Back to the Beginning.

We always start with a mattress, don’t we? We take our first salary which is not much at the time and we go to a supermarket nearby because carrying a mattress over a long distance is nobody’s piece of cake. With our meager earnings, we purchase a mattress that will be as kind to our backs as it will be to our pockets. We grab a cheap blanket and pair of sheets on the way out and, carrying our only possessions proudly in our hands, walk with heads held high into an empty house to start our life of independence.

We will spread the mattress on the floor at the far corner of our one-roomed house. This mattress will serve as our sleeping area, our dining table and our sofa. For the most part, we will not entertain visitors much. We will not cook much either. The nearby food kiosk will be our saving grace from starvation as  we will rush there to grab a serving of madondo or githeri or … what else it there … chapati? to take us through these empty days.

We will however not live like this forever. Our circumstances will help fan a flame in us. A flame that will propel us to excel. We will want more room. We will get tired of madondo chapo and crave for home-cooked ugali, sukuma wiki and beef stew. We will then save up to buy a stove or a jiko, a sufuria and a cooking stick. Maybe one plate and a cup? A spoon and fork…no, the cutlery can wait. We will fall asleep on the mattress and on it dream of laying our heads on a bed for a change. We will have an obsessive desire to sit on one of those fluffy couches that come with pillows to cushion your bum and your back. We will want. This wanting will drive us to work even harder. We will hustle day and night for more financial freedom. Soon we will be rushing back to the supermarket for that bed. For that dining table. For the curtains that match the seats. For a carpet, a fridge and a cooker. Subsequently, we will move into a bigger house. In no time, our cold and empty one-roomed house will become a warm fully furnished multiple-roomed home.

How about that for small beginnings?

This is how most of us are introduced to a life of independence. If your stride to independence was to a furnished house then you make me jealous. Consider yourself exceptionally lucky my friend.  I remember my first house. It was a very small affair. It had a sink and a kitchen cabinet – which was a bargain for the rent I was paying. There was barely room for a bed. There was an adjacent room with shelves, which was supposed to be some kind of store room? It was small and cozy. Not much, but it made me proud that I could sustain myself and did not have to live off my siblings anymore. I had come of age. It was exciting as it was limiting.

With time, I could afford to move to a house with rooms and stuff. I had the luxury of a living room and a modern kitchen. This house had a balcony to boot. It was timely too because Hailey happened at the time. The timing couldn’t have been better.

This is what life is about. Evolution. You start small and dare to dream big hoping that someday you will need to create more room for your growing collection of shoes, your ginomous TV set,  your king size bed. We grow progressively. And it is a good thing.

But even when we move to bigger things and bigger places, we never forget our humble beginnings. We always treasure them because it made us want more out of life. With that desire, we were able to strive hard to make it. Our beginnings made us who we are.

This was my first home. I have laughed in here but I have cried most of the time. I have been so many things at different times.Yet with every first home, there comes growth. We live somewhere and with that growth, we tend to want more stuff.  We just want better.

I want more. I want better.

What I am doing now is that I am packing. I am leaving. I am looking for a better home. A bigger home with bigger windows and nicer stuff. I need a backyard. I need more space. It is a bittersweet experience because I am leaving this home that I have grown so attached to. It stings a bit. I don’t know whether to be happy that this new home is a step forward? I should be happy about this no? But then again, humble beginnings. They are responsible for who I am. Bittersweet is the emotion I will settle with for now.

I am emptying the closets and putting everything in labeled boxes. Soon, I will be out of here.

I will sure miss this place.

Come with me?

Come with me!

Come with me.

Shanterina.

She is the epitome of African beauty; short hair, dark complexion, white dazzling teeth. She walks with grace. She has a smile permanently plastered on her face. She is beautiful.

Shanterina is a goddess.

She comes to me whenever I need her. I don’t even have to call her, text her, snap my fingers or anything. She just appears. Just senses my need for her, and she is there! Nice, huh?

She does her job well too. With loyalty, commitment and diligence – she possesses the perfect CV, I’m sure. She is smart and funny to boot. Her creativity is unmatched. You can’t help but fall in love with her when you meet her for the first time.

She always has the right words. She knows exactly what I want to say, when I want to say it. She fuels my thoughts.

