Divine creativity equals unusual me

This is a very hard post for me to write as I'm experiencing a varied range of emotions that are not comfortable. A large part of it is shame. It amazes me how finance is one of my major areas of training yet my personal financial story is one that just makes me feel ashamed, uncomfortable, nervous and all sorts. My relationship with money is so awful that I hate talking about money and shy away from reading on it. One of the main thing that I  keep seeing as a block to growth in my dreams is my relationship with money. You cannot solve what you refuse to confront.

In summary I would say three main issues: I have a very warped view of money, zero saving habit and living beyond my means.

This is just so hard but I have to. I have been saying how I am ready for a serious relationship but deep in my heart I know that one of my biggest reluctance to the whole marriage idea is the inadequacy I feel in terms of my financial status. I don't just mean the amount of money but what I bring to the table. My savings are laughable like I can't even call them that. I have bad spending habits and its this one dark thing that touches on so much. I don't want to turn into this uber miserly person but I do want financial freedom. Money is usually the number one reason I worry.

This month has been one of the toughest months this year and like eighty percent of it was due to money.  Today I woke up and started reading blogs as I occasionally do on Fridays and it lead me to  a blog dealing with financial independence then another. To cut a long story short, I actually read up on almost 8 blogs with over fifteen articles. I'm a doer and from all that reading I got some tips to begin my journey; very tiny baby steps but I feel quite positive I can stick it this time.

Safaricom introduced a service called Mshwari which for some bizarre reason I totally dismissed or ignored. I have no idea why but a few weeks back I saw, on tweeter, a friend talking to the customer service to sort his mshwari account. It got my attention but I quickly forgot it. Today while reading all these articles it hit me how Mshwari could be a tool to help me in saving. So many of my clients pay me via Mpesa and I do so many transactions via my phone so what if I could save every time any money comes in via Mpesa. It doesn't have to be crazy huge amounts but I could actually do it. I for one have been saying all churches should get Mpesa paybill numbers as it would make my tithing much easier. If the corrupt one want to steal, that is between trhem and God but let the rest of us fully utilize technology to make our lives streamlined.

Adam Baker from ManvsDebt introduced me to Dave Ramsey's envelope system. It seems really backward and simple but at this point I have to take whatever can work for me and the simpler it is the better. I tried the spreadsheet method and that did not last.  Below is Adam Baker's summary of it:

Action #8: Use Cash Envelopes for Food, Clothing, “Blow Money” (20 minutes)

Simple steps:

1. Pick your spending limits - For the categories “Food”, “Clothing”, and “Blow Money” (guilt-free entertainment) – pick a maximum amount you are willing to spend over the next 30 days.
2. Stop by your bank and withdraw cash - Of course, the cash is equal to the combined limits you set for the three categories.
3. Stuff envelopes with the cash - Get out 3 envelopes. Write the name of the category on the outside, and stuff the appropriate cash inside the envelope.
4. Pay with cash – For the next 30 days, anytime you want something in that category – you’ll pull out your envelope and pay with cold, hard cash. Yes, I’m serious. You don’t have to carry them around at all times. When you go to the grocery store – take your Food envelope. Again, this isn’t rocket science.

How this can change your life: There is no budgeting trick or technique that is more powerful than going to pay for $60 in groceries and only having $45 in the envelope. I promise, the first time you put back $15 in items – your commitment to budgeting will never ever be the same.

 I am coming up with a budget and I will start tracking all my purchases on a daily basis.

 That is all I can write today but this blog and my journal will be my accountability as I really don't want to be discussing this with my friends. I am committed to following through with this even if strangers on the internet get to read my journey

To my utter shock my not voting just ensured that I was in a numb state immediately the long election period was over but as more time passed and I had time on my hands, I have experienced the very same emotions I was trying to escape by not voting and investing myself in the process. The range of my bitterness and hate shocks me. I feel so many negative emotions that I cannot enumerate them.  I was among those encouraging people to listen to these awesome sermon series done pre-election and immediately after the election date. One of the key points the pastoral team emphasized was that half of the nation was in mourning and felt that they were in exile like the Israelites in captivity in Babylon. The main text was Jeremiah 29 though the background starts in chapter 27. I was in this zen state where none of it touched me. I was a bit disappointed but unlike those around me in true mourning, I was fine. I was hopeful and all. Well you can be sure all that has flown out of the window.  More so with the supreme court ruling . I kept saying this election has ensured that the die has been cast and the lines are firmly drawn. I always thought we would be the generation to escape the tribalism curse but if anything this election has ensured that my generation will be much more firmly entrenched in tribalism than our parents ever were. I honestly used to brush off all those things my parents said as nonsense but now I see that they were speaking sense. There are truly 'those' people and they also do see us as 'those' people. We have just been been living a lie all in the name of civility.

