Crying Space

Photo Courtesy of Wisegeek.com

When have I not cried? Yeah, that is an easier question to answer than; when have I cried? This gets me more to the point because I have cried more times than I care to remember. I cried when the Titanic sunk in the movie Titanic. When Phoebe gave up the triplets she had been carrying for his brother in Friends. I cried in almost every episode of Army Wives-that series is a tear-jerker! I cried when Md and I got engaged. I cried when Heidi tearfully bid farewell to her cousin recently and hugged him so tight, refusing to let go. When Hailey, while hugging and kissing me on the cheek, neck, eyes, mouth, told me how much she missed me when I was away in Nairobi for a whole week.

So, when have I not cried?

This warm Wednesday evening, I am walking along a busy road. I am in deep thought. Cars swish past me. Thoughts that I shouldn’t be having start creeping into my mind. They peep in. Look around for some space. There is little room, barely enough to accommodate one leg or an arm, or a small head. These thoughts are determined. They know that all they need is a small opening. True to their conviction (and thanks to my aimless walking, my straying thoughts, and a difficult day that drained me as it took its time to come to an end) they find that tiny crack to squeeze themselves through.

With one leg in, the thoughts start to slowly feed my mind with negativity. They can barely be heard since I am on a busy road and thinking is not all I am doing entirely. I am watching out for the passing cars, giving room for the human traffic going against my direction, stopping to give room to a sweating mkokoteni guy…these thoughts need my attention. They squeeze in and before I know it, two legs are in. Both arms find room. A big head squeezes in as well. They are slowly progressing from inconsequential whispers to overwhelming noises. They are taking over. My attention is drawn to them. My positivity is neglected. Surely, I am not going to kick positivity to the curb only to focus on these newcomers, now am I?

Well, I do.

A car passes by in full speed almost hitting me. I have strayed from the pavement to the road. The driver peeps out and curses me out. Just like that, the negatives find a better avenue to assert themselves: “You could have died on this road. That car could have hit you. If that happened and you died, would anyone really miss you? You really think so? Who?” Do they have a point? I think about it.

I think about so much more. I am now a walking host to bad vibes. I reek of negativity.  I stink of a bad attitude. Of bad feelings. I am all blue and full of gloom. I have a mind to get a sticker and put it on my forehead that reads: Suffering from Acute Melancholia. Highly Contagious!  

I have a lump in my throat. My eyes tingle. There are tears welling up. Fast. They want to be let out. But I am on the streets. People will see me. I might meet someone who recognizes me and they will insist on talking to me and I will feel like slapping them across the face, and I will try to talk to them anyway because it’s the right thing to do and my mouth will open and the words will refuse to come out and the tears will refuse to stay in and the waterworks will flow and the person will stand there looking all confused wondering what it is they said, or did, or who is responsible for the tears, whether I am a victim of a dead beat dad…then  I will shake my head, they will keep prodding, asking why I am upset, what has gone wrong, who has wronged me, whether I am sick or hungry, or angry or ... That sign on my forehead would have come in handy!

Seriously, who doesn’t know not to ask questions when you see a grown woman crying. Women need some alone time with their emotions sometimes. I know I do.

I need space where no one will ask me why I have tears in my eyes. Where I can cry so that the lump in my throat is cleared - I actually get a sore throat when I am stressed so there must be a connection. I need somewhere where I can cry, wail, snort, sob, heave, and not care how ugly I look. Well, I need space to wear that teary, mucus-y face with pride. And I will not answer any questions. Space that will shield me from judging looks. A place that will cushion me from labels like ‘softy’ or ‘pathetic’ or ‘unstable’ or ‘poor Renee’. Where I will not be expected to act all put together. I need a place where I can break apart.

This space will enable me to express these dark emotions the way a mother expresses milk that burn her welling breasts. The toxic emotions need to be excreted from my body before they corrode me from the inside. I am in dire need of some crying space. But where does one find that? Where in this crowded busy world?

While others can hold their tears and their hurt until they are in that comfortable crying space; in the comfort of their beds at night, behind the walls of their homes, out of glaring eyes and unwelcome queries- I don’t have that luxury. I am embarrassingly unable to hold the tears when they demand to get out!

