Middle Age: Owning up to my shortcomings

When I turned 30 I promptly sat down and typed an enthusiastic article about turning 30.  And how to have it all figured out. I honestly expected it to be a breezy ride. Well, yeah ….

I had goals.  And plans. Like how to graduate from melamine and plastic cups to House of Leather mugs. And to drinking wine out of real glasses, not disposable cups recycled the whole year.

I was also going to start dressing like a lady, not the tramp that I am, and to remember to shave my armpits.  So I had one dress made. Then it was too much to get into it I had it made into a skirt.  And my ladyship project stalled after that.

Being a lady is more complicated than we think. You know it means for you to be a little light-headed, which I am not. I am a bag lady. I carry umbrellas, coats, shoe polish, scarves and chargers. All that in a big bag or two. And two pairs of shoes. A rough-road pair and a normal road one. And socks, and a sandwich, in case I get hungry later.

If the roads were smooth I'd probably need one of those pushcarts I see homeless people pushing in movies.

It is 2017, and I still cannot cook to save my life. I know people go for cooking lessons, I have had a few, but  I seem to forget what goes where when. But I admit it now, I can't cook. Maybe I should try another form of cooking. Coz boiling doesn't work- I burn my pasta when I boil it. Frying doesn't work- my soup is always too watery or with clods of corn flour in an effort to thicken it, deep frying is a health hazard, I might turn anytime and the hot oil will come down on my feet.

I also assumed I'd stop being affected by people's actions, worries and oddities. I guess that is part of me now. Mother Teresa. Just give me a story.

I still spell very badly and cannot pronounce some English words but what am I? The grammer police? No I'm just a regular Kenyan juggling four languages in every sentence, trying to make sense.
I do, sometimes.
Sometime I donno who is the person sitting down lost in thought.

8-4-4, how it almost ruined our lives had we let it, and the school trips that made it worthwhile​.

​First, in ​Form One, I realised this was high school and I had not the slightest chance of being popular. This was when I tried for the debate club. The debate club was set up in the Physics lab, every Wednesday, and me, being a good English student according to my standard eight English teacher, a conclusion based on my composition writing skills, thought I should fit right in​side ​with ​the debate club. And I marched in in my green form one skirt, long to the ankles, with my long sleeved sweater and big shoes, the ones that ​had a clasp​ on the side.

To be in the debate club, you had to go through a test of tongue twisters. I failed the first one. I didn’t get into the snobs club, so I tried for drama. The drama instructor, some college guy asked me to act like a drunkard. He didn’t specify which kind of drunk. I did the village one, the- I​-​have​-​herds​- ​of​-​goats​-​, ​and​-​many​- ​wives version and failed. He wanted the town drunkard that gets blinded by cheap alcohol kind of drunkard.

I could have joined the badminton or table tennis club, but it was a rich kids affair and who could buy me a racket?

Is it for Maths?

No.

Is it for Chemistry?

No.

What is it for?

For games.

Iĩ? Because they are going to grade you in games? Wee…chunga sana, ebu take your Chemistry books and revise… you have seen a money tree growing behind the house..?

Time was running out, you had to be in some club of sorts, and read Gifted hands all in the one year. There was the wildlife club, boring, Agriculture club, boring, Rangers, boring, the school magazine, snobs, Math club, Hockey, Basket Ball. And then the free for all clubs. C U and C A. I

Joined C.U, on the basis of , maybe drawing close to Jesus will help me get through this high school business. C.U had enough trips to keep one occupied, they also brought young ruddy preachers who drove us all into a dancing frenzy you would be counting the days until Sunday. The next term we had a trip to Alliance boys. Boys!

When I came back, my deskmate, who had an ongoing crush on Sisco and Eric Wainana before I knew you could have a crush on a celebrity wanted all the details, so she and the two girls behind us drew in close to hear all the details.

‘We were very blessed.” I said, righteously.

-Mh! Ciss you should be hang- Edith said.

-How about the boys?- Emma asked.

‘We met one boy, the brother to Peaches in form 3.’

-All of you?-

-You all met one boy?! Get serious-

So my popularity scale scaled down some more. What was the point of going to a boys school and not meeting any boys?

I decided to join CA. CA had an attraction. This was a Catholic school, so Catholic Action club had some freedoms, they could make mandazi’s on Saturdays to raise money for a new white fabric for the priest’s table or something like that. It also had the cool kids who could ‘borrow’ Usher and P Diddy’s tune to sing the Psalms during morning mass. A break from the routine, We knew there was a new song by Joe or TLC by attending morning mass.

C A was also lenient on boys matters. When there was a big mass and other catholic boys were around, we could chat them up.

