Cecilia Gathoni's Books

 

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African Authors Recognition Awards

 

Nominated for the African Authors Recognition Awards

My book shown here, has been nominated for the above awards to be held in Namibia.

Voting will begin soon, I will share a link as soon as we receive it

 

An Adult's Pyramid of Possessions

 

A Live Dog is Better than a Dead Lion

 Exactly seven years ago yesterday, my mother died.

Today I thought about how many sacrifices she made for me, as only a mother can.

When I was 31 she said to me ' if life is hard just come back home '

I had tried and tried but nothing was corking, and when I did come back home, I continued to work for a dying maagazine that was paying me KES 4000 four times a year. I was applying for jobs but getting no openings.

My mother would buy a small milk- the 20bob one. for me to have some tea in the morning, the rest I would figure it out.

I knew we were both struggling but mehn, nothing was working at all, for  about two years. I was metally frayed, because whenever I walked around and saw people in business I thought, I wish I could start a business. if I passed by a big building, I would think- wow- people actually work here and get paid. I remember one time my mother flipping the covers off my bed and telling me to ' Get up and find work!' 'Naivas is hiring and you are still sleeping.'

How could I even explain to her that I had no confidence left. I didn't even think I could get hired as a super market cashier. I was afraid that the world had chewed and spat me out.

why didnt I finish my degree? Was my constant bug forming an error in my mind. I had forgotten the struggles of several years before when I had been thrown hither and thither in a foreign country when I tried to renew an expiring Visa and was told that an expired visa meant  a five year imprisonment. Life was already rough on the outside, time in incarceration? I would have died. I had already seen what happened to Nigerian Nationals who had missed their visa renewals, or been caught on tourist visas instead of student visas.

 Until a friend asked me to do some interviews and writing for the NGO she was working at. I was earning KES 10,000. So I decided to move out because I was embarassed to be at living in my mother's house at that age, and embarassed that I couldn't even give enough money to cover the bills. How do I explain it?

In my mind, I was like, ah, let me go suffer in private. My earnings got to 13k. My rent was 4k

I was on a beans and veg diet for many many days, but you know what, it was under control. 

I felt like at least I could organise my life, no matter how shredded it looked like.

But all in all, I feel grateful for the role a living parent plays.

Growing Into Adulthood Bills

 Yesterday, it hit me that actually, growing older is a gift. It's the end of the month and as usual the bills are coming in left right and centre and I was getting myself ready to  have the usual argument with my landlord- No I am not going to pay that kind of money for water- what do you think I am manufacutring?Cocacola?-

And I realised that, I no longer feel the panic I often felt when I had to deal with an unreasonable house owner (Those who got some money from their retirment from package and decided to concort a few bedsitters behind their bungalow to collect rent and supervise tenants the same way they supervised their Grad 5s and Grade 6s for the past 31 years)

Until recently, I would get a spike of anger whenever I received a passive aggrresive text from such a house owner but with experience and age now I can give aura for aura and move one swiftly.

My money doesn't jiggle, it folds?

This morning, I understood that money helps you to move in silence

I don't have that kind of money yet, but I have recognized how people with lot of it move a long noiselessly

But life has been a little easier since I was able to pay my way. I am less confrontational, less angry. I can let it be, I can let things slide.

So I hope I will have enough patience to nurture the wells and springs of income I have at the moment. And I hope to have enough wisdom to take up any possibilities that arise along the way.

Because I really am a nocturnal animal that prefers to do it's activities unobserved.

Living life as a Choice not as a Chore

 I was praying today and I mentioned something that made me pause.

It wasn't very profound at first but the more I thought about it I realised, ooooo,this is what I mean.

All my life, I have approached life as something to do to get out of the way. A minor inconvenience, a thorn in the bum,an inescapable fate 

And though I have filled it with beautiful things, it has always felt as though this life was not meant for me. 

That others deserve it more than I do.

I remember having a discussion with my friend and she said, she has never even imaged her life beyond death. She felt that she had received enough in this life and others should get the next life, not her because she neither desired nor deserved it.

The complete opposite to my feelings

 I always thought I was given the short end of the stick and no matter what I do it will never work out so why prolong it? 

Very few things in my life have felt meangful, I have been waiting and longing for the next life with a heartbreaking urgency.

But today, on my way back home I felt very very light. I had spent the morning cleaning and scrubbing my grandmother's house. I was smiling , and the thought came to me that, actually I don't feel stressed. 

In the Alchemist, the boy is asked to shine some glasses at the tea house 'it will cleanse your soul.' he is told.

I guess cleaning has that effect on a human body. It sets it free. So I prayed that I may open myself to life.