As if on cue, one tear trickles down my cheek. Maybe this is not the best time to cross the road to the other side then? I will just stand here for a minute or two. I reach for my handkerchief from my purse…

See, until I grant these ‘visiting’ thoughts time to express their fears, their anger and disappointment. Until I acknowledge these feelings and cry them out of my system, I will not be able to smile again. Unacknowledged feelings are like that drunk cousin at a family reunion, they say. They won’t shut up so you can hear anyone else. They go on and on and on. These feelings may be unwanted but they have a purpose. After the acknowledgement, I will be able to see more clearly (I will cross that road with better care for sure!) I am then better placed to forge ahead. I can then welcome back positivity. I can even afford a smile. J

I will be ‘normal’ again in a minute. Normal meaning; jovial, full of hope, fun. But that is not really the meaning of ‘Normal’, now is it?

If you spot me standing at the corner of a street with my head bowed down and a handkerchief covering my eyes, do me a favor and move right along. There is nothing here for you to see. Just an emotional woman grabbing her rightful crying space.

And No. It couldn’t wait!

Have a positive week!

Vera Sidika: Whatever Makes You Sleep Better At Night

It is three o’clock in the a.m and sleep eludes me. I have been tossing and turning for a while. Insomnia and I are bedfellows (wink, wink!). Then Md woke up for a glass of milk and the morsel of sleep that I could have used to ignite much more, flew out the window. I had to throw away the covers and seek the solace of the keyboard.

Writing at this hour is so peaceful. So quiet that you can literally hear the ‘tap’ of your fingers on the keyboard as your thoughts flow from your head to a Microsoft word page. The sound of silence is so seductive. The air is still. The only movement is from my fingers, the only sound is the soft tap, tap, tap. This is profound serenity. I wish it could last forever.

All day yesterday, my mind was on a post I was to do. I wanted to give my two cents on Vera Sidika’s recent body changes. Her skin lightening and boob enlargement, mostly. I wrote paragraph after paragraph but the story was just not connecting the way I knew it should. For me, the best thing to do to an obstinate story that refuses to come together is to leave it alone. Let it lie there and ferment for a while. When you come back to it, its ripeness will sting your nostrils as soon as you open the page. Then you can devour it like there is no tomorrow.

I therefore let the Vera story be and I slept. All the while knowing that I owed you a post. That must be the reason why I woke up at a few minutes to 3 a.m to answer the call of nature (the things I share with you on this blog yawa!) and couldn’t go back to sleep. It’s the guilt of leaving you hanging yesterday. I could see your evil eye cast in my direction as you refreshed the page and no new post was forthcoming. Yeah, I could sense your indignation. I saw how you looked at me. How you closed the web page in annoyance. Yeah, thank you very much for interrupting my sleep by the way!

When Vera Sidika first talked about her skin lightening on TV, I wondered loudly what the hell was wrong with this woman. I shook my head, like I suspect most Kenyans out there did as she twirled her hair backwards in a ‘don’t care’ attitude. “My body is my business” she said. I analyzed her. I diagnosed her to have self-esteem issues. Concluded that as a child, she was never told that she was beautiful enough times. I, in my most judgmental outfit, prescribed a shrink to talk to her and help her deal with whatever issues she was dealing with.

I am a woman in my thirties and I too believe that my body is my business. I don’t like being judged. No one out there knows me better than I know myself. My choices now reflect on my experiences while growing up. My thought process is based on my beliefs, my values and my morals (or lack thereof, depending on who you ask)  

I imagined therefore, someone telling me that their life is better than mine. That I should do things their way, based on their beliefs and values. I imagined how it would sit with me to have someone dictate my choices to me. I concluded that it wouldn’t augur well with me. Not in the least bit. This train of thought is what prompted me out of bed.

It dawned on me (at dawn nonetheless!) that at this point in my life, I don’t appreciate being judged or being told what to do, and most probably so doesn’t Vera. As an adult (of sound mind, if I might add) I embrace the person that I am ever so tightly, than ever before. I love my hair in dreadlocks, I love how I dress. I love who I am, warts and all! I make my decisions based on what I believe in. If I can live with the choices I make, then so should everybody else.

I am all woman. Perfectly WOMAN. All grown. I have earned the privilege of being allowed to make my own mistakes. I wouldn’t appreciate it if that privilege was taken away from me.

