Pandemic Fatigue catches up with a cowardly courageous woman.

My second last roll of tissue rolled and fell into the toilet this morning.

Great.

Now, on top of calculating how much nutrients my body can absorb from sorghum porridge I have to watch how many boxes of toilet paper I use per visit.

I should have paid attention in Tanzania maybe I could have figured that water in a jerrycan hack.

Else, not being a newspaper buyer I have to start thinking about which of my many notebooks have the softer paper.

It's like that time primary school when my two last tissue rolls fell into the bucket of water I was keeping at the bottom side of the bed. 

I went to the assistant matron with the dump toilet papers and told her I was out. Bless her heart because she managed to get me a roll from the ones they kept for the younger children.

I have ran out tights as well. I have basically been doing rounds in tights and many months down 2020 I am now left with one decent pair which I can't really go out in because it's really a man's tights. It has open pockets in front . That's  how I figure it is men's wear. This is really a strange year, it's long since I wore out clothes. Five pairs to be exact, or maybe I didn't notice because when it was normal to roam I'd come across tights wherever and buy, discarding the faded ones. these ones have holes and lost elasticity and can't even be used as rags.

I've started showing up at the salon in my Sunday dresses that I almost look fresh.

Like I just moved to Nairobi from Kamwakwa where I was working at a timber sales or co-owned a printing shop.

Anyway corona will show us.

I have been wondering what's wrong with me.

Now I know I have pandemic fatigue.

I am trying my best to stay safe but  I am becoming complacent I no longer kick and bite when the conductor tells me to songea huyu kuna wenye wanashuka pale mbele.

Move a little, some people are getting off in the next stage.

I am using the 10bob masks even though I know they are one ply.

I don't wipe down everything quite as vigorously as before.

It's  hard to get into bed

It's  hard to get out of bed

Sometimes I feel a sense of dread so strong It feels physical.

I've stayed awake praying

I've stayed awake sobbing

I've despaired

I have called down hell and damnation to several annoying people

I've spent a whole day in bed, waking from one dream to another because, I just couldn't face the day.

 So I spent the night googling depression symptoms.

But.

I've got up 30 days in a month, sometimes 31 and lived.

In the Samurai's garden, there is a quote. 'It takes more courage to live.'

So I guess, in spite of things I am courageous. 

A cowardly courageous woman.

Battle Fatigue

I feel like I crossed the threshold of something significant today.

It feel like all the weight from the past and for the future has finally settled into a comfortable home within me where I no longer need to haul it along but to simply let it be wherever it wants to  be.

I feel like I've stopped fighting against the goads.

I'm cowardly but very courageous while doing it.

It reminds me of the time my uncle started teaching me self defence.

He had just got out of jail and was trying to fill in the time before he got his ID processed.

While he wasn't flirting with every single girl to woman between 25-50,

he hang around the back of his brother's kitchen singing scandalous lyrics to songs he obviously made up in his time in 'college' as he called it.

He made me do each move over and over .

I lifted weights 

I did squats and kicked and punched and when I felt I couldn't do another single burpie he'd say, 'if you do two more, those are the one's that count.'

Then he told my me to tell my mother to get me a sports bra.

My mother said 'ndigithiai-niī

And then schools opened and I continued to do the exercises and it's true, the ones you do after you feel you can't do anymore are the ones that matter.

(I really miss his, he was the realist relative that lived.)

I feel like I am beyond the two extra workouts.

In life.

I feel like I've been training and training and done the extra rounds and now I am just plain exhausted.

I could do it all again, with less agitation but I really would prefer rest, and probably automation.

In her book, Daring Greatly Brène Says that

'often the result of daring greatly isn’t a victory march as much as it is a quiet sense of freedom mixed with a little battle fatigue.'

I have battle fatigue.

Paper kites- Halcyon 

Writing Challenge: A favourite movie

In my work as a hustler I get shouted at a lot.

It's just the way things are. In this field, communication styles developed then mutated and  mostly what is left is raw truth said in 

raw anger, lots of raw blame and finger pointing

And many times you find yourself doubting if you don't really live in a tree. The way people will address you.

Writing Challenge Day 7

My Favourite Movie.

I couldn't decide which one it is , so I will go with the two movies I watch when the world stops making sense.

Which is often.

The Princess Diaries 1

The Devil Wears Prada.

In the Devil Wears Prada, Andrea is a writer who gets hired for a PA job in a fashion magazine. 

Her boss is a rude editor who only believes in one thing:Success.

-Wait wait,

The boss Miranda is played by Merly Streep.And so of course it's a good movie. Clare(Miranda calls her Clare even though her name is Andrea)is played by Anne Hathaway who is brilliant. 

