Personality Profile : Portrait of a Meditative African gentleman

This is my friend Muscle man.

He is the true definition of a meditative gentleman of average age.
You never really know what he is thinking so you just pick up a stick and prod him a little to get a reaction then run away.

Muscle Man is kind and generous and everybody's sweetheart.

He is the person who will hire a car and ask you 'Hey do you need to go see your Mum? I'm sending a driver to take you.'

When he laughs, it's careless and thorough.
I like his laugh.
When he dances, his body takes flight.

He has a fiddler's fingers, though he lifts metal all day.

But he is not all mushy and rose petals when serious matters arise.
You will stand at attention when he clears his throat.

Muscleman lives his life the way he has planned it. It doesn't matter what you think, that's your problem.

Several times in my eventful life my brain has shut down and Muscle Man has taken one look at me and seen: Gaka Kairītu nīgatukanīre.

(this woman is mixed up.)
And he did the thinking for me.

When my heart didn't know what to feel
He felt for me.

I'm grateful for friends who are really family.

Grieving : "I will go down mourning to my grave"

Kwani you are still mourning your mother?

That's the question.

I'd like to ask how long shoukd I mourn my mother? 10 days? A month? 6 months? A year?

I also want to say come back and ask me that question when your mother does but that would be rude and unfeeling and I have felt dreadful enough recently to wish it on anyone.

But each time someone asks me if i'm still grieving I really want to walk away.

Before I get out my guns and tell them to have a little imagination.

Truth is, you need a little imagination of you haven't experienced death.

Me, I have experienced it from all directions and it doesn't get easier.

It gets harder.

You get weaker.

You cannot handle funerals.

You avoid people who speak carelessly.

And basically you slowly put one step after the one in front and hope your God hasn't given up on you.

Personality Profile: Maureen Wa Shem

My friend has quit her Chinese Interpreting job to become a farmer.
I asked her so what kind of farming she was doing.

She said "You know, the usual
Spinach and a few kales."

But I met her a few weeks ago and she informed me she has started livestock farming. 
'Oh really? In the village? '
I asked
"No, just in my backyard"

So I thought possibly rabbits or chickens.
Then she showed me a video.

We were standing outside the Buruburu KH. It was the Sign Language Assembly and Maureen had come looking for me, she brought me lunch but didn't find me so she came back again.

This time we found each other.
And talked until it got cold.


My mother loved Maureen.

My grandmother loves Maureen
And everybody else I introduce her to ends up loving her because she is just that. 
A lovable girl
She is those kind of girls who always know how to talk politely to everyone, give advice without crossing lines, cook good food for a family, knows what spoons to use to serve a man, what dress to wear when.
What perfume to buy, what gift to give. She knows how to dance and even how to make liquid soap.

And most of all she knows how to keep a friend because if it was upto me we wouldn't be friends after all the stunts I have pulled over the years. 
Including poisoning her with a carelessly prepared meal, choosing a new friendship over an old one and just being a complete big eared bovine who doesn't know a good thing when it's staring right in her face.

When Maureen came home my Shushu  said:
 'In fact ,she doesn't behave like a Jaluo at all.'

A very high compliment from someone who only has interacted with other tribes through the radio.

And every other time she would ask me.

'Na Kaī kairītu karīa karata gaku kamūjaluo gatūire kū?'

That small luo girl who is your friend,  where is she now?

I told her she got a married

She exclaimed 'Then may God bless her,  even you now it seems you might find a husband too.'

That was a few years back.

Maureen is one of those friends who still kept me as a friend after she got married. 

I really appreciate friends who don't kick me out of their lives after marriage.
It's very hard for a single girl of 30+ to start making new friends.

But  I think the highest praise I have for Maureen is that she would never use information given in private for public use.

I mean:
She may know dirt about you but she won't use it to score points somewhere else.

(I don't collect dirt but dirt seems to find me and settle.)

She is that kind of confidant who doesn't harvest data from you.

And if she comes across it won't  repeat it somewhere  else.

That is class.

Mercedes-Benz kind of class.

I aim to be that kind of human being.

The one that puts over a blanket over another's shame.

The one who doesn't laugh at friend who decides to go out on a date outing with an idiot, just because she is 26 and 'oh God what if no one ever asks me out and then I am 35 and all alone in the world?'

I should have known I would be 35 at some point  but not all alone in the world. I'm not. I'm surrounded.

It turned into a disaster, the outing. The worst disaster you can imagine.

