Cast Away : For These Reasons - Lambert Timothy James

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      Copyright © 2014 Jo M. Sekimonyo

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted under the U.S Copyright Act of 1976. For permission requests, write or email to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below:

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      Venus flytrap Press, LLC

      P.O. Box 390780

      Cambridge, MA 02139

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      Editing by Tara Casimir

      All quotations remain the intellectual property of their respective originators. All use of quotations is done under the fair use copyright principal.

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      1. Ethosism 2. Political Economy 3. Capitalism Barbarism

      4. Abstinence Theory 5. Common Sense I. Title

      Contents

       Letter to Mama Vincent

       Preface

       Acknowledgments

       Foreword

      I. Social

       Interlude I

      1. Introduction

      2. Kamikaze

      3. I see poor people

      4. Gangnam Style

      II. Politics

       Interlude II

      5. False Prophesies

      6. Corruptibilis

      7. Mohamed Bouazizi

      III. Economics

       Interlude III

      8. Say Whaaat?!!

      IV. Paradigm Shift

       Interlude IV

      9. D.R.I.P

      10. Diamonds are a woman’s BFF

      11. Hop-o'-My-Thumb

      V. The New Testament

       Interlude V

      12. Current and rude state of society

      13. Abracadabra

       Sky High

       Full Circle

       And finally

       Endnotes

       Additional Readings

      "If you are going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise, they'll kill you."

      â€“ Human

      Letter to Mama Vincent

      "There is a common tendency to ignore the poor or to develop some rationalization for the good fortune of the fortunate."– John Kenneth Galbraith

      Dear Mama Vincent,

      If this letter comes as a surprise to you, then you have no idea of the profound impression that our encounter with you has had in our lives since that day. Putting faces to the global malaise has kept my wife and me from sailing conscience-free around the ocean of the abstract. I sincerely commend you for taking full responsibility for the bad decisions you have made in your life, but I would be foolish to believe that your slip-ups are all there is to the story. In reality, from your birth, the odds were already stacked against you, and I know how this part of the world is merciless to single illiterate mothers. Vincent could have easily been me if I had landed in my mother's hands.

      Dear, under your beautiful smile and joyful laugh, I saw an excruciating pain. You still have your life ahead of you. You shouldn’t be a nameless figure, giving up on your big dreams and aspirations just yet. Then again, holding Vincent in my arms, under roaming eyes of law enforcement agents passing by, I for a moment shared your agony and despair.

      It is touching the way you come to describe your son Vincent as your reason to live. Most of the young people your age uses such poignant statements to refer to the cute boy or girl they come to believe are their soul mates, the same person they will eventually dump for some blasé reason with little if any remorse. Even worse, it is revolting to overhear grownups reduce life's meaning into the ephemeral passing of emotions. Still, I cannot ignore that your reality in Kenya is far different than people in my current world.

      You confessed to us that, at times, you feel hopeless, a pariah creeping through the streets in the vibrant city of Nairobi, which has decided to criminalize poverty. It is not a surprise that Nairobi's zero tolerance on the deprived has created the largest landfill of the poor in the whole Eastern region of Africa, the slum of Kibera. Yet, it breaks my heart to say there are other Kiberas and worse around this suffocating blue planet, which is not comforting to you either. From my travels, I have seen countless young mothers with their children panhandling all over the Democratic Republic of Congo and on every corner in Addis Ababa Ethiopia, and men in faded uniforms begging for coins on main streets in crumbling cities across the United States of America.

      I have been on an investigative journey dissecting the hardships endured by Brazilians living in the City of God, the inhabitants of Cite' Jalousie in Port-au-Prince, Haiti before and after the devastating earthquake, the Romanians in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, Russians clustered in the Ghetto of Tver City, Chased in Khayelitsha, South Africa, and the poor in Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong, China. I have been surprised by the residents’

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