Finding God: Mortality

 About a year or two ago I really struggled with life. I went through a slump where I kept wondering what was the point of it all. I had not given up on life, I just didn't see the need to keep potting about if this life was headed to the pit. I mean, why din't the creator just wrap up the shebang, refresh and have us living  a better life? He can do it, why didn't he? And each day felt heavier  than the one before it, and the one after felt dreadful.

But I had an epiphany one day. And I made a resolution to keep living as best as would be possible. And that meant that everything I was doing was to help me make the next step. Any decision I made, I made with the end goal of living one more day. And the days kept rolling into each other, until that feeling disappeared.

Recently, I woke up to the fact that, I am just a mortal human girl. I will die one day, probably sooner than later. But by God I have to keep taking every breath that is given to me. I cannot despise the gift  that has been given to me from my source.

Someone , my phsyotherapist said to me the other day- I wonder why God keeps this world moving on while life is so hard, people are suffering, some have depression. Some want to kill themselves-

she tells me many stories to disract me from the pain she inflicts, she has been trying to set my sprained ankle right.

I told her, from the bottom of my hear that. "As long as we are struggling, we are giving life a chance, we are not like the ones who have completely given up and jumped off a building."

And I am believing this with every fiber within me. Challenges, hard times, they give us a chance to fight. We refuse to drown, we refuse to drown.

We keep grabbing at the shallow rooted reeds at the banks of the rapid gutted river that is our lives.

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                       You have seen how many places I have gone. Put my tears in Your bottle. Are                             they not in Your book?

You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.

                         You have taken note of my journey through life, caught each of my tears in Your bottle.                          But God, are they not also blots on Your book?

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Absorbent

Tomorrow I'm going to visit my friend in her rural home. It's far, it's inconvenient, expensive and all the planning ahead has been quite exhausting. 

But I will go, and even though I risk getting malaria I would never let such a chance go because it's not everyday that someone says, "come and rest a little here."

A few years back, I never imagined that the only thing I would be longing for with al my heart is a chance to just walk into my mother's house. The calm green walls, green velvet sofas, a calm cup of Kericho gold tea, the softly humming TV forever tuned in to a news channel, the soft radio on Sunday morning tuned to a Sunday morning prayer that went on for a few hours, and the green bedspread she always made my bed with. My bed had a green velvet headboard too, and the kitchen spelt a mixture of dry tea scrubbed wood, sometimes, the fading scent of a paraffin stove smoke which you taste at the back of your throat.

My mother would say '|doh *ke <oh>shere.' and I would carry myself grumply and go. We would talk about her cat, she would tell me about some news at her work place. 'siku hizi kumejaa wakisii.' other times she would tell me about the Maasai who had a wholesale and retail shop near the house. ' 'Akoragwo na itim<oh njohero' They were simple uncomplicated visits. 

I have gained friends who tell me 'just come'

Sometimes I just want to slip away from my solo life.

To just be immersed in a family. Where everything is happening around me and I don't really have to participate.

Do you know  I write about family, loss, brokenness, hope and contenment in my recent book?

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Polite Society

When you finally get accepted into polite society, it is easy to assume that  you are now  fully integrated and one of them. You may now walk, talk, and have the same mannerisms as them, but there  will be  some things that will remind you to know your place.

 But knowing your place is hardly the thing you want to think about after you have put in so much effort, yet knowing your place, even in the new society set up, can be the way to actually hold your place within.

Profound Thoughts

 Today in one of the English classes we found ourselves discussion the question - what event in your life shaped your the most?- The student said, she had many, and when I asked her to pick one, I also mentally picked one.

Hers was the period between her parents' divorce at 16, teenage rebellion and the resocialisation she experienced when she moved away to study at 19 years old.

I told her about moving in with my mother at 17 years old and suddenly becoming aware of my new position. Before, with my grandmother and uncle's family- I was just a growing child, then young woman. With my mother, I was an adult  that needed to pull her weight.

I didn't also mention that it was also at this time I realized that I had squandered all my chances.

Let me explain. 

I was a performer, an A student through primary school. In highschool I just  lost interest. So when I came home with a very average B, in a year when 60% of the country's top students had an A and A-, it wasn't well received.

My chance to get into a mainstream Uni, where I would get a Government Loan was lost. My mother could not afford a private Uni.

I was cooked.

And right away I realized I was gonna have to work twice as hard to take care of myself because the period of handouts was over.

That is how I found myself doing two jobs and evening classes at 19.

I am still doing multiple things. I teach, I lock hair and I sell my books.

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Peace, Maybe

 

I have been thinking, talking and even reading about peace and today I thought about how, despite not always feeling very peaceful, I  have managed to somehow find peace within myself.

