Sirmi

Economist.
freelance data analyst.

[Sirmi @_Sirmi_]

@_fels1 😀😀😀 its never this serious

[George Tsitati @Tsitati_George]

I have tasted Masters, I have tasted PhD. I recommend therapy.

[Sirmi @_Sirmi_]

@iQwatson @Safaricom_Care Still same, you can switch off the other esim.

[Sirmi @_Sirmi_]

@iQwatson @Safaricom_Care This is how I did it,
Request someone to buy you airtime as well as recharge data bundles.let Saf be Sim one, switch off Sim two. Ensure data Roaming is on and try accessing the App and it will automatically pick the Saf number- activate with your pin.

[Muvs 🐦‍🔥🇦🇷 @Youknowhodis_]

Life has me so cooked I'm reading the Bible again bro. This nigga Thesalonians knows ball ngl - mans is saying niggas should shut the hell up and make bread

[Sirmi @_Sirmi_]

@AKchumo I bet nhow hotel receptionist have seen her with other men 😀 ji enjoy lakini.

[Sirmi @_Sirmi_]

@NoOnness @frank_mwiti @SafaricomPLC You can use the online application Form, plus pay via Bank Transfer https://t.co/kUmdUQs4kY excuse.

[Gichuki Kahome @kahome_steve]

The NSE is up 56% YTD

It was up 34% in 2024

The momentum will most likely continue into 2026.

Is it too late to join the party? Is it a good time to buy?

1. KPLC still trades at a PE of 1

2. 7/11 banking sector stocks trade below their book values

3.We have buy ratings on almost half the stocks on the NSE that we track

4. ⁠Companies earnings are improving. Equity bank and Safaricom just released very strong earnings. Even companies like Home Africa, Unga, NSE, BOC, CGEN had a huge jump in earnings

5. ⁠NCBA & EABL are rumored to be in acquisition targets

6. Kenya pipeline IPO is coming and family bank is getting listed as well

7. Interest rates are dropping. Fixed income securities are becoming more unattractive by day

Many words to say: The NSE bull run has legs. Don’t leave the party just yet. We just got started. And if you have not yet joined, the guest artist is yet to perform.

[Silas Nyanchwani @nyanchwani]

Life. Man.

When you are 25, 35, or 40, it looks like a lifetime away.
If in a good place at 25, say a graduate with good career prospects, and a steady lover, everything seems possible. You imagine you can squeeze a family, husband or wife, two kids, dream home, a PhD, and live your dream life by 35 or 40.

At 25, you look at older relatives or people with messy lives, and you wonder what could have gone wrong.

I remember the first time I attended my daughter’s PTA. I was a relatively young man. There were older folks, older men with vitambis, one or two with greying hair, and in my own youthful folly, I may have cursed inwardly, wondering, “where were they?”
When you are young, you will never understand how someone can be older and be jobless or be rudderless or without a family. When you are young and successful, you become criminally blind to the surprises of life. Sometimes things go so right, you win so much, so consistently, you forget about failure or losses. And these are the people likely to be hit the hardest when life happens.

A business partner in the UK told me how his sister recently alijitia kitanzi. The sister was a bright student all her life and ended up working in a large, global corporation. When she was laid off, the accumulated stress from the loss of her job and undetected depression sent her on a spin ending in death. She was 38.

What is ten years?

It sounds long. Right?

Yeah, but all it takes is one bad, long-term relationship to waste some six years. And you need up to two years to heal. That is, if you are strong and there are no kids. Divorce is a different ball game altogether. It takes almost two years from the point you decide to divorce, to another long year of back and forth, doubts, and all. Post-divorce is a terrible time, and both men and women handle it differently, and people move on in different timelines.

You think ten years is a long time, but all it takes is people saying “tutam” in a mannerless way, and you are stuck in a bad job or jobless for another three years, barely scraping by. We rarely talk about how bad governments keep being shackled in poverty longer than necessary.

You lost a job, and before you know it, three years have passed since you got another one. Some guy commented on my post that it took him 13 years to find a job after losing his first one.
Yaani, 25-42 is such a tumultuous period, and nothing in our constitution prepares you for the vicissitudes of that critical period. Marry right, and you have hit a jackpot. Marry wrong, and a decade of your life is flushed down the drain just like that.

A lecturer in a Kenyan university can turn a basic master’s degree into a nightmare, and what was supposed to be a two-and-a-half-year course can turn into a harrowing five years. There is a year you will drop it altogether, until a sensible friend encourages you to go back and finish.

You can fall sick unexpectedly and get derailed. Things can go wrong. May be ni wachawi wa kwenu. Maybe it is the poor choices you will make.

For instance, in the deep throes of passion, when the sex is good, when her legs are on your shoulders, and you are fishing deeper, you don’t stop to think that maybe, this guy, so good and tender, is a deadbeat-in-waiting. When a girl is all feminine, all-loving, all respectful, as a man, you never think for a moment that in two years she will turn you into an alcoholic milaya, sleeping with anything to get back to her, which is foolish already. Nobody, at the peak of a good relationship, stops to imagine that their partner will be the source of their future anguish.

And red flags?

Useless indicators. Red flags occur to you in startling clarity in hindsight. In hindsight, everything is so clear. But in real time, we assume. Assumption is the mother of all blunders adults are likely to commit.

Can you game life? Can you extract good outcomes if you play right?

I bet you can. Or maybe, everything is predestined to happen, as it happens, and we are just unwilling actors playing out a script whose end we don’t know.

I no longer know these things. Nowadays, I am willfully ignorant.
I saw this meme, and it’s like all of us are here for the first time, so “tupunguze advice”. We won’t stop dishing advice; those of us who do need some humility.