I love the intro music, and all the clothes that Andrea get's to wear. Including the black and white bra in the opening song because I once had a bra like that until it lost all of it's elasticity so I just kept it on as a suveniour.

But what I love is how Andrea keeps bouncing back.

When you work under someone that is constantly making you feel small and worthless it's possible to just say- si ikae. But she doesn't let it work on her insecurities.she succeeds in the job, then leaves at her own will. She leaves the glamour behind, because that is not all there is to life. And flies back home to her very very yummy boyfriend.

I like the Princess Diaries because they live in a refurbished firehouse and when the girl needs to come down she slides down the pole. A house doesn't get cooler than that, plus they have a cat, Fat Louie.

(I just googled who played the girl in this movie. Wait for it...Anne Hathaway. So it might see I am her fan too.) I like The movies the limo driver has played too. He is called Hector Lizondo.

When a past she didn't know about resurfaces, Mia has to man up and face up both the past, the future and her present life which has suddenly taken a spin.

The question of why now? Arises when she has to decide whether to forgive or cut her paternal grandmother completely off for not showing up early enough.

She also had to be honest and tell her friend the truth that now she is no longer the ordinary bestie she has been but royalty. Her bestie is way stocked  for her new status more than even herself. Beasties like that are precious.

I like this sub story because it shows how relationships are not a fairytale.

 They have ups and downs but you have to be completely honest with each other.

I watch the Devil Wears Prada when I have an interview that's  scaring me.

And I watch Princess Diaries when I need to remind myself the past can be whatever it please itself to be,  I cannot do anything about the past. I can only have a positive perspective about the future, and live as best as I can for the present.

and everything will be okay, because Anne Hathaway.

This Chic: Single and Happy?

The best bit about being single is the time I have had for self discovery.

I have done many summersorts in my efforts to know who I am what I am and what bits of myself I hate. And what bits I really like about my personality.

The result is each each that passes I say to myself. Gosh I was such a dimwit last year.

And I'm glad that it is all happening within my own circumference. 

30 Day Writing Challenge 

Day 6 : Single and Happy 

Day 4 and 5 are topics I'm not ready to poke at this moment. Day six didn't look so threatening.

Yeah I'm ready to reveal scars but not all of them. As yet.

When I was younger, I used to think that I wanted to get married yes, but could we have separate rooms?

Then I thought that yeah I possibly would like to get married but not before 29 because what if I discovered I didn't like the person anymore and wanted a divorce at 30?

So I thought maybe I should wait until I am past 30, so that the desire to divorce someone would have ended and I'd just be happy to have mūndū wa kūndirithia ūkūrū.

And then I got used to being single because that was the life I knew anyway. It was my mother's life and my grandmother's life and my great grandmother's too. The former two lost their husbands early in life. My mother, well, my mother, we'll poke at that another time.

And me, well. I needed to sort my issues before I got someone's son in the mix and made them miserable.

But how could I be single and happy without being lonely?

Honestly, unless someone mentions it explicitly, I hardly ever feel like my happiness would multiply from marriage.

In my singlehood/ness. I have learned what works for me and what doesn't.

As a creative, I know how to be alone.

I think marriage to someone I really like would add to my joy, but not like from 50%to 100%  but more like from 100% to 150%.

I also have learned that if I am not happy and comfortable with myself now, no son of Adam can make me happy and comfortable.

I have to know how to be happy right now.

I am happy too for the kind of tight deep reaching friendships I have had time to develop.

After marriage, one still needs these other connections.

I am happy that I can be empathetic to those who would really like a mate but haven't found the right one, or haven't been found by the right one or have had to leave the right one because of reasons.

I am happy too to have good relationships with members of the opposite sex without it needing to lead into anything. Just pure brotherly fatherly uncley relatinships.

I've had to come to terms with accepting my position as a middle aged woman in relation to single men slightly older than me  and my position in relation to single men way younger than me.

It's a balancing act of knowing how to be a single woman. A younger woman the older ones could date  or a big sister  to the younger ones but still the sort of woman they might find attractive. 

And the continued condescension between me and single men my age

So single and happy can ? Yeah. 

#singleness #growth#innerwork#adulting

Your Shallow and incomplete guide to cooking food for people who live alone or with cats and are tired of eating ugali with eggs every night.

How to cook a liver with vegetables.

In the book Julie and Julia, Julie describes the buying, preparation , cooking and the eating of liver as requiring special mental preparation.

I agree.

I only cook liver maybe once a year or not at all.

