We could just, take a Bus, By Cecilia Gathoni

 The book opens with the story of Fabian, a family man living in an Opulent Suburban area of Nairobi City. A warm opening about a peaceful family life that blows over when he decideds to get into politics. After his disappearance, we meet the other four characters, some are going through a  midlife crisis, while others  have finally understood their purpose in life and tryng to restart.

At first one wonders what a politician, a housewife, a Chinese immigrant, a ten year old boy and a 25 year old Muslim woman have in common, but the story swiftly spins together their lives until the reader see that- ahhh, I see where this is going-

One attraction in the story is the places they get to visit. Even though they pass through the main tourist attractions like the Victoria Falls and the Skeleton Coast in Namibia, they discover other less popular sites, learn the history of migration and attend workshops in different Universities.

Their journey culminates at the The Diaspora Salon in Marrakech.

Gravity

Many times I  have felt myself pulled in different directions, emotionally and mentally.

And of course, that's when I get an overwhelming desire for flight.

Recently though, I started to work on my internal gravity.

I started to tell myself  ' hold still, give yourself time, ' 

and like one  would  command  a dog in training that has  a tendency to  get  agitated,

I commanded myself to:

 

STAY!

Ciss, STAY!

Whenever I have  to  the urge to move, move  or be active, be present, be useful, be helpful,  be there.

I tell myself ' si utulie msee.'

It's not easy,  for a number of  reasons.

 I could say culturally, a woman is expected to be on the move  and  not  stop to even  have a meal, because  when you are  serving  everyone, touching this,  and  that and finally  having  your meal  in tupperware  beside  the sink as  you wait  or the  sufuria  ya  ugali to soak so you can finish cleaning up before  you go  to sleep at midnight, means  that you are a complete  woman. Not lazy. And  your in-laws will love  and admire you and  praise  you but  still criticise the  quality of your chapati.

So that  is how I was raised, to be on the move even  when all work is  complete and it would make more sense to take a nap and get up later, BUT we keep  moving.

Or it  could be conditioning. When I was younger  and unable to finish my education because of lack of fees, I panicked  and  imagined  I had  to work four times as hard as anyone  that held  a Masters, a Phd or simply  managed to  find  work immediately  after  completing their Diploma in Project Management. Some people  had it smooth, some had connections, and some just settled into life earlier.

After years of hustling just  be able  to afford milk and potatoes, it has become  part of me to do this and  that to keep afloat.

Even  when I don't  need to.

It's as though my sense of self is attached to how exhausted I feel at the end of the day, how depleted I am at the end of the week AND how many times I can keep telling the people around me that ' oh my gosh I am so tired. '

You know that common phrase about not pouring into an empty cup?

Sometimes I feel like I am running on an empty cup.

 The good thing is, I can now recognize when I am running on empty, and I take time to recharge.

I have also understood, through a lot of experiments, that actually, when we learn to quiet the internal storms, then the outer storms don't shake us when they arrive.

Though I now have to find a balance between, moving away from constant  movement and interaction while also avoiding the loneliness epidemic

GEN X, Which HighSchool did you go to?

 When I was in Primary school, I would hear my uncl a and aunties talking about the hi highschools they had been to, and the once they admired.

Mary Leakey,  Kangūbiri, South Tetu girls Limuru Girls, Loreto Limuru, Kagumo boys, Njiiris, Tūmūtūmū, Alliance Girls (which was kinda out of reach ) but there was always BG to aim for.

You knew after that you would go to Nairobi University, or KU if you wanted to to be a teacher in future.

Life after highschool  didn't matter so much to me because I knew O was gonna get into Kenya School of Journalism, the cut line was a C, and I was so sure of it I knew I didn't have to study Chemistry too much.

At that  time Maseno University offered a single course in Mass Communication.

But I wasn't gonna be allowed to go to Western Kenya, not with my history of Malaria.

Anyway, that's a lot of water under the bridge and the purpose of the post wasn't. Even about Universities.

It was just a realization I had yesterday.

I have sat through a familiar discussion too often, where one person wants to talk about the superiority of the school the attended.

So I went to BG and I have friends that went to Mang'u, Nyeri High, Loreto girls and when we reminisce about highschool, it's about teachers we had nicknamed or the punishments we scored.

Never have we sat to compare school facilities. And apart from the schools like Loreto that had a swimming pool, everything else was standard.

But then I find myself in this group of acquaintances and  the girl finds a way to ask : where did you do you chemistry lessons? And someone from the group will answer, In classroom, unless we had practicals then we'd have them in the lab.

In the lab? You only had a lab?

Yes we had a lab, 

Only one? Us we had a lab for each lesson, Chemistry lab, Biology Lab, Physics Lab

Oh watu wa group of schools

She smiles contentedly 

Na wewe Cecilia?

Oh, we had labs

And I leave it at that because I don't get it, and I don't want to get involved.

But after hearing this over three times, I can only exit the room before I say something nasty.

I found myself in that so called  group of schools and couldn't believe how dusty it is., even the said labs are broken down with missing taps.

How can I participate in the discussion now with the knowledge I have, when I imagine the pristrine condition of the Music Rooms, the Computer Labs, The huge  Library, the Agriculture Labs , the chemistry lab 1 and 2, physics lab 1 and 2 enormous Homescience fitted with kitchen equipment on one room, and Sewing machines in the next room, enough to sit 60 girls at the same time?

And I finally understood why  the school placement  was a problem last year. When they said a student can be placed in any school within any county, I now get it why Central had a problem. Government Schools in Kiambu, Nyandarua, Othaya and Nyeri have long been standardized, and it wasn't 100% government funding. It was community efforts. Every few years a school will have a fundraisers.