I don’t know how old Vera is (really) but I know that the people we should be paying attention to are our children. Vera is a grown woman. We should leave her to her mistakes and focus instead in influencing our young children and our teens. We should be helping build their self esteem. We should be telling our young girls that they are beautiful. We should be teaching them to value themselves so that when they choose their role models, it will be someone who is comfortable in her own skin.

If I don’t appreciate an adult woman lightening her skin, tough! That is my problem which I have to deal with. I don’t advocate for boob enlargement through plastic surgery, but tough on me! Those are my demons to exorcise, not hers. So what if she is all fake? If she is happy with herself, who are we? Just because I go to church every (most, really J ) Sunday, does it mean I should go knocking on other people’s doors and prevail upon them to go to church with me? And if they prefer to sleep in, should I sneer and point fingers, predicting fire and brimstone on their souls in the hereafter?

Personal choices, as long as they don’t border on criminality, are to be respected. And mine are as important as the next person’s. Infringing on those choices is denying someone the right to live their lives. The right to be themselves.

Even though you will catch me dead getting a boob job or bleaching my skin (I could only ever afford ‘River Road’ bleaching anyway), I realize that people have a right to make their mistakes. They then get to learn from those mistakes. Folly is thinking that I hold a stake in someone else’s destiny. I don’t. In the same way that no one else does in mine.

Vera could possibly have whatever issues we would like to diagnose her with. But all that is speculation. We haven’t walked a mile in her shoe. We don’t know how her typical day looks like. We are clueless on how she sleeps at night. What goes through her head as it hits the pillow at the end of the day? What does she think about when she can’t sleep at 3am in the morning?

We are in no position to judge her.

I am in no position to tell her story.

When faced with decisions, whatever makes you sleep better at night suffices. It is your life, your beauty sleep. If your conscience is clear, you owe no one nothing!

We will talk and give our opinion about you, but in the end, you are the only one who gets to live with the choices you make. You will stop living the day you let others make those choices for you.

Please don’t ever let that happen. Live your life!

What Hailey Knows

Geography dictates that nights are colder when the sky is clear. A clear sky allows heat to escape from the earth to the sky. A clear sky also enables easy visibility of the moon at night. We are therefore tempted to assume that the presence of the moon makes the nights colder while in essence it is the clear sky (which coincidentally enables us to conspicuously spot the moon) that causes the drop in temperatures at night.

And our geography lesson for today ends there.

I am taking the kids to catch the bus to school in the morning, right? It is a cold morning and I lament how cold it is as I pull my jacket to hug my body. As soon as the words are out of my mouth, Hailey looks up to the sky and tells me that the reason it is cold is because the moon is out. Yes, it is cold when the moon is out, she shares.

You must have caught on by now that my children have a thing for the moon. This must mean something, and I believe we will find out in due course.

I ask Hailey to repeat what she just said because I can’t believe my ears. She goes “When there is a moon, it is cold” I say ok. Then silence.

We wait for the bus which should be here any minute now. Heidi is standing quietly beside me. I am looking at Hailey just to make sure that nobody made a switch at night to give me someone else’s daughter. She has Hailey’s face alright. I see my cheeks in there. My eyes are looking back at me. Her father’s ears and nose stand out defiantly. Haha..those ears! They confirm to me that I have the right child for sure.

“Who told you that mum?” I ask after the long pause.

“What?” she asks. She already forgot we were having a conversation. Kids!

“Who told you about the moon and the cold nights?”

“I just know” she says as she shrugs her shoulders

“Come on. Who told you” I ask again. Coz really, I need an answer.

“Najua tu!” she shrugs her shoulders again.    

    

Then we see the bus. It’s hugs and kisses. “I love you!”, “Good day!” and off they go!

I am left there standing, and still in need of an answer. Sorry, but Najua tu will not cut it for this mother. Someone is educating my daughter about stuff and I have a right to know who, right? I know for a fact that they are not on ‘The Correlation Between The Moon and Cold Nights’ topic in their Science lesson because 1) She is in class one. So, pleeease! Digital kids or not, NO WAY! 2) I check her books every evening, which confirms point no. 1, that they are still learning the basics. Come on, she doesn’t even know what the word ‘Correlation’ means!

This is what you see when you go through Hailey’s Science book.

When the trees are swaying, it is a windy day.

When the sun is out, it is a sunny day.

When it is raining, it is a rainy day.

When there is cloud cover, it is a cloudy day.

