When I wake up one Monday morning at 40, I do not want to find myself saying that I am a writer, and just that- no book to show for it. Or having random sex over the weekend with a random man. Or find myself still riding on teenage impulses that will drive me to write ‘please-wash-me’ at the back of dusty Lorries. I do not want to spend my Sunday afternoons alone when I am 40. I also do not want to wake up one Monday morning saying ‘I have been with this company on the same position for 20 years’. As I reflect on the things that I do not want to find myself doing when I am 40, I think of the lessons that I have collected from the people I have been lucky enough to know and interact with. These are people whose words shape me.

From my father, I learnt the art of love. He taught me that there is love, even in death. That it is ok to shed tears even when you are a man. Emotions are what make you human. He taught me that some matches are made in heaven, and there is always that one person that will always be irreplaceable in your life- and other people have to live with that. He also taught me that education is the greatest thing that you can gift your kids. And that when they are all grown and you see them walking into supermarkets, able to buy a kilo of rice with their own hard-earned money, it will make you happy. He taught me that giving will keep you a happy person. Selflessness. He taught me that my mother was an irreplaceable woman. And that a man can walk into a supermarket and ask for sanitary pads for his daughters.

My government taught me that the government is never your friend, but your biggest terrorist. And that it will walk around wearing your intestines around its neck like a necklace, shamelessly, without flinching.

Pablo Neruda taught me to love without wanting to know how, or when, or from where. To love straightforwardly without complexities or pride. To love because I do not know any other way.

My mother, in the 10 years I knew her, she taught me things. Her absence taught me how to be a mother even before I was. She taught me that a man in marriage has to respect you. That sometimes, a woman has to wear the pants, but other times, she has to put them off and let others take care of her. Sometimes she has to walk to the market and carry her drunken husband home, clean vomit off his body, and tuck him in bed. She taught me to love a man, and to teach children discipline. I once took a 20 bob from her wallet. Her slaps and pinches taught me to respect people’s property and to ask when I want. My mother taught me that the spirit of the dead lives within us.

Biko taught me that you might have all the talent in the world, but without humility, and kindness, and commitment, and diligence- all that will be nothing.

And my brother, he taught me things. That I am never alone. And that I am the most intelligent woman he knows. He taught me the business. Taught me that even when you find yourself digging trenches with other construction workers with your university degree, one day you will look back, laugh it off and say; wow! It’s been a journey. He taught me selflessness, like our father. Taught me to look out for the man that puts alcohol before anything else. Avoid him like a plague. He asked me to never touch alcohol. I touched it.

Doctor Ezekiel Alembi is missed. And so is F.K Kyeva. May they all rest in peace. They taught me English- introduced me to this literature thing. This writing thing. They taught me how to find solace in words.

Round tables with my girlfriends over drinks on Friday evenings taught me that there are bad men in this world, and there are good ones. These girls taught me that girls are their worst enemies, and each other’s biggest lovers. They taught me that a man is what you make him. If he treats you like a pair of stinky socks or lodge house sandals, and you still let him, he will do that over and over. These girls taught me that a man needs to be taken care of, to feel needed. And so does a woman. In these round tables over bags of chips, they taught me that I do not need to marry because I am of age, or because I need to take someone home over Christmas time- they taught me that we should all marry out of the necessity of love.

My ex-boyfriends taught me that the flair of the bad boy is not my place to hook and bait. They taught me that I loved myself a lot more. That I was not ready. I needed to learn to be alone first. They taught me that I needed my time to be wanted back as I wanted. They gave me good times. They kissed me good, and we had good Saturdays in bed. They taught me that there are constant lines in the vocabulary of manhood- like ‘she likes me’, ‘she kissed me first’, ‘we are just good friends’, ‘she knows about us’. They also taught me to leave a man’s facebook account alone, his phone. And if ever I feel a desire to peep into any, I am better off out already. From them, I discovered that the lover and the loved are different people, and that love is never returned in the same measure that you give it out, unless we can measure love in units. It can never be equalized. They taught me that my satisfaction- of the body and the soul was solely my own affair. And no. Not in a masturbatory kind of way. They taught me that sometimes solitude clears your mind. Makes you think! They also taught me that my wounds heal fast. Within the length of a sneeze. And that I can’t stand being a passing fancy.

The places I worked taught me that corporate is a bitch. And that I cannot afford to etch friendships that will cost me better opportunities. Work taught me that I need to feel useful in a company, and that is the only way I will get satisfied. I also learnt that you have to give your services for free sometimes, make them need you first, and then make your demands.

A boy I once liked taught me that two people that are compatible with each, understand each other, even complete each other’s sentences do not necessarily have to belong together. He taught me that these people you see on twitter, flaunting their big monies, they are on their 17th job, and you are on your 2nd,so it is an undoing to compare yourself with them. He taught me that money does not make you happy.

Sylvia Plath taught me that I am too pure, as pure as the dirt I allow inside my life. And that this is now. Because it is now. And I should live it. Cling it. And as I do that, I should learn to say it well in good sentences.