Not that everything is alright, I still have noise in various parts of my life, but when I come to my house, take off my shoes then brew a fresh cup of cardamom tea, I feel really good. I almost feel like everything is alright with the world. And perhaps it is, at least in the universe that I frequent.

My friend asked me how I was feeling and how it felt to have moved to a different place, away from the bright shining lights. I told her my nervous system has calmed down. And the minute  I said it out loud, it's liek I confirmed it, that yes, the wheels are turning  a little less faster than before.

It's not to say  that I haven't spent some nights wondering what's gnna be the end of this? Or  what will be the outcome of this other big risk I have  taken? There  has  been uncertainities, but through them all I have managed to calm myself  down and do the next thing  that needs to be done.

And  maybe  that's what it is, peace might be; the energy one has to be able to get up and participate in life.

This Chic: Growing Finer.

One of the things that have me really pumped is how beautiful I feel recently.

 I have never had a problem with my physical appearance, but whenever people said to me- oh you are so skinny, I wish I was skinny like you- I have always slapped back the compliment by saying- oh, but I wish I had more junk in the trunk, and a cleavage-

Because when you are born on this continent, you find out quite early that if you cannot shake your bum bum, then something is missing.

 I tried to gain weight, several times, but the more I tried, the more I lost, and one time when I actually put on some kilos, it all lined up along my midriff,  and burst the mixed tribe race myth I tried to hide behind and confirmed me  100% Kikuyu, no DNA required. 'Tires' are a speciality we the daughters of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi cannot escape.

So being slim all though my 20s and most of my 30s wasn't really ideal, and even when I look at my pictures from then I cannot say I really like the look.

Then came the 35 turn and things started to change. I got fleshier, my skin looked brighter, and with my hair locked. I kinda locked in the look I have been wanting all my life.

One time I even texted a friend to ask 'Okay, now I have cleavage, what do I do with it?'

Hitting the gym was a game changer too.

SO many times I have caught my image in the mirror and mentally done a double take coz damn, who is this fine looking mama looking back at me?

I love my body, I love the calm pace that I have attained. I no longer rush through life melancholic like I did for so many years.

 I guess it has something to do with acceptance too. Accepting that this is my life now, this is the best it can get, and the people in it right now are the people I have carefully tried and tested and finally decided that, these are the people I want circling my orbit.

These are the people that know my flaws but still hold me when I need to be held. These are the people who give me strength to be great. Because  even when I have lost faith in my self, I get a little prod in my back to tell me, 'keep carrying that light you shine high.' I have a whole battalion of humans and other living beings that support my existence.

 Part of living is understanding that we cannot exist in a vaccum, we are communal animals we are living breathing creations  that must be, not only connected to the source, but, must continually feed from other creation. We are co-dependent, and slightly fused, if we attempted to detach we'd fail terribly, collapse, lose it all.

There is extreme beauty in my life.

Perhaps that's the reason I feel beautiful, even with scars and a body that likes to take long agonising breaks sometimes.

I recognize radiance in most spaces I find myself in. I have the ability to hold beauty and ugliness in both hands, I have enough  grace to clutch tightly at pain in one hand, while joy reverberates on the other. I have gained the poise to know that while I may be good, while I may try to do good and live a decent life, I am constantly making mistakes, giving in to wrong ideas sometimes, my toxicity is always present in my life. But there is consolation in the fact that I am dust. Not star dust, that's too high, I am earth dust. 

But while I may be clay, I am trying to be the best version of clay I can be.

(CATHARTIC)

A Home for the Nomad

 Between chasing the chicken from the outdoor kitchen for the 100th time, sweeping the rice grains now scattered on the floor  while trying to stop my grandmother from eating the raw onion that rolled to her feet when I scattered the chicken, the village gives a body enough activitiy in a day. You do pilates, yoga and zumba all before 10.00 O'clock.

And when you again get to the sink and notice the pile of dirty utensils that has gathered once again, peace is not the feeling that you get.

But amidst the disorder, there is a pulsating energy that carries you on it's shoulders  like a flood current, slower, but all the time moving, moving.

I walk bare footed, all around the rooms, around the compound, up and down the land. the heat  in the earth wraps my feet like therapy, like reassurance  that, I was part of the ground. That I am the daughter of the soil, I was hewn from this earth, and each step grounds me, firmly.

Someone asked me ; why do you move around so much?

I gave her an answer.

But my truth is different, I move around so much because I have never found a place to call home.

Perhaps it's the pastrolists blood coursing in me rendering me restless. Moving with the seasons, and only stopping at one place long enough to exhaust its green grass, and then it's time to move again.

I only recognize one place as home, the one that I grew up on, next to the forest. But I cannot be there, so as long as I am alive, I am a temporary citizen on this earth, with no particular attachment to place, person or tribe.

I am a soul that walks its own path, guided by my own  true North.