common sense

I was employed 22 years ago in a telecommunication company in the cables department; this company had a huge workforce during those good days many people were earning a living through employment opportunities offered by this giant company.

This company was admired by many as it was one of the big companies in the country which offered employment opportunities, but as the years past the number of the large work force kept on dwindling day after day, during those hey days the company had a workforce of about 18,000 but as of today the number stands at less than 3000.

The demise of job opportunities in this great company was mostly encouraged by cable vandalism as 90 percent of the network was through copper cables and about 5 percent of optical fiber cable.

The thing is, this company was supposed to be some sought of a treasure for generations and generations to come but some bad elements in the society would not allow this to happen just because of their greed for a quick buck.

Actually I was asking myself, do these people have families to take care off? because if they do then they would not be doing such primitive actions, To my understanding one day when their children are adults they would also like to get some employment especially in some large companies like the telkom company, but if there are no opportunities for their children because of the vandalism which occurred years back then who would they blame for lack of opportunities?

Since I was a kid in school my teacher would sometimes tell me use your common sense, according to me I grew up knowing that these senses are common to everyone, due to the fact that I have been told to use my common sense. But what I am seeing with the vandalism of the of the cables? I see nothing but a scary picture for the future.

These events have made me ask myself is the common sense common to everyone? Or is it just a saying but it’s not common to everyone.

If you use the common sense as it is known, then obviously one will know that by destroying this today am denying my children and grand children their lifetime opportunities. As for the present time one would know that by making one man suffer due to this primitive act then am destroying a future generation, because there are school going kids who depend on that salary the father gets at the end of the month to pay their school fees, they depend on that same salary for their upkeep and so much more.

my story part 5

well last time i emphasised that there is nothing permanent on this planet,yes thats according to

my thoughts i dont know about yours but its my sincere hope that you will agree with me at least

on this.

Actually there are lots of things i would like to share thats according to what i have

learned or researched,well i have been asking myself whats the basic good thing or things in

life?according to what am imagining first is good education,good job,good health and love but out

of all these 3 i have mentioned, i found good health to be of utmost importance second is love.

well to justify my thoughts,lets take an example of a person who is healthy,when you are healthy

you can do many things good or bad.but when your health is not good you cannot think of anything

even the best thing you usually like wheather its good food,cloths they wont be in your mind

,your mind will be occuppied with the sickness and sickness only.

second is love,actually when i talk about love its not just the love between a man and a woman

but i mean love in general,i will take some small example of love,have you ever been

hospitalised?well if you havent maybe you might have visited one of your friends or relatives in

hospital,actually when a person is sick and friends and family visit him/her he fills that love.

one day i had gone to hospital to visit a relative who was sick,visiting time was 12;00 and 17;00

pm daily well i had made 3 visits for 3 days to visit my relative most of the time we would be 4

-5 people, but beside her there was another patient who was just alone and no one to visit her,

the first day i thought maybe her relatives came earlier than me thats why there were no people

around her the next day i realised the same situation,this time i could not keep quite so i told

my cousin about this observation,though the patient was not critically ill but the look on her

face was devastating i felt something painfull in my heart so my cousin and i decided to ask her

if there was anyone who came to visit here earlier.

The answer was no,we asked why?she told us no one knew that she was in hospital then we wanted to

know more as she appeared to open up ,she narrated to us her oredeal that she came from upcountry

to visit a realtive but in the event she fell sick and came to hospital by herself,when she

arrived in hospital she was critical that she was admitted its only after 3 days that she knew

she was in hospital.During that time there were had no mobile phones or emails so we depended on

letters we asked her parents address she gave us and we took the trouble of writting a letter to

her parents who were in upcountry.

The letter took some 3 days to reach there ,immediately her parents received the letter they came

down to the coast and straight to the hospital where their daughter was.Imagine the mood which

was there when the parents arrived actually the patient responded well to treatment,even before

the arrival of her parents as we had made it our duty to visit her and our relative it was as if

we were visiting 2 relatives at a go she was veryvery happy.

Thats why i have realised there are things which can touch someones heart especially love , you

can be very rich have a good house ,good car and everything which i might take to be good but

when there is no good health and loooove all these are nothing.

This is my story what can you tell me?

stay tuned for more of my stories…..and thanking you in advance for your support

my story part 4

well i in my last post i had given an example of a colleague who never enjoyed her salary due to her sickness,well on a sad note this collegue past away early march this year after battling for a long time with this illness.
Actually as a human being and a a collegue i was very much devastated with this loss but there was nothing i could do but just to accept the reallity.
well i believe in life there is education in everything you see its just your attention needed to see what this education is,but before putting your head down you wont realize anything you will just say its nature.

