Tag: Kenya

The Fourth Trimester: How It Started

Ladies and gentlemen, remember when I bid you goodbye last year, one Monday in November? Little did I know that the fourth trimester was gearing to start in a day! I kid you not, it’s like I called it.

One minute I am sleeping peacefully, the next, I’m heading to the loo to pee and then the next, I’m lying down and shwaaaaaaa, I feel a gush down there. (I don’t know what onomatopoeia to write to express the feeling.)

I am almost certain this is not it. It can’t be it, can it? I mean, my EDD is a whole week away. I get up and walk to the loo again. Yep. I am spilling water. This is around 6 am.

“Babe, I think my water has broken,” I say, half laughing. 

Mr gets up. He has been awake, anyway, since he asked me if I was okay long before this. I had been a bit restless that night but felt fine. 

“We should go to the hospital, right?” 

“Right.”

Very fast, we dress and grab the bags and masks. It is time, even though it doesn’t feel like it is. I am not even in pain and still not sure my water has broken. I tell my help I will probably be back. Lol. No, you will not, Shiku. 

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New Eyes, New Ears

I guess I am back.

I’m seated at the salon, my hairdresser twisting my hair into little locks. Yeah, I locked my hair three weeks ago after I finally gave up on the hassle of trying to make it look good, in all its toughness. I think I like the direction I am going with this. Anyway, that is not why I am back. In the recent past, someone hit my mentions and said that he misses the days I would keep him abreast on the latest in our music world. Just in case you were wondering whether your thoughts are part of the “Thoughts and Stuff” mantra, well, they most definitely are. Thanks so much for always checking in. 🙂

Well, a lot has happened in my music world since the last time I ever spoke music in here but I will talk about the most recent two and make it a habit going forward.

All Things Work Together

First and foremost, Lecrae releases his eighth album, All Things Work Together a few weeks ago.

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Newbie in Nanyuki: Day Three

Ol Pejeta Conservancy. You cannot come to Nanyuki and not go to this place. A few days ago, the friend who recommended this place sent me a Business Daily article about the tycoon who popularized both Mount Kenya Safari Club and Ol Pejeta. I will not write this one chronologically because things fell into place from a combination of lessons.

For starters, I had no idea if Ol Pejeta works like national parks and I did not know that Sweetwaters Tented-Camp was right inside the conservancy. I thought they were two different things, even after scouring through the website. I tried to use the live chat feature within the website for further guidance but nothing gave (someone replied days later after I had already visited), so I decided to take myself there and see what would happen. Google was very on point this time. For most part, the road is great and looks newly-done, but some km before you get to the gate, the tarmac comes to an end but it is very much an all-weather road, even within the conservancy. Ol Pejeta is 23 km from Nanyuki town. According to the guide I met later, there is some politics surrounding the untarmacked part of the road. Ol Pejeta wanted to tarmac but the government insisted on doing it, thus no one did it in the end. This was also confirmed by a woman I talked to on my way back to town.

Cyrus is the name of the guide I met deep in the conservancy. He told me that Ol Pejeta means place of many fires because, apparently, the Maasai men would burn fires across the plains. I have tried to verify this on Google but can’t, so if there is a Maasai out there who can confirm or trash this, please do. 😀

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Newbie in Nanyuki: Day Two

Continued from Newbie in Nanyuki

Sunday was blend-into-the-community day. And what better way to do this than to go to church. When I was getting lost yesterday, I spotted one PCEA church and one Baptist church down the road from the hotel. However, a friendly guard told me that the PCEA in town was much better and was not all Kikuyu. Hehe. It’s like I look like those people who pretend not to know Kikuyu. I followed his advice anyway and walked. He was concerned about why I was walking though and I told him walking is the best option for my chill mode. As you can tell, in places dominated by Kikuyu people PCEA is a church you will see everywhere, just like home. And they keep mushrooming.

So I set off on my little adventure of Nanyuki town. As a lot of major towns in Kenya, Nanyuki is pretty linear, with buildings congregating along the Nyeri-Nanyuki road. Remember your Geography lessons about types of towns/settlements? It is not quite the short distance I assumed it was from Sporty (as locals fondly refer to the hotel) to the church. I had to ask a bodaboda rider for further direction. It gets real hot in the morning here, funny enough. I kept walking, thinking all the while that I was clearly lost, but I was not going to ask another person for direction. He said it was opposite the Nanyuki General Hospital. No way I can miss that, right? Eventually I came by an old lady who was limping to church. I could tell she was headed to church because she was wearing an AIPCA headscarf tightly around her head.