Then I decided to take it to another level. I decided well, C U and CA is good enough to introduce me to other people, but that is just a small cluster of those in the religious scene.

Science Congress

There was a ‘call for papers’ for chemistry projects, and my holiday tuition teacher, a young man a few years older than me gave me an idea, which I passed of as a very original idea and me and Georgina presented it to the chemistry teacher.

The chemistry teacher was a very interesting human being.

He stood very close to you and looked at you directly the eyes. You would move back a step because you would be standing outside the staffroom, with the entire Form Two Pluto peeping to see how close you and the Chem teacher were standing.

We took turns to discuss the project with him, to avoid being overwhelmed. Now that I think about it I wonder might he have been hard of hearing?

For your project to be presented outside the school, it had to impress the school teachers first. So they held an inter stream competition. The first school we went to was a girls school. And we realized Science Congress was not quite a hit like we had been hyped to believe. When we finally made it to another level and went to a boys school, it occurred to me that I was better off frying mandazi back in school.

Let me put it this way. A science congress is the difference between a College of Design and A College of Accounting. For a teenager with blood running through the body, when you think of a tour outside school to a boys school, discussing titration with a short boy in a baggy school sweater and a Chelsea belt clasp is not really how you plan to spend a day.
It also occurred to us that science congress had very few girls, meaning the teachers just hang around and hovered around us to avoid ​-​misconduct- and by the time the sessions would be all over, we would have got one name and school address, between us.

Anyway, we survived. We got certificates. Maybe I should attach them to my CV next time I go job hunting.

 

By form three, I had resigned to the fact that the one Geography tour and two outside excursions to fetch water from the stream when the water system broke down were the only trips I would experience in high school.

Lean on me

What are we afraid of?
What do we fear
We limit distance
So another may not lean in too much
Disturb  our little paradise.
Some open up. Like Tedi
They canjole, they console, they love with tears and sympathy.
They scold and console with tenderness.
and we:
Cold and constrained in our affections
Never get to feel the tenderiest of feelings
Those that result from allowing another
To be vulnerable around you

Socialising the Introvert: How to have healthy Natural hair, NATURALLY

Plum and Cherries

2017 is a great year for natural hair enthusiasts. There is a lot to talk about. Where to get natural hair products cheaply, which YouTube videos are worth watching,which shampooing regimes to follow.
I get stopped on the street by beautiful girls who obviously have spent 5k on their hair this month. They want to know; how do you get your hair to curl like that?

And we end up having a great chat, I tell them how many minutes you should leave shampoo in your hair, which direction you should comb your hair after conditioning to ensure the curls are defined properly.

We talk about how hard it is to give volume to dry hair.
Such wonderful times.
I feel like Vera Sindika, almost turned famous. We exchange numbers and continue to exchange tips on whatsapp.

Yeah
Sometimes hair becomes the perfect icebreaker to any awkward situation. It turns me from a gloomy, no morning person to a cheerful life of the party.

No. It doesn't.

And whenever someone starts to talk about hair or asks me about hair any time of the day, my mood just turns from sunny with a bit of cloud to cloudy with thunder and lightning.
Not because I think it is an insult to my intelligence to be chatting about a dead part of the body, it's just boring and I'm not a naturalista.

I just have hair that curls naturally, and until the natural hair wave hit the Indian Ocean shore I was peacefully minding my own business. The only trouble was the touts asking why I don't ask my boyfriend for hair salon money.

And elder women telling me how a little blow-dry would improve my appearance.
And my mother' friends asking why I didn't want to turn heads when I walk the streets.
And older men, people's fathers saying to me:
"You are a nice girl, why don't you comb your hair?"

Have a look at this scenario, 1992 in a school of  500 over Bantu school children, you are the only one that looks like a Cushite, or a highland Nilote.
And every Monday morning during parade Mr. Karimi reminds everyone that hair should be?....

"One inch from the head!" You retort.

For both boys and girls.
Trouble is, you hair grows more than a few inches every week.
No one is going to give you money for a kinyozi every week...

So my uncle would shave me using scissors. He hated it. He would leave it to the last minute and curse the whole time he was shaving, while I held up the tin lamp-kagwatira.

this is a tin lamp

In school, the girls, after confirming I had not put chemical, or hair glo, decided I had mucous hair. Not the mucous membrane. We had not learnt about that yet.
The mucous that kids in the plot have when they open the gate and you are wondering whether to apologise to your visitors for the view, help the kid blow the nose or close the door and move the party to the local coffee house.

So I became the Shumary girl with mucous hair. Or cow hair. Not the family cow you name Daisy.
A really big cow that is probably wild and head-butts all other cows.

I retreated deeper into my shell
I would have liked to wear a hat.

