A week ago or so, I was invited to spend a fabulous evening with some of Kenya’s select, most wittiest, insanely stylish, hugely entertaining and all round seriously intelligent group of bloggers.
Now, we are interesting species out here in the blogosphere. We all appear in a flurry of kisses and hellos, all in between whoops of ‘hey, I know you – you are pretty damn fabulous!’ It’s all confident hand shakes, hugs and slaps on the back. There are new introductions that sound like you’ve known each other for eons and then an air of cool admiration as the fashion bloggers cruise through the crowd like silk through your fingers. The energy is pretty surreal, simply because, this group is just intelligent, bold, savvy and interesting enough for me to take a Friday night out to meet new, new people. As I look around, I take in the badges of their blog identities and they wear them well and with that typical ice cool Kenyan pride. These lot know what they are talking about and they are pretty damn smooth, well researched, educated and best of all – witty. This crew will sell ice to an eskimo, excuse the pun – and why? They’re smart, intuitive, open minded and with enough guts to get out there into that vast, alligator swamp filled internet- stratosphere and speak their minds. Educate. Inform. Entertain.
These are the individuals that try and make your lives that little bit more interesting, burning the midnight oil, writing and researching, just so that when you do flick across one of our posts – we’ll hopefully have you hooked with great quality editorials, hot photography and full on knock your socks off intelligent advice. We are really in the business of improving your daily state of mind. I really really like this lot – we’re definitely hanging out again..So, this meeting of great minds, ahem, that I was part of I might add, was bought together by the fabulous Wendy Watta (photo below) – whose perfectly personified Kenyan smile, I tell you now, is going to become legendary! What a cool move by Eat Out Kenya to get us all together as part of recognising a strong social media platform that is growing in this country and reaching far beyond.
Moving away, for just a small moment away from hugely, hugely important and dynamic issues such as conservation and our hurricane like terrifying experience with terrorism, there is a side of Kenya and it’s people that must always always be celebrated. We will never let your forget that. This is what this night was about. African heritage. A celebration of who we are as Kenyans – what great things we are achieving individually, our voices that are now spreading across oceans with blog followings reaching out as far as Australia, India, the USA. All these individual bloggers around that table that night had something positive, exciting, smart and intelligent that reflects the intellectual needs of a rapidly moving Kenyan society. There are a generation of Kenyans that still have enormous faith in this country, it’s art and fashion movement that is exploding beyond our borders, our music and entertainment scene that is hitting out hard across Africa and Europe.
Amongst all the enormous issues that we face daily in this country, there are countless positive ideas and images that are being generated by a new wave of Kenyan bloggers. And don’t get me wrong. Most of us have full time jobs that see us through the day – our blogs, our writing, our endless hours of pursuing that perfect shot for our followers are pure passion and hopefully for some, if not all of us – these will become landmark conversations transformed into products to sell to the world.
These are the people I want to be seen and heard with…these are the conversations I want to be part of and best of all – these are the people that bring humour and positivity into everything – it is infectious. I laughed – and I mean ‘belly laughed ‘ with some people I had never met before. So, do me a small favour folks. Take a moment from that weary day of yours, get out there, follow Kenyan bloggers, give us the support that the rest of the world is showing us and celebrate what is truly and absolutely the heart of Kenya!
And finally to end, this is the way most fantastic nights out end…with a great bunch of people and a hefty load of our amazing Kenyan “Dawas”! We’re all truly pretty normal, intelligent people – I, er, somehow recall!!!!!
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