I hope that I keep saying it in good sentences.

I do not know how to stare at paintings, their details confuse me. They make me feel shallow-unable to connect with art. I am looking at the painting of a meeting of the woman’s inner thighs. For some reason, I am repulsed by it. It makes me feel unclothed, exposed. Objectified, commoditised.

This is an ugly painting. I say out aloud.

The woman’s body is the most longed-for but feared form of art. Says someone from behind me.

I take that you paint? I ask. He nods. Yes. I painted that.

The woman’s body is the only thing close to godliness. He explains. But we gawk at the sight of a naked woman, ashamed by it, as if it carries transgressions of the world. However, we smoulder with desire in our aloneness, burning in the mind, gasping at her naked soft skin.

Would you like to sit for me? I say no, with my lips closed. Cards are exchanged. I read his name from the card. He is Alfonse. Who paints and has Alfonse for a name?

We talk. He is a solitary soul, just like myself. He knows only talk about brushes, strokes of colour, crayons, fullness of paintings, and eroticism in renaissance art.

But when he talks, he gets lost in his conversation, and for most bits of it, I am just nodding, waiting for a waiter to walk in with a mishkaki.

So will you sit for me?

Saturday morning, I drive to his studio.

You can sit on my lap. He points at a chair in front of him. His tools are set. Brushes. Colours. Crayons. Ink

He stares at my flushing face. Then he compliments my earlobes. I find pleasure in painting the feminine, he says. I am wondering why I am there, sitting for a man whose name is Alfonse, a man whose forlorn verbosity and artistry scares me.

He sets a bare canvas in front of him. I am staring at the walls, carefully avoiding his glare. But I can feel the first touch of his crayon on canvas. It is like the first meeting of unfamiliar lips. He starts with my earlobes. I can feel him tracing the lines of my face.

You have a sad face. He murmurs. There has been many tears right here. His eyes are on my cheeks.

He outlines the edges of my shoulders, my mids, my thighs down to my feet.

Then he takes his paintbrushes and with mixed degrees of ink solution, he unfalteringly paddles across my body. He paints my heart white, plastering itches and aches that my previous heartbeats have caused me. On my shoulders, he smoothens the dark patches that my burdened bra has for years embedded on my shoulder.

His brush strands hit the domes of my breasts, colouring them a shade of bronze, with a touch of fire in it. He lingers a bit here, and I can feel a slack in his grasp, his brush sliding out of his arm in the glistening dew of his palms. He paints the buds erect.

On my nipples, the fossilised cracks from bites of angry lovers, he paints purple. He takes more time here, smoothening the cleavage, separating it well, putting each bud firm on its own. I can hear him breathe heavily, like a wheezing child. Words can’t explain the weak in my knees, even as I sit…the silent chatter in my teeth…and the desire that is drowning me

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I wonder if he can hear me breathe like a car engine too. I feel him touch me with every quick stare. Like he can see through my clothes, like the painting under which we met, at the art gallery.

With each smooth stroke through my body on his canvas, I feel like our bloods are instantly mingled. His fluids on the brushes get excited, they splatter measurably, softening body parts, radiating me in colour.

He follows all the crisscrosses of my body hungrily on his paper, with a loose lip, and a drool at the edges of his lips. And as he breathes louder and louder, I can see his swollen ample paunch underneath his pants. And I am squirming around, unwilling to let him go, leaving any of my parts cold. I am tossing and turning on my chair. He asks me to sit still, speaking after long silent minutes.

I can feel myself taking shape. He destroys me and he makes me.

He doesn’t seem to make a mistake, or stop to gauge his work. He paints with a surge. He doesn’t stare at me a lot. It is as if he has known me for a while. Like he is drawing me from an image he has had somewhere for a while.

He shapes me into more than I was. Taking each individual part of me and organising it well.  His detail is exotic and subtle, and as his brush strands brush close to my heart, all those stories in here,  of life slaveries are erased, turning the dumpster of vileness  into charm and warmth. Every drop of paint captures the effect of radiance of the sun, embedding it into my skin. I can feel the glow burning me.

There is an aura of nakedness. And I am finally feeling a difference between my nakedness and my reprehensible nudity. I don’t feel unclothed by his glares and his brushes, but I feel close to recognition, transformed into appreciating every summary of my body, its decorativeness and its flawy. Happily subdued.

Alfonse liberates my human form and my jailed soul.

You will forgive me if I am unable to control my ink when I am excited, he says.

I feel perfect. Balanced

Do you want to see now? He asks. Or will you wait for it to dry?

I am staring at her, a reflection of myself every time I step in front of the mirror, undressed, but with a bit of a glow.

You are a sleeping goddess, he says. I am tempted to ask how he saw through me. But under my flushing skin, I mutter something. The gods live in the strands of Alfonse’s paintbrush.