The above sentences are accompanied by ill-drawn pictures of the sun, rains, swaying trees and clouds.

They were asked to carry balloons the other day to learn about air and bubbles and moving air - which is called wind by the way. Hihi…you’re so welcome!

Given the above evidence, I expect weather conversations with her to border along the lines; “Mum, since it is raining, today is a rainy day sindio?”  Yesterday, while reading her Science book, she looked up to ask me whether it is possible to have rainy and windy nights as well. To which I answered in the affirmative.

You get my point?

I need to know who is teaching my baby and the fact that she is not sharing information with me has me worried

This is how it all begins. It’s the moon today, tomorrow it will be the “Birds and the Bees’ story. She is growing so fast and before you know it, it will be time for that talk. I will sit her down and putting my shyness (Yes I am shy… sometimes) aside, I will look her straight in the eye (Oh boy!) and say; “Hailey, I think it is time we had a talk.”

“Ok” she will respond while looking at me straight in the eye. Hailey has a steady stare. She looks you straight in the eye when you talk to her.

“Now, there is a story about the ‘Birds and the Bees’…”

The she will burst out laughing. I will look on with shock.

She will laugh and laugh. Hysterically.

“Hailey, what is so funny?”

“Muuum (she likes dragging the ‘mum’) I know that ‘story’!” She will put imaginary quotes on ‘story’ using both her forefingers.

“You do?!”

She will nod, with a smile on her face.

“You know about the birds and the bees?” I will ask again, unbelievably.

She will nod again, still smiling

“Ok. So you know what the story means?” I will give her a knowing look like…you know.

Then she will nod again.

“…REALLY means?” I will not believe her

“Yes, I know what it REALLY means. It means that children are not bought from hospital. That a man and a woman….”

“Ok! Ok! Young lady! I would like to hear the story from you, but first things first. Who told you the story?”

Then she will shrug her shoulders and say “Najua tu!”

I will lose my mind! I promise you!

Like this information falls from the skies?  

Ok, maybe her teacher mentioned about the moon in passing or she heard a conversation between adults. I mean, kids hear and see things and learn from them all the time. It is no big deal really. The only problem I have is with this ‘Najua tu’ business. Why won’t she tell me? Is this what our relationship has become? She learns new stuff and doesn’t see it fit to share with her mother.

Sometimes it is unsettling that my children are growing up and they are learning so much from so many people. PEOPLE I DON’T EVEN KNOW! From the way those people speak, to what they do and how they carry themselves. They are watching, listening and learning. I wish I could hand pick the people they are allowed to emulate. Maybe even make a list for reference. Once out there, their small minds belong to the world. It belongs to her friends, her teachers and any other person who crosses their path in the course of their day.  

Forget the moon stuff, I can let it go that she learnt it somewhere and won’t tell me about it. Maybe she doesn’t even remember where she got that piece of information from. What I will not take sitting down is if someone else beats me to the ‘birds and the bees’ story. What if someone else out there, teaches her about it before I get to it? That really scares me.

I am therefore watching Hailey closely. I am watching her like a hawk. When she is ready for the ‘birds and the bees’ narrative, it will not slip my surveillance. I will grab the chance and be all over her mind like white on rice. She gets to hear it from me first. I think I earned that right when I pushed her out of me in the delivery room 6 years ago. Once we have had the talk, I hope, oh, I pray that she will come to me for clarity whenever she is confused. O how I pray!

In the meantime, this shrugging and “I just know” business between me and Hailey, needs to stop. It has to.

Do you understand my anxiety? Do you?

I am a writer!

When you quit your job, you take up another task of having to explain to everyone you meet what it is you do now. This is because your job gives a glimpse into the kind of person you are. Yes, you are what you do.

A name doesn’t say much about you, but the minute you say that you are an accountant, a lawyer, a waitress, a househelp, a janitor, you will be quickly classified and it is from that classification that your worth will be measured. Sad, but true.

I have met two people now who, after introducing myself, sought to find out what I do. Make that three, if you count an old lady who was curiously interested in my life. I found that a bit unusual.

One was a hairdresser I happened to go to, to have my hair done. We chatted about my hair for a while – there is so much to be said about dreadlocks. This is the kind of hair you can pretty much choose to forget for a couple of days, and there will be no real damage done to your appearance.

