45 Years On.

You get into a relationship with a man in your prime years. Soon it turns into something serious. You date and get married, say “I do” because you truly do. You are barely 18. You love him. You would like to spend the rest of your life with him. You are accepting him at his best and will keep him at his worst. You mean it when you promise to be with him for richer and for poorer. In sickness and in health.

You do.

Mr. & Mrs. Murrey

You start your life together. You fit into your new role as a wife pretty fast since you have your first child (a son) the following year. You are there for your young family. You are happy. He works. You are a housewife, which is work too. Immense work. You endeavour to take care of him, your home and your child. And the children keep coming. One after the other. Eight of them, they come. Some pregnancies are easy breezy. Others are a challenge. But you bear them all like the champ you are. With each birth come unsurpassed emotions of love. With each child, you experience elation that knows no bounds. You want more children, but the eighth pregnancy proves challenging. You realize that you have stretched your luck. Eight is ok. Eight is enough. You love the eight.

You take care of all of them. You change napkins more times than you care to count – diapers are not a word that exists in your vocabulary. You run after the children to contain them. You scold those who show signs of straying from your teachings. You crack the whip on your wayward brood more times than you can count. You love them all. You adore them even more.

Soon they start school and have to go to the city to get the good education that their father wants for them. You have to stay in the village and run your home. It kills you to be away from your children. You tough it out all the same. You do a spectacular job. A big beautiful house is constructed under your watch. It rises from the ground to tower intimidatingly at the other huts in your neighbourhood.

You tough out a lot more for your marriage to stand. You are taken for granted. You feel unappreciated. You remind yourself how it felt to be loved. You wonder whether he has forgotten how it was between the two of you. You wonder if he thinks about you. If he still loves you the same way he did when he married you.

You keep the faith.

He loves you. In his own imperfect way. He shows it. He takes you to travel around the world with him. You traverse the globe to countries you only saw in the map during your Geography lessons.

Years come and pass by. Retirement beckons. He comes home to you and you now spend every waking minute together. The children are all grown up. They are out there charting their own paths in life. They visit sometimes, but it’s only you and him now.

Then it hits you. You’ve been together for eons. During these years, you have argued. You surely have laughed. You have cried and made merry. Through the good times and the bad. Better, worse. Health, sickness. Births, deaths. Weddings, divorce. Success, failure. Bounty, scarcity.

It’s been a long stretch. So long that you don’t know where his life ends and where yours begins anymore. You are at this point entirely, completely, confusingly one. Your dreams, ideals, values collided so much over the years to eventually merge into one.

You understand his every need. You know his deepest secrets.  His strengths, his weaknesses. You know what he’s feeling because you have studied his mannerisms to perfection.  You know why he is quiet and withdrawn some days and why he bubbles with excitement on other days.

You look at him and wonder how you managed to stay together for all these years to remain standing. You wonder to what you owe this miracle where you have called him husband for so long, while he calls you wife.

You marvel at how you worked through marital problems and made a conscious decision to stay together at the end of it all. How you honored your leap of faith that resulted in you saying “I do” even without knowing what you were ‘doing’.

You wonder how your marriage stood the test of time.

Most of all, you wonder if he still remembers how it felt to fall in love with you for the first time. How it felt when he led you to the altar to declare to the world and to God that you were his chosen one, his wife.

Then he gathers his children together on the 3^rd of August, 2014. He makes it known to them that today is a special day. He explains that it is special because it is the same day he married a beautiful girl 45 years ago. A very beautiful girl, he calls you. He remembers. This brings tears to your eyes.

He remembers!

45 years on, you still do. It’s you and him now till the end of time.

To my parents! To 45 years of marriage! To many more!