When I was not feeling like Nyameni a big brown cow, I was feeling like the bad continuous mucous that you get when you have been crying and keeps coming and coming and your cuff is no longer useful as a nose blower.

In highschool, when I guess I was at optimum health and youth, my hair grew and grew and a classmate, one of the witty ones wrote in my book that I need to get checked, my hair might  be a cancerous growth.

And my mother and grandmother felt very proud. They looked at it with wonder. Their friends talked about it.
When we went visiting friends, or had funerals, I had to have my hair blow-dried the day before.
 The women would sit and stare and say:

'Hi, the daughter of Nyawira was given hair.'
"Hi, ii it is past the shoulders.
"
And so I would sit there, while they talked about the hair.
And if it was the hot months and my hair had the brown tint, they would discuss the reasons:

'Is she eating eggs?'
"Yes, she never lacks eggs."
'And whyis it? It is very red.'
"I also don't know."
Then July would come and it would be black again and the conversation would change.

-he he he, this one is like for an Indian.-
And cucu would smile

Cucu told me one time,
"When I got married I hoped to give birth to a girl."

-Why?-
"So I could plait their hair. But yours is very slippery."

And one day a girl staying with us was straightening her hair with a tin cup,  I said I also wanted mine straightened. When she did one hair knot, it fell off.
It was a catastrophe. I had to be shaved.
I didn't mind.
But my cucu was not amused. "All the money I've spent on that hair, buying oil." The girl didn't stay very long with us after that.
It wasn't her fault really, how was she to know my hair could not take the tin cup heat?



After high school, I discovered an Ethiopian Salon and went in for a blow-dry and they used a flat iron to finish it off.

Cucu told me:

"Aai, that one you have put something."
 I was furious. Where would I get money for a perm?

So I went out and said to Toni, the local barber:

-Toni, I want you to cut off all of my hair-
"Do you get mad sometimes?''
-No I'm serious. I'm tired of long hair.
"You have no idea what you are asking me. I will not cut your hair, never."
-But I'm paying you!-
"I don't want your money."
"Suit yourself, I'll have it cut."
 I went to a barber that didn't know me and asked them to cut it all. He didn't hesitate.

And for a few months I walked around looking like a Somali long- distance- runner.

When it grew into an afro, I almost got a husband. One day I was walking in town minding my business when a man stopped me. Handsome man with an accent.

He poured compliments on me. Said he wanted to take me back with him to Zambia.
I had just bought a phone. He took my number.

Early the next morning I found several missed calls on my phone. He called but I was yet to recognise my ringtone. He didn't call again.

But my Afro grew.
And one day, while visiting friends, one of the boys said: We should wash Cecilia's hair, I'm sure it coils.
So they washed my head and of course it coiled and coiled and I stood there with water in my face while they looked and asked was I a Somali? I had not met my father yet, so I wasn't sure.

But I liked the curly me.

The Afro would add 3 three years to my real age, with curly hair it was hard for anyone to guess.

1001 experiments later, I learnt how to do my hair. I don't need to fuss over it. I just let it be.

And then the natural twist out wash and go fad began. And I was getting attention once more, and the hardest thing is to explain  to a naturalista that I honestly didn't do a straw set, I don't even wrap my head in a silk scarf at night.

So don't ask me about hair
Please
Unless you are Sobiero and will give me a jar of flaxseed wax to replace my synthetic one, let's talk about something else. Or share whatsapp jokes, I won't mind. I won't hate you. I won't avoid you.

I don't handle attention very well I am a shy little bug that likes to blend in. I've had a mind to go back to straight hair, or get muongezo, just to avoid conversation.

Muongezo

Now I can exclaim how big this article is for someone who hates hair talk.

Credits
 ArtAttack Studio for letting me hang out in their studio as I typed this.
           Iris Styling for making me into a lady
           Hans Wear, Wangige market for the lace vest and shirt
           Kiini photography

Finding God: Can the fatherless race be saved then?

There is a time I didn't know God cared about me. In church they read to me Deuteronomy 23:2 – so no matter how much tithe I gave, no matter how many songs I sang, no matter how many youth projects I supported, I was still not welcome.  So I stopped trying.

But I did not stop appreciating the universe, and in the midst of my thoughts and confusion, I met a boy that asked me to read Acts 10:34,35.

And I felt stupid for all my effort at reading of the bible.  I had never read that.

So I started to think deeply about this God and the more I found acceptance from the true God, the more I wanted to be even more acceptable to Him. At last, there was something I could do that God would appreciate.

Knowing one's Creator is like going to Pixel Studios and meeting the production crew and being totally blown away by how real the meaning of animation is.

To know in the Bible God has said directly that He loves us, but the evidence of His love that I see each day, gives me peace, joy and fulfillment.