“How old are your dreadlocks?”

“Two years?”  I counted mentally to confirm this answer was accurate. Yes it was.

 “I think I should also put dreadlocks” she said with a smile. Why does everyone say that? Most people keep promising to ‘put’ dreadlocks every time we have a conversation about my hair.

“It seems so much easier to maintain” she justified herself.

I smiled at her image in the mirror.

Silence

“So, where do you work?” she ambushed me.

I say ‘ambushed’ because I did not expect to be asked where I worked. More of what I did. Not where.

She already assumed that I worked somewhere for someone.

“I am a writer” I replied

I was disappointed when she didn't ask what I wrote about. I could have told her that I had already written our conversation in my head and that I would share it with my blog readers this week. Pity she didn’t ask.

I later thought about it and realized that for all the years that I have been writing, I had never referred to myself as a writer. This was my first time.

It felt good.

Another time that I owned up to being a writer was a week ago while on a bid to participate as a Storymoja Festival blogger. The annual Festival will be running this year from September 17^th to 21^st. I am happy to have made the cut. You can visit the storymoja blog where I will be a contributor to keep up with the events lined up during this year’s festival. Also visit my other blog - http://perfectlywoman.wordpress.com/ to read my writeups on various issues. Feel free to add your voice.

I consider it a great blessing to have found myself in a room full of young creative, free minds. Bloggers who are very, very, very (can’t stress this enough) passionate about writing. There were those who had forsaken lucrative careers, law was the prevalent jiltee, to simply write. Take Olivia who dropped out of a law degree class because she realized that she did not want to be a lawyer after all, for example. She was at pains to explain to her people that law was not the way for her. Her insistence that she wanted to take an English course was met with disdain - What?! And become an English teacher??? You should have seen the passion in her eyes when she spoke about teaching English. It was palpable.

The thing about one’s passion; be it a writer’s, a lawyer’s, a teacher’s or a waitresses’ is that it fills your life with purpose. You stop considering what you do as a job. It becomes who you are. Even if that (ugly) wig and gown that lawyers wear look good on you, you only find fulfilment the day you start enjoying what you do.

I sat next to Magunga who had just shared on his blog that he had successfully completed a law degree course but was not keen in pursuing a career in law. Why doesn’t anybody want to be a lawyer woiye? He wrote about being nervous at the thought of informing his mother that he wanted to be a writer instead. It cannot be easy to ditch a career that has practically dug a huge hole in your sponsor’s pockets. It isn’t easy, but such is life. You gotta live it! You gotta be happy! Happiness comes with a price sometimes.

The passion that Olivia writes with. The expertise with which Magunga pieces his articles. These can never be ignored. They are ingrained so deep within the core of your being that you just have to let it out. When you gotta write, you gotta write! That room was full of men and women who wanted nothing but to be allowed to do what they love doing. Write.

We understand that there are bills to be paid and that writing might not always give you the financial stability that you seek. Even though I was applauded for quitting my job, there were voices of reason in between the cheers. “When the landlord comes for the rent, make sure you call all these people who are cheering you this minute to help you raise the rent” Magunga whispered to me.

Thing is, writing may not pay a dime, but that compelling feeling will not allow a writer not to write. It cannot be silenced with a six figure salary. I guess in a way, the universe knows that it is at a loss when those people who should be writing, choose not to do it.

I wake up every day to tap away at my computer because I am a writer. It is all I am now. I am no longer a writer clothed as a secretary. I have been laid bare. Writing is not my side hustle anymore. It is not something I do when I have nothing else to do. It might take a while to get where I want to be, but the crazy me believes that as long as I keep doing this persistently, consistently, I might not have to go back to my fellow writers for a quick mchango at the end of the month.

So hey, I am a writer.

I am a writer!

P.S: As I write this, news is streaming in about the Mpeketoni Attacks. I condole with the families who have lost their loved ones to this heinous attack. May God help our country.

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.

The Wall

I finally witnessed firsthand what Mutahi Ngunyi was saying the other day about the tyranny of numbers. He said it unapologetically, with a hint of arrogance; that Jubilee had a better chance of winning the last general elections because well, they had the tyranny of numbers in their favor.

We were disappointed at his audaciousness. How dare he? We were trying to move away from such backward politics, we lamented. We don’t vote along tribal lines anymore. We know better. But do we really?

