All seems very friendly !

Well, yesterday Parliament was finally opened with some extra pomp and flair and what a jolly friendly affair it turned out to be.


Kibaki arrived in his usual style with red carpets and a jolly long motorcade with roads blocked and traffic tailed back out into the suburbs. Even Raila arrived in a much more dignified manner in his Lexus with the goons in the Navy Mercedes way behind so no chance of them showing him up again!

There was lots of hugging, 'opposition' MP's finally sat together, and there seemed to be a lot of laughter. There was some scheming of course - but that can't be helped I'm sure (- I mean you can only be elected to parliament if you can prove you're totally two faced - I think that's a prerequistite), and of course there was some unofficial closing of the eyes and nodding of the heads as the regulars dropped off to sleep.

Kibaki's speech was all about peace and reconciliation - but the words were written by someone somewhere knowing the International Press would be watching Kibaki yesterday, as the English language used in his speech had lots of jolly big words that Kibaki stammered over (much to the amusement of the Parliament), and at the end of the day - it all sounded like an insincere load of crap actually.

But anyway, we have to hope that whatever the words said, what he meant was "We shall work as a team and put Kenya back onto its feet."

Lucy Kibaki was suspiciously missing from the grand occasion. The official press report says she is at home recovering from an unspecified illness, rumours in the press say she doesn't like Raila's wife and therefore refused to appear and share pleasantries with the women. Personally I think that after the shenanigans of the past couple of months and all the court cases that are now pending against her, I should think our dear President has had quite enough of giving out goats and has had her locked up in a padded room and thrown away the key!!

Anyway today I shall have faith in my country and its new beginnings and shall block the past from my mind ..........
for the next one hour anyway just so that I can relax and have a coffee and think happy thoughts.........
THEN, I shall be back on the warpath. (I hear there's some serious accusations on the BBC about our politicians that I must get round to reading and ripping into.)

Do have a jolly good day yourselves too thinking happy thoughts because its FURIHDAY, thoughts are free and kidding ourselves that life is perfect is a fun thing to do once in a while. It costs nothing and seems to flush out the cobwebs.

As my son told me this morning as I crawled out of my bed with a pounding headache and after no sleep at all as an alarm had been going off continuously all night right outside my bedroom window, save for the couple of minutes every few hours when the guard tried to reset the damn thing, and it stopped briefly;

"Well Mum, at least you had 120 seconds of quiet sometime in the night!"
- He's right, I should be thankful.

Do we have any chance of beating Blue Monday?

I read on the Sky News website today that positive thinking is the way to beat Blue Monday today, but from what I’ve been hearing and reading all day, I cannot seem to find anything remotely positive in anything at all. I thought I’d write it all down for you to perhaps tell me if I’m missing something positive here and you could then point it out to me and get me through Blue Monday – (without a costly psychiatrists bill and a lot of anti-depressant drugs!)

This is a list of what I have heard or read just today;

1. Lucy Kibaki slapped Imanyara (the PNU guy who was up for election as the deputy speaker of Parliament and conceded to his ODM counterpart), as apparently he was one of Kibaki’s henchmen who is not agreeing to a deal that Kibaki wants to put forward to Raila suggesting they take two and a half years of the Presidential term each. (Not that I think Raila would go for it but anyway). Apparently Imanyara made the fatal mistake of slapping Lucy back and then got set upon by Kibaki’s bodyguards for his troubles and is currently residing in a Nairobi Hospital.

2. Kofi Annan hasn’t got ‘man-flu’ after all and has been rumoured to have a slightly dodgy ticker. Hence the may / may not arrive stories going around.

3. Raila is to file a case in the International Court in The Hague in which he will sue Kibaki’s government for ‘crimes against humanity’.

4. Raila, whilst addressing a crowd outside a church in Kibera yesterday, told the gathering that they should not be killing their neighbours and destroying each others property when they all had so little to their names anyhow. Instead they should take their anger out on the wealthy Kenyans living in Karen and Runda and burn their houses down, as according to him, they are the cause of all this mess. (I'm assuming by this he's meaning the Kikuyu big wigs who are known to live in the area? - Who really knows?)

5. Noah Wekesa, the Minister for Science and Technology and the MP elect in the Salama Province in Western Kenya has threatened to resign from his position in the cabinet if the government cannot stop the violence in his home area. Latest reports on the radio confirm at least 5 people have been killed so far today, and rumour has it that that number is more than likely to be far more.

6. Raila has called for a mass demonstration countrywide on Thursday this week. Now the PNU supporters are saying that if this demonstration goes ahead they will conduct their own rally protesting against the ODM supporters. (I do fear if this is really true and these rallies go ahead there will be total carnage and the police will not be able to stop it.)

SO there you go, end of the list of rumours for the day. Please note that I have not verified any of them although some I have read in the press, some were heard on the radio and some were through word of mouth.

Thing is, they’re all incredibly depressing and if there is even the slightest inkling of truth in even one of these rumours I can’t see any positive coming out of this entire week never mind trying to get over Blue Monday.

Excuse me whilst I go outside and scream really, really loud!!