What I have learnt is that advice only makes sense after the experience. Not before.

Sometimes people come to me and all they want is for me to agree with their preconceived notions. When I point out different perspectives, they either go cold on me or disappear, only to reappear a few months later, saying, “Silas, you were right.” I don’t revel in them learning the hard way.

I am also like that.

There was this girl I loved and was so head-over-heels into her. And she had a sparkling charm, and something I had desired in a woman for such a long time. One day, I went to pick her up from the airport with my friend. After we dropped her off at her place, my friend told me to dump her. He was unequivocal with his advice. I was adamant that she was a good girl and that my friend was being unnecessarily hard on her for very humane, if girly, mistakes. After all, no one is perfect. My friend gave me that weary look we give friends who are about to trip. I thought he was jealous. I thought he wanted her. I felt myself smarter than him.

Roughly, a month later, the girl did the thing. No anesthesia. Ushawahi achwa hadi unajicheka? I had to hide from my friend for a while. He still laughs at me. And I hate him because of that.
But after she did that thing, my friend’s advice made sense. He had seen what I could not see when I was in love.

Anyway, to young people, live your life with diligence and discipline. There is so much within our control. And there is more that is beyond our control.

A few things I have learnt, I can tell my 25-year-old self:
1. Your personal goals (career, academic, social, spiritual, hobbies) are yours and yours alone. Never let anyone interfere with them. Not a spouse, not a child, not a family member. Indeed, there is room for adjustment here, a compromise there, as sensibly as it is possible. But never sacrifice personal goals for the greater good of something that can end like a relationship.
2. Don’t judge. Most of us millennials became those unmarried uncles and aunts pretty fast. We became the lucky unemployed uncle and the struggling aunt before we even knew it. Accept your wins as a young person with grace, and your losses with greater grace.
3. Don’t be addicted to anything: alcohol, drugs, sex, or gambling. Nothing enslaves or wastes time like treating an addiction. If you must drink every weekend, if you must use drugs, if you are gambling, you are on a very treacherous path. Morgan Housel said that self-control is having empathy for your future self. Ask an addict how difficult it is to stop a habit that has become their second nature.
4. Quit bad relationships sooner. It doesn’t matter if his pipe cures your demons. Or she rides the ghosts out of you—date people who are likely to complement your life desirably. Nothing wastes more time or derails people more than staying longer in useless relationships.
5. For men, know that at some point, between 25 and 45, you will lose something extremely important in your life. It can be your family (wife and kids), a dream career, your health, yourself, etc. What matters is not that you will lose that thing. What matters is how you handle the loss.
6. Save. Save. Save. Invest. Invest. Invest. However little. However much. You are never too young to be financially wise. Being financially wise is more of an attitude thing than the income you make itself. That is why a government employee earning Sh 50,000 has a better savings portfolio than an NGO guy earning Sh 200,000. Invest in financial literacy, son.
7. Invest in knowledge.
8. Have fun, as in live. Eat your best food. Date your crush. Drink what you like. But all the fun must be earned.
9. Always remember that the years go by very fast. And sometimes, life happens. Your dreams of what you will be ten years ahead may end up misplaced, and you can never predict where you will end up. I have a friend who is working in Kyrgyzstan. Good luck finding that on the map. Dude had completely different plans for life.
10. This came last because it is controversial to most people, but I will always encourage young people to find God.

May the week break.
Uncle Silas.

[♰ @reeceollld]

fast learner 🤝🏻 short-term memory loss

[Ja Loka @_fels1]

Sometimes back I was having a conversation with a lady about this. I asked her if she would ask for fare if I requested her to come see me in Mirema, and she gave an emphatic YES. I then asked her who her favorite male celebrity in East Africa was. She said it was Ali Kiba.
So I asked her whether she would ask for fare from him if he was in Nairobi and for some mysterious reason, wanted to meet her. She said, "Hell No, I'll find my way there even if it means running."
So ideally, in life, you settle for the love you believe you deserve, including unrequited affection. If she likes you, she will break every barrier and every rule to be with you. She will even fight every other competition to ensure your options are non-existent. If she doesn't like you, however, you will have to keep paying for every form of inconvenience she has to endure by being in your life.

[SM @saniyamirza2000]

This age hits hard.
Career pressure, daily responsibilities, big dreams, marriage talks, and aging parents, all at once. Just trying to survive and find meaning.

[Sirmi @_Sirmi_]

@amerix Judging the entirety of Europe based on a single, negative post about Germany is a biased perspective. My personal experience living here has been far more positive than my time in Nairobi.

[stressed @onlystresstoday]

for your own sanity, always take mixed signals as a no

[Daphne @celebriD]

Men don’t avoid educated, financially stable women. They avoid women who think their degrees and income give them a pass to be entitled, masculine, and disrespectful. Femininity and peace will always outweigh a résumé.

[BBC News (World) @BBCWorld]

Is William Ruto the most disliked president in Kenya's history? https://t.co/otkdeQ8plv

[Eric @amerix]

Men,

Do you think you can satisfy a woman's sex fantasies?

YOU CAN'T.

Do you think you will succeed to conquer an organ that dilates to accomodate the skull of a foetus?

Stop losing sleep because of fantasies.

Don't remain a boy — phallic.

Graduate to a MAN — METALLIC.

[Eric @amerix]

From a wheelbarrow to a wheelchair.

Progress.

[The Economist @TheEconomist]

Kenya has grown steadily and sustained a largely peaceful democracy. But now the picture is looking bleak, as people grow discontented and vent their anger in the streets. The country’s leader must change tack https://t.co/2Ce84Qgz23

Photo: Imago