I do know that this is the wrong attitude but honestly I do not give a foot! I feel like some of us have been trying to be decent , considerate and fight the tribal bug while others have been smiling with us, being all chummy but in all honesty our parents were right that those so called friends of ours, listened to their parents and when the rubber met the road they all do support 'their'people. For how else would a thief, a known drunk be now purportedly a state head. I cannot even bring myself to call him my leader. It is too soon. A friend once said that when she sees a particular politician's(he's from the same tribe as me) face she see the devil and I was quite taken aback at this as this but kept quiet in the name of avoiding an argument and keeping the peace but now I realize that was cowardly. I feel like telling her that when I see this particular politician( same tribe as her) face I feel such revulsion and like I am looking at the face of evil itself . When I see him, i see all the progress we have made as a republic all blown up in the wind, I see free flow of drugs and I see impunity and theft. I used to say that I never used to look at my friends from a tribal perspective, well now I do. I am re-evaluating my friendships especially in light of all the crowing going on. Indeed let the victors celebrate but all I can say the lines have been deeply etched and yes we will all remain civil but trust in some aspect, if not all, has been lost. After the post election violence a friend once said: 'these are not people you turn your back on to fall asleep next to them'. My friend has grown up in Kenya though is of a different nationality but how true! I used to be of the mind that I would date and even marry from these people. Well miss me with that mess!. These are not people you date or marry. The sheer arrogance of it all. That they are better than every other group of people in this country. Yes violence did not break down and for that I am grateful to God but lack of war does not equate peace. There's a very frightening silence that has pervaded the country and some mistake it for peace.  John Githongo's article titled Rethinking the Kenyan Project' said it best:

Despite a largely non-violent election with an outcome, however contentious, celebrations by Kenyans were muted. The media showed some footage - mainly from the urban strongholds of Jubilee’s Kenyatta and William Ruto - where supporters took to the streets and danced for joy. In most of the county, however, a mournful, profound and unsettling silence set in. Cord’s challenge of Jubilee’s supposed victory, while thankfully playing out in the Supreme Court, has been accompanied by a powerful silence across entire swathes of the country. The March 4 general election carried with it multiple transitions: the end of Kibaki’s term; the implementation of a devolved system of government; and, it was the first held under what is considered among the most progressive constitutions on the African continent. Kenya ought to have had multiple reasons to celebrate; yet in much of the country, particularly as the dispute over the presidential election unfolded and then proceeded to the courts, it is as if a climate of mourning – manifest in a powerful silence - has taken hold.
I have grappled with the reason for this silence because it is clearly more than simply because one candidate won, and another lost. After all, that is the nature of all elections. There is a more troubling reality that it makes manifest: the election’s failure as a nation-building event. Indeed, it is clear – especially from the partisan and ethnic vitriol evident on social media – that Kenya emerged from this process far more polarised than ever before along tribal lines.
Unspoken publicly but articulated eventually by many Kenyans is an old narrative – Gikuyus and particularly their elite are Kenya’s problem - that is consolidating with every passing day. It was best put to me by a multi-ethnic group of professionals I sat with last week. One explained, “We all want peace so no one wants to say it too loudly, but most of us believe this election was stolen. We believe the failure of IEBC’s systems was deliberate to enable this. Then we are told of the ‘tyranny of numbers’ and it dawns on us that we non-Gikuyus are being told one of us shall never become president. We are being asked to swallow that and it’s presented as a fait accompli that we’re going to have to live with or else – tough!” Said another, “So in the silence you are talking about there is a sense that we are mourning the death of something, as if something very bad has happened or is about to happen. As if something has died… [T]he anger, humiliation and hurt are too difficult to even describe. That is the reason for your silence.”
When I travelled to Uganda not long after the NRM government of President Museveni came to power, I was told of how in Central Buganda’s Luwero region where Obote’s troops had massacred civilians en masse, the birds had stopped singing. I was told the same in Kigali when I travelled to Rwanda not long after the genocide. In Kenya, after this election, the birds may still be singing, but Kenyans have stopped talking, especially across the ethnic divide. It is a screaming silence – save for the fight on social media platforms like Facebook that allow anonymisation where a younger generation we had thought less susceptible to the bigotry of their parents and elders is having it out with vicious toxicity. Our leaders can change this or in turn be changed by it.

legal adj., adv. according to law, not in violation of law, or anything related to the law.

So yes the supreme court ruling has deemed the incoming government legal but in my eyes it lacks legitimacy.