be involved in distributing wheelbarrows? KNTC should have been privatised and its assets sold to the private sector many years ago

The impending implosion of activities around Uchumi and its revival is bound to inflict widespread financial distress to many other companies especially within the SME sector.

THE SOLUTION;

If the government is, indeed, serious about saving Uchumi, it must go by the well-known playbook applied by other governments in a similar situation and that runs as follows:

First, kick in equity to allow you to acquire majority control. Throw out the management and board and bring in an international chain to run the firm under a management contract.

To ease liquidity for the company, do a bond that you can then on-lend to the supermarket chain and make it possible for the company to borrow at a risk-free rate.