By Anonymous Imagine me, letting you and all that you mean to me go away. Disappear. Done. Finished. Can YOU imagine it? I cannot. I am unable to let the…
Author: <span>friends</span>
By Kizzy B
I am in my late twenties. Time is moving too fast but, my life… doldrums for lack of a better word is what I feel right now. You see, people are often comfortable with the saying: “Everything happens for the right reason, at the right time and maybe with the right person.” How challenging that statement is to me.
Before you judge me for rushing my life and feeling as though I don’t belong, let me tell you something.
By Joy Anindo
People who know me know I am a sucker for cartoons and animations. I will sit there and watch, giggle and even cry at some scenes. Because I’m cool like that.
There is this one animation that really got to me, Rise of the Guardians. The plot involves these immortal Guardians like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy who protect the children of the world from fear, darkness and despair. However, an evil boogeyman named Pitch Black (I know right? Total bad guy name.) plans to overthrow the Guardians by destroying the children’s belief in them. It’s falls to Jack Frost to help thwart Pitch’s plans and save the Guardians from destruction. The work of the Guardians is to protect the children from fear. Jack Frost is recruited into the group and he doesn’t understand why.
Growing up, my mother constantly reminded me to avoid peer pressure when I was in high school and campus. I sort of swam the tide and got an education, landed in various offices and finally settled. One thing that my mother never told me was that pressure grows more intense when you start working.
Two months into my job I got into serious problems, got into debt to finance a lifestyle I obviously couldn’t afford to match the top tier firm I worked in.
Guest Post
Lately, I have been having a severe case of PMS (or at least I thought it was). I have been moody and tired, always wanting to hug my bed when my alarm goes off in the morning. It has been taking the least amount of effort to get a “No” from me, yet I am the true definition of a “Yes Man” or girl in this case.
On this Friday, I have reached the “etc” point of my day. (You know that point where your system has shut down and all you can do is go online and snoop around other people’s lives.) I am a huge fan of Sharon Mundia and her blog “This is Ess”. She seems to always be in beautiful places, wearing beautiful outfits, looking absolutely beautiful. On one post she describes a meltdown she had recently and as I kept hitting the page down button on my keyboard, tears came flowing to my eyes. At that moment, I realised that I am going through exactly what she is, only perhaps in a different way.
By Nyanjui Ndung’u
One can say that gents and ladies are wired differently and some argue that one gender is better than the other. My take is purely on what perspective you bring into play as the genders seem to complement one another e.g. ladies tend to be more emotional about stuff whereas guys seem to be all macho and most have a tear limit theory that withdraws tears from a duct that is only filled once an year so the tears only flow when stakes are high. Okay, onion cutting is an exception but hey maybe that is the reason most guys avoid this because they would be indebted to the tear gods. I digress but oh well, I guess that is common for both genders to just take the ball and run with it every now and then.
As H_art the band say in their song “Uliza kiatu” which is Swahili for “ask my shoes”, the only piece of attire that knows where one has been is the shoe
I have written this for the longest time possible. In my mind. I didn’t know I was doing it. The pieces just came together. Slowly. One day at a time. Bringing together memories and thoughts from the past and from the present. Building up dreams of the future too. My brain has been full of activity. This story and that story. This thought and that thought. This memory and that memory. Fragments here and there. Piecing up together. Joining each other like Lego. Coming to birth.
Four years ago, I lost my childhood friend. She was twenty. She wore a wedding dress to her funeral; a poignant reminder of one of her cherished dreams. I don’t remember what I wore on the night that I was told we had lost her. I don’t remember the day itself; what I ate, what I was, what I thought before I woke into her absence. I remember falling on my knees and crouching to my ankles. I remember the ache that began gnawing deep inside me, its manifestation in the way I scratched my legs till they bled, a vestigial habit that I would slip into when I did not get what I want, in this case, her healing.
Guest post by Anonymous
There are many mistakes that you could make as a woman regarding love and relationships. We may choose to blame it on ‘broken hearts, YOLO, or on the a-a-a-alcohol’, but a mistake is a mistake. The good thing with making them, if you are smart, you will learn and avoid them like the plague. However, if you refuse to learn, it will become an unpleasant cycle that will taunt you and you will turn into a miserable old lady no one really likes.
Here is my story:
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.
Do young people know the ABCs of Money Management?
High school students are studying up on geography, chemistry and history, but most aren’t learning fundamental money lessons to help them financially navigate the real world.
If I were an old man, I’d be termed as old-fashioned. A man who’s time is over. A guy of the ending generation. My words would be trashed in some quarters and the ‘young’ would make merry in letting me know that the new cohort does things differently. That in the new era it is the gospel ‘industry’ that thrives. And that we should let anyone thrive in doing whatever they please. As long as they insert the name Jesus in whatever composition they make, then it qualifies to be a gospel song. Try and read this to the very end.
By Kariuki Dave
Now that Father’s Day is here, we are all obligated to honour that special old man in our lives whose efforts are least appreciated by the society we have today. Father’s Day is one of the little known international days. That is not my concern for now though. I am more concerned about those of us who were brought up by single mothers. Who do we salute on this day? You see, I belong to this group of people who, for one reason or another, didn’t get to grow up in a household with a father figure. Some of us had fathers who were just there to be seen, not to be heard nor felt, but we are here anyway like the rest and we do have a story to tell about those who took up the challenge and played the father’s role in our upbringing. My grandmother (God bless her soul) happens to be that person to me.
By Mwangi wa Njihia
In the beginning was man. Not the plurality of humankind but the biological man. And the man was an undisputed social head. And the society became patriarchal. And men have dominated the women ever since. That was until some few years ago when women subtly cracked male domination. The women then delivered a full punch through an effort called female emancipation. And with that, women demanded equal status to men. And the ‘masculine’ woman was given life. But the man started losing ‘form’. Things have never been the same since.
From the plains of Timbuktu to the waters of Limpopo. From the city of Ougadougou to the King Mswati III celebrations down South. From the Juju man village in Nigeria to the boys chasing chicken in Kakamega, when an African dances, a true genuine African, everything else must come to a halt. Whether you were pounding fufu or slaughtering a goat or in the middle of a juju ceremony, an African dance will have you stop whatever…and join in.
Any African event will never miss a true African dancer. By African event, I do not mean a formal event where you have to be dressed to impress and behave as if you bought shares from a company named Stay Classy. I also do not mean an event influenced by the West where the music and the dance symbolize nothing of African origin. Neither do I mean an event where there is no music, definitely not that. So how do you recognize an African event? Allow me, friends, to take my sweet time and narrate that to you.