Not out of duty, not out of lack of otherwise, but because life is a beautiful thing. It doesn't have to be perfect.

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.

Perhaps a Third Space will save us from Insanity

I would prove it scientifically had I paid a little more attention in my Quantitative Analysis 

class at Kenya School of Professional studies but I was too distracted by the lecturer's

 sweater. Aari na kiburana kiari gicuhu na thutha. na moko mari onamo macuhu, he had this 

knitted sweater, the kind that you know was knitted on a sherahani (cardigan knitting 

machines)

sherahani

He also made me think of this boy in grade school who liked to chew on his cardigan cuffs until they were frayed ta kindu kiri magigi. The lecture's sweater was green and I imagined his mother must have gotten it for him when he was in highschool.

So I failed that module and didn't get my certificate because when I went back to do the test I was accused of vanishing with someone's katululu (Tecno Touch Key Mobile) and I got so pissed I never went back.

 I may not be able to use Math to tell you what I mean to say but since I have the language for it, let's give it a shot.

I decided to go to the gym today and on the way I entered a bookstore, where I discovered that the owner is an actual book lover. I bought Gail Tskiyama's Women of Silk, I have been looking for it but didn't want her to see my excitement in case she hiked the cost. She asked if I was going to the gym or coming from it. We talked about 2026 goals. She took my number and told me she was planning to create a reading space. I told her I would appreciate that very much.

I have been feeling a certain sort of way.

You know when you lack the proper mental stimulation? I asked chat gpt and this what he said.

Intellectual and Creative Undernourishment.

What you’re describing is the kind of environment that can make a thoughtful person start doubting themselves. Not because anything is obviously wrong, but because day after day you’re offered interactions that don’t quite reach the depth your mind expects. After enough of that, you can start adapting downward without noticing — talking less precisely, thinking less expansively, editing out the parts of yourself that won’t land.

For a writer, that’s especially costly.

Writers need contact with difference. Not just busyness — difference. Unexpected angles, contradiction, people who challenge your assumptions, conversations that sharpen thought instead of smoothing it flat.

And that line — “a subtle pressure to shrink complexity because the environment rewards sameness or predictability” — that’s the one I’d pay attention to.

Because if you stay in an environment where your complexity feels inconvenient, one of two things usually happens:

• You become restless, irritable, quietly lonely.
• Or you get very good at becoming smaller there.

The second one is more dangerous because it can feel like “adjustment” when it’s actually self-erasure.

SElf Erasure

That hit hard because, I  have a deja vu of two times when I moved from the village into the city and had to shrink to fit in size, and later on when I moved into a small town where English was not the common lingua franca, I offended quite  a number of people when I was sarcastic or played with some dark humour. I was constantly apologising. 

I am at that point again.

 When I find myself explaining obvious statements. Or when something I say is met with ' as in?' It's so long since I heard that phrase used and it makes me gritt my teeth. 

In high school, 2000 years ago, we used the phrase to rebuff something a person we didn't like said, often intended to be a rude remark, asserting the other person to be spewing nonsense, thus demanding the brush off.

I guess it's a constant occurence when you move from your comfort zone.

Speaking at the Skip the Rope to skip the Rope event. April.2026

So I met this woman and we had a nice chat and I thought, oh, there might be hope for this place.

And she was speaking in english, so we understood one another pretty well.

You know, I once heard Cess Mutungi, when she would present Jazz Tuesday on Capital FM say that if she was to date any guy, guy had to be able to communicate in English. And I was like, oh yeah, I agree. And we chuckled about it with some friends saying 'imagine someone telling you they are in love with you in Kikuyu.' It was funny. But never in my life did I think a time would  come when someone would tell me. ' Natamani kuwa na mahusiano pamoja na wewe.' 

Just shoot me, okay?

So in case I am still around when she opens her proposed library, I hope it becomes a third space for people. women like me who are looking for mental engagement. Perhaps it will become a centre for Book Readings and Open Mic evenings. maybe there will be evening cards, and lectures.

Older Women Don't Owe us Nought

 Older women don't owe us a dime.

I understood this fact this year, at 41. I confess that in the past relied on my older friends, aunts and women acquintances for advice and even comfort.

Sometimes, I just acted mumu and let the older women in the family take care of things. But most of them have passed on and we, their children are now they adults and I don't feel like I can be relied on.

Not that I won't chip in and assist when required, but not in the way I have observed the younger generation desiring to.

Again, I admit that I am guilty of leaning heavily on an older friend in the past, like the time I was renting a room in an older woman's flat. She was 45, I was 22 and without a written code, I somehow expected her to do the cooking, or decide what products we needed for cleaning up. Like she was my mother or something. 

