THIS CHIC- 5 types of Relationships to keep you from toppling over.

Your Pseudo Aunties

These are you mother’s friends who you have known since you started to talk. They are the ones who came for visiting day, took you to snake park on Tuesdays when it was a public holiday but your mother had to work and came to all the funerals. Your mother’s friends are the cool girl friend you wish you could have. They will be smart, organised  with all the right connections and totally awesome for updating your wardrobe. They also will puff your esteem by asking you to do things for them that make you seem smart.

 Like installing true caller on their phones, or composing the minutes of a meeting they had with their staff in a Word Document. And they get so amazed at how their friend’s daughter can be so clever. They are the ones who pray when you have gatherings, because you are all from different faiths and her, being neutral won’t hurt anybody.

A pseudo aunt is at times a surrogate mother, coz unlike real blood aunties there will never be a competition for affection. Your mother cannot say, you are stealing my child’s love. They will even encourage it since this is their friend. And you, you can love these women without the reservation you may have towards your blood relative. That thing that keeps us from being close to people because we don’t want to be clingy?

They can be careless girlfriends who laugh with you when there is a high but they will also be the ones pinching you ears harder than your mother ever did. Your pseudo- aunties will be the one your people call when you start on downhill course, when they have tried everything. Beating,starving, threatening, refusing to pay you fees, throwing you out. They say to her- ta mwarĩrie niĩ nĩanemete...

One of my cucu’s girlfriends, a smart woman with a nuclear family and a steady job, she was half my cucu’s age but they’ve always been tight. And even now she still goes to see my cucu and brighten her up. Loyalty. When I was growing up, she would appear when stuff had happened or was about to happen. When I was in class eight, she came and told me- I am praying for you to go to Ngandu, choose Ngandu-

I didn’t believe in myself that much but it made me want to go to this Ngandu. My uncle had said by the things were looking, I might end up in Walasojet Secondary School. I didn’t think it was a bad idea, Walasojet seemed like a place with history compared to a Catholic convent.

When I was preparing to go to Ngandu. She came and gave me a 20 minute walk lecture. That’s how she talked to me, she would say, ‘nginyia Mĩtero,’ a twenty minute walk where she would pay all attention to me. This time she explained about all girls’ school and lesbianism in detail. I was grossed out of course.

 Several years after high school, when girls my age were all married with two kids, a Toyota Sunny and a husband turning oval, she was convinced I was a lesbian since according to reports I wasn’t making any introductions and she tried to hook me up with a smart middle aged boy.

I got other lectures through all high school, when I was number 30 out of 35 in Form 1. And in form two she told me. 

‘You are a beautiful girl, know that. Boys will tell you that, but know you are and when they tell you, tell them you know.'  I didn’t believe I was  beautiful, at least not entirely.  I liked bits of myself, but she seemed convinced.  I guess she was told there were  boys coming home to just pass by, one of them cycling 80 kilometres of hill to reach home. Kwa mwendwa gũtirĩ irĩma nama, my neighbour had laughed.

She still lectures me when we meet. When I have lost weight, when I am obviously not getting enough sleep, not calling home as often..
But she will also be quick to mention when I seem content and not tow withdrawn. 'You are still a good girl,' she will tell me.

My other Pseudo aunt is my mother’s friend who has always been about, I guess I love her as much as I love other people I am related to by blood, but mostly, as with other pseudo family members, is the respect I have for her. Mostly for sticking with us through tough times, happy times, lean times and never ever being judgmental. She also does not tolerate badly cooked food, or little food. 'You need to feed people, not give people a taste of food,' she says.

She got married in her late 40s and to me that was the coolest thing.  She was ready to give up a measure of independence, be a second wife to a widower. I viewed it as courage, something a huge number of us won’t try. We would rather watch the show from the sidelines. 
She wanted to do it properly. Her daughter was grown up, now she could focus on her life.

This aunt is responsible for updating my wardrobe. She has an eye for pretty things and all through my life I’ve had things from her. Panties, a dress, pajamas, A pair of Jeans, she is generous without making you feel like a pauper.

Your 12 girlfriends

Every woman needs at least 12 female friends or two super girlfriends. These will stop you from making serious mistakes in your life, give you therapy when your heart is cracking and bring you back to earth when you’ve started to walk on air.

Your girlfriends are able to take a good look at you and tell you to grow up-coz you are acting 12, and you won’t take it badly.

cheesy conversations  like these that dust out the heart

Your girls will call you for a sitting down, to ask you where you have been these two weeks because they heard you have been missing and suspect you might be up to something vile.

The reason you need twelve is because each one has a role in the relationship. You cannot tell your psychologist girlfriend your financial matters, those are handled by your accountant girlfriend who will take a look at your spending habits and decide you cannot even afford biscuits for the rest of the month.

😭😭😭

          Not even the  five bob Nuvita blue ones.

Your image consultant will tell you to stop buying those old shoes and just get two good shoes, even though your happy shopaholic girlfriend said you need blue doll shoes to wear with your cream skirt.