I have thought about you, about the possibility of you being there. And the possibility that the mumble he swallows in the jangle of our lovemaking is an attempt to warn me that there is another like me. Or the stains on his shirt are maps I can trace with my fingers to get to you. Or the keylock on the phone is the wall I need to jump over and find you, squatting, waiting for him. Or the fast pounding of his heart when he is kissing me insanely is a silent sentence that speaks of you.

No, do not inflame in disgust. Do not stand me against a yardstick and calculate my worthlessness. Like you, I have disregarded any possible hint from my conscience that there might be another, except on moments like these. I have hungrily eaten his words with my ears. Thawed into discipleship by this man. I have lost my sanities in a fiery flare of the heart. I have spread my thighs in clean linen, quenching my thirst in his manliness.

Nights like today, and mornings like tomorrow, I have let him melt in my mouth like a piece of candy. How does he taste? Like caramel and chocolate with a little tease of saltiness. And in those nights and mornings, I have wanted only him, the music in the player and our throbbing loins to be my only husbands.

And after we are done, heaving in the ‘sighs’ of satisfaction, sleeping next to him as he snores away , I have thought about you; like I am doing now. I have wondered what you are doing. If you are trying to call him? Or it is your text he ignored earlier.  Or if he calls you the same sweet names that he calls me. How does he taste like? Does he also love his food with a lot of onions? Does he make his eggs in the morning?

Do not call me neurotic. Let us just be real, you are a huge possibility. Man is vast in needs, and they are rarely gratified. Or my inadequacies render me hopeless to these degrees, leaving me ricocheting in between the possibilities of you existing.

I wonder about us, who in between the two is the other woman…and who between the two of us has sinned and fallen short of glory. Or is it him? The dirty guck that I keep pulling back from my clogged sink drain? Or am I an enemy of my own peace? Wasting my after-sex moments cuddling with my worry? Wondering and whining in my aloneness?

It would lend my gaping voids inner richness to know that you are not there. That you do not exist at all. That when my hands interlock with his, and our bodies are rocking and blood bulges on his veins in the forehead, it is not because he is worried I will know, but because the ecstasy overwhelms him.  That the marks on his back are my own. My nails’ imprints. I. Alone. That when he gets lost in his silent moments, it is I he gets lost with. And as he turns in his sleep  now, asking me why I am still awake, and as I wrap my body around him to get lost in my own dreams, I believe only the voice that tells me you are not there. So I choose to end this story happy, stabbing you off my thoughts. Cinderella gets her prince, and the rhythm of my mans’ breathing and my own breathing lulls me to sleep. I shall think about you tomorrow.

(To the woman that has ever spent sleepless nights ulcerating herself over possibilities of him being a cheat. )

The madness of love is the greatest of heaven’s blessings — Plato .

In this cold day of August, we remember our lovers.

The lovers that loved us are the ones that raced our hearts. The ones we looked at over a simple coffee date and climaxed at the sound of their words, the sight of their lips. The ones we interlocked with so perfectly, rhymed with like the sides of a zipper. They are the kryptonites of our lives. The indexes upon which we have found other lovers inadequate.

They are the ones that have haunted our dreams. The ones that have kept us wondering whether they loved us as much as we did, whether we made them feel the way they made us feel. The ones that made us feel insufficient, a little short of what they wanted. The lovers we loved and didn’t love us back. The ones that led us into an overfeed of the motivational books, they sucked out our esteem, trampled us over. They are the lovers we later fought to forget, and eventually did. They are the lovers we still wonder why we were so stuck up on. The lovers that loved us never loved us.

They are the sex deities. The ones whose fingers strummed all the good places, discovered pleasures in us that we never knew we could feel. They knew where to touch, how to touch. They made love to us leisurely; they sexed us swiftly.

These lovers are the men and women we met online. The ones we chatted with dawn till dusk and dawn again…hesitated to meet face to face, and finally fell prey and met, and or even mated. They are the ones we will never see again because it just wasn’t as good as it was online, or it wasn’t going to work eventually, or they were seeing other people, or they went silent on us, or they…

They are lovers who sat across us in a bar. The ones we didn’t afford a second look at the first sip. So ordinary. So revolting. The ones we liked after imbibing seven bottles. We danced with them. The lovers we took home, intoxicated by beer and smashed by spasms of teenage sexual impulses. The lovers we mounted before asking for their second names.

They are the good men. These lovers that texted us and called us all the time. The ones that told us that they will wait for us until we were ready. The ones that said, “I just want to get to know you better’. The lovers that called us every day at 5am in the morning to wake us up for work. These are our lovers. They are the lovers that understood why we needed to be held after sex. The ones that understood why we needed foreplay. And why it was necessary for us to have cake, and chocolate, maybe, and flowers, or not, and birthday gifts.

These are lovers that understood when we didn’t want to talk to them. They understood when the moods were playing in the swings. They are the lovers that were still there even when we acted stupid and messed things up. They were too good to be kept around. They bought us books and got us movies on Fridays. They cooked us good food. They wanted to see us every day.