And parents of the  fourth year class  would be allocated a certain amount to to leave a legacy for the  generations behind.

In my years at BG, there were two projects, a fundraiser where President Moi was the Guest of honour to build and stock  a modern  Library and in our fourth year, our parents paid a set amount each for a new school bus. 

I guess, she hasn't met someone from Central.

Home is not the place I leave but the one I come back to

I don't know exactly when but it had to be after mother's passing when it hit me that so many strings had been severed with that one death.

Before, I had always felt that I was being pulled in different directions.
Now it seemed very clear that I should have just focused on one direction, I had only needed to be in one.

A few years later I firmly understood what it meant to create your own home.
It's hard to explain but before I just needed to have a place to stay and because of that I worked hard to pay rent in time but it would be just that, a house that I lived in.

Now I have a place to stay, but I have made it into a home, a sanctuary and a place of rest and growth.

I know longer cry on my way back to my home from my ancestral home.
I know there is safety, warmth and good food in my own home, and God's spirit flows freely.

The Past Four Years

 When I paid for an ad to start teaching English online, I expected it to only last the three tropical winter months- June, July and August, then I would be comfortable to walk around again doing my hair clients and attending farmer's markets to compile stories.

I didn't know that I would start to like and enjoy it so much that I would end up signing up for a Teaching Diploma, which would have me working in a school in Europe, and then with professionals. Now, I am not even very clear on my job description because my roles have morphed into one beautiful giant that changes depending on the day.

Sometimes I am teaching grammar to school children, some days I am having hard discussions with Pyschology PHD students, and two days in a week I meet up with two Risk Management Accountants explain things like, Hazard and Operability. I often need to watch several SNL skits after these lessons.

 Then I have my four teenagers who have me searching for a myriad of topics from vegetarian diets to football to questions like 'can I show you my latest Anime figure?' in the middle of a grammar lesson. The kids come in all cute, with their stuffed animals during winter, or a jar of ice cubes to snack on in Winter.

There is an architect, co-ordinating one hundred projects, and I get to see the European rural arena with its numerous berries.

Now I eat, drink and sleep Students. They've become my friends, and I am an auntie to the children, and I am glad for this part of my life.

Life in Smaller Doses Please.

 

Whenever I feel like I have finally figured out life, it slips from my grip and I have to start all over again. For example at the beginning ofthe year I thought that, maybe if I did my part in the society by being good , kind and generous, society would recipocrate.

Well, it hasn't. In its place my kindness has been met with suspicion. My generousity has raised eyebrows

- na anatoanga pesa wapi na haendangi kazi? Huyu ni must akuwe amewekwa na sponsor-   -ee, hawa ndio wanazurura huku wa mabwana za watu-

(it didn't help that someone's stupid husband started ringing my phone with an excuse, sijui this sijui that but after the second ring I started ignoring. And he better thank his gods because if I picked up that call he might have ended up deaf. I can't deal with stupid people, I cannot tolerate people's stupid husbands. ) 

So I decided to mind my own business, and believe me, if I decide to mind my business, I score full points. That didn't augur well with society.

"Huyu ni nini anafanyanga hapa na hiyo paka yake, ata kwa parking usiku?"

"Ata usiku unampata na kiti nje."

This, from humans who, ukiona wamevaa nguo utafikiri wako na akili.

But of course it's expected, we insult what we don't understand, and anything that doesn't align with our point of view, no matter how limited by lack of experience it might be, becomes phantasmagoric.

Any how.  Since I cannot expect to explain my life to everybody, the  best way is to just keep on living this beautiful, fantastic life.

So today I decided that, I will stop trying to live many days in one day, it's just not possible. I have to live hour by hour, day by day.

I will stop carrying over emotions from yesterday.

 I only need to deal with today's issues, this week's issues, this month's issues.

{I lost my train of thought when looking for the trailer for the beautiful Fantastic😐😏}

Speculations Against the 40 year Old Female

One of the nastiest habits I find repulsive in people is speculation. I have recently learned  the translation for the word, it's kukisiakisia.

I have often found myelf snapping at a kisiakisiaring person because I honestly cannot tolerate it. Here's an example, you go out with you friends, and on that particular day you have one of those pre-menoposal waves that has you feeling nauseated by everything, the only thing that can pass through your throat without wretching is dawa (ginger, lemons, cinnamon boiled together and served with honey)

You don't order anything from the menu, and your friends  feel awkward to be eating and drinking and start pressuring you to  ' at least si ukule samosa .' You don't bow to the pressure, and cannot be haggered to explain. So let's say, in this case, you are not the pre-menoposal one, you are just one of the friends who is not pressuring anyone to eat trianglar shaped meat pockets, but have promptly ordered yourself a dawa as well along with the Tilapia with Ugali you are having.

And on the way home, the other friends start to talk about the one that just had a drink. ' Maybe she didn't have enough money.' 'Maybe she is on a diet.' 'Maybe she is pregnant.'

And you snap at them to say,' Maybe she just didn't feel like eating, why can't you respect that?'

That's  the safest example I could think of.

Being single, 40, childfree and happy elicits a lot of speculation. The most common one being, you have your eyes wide OPEN searching for a man. Any man. So hear comments like I - Have you seen nani recently? Do you keep in touch with nani?-

Just because I am single doesn't mean I am hot in the pants for any man that crosses my vision. In fact, a man is often the farthest thing from my mind.

I think about money, and business, and books, and cats, and forests, and my family, and God, and eternal life. A man? Is relationships all people think about? I was preoccupied with having a boyfriend in Standard Seven. Now I worry about big girl plans, big girl bills, and big girl thrills.

That said, you can be sure I am preparing some retorts.