my current fave icecream flavor - blueberry cheesecake (nestle)
yummy

said my goodbyes to d today - email.
he said his goodbyes on Wednesday 12th - we met.

Did my Philosophy exam today.
Lecturer shook my hand and told me I'd been a great student. Wow.
Here's what he wrote on my final reaction paper (got the least marks ever - 92%, but his parting comments were great:

Very thoughtful and thought-provoking reflections. I feel as though I know you better after reading this essay, and that is a great thing! I'm grateful to Descartes and Wiredu for clarifying certain ideas related to your journey. I think very highly of you and remain convinced the Lord has great things in store. Blessings Always!

Here's my essay:
As I conclude the Philosophy course, I am better able to appreciate Philosophy as a branch of study that examines the fundamental questions of life and how they relate to everyday practical pursuits. Questions on the existence or nonexistence of a Supreme Being; the conception of the cosmos; the nature of human personality; fate, determinism and responsibility; goodness in the individual and in the community; religion and morality.
Who am I and why am I here?
Am I defined by my African-ness? And if so, who is an African? Or am I defined by my religion? Or status? Or class? Or appearance? Or personality? Or a mixture of all these?
And why am I here?
Does life hold any meaning? And if so, can I discover a specific purpose for my existence?
Many of the philosophers that we have studied so far have evoked varying levels of interest. The two that stood out for me, for contrasting reasons, were Rene Descartes and Kwasi Wiredu – Descartes because I disagreed with his fundamental premise and Wiredu because he brought clarity to my perception of what being certain aspects of being African entailed.
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Descartes’ famous statement “I think therefore I am” changed the central focus of philosophy by directing mental energies to the problem of true and certain knowledge. Descartes made epistemology, the question of the relationship between mind and world (reality), the starting point of philosophy. According Descartes, thinking was his essence as it was the only thing about him that could not be doubted.
Descartes’ credo marks the beginning of the triumph of the human intellect over other aspects of human consciousness. Heart, soul and feelings were driven out at the altar of utilitarian thinking and expediency. After all, wasn’t it the age of enlightenment?
At the heart of Descartes’ implied question is the search for meaning in life. Nonetheless, after the ebbs and flows of contrasting philosophical ideas through the ages, and the rise and fall of various extremities in schools of thought over time, a modern cursory examination that rethinks and restates this subject might yield an almost immediate contemporary response: love.
Love as an answer, in a modern context that is characterized by isolation of human beings one from another, would seem to provide a panacean solution by proffering a life filled with connectedness to other human beings; meaningful relationships filled with joy and a shared sense of belonging and community:
I LOVE THEREFORE I AM…
However, in addition, there must be some reciprocity. For only the one who loves me (back) satisfies my desire for love:
I LOVE AND AM LOVED THEREFORE I AM…
It is true that once you have felt what it means to love – the total passion and the total height – you are incapable of being satisfied by anything less. Still, is there a greater concept than love? For even though loving and being loved can transport one to rapturous heights of joy, love gone wrong can also drag one down to the desolate depths of despair and heartache.
Love between human beings is imperfect and incomplete. For if I found true love, a true and unfailing friend, what would he be like? One who would stand up for me in every situation? One on whom I could absolutely rely? One who protects me unfailingly? One who trusts me and in whom I can confide everything? One who sees me as unique, the Only One, and who would remain faithful to me for life?
Such a friend cannot yet be. Nobody could remain perfectly virtuous for any length of time. It would be unjust to demand it from anyone.
So it leads me to search outwards and upwards.
To seek love in the beauty of perfection. To contemplate One whose infinite goodness is beyond comprehension. Then to revel in the knowledge and wonder of His grace. Indeed love, in its truest sense, is caught up in worship. For “love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance.”[1] Romans 12:1 says,
Therefore, I urge you ... in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.
Worship is not confined to the mind, but involves all the faculties of the human soul: the intellect, the emotion, the conscience and the will. It thereby transcends any other human experience. As I worship, I experience an intensified and liberating sense of reality that surpasses any other human experience.
Thus, after thinking through its implications, it would seem that – famous though the statement by Descartes may be – it is nevertheless fundamentally unsound. Descartes was left to construct God from his own mind, and his statement “I think therefore I am” made him the final authority on God. God will not be put in anyone’s box. He loved first. He created first. As Thomas Aquinas put it, He was the First Cause. Because He Is, then I am. I proceed out of Him, in Him I live and move and have my being (Acts 17:28).
After exploring and meditating upon Descartes’ postulation, I would articulate the following full-circle progression as true for my own life and experience:
GOD IS, THEREFORE I AM.
I AM, THEREFORE I LOVE.
I LOVE, THEREFORE I DESIRE LOVE.
I LOVE AND AM LOVED, AND IN SO DOING, I REACH WIDER AND HIGHER AND DISCOVER THE ULTIMATE OBJECT OF DESIRE – GOD.
Which, briefly stated, would read:
I WORSHIP (GOD), THEREFORE I AM.