The lovers that loved us made us slaves. We were the ones who did everything while they sat on the passenger’s seat, just there, enjoying the ride. We sent the good morning texts and the how-have-you-been DMs. We remembered their birthdays and reminded them our birthdays. We were the caretakers . They were the lodgers. Arrogant lodgers.

They are the friends we staggered and fell for. The ones we used to share everything with. Exchange notes with on the men and women we liked. They are the ones we firstly looked at as brothers and sisters, until our eyes looked deeper and saw something in there. They are the lovers we thought we would be with, and so hugged the fall…and down we fell. Bottomless. They are the friends we lost for having loved. Wrong move to have loved.

They are the lovers we wanted to love, just for a bit before we got to where we were going, or to run away from where we were coming from. No we didn’t use them. Well, maybe we did. They are the lovers who kept us away from feeling lonely over the weekends, the ones who protected us from the emotional explosives of being single.

These lovers loved us…each in their own way….

My most popular post

This has to be ‘The things we Don’t say‘.  I decided to out a skeleton…stripped naked and fed the gawking eyes. Coincidence of sharing a skeleton with a girlfriend gave me courage; I wrote it, then I hated that I had written it, contemplated pulling it down after pressing ‘publish’… hid from the internet, then I felt better. As if I had emptied my heavy sacks, right there on the screen. I felt good. The response was to this post was intense! I could not tweet for a day or two. I felt like everyone was watching. Up to today, I have never managed to reply to all those comments! What shocked me about the response is the numbers of ladies who dm-ed me, or commented, speaking of similar experiences. Sad!

My most controversial post

Lets flirt and Die Happy- yes, it spurred controversy. There was even controversy inside me as I typed away. I do not even think that I believe in any of those things that I wrote here. A case of easier written than done I guess.

Post whose success surprised me

Once upon a childhood- I was young, breaking my blogging hymen. Not knowing my way around here, not even sure if I had any readers. I just sunk my head into memories of the past. I have the most interesting childhood. I do not think there is anything in this world I haven’t done except getting weed high and pulling a just-a-trench-coat-and-nothing-under on a guy. Oh yes, and kissing a Chinese woman. Damn I have even met Yakobo my fantasy writer and shared 12 hours of darkness with him, just being studious all night.  I have even walked the streets of Nairobi barefoot, heels in hand,  just so I can feel the gravel grinding my soles. Anyway, I thought this post was going to make sense to just my brother and I. I got more than I had anticipated.

I cannot fail to mention this post that almost got me into trouble. I didn’t know that as a writer, to keep a reputation you have to keep quiet too? Whatever happened to fearless journalism?  I stirred many guilty whiskers with this post!

Post I am most proud of

Inkdrops from Kibera- Sometime this year we started a project in Kibera. I am proud of this post because it stands signature to the good moments I have had all the Sundays I have gone to Kibera. The kids at Kibera give me a lesson every time I visit. This was also my first time in Kibera, shame huh? I am glad I visited though. This post also got us more people participating in the project.

Post that didn’t get the attention it deserved

Contemporary. Have we failed? Ah well. I am passionate about literature, writing. It is what I studied in school. Whenever people sit down to talk writing, my eyes open up and start looking for husbands in the panel. That is how close to the heart literature resides. But this post, well, I don’t know. The hits were good yes, but I expected more discussion on it…

@woozie_m, @edgicovi and @gitts thank you for tagging me. In return I shall tag the following to share their links

@nittszah- She rocks in a stoned kind of way!

@lil_deph- she is my new addiction. Discovered her two weeks ago and I might be developing a girl crush on her work. The ecstasy! The familiarity in her story. I identify!

@MisterNv- I like his acuity in pertinent matters. His writing is just so grown up!

@Bintim – she is bold in her writing. She keeps fiction alive. That’s a creative person.

@akellove - she has energy! She churns out posts after posts. To say the least, she keeps her readers watered.

I forget the world and become who I want to be. My archetypes, all of them come to life. I host many.  I hide and break the mirrors of the world, those that remind me who I am, and so I generate myself all over again. To one person, in one window, I am virginal. Clad in a long skirt and a simple tshirt, I am a newborn Christabel. To another, I am Jezebel, lord of reeks. These tasks I perform just too well. I am addicted to forgetting myself. To creating illusions about myself. The internet has never invaded me. I invade it with fake fragments of myself. All these fragments of my wishful being or archetype me are moulded with the words I use. The written word is faceless. I put my face on the words and become what they create. When I am here, I have no boundaries in my interaction. My tone and my intention are purely wicked. Crisply sinful. I can also be incredibly timid, even vindictively egomatic.

I lie, convincingly. Maybe this blogpost is a lie. You will never know!  However, on the destitute side of this lays my tangible relationships with people. Tormented, crying out for me to reach out. When you are like me and you use Android, you know how numerous a chat application you can download. In the middle of face to face conversations with my friends, a tweet pops up, a chat from whatsapp, gtalk, et ce t era. Ring! Ring! Ring! I have tainted manners. Sometimes I reach for my phone and reply. Other times I walk on the streets, chatting. I have had my father threaten to put a ‘no-phones’ poster on the door when I travel home. Because when I am there, I am still not there.