It rained heavily as well.

And all she said: "Don't blame yourself, you seemed to love each other."

And then she cooked the fish we had caught as I tried hard not to cry a lot for trying to fall in love.

Over the years. I have learnt valuable lessons from the slip of a girl.

1. In Kenya it's not simply about working smart, it's about working hard and breaking your back, then perhaps you might have enough to feed yourself.

2. Be nice to people. Be kind. Be polite.

3. Care about people. When her friend was sick, Maureen moved to her friend's house to take care of her friend for a month, while working a demanding job at a tour company.

4. Always dress right.

5. Have fun. No matter how bleak things seem. Go out, have chocolate, date someone, fly to China. Just don't drag yourself down

I'm proud of my girl.

And if you are a fisherman. She can hook you up with bait, bucketfuls of them.

@decathlon are you listening?

Midlife Crisis Ahead: Rip off the band aid my way

Someone, perhaps the most outspoken member of the family will say.
'Reke tucokoe ngatho nīguo tuohorane.'

And when they are done someone will finya kafefte in the palm of another's hand and they promise to see each other soon.
They have set each other free.
When you have to leave a place you have belonged to it takes all the energy you can muster up to make a clean break.   

Strands of the old place are intertwined with the fabric of your core and there is no way to extricate yourself without shredding living flesh.

How do you taken of a band aid?
What is your pain bearing capacity?
Rip off the bandage or slide it out with a bit of tincure?
Either way, When it's time to go.
Let's just give thanks and set each other free.

I am leaving a place I've called home for years now. Not in a huff puff walk out manner but in a well calculated shift that brings advantage to me.

Thankful for the gardens I planted,

My garden this season

thankful for the neighbours who didn't play loud music. Thankful for each phone call, text message, ride, hug, lunch, coffee and escort.

Little Red Riding Hood, a very short story.

This is my friend Steve.

We are in these woods collecting firewood to cook this meat:

We were meant to go hiking  but it rained at  Ngong Hills so we of course found a back up plan. 

You cannot go back home on a Saturday when your neighbours already saw you leave like you had major weekend plans while they were all doing weekend washing. Alafu you come back at 10 a.m. si they will think you have started trading sukuma wiki from Limuru to Marikiti then on Monday you hear a knock at your door at 4.am someone requesting ' please buy for me maize for boiling when you go to the market.' How do you start explaining you are not a market trader at 4.00 a.m on a Monday morning?

Steve says
'By the way, so these are like the woods Little Red Riding Hood was getting eaten in by a Fox?'

I say 'was it not the grandmother that got eaten?'
Steve says 'yes then the Fox wore the grandmother's dress.'

'And hat,' says Maureen K.

Then I ask if they ever heard the Kikuyu version of Little Red Riding Hood.
Steve says 'yes, our shushu used to tell us stories but they were horror stories. After that you couldn't get yourself to cross over to the sleeping house.
Many Kikuyu fables were horror stories.'

 Steve says ' I miss my shush' but I don't hear him.
'But she will be resurrected.' Is what I hear.
''She will?' I ask.
'Yes, ' Steve says
'Little Red Riding Hood's shushu will be resurrected?'

'Little Red Riding Hood' Maureen chirpes in. 
'No, I said my Shushu, she died.'

I don't know why we start laughing.
The three of us. 

Maureen K, Nelson K and Me

Little Red Riding Hood's Shushu unfortunate end or the hope of Steve's Shushu being   resurrected inspite of her horror stories.
My hair gets caught in a bush.
 Nelson tries to disentangle me.

Maureen says '  Wait this is a picture moment'.

*at this point in the story I realise Steve is Steve K, there is Maureen K, and  Nelson K. So Mimi pia  si nijiite Gathoniciss K? We shall find the vowels to go with it later on 2020 is still young.)

So I ask him to plan to go preaching with me now that he is in Nairobi and he says:

'Aki Sato nishapanga kwenda shopping,'
(He has plans to go shopping)

And I laugh some more.
But that is Steve. 
He is hilarious.

He is also the brother you never had. The brother who you can send to the kiosk for pads and he comes back with juice and wet wipes too in case you are feeling dehydrated.


Steve is at a stage where he really doesn't care. 
He is happily serving his God while eating coconut rice and madafu at his own pace.

Let everybody deal with their own conscience.



He makes a great Shrink as well.
You end up telling him even what you hadn't planned to.

The meat was delicious. Thanks to chief barbecurist Godi.