WHY DO WE CHEAT IN RELATIONSHIPS?

So goes the million dollar question. But is the question as complex as we make it or is it so easy to answer that we would rather not admit it?

With the rise in HIV infections in marriages, most of us have really found a legitimate ground to question the sanity of marriage. With more people in the life-long commitment getting into the mpango wa kando (clandestine relationships) phenomenon, it seems as though getting married now acts as a front to hide the cesspit of sexual decadence many would wish to keep secret. But why? Why would we commit to someone only to turn on them faster than Flash on a free ride down a slope? How bad could they have gotten since the first time we saw them?

'Relationship experts' have tried answering the question so many times but it seems they too perhaps think too much. For anyone who has ever been in a relationship, one can attest that when caught eating from the wrong plate, there is no shortage of a myriad of reasons. My spouse didn't do this or that, my marriage has lost taste, sex with my wife/husband is boring and so many more flimsy excuses that usually make you want to slap someone. Which brings me to the topic - why do we cheat?

Answer : because we can. And we all know that. Any reason given when the caught is only but an excuse. Cheating happens because there is choice. While cultural inertia, upbringing, personality e.t.c do play a part, at the end of the day, the choice is what determines the action.  And there is no easier action to take when the marriage hits the rocks than to seek solace elsewhere. It's the easy way out and most of us  appreciate an easier route if it will help us get what we want( which is why we cheat in exams too. I'm guilty of this one, sorry).

Relationships are hard work, even if you are Romeo and Julliet, and committing single-mindedly to that one person you chose (choice again!) is even harder. How to succeed in relationships and marriages is no different from how to succeed in any other field. It's success you seek after all. While the area of application may be different, the tips to succeed are all from the same copy book - hard work, persistence, re-invention e.t.c.

There is not a list of things that make people cheat. People cheat because cheating and choosing to cheat exist and unless a study shows it's actually a mental disease, its something that we can all do, if we choose to that is. And remaining faithful is a choice too.

You can read more of this here

Photo : courtesy

WHY FIVE SHOULD BE LAST FOR MESSI

The greatest ever? That is the feeling here. While critics may find fault in the lack of a World Cup in his trophy cabinet, there is no denying that Lionel Messi has dominated the modern game in ways no one else has and no one else might.

When he claimed a debut win of the prized individual award in Zurich on a cold evening on December 1st in 2009, few would have expected the unprecedented run of three more successive wins that followed. At twenty two then, Messi had shown great promise to earn the monicker 'one of the best of his generation' yet, when he claimed his fifth Ballon d'or on Monday the 11th 2016, it has set tongues rolling, further putting to boil the debate of whether he is the greatest of the sport or merely one of the hallmarks.

For Messi though, the debates are pointless, as, by his own admission, he would trade the five of them for a World Cup. But Messi should have no doubts, he is defining an era in ways no other player has and in winning the fifth Ballon d'or, a milestone in a game that has seen Edison Arantes (Pele), Diego Maradonna, Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini and more, Messi has shown he belongs to the class of the elite; a legend, a collosus and and an eternal footprint. It is this that should make him consider handing his future Ballon d'Or wins to an up coming player.

A truth that will hold is that, as long as Messi keeps his mercurial performances constantly mercurial, not even the excellent human in second will come close to claiming the Ballon d'Or. Cristiano Ronaldo does his best, and at his best he is in his own league, yet even he, the supposed rival to Messi, has been left nipping at his heels not only in Ballon d'Or wins but also in trophies won throughout their respective careers.

Messi is great, and he knows that. Which is why he should maybe consider turning down future Ballon d'Or wins. It is not so as to be 'a good person' or to hand a platform on a silver plata to new players but as an acknowledgement of his own status. Truth is, very few players at their best can match Messi at his best. This then leaves their chances of winning the Ballon d'Or at almost nill, just ask Manuel Neuer, probably the best keeper of his generation and the best player of 2010 in many people's eyes. There comes a time when turning down plaudits, after receiving many similar ones in the past, is a show of greatness. For Messi, his own incredible path has already outlived him. Alongside Cristiano, these two have shattered virtually all scoring records in football. Messi has won the Golden ball five times. He should consider handing away his future win so as to give newer players an opportunity to try and wrestle the title. It is highly dubious that they will succeed, but even if they do, Messi's status as an icon cannot be rubbed off. He is a landmark in modern football. We need more like him, but we can't have them if his shadow looms over them like a dark cloud.