Do not get me wrong. I love the internet. I have met very ingeniously resourceful people on twitter. I have made successful relationships, friendships, and other on facebook and twitter. But when they said that internet fastens life, they never lied. It has denied me the advantage of time…of putting things under the test of time and drawing prudent conclusions. One day I do not know your name, give it a day in chat and I am already baby-sweeting you. What takes months to know, is disclosed in a week. In a week, we end up knowing each other (or the internet sides of each other) too fast that there is nothing else to know. In between these minute to minute, morning to midnight chats are coffee dates, and if you are liberal with it, there are hook ups. Sex. Life has never been faster. Sometimes there are no dates actually, because we spend the whole day together, chatting. There is therefore no reasonability and dates can be overlooked.

These relationships, no matter how outward or bottomless they can run, are denied the basic influence, that of time. They run deep or shallow with the malfunction of a strong base. Easy come easy go. Like the buildings in Embakasi that sprout up too fast, and before they are up, they are down. I come to this realisation after deleting most of my chat applications and spending more than a week without them. I realise that I need to know people. Know-them-know-them!. Maybe we all are lying, like me. Maybe we all dress up in costumes behind stained glass masquerades, convincing the other party with our words, words that smarten us up in the internet.

I need to go back to the basics and know people. I have hoards on my wings and I realise, just as I think people might have a wrong impression of who I am by my tweets, my chats, and my blogposts, I probably have a wrong impression of those hoards that I flock with. My desire right now is to strike balance between the internet and that which I used to have. To be able to go through pages of a book in the bus ten minutes consecutively without logging into gtalk, to be able to call people on phone and hear the authenticity in their voice, to remember that I should text my sister and see how she is doing. Between the two of us, internet and I, one of us is a slave. I hate to admit that I am the one enchained with shackles, probably shackles in my mind and my limbs. I need balance.

A few weeks ago, I met up with a pal for drinks and to catch up. He couldn’t understand why I insisted he bring along a book I had lent to him years ago. He was more confused when I blew up when he handed me a replacement for the book which he had misplaced. Needless to say, not much drinking or catching up was done after that. What I couldn’t tell him was, the book was a birthday present from this girl and the reason I got so upset over him losing it was, it was the last shred of evidence of our once thriving friendship still in my possession.

A few days before the meet up and the ensuing blow up, I received a wedding invitation in the mail. She was getting married! I didn’t know until I read about it in the bloody card. I was livid! I could not wrap my head around how we had gone from screening potential mates for each other to me finding out she was getting hitched in a mail invitation. In a futile endeavor to preserve mementos from the sunny days of our relationship, I had to get the book back; the exact one that she had gotten me. But just like the friendship, even that was gone.

We used to talk all day, everyday. She knew my deepest darkest secrets. While most people would freak out at the murk and number of skeletons in my closet, she played the part of confidante with an effortlessness that would shame a priest. And I could always count on her honest-to-God, unadulterated opinion on things. I returned the favor as best I could. How then did we go from that to exchanges limited to one generic birthday text per year? How did we go from her dragging me shoe shopping because my opinion mattered, to her making what is probably the most important decision of her life without at least giving me a heads up? What if she is pregnant too? What if she is moving to another country? I can’t help but wonder how many more life altering decisions she has made without my input.

I try hard to think back to that exact moment the friendship went to the dogs and I keep coming up empty. I wish there was a monumental incident to mark the beginning of the end. I even wish we had fought because then, this whole situation would have made a bit of sense and it would have probably justified trying to fix the relationship. But we didn’t fight, we didn’t cross each other or hurt each other in whatever way so there is nothing to fix. The sad truth is, a friendship that took years to build fizzled out in just a few short months and I have no idea why. I don’t blame her entirely. A friendship requires work and we probably should have put in more of it to keep it alive. But I can’t help feel like she gave up on it long before I did.

Anger seems to stand out from the array of emotions I am going through, none of which are pleasant. But anger I can deal with. I can smash up stuff (mostly stuff that I don’t have to pay for), I can scream myself hoarse into a pillow, I can punch out the couch cushions. What I can’t handle is the sinking, sick to my stomach feeling that comes after I have ran out of shit to smash, my throat hurts, my arms are sore and my knuckles raw. I am not angry at her though. I am mad and jealous of the world she now graces. I mourn the loss of her from mine. I know I should just RSVP, congratulate her for finding the elusive and somewhat mythical “one” and just deal with my issues. But the bottom line is, I miss my friend and my heart is breaking because I cannot tell her so.

By an Anonymous Guest Writer

I desire the things that will destroy me in the end (Sylvia Plath)

I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty….how free it is, you have no idea how free (Sylvia Plath)

I don’t know what people mean when they say ‘relationship’ material, or ‘wife’ material. What is that? Cotton? Kind of dry cleaning material? Wash in warm water, without soap? All I know is that people are too serious about life that sometimes it escapes them, slides off their palm…and they stop living. Or maybe I am the one who isn’t serious about life…and I don’t know which between the two is supposed to be right. Things exaggeratedly excite us that all the time we are walking on life’s path, we skid and fall, trip on thorns and all. Relax people. Relax. It is never that serious.