To be a child again

It’s pretty simple, if the bus doesn’t find you waiting, it leaves you. We all know this and that is why on this morning, realizing that we were running late, we tried our best to perform miracles. I beseeched the girls to gulp their tea instead of sipping it with pursed lips as their pinky fingers saluted the sky a la the rich housewives of some city or the other. I tried to make them brush their teeth with the speed of lightening. I even coerced them to find whatever was missing from their bags-a misplaced pencil, book, rubber-as I filled their water bottles. The shoe laces, the jackets, handkerchiefs in pockets.

Sometimes, miracles do happen. This wasn’t the morning for them though. All the above made little difference to prevent us from being late. And just as we were struggling to sling school bags over tiny shoulders we heard the bus come to a halt outside our gate.

We make for the door. Bags slung on shoulders. We are out of the door. We are running. Running like mad. Running like Kalenjins out to win a race.  Then as the bus engine revs and the bus starts to move, I yell for it to wait. “WAIT!” Hailey decides to yell with me. Soon we are one mad woman with two kids yelling and running at 6.15am. The neighborhood is barely awake. I bet they all heard us. I bet one Kipruto was busy dreaming of how well his shamba was doing. How his yields were coming up pretty well. Maybe his wife Chelagat was just turning in bed trying to catch last minute morsels of sleep  before she would wake up to prepare dreaming Kipruto some breakfast. Only for both to be jolted out of their sleep with yells of “WAIT! WAIT!”  I think we owe our neighbors an apology.

Lucky for us, the stars aligned prettily that morning because the driver heard us. Then again, who didn’t? He stopped and waited as I opened the gate, held each child’s hand and lead them to the waiting bus. I tried smiling at him apologetically but he wasn’t into showing teeth at that hour of the morning. I gave up. Just as I was about to lift Heidi onto the bus, she lets go of my hand, retreats from my grasp and points to the sky gleefully yelling “MOON! Mum, Moon! Look, moon!”

I am dumbfounded. In all that rush, she took the time to spot the moon? NOW? I tried to ignore her and put her on the bus anyway but she wouldn’t let up until I acknowledged the moon. So I looked up and put on a smile. “Moon!” I marveled with feigned excitement. Only then did she allow me to lift her onto the bus and Hailey followed suit. After keeping the bus waiting for ten seconds, I wouldn’t dare look at the driver again. First we were late, and now we were holding the bus to stare at the moon? We are terrible, terrible people!

But it was a few seconds that did not really matter to the driver; it did not change his schedule. Those ten seconds however meant a lot to Heidi. She took the time to notice something she felt was quite important. She goes to school every day, but you don’t see a full moon in all its glory in the wee hours of every morning. Just for the record, Heidi was onto something. It was a full moon, big, white and bright. A spectacular sight.

While I was thinking that I should put them on the bus as fast as possible she was thinking that the bus had already stopped anyway, so what was the harm in taking a few seconds to look at the moon. I did not think of that but her 3 year old mind did.

I marvel at a child’s mind. Children perceive the world with awe and curiosity. Look the moon is out! There is a flower! The shining stars! An adult mind assumes it already knows too much. It stops being curious. It doesn’t stop to notice the simple things because we believe we already have all the answers. We therefore deny ourselves a chance to learn a great deal in the process. A bunch of know-it-alls is what we are.

We grownups suck the joy out of life. We focus only on challenges, on bigger, difficult things, while ignoring the simple pleasures. We forget that solutions to complicated matters lie in the very simple day to day activities. An apple falling from a tree is something most of us would not give a second glance. How boring is that!?  Yet Newton the genius was paying attention when that apple fell.

Sometimes, we have to be reminded to stay still and notice what is going on around and within us. We pay for yoga and meditation classes because we really don’t know how to stay still anymore. We are always on the move. We have to learn to focus on our breathing, our beating hearts. Important things that we ignore because we have more important things to do?

I don’t think I like being grown up. Not if growing up means not asking questions, not being curious, not noticing the simple stuff that adults pass by all the time. I don’t want to grow up if I don’t get to play. If it means not getting to experience the magic moments handed to us by the universe.