Photo : m.heraldscotland.com/sport

THE MENTAL SHIFT OF THE TURN OF A CALENDER

Hi there beautiful people. Sorry for the lengthened silence. Lets just say the holidays got me. I hope they have been nothing short of breathtaking on your end. But anyway, I have crawled back from the self-imposed silence exile and as usual have emerged with a thought nurtured by my time in darkness. Why is it that a new year elicits so much excitement and hope despite the fact that it is only a flip of a calender?

All the trite of new year resoultions, higher expectations. Is the dawn of the 1st of January really a cause for celebration or just a façade of new beginnings with hardly any newness to it?

Whichever way one looks at it, the new year is bound to always elicit some freshness and jubilation in any one human and alive enough to experience it, even to cynics and skeptics like me. There is always a certain mystic and charm of a fresh year that goes just beyond the flip of the calender. A new year is like a new day - it offers its own unique enigma and with so many days ahead, offers us a chance to make it.

While the act of flipping over the calender is a simple one, the shift of attitude and character that we so often wish to carry over to the new year certainly requires more than a desire or wish. Just like how you plan your day ahead, making plans for the new year late in the year preceding is vital. This not only enables you curve ways to achieve the intended targets, it also allows you time to go through the targets and correct them where neccesary or be more specific with what you want to achieve as well as laying the concrete plans on how you want to achieve it.

The reason many new year resolutions fail before even day two is usually because most are made on a whim, a moment's spark based on a previous or maybe recurrent desire. Just because you have been wanting to do something doesn't mean your brain will automatically respond to the sudden wish to change momentum. The brain is a little bastard. It loves status quo. Unless change is introduced slowly until it settles into rythm, it will always reject whatever we wish to impose. That is why it is said 'Practice makes perfect'. The tiny goo that is our brain often needs a little firm prodding so as to get off that lazy ass we so often allow it to slump into.

Another reason they fail miserably on their belly is because we so often want to do them all at once. Multi-tasking, they say. Well, multi-tasking lowers productivity. Confusing the brain on what to do means you never concentrate on a single task hence never complete it and if you do complete it, then it's not well done. The best way to finish tasks is to do them one by one, in order of priorities. Hard, but doable. Offer your full keenness on one task and do it well. The results will be stupendous. But like everything, the brain will need conditioning through consistency to pick this up too.

A new year is like a fresh page - it offers you an empty space to fill. But just because space is there doesn't translate then to a sudden influx of knowledge on what to do with it. You will need to give your brain what to work with beforehand and you will need to have lain down an outline, even if it is just in your head for a start. Have a silhouette so as you know how to draw the body. Striking blindly is what leads to burn out and loss of motivation hence leaving most of us feeling dreary and jaded by February. An outline is a motivation on itself with the other being a vision of who we want to be.

A new year resolution is never the solution anyway. True, it offers a 'a new possibility' but as a writer, I know a fresh page doesn't automatically translate to the thoughts being any kinder. Often times, as long as the idea is there, a  firm push is all it needs, a little grit. It's all in the head. Your desire and mentality determine your actions. You want change, you start to work on it as soon as possible. It doesn't matter what. A change could happen on March 23rd or on December 28th. It could happen within the year you wish it to or it could carry on into the succeeding year. The thing is not to expect miracles just because we desire or just because we have faith. Action. That's all it takes. The first step is the most important. And the first step is to realise you don't need a new year to make a change. Start now. There isn't much time.

THE PROBLEM OF WE, MEN

In this new world, men have come under criticism from the womenfolk for being tad a bit too soft or unmanly. It seems to be true even as we remain impassioned to the claim and we ought to take action because there is cause for concern that the views by our women are true.