I am a staunch member of this ‘flirtationship’ dogma. Here, we preach insanity and a little pinch of sanity, ‘unseriousness’, freshness and all. Things here are kept fresh! Let us not kid each other. There are many flirtationships that go on in our wrapped up boxes. In the wake of the day, we can’t just wait to hear the click sound, or see the red star, or the (1)…depending on the twitter client one is using.

I will tell you what I think of flirtationships. They are amazing. They are fresh. We spoil it all when we start putting tags on things. ‘This here is a relationship’…’and this here is a marriage’. I wish we could try playing loose, not in the real sense of the word, but you know what I mean. Stop labelling things! Labelling things fronts responsibilities and expectations. People rarely deliver. Thus I think you are safer not labelling. Put it in a box but don’t label…if it turns out as sugar, well and good…if it turns out as poison…well, die happily. You had your five good minutes!

Unfortunately, life is not edged  and smoothened as well as I would love to have it. At a certain point and time, people expect you to vow an undying commitment to a certain person. After a while, this commitment is   supposed to bear fruit and birth a ring on a finger. Nuptials thereafter. Subsequently, we are supposed to put up with heartbreaks, Mpango wa kando, bad sex, even no sex….all this just because life is the way it is and people are human! We then get used to each other, too used to each other that the staleness pongs! We become too acquainted with each other that we start taking shortcuts. One call or text is enough for a day! ‘But I called you this morning?’…’ Shit, I have to buy her flowers on Valentine’s day’…have to’s, expected to’s…see? It is all methodical and boring! ..life becomes a schedule, like an alarm that goes off every morning or a Tuesday that comes every Tuesday! I call it living as if we are planning death.

So what is a girl like me to do…who wants it all fresh and random all the time? What’s a girl to do who can’t stand falling in hopeless despair for a man? To be hopelessly at the feet of a someone… creating opportunities for disappointment? Don’t you think that this hopelessness is something we create as human beings? Moving away all the furniture that occupies our hearts to create space for bouncing balls that will most definitely bounce out. Why do I have to invest in that when I can flirt away with a particular person..who cares about me…and whom I care about, with no big expectations…no lines drawn.

A very good friend of mine once told me that it is very easy to fall in love with someone, what is hard is staying! I wonder if it is possible to fall in love with someone and still keep it a flirtationship. Flirt in love! Well, Maybe I am selfish, and I am on the wrong path of pursuit for happiness! But seriously, why does it have to be all regular and boring …all methodical….why are you just about to ask me ‘after the flirting, then what’… there has to be a then what? Can’t we live without thinking about tomorrow? I have two people in me . One wants to follow this set of rules, to create a space for this emptiness to occupy, to have a probable heartbreaker to tag on my arm…because there is fullness to this emptiness, a kind of a thereafter and long-term satisfaction. However, my shadow just wants to be random. I just want to have my cake and still eat it… to just be slack with it. I do not want to create expectations, responsibilities… I do not want to be disappointed.

In other news, @Marvo3

He said

I said

I do not need to introduce him. He is the man who gave clinical questions a new definition. He just does not care, he blurts it out there in the open, unpunctuated, ‘unweighed’! @Marvo3  makes it to my blog because I know a few lot of us out there with the same problem, and that I know people have started looking at me with this facet in mind. Clear the dirt in your eyes people. I won’t bite. Sometimes when people behave in such a linguistically decadent way, a nut snaps! I mean, what he asked was not bad by the way. I wish he had the art in him to craft it in a stimulating way! If you are going to ask something shallow, ask it in a very ingenious way…redirect the stare from the shallowness of your content. Again, twitter is not a brothel. It is not somewhere you will find girls lined up for a handshake and a push into a toilet for a quick one. Mbieiv! And If you have to pick up lasses, there are ways…there is an appropriate rhetoric! Do some research!

Judge me now.#okthanksbye

Skeletons are a name for the buried caskets. There are those however, that belong to our closets. Those that we hide behind layers and layers of nice outfits. Sometimes we hide them because we killed the bearers of the bodies, other times; we hide them because they are just skeletons…burdens we bear for no apparent reason. Manacles for our undeserving arms and legs. Nevertheless, at times, pulling the skeleton out does help. Maybe not much, but at least, it keeps us from suffocating in the stink.

I read blogs run by writers who expose even their innermost secrets to an online community that is very much all and sundry. Some behind pseudonyms, others face on. Without wavering. I envy the audacity in their writing. However, isn’t it through your own experiences that you manage to teach? Not? Well, my writing mojo today comes to me in the wee of the night, spurred by thoughts of my sisters and a chat I had with a newly made friend…this mojo today comes out to undress me.

