Ngahika Ndeenda

I knew all my friends would get married before me, except one, but she recently told me she thinks she might have met –the one- so anytime I should be hearing wedding bells, and out of the crowd, I’ll be the last woman standing.

My other friend is getting married in November, and I feel terrible that I might not attend the wedding. See, we talked about it long and wide,, I was going to be a maid, and we would not wear all those fake silk lilac dresses, we would go full kitenge all the way to the evening party. I imagined taking pictures in her wedding, maybe packing her bags for the honey moon. I couldn’t sleep when she sent the text, I thought in all directions; should I get a job, do the Nigerian connection, marry some rich dude quick so that he can buy me a flight to attend the wedding. , then I thought maybe I should do a refresher course for my sewing skills and design and stitch her wedding gown, send it as a surprise. Then I thought maybe I should just keep saving(yeah yeah) and maybe by November I might be able to send her a cheque for her cake if not a one night stay at a hotel for the honey moon, then I narrowed it down to knock off earings at Petaling street.

It’s funny, So far, my age mates have kids in upper primary, most of them are married, but I keep running if I could call it that, telling myself I still can’t cook chapatti and Iron shirt corners so, why even look at a guy. Today, my other friend really entertained me. She has met – the one-

‘Man! You should meet him. When I met him, I tell you Cecilia, I bowed.’

‘And when he passed by and checked me out I tell you Cecilia, he bowed, believe me’

Ok, I was laughing too much before I got her point. So she explained. The guy stands out in a crowd, he is respectable, he knows how to dress properly, and he carries himself around like he owns the place.’ I tell you Cecilia, if you don’t respect the guy you marry, that’s trouble and if you don’t click’{showing me , if you don’t click right away…aa ..there’s nothing there}

Lew; yet another friend, his last single friend married last December, and two of his close friends are raising 3 month olds. He told me the other day he’s going out of his mind, and I joked maybe we should just marry each other, since our crowd paired out and we are the two left standing, though it would be like marrying a cousin.

So I’ve been thinking that maybe I should bring my age limit down a bit, from the number that the bowing friend says- ati what age Cecilia, who’ll look at you ?’

But I was thinking about it seriously again my friend-told me the other day-You know, you loose 5000 brain cells each day when you reach twenty. And I thought,well, multiply that by 12 years and see, when I 'm 32, there will be no point in marrying another fool.

(not sure how many thousands,All numbers sound the same to me so, she might have meant 10,000 or a hundred)

(the title is adopted from Ngugi wa Thiongo's title- in Kikuyu and English- I will marry when I want-)

This is my house, No it's mine, no no this is my house

Don't Worry About A Thing

Who is –AThing?

Some guy.

Dresses very badly, don’t mind him

Sweaters and cowboy boots

A big hat like a fisherman’s

And he likes to eat boiled carrots

Oh yeah, carries them in a small polythene bag in his pocket

And when you touch they feel like worms

If I were you, I’d never worry about AThing, not worth it.

(20th Jan 09)

I'm an embarrassment. Well,just 88% of the time

In standard two, when we went out for PE{Physical Exercise} we’d sing game songs and most of them must have been composed by a mad teacher. Some were about saluting the teacher, and another about an old black petticoat that got torn cha.
One day we were singing one song ,girls on one side, boys one the other, and whichever name was called first, if a boy, he’d go to the girl’s side and pick the girl he liked and brought her back to his side. This was a lot of stress in our young minds because the person you chose was free to reject you and then the entire class would laugh at you and swing you from side to side on your back.
My turn came, and when I stepped forward to choose one boy , he bolted, took off, and I was hot on his heels after him, got hold of him and brought him back.{I’m not getting a swinging today} I never lived that down, even now when I meet my old classmates, they remind me of that, even though later, when we were adolescents the boy bought me a few chocolates and said he loved me like chapati and karanga, {I actually have never found out what karanga is}.This went on for about a term , then he told my deskmate the same and that marked my second dumping.