Perhaps when I go to the butchery and see it on display and remember, oh liver is a food item.

I didn't grow up eating liver.

We had access to chicken liver which would get mixed up in the rest of the meat.

I liked to eat the heart though.

I didn't know how to cook liver until my housemate from the Botswana upperclass gave me step by step instructions.

For pig liver.

She also taught me how to bake a ginger flavoured fish.

Then she conned me out of my house deposit  when she graduated and was off to her country setting our other housemate on me claiming I had, her deposit. 

The other roommate was Rwandese.

Thinner than a praying mantis and the daughter of a high profile official in her country.

So she didn't attend her classes but spent her days with a crowd of other moneyed college kids driving fast cars, drinking alcohol by the gallons and breaking into the house each time she misplaced her key.

On silent nights she smoked weed on the balcony with the Nigerian middle aged man down stairs.

The Nigerian man tried to give me a ride to town several times. He called me a snobbish Kenyan until the day he found me walking to my friend's condo on a hot afternoon and he simply said get in the car girl! 

And I sheepishly got in, folded my hands on my laps and thought about kidnapping stories I had heard in the news.

He didn't say a word to me.

When we got to the condo parking

I said thank you and got out.

He didn't stop to offer me rides after that.

The Motswana girl was a good cook. But she didn't cook at all.

Just made cup after cup of coffee which she would drink sitting on the treadmill tricycle that was the only bit of furniture in the large sitting room. That, and an old tv that only broadcast Channel 1 news in Malay. She then would get out to the balcony to smoke some thin  cigarettes.

I broke her coffee cup washing it that time she went to visit her boyfriend, when she came back she was really annoyed, then her friend from her hood back in Botswana came calling and was walking about the house naked.

She also didn't lock the toilet when she was inside and almost gave me a heart attack when I got in and almost went blind with both shock and embarrassment because I had not seen a full woman's grown body since primary school and here was one sitting on a toilet asking me if I was coming in for a shower.

I escaped and spent that weekend at my friend's house. There was no chance of any humans walking around without clothes here.

I ached for the lost deposit but then later on in life I did my math and settled my heart that the deposit was legitimate fees for several cooking classes. 

The Rwandese praying mantis only cooked potatoes with frankfurters and when she did she would use my cooking oil. 

I'd scrowl at her any chance I got but she never would look me in the eye.

 I did learn to make a liver and here is the recipe.

1. Cut the liver into nice cubes.
2. You may rub it with lemon juice to remove that livery smell it's got.
3. Turn it over into a thick frying pan and turn it until it starts to turn Brown.
4. Add a little oil and keep turning it over and over.
5. Sprinkle some salt.
6. Add yellow and red bell peppers, hobo and onions and tomatoes all together and cover for a while.
7. You can add a table spoon of water and let it simmer.
8. Keep checking to see if it looks cooked.
9. It should be soft to cut through and not rubbery.

Enjoy.

I find if I leave it over and eat it the following day it tastes better.

But I have a weird taste choose so don't say I told you to watch your cooked food over night.

Embracing Vulnerability: #Growth From The Inside

I'm 5% steel and 90 percent emotional  rust.

The rest of the 5% is the air that sustains the steel as it combusts the rust.

Basically, it's hard to explain how I'm still standing.

I take hits hard.

I crumble often.

 But my five percent steel

Is a whole five percent.

My friend said  to me a few months ago, that I resembled growth from the inside. 

It's not easy to know how growth from the inside looks like.

And I wondered might I not be worse off than when I began?

But you never really know If you have grown or not until you face a situation you faced before and did poorly, but this time you do better?

I don't mean Maths. I'd still fail maths if I took a test today. But in human relations, in how I view myself and how I interpret other's actions.

After trying to understand it. I finally told her- please explain- 

"Growth from the inside, is often seen by outsiders/ others as a threat or inspiration. Depending on whether the person has a fixed mind set or growth mindset. For me, it's inspiring, to see you all made up. I've never seen you all dolled- up, not like that. It's a risk, that was basically a"touch down ". You look amazing. Then seeing you model....I tell you the dreams you held on inside are surfacing. And the fact that, you accept & own both your inner and outer beauty is inspirational. True, life hasn't been easy.. But, you're taking it in stride and may JH continue to bless you, and strengthen you daily..."

So, inspite of my fear, nerves, constant apprehension? Delabitating uncertainity and the everyday realization that this world is too clever for me, I am growing.

I'm scared yes, but my fear these days fuels my motivation.

Take my hairdressing experiments for example.

 The Kenyan salon environment is the last place someone who has as many fears as I do would want to be.

The caste system, the politics and the competition.