It is pertinent that we stop blaming feminism for our failed masculinity. Women are not to blame. We, men, are the culpable party.

Following ground breaking progress that we have witnessed and even been part of in the past two or three decades, and with a projection of even greater strides ahead, it is unfortunate that we still insist on raising our boys the same way our grandfathers' grandfathers were raised. In that era of yore, it was definitly encouraged right from birth that bossing women was not just a choice but nature. Afterall women then were viewed as discounts of humanity. It was easier to get women to do things for you by either shouting, demeaning or even beating her. In fact the latter was encouraged and perpetuated by inaction against the offenders. And the women then knew no better, taking it wholeheartedly.

Between then and now, however, there has been a paradigm shift in policies and values, in views and beliefs and in reason and behaviour. Women have learnt to stand up and fight for their rights. For the right to be treated, not as equal to men, but in a fair manner as productive and important members of society. The modern woman today is independent, vocal, visionary, educated, enlightened, empowered. She epitomises the strides humanity has made. However, the trouble is that we have remained relatively left behind as men.  The seismic shift seems like a gaping hole we somehow glided over blindfolded, in our partriachial parachutes.

Feminism is not the death of masculinity. Indeed we should see it as a compliment to us. It has exposed the shortfalls of the partriachial, male chauvanistic society from whose perilous grasps we have emerged. Hitherto, men have been used to being unchallenged. Whether deserving or not, honour was bestowed unto us by virtue of our sex. We were fathers but never raised the child(ren). Some of us were lazy yet slept well fed. We beat women but suffered no consequence. The meteoric rise of women has caught us flat footed. Reason is that, while many older women have been at task trying to raise girls above the shackles of a traditional society, the older of us have remained nonplussed, foolishly believing that the tradition serves us well. There are few, if at all any, mentorship programmes for young boys on how to be and act in this modern world, especially on how to handle the modern woman. As before, we seem to expect our boys to totter and stumble about and somehow find their way somewhere along the way. Don't cite examples of how you turned out fine yet you blundered your way blindly to adulthood. Chances are, most of us aren't even as well adjusted as we would like to believe or deceive ourselves. How would it feel to marry a woman who earns more than you? What do you think of a man that earns less than his wife? We feel threatened by women who earn more, hold higher positions than us. Yet we shouldn't be. A woman will always want a man that leads no matter her position in her career. Unfortunately, there is not many of us out here who can wrest the initiative. We want things delivered at our feet like before yet all that is gone. More and more women are beginning to earn more than us and there is no reversal. 

It is no secret and if it is then it is a well known one. We need to change how we raise our boys now. The reason women bemoan men of today is because we have remained in yesterday. As a man raised 'the traditional' way, when you meet a woman who challenges you, your whole world is thrown upside down, like your whole universe has crossed dimensions into another existance. So you try and impose your ways on her only to find her unwilling to baulk at your force. Truth is women have never been okay with the brawl. It was fear that kept them quiet all those years. Now they are more enlightened, empowered and dare I say, better than the women of yesterday. It is time we began raising our boys and mentoring our young men on how to embrace responsibility and the new dawn of femininity. Most of us men were raised badly. Many of us were not raised but just staggered into adulthood without attaining maturity. It is difficult to change the monkey of old. Instead why not the mature of us begin to mentor boys to be men. Real men.

For us to shed this tag of 'modern men are weak', we need to begin by raising responsible boys, boys capable of being men, men capable of handling the modern woman, a woman who does not look to be completed but rather, to be complemented. For us to pay them the complements that will make them swoon, we need to be on the same page as them.  Lets start now. Its urgent!

On an unrelated note: congragulations Konzolo for the birth of your son, Ambuzi. May you raise him to be a Real Man.

