Happy Birthday Shiku Ngigi

friends

You must be wondering why I would write this. I didn’t. Dickson Otieno did, just for my birthday. He made me chuckle and my eyes well up with tears. Like seriously, thank you Dickson. And thank you all for making my 25th birthday as big a deal as I thought it would be. I will stop now, before I cry. 25-year-olds don’t cry all the time, do they? Here goes.

By Dickson Otieno

On your birthday:

“I remember when Foursquare was great. And almost everyone was competing for Mayor-ship of various places. I still don’t get what came over that company. They messed themselves up, didn’t they?

Shiku was the Mayor of the School of Information Sciences. I had only 3 Mayor-ships. And all were of places I had created myself – Home, School of IS Cafeteria and NCT8. So as was the norm back then, I was competing for Mayor-ship of the School of IS. We became Foursquare friends. She was the Mayor. She seemed to have so many check-ins in such a ‘small’ university. She kind of kept track of herself throughout the day. I wondered if it was supposed to help her in case she got lost.  She was here and there. I don’t know where. I can’t remember. But each time I looked at my Foursquare, ‘Shiku just checked-in’.

Then Twitter integrated perfectly with Foursquare and we followed each other. We never talked. Maybe a RT or a reply once in a while. I remember.

Funny enough we’ve only talked face to face once. It was accidental. If you’ve been to Moi University, you know the route from the Library to Hostel K and L. It was coming to rain, and the almost short girl with a huge bag pack was racing to the School of IS while I was headed to L.

“Hi, I am Dickson Otieno”

She laughed. Then she said a lot of things. I remember I was running some INF account on Twitter. She asked about that too. And that was it.

We’re online friends. Google Hangouts. She helps me a lot on so much. She’s the online guru. I am but a learner. Though I am particularly proud of the fact I self-hosted my blog before her. I remember I didn’t even know about the Jetpack plugin… face palm.

There’s only one blog I read religiously. Shiku’s. I don’t understand where she gets the strength to write. Her commitment to her site is enviable. Google Now knows. So whenever there’s a new post, it just pops up on my screen.

Oh and she began blogging when I was in form 2!

Principled. Honest. Intelligent. She is. You’ll flow with her when she writes. You’ll sink, float, walk, run or fly with her words. I swear you will. Because she’s real. I mean who writes about things like stomach upsets in the middle of the night?

I hope she writes 1,000,000,000 posts.”

Happy Birthday Caroline Wanjiku.

11 thoughts on “Happy Birthday Shiku Ngigi

  1. That’s an aaaaaw moment right there…Caro that’s one sweet post…would have cried my all if it was written for me(some emotional friek I am)…happy belated birthday again!!!

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