To perceive the world through the eyes of a child means never once asking yourself what people will think about you because that really doesn’t matter. Not being ashamed of saying the words “I don’t know” and therefore learning something new in the process.

Everybody is in a rush nowadays. But I will stop. I will stop being impatient. I will take a pause, take a deep breath. Turn off my cell phone. Look away from my computer. Wait for the light to turn green before crossing the road. I will stop running and instead kick the pebbles on the road. I will calm my overworked mind. Find my inner child, ergo inner peace.

I will be a child again. Because kids will teach you. Then teach you some more. And if you are a good learner, they will change you.

Modern day Polygamy: Pick a number

First it was Linda Muthama. And now Cecilia Mwangi, former Miss Kenya, follows hot on her heels. Celebrities (I use this term loosely) trying to ‘justify’ their place in society; the place of a second wife. Cecilia admits that Linda’s coming out on her polygamous arrangement emboldened her to do the same.

They are vilified unjustly and they urge the modern society to stop demonizing them since polygamy is a better, far much better arrangement than monogamous families who bear the brunt of infidelity.  So a man won’t be faithful to his wife and what, we create a carnival for all promiscuous men to go on the rampage and legitimize their philandering?

When I read the articles where the two granted interviews to shed light on their lifestyle choice, I asked myself a few questions; Does the first wife have any say in this or do we give them the ‘put up or shut up’ ultimatum? Would the same women encourage their husbands to get a second wife had they been married as first wives? Better yet, if the said 'husband' sought wife number three, would they be ok with it? It’s still good old polygamy isn’t it?

Polygamy feeds two vices; that of a player, and a golddigger. Its hard to believe that such arrangements are borne of love when it happens only among wealthy men.We don't see the average 'sufferer' trying to shoo away scores of women eager to take their (2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th) place in their lives. If he can provide just the basics, why not give the poor man a chance?

Polygamy tells the player that when you settle down, you don’t really have to settle down. One guy even went ahead to tweet, “If Cecilia Mwangi, a whole Miss Kenya, can become a second wife, ladies who are you not to agree to such an arrangement?”  

The argument that being Africans, we should not stray too far from our traditional practices, polygamy included, has been floated. Let’s not however forget that just like FGM, wife inheritance, and wife battery, some cultural practices were not really helping the society in general and women in particular. That’s why they had to be discarded at some point. Polygamy thrived in the days when women were considered as good as property. The more a man had cattle, goats, sheep, land, AND women, the wealthier they were considered. Polygamy was entertained in the days when women had neither voice nor choice. A wife had no say if one evening, her husband came home with a woman he had lusted after for a while and in a sexual gratification whim declared her his second wife. Polygamy meant that a woman could do zilch as long as cows had been taken to her father’s home to seal the deal.

It is commendable when second wives encourage their ‘husbands’ not to neglect the other family. Noble even. But it must be understood that sometimes material provision is not all a woman seeks from her husband, especially in this day and age where women are comfortably capable of taking care of their financial needs. All some women ask for is for their husband to prove that while married to him she will become his be-all and end-all, his credit card and stock market shares notwithstanding.

It’s very hard to believe that a woman would consider marrying a man if she knew that there was a chance he could bring another woman into their life and make her part of their marital home. Second wives are a result of infidelity in marriage, a breach of contract. They are always imposed on the first wife. I find that unfair.

We are trying to discourage the illicit and secretive affairs outside marriage by lauding polygamy, but aren't polygamous marriages a product of 'illicit and secretive affairs?'

Please help me understand polygamy will you? In my understanding, a polygamous man is a selfish man who convinces a woman to marry him. A few years (or months, doesn’t really matter) later,  he gets bored of the whole thing (loving wife included) and he goes out to play. He then brings home his game and tells the missus “Guess what wifey, I like this one too (maybe even better) I promised you that you will always be my number one didn’t I? Well, she is number two. She stays. End of story.”