Shanterina ladies and gentlemen, is the name I choose to call my muse. (And also the fascinating name of a girl in Hailey’s class who I have never met.  But that is a story for another day…)

Day in day out, Shanty seats by my side. I tap on my keyboard as she tells me what to write. She coins the words for me to make me look good. She does this out of selflessness. She is painfully modest. Never takes any credit. Always letting me shine in the limelight while she lurks in the shadows. She has been a great companion.

Until now.

She is quiet today. Awfully quiet. I have tried talking to her, beseeched her to give me something to pen down for you my loyal readers, but she won’t budge.

I am lost on what to do to her. I keep calling her name.“Shanterina?”

Silence

“SHANTERINA?”

Pin-drop silence

“For Chrissake, SHANTERINA, can’t you hear me calling you?"

More silence

She stares at me. Her eyes are blank. She won’t give me nothing. No emotions. No smile. No sneer. No nothing. Absolutely nothing!

Nothing I say seems to work. I even tried to bribe her at some point when desperation had hit a whole new low. “What do you want? Tell me. Anything and I will give it to you. What, you want to bleach….sorry...lighten your skin like Vera perhaps? Are you fed up of your black African skin?” I asked

Silence.

“Is that what you want? Tell me … 50 million is a lot of money, but, but … I can organize a small harambee … have all my friends and readers donate something…you know….”

Silence.

“Can we go to work now please? Please remind me of that funny incident that happened that day in whatsthenameofthatplaceagain? Remember? Go on, tell me about that as I type...”

I stretch out my fingers as I hover my left hand over letters A S D F, and my right hand over J K L ; as we were taught in typing school.

My fingers are ready. I sit upright. My posture is ready.

I am all set. Yet my muse won’t budge

She does not utter a word.

“What do you want from me?” I ask in exasperation

“WHAT DO YOU WANT?!”

Silence.

“TALK TO ME DAMMIT! SAY SOMETHING!”

She looks away as if ashamed of my outburst.

I am going crazy. She is driving me mad!

“Please…” I add softly

“Don’t leave me now?”

She looks at me.  

“Please. I need you” I continue pressing for a reaction. ANY reaction.

“I need you!”

I am begging now. Groveling, really. I am one sentence away from falling on my knees. I even use Pink’s lyrics from the song “Please don’t leave me”, to plead my case; “I always say how I don’t need you, but it’s always gonna come right back to this. Pleeeeease don’t leave me!”

Shanterina has an ice-cold heart people! She is unmoved.

I am beyond desperate now. I go up to her and hold her arm. I pull her face towards mine to force her to look at me. Maybe if she sees my pleading eyes, her heart will soften.

Our eyes meet. She returns my stare. She doesn’t blink. There is no emotion there. Her heart doesn’t soften. She feels nothing

“Please give me something” I whisper still looking her deep in the eyes.

Shanty pulls away to free her arm from my grasp.

She turns her back towards me and starts to walk away. She takes one steady step at a time. She is leaving.

The distance between us grows bigger. She is leaving!

“SHANTERINA!” I call after her.

She stops in her tracks but doesn’t look back.

“SHANTERINA!” I bark even louder. So loud that I do not recognize my own voice.

This is enough to make her turn. She looks straight at me.

I take my time. I walk slowly, leisurely, towards her. One steady step at a time.

I stop short of walking into her frame. Our faces are almost touching. Some of our body parts touch. I am aware that I just invaded her personal space. I know that I should step back a little, give us some room. But I don’t move an inch. I have my face in hers. I can smell her breath. Mint. Her eyes don’t blink. Neither do mine.

My eyes burrow into hers.

I bring up my right hand to cup her chin and force her face to the side so that my mouth is directly above her right ear.

"Shanterina…?” I whisper in her ear.

She says nothing. Of course!

“YOU ARE FIRED!” I hiss into her ear again. The words come out of me with so much force that it makes me shudder.

Without saying a word, she frees herself from my grip. She steps back. Reclaiming her personal space. 

She then turns to walk away like before. I look at her as she walks away.

Then I see it.

There’s a leap in her step. She skips and turns around to look at me.

She smiles! A bright smile. Perfect teeth. She winks at me then turns away to glide into the horizon.

I find myself smiling.

“See you soon” I whisper at her disappearing frame.

See you soon!

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.