The demise of my workmate was just some sought of a wake up call and it dawned on me that on this earth there is nothing parmanent you just need to know

that very well and i can challenge anyone to tell me whats permanent on this
planet,remember some years back you were are toddler but now you are a grown up.
you were a student just the other day today you are working and raising your
family.
some 10 ours back you were fast asleep but now you are running up and down
working the least is endless,so today i just wanted to tell everyone including myself
thats there is nothing permanet,if you are poor know that you are not going to be poor for ever ,if you are rich you should know that you are not going to be rich forever
,if you are sick its not sicness forever,if you are fit its not fitness forever if you are alife its not life forever.
In short we are supposed to take everything in this world to be some saught of a classroom whereby you are learning always by doing that we will leave this world a better place than we found it,how lets take an example of poverty if you are poor
killing someone will not make you rich are hating someone will not make it better either you just need to be hard working thats all since poverty is not meant to be forever oneday you will be a somebody anyone can be anything just keep it in mind thats nothing is permanet it this world.

let me stop here for today but lets think about this and give me your feedback what dou you think.

my story part 3

Usually even after the passing on of grandpa i kept on visiting my old friend to pass on the wisedom to me and as i have said from the beggining i am a keen listener to whatever i am told especially good stories that will uplift my spirit
while visiting my friend during my free time,he gave me lots of memorable quotes but there are two of the quotes that stuck in my mind, as we were talking he told me this(a king who have not encountered any problems in his kingdom has no history to tell)
in short he must have some sort of reference or history to tell in order to rule effectively.And (be keen on words you say)as the government has issued some people licenses to sell their words.When i asked him who these people were,he simply asked me what
do you think the lawyers sell or what do you get in a newspaper obviously its what is written in the paper that made you buy it,therefore he emphasised watch your words.

After running up and down for one year trying to get my paycheck,things started to open up on this part as i usually get my paycheck without fail every month.After some four years in empoyment i got married to my beautiful wife whom i loved and still love to date.
In our tradition or maybe in our african societies after the honeymoon maybe some six months or one year the wife is supposed to be pregnant so as to give her inlaws a grand child to play with and its at this point that she will be respected in the society but if this
is not to be in sometimes to come then mummurs will start,people will be asking among the couples who is not able to deliver why is it taking too long for them to get a child?there are some who will follow the woman and try to convince her to have an extra marital affair
just to ascertain who is not able to deliver is it the husband or the wife?some will follow the man and tell him look for another lady and try your luck you might get a child who will be your heir you cant just stay like this.

I am a victim of such because after happily marrying my wife for the last 20 years we have not been able to have a child of our own and we have been visiting specialists gynaecologists in town but to no success,i have accepted the situation as fate because everyone in
this world would like to have a good life, meaning everyone wants a good house,good car and healthy children and everything good in life,but the question is what if you dont get them what will you do.

I have been approached by people about this issue they keep saying how can you stay with a wife with no children?then i tell them think it this way,you have a daughter who is married to a good husband she stays in marriage for some years without having kids then her husband of so many years
decide to tell her lets call it quits, since you cant give me children, what do you think about this?they usually tell me they wont be happy for their daughters to be treated like shit,then i ask why do you want other peoples daughters to be treated like shit?surely at this point
you dont get any comment.

After soul searching i do ask myself what do people really want so that they stop looking for excuses,the marriage has taught me very hard lessons in life,it has taught me to be patient and also look things at a different angle,and be mindfull of others,Because theres a time i would look at
my worn out shoes and say that such and such a date i will buy another pair of shoes,but when i research deeply i find another human being without legs then i ask my self whats in the mind of that person,he/she might be wishing if he/she had legs just to help him/her walk faster never mind the pair
of shoes ,for those who are blind also wish they could see like other people do, but fate has not allowed them,this means they must be accepted in the society like any other person you cannot say that so and so is blind or deaf he/she should not be among us because of the disabilty.Its at this point
that the marriage and its ups and downs has taught me lots of things and the two memorable quotes now keep on ringing in my mind (grow up and see what the world has to offer)and(a king who have not encountered any problems in his kingdom has no history to tell).