I am an overbearing sister to all young girls, and mostly to my sisters. I fear the sight of young girls walking home alone from school. I see harm in the face of every man who steals glances at them, even innocently. Every time I watch the news, I rarely fail to catch a piece on a she who was defiled. So it becomes even worse. I carry around a chronic fear, fear for my sisters…always thinking that someone is going to harm them… I am overprotective of them, even though I rarely show them this. But why?

I am ashamed of speaking about it. I have not told a soul too many…not even my closest friends, that this overprotection is not out of sheer love but things unrelated. At the moment I am debating on whether or not to stop typing because I do not see any sense in this post, and because my family reads my blog… However, let us see how and where it goes.

I do not remember his face, not even his name. But I do remember the colour of the door. It was wooden and blue. Behind it is where our forced violent rendezvous would be. Days and days. Me, 6 years of age…him , 40-something. My mother and his wife were best friends, and she would send me to her house for this and that from time to time. If I found him instead of her, he would usher me in, lift me up and work his fingers up my dress. 6 years old. I used to call it ‘that thing that he does’, only in my mind. There are times he would sit me on his lap and force himself in. He made me discover why I had a hole down under…. At times when we watch news, we fail to comprehend how a grown man forces his way into a girl whose organs are not even formed. It was too painful to forget. Too painful that for years and years sex and pain were things I couldn’t separate. Each existed because of the other.

If you know me that well, you know how photographic I am about the memories of my childhood. This was the onset of the vividness . Pain makes me memorise, unfortunately. In it was the kind of pain that leaves an imprint in your mind, the kind that makes you jump even at the mention of a word remotely associated. I remember things, even colours of shirts he put on…and his slippers, cut at the back into half to fit in his short foot. But the weirdest thing is I do not remember his name.

We stayed in a suburban area, in rental houses before moving back to the rural areas. I was always the earliest to get back home from nursery school, and the nanny would leave me alone for the better part of the afternoon. He would carefully time her, wait for her to leave, and then he would come for me. I never said no. I was afraid of him. I never told. Before this post, only a tweet pal knew about it. I do not have memories of loosing virginity to a boy I even remotely liked. When time came for me to allow one to ruffle the diamonds, and he asked “ Why there be no blood now? “, I blamed a bicycle that up to now , I cannot ride.

I have been ashamed of this for 20 something years. We since then moved location. Why I decided to blog about it? Because someone asked me why I am always worried about my sisters, and I could not tell him the exact reason because I am ashamed. I will not blame it for anything that is happening in my life right now, even though for years and years, it made me feel dirty and unwanted: and as usual, this came with its own mortifying branches of ordeals in the struggle. I have however picked up pieces of the broken pots and dusted my dress, moved on from that. But the fear I have for the young ones who have not even learnt the difference between an eye and a nose is what strangles me day and night.

The courage to share comes from the coincidental realisation that a very good friend of mine went through the same ordeal as a child; and the questions in my mind as to why we are ashamed of talking about these things. Questions as to why girls are raped and their eyes forever face the ground, never looking up again in the fear that the world will judge them. Anyway, understand me when I say that I fear for our girls…the young ones in the rural areas and even the urban areas who do not have the advantage of a school bus to take them home…even those that spend the day in the scavenging watch of vicious uncles, cousins, and neighbours. I fear for them.

Well, my skeleton is out. Let it go stink somewhere else.

I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. I think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn’t write anything without hope in it.
Oscar Hammerstein II

Misery is Kibera, as far as my mind can tell. It is the land of dark hearts dimmed by the lacks that flood their lives.  Lives that kill others without care. It is a place of flying toilets and goons that snatch your handbag –sometimes; they even ask nicely for it. Kibera is death. It is population and pollution. It is open sewers right in front of makeshift houses. It is a room that accommodates father, mother and children. Kibera is hunger, rape. Dirty children running across the small squeeze-in alleys that separate the houses, playing pinch-no-pinch-. Hunger, open sewers, dirty, goons, makeshift houses- this is the expanse of my mind’s imagination as the Matatu slowly makes its way through the traffic jam from Prestige to Kibera. I have never been there. I read about it in books, I see stories on CNN and Aljazeera. Even sometimes, Treysongz tweets about it.

“ Ghetto Heaven Carwash”, “Sita Kimya—Zungumza, Zuia Ubakaji”… beautiful graffiti on a wall as the matatu slowly comes to a stop.

I am with @visionafrica, @wamathai @mumbi_ and @soul_fool on our way to visit kids in a residents-run organisation , Mpira Mtaani- football meets education. At the matatu stage is a group of tens of men dressed in white robes, jumping up and down to the beat of drums and the scorch of the sun. Every jump brings down a drop of sweat from their tired looking faces. I assume they are members of Dini ya Msambwa. But on their flag are the words African Israel – something (I cannot make out the words clearly, the flag bearer is chanting and dancing too vigorously to allow my eyes to catch it)

Leading to Kibera is a very neatly carpeted road that disintegrates as you approach Olympic Primary School. As we approach the ‘real kibera’ I suddenly start feeling unsafe. The kind of feeling you get when you are walking on River Road at 9pm. I clutch at my handbag tightly under my armpits. I notice a number of people looking at me, judging me, their eyes laughing at me.