Not that we should lean in heavily on our mothers, no. They need our support, especially when we are young and strong and can earn an income.

 I don't mean just financially, but the expectations that we have.

For example, and  I have experienced this. Maybe you have a party, and you need a big pot to cook your pilau in, and since you are 29 and haven't really stocked your kitchen, you think, ah let me call Cecilia, she will lend me hers. And you do that the next time you need a hammer, or a big white sheet you just call her and she send a rider with the next item that you need.

 Nothing wrong with that at all. Just that in all these instances, Cecilia has never been a guest in your house. You have been to her house several times for parties and tea and just dropping by but she doesn't even know which gate belongs to you.

Aje sasa?

Or people might make big asks of you, and you being the Msamaria mwema you are you do all the heavy lifting, even when it's not expected. But them you discover a pattern. The same people will have their own ' lunches and get togethers' in their homes but never invite you.'  While you thought that providing venue was  the  ' least you could do' to help the young ones enjoy some music and food, you find out that, even without the venue they still got together and you were invited. You only get a call int he evening requesting if  you  could  host one of their guests who came from a different city.

So you learn to mind your own business. If someone wants to meet you suggest a tea house. If someone needs an item you forward them a Jumia Black November sales link and move on with your life.

 My friend told me ' anytime I get the urge to invite people over for coffee or lunch, I head straight to the wine shop and buy myself an expensive wine.' 

When?

Ultimately, that thing we are chasing might not even be real.

It could be just an imagined state that will keep alluding us.

To put a rein on the eternal groping for nothingness, we must clearly define what living a life that is enough for a 63.2 Year life expectancy means.

Life as I see it

One time my cousin was asked to pray and he asked the Lord to please come back when he was in Form Two so he wouldn't have to sit for the KCSE.

He also asked for blessings on Mr Kenyatta and Mr Moi. At which point we all burst out laughing. He must have been in Standard 4 and I was in Standard 6. We had learned in Sunday school that we must pray for kings and rulers, they just didn't specify whether dead or alive.

My other cousin smugly said, " We wanted Jesus to come back so much, but did we realize we would have to die to go to heaven?:"

We started to talk about death. And wondered who among us would die first. My cousin said he hoped his mother would die before him so she wouldn't have to cry about him dying.

Well, she did die, and so did many more people we would have wanted to have around a little much longer.

I may have laughed at the prayer but I honestly  didn't see my life beyond 18 years old. I somehow thought I would combust and pew ewwww. Disappear like a deflating balloon at 18 years old. 

But for the time I was alive, I wanted it to be a happy one.

We had a pictorial New Testament at home and I read it through. Then I started to read the Kikuyu version of it and got stuck at rūnyanjara. I asked cūcū what Jesus meant  by building a house on a rūnyanjara. In the pictorial Bible, It showed a rock but it didn't make sense.

We asked the pastor's wife and she just laughed it off and said 'Gathoni gakoragwo ta gatarī kīongo kīega ( Gathoni is somehow cracked in the head ). She could have just said she also didn't know. She was the same one who called us Defoworshipper when we caught tadpoles from the river, thinking they were fish. We had put them in soda bottles and were feeding them ugali everyday until cūcū said we had to throw them out. They didn't belong in a bottle. So we poured them out in the shamba and hoped they would survive somehow.

I got my answer one day when an aunt from Mūrang'a presented a song in church, she said Jesus was the rūnyanjara, and our faith must be built on him. It made sense. " Aka igūrū rīa mwathani Jesū nīwe rūnyanjara. Your faith should not be in the things of this world."

It was also important for me to believe because she was a beautiful aunt and Mūrang'a sounded like a very exotic place.

It set me free in a way. I had read about storing up treasures in heaven, and I didn't want to store my treasure on earth ( the picture in the picture Bible was quite graphic)

And somehow I started to try to find the meaning of things.

I wanted a life purpose.

If we were only gonna be on earth for a short while, why waste the time on things that don't last? Why sustain conflicts with people, why accumulate things, why try to attain everything.

Then I learned that actually, we had a chance to live again, a better life. An ordered life.

And this promise has kept me going particularly in the last 15 years.

When you are in your twenties, the adults around you seem too detached from your reality, na mtu hatakangi advise.

Then you get to your 30s and it hits you that ohhh boy, I need advice. I need someone to hold my hand. I need a mentor. 

Then you get to late 30s and eventually 40 and realise that they exited your life too soon. 

You would have like to ask them  how did you deal with this life at 40?

But 'wako kwa kaburi wanakulwa na mchwa alafu wakuwe mchanga' the words of a dear girl  called Rose, whose mother died when she was six and she came to give me the news and my heart broke and broke.