RADICAL CHANGES SAVOUR OF OUR FOOTBALL, NOT PRAYERS

If it's not limping, it's ailing. If it isn't ailing, then it is paddling in a pool of embarrassment. This is the narrative that has been a recurring feature in Kenyan football for as long as there was football and memory, and the recent embarrassing scenario that marred Harambee Stars' journey to Cape Verde should perhaps be the crown on our ever growing pile of humiliation. The story has been the same for years-different casts but the same script and this low has exposed the real issues if at all we had missed them in the past.

1. Poor leadership

This is perhaps the highlight of everything wrong with our football. From vacous and silly supremacy battles to lack of proper structures, no low is too low for this current administration to stoop,even as far as threatening players is concerned, what with allegations that a top official from Football Kenya Federation (FKF) allegedly threatened to ruin a player's career for protesting the treatment of the team in the saga before the Cape Verde trip (The player in question is the chair of a union for players).
While I wouldn't want to pour water over the current administration's efforts, it is clear even to a layman that aside from quickfire, short term achievements, nothing stands tall as a resilient legacy on which we can dock our dreams and hopes. FKF treads on soft grounds and it is this negligence that has left our football sitting upon its anus in ignominy. Take this: since 2007, when the new administration was first voted in, the coach's hotseat has seen eleven different people rub their butts upon its scorching cushion, with Jacob 'Ghost' Mulee and Francis Kimanzi recurring on it like a comedic setpiece. Yet the wave of whatever change each coach has promised has remained elusive and pipe. Can we blame the coaches? Certainly they are culpable but it is the administration responsible for hiring them that should see the pointed fingers first. For a regime that barely has a tangible development plan, the sacking and hiring and re-hiring of coaches is meant to be a front that hides the fact that we could replace our football administration with lamp posts and still see no difference.(The highlight of this was when they forced the visionary Bernard Lama to resign after just two months incharge of the national outfit).

A rewind back to the turbulent year of 2004, a year that saw Kenya banned from international football activities by FIFA, bespeaks of the malignancy of ineffectual leadership we are susceptible to entertaining. Bear in mind that despite the administration being different then, several faces have remained gritty in the face of it all, a constant in the prevailing variable. The two top-tier league format witnessed that year and the season of 2015 is evidence enough that we have a leadership that changes personality but not character. It is no rocket science. To improve our football, a total overhaul of the same system of governance and the same faces should hallmark our desire for change.

2. Poor coaches and poorer hiring methods

A few years back, a distinguished gentleman by the name Antoine Hey came, saw and made hay before we could all say hey! If anything corroborated the lethargic and almost disdainful arrogance in our football governance, it had to be this man. He who walked out of the Harambee Stars right before a crucial World Cup qualifier against Nigeria in 2009. How he was hired remains a mystery considering his resume offers no substantial content barring tinny factfiles: it looks like a badly done term paper from a particularly incompetent student. This properly put to perspective our flawed coach hiring system. Simply put- we are not getting good results because we are not hiring good enough coaches and even when the coach is good enough, there is always a danger of an administration that looms a shadow over the coach. Yet we seem to always prefer foreign coaches whose reputation is alien even to a know-it-all like wikipedia. We simply can't crack excellence with such. We seem to expect maximum results from average to mediocre coaches. The cloak will never fit if we keep cutting it smaller.

3. Taking joy from mediocrity

This is perhaps a culmination of our hopelessness born from being let down daily by an administration that looks like they would rather be elsewhere. Yet it should rage us to see our football go to shreds as it is.
On October 8th 2011, Kenya held Uganda to a barren draw in Namboole stadium in an African Cup of Nations (ACN) qualifier.it was the final game of the group. What followed was wild celebrations from our end of things as if we had tasted a slice of victory. The merriment was anchored to the fact that the draw had seen Uganda, whom at that point were the leaders of the group and one victory away from the ACN, fail to proceed. It didn't serve us good but seeing Uganda out in the cold with us was a reason to celebrate. This kind of attitude summed up our lack of belief that we can do just as well if not better. And such a trait seems to have taken an impertinent root in us. Each time we pull off a draw, we wax poetic lyrics on our team in manners likely to make Shakespeare's sonnets look tame. And this has spread onto our clubs too where we call for them to fight for a draw on foreign soil, forgetting a win is a thing. Drowning in small victories will only leave us in a mark time. To qualify for atleast an African Cup, consistency is key and we will never rise to the 'consistently good' class if we celebrate draws and one off victories as collosal triumphs.