How to 'Ex-Terminate' a looming affair

So you have done the disappearing act perfectly well and think that a relationship you wanted out of is dead and buried. Eons later, you bump into each other. She is still single, ready to mingle and dying to settle down; desperate for a relationship that will lead to marriage. She tried Pastor Chris Ojigbani’s renowned seminar, she once applied to The Daily’s lonely hearts column, and when that failed, she further went out on a limb with facebook’s ‘divas for something-or-the-other’ only for it all to fall flat on her face. But in an uber lucky twist of fate, just when she was about to give up and purchase a clowder of cats to keep her company in old age…Voila!

Like a gift from the high heavens, here you stand! The only problem is, once she was out of the picture you moved on, played the field and even convinced some nice girl to marry you. Your ring is in full view for her to see but she won’t accept that what you had is kaput. She refuses to acknowledge the fact that you married your gentle, down-to-earth sweetheart. Her? She might ask. Of all the people, you married HER? (Picture her sneering and scanning her from head to toe)

With that look, battle lines will be drawn. Her mission - to get ‘her’ man back come hell or high waters. So she will make sure you bump into each other again. And again. And again. She will casually ask to share drinks (or food) with you one evening - for old times’ sake of course. During which time she will endeavor to awaken memories of your dating years. Reminders will pop up on how the two of you were so in love. How everyone expected you to spend the rest of your lives together. How she cooked mouth-watering Chapatis for you (Is it just twitter or are men seriously obsessed with Chapatis?!)

She will dress to kill; her dress will be cut to accentuate her curves with her cleavage peeping at you mockingly and the hem falling just above her knee, and threatening to go further up. When it comes to looking good, gentlemen, EVERY woman can put up a good show. The fact that we all know what men like makes it easy; The voluptuous behind a la J-Lo, the well endowed rack a la Pamela Anderson, the long legs a la Tina Turner, ergo the hip enhancements, the skin lightening creams (and injections), the weaves, the push-up bras…It is laughable how women manage to ‘manipulate’ men.

Suffice to say, she will bring her A game to the table and she will dare you to resist all that, your marriage be damned!

Let’s face it, most men don't have it in them to fight off an overzealous Ex. Granted, fighting temptations is not one of men’s strong points. However, for the few men who know what a ring on their finger means, you will be glad to know that you can actually lose a clingy woman without enrolling in cat and mouse games, or pulling a Harry Houdini. You can thank me later.

1. Talk fondly about your wife (Your kids too if any) She cooks for you, she rocks your world, she is a great mother, etcetera. Even if she burns every meal she cooks and goes to bed in her ‘sengenge ni ng’ombe’ tee. For better or worse, remember?
2. Show off your family's pictures if you carry some in your wallet. And please carry those pictures like you do your ID. Your family is your identity after all, innit?
3. Don’t initiate anything. A hug. A kiss. A meet up. A phone call. ANYTHING. Why do you think a woman gets mad when you call yourself her boyfriend yet you don’t bother to call? It’s because we know that when you don’t call, you are not interested.
4. If you bump into her at your ‘local’, refrain from buying her drinks or any treats whatsoever. If you do so you will inadvertently turn your coincidental meeting into an impromptu date.
5. Suggest hooking her up with some nice guy you know. Then go ahead and do it! Meaning what you say will help to avoid giving her mixed signals.
6. Don’t share your marital problems with her. That is the weak link she is after and as soon as she finds it, She. Will. Milk. It. Dry.
7. Understand your weakness with the female anatomy and keep your distance. If she manages to get you all alone, all confused, all vulnerable and all in her spell, then your goose is cooked.
8. If for some reason you need to call her about something; maybe to pass your heartfelt condolences for the loss of a relative, a cat, dog, job, whatnot (I can’t think of any other valid reasons), then don’t call at night. Calls made at night have a personal tag to it and you don’t want to go personal. This means that Texting, (need I say sexting?), Chatting, are all absolute no-nos!
9. No you can’t be friends! Not if she is still hang up on you, you can’t! You will call it ‘friendship’ for so long until she starts staying up late, staring at the ceiling above her big California King bed, asking herself “What if…”
10. Cut the cord. Sever links with her. A relationship needs care to grow. Neglect it, and it wilts away. You want to let it die.