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The course really hit home when we read Kwesi Wiredu. Reading his views struck a deep chord. I must admit I had been dreading this section of the course because I’m one of the 0.1% of the population of Kenya that can be described as ‘tribeless’- my heritage is so mixed that I don’t have a sense of belonging to any one particular tribe. As a result, my eyes tend to glaze over when people start discussing their pride in their various cultures or things of that nature. I had therefore (wrongly) assumed that I would have no empathy with anything related to an examination of the degree of my ‘African-ness’.
Yet reading Wiredu, I was struck by how well he appeared to articulate exactly what I have been wondering about on a subconscious level for most of my life.
While he acknowledges the existence of a traditional African philosophy (surely it's plural, not singular), he asserts that there exist universally true ideas and concepts whose validity can be determined objectively, irrespective of whether one is European or Asian or African. The result is philosophy that is at once universally relevant and essentially African [2].
This makes a great deal of sense of me. Relevant African philosophical perspectives would acknowledge and draw from the past, examine the present and originate new principles based on current practices, trends and belief systems. They would be dynamic.
Wiredu propounds the concept of “the fallacy of uniqueness”, in which he explains that:
It seems to be supposed that for Africans to have an authentic identity, they need to be unique in their social and political forms and in many other things besides. As suggested earlier on, however, in questions of truth or falsity as also in questions of what does or does not minister to human welfare there is no particular virtue in being different. What is required for authentic identity is that belief, decision or choice should be based on one's own conscious reflection.[3]
I find this especially applicable, not only in an African context, but in a Kenyan context as well. One of the facets of Kenyan culture in which I feel undue emphasis has been placed on the false notion of celebrating differences rather than similarities (the fallacy of uniqueness) is tribal affiliations. In the last two years, the concept of tribalism has been on the forefront on the political scene, and a lot of heated debate has taken place on the subject. The question I constantly ask myself is: having lived my entire life without knowledge of any native tongue, am I depriving myself of a sense of ‘pride in my culture’? Am I better or worse for it? And what is this pride in culture anyway? What exactly is it to be proud of one’s culture? And apart from vague over-generalizations like ‘pride’ and ‘ownership’, exactly what benefits do myriad tribal languages and affiliations have?
I believe language is a direct reflection of the special characteristics of each culture; its conventions, history, tradition, race, religion. Your language affects the way you view and perceive the world. Whether you like it or not, you will identify with people who speak the same language, because it gives you a sense of belonging and place, and personhood. Thus, the biggest threat to unity and harmony is a diversity in language. Look at what happened at the Tower of Babel.
I was brought up by parents from different tribes. They met while they were abroad on church-sponsored scholarships in the late 60s. Because of the circumstances under which they met, and their different backgrounds, their common language was English. When they came back home, they settled and started a family. We grew up speaking English as a first language. While this was not odd within the narrow confines of the city, as I grew older I came into contact with more and more people who were first-generation ‘urbanites’, thus they spoke English as a third language (after their mother-tongue and Swahili). As such, they tended to associate more with people from their own background (read – in most cases – tribe). This made me wonder if this so-called ‘pride in culture’ isolates rather than celebrates individuals. It seems to me that the more we identify ourselves as Kikuyu, Luo, Meru, Giriama, Luhya, Kamba, etc, the less and less we identify ourselves as Kenyans.
Tribal affiliations lead to tribalism, which isolates individuals more effectively than it amalgamates them. Many ‘ism’s, after all, involve the exaltation of one party at the expense of another.
Until human beings develop the emotional and intellectual capacity enough to really celebrate our differences, and not just talk the cliché, we need to give serious thought to leaving our Kikuyu-ness and our Luo-ness, our Kenyan-ness and our Tanzanian-ness, our Israeli-ness and our Palestinian-ness, our African-ness and our American-ness, our Blackness and our Whiteness, at the door and endorse what we all have in common – the universal principles that bond us together as humans. As Galatians 3: 28 says:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
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Hence, my brief study of some of the past and present principles that underlie the discipline of Philosophy has enabled me to examine my life in the light of what the ancient and modern Thinkers pondered, and (re)define the principles that govern my own journey. It has been an enlightening quest.