The 2-0 win over Uganda in the Cecafa 2015 on November 22nd not withstanding, Uganda is still the best team in East and Central Africa, no matter their performance in this year's Cecafa. The fact that they are the only team from Eastern Africa in the last group stage qualifiers for the African Cup lends credibility to this claim and this condemns us to the tears we were to shed in 2011. This time we are alone in the cold with Uganda a few light years ahead.

With a management that has ridiculously high targets for a new coach over a ridiculously short period of time without any tangible plan, the African Cup might remain a mirage and yet it is only after a remarkable showing in the continental stage can we dream of the Holy Grail that is The World Cup.
We need a paradigm change for our football to show any signs of progress. Our best performances never clear the ever nagging question- will we play this well next time? There is something missing and that something can only be found in a complete change of guard. Our dead faith and prayers will only lead us where dead faith leads people- nowhere.

December 14th should see a new dawn in our football. Acting on that faith and voting for change is the only way we can make the blurry dream of the African Cup of Nations and the World Cup clearer. Or else we keep chasing the wind with hopes of drawing milk.

Photo: goal.com

LET MY HAND DO THE TALKING

Poetry

Remember me,

For my passions,

And for what I could best describe as compassion,

I do not know the nerve I tickle in you,

But in any way remember me.

I may not be ideal,

But I am a man of means,

I am my writing and my writing is me,

Yes by definition I am a writer,

But by occupation, a waiter,

Waiting upon the fates to finally smile down at my efforts.

I may make it, I may never make it

For its hard , smiling when crying is the default,

Fighting when giving up is the only way to rest my faint frame.

And to that I say I may or may not see the light at the end of the tunnels.

I would love to see the sun shine again, upon my life, my family,

Posterity, anyone that I touch with the crafts and smiths of my words,

But in the wake of the shrewd dealings of reality, I know that my life might be cut short before I see the end.

Why did it have to happen, I always ask anyone with ears enough to listen,

That I would find myself footslogging in the bog of uncertainity, heading into a 'promising future' that is as dark as a room without windows or a night without a moon.

Why should I have to hold my head high when I can just hang it in defeat and shame? Sigh and let tears wash down my eye.

The vision is great, but what if the rift between my present and fulfillment of this vision is so great as to warrant despair? Am I to still remain hopeful that I will fly?

What am I to do? Maybe build myself a plane to see me through? Maybe train and ride hornbill too?

It is a cruel hand upon my living, an unfortunate misgiving, and a dark cloud hangs above my head.

Yet all in all, each day, I pray for a tiny ounce of strength to fulfill this goal of day. To write and just write and keep writing.

If I don't live up to this then failure doesn't come on bigger serving. Each day I look forward to this - word on paper.

Through the winds of laziness and demotivation, it's all I live for,

I hope to leave a lasting mark in society, a mark that posterity will look back at on a chilly Throw-back Thursday evening and say in earnest," Indeed in our lineage, walked a great man".

DESTITUTE OF FATE AND OTHER SHORT STORIES

                             2
         IN THE FACE OF HUNGER

A gust swept through the heath, through the unending vast, empty plains of Hatma, covering the whole area and the air above in a thick, heavy cloud of twisting dust. The brown threads of dirt swirled as they trundled across the emptiness, after the wind. Aside from a few scrubs and small, elfin and unhealthy trees scattered about, there was not much vegetation here. Homes were a rarity, sparse and scattered on the plains that stretched into the very periphery of the miraged horizon. A few pallid and sickly cows gnawed at the hardly leafy scrubs, with some attempting to reach the leaves on the trees. Others,yet, lay on the ground, having given up entirely on finding food and silently waited for their peaceful demise.