Try the above and you will irritate the hell out of her. She will be so bored of your marriage-wife-children-commitment-family yada yada that if you are lucky, she might start avoiding you.

Unless of course you don’t really want to lose her entirely. Would you prefer to keep her as a side dish maybe? A scrumptious chips funga for your dry spells? No harm in stringing her along, is there? Her much needed ego-massage comes in handy when the missus gives you grief, ey? Every man sure needs one of those, right? Yeah? Really? SHAME ON YOU for even daring to nod your head! 

The Whys & Wherefores

There is this song by Toni Braxton “Why won’t you love me”. First of all Toni is one woman who can totally gerrit. That woman puts the FAB in fabulous! Let’s see; promoting her album while pregnant simply because her recording company would not put it off. She has a cancer scare which thankfully turns out to be benign, but in a twist of fate she is diagnosed with lupus. Add to that raising an autistic son whom she talks about in an emotional spurt, only like a mother can.  You have a woman who at the age of 45 is sexy as hell (no homo) with a sultry voice and who is above all, a survivor of divorce.  It doesn’t get any more woman than that people. Na-ah! 

The song is very soulful and sweet and painful. You know the kind? Those emotional songs that can make you fall in love with some random unkempt stranger seated next to you in a matatu? There are songs that make the most impervious of men to go down on one knee and declare their undying love to a woman.  Add some poignant lyrics to Toni’s vocals and you get such a song; a song so powerful that it would make the abecedarians at Tusker Project Fame to hide in their play pen. Good job though EABL, but Ruth? I don’t know…. Really, I don’t. I never got to watch most of season 5 so I won’t pull an ‘Alpha Rwirangira’ on you guys.  Then again, it’s a bit too late for that now, innit?

Moving on swiftly….

Toni.  Asking why? And don’t we all, at one point. “Why won’t you love me the way I need to be loved”, she asks. So why won’t he? Is it because of the way you wear your hair, the way you talk, walk, dress? What is wrong with you? What can you do to be perfect for him?

As much as I love Toni, and as much as I love this song and a good number of her other songs, I do not like the lyrics to this particular song. A woman who asks what she can do to be perfect for a man is a woman who doesn’t think she is worth much to begin with. It all begins and, sadly, ends there.

They say it always starts with the WHY before the how, what, who, when or where can follow.

For example, I know the reason why I go clickety-clack on my keyboard, not as much as I would love to perhaps, but every once in a while. It’s because of such lyrics, such representation of women as ineffectual beings. What’s with all that I’ll-be-anything-you-want crap anyway?  It’s deeply unsettling.

Why won’t you love me? Why do you love me? Why is the sky blue? Why is the alphabet in that order? Do some questions have answers? Just like Toni might not get a satisfactory answer to her question, some people can never answer why they love the person they claim to love. Sometimes, you cannot put your finger on that je ne sais quoi that makes your woman or your man tick. Sometimes, you can only appreciate that when cupid strikes, some nerdy girl with braces, a flat chest and the smallest behind or some loud obnoxious midget of a man could get you sprung.

Or maybe sometimes we (I) should just sit back and enjoy a beautiful soulful song without getting agitated about the lyrics, neh? Ok. I am stepping away from the keyboard and putting my earphones back on.

Peace!

Dads, Daughters & Distance

“I am your number one fan, and yet I have never graced your blog”, my ‘dancer’ complained to me over the phone the other day. I was surprised because he is not the type who enjoys drawing attention to himself - and that was my main reason for not bringing him all here. “But I have given you a few mentions here and there….” I tried to wiggle out of it.

