Piracy has several meanings, one of them being using other people’s intellectual property without their consent, or clearly put, copying and using other people’s creations without spending a penny as a reward for their troubles- for being smarter than you are.

Or, even to put it more clearly; refusing to behave like a consumer with integrity by playing your role at the end of the production chain.

Well, I will not plead innocent to this crime either, what with this economic crisis devastating even the hitherto presumed economically unshakable.

But then, ladies and gentlemen, I am not here to announce to you that soon you should expect to buy cheap music and movie CDs whose titles will be labelled with a marker, and as you watch, you will be rudely interrupted by my own ads overwritten on the original CD contents proclaiming me as the best DJ in town, even shamelessly displaying my contact number.

I think police should be taking down these numbers and pay these pirates a visit because I have started to think that their taking advantage of the absence of a legislative discouraging piracy is going too far.

How do you steal and even have the audacity to indicate your contacts on the stolen merchandise? If you ask me, this is clearly a come-and-get me-if –you-can attitude, which is totally unacceptable!

A pirate is a pirate, whether he is operating in the Indian Ocean hijacking ships and demanding for ransom or in Quartier Mateus copying Bongo Flava CD albums and reselling them at a cheaper price.

Well, I was getting a bit carried away there, wasn’t I? As I was saying, I am not here to announce my retirement from bird hunting to join the bad boys of Mateus who reap where they did not sow. 

To confirm your fears I am turning to real piracy. Yes, you heard me right; I am becoming a real pirate. You may be wondering why, of all timings, I have elected to become a pirate at the most dangerous time when every super power and aspiring super powers are up in arms against piracy.

But blame not me but the current economic crisis. You may also be wondering whether I intend to disappear into either Lake Kivu or Lake Muhazi where I will be laying ambushes to vessels traversing the waters transporting Primus.

Let me allay your concerns and inform you that I intend to do nothing of the sort. For your information, I am not retarded and neither am I suicidal because only then would anyone contemplate messing with the boys in madoadoa here.

In this case, the wisest option would be joining the boys from the horn of Africa in the Indian Ocean because there, camouflaged by the vastness of the sea, one stands a chance. 

Also, it would not be much scary knowing that the possible adversary is nothing but a bunch of cowards hiding behind the sophistication of their weaponry. I would especially pick out vessels with words like …Charles de Gaulle….

The case would be totally different if one chose to do the same in one of the water bodies in the land of 1-K hills- did you hear the story of the liberation of Iwawa Island? Hakuna kulala!

But then, I am a bird hunter and since I will die one, I don’t intend to indulge in anything maritime. My piracy will revolve around bird hunting and as I told you earlier, my decision is mainly and completely driven by the present global economic situation. Someone, I don’t know who, rightly said that no money- no love-no life.

That is why things are very bad. There was mad cow disease, bird flu and now swine flu (man how I am delighted that some of my friends will have to change their undesirable eating habits!) but most of us were not bothered.

There was also 911 and other threats to global peace but again, this did not move me much, after all why should I lose sleep over a bunch of crazy Arabs blowing themselves up as a show of their hatred for the United States of Kisumu…ooops sorry, America.

But now I think nature has been observing us closely and has come to a conclusion that were are very stubborn. That is the reason he has decided to hit us below the belt where it hurts most.

The entire world revolves around money and who is the bird hunter to defy this phenomenon? In m entire life as a bird hunter there has been few occasions during which I went hunting without first making sure that my pockets were compliant…or at least pretending that they were.

You need money to show that you are indeed a bird hunter of substance, not a Mayibobo trying to push his luck.
Now back to my decision to become a pirate.

After convening the bird hunting board (which is constituted by nobody else but me for lack of competent people) I decided that if a couple of skinny Somalis armed with obsolete guns could manage to earn millions of dollars in a couple of weeks, then I could triumph three-fold if I tried their approach.

Only mine would not be for monetary gains. Let me tell you a story of a Mukamba and a Mukikuyu, both tribesmen from Kenya.

The Kikuyus are well known for their love for money while the Akamabas are popular for their love for women (and men in the case of women because the train crosses the gender line quite proportionally).

The two men went to Tanzania to look for employment and were hired by an old wealthy childless Tanzanian who had a young beautiful wife.

On his deathbed, he summoned his loyal employees and asked them how they wanted him to reward them for their hard work and loyalty.

The Kikuyu man asked for a huge sum of money and the dying man signed a cheque there and then and the Kikuyu left. When it was the Akamba man’s time to name his wish, he did not hesitate to say Kibeti Gyaku, meaning your wife!!

The old man had a cardiac arrest immediately and died without refusing or granting his wish. The moral of the story? No, I am not telling anecdotes here. What I want to tell you is that while the Somalis have taken to piracy for money, mine would be for birds, strictly.

You see, we share the same principal. The Somalis have resorted to piracy as their way of balancing the universe. While Somalia is rotting with poverty and destitution, others around the world are stinking rich, spending millions to buy their dogs and cats food while Somali children are lucky to have a bowl of corn porridge a day.

So, they grab a few ships belonging to these people and demand that if they want them released, they should cough up a few millions.

By the way, I am not afraid to be branded a piracy apologist because people are denying that a Genocide happened here and they are drinking their wine and eating their Pizzas in Europe peacefully. Which is worse?

I have been observing that the trend at which birds are diminishing is quite worrying.  Not being good hunters, scores of people are opting for early retirement and settling with the first bird that happens to stumble in their net.

This indeed is a threat to bird hunting because it’s depleting the natural resources. Since I can do nothing to stop this and I don’t want to retire early, I have decided to become a pirate!

I will be hijacking birds belonging to other people since the free ones are either few or could lead you back to 1930 because their ages are 1990 and above which automatically puts them under the protection of the boys in blue. That’s my understanding of balancing the universe.

Ends