I walked into a Butchery in Sotik the other day and a light bulb moment happened. Md is done babysitting me now and I am getting to know Sotik all on my own. He did a good job of showing us around. Not that Sotik is a big town or anything. You can walk around the whole town from end to end in what? 20mins? The town is small but the babysitting was good while it lasted.  He showed me the supermarket, the grocery market place, the ATM, the chemist. He also showed me a restaurant where they make the most delicious fried chicken a girl could ever crave for. A girl has to know such a place because there comes a time when the craving for fatty foods far outweighs your determination to maintain a trim waistline. When that time comes, you have no choice but to indulge, calories be damned!  Ladies, can I get an Amen?!

So I walked into this butchery to buy meat. There was nothing extraordinary about the shop; there were two attendants with blood stained white coats, big pangas cutting through stubborn bones. There was matumbo – fresh matumbo - so you can imagine the ‘stench’. Blood. Fresh blood. Smell of blood. Why do I eat meat again? I took in the scene. Tried to picture what had happened to make a live cow a piece of meat. The merciless act of butchering. Gutting. Spilling of blood. I tried to pay attention to any feelings of repulsion. Nada. I truly have no ounce of vegetarianism in me. Not an ounce. I proceeded to buy meat.

I noticed that one of the butcher men who had been pounding on stubborn bones was now looking at me impatiently, waiting for my order.

“Kilo Moja ni how much?” I asked.

“Three hundreth” Yeah. That is how ‘hundred’ is pronounced in Kalenjinese!

I requested for a kilo and a half, all packed in halves for refrigeration purposes.

At the far side of the counter the other guy was trying to do something to the matumbo; was he cleaning it, cutting it? I did not look long enough to see what he was doing because something else caught my attention.

The wall.

There were newspaper cuttings pasted all over the wall. The focus was on none other than the Vice President of Kenya, William Samoei Ruto. The wall was covered with newspaper picture cuttings of Ruto. There was Ruto with Uhuru Kenyatta in that photo where they did the campaign advert standing side by side against a red background with their backs to each other. Another picture was of Ruto with his wife and other members of a church congregation when he cried and cried and cried at a church service after Jubilee’s victory. Boy, didn’t he cry! I even got to notice that he knelt down in the process and wept thoroughly– I had missed that! I think every picture ever taken of Ruto with his wife, alone, in a press conference, in a rally, in a funeral, wedding…was there on that wall.

I noticed Rachel Ruto’s shoes in the picture where her husband was weeping in church. That shoe is so good! I took a great length of time to study that shoe. It was multicolored, had a great heel…the shoe was to die for! But I guess the shoe was the last thing on her mind when her husband was kneeling down weeping and she had one arm on his shoulder seeming lost on how to react. Ruto had both his hands on the floor. He seriously wept! Can I just ask, emotions aside, why exactly did he cry so much? I know he was happy, grateful and you know…all emotional about that victory. But seriously, the weeping was ….why did he cry that much? Coz he really cried. Aki alilia! Get that clip and watch again if you can. Dude can cry.

Done with the weeping reverie, I finally spotted it. The newspaper clippings were nothing compared to this particular picture. Right there in front of me, above me, I saw it. I don’t know how I missed it before. A framed picture of the president was there, which was expected. BUT next to the framed picture of the president of the republic of Kenya, stood the framed picture of the vice president of the republic of Kenya. There was something about that picture. I could tell that it was framed with a little more care. A little more precision. I imagine that whoever framed it did so with a smile on his face. He must have caressed the frame a bit before putting it up on the wall. A thousand shillings says that the glass is cleaned every week or every fortnight just so that it does not accumulate any dust. Dust on that picture frame would be an abomination.

After looking at the wall, you realize that the framed picture of the president holds no candle to the vice president’s picture, regardless of superiority. It was put there with pride. It was a conquest of sort. A battle that was fought and won. A trophy? Arsenal fans now know what I am talking about, huh?

The butcher man could be a local man with no more ambition than to run his business and make a decent living. Feed his children, educate them and put a roof on their heads. But every five years, he wields some power. He goes out to war. He gets to play a part in determining whose picture he will hang on the wall of his butchery. He pitifully believes that Ruto’s win is his win, irrespective of whether Ruto does the work assigned to him by Kenyans or not.