“Where? I haven’t seen them”

“My previous posts… A-Ha! So you say you are my biggest fan, and yet you are not such a keen reader eey?” I tried to turn it around.

“Baibe, all I read about is Hailey & Heidi….” Did I sense some jealousy?

I realized that he was feeling ‘left out’, which was not fair. It’s tricky though, being in the life of someone who likes to pen down their thoughts and life happenings because chances are, you might bump into ‘yourself’ while reading one of their articles. I am sure no one is ever comfortable reading about themselves unless you have something good to say about them, or you write for the media in which case, it won’t matter. So where do you draw the line. Where do I draw the line, dear dancer of mine?

Being a private person, writing has challenged me to come out of my comfort (read private) zone because you cannot write unless you have a story to tell; you can tell other people’s stories for so long. When that is exhausted and you increasingly come close to becoming bedfellows with writer’s block, writing about yourself is something you cannot put off for a long time.

Through with the ‘pouting’ (ha!) we went on to talk about other more important issues. He wanted to find out how the kids were doing. How is Hailey? Does she ask about me? I really miss you guys. Is Heidi walking yet? Is she talking? To which I proudly, and selfishly-now that I think about it, say “Yeah, she finally said ‘Mummy’ the other day” Then the pouting starts all over again…”Mummy? What about Daddy? She hasn’t said ‘Daddy’ yet?” I then remind him that Hailey’s first words were ‘Daddy’ - you win some, you lose some.

I hand the phone over to Hailey and for the next couple of minutes, I somewhat cease to exist in her world. I lose her for a while as she converses with her father with all her senses. Her mouth smiles, “I am so HAPPY to hear your voice”, her eyes say “I miss you Daddy” and with her words, she actually says “I love you too”

I can make out the whole conversation from her responses; how is school, to which she answers fine. What did teacher say? To which she answers, she said to do my homework. Ok…how is Heidi? Heidi is fine. Give Heidi a kiss for me. She goes to find Heidi, wherever she is, and forcefully plants a kiss on her cheek as she goes “Mmmmwwwaaa….!” Heidi screams. She always thinks that Hailey is out to get her! “Si daddy amesema nimfanyie Mwwwaaaa!” she tells me defensively. I tell her it’s ok.

Mission accomplished, she gets back on the phone. Her father is laughing on the other end. As I am trying to convince Heidi that her older sister meant well, Hailey is singing on the phone with her father. It’s always either ‘Baby Jesus’ or ‘Kamares’. Today the song of choice is Kamares which has her wriggling her waist as she goes “Na Hailey siku hizi, ana ringa ringa ringa….anatoa waist kamares….” Who comes up with these songs!?

She gets a high from these phone conversations with her father. Sometimes, she will hand the phone to Heidi saying “Ongea na daddy” I guess she wants her to experience the same feeling of closeness she gets after talking to him. When Heidi learns to talk, I think the fact that she is also tired of being ‘left out’ of those conversations will be a motivating factor.

When I get the phone back, he asks again; how is she doing really? Fine, I say. His voice is heavy with emotion, and I sense it. You can tell that working miles away kills him sometimes. He misses his girls - He misses them like crazy.

I envy him because with all that goes on around us, the girls will always love him. Unlike motherhood, Fatherhood is not complicated. You only have to be there and the love you get back, ENORMOUS! You just have to be there, distance notwithstanding.

Keep at it baibe. Keep doing what you do best. Mwwwwaaaaaa!

She shall be called Woman

A female human being, an adult female person. Aristotle called her an incomplete or mutilated man – “The female is as it were, a defective male”, he wrote. Idiot!

Aside from these scholarly definitions, what does it really mean to be a woman?