I am talking about the ups and downs of marriage,keeping in mind that there is also a workmate who is yet to be married and suffering for 14 years and her medication bills run in terms of millions which means she is only working for her health to be good,but she is struggling because she cannot think of any happiness except
for her health compared to my story i find that am very lucky.Thats why i have learnt a lot through the hardship am going through and its my wish to accept and understand my fellow human beings and not dismiss anything that comes across,and its still at this point that i ask myself is this what the world has to offer.?

my story part 2

After the demise of my grandfather i had a friend whose age was almost to my grandfathers whom i used to visit and i still visit to date and truly speaking this man equipt me with many stories which
made me think as if my granpa was still alife since he too gave me very many memorable quotes of which i will be unravelling as we move along.

when i was a student i used to say that the minute i do my exams then i will be a free man there will be no waking up early in the morning and going to school,little did i know that after the
formal education,going to the world you will need lots of amunition to defend yourself e.g good eduaction and experience.while still in the job hunt i used to read newspapers for any openings
funny enough in most of the adverts they will be asking for a certain level of education and an experience of maybe two to three years then i would ask myself ,where in the world would you have gained
this experience when you just left school the other day?these people must be crazy.

After swallowing the bitter pill of the army recruitment lady luck came along and i had a part time job with the then kenya posts and telecommunication co-operation as a casual labourer,as a casual
i encountered some of the difficult manual jobs in which some of my colleagues left due to the hard labour they encountered but on myside grandpa had given me a treasure which kept ringing in my head
so i had to encounter the hard ship thinking may be this could be the offer the world is offering me(the hard labour)after one year of hard labour there came a memo which said all those casual labourers who have stayed
for one year need to forward their names for permanent employment,i was among those who forwarded their names and luckily by 2nd june 1988 i was absorbed as a permanent employee to the rank of technical assistant or in
other words i was a semi skilled worker of the co-operation.

In getting the permanent employment i was overjoyed keeping in mind that now everything will be a bed of roses since i have acquired a permanent employment.After a month of being a permanent employee usually you get a pay check
evrybody got his/her paycheck but mine was not there when asking the relevant offices about this,the reply was that some documents had not reached salaries therefore a voucher had to be prepared for payment
hopping for things to be rectified the following month but that was not to be because the same story kept appearing for one year till the day i said enough is enough i had to incurr costs of travelling to the headquaters which are in
Nairobikenya while seated in the bus on my way to Nairobi the memorable quote kept ringing in my head (grow up and see what the world has to offer)

I said to my self surely the world has a lot to offer but then is this what grandpa was refering to?is the pain the only thing the world has to offer? .It is after this trip to nairobi when the paychecks started trickling in, month after month
but only after surffering for one year all in the name of what the world has to offer.

my story

welcome once again to swabaks blog,first and formost let me introduce myself
well am a kenyan male born 44 years ago in the coastal city of mombasa which is also the second
largest town in kenya.
   During my childhood i liked having penpals from different parts of the world,so that we would exchange
ideas stories and much much more,i believe the passion for making friends is the thing that lead to introducing this
blog today which i hope to communicate to different people so that we can share ideas.

As a child i was very quite and shy in school and in any gathering ,which i would be in, therefore it was very difficult
for me to be noticed but though i was quite and shy i had one thing which was my passion and that is sitting close to my
grandfather and listening to many stories which i liked and treasured very much and i seemed not to be satisfied since i
kept asking  for more and more of the stories,
and my grandpa would only be too happy to tell me the stories as i was a keen listener.

Among the memorable quotes i got from my grandfather he used to tell me(boy, grow up and see what the world has to offer)this quote is
ever ringing in my head and my grandfather has since died am left with the quote which i am still trying to unravel.

After my ordinary level education i stayed at home trying to learn different things including going fishing with my grandpa and learning anything
that i thought to be relevant in mylife,during my job hunt i had an opportunity of going to the army recruitment exercise back in 1984,actually i passed
through all the necessary requirments including medical tests,apptitude test you name it, at around 20:00 pm while still in the examination room hopefull
that in a few hours to come i will be an army recruit,there came an officer well dressed and well displined and shouted my name out,i replied yes sir,he asked me among the
recruiting officers here whom do you know?i said i dont know any of these officers i have just seen them here, he then said to me bad luck for you try  
next time,that was all to eliminate me in the list of recruits,and there was no time to ask why as it is known in the army you just follow orders no questions or arguments.

I went home devastated as it was already dark the time was 21:30 pm,on my way home after this incident the quote which my late grandpa left for me as a treasure came back
ringing in my head and i kept asking myself is this what grandpa really meant when he told me to (grow up and see what the world has to offer)was this one of the worlds offers?
i was supposed to be offered devastation after going through soo much the whole day? This was one of my greatest embarrasments but in my mind i kept saying to myself if this
is the offer my grandpa was refering to then its a bitter offer but then this was just the beggining of the world for me as i had not established what was the world offer, the
 life was just beggining
it was as if i was being told welcome to the world.