Your aunt lulu girlfriend will listen to your family issues and come to family gatherings and even visit your mother by herself, and you suspect your mother likes her better.

Your girlfriends are the rope that you grab to when the mud starts to swallow you. Your women folk.

But you gotta maintain the loyalty. A 15 year friendship can be torn down in one day, no looking back. Intuition plays a big role in girl’s friendship. And I don’t mean those, we go shopping together and share a tailor and love Filipino soaps cheerleader let’s be best friends girl friendship types here. 

I mean the I am so tired and I’m just gonna plop up here on your couch and you better feed and entertain me otherwise I’m gonna kick it- I shall- Kind of girlfriend. The girls you have lost respect for but deeply respect and would never talk behind their back. You love her to death but you order her around like she is you maid. 

And she borrows your lipstick, the expensive one, the MAC the one you bought when you did that job that gave you unexpected cash and you know you will never afford it again. And they lost it. And they are not sorry because they don’t know why you suddenly won’t leave the house without lipstick?

That kind of friendship, is the one you need to help you get off your high house and be human like the rest. I think maybe it’s a sort of a sister hood friendship for those who would understand how having a sister is like. The friendships you would feel dead if you lost them. The ones that when you mess up you stop functioning until the damage is repaired.

One of my girlfriends, little girl, well not so little now she is a wife somewhere. By being friends with her, I started to try to be a better person. More forgiving, more patient, less opinionated, more hardworking, more respectful, more down to earth. For the many times she forgave me, was patient and by observing her dealings with her people, my people, the public and how when she came home , though not speaking our language, touched everyone’s hearts and they still ask for her, which makes me think that really a language barrier can only be as high as you want it to be but it can never be unscaleable. I almost lost her one time. The fault was all mine of course.

Your 12 girlfriends probably don’t even like each other, but one your important days they will be together, all trying to be there for you as they know how, all trying to come off as the best girlfriend to you. Wondering why you are dating that proud PHD man who talks with his hands on his waist and wears bright red ties and who will probably turn you into a light blue matching coffee table and sofa set cloth, white pumps and weave middle aged housekeeper who only laughs on cue.

Your girls will smile and grin at him and wish he would disappear so they can slap you to you senses.  They do slap you if they catch you.

next up: your boys, your mothers and your disciples.

Socialising the introvert- When Intelligence is out of reach

I wanted to be intelligent.

People around me would talk about intelligence like it was something very very  special in life but only achievable by some.
You heard them talk about someone’s child or the other:

"We we we! Ta tiga. Ucio mwana kaĩ Atarĩ tobo mũtheri. Mbũthĩ mbuthĩ."

They would say about the kid who topped the exams in three divisions.

 “Kwanja when he speaks English, it comes out through the nose.”

I was at that stage when I didn’t say  much so someone would  remember I was in the room and say
 “Hĩ, this child of Nyawĩra is very quiet, nĩ akirire ũũru.”
“Ah, ũyũ tiga rũng’athio atonagio ndũtigane nake, hinga ya mwana.

I was trying, really trying to say something clever. I was not sulking, I was not a hypocrite but after such an expression of faith in my cloudy disposition I would of course start to sulk and when I  talked it came out in a whinny voice.  I might as well have been bleating like the sheep I am.

Meeeeee

But I had another problem. Not one that you take to a special education teacher, a kind of social slowness and lack of adeptness.  As a girl, of course I should have been in on the 411 of everything happening around me but I was always the last to hear about which teacher was getting married, which girl was dating an Alliance boy’s high school head boy. Who stole the food from another girl’s box.

 Maybe I don’t care much about gossip. Maybe I was afraid of being caught up in drama.

“What did you say about me?”
“What did I say about you?”
 “I swear when we meet no grass will be left on the ground.”

As such I never really got to hear what people said about me, apart from that one time a girl said I was writing four A4 loose leaf sheets of letters to a boy. I laughed and asked her if it was true she had said that, she said yes.

I asked why would you say such an untrue thing? "Four foolscaps?"

But I wrote too much on my composition papers so people believed I was capable of such  scribbling.
I frowned at the girl then found the boy and told him the story, I had such fun, telling him I would never do such a thing. " Imagine, four foolscaps to you?"

Not much got to me about me after that. Probably people whispered behind my back but I didn’t really care what my peers thought of me. I was always an old soul.
It was the grown ups’ opinion I wanted to hear, or not hear, in case I heard something like I feared they would say:

“Ndongoro ĩno kuri kĩndũ ĩtihagia…”
(She has the brain of a mollusk, she is incapable of any intelligent ideas.)

And then I decided in my simple brain that :
1. Intelligence was not really something I need to pursue.
2. Being smart in the head is relative
3. Not every intelligent or smart person is necessarily happy.

I stopped worrying and if I have nothing to say, I keep quiet. If I am with my friends I say everything I’m thinking and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a smart idea or a really stupid one. I’m just interacting, and there are no rules to that are there?