In one particular compound, one that was a little too flung from its nearest neighbours, was a mud house, with a woman shaded on its front, eyes distant in troubled muse. She looked bony and unhealthy, sick almost. Her cheek bones showed vividly, as if trying to crawl out of her dry, lean skin while the distant eyes were sunken, dull and watery. Her clavicle showed, running outwards from her sternum and projecting from the shoulders of her bony arms. Lain next to her, on a rugged blanket, were two of her children. One was a girl, about eight while the other was a boy of about five. Both faired no differently from their mother. Their faces showed bleak query as they rested next to their only hope of surviving this cruel harsh world. At the far end of the compound, a mongerel dozed away the hot afternoon, too weak to move. A wound cut across its side, pus and blood having coalesced there to form a red mess,only pleasing to the flies that darted on it as they pleased. This was the result of the previous day's encounter with a furious mother cow after it had attempted to prey on the cow's weak calf. The mother had launched towards him with fury and duíg a vicious horn onto the dog's side. Its weak,watery and tired eyes spoke of not just hunger but sickness. And it showed in the dry, stiff and faded fur. Already, some of it had fallen off, leaving ugly patches of the grey skin underneath.

The woman shook her head in despair. She just could not get what had come to be. It was usually bad, but it had never gotten to this level of bleakness. With no husband to help her out,and with all her cattle dead,she had to figure out how to fend for the children. She had no idea where he had gone. Infact,no woman in the village had any idea where the men had gone. Sometime back,they had come together and claimed that they were going to look for food. They had then left the village. It was long ago, she remembered, too long ago infact that now they had essentially given up on them ever coming back. Maybe they had been held up but were certainly on their way back; or maybe they had found a better life beyond Hatma and had decided to go for good; or worse still, maybe the harsh conditions had gotten the better of them and their bodies had been feasted upon by rowdy scavengers. Either way, the men were gone for sure and coming back was a mystery which she wasn't detective enough to sink into.  The younger child, the boy, let out a frail wail, disrupting the mother's train of thoughts.
     "Mamaa, njaa,"he whimpered, his voice trailing off as a cry took over. The girl backed her brother, slapping the mother's wrist continuously in a solemn plea. The mother looked down at them, at their pain and a tear fell from her eye. Not even water to quench their thirst. She held their hands and shook her head, just about holding herself together.

She nostalgically took herself back to the last time her family had had food. Some relief food had been sent their way from the admin. Hatma had sprung to life that day, for it had been the first time that they were seeing food in its satisfying glory since the onset of this devastating drought and famine a while back. Their always unavailable, busy mp had been strangely free that day, and who was he to let this platform to gain political mileage pass by. He thumped his chest and proclaimed his workmanship in his raspy and heavily-accented voice. He had yet to show face after that. Women and children displayed their best smiles that day as the men stood with assumed and exaggerated authority on the side of the queue. But the food had run out fast, like a drop of water to quench thirst. The news was that the admin was cash-strapped and that more food would come their way as soon as money was available. If it served her memory right, which it did, it was during this time that she heard over the radio that the mps would be getting a payrise. Now whether that payrise would be in raindrops, tea leaves or philosophical thinkings, she did not know. Cash-strapped indeed. Her radio now lay in some corner in the house, gathering dust, the battery having long given up ghost or whatever it is batteries give up when they die. Indeed it had been a long time back. So long she had even lost track of time. It could have been a few days back. Or it could have been a few weeks back. Hell, maybe it could have been months ago. It was really difficult to keep track of this time on an empty stomach. Plus days tend to be longer when one is malaised. But she was almost certain that the admin people had had their payrise by now. It always happened. But now she had nothing to feed her children, who seemed to have run out of tears and were just staring at her, perhaps thinking of how uncaring their mother was turning out to be.