You know the song – talk? - One time I was thinking about how many times I have gushed out unintelligible streams of words in supposed prayer. Yet I was sure He heard?  And no time has He ever been unavailable to talk?  Because he was feeling sweet?  And all the hiccups you've had but when you explained things to Him, things got better? This love is like no other.

God's Love

Burned bridges

Sometimes in moments of self-evaluation,
I wonder what happened,
Where did I miss a crucial relationship, an important conversation.

In the crucial ages of twenties,
When full of energy I built bridges and then
burned those bridges.

Could it have been otherwise had I been wiser
In all  that characterised those years
Did all the signs appear,how did I miss them?

Should have more loving?
I was caring. A little too much perhaps
Like Liking Ignored.

5 phrases you should drop this month

Mambo ni mengi

 I hate the above phrase. what does it even mean? Things are many? Is that even correct grammer?
Whenever someone says - mambo ni mengi- to me I don't exactly get an urge to punch them, but the feeling is close to that. I get annoyed. If you don't want to tell me you problems, don't, honestly I don't care that much.
 Just tell me you don't want to, I'll be happy not knowing.

But, mambo ni mengi makes me feel like you want me to probe,
you want me to beg you tell me what is wrong
 you want me to stop what I'm doing and engage you in small talk, as I try to find out which things are many.
That is why I walk away, then you say sinanga mzigo. Of course I won't carry unnecessary burdens.
 In fact I will avoid any burdens I don't have to carry, things are many for me too.
 So, things are many are yours. I don't want to hear.

Tunang'ang'ana

 Who is not? Life is hard as it is. We are all trying very hard to find where the 90 bob soko ugali is left. Where they
 don't ask us to pay 5 bob for the plastic bag. Yes, we are all ng'ang'anaing. All of us, not just here in Kenya. In Tanzania,
 in Oman, in DRC, in Zanzibar and everywere else Kiswahili is spoken.
 When I ask how you are and you say you are wrestling. I want to ask you what are you are wrestling exactly. It brings to mind WWF
 which we used to watch on Sundays after church. I'm wondering if what you are wrestling looks like The Rock or Bret Hit man Hart.
You are wrestling and you still can afford to eat pizza once a week. Ama that's because unga ya ugali imepotea sana?
When you say unag'ang'ana. I think that maybe you have a chronic illness we can't talk about right now. Or maybe you have
 an Equity loan you have been paying back and now your salary is only good enough for rent.


Tunahustle tu

Is a phrase that is only separated from the above by a consideration of the demographics.
People born between 1983-1990 use this phrase.  1982 and in to the 70's are the ones who are perpetially wrestling. But these hustlers,they are always hustling or they have a side hustle.
 Their job is a hustle, getting into town is a hustle, making time to  chill out with friend is a hustle, unless it is to discuss what next hustle might bring in some cash.
Kuhustle, is okay, it shows you are occupied, you get respected for being busy.


Umepotea
 When someone calls and says to me 'umepotea' that becomes the end of the conversation. I am lost. Okay. So shall we start a sing song game?
 No, it's you who is lost
 No No, it's you
Aaai,,, me I'm not lost
Even me I'm not lost, you are one who is lost.

Give me a few minutes to sob, if this goes on I'll die. I will.

You know, if you calculate the life expectancy of a Kenyan female and consider that I have lived over three decades,
 you will realise there is a lot more we could talk about instead of this lost and found push and pull I'd rather not participate.
 We could talk about the impressive size of the Monarch butterfly's brain in relation to the
 miles it covers in migration. Then maybe we shall stop worrying about who is lost. A monarch butterfly's life might be in danger at this moment
 and here we are speeding the dial of my life expectancy. Do you realise if I had a child now the likelihood of seeing him graduate from high school is 37%.

Hello my friend, I haven't seen you in a  while. What is different in the world you live in?


Kunyeshewa nayo....

I was opening some social media accounts for a client. He was concerned about the type of traffic we could attract to the site.
"You have to be selective about the people you invite,sio watu wa kunyeshewa nayo.." he said.
He is  a Trump supporter and not a man to tell jokes so work came to a stop, it was just the perfect explanation for how content should be package. If you are gonna say something, please, put a little thought in it will you? I wonder how many people I would cross out of my social media
accounts if  I ever used the stated criteria.

This nayo.. phrase is too saturated in Nairobians' vocabulary. It only sounds like a real statement when Cess  Mutungi says it. Cess can say anything without sounding like an idiot.

Two Nairobians meet by accident at Kencom. They have not met in the last one year. Let us listen in on their catching up speech:

Umepotea?
Mambo ni mengi
Kunyeshewa nayo..
Kung'ang'ana tu
Enyewe tunahustle.

both of you, go home already okay?