 They are a fast talking ready to contend bunch, but who are so good at their work that the feelings I might have towards them would best be described as a mixture of awe topped with a big red cherry of disgust.

I hold them in equal amounts of derision and adoration.

And here I am trying to earn a living among them, knowing they know I'm not as skilled as they are, yet from the corner of my eye, I see the same feelings towards me, and something else.

They can see the 5% steel. 

They know I don't fully belong here, but they also can't place me. 

 There is something else there too, they admit.

There is fire.

And something else that is quite invisible. You need to posses it to know it.

'We are not sure why she seems to radiate joy even when she is obviously having a rough day.'

I've been reading about vulnerability and how it affects my life.

In her book: Daring Greatly, Brene Brown says that.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity

True after exhibiting vulnerabilityI have made some special connections. I have felt a little braver, I have become empathetic because I have been able to recognise the struggle in others.

And each time I bare my soul 

I have no need to live a lie. I am accountable to myself and those I have or in my life to be fully authentic. In a way I expect the same from them, but I never get disappointed.

"often the result of daring greatly isn’t a victory march as much as it is a quiet sense of freedom mixed with a little battle fatigue."

My friend Angie, overcame depression after a divorce

My friend Lindsey overcame Postpartum Depression

My friend Zawadi overcame intense grief after losing both parents

They are not strong, they are brave for not pretending that they were okay when they weren't.

The result is this clear growth from the inside.

It is the victory of overcoming a mountain that could have wrestled them to the ground.

I am a third of the way in my journey to becoming what I feel I should be.

so in a future post I will write about that.

My future is my mother getting resurrected looking hot and spoiling the market for me.

The first thing my mother can expect from me when she is resurrected is an argument. 

She will have to explain why she just wakes up dead one day and doesn't even send me an alert before.

Even a text would have sufficed.

"Hi, I am dying, you can have the radio, I knew you always coveted it."

Or "I'm out, you should have been a son."

Or 

"I'm dying, don't make a scene."

Or

"I'm dying, marry someone dammit, preserve this family line for heavensake!"

Or 

"I"m dying yes but I better have four grandchildren when I get up."

Nyawira wa Munyeki & Gathoni wa Nyawira

All in capital letters because if she was dying she wouldn't have been able to find her specs fast enough to type that last message.

I admit I am keeping that little anger for her. Why it was such a bummer was because she always told me whenever she was leaving the house to go somewhere else other than work.

"Hi, we are going to Kisii for a funeral."

"Hey, ndathiī Donholm (her elder sister's house)

"Hey Ndathiī gwa Kami (her younger sister's house)

"Hey, nyuma kwa auntie nī akūgeithia. "(I was at my friend's house, she greeted you)

So for her to take the longest journey to be joined with her foremothers without telling me about it was a little offscript.

or maybe she didn't know about it, let me give her that, it was probably those unplanned trips tuseme. But still. 

I better have a man by then because if she is resurrected looking like this then I may as well make peace with spinsterhood for eternity.

Even at my blossomest age I never looked as fine as this woman.

I also need to have a few grandchildren to show her that hey look the family line is getting on.

So I hope someone nudges me when the time is nigh so I can at least adopt some quickly. A daughter will be crucial of course. And about seven sons, one of them Korean. I want those Korean eyes in my family.

I've been scared of what would  happen  to my emotions this week. 

I was worried my grief would rise up afresh and I would be paralyzed and  my head would be muddled like it was a year ago, a few months ago.

But you know what?

Time heals.

And you know what, it gets easier each day.

My biggest help have been my friends who I can totally trust with my emotions.

When you are grieving you need someone you can gush out confused emotions to.

My friends know when I say 'sijui nafeel feel aje' it means please let's chat until I start laughing at dark jokes.

My friends also know sending over a cute pillow or a cat meme will make me very happy.

I also have an aunt who was loved a lot by mother and who my mother loved a lot. And she didn't leave the scene when most people did.

And dear christian shepherds who check with me often.

It's  true only Jehovah's kingdom will be able to heal us all completely.

But even right now. Our creator is not ignorant of our suffering.

And he is open to questions. 

I've asked him very hard questions and cried to him in a lot of anguish.

But he has never turned me away.

He has been a real father to me.

And everyday I can smile, I owe it to him.

For now, I just keep doing my best to survive each tornado.

But very soon I will say:

“Look! The tent of God is with mankind, and is residing with them, and they are his people. And God himself is with them.  And he has wiped out every tear from their eyes, and death is no more, neither is there mourning nor outcry nor pain  anymore. The former things have passed away.” 

Revelation 21:3,4