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Newbie in Nanyuki

Guys, I did it. I took the road alone and found myself in Nanyuki. Thanks to the urging of someone very close to me and a few calls (thanks 🙂 ), I am here on my first solo trip. I thought about visiting one of our neighbouring countries and then it hit me, I haven’t even seen half of Kenya. Calm down, Shiku. It’s better to get lost in a place with your M-Pesa and language than in another foreign land. You can bet I have made quite a number of wrong turns thanks to Google. I know I will continue making them, but that is how I am learning. I even got coolant added without my dad’s urging. Man I am so grownup!

Do I need to mention that the road all the way to Nanyuki is almost flawless? Makes me wonder why it was even mentioned in the Madaraka Day speech when other parts of the country obviously need roads. That is what I call misplaced priorities. Side note: Juja Mall be a Ghost Mall, I confirmed that. It took me about 4 hours to get here, thanks to a few wrong turns here and there. One it the Nyeri right-turn. I could hear my dad telling me to turn in my head, but Google was quiet. And then she spoke after a few meters and I decided to ignore her. “Take a u-turn,” she insisted. Thrice. So I stopped, took a breather and turned. Lol. I am so stubborn.

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What Do These Buttons Do?

Have you ever used something over and over again and not asked yourself what some parts of it do and never bother to find out? Well, I do that all the time. Last week, I learnt something new that made me feel very stupid. Thankfully, my stupidity gave birth to a new section of this blog. So here we are. Every week (so help me, God), I will write what I have learnt that week. I realize I learn so much and then it goes to waste without me sharing it. I discover things too, but only share them when it occurs to me that someone needs them. Sometimes, it’s just a reminder of something I had either forgotten or not taken too seriously. You know that Dead Sea analogy, if all you do is take in and never give out, you turn into a lifeless thing. I refuse.

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Diary of a Single Girl: August

You were going to procrastinate again. You were going to write this post some other day. But then someone somewhere insisted that you had to do it today, not tomorrow. So you gave in. He has a point. A few days more and it will be September! Sigh. Where to start?

You have so many things running in your mind on any given day or time that they all seem to evaporate and override each other by the time you want to sit and think of one of them. Days are a blur most times. You get up, snooze a million times, take your sugarless tea (oh yes, you can finally take sugarless tea without blinking) and get to work. Speaking of sugarless tea. It’s been a journey of many turns. You have thought about some of the ladies you know with flat tummies and they have one thing in common – no sugar. Why not you? People insist that you don’t have a tummy but you know you do. These are the kind of friends you don’t need in your life. Friends that tell you lies to make you feel better. Lol. We see you.

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The Day I’ll Never Forget

So this story has to be told. How I found myself dripping with tears at a modest corner office at Kikuyu. How I learnt so much about my church just sitting at its office. I had planned to take my passport for months. I even filled in the application on ecitizen and paid but just left it until the day I’d take leave from work just for it. That day finally came last week. And because I had a feeling something would go wrong somewhere, I took two days off. Let me tell you feelings are solid things.

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Earworms Everyday

I will tell you the truth. The reason I did not blog yesterday. It was a long day, like every other day. My data connection refused, and so did my brain. I wanted to post one paragraph. A status update. Earlier on, someone had joked about how half his emails are from my blog. I am basically spamming people. Lol. So I decided that from now on, I will blog every other day, until something makes me change to another pattern yet again.

Anyway, my topic today; earworms.

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Driving D-Day

Warning: If you think I break grammar rules, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Sometimes I just exist. Just exist waiting for the next big thing to happen so I can start living again. That’s the reason I have not blogged and it’s mid month of my favourite month. Something must seriously be wrong with Shiku, you must have said to yourself. Wonder no more, because here is the lowdown.

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Why You Have That Headache 2

You take the painkillers and they simply don’t work. Not in the least. You get that headache again on a Friday night and you just get mad at the world. You don’t finish your supper and just shut everyone out and go to bed. To struggle to sleep. You decide to not move out of the house the next day. To stay put. To iron all the clothes that have piled up over the month and just chill out. Your hair’s a mess. The growth is just annoying. Maybe that’s why your head is aching. That growth is always painful anyways.

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How Was Work?

I’m having a mild headache. You know, those ones that you know will disappear once you get home. I was okay before I left the office. Then I got into this matatu with a drunk kange and it hit me that my head was aching. Dude was laughing the whole time, in delirium, not giving passengers change and showing them his “change-less” palm.

“Kama watu huishi kama wewe, hawawezi pata depression,” one passenger at the front quips.

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In Case of Emergency…

Imagine that you are walking in town one Saturday afternoon. Either alone or with a friend in tow. Let’s assume the second option – you are strolling in town with a friend, W. You talk about the weather and how it’s been behaving. How the week was at work and at home. You talk about everything that you can possibly talk with your friend. Then, suddenly, in the middle of that you start feeling ill. At that moment you realize that there is something terribly wrong with your body and you cannot really figure it out. You assume and keep on talking. Suddenly your friend realizes there’s something terribly wrong, but they too are clueless. Things happen so