By Okeng'o
G. O.
Tutorial
Fellow, Department of Physics, University of Nairobi and
Doctoral
Student, Square Kilometer Array Project (South Africa), based at the
Department of Physics, University of the Western Cape (Capetown,
South Africa)
©
Copyright by Okeng'o Geoffrey Onchong'a, July 2014
Last
weekend, while in the midst of sipping away my favorite
`thought-consolidating' beverage at one of my famed joints around
Mowbray-Capetown, a best friend of mine tabbed my shoulder and asked
me wryly: “Mr Kenyan Astrophysicist, what happened to you man?
Seems like ages since we heard from you!”. It took me a few sips
and a little scratch on my clear-shaven `cosmological' head, to
exactly decipher the magnitude of my friend's question. Then when I
remembered , I acknowledged with a nad that it has indeed been over
a whooping 500 + days (or 43 + million seconds) since I last updated
my blog! How could this happen under the Sun unless of course the
clocks outside my `enclosure' have been ticking faster of late? I
asked myself this question, before taking another sip. Well, my dear
esteemed readers and fans, the Kenyan Astrophysicist is back! This
special edition provides a brief statement, in his own words, what
actually transpired..
You see, they say experience is the best teacher and
indeed I have come to fathom the fact that (from my recent
experiences) growing up is not an easy feat! And who said it should
be anyway? Now, close to eleven thousand days ago when I grew up as a
restless young man: full of overzealous energy to conquer the
`world', myself, together with other young boys of my age, spent our
evenings sitting outside an open fireplace, listening to stories from
my self-styled wizened grandfather- the late Mzee1
Johnson Mbaka Ochong'a. Sheltering under the `roof' of the myriads of
twinkling stars that lighted up the calm heavens, my grandfather
would, perhaps bemused by our youthful demeanour and boyish
arguments, calmly reprimand us using a famous Kisii2
african proverb that says: “Yaa kina mobirore timokaga mbinde”
which when translated in English simply means “Grow up ye young men
thinking otherwise”. This, as I came to understand later is a
widely used proverb to warn young men about the eminent challenges of
life when one grows up. And yes, I now understand that my
grandfather's words were exactly on point. But what does this have to
do with the Kenyan Astrophysicist's MIA?
Well, while it is quite tempting to associate my
prolonged absence from an important platform such as my blog to
probably laziness, a computer breakdown and/or both, I would like to
take this earliest opportunity to plead “not guilty” and deny any
charges that anyone of you may lay against me. Nevertheless, I must
acknowledge and take some of the blame.
So
what transpired?
Before 'confessing' where I had been holed up all this
while, first some disclaimer: I have to categorically state that my
whereabouts in the last couple of months have got nothing to do with
either being lazy or inactive! (at least from my frame of reference).
Much has been happening, and to agree with my grandfather; I have
indeed been 'growing up'-while away! Thanks to my PhD supervisor for
the PhD project that has kept be busy in the last two years or so.
And as any graduate student would easily acknowledge doing a PhD is in
its own right a full-time 'job opportunity' and writing codes (that
appear easy at first) in order to solve cosmic problems or analyzing
data and publishing good papers can turn out to be a hard nut to
crack (well, most of the time). So, patience please! Therefore, if
you do not spot me traversing some airports to attend conferences or
workshops relevant to my research, you will definitely find me
perched on my home or office desk staring at my computer screen and
occasionally scribbling some equations in my notebook. That's where
I have been!
1A
respectable Swahili word for an older person or elder
2Also
known as AbaGusii, the Kisii are Bantu people in Nyanza Province,
Western Kenya
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