This man, just like Ngunyi, knows about the tyranny of numbers only too well. Maybe better than us ‘educated’ lot. It is sad that it is the only language he knows though. Maybe we should educate him about the ‘tyranny’ of a good development record, the ‘tyranny’ of security, the ‘tyranny’ of corrupt-free government. Until he is educated about other important aspects of government, then his voting will only be informed by that tyranny of numbers. It is the only language he understands after all.

The butcher man let the wall speak for him. We barely said two words and yet I got a glimpse of his heart through the hangings on his wall. He is a man proud of Ruto. Ruto’s win, was his win.

How about you? What do you proudly hang on your wall? What is it that speaks for you even before you say a single word?

 What is your Ruto?

Coloring within the lines

My daughters have answers to every question asked. Check out our conversations recently:

Hailey: (Makes a sound; half-belch, half-hiccup, half-cough)

Me: (Teasingly) Did you just belch?

Hailey: No! I don’t belch.

Me: You don’t?

Hailey: Yes. I am not a boy!

Me: (Rolls eyes in defeat)

Me: (Offering Hailey her 4 o'clock tea) Do  you want bread or pancakes to go with that?

Hailey: (Thinks for a moment) My heart tells me to go with pancakes

Me: (Does a quick double take) YOUR HEART tells you?

Hailey: Yes. (Smiles sweetly) My heart tells me to eat pancakes.

Me: Ok then. Let’s follow what your heart says, shall we? (Hands her pancakes)

Me: Heidi, have you done your homework?

Heidi: (Absentmindedly) No

Me: Why?

Heidi: (Ever so innocently!) Coz I have not done my homework.

Me: Heidi, did you finish your food?

Heidi: No

Me: Why?

Heidi: Coz I did not finish my food

Hailey surprises you with very unconventional answers (My heart tells me? I am yet to get over that statement. She is barely six for chrissake!), while Heidi never gives a reason for anything she does! She is in love with the word ‘coz’ and it has to punctuate her every statement.

You tell her not to remove her sweater, and she asks “Coz…?”

“Coz if you do, I will spank your bottom, that’s coz!” I am tempted to respond.

Incidentally, ‘bottom’ is an anatomy she is fascinated with too!
“Mum, you’re washing my bottom?” She asks laughingly when I am giving her a bath.

“Muuuum! Hailey slapped me on my bottom!”

“Muuum! Hailey touched my bottom!”

I am left wondering if her bottom is that sensitive or she just loves to use the word.

After giving me the ‘coz I have not done my homework’ response in one of the interrogations above, I asked Heidi to bring her book so that I could help with homework. She had been asked to color a car drawn by her teacher. The idea is to color within the lines. So she takes the crayon and starts coloring. She really tries. But she is not perfect yet and so some colors cross the outline. Which gets me thinking...

How many adults are still doing what Heidi was asked to do? Still coloring within the lines? Someone drew some invisible lines for us and we subconsciously try to keep within the boundary. Afraid to try anything out of the norm. Who said we all have to be good in sciences? Get married and have children by the age of thirty? Have a skinny body and light skinned complexion? We kill our uniqueness every single day as we try to live like everyone else. And when we cannot live up to those standards, we beat ourselves up, become depressed and unhappy with feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing. So many problems while we could just be content with being ourselves and consequently live a happy, fulfilling life by being who we are meant to be! Haven’t we humans perfected the art of complicating life?! Think about it really.

How about drawing the line wherever you want and not letting anyone else show you where the coloring should stop. Know what you want and make it your personal goal to achieve that which your heart desires. Isn’t life better that way? Aren’t we happier when we conquer the fear of exploring (coloring) outside that box?

Asking a child to color within the lines stifles their creativity. Why not give them a blank page instead? See how far their imagination goes. Heidi did her homework all right. She colored the car and tried as much as possible to stick within the boundaries. But I vowed to teach her how to get the most out of life. To go over and beyond. Explore the unexplored. Seek the undiscovered. Once she was through with her homework, I gave her another option. I gave her a blank piece of paper and asked her to color anywhere with whichever colors she fancied. Take a risk. Make a mess. Go where your imagination takes you.

You never know; coloring outside the lines might produce an even better picture. Out of that mess, could come something insanely spectacular.

Coloring within the lines is good. Neat. Perfect. But when you think about it, what is so great about perfect?