I always take the bus, even when I’m late for class, the taxi culture hasn’t really got me, and anyway if I took the cab, It’d throw my budget of course seriously. Sometimes, when I go to the supermarket, I will wait one hour, one and half hours for the bus and I will be so dehydrated form the sun, I ‘ll collapse into a seat and only wake up at the next station, to wait for another bus. As I wait, often, I make friends and we’ll be talking and chatting and bemoaning the hard life of a commuter, or how hot the sun is, even at 6p.m, how they should make air conditioned bus stops …
So you can picture how excited the other day when my friend drove close to the bus stop and waved me to get into the car{I should say my friend’s friend, I don’t have that many friends who drive around} In a second I was at the door with the biggest grin, and frantically waving goodbye to my classmate, and he was saying hey you left your notes, and I was saying you can keep them. So the driving friend asks, hey your friend going the same way? He beckons my classmate to come in too and the latter comes at the proper pace and we drive off.{All the while, I’m thinking ok, what's wrong with me now?}
I was looking through my old pictures and I saw this picture from my aunt’s wedding. It was after high-school and I had just moved into the city, we’ve already covered the issue of dressing, so it’s agreed that it’s not that I can’t dress properly, I got my own style.Looking at that picture, there isn’t much difference from what I’d chose now for a wedding. Even though my aunt commented how that shade of blue and purple could never go together.
I have a few dishes I can order all by myself now, and When we go out to eat with my friends, the Chinese counter wins most of the time. I find no inspiration battling a plate of fire down my throat. So regardless of the place or setting, I will order plain rice and roast pork, and eat all of it, then finish before everyone else, and you’d think with such a diet I’d have some hip.
Last week, me and my two nurse friends were in a meeting and before it began, one of them was explaining to me how she was vomiting at the hospital the previous day for many reasons, and the other one was saying- that’s nothing I had to watch a pipe being passed through the backside of a patient, man it’s painful, she didn't say backside, she used the medical term anus and the people in-front of us turned, reminded me of the first time I heard my friend say bitch in a conversation- that bitch needs some training, she was explaining to her cousin, a man of about 40. She works at a veterinary so she was talking about some female dog. So to some extent, iwould it be fair to say that it's the crowd I hang out that has to blame for the way sometimes my mouth goes off by itself?

SHORT STORY {CONTINUATION............}



Let’s paint her. Angelica is one of those women who take on the stature of a wife immediately they turn fifteen. They know how to dress up in fitting pencil skirts and are not afraid to wear see through blouses, sometimes in yellow, sometimes in bright pink. They can cook a proper meal, iron shirt corners and black pants without leaving a ridiculous shine, and later in life will have well watered house plants
She has, among her contacts, a plumber, an electrician, a wash lady and another who comes in when the first can’t come because she has to attend a parents’ meeting or has period cramps. Angelica does not spend her money on Sydney Sheldon novels or second hand magazines at Mfangano street. She buys cook books , new from MPH.
In her house the curtains match the carpet, she bought two sets from IKEA, and even in the bedroom, you will not catch an artsy secondhand cotton hand stitched curtain.
There is always a fresh supply of towels in the house; stripped, quite formal and appropriately so.She doesn’t want to cause anyone pain by issuing a plain towel, or white, which after use might have dark spots here and there and the user will wonder whether to wash it, wash the dark spots, soak it or pretend that’s the normal order of things, while in their heart they swear never to sleep over again. For her nieces, she will provide sleeping shirts and flip-flops , extra panties, and a toothbrush for a nephew.
She has two friends. Mary is single, well, not exactly, she has been dating Farshid for the past 5 years and even though she is 27 years old her parents will not let her marry him. So they just hang out and hope situations will change. Angelica thinks Mary is giving her parents too much leeway. Then there is Alice Tee. Married and well settled. She’s a wife, raising Chung and Ji Wen. ‘Too strict with the children, pushing them too much, piano lessons, volleyball, French,’ Angelica once mentioned it and Alice shrug and said- they need to know all they can-

short story

It struck him the same way some people are stricken by madness, deeply, slowly, deniably. Until your thoughts betray your thoughts until your perception changes, you become wiser, and everyone around you becomes a blithering fool.
It came like the first symptoms of polio in your legs. The un-reachable itchiness in the bone, the periodical numbness that denies the existence of living cells..When your pace eventually falls, and despite the repeated attempts and fervent kicks that do no more than sprain your hip and do not contribute in any way to your forward motion.
His wife, Angelica thought the sleepless nights had to do with something he had done and was having trouble confessing to her, or even the power to deal with it. But this soon changed when he started to come home late, tired, falling beside her with just a goodnight honey. While his dinner grew colder in the microwave.


(I started this some weeks ago, today one of classmates gave me his assignment to read, it was really good, like Moby Dick. It gave me the vroom I needed to continue with this story}