Peer Pressure for the 40 year old

 I have always been stubborn. When our class prefect was away one day, in 1995, people decided to use up the coloured chalks to write and draw on the board. They wrote what they thought about her leadership, what a terrible person she was. They tried to get me to write something but I couldn't, she was my friend and a member of our fatherless race.

The following day, someone told her that everybody had written something about her and there was a plan to oust her and make me class prefect. I tried to defend myself but my voice was drowned in the crod so I took out a a book to read.

Someone tapped on my shoulder, it was my friend, asking if I could ccompany her on a teacher errand. And as we walked I started to tell her how I hadn't been involved. She simply said - I believe you- You are my friend.

I could have cried. It was the first time someone had believed me.

A few years later, when we were preparing for our final exams, some girls started to form chamas to share the latest gossip before sleep. I didn't join even after several invitations. It's not like I had something important, like reading for the exams. No, sleep was my priority.

One morning, every girl except three of us- the nerds- were summoned into the classroom. Kumbe they had been caught the precious night gossiping about a teacher and been asked to write down all their names. I was there wondering, ' what's going on.'

I tell people I had more courage at 12 that I had in my 20's, but still I have't been one to be pulled downby peer pressure. In college, there were several opportunities to cheat in exams but I didn't see the point. I failed, miserably in one of the Business Management units but there was no way I was going to copy just because everybody was doing it and the invigiletor was acting like she had somehting to do on her phone- we didn't even have  safaricom bundles then.

Anyway, since I moved to a smaller town, I am finding myself in situations where people who haven't worked on their own convictions would feel better if I didn't make their consciences ache. But me,  being stubborn me, and not interested in pandering to anyone's conscience but mine, I have found myself making enemies quick.

Conversations on The Complicated World of Humans

 I have been thinking about, how our African culture, colonization not withstanding, is a giving culture. We always serve the visitor first, we smile at the stranger and we are ready and eager to share what we have.

Sadly, it's not the same for Africans and people of African origin.

When we visit a white dominated country- Europe, The Americas, we are regarded with suspicion.

You visit a monument, ride the train and feel the eerie assumption that- this one should not be here, this is ours-. And my conclusion is, sadly, the lighter coloured sons of Adam are selfish. But maybe they know they don't have enough to share so they must keep being tight fisted. Fact is, Africa has many many unending resources, and we know it, though most of us don't realise it.

Despite many years of (I don't know what kuporwa is in English), the content keeps on generating more and more for the entire earth to use.

And my conclusion is, the only place where an African can be at peace is Africa, this is home, and we welcome everyone regardless of their origin, because that's who we are, givers and we always have enough, and more. Okay I will start a podcast 😅

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.