“Wanted! Peace. Alive”…still graffiti on the wall.  I read a lot into words. So I start wondering about these words. Is there peace that is dead? Peace is always alive. No? Then it hits me. We often say that we are fighting for peace when we kill brothers from other tribes. We fight for peace. Dead peace.

We walk on. Way past London Hotel. A good population walking around here is in NGO Tshirts. It bothers me. I do not know why. In an open space on the side of the infamous railway line, their Kamukunji ground I believe, is a man standing on the dais, pumping Sunday words out of his mouth in his mother tongue, to a crowd that seems to be following his every word. He however seems more miserable than the people listening to him. The kind of the tired expression people give to the world one last time before they put noose on neck is what is painted on his face.

Children start running to @visionafrica. They are nice, they are smiling. They say hello to her in English. Good English. Then they say hello to us. I wait for them to ask for ‘shillingi’. None does. They run off instead and join others in play.

It is mating season for the sun and the dust with their respective spouses! I can barely breathe. @soul_fool and @mumbi_ indulge in a conversation about their ear piercings as we walk- How old is yours? I don’t use stoppers on mine. Do you? . I wonder if they will throw in one on when they started weaning the piercings. But I digress. And so do they.

We are slowly getting into the heart of Kibera. Shacks are becoming ‘shantier’. More children running around barefoot. Smiles on their faces and wander and pity on mine. How and why they are smiling baffles me. I feel like in a minute or so, someone is going to throw a flying one on my face. But shame on me for that. Shame on me. at a corner , just close to an open sewer is a mother sitting on a stool holding a newly born child, selling Colgate-filled tubes on the street. They are not packaged like the supermarket ones. People are buying them anyway. Next to her is another. Our eyes meet as she slaps the child in her arms, forcing her abnormally extended nipples out of her youngster’s mouth. Her eyes judge the ‘woiye’ expression that is spewed across my face. She looks away instantly and starts swatting flies from the omena she is selling.

We are here. Mpira Mtaani. The boys are running out to play football. They smile at us and say hello in very good English. They are happy. I wonder why. Why they are not out killing people or snatching phones from unsuspecting people. I wonder why I am not happy. Why I do not see such radiancy on my face every time I look in the mirror.

Class in session at Mpira Mtaani

Mpira mtaani is an organisation that gives kids in school a space for recreation, but most importantly, a place to do their after school study, receive extra tuition, etc. The administrator tells us that these kids do not get much time at home to finish their homework. The facility helps them a lot. Here, they find books to read, interact with kids from other schools and get extra teaching from volunteer teachers.

In the Library is a girl that arrests my attention. She is reading with passion…subvocalising her words. Her arm is lovingly wrapped around her small brother’s  who intensely watches her sister as she reads, probably wondering who she is talking to in the book. I want to go over and tell her that subvocalising and moving lips is bad for her reading. But that can wait till next weekend.

We visit another part of Mpira Mtaani- a classroom where these kids receive extra coaching from 4.00 pm and over the weekends.  There, I fall in love with a kid. 3 years old. She has pain written all over her face. No one is talking to her. I lift her up and she rests her head on my bosom. All the other kids around are smiling. She is not. She has a serious scar on her face, from a burn, the other kids tell me. I want to ran off with her, adopt her even. I want a baby!

We are done visiting and surveying the grounds to implement a writing teaching initiative for the kids in the coming weekends. Walking out of Kibera, I feel stupid and ashamed of myself for the images I have had in my mind. Kibera is poor, yes. Kibera is flooded with NGO’S yes. The living conditions there are unthinkable. But Kibera has beauty in it. It is in the hearts of the people who live there. They smile, regardless. They talk to you. They don’t rob you at gunpoint. The kids don’t ask for ‘shilling kumi nikanunue chakula’.

But, advice from @visionafrica, the kind of help that Kibera needs is not food which they will still be coming back for in the next few years. They need good education, good health care, business projects. They need to be taught to be financially independent, self reliant. Kibera people do not need pity-a ‘woishe how do you manage to live like this?’ never helps. They need assistance. Come survey with us, and see what they need that you can provide. Even guidance and counselling would be much appreciated.

“Zuia Ubakaji-zungumza na mtoto wako asishikwe shikwe ovyo ovyo barabarani”…more graffiti on the way out. “Bila cd? Hapana. Afadhali ikae”

We make our way to Chess Sunday at Capri 7. Just after Yaya Center, a woman sleeps on the side of the road. Clutching firmly at her coin cup. A few metres from there, a kid runs over to @wiselar , “nipe shilling uncle”… I felt safer in Kibera. People smiled at us in Kibera. Here, no one cares to know how your day has been, or throws a smile your way, except the kid holding on to @wiselar’s hand for shilling moja.

Some of the Mpira Mtaani Kids