She looked around the compound. Firewood was at the far end, to the right of the compound, waiting to be fired to life to heat that rare meal. At the gate, the mongerel kept dozing off, thoroughly beaten on this one. She looked back at her children.
      "Papa will come with food," she said feebly, trying to pump some hope into their fallen wheels of optimism," maybe tomorrow or the day after or maybe next week. Hold on, sawa? hold on." She wondered if she believed it herself. She didn't and she knew they disbelieved her too. She was hopeless and she couldn't give them hope she had lost a while back. Their yellow, pallid eyes stared fixedly at the unblemished blue blankness that was the sky. The gods had lost their humanity too. The boy had his dry, cracked lips wide open, flies buzzing over the exposed flesh. The girl had closed her eyes, breathing heavily with laboured heaves.

The woman reached her trembling hands down her side and pulled herself to her feet. She dragged herself to the firewoods. Her stomach gave a sharp protest. She clatched it and pressed hard. It lurched and roared. A sharp searing pain shot through her midsection. She winced, bowed forward and pressed her stomach harder. She grit her teeth and closed her eyes tightly. The pain ebbed. She stood upright and went her way. The piles of dry wood seemed to hold up to her in anticipation, for it had been days since any of them had been called to duty. So eager were they that when she reached for one and pulled it out, others followed suit and tumbled out of place, scattering on the ground next to her. She gave the large branch a nasty look, the bark dried on it and breaking off in scaly pieces. Then she turned and began making her way back to her two children, the branch dragging faithfully behind her. Wisps of dust rose behind it before scattering over her head. They watched her approach, none showing much emotion but for the frown that signified their pain. She walked up and stood over them. Her lanky frame made her dominance more pronounced. The branch in hand added on a layer of threat. The girl shut her eyes and contorted in a sob. The boy was already drenched in tears. A tear made its way down the mother's face. She gave a deep exhale and shuffled herself into the house.

The room was barely windowed, with the lights streaming in from the tiny, round opening and the open door just about grasping the even recessed parts of the single room. On the floor directly under the small opening, shrouded in a shoal and a fusty, faded blanket was a baby, wheezing audibly in her troubled sleep. She was in no better condition than her siblings outside. Her body was gaunt and sallow and extremely tiny. Her features showed sharply for a child her age. Infact in this condition, her actual age was indeterminate, an open secret only the mother knew. The mother looked at her daughter. First indifferently. Then with some vestiges of concern. Then tenderly. She began shedding tears, her face folded in a scowl as she raised the branch high above her head. Tears which now rolled freely down her cheeks found their way to the ground as readied to bring the stick down. Then the baby stirred and opened its eyes. Immediately, it looked up and saw its mother's face and there spread a tender,genuine smile that could thaw even a heart that aspired to be Hitler. The mother whimpered and let the stick tumble from her hand. She knelt down, picked up the little one and cuddled it on her shoulder, her face drenched in tears and mucus as she rocked her baby. The baby remained upbeat, humming lowly behind the mother's shoulder, oblivious to the danger that had been about to be unleashed on her head.

The mother rose to her feet, picked up the branch and stepped out. The heat of the scorching sun seemed to have gone up by a few degrees. It roasted every thing directly on the route of its furious bars and the mirage on the distance seemed like a large mass of clear water, rippling in the distance in reverential silence. She put the baby next to her siblings and then stood over them. Once again the baby broke the chains that had cletched on her heart with another innocent smile. The older girl sobbed in silence, eyes glued to her mother. The boy looked on in resignation. Those wan faces head started to drain away the tiny bits of life still beating within their hopeless
bodies.

Then she looked up and sighed. One step. Two step. Branch dragging faithfull behind her. Her feet barely lifted off the ground and this left a trail of dust in her wake.

The dog looked at her as she approached. He couldn't help himself. He trembled lightly and the flies on the wound on its side scattered in a flurry with an incessant, heavy buzzing before converging again. He gave approaching woman a look of pity. The woman now stood over him. He knew what he had to do it seems for he lay his head submissively on the hot, dry cracked earth and gave a low whimper, a resigned look in his watered eyes. With all the might she could gather, the woman raised the branch high over her head and brought it fown with a hissing force on the dog's head, crushing it into a bloody splatter. There. The last resort. Today they were sorted. Tomorrow could only get better.

                  

                         The end