It means that you are damned if you do, damned if you don’t. That you will always need vindication if what you stand for is not co-signed by a man. It means that you will be jeered when you try something new. What? You think you have the ‘balls’ for it? In order to be heard, you will have to speak louder, maybe even shout. You will have to hold in your tears when you feel overwhelmed, crybaby!

It means that for you, dumb is good. ‘Dumb’ women are nice. They are sweet and appreciative - grateful for being granted the honor to share in this ‘man’s world’. The so called ‘smart’ women are full of it! Full of what? I don’t know, maybe they mean ‘it’ preceded with ‘s’ and ‘h’? These smart ones are arrogant, bitter, loud, demanding, unreasonable and unlikeable. In fact, they are stupid. Isn’t Ignorance bliss? “The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead”, said Aristotle. Smartass!

As a woman, you will be misunderstood, appreciated, loved, despised, admired, abused, cherished, chastised, adorned, tainted, glorified and embarrassed in equal measures. One man will exalt his mother while abusing his wife. Another man will support his wife’s career in the corporate world and frown at the female politician who wants the top seat. You will be expected to work and help bring home the bacon, while at the same time you will have to be the stereotypical ‘bare foot and pregnant’ woman when called upon to tend to the home.

You are allowed to scale the ladder but not to go all the way to the top-you simply don’t belong there; huko kuna wenyewe. If you dare sing to the tunes of Destiny’s Child’s ‘Independent woman’, you warrant the middle name ‘Bitch’ for daring to forget who runs the world.

The other day, a male colleague sought my assistance in gluing together a torn 500 shilling note. On this slow Monday morning I am feeling uninspired. The excuse that it is a Monday would normally suffice but not today-the weather has mood swings. It’s a gloomy cold Monday. Insult to injury - I am suffering a headache and a sore throat; call it a hang over if you will. I don’t know if it’s the drinking or the chattering the previous evening that earned me these ailments but it’s not a great day by any standards. I tried coffee but wapi?

I am seated at my desk trying to work. I start looking at some photos I had saved in one of my folders where I come across a full length photo taken with Hailey. I analyze it; Hailey’s pose is so ‘America’s-Next-Top-Model’-ish. She has her right arm folded to her side, the wind is blowing at her ‘Cinderella-inspired’ dress and she is wearing this smile, coy and sweet. Even at her tender age you can already tell she is a ‘woman’ in the making. I know every mother thinks that their kids are the most beautiful on the planet. Shamelessly, I am no exception. Aristotle has an explanation for everything; He says “Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own”. Tsk, the nerve of that guy!

My analysis of the photo is interrupted by my colleague, who has a roll of cello tape in his hand, he mumbles some greetings even though we’d been through that when we met in the morning. Seeing that he has my attention, he goes on to produce a 500 shilling note from his pocket. “Si you glue this money for me?” It is torn in half.

I ask why he wouldn’t do it himself. If I was to do it, he had to ask really nicely. After all, What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do - yeah, Aristotle once again. He (my colleague, not the smartass) had tried piecing the torn note together but was unable to do it right, he pleaded. Since I had a headache and couldn’t get into a testimony on stereotypes - as badly as I wanted to- I agreed to help the poor ‘dude’ in distress. “Give it back when you’re through, will you?” he says, tongue in cheek. “Very funny!” I retort.

I placed the 500 shilling note on the table, brought the two pieces together and with the utmost precision of a surgeon, passed the cello tape over it to make a classic merge of the two pieces. Former President Moi’s (or is it Jomo’s) picture was perfect, not even the contour of his shoulders was crooked. Had I been doing this job in my previous life? No. I am a woman. But do I say?

I know I make it sound like I just performed brain surgery but you must understand that as a woman you sew, you clean, you cook, you love, you nurture, and you hurt and rejoice with your heart. You piece together torn notes, torn relationships, torn children and even torn men to make them whole again. You find an inner strength inside of you that you never knew you had until you needed it. You hold together those minute details that to the outside world seem so negligible but are in essence the integral part of the whole. It’s what we do.