WRITING TIPS- Surviving disappointments in five crucial ways.

In my work, the graph is never completely drawn. One thing could go wrong in a minute and that is the end of you. You are dealing with sensitive data and information that doesn’t belong to you and mishandling it can bring your ruin.

yeah..

Last year, I came very close to losing one of my major clients. The one whose work ensures I can live in a house and afford water, electricity and this time it wasn’t even my fault. At least not 100% my fault. Things went kaboom. I lost cash, I was distabilised for a few months, it was just horrible.

 I can be slow and procrastinate a lot. But when it comes to the work that fuels my life. I will be up at 2a.m trying to resize those 3MB pictures I received, to have them ready a client  expecting pictures for an article. I will be on my desktop, feet wrapped in a blanket trying to proof read the article I just finished even though I can no longer make sense of the words on my screen.

But freelance work is also tricky in that, it involves a lot of people with different skills. Our jobs are dependent on another, and when one person fails to complete their task then the whole web is up in flames. I didn’t lose the client, partly due to many many prayers and asking God to help me out and shoveling my way out through sleepless nights trying to fix other things to appear relevant and being honest. I remember saying to my client at a meeting when questions were being fired at me.

 Questions I had no answers for. I simply said:

“Hata mimi nimeshindwa sasa, I don’t know what to do.”

But I picked up lessons that I will share with you, not that I have completely found a fool proof method, but these can help to cushion against disappointments in your freelance writing career.

Maintain a good record

Have you ever walked into an office, looked around and saw that every one was either on Facebook or on a betting site? On average, 80% of office workers spend a minimal average of 40% of their office work hours doing something totally unrelated affairs,  chatting and calling up their friends to arrange for a dinner after work. That’s okay. They still get a cheque at the end of the day.

My friend Bonnie tells me often, the internet is not just for mailing and social interactions. Let the internet work for you. 

As a freelance writer, it is very easy to spend time reading very 'life changing facts' on buzzfeed

There is  nothing wrong with that. But have you met your deadlines? True, you seem to work better under pressure, but this is not college my friend. This is real life. And ensuring that you get your work done will help you to maintain a track record of good performance. People will hear you out when you need to be heard.  Do your job, apologies are awkward.

Do the Dirty work

 

put them on

When I went into freelancing, my friend Ken gave me one very simple rule about freelancing.

He laughed

‘You need these guys more than they need you. So be ready to beg them when you have made a mistake, and provide fine work.’

I was up for the challenge, but I didn’t know how many times I would be required to use my bargaining skills. See, as a content writer, you have your own ideas, you have your own creativity, but your client has their own mind and their own ideas as well. The  crunch is how to merge that  to come up with something that works for both of you.

You will be asked to revise work, scrap work, wait for review when you are dying to put the work out there. You will need to dig for information, guess what people are not saying in interviews without misquoting them. You need to correct your errors too.

 My big one is the stupid typos. Gosh, sometimes I want to jump off a building when I look at something I posted on a site three days after, after three hours of editing just to find a typo in every paragraph.

But don’t be shy about it, you are not perfect. Say sorry and do it properly.  Even if it’s your third time.

Chill Out Man, just Chill.

It’s not life and death here. And most things can be fixed. Those that can’t we bury them in a shallow grave and pretend we donno what happened as we intently focus on the current work.

 Being anxious will stress you out and there is no way you can deal with clients when you are stressed out. You will both get migranes and hate each other.

When some work is stressing me out, I take time out to collect ideas for other  projects, read and do my research. It recharges the mind. But it doesn’t mean you go into hiding. You need to be seen…yeah, that I’m still working on. People need to know you are still breathing coz they could forget you.

Know your team

You cannot do everything, you need a team. As a content writer, people often ask me if I can make websites too. Someone will also ask you about marketing and videos. So know your people. The people you can call up on Saturday morning to tell them you need to present a job on Monday morning. These people will call you up at midday on Sunday to tell you to check you mail, job completed, exceeding your request.

I have a wonderful team this year.

 A video person, a graphic designer, a web designer and models.

Don’t be afraid to work with people you have not worked with before. And know what you want out of each project. Some people can guess what you need, but others need you to work with them every step.
I have also come to realise that people who have few or no recommendations work harder to prove their worth. If you can find a bunch of people who are trying to keep alive as you are through hard work. Then you will spare yourself the migraines we talked about.

Trust In God

The way I see it, most of the scrapes I have survived in my short life didn’t kill me because someone higher than me was making a way out for me. Don’t be afraid to involve God in your work affairs, after all when you get kicked out of your house he will be the one you’ll be crying to to please not let it rain tonight juu vitu zako zitanyeshewa hapo nje and the couch will never dry.

My friend Eva taught me how to layout a work plan and have a discussion about it with God. But it also means you have to work extra hard to give him something to bless.

I know I have used the phrase- to live, to survive, to keep breathing too many times here. But that’s what we are all trying to do. Unless you belong to the Lord Delamere clan, you gotta work to keep living.