Woman - Does this one word do justice to who she is and the role she plays? Maybe. Maybe not. Because to some, she is shit while to others she is THE shit. We should however never forget that regardless of how others see us, Happiness depends upon ourselves. Aristotle said that too. What a genius huh?

Cheers to all you wonderful women out there! I would drink to that but I promised myself not to touch alcohol for a while. Nevertheless, be proud of who you are woman!

Surviving Men

Next time you see a bride standing at the altar in a wedding gown and exchanging vows with a man, promising to stand by him no matter what, you should applaud that woman. Seriously. Get on your feet and applaud her because she will be undertaking a rough path full of hardships.

Not to say that the men have it easy. All I am saying is that before you go around making silly statements like ‘women are hard to manage’, (refer to my previous blog) take a minute and walk a mile in our pinching shoes, will you? Some (few) men already know this; others have never really stopped to think about it, while others believe that we are only doing what is our job to do and we should therefore shut up and strive to do it well. I will ignore the last cluster since I am in a good mood today and I don’t want anything to change that.

You know the way a woman carries a pregnancy to term while ensuring that the baby she is carrying is well nourished, safe and healthy? Now imagine having another baby who has no ‘due date’, meaning the difficulties you face while ‘carrying’ it are indefinite with no end in sight. Imagine having to provide ‘nourishment’ with no guarantee of its full growth and safety. The latter ‘baby’ is who we like to call a ‘Man’

The only two differences between a foetus and a man are that one is a ‘parasite’ inside a woman, while the other one is outside her; one grows and develops while the other has stunted growth.

The emotional roller coaster that a woman goes through when she pees on a stick during a pregnancy test, and when she walks down the aisle and stretches out her finger to accept a wedding ring are somewhat the same. She thinks, will I be a good mother (wife), will this pregnancy (marriage) go smoothly? Do I have the strength to see it through? Am I ready for this?

If she chooses to have the child or accept the ring (tomato, tomay-i-to) then her life is not hers anymore. It becomes all about the child (man) because she has to make changes to accommodate this person comfortably in her life. The food she used to love eating cannot be kept down anymore as she ends up puking it all out, thanks to morning sickness; she has to change her circle of friends, thanks to the society’s perception of her new status. Her outfits become restrictive and she has to buy new ones, thanks to a bulging tummy; her decisions are equally restricted as she has to consult and maybe even forgo some of the things she would have loved to pursue, thanks to a demanding husband. As if that is not enough she will have to adapt to a new family who, just like a protruding belly, are not easy to carry around.

Just like a growing foetus might abort with no warning and due to no fault of the woman, a marriage may come to an abrupt end leaving her wondering when the rain started beating her. It may end simply because a man prefers another woman who is more fun or slimmer, taller, sexier, prettier - the excuses are in milliards.

Instead of thinking how hard it is to ‘manage’ your woman, think of all the sacrifices she is making and how hard she is trying to make things work. When men get married, their search for a mate is obviously over and therefore, mission accomplished. Case closed. End of story. Their main agenda for a chick they are interested in is ‘kumuingiza box’ as they call it. Once a chick ‘ameingia box’ what other challenge is left for them? To make the relationship work? What is that? This might as well be Greek to him. That automatically becomes the woman’s responsibility

Well, just as there are so many pains in pregnancy; fatigue, heartburn and gas, there are also those fuzzy kicks, overwhelming emotions of pride and joy to get us through a pregnancy. Just as there are all the disappointments in marriage in the form of ‘chips funga’, lies, betrayal and disloyalty, there are also special moments of pride, joy and happiness to make us survive men.

So even though men are absolute idiots most of the time, there are a few times every woman looks at their man and sees the reason why she has stuck with him through it all. These moments should not be few and far between. Very few men understand that in order for a marriage to work, he has to keep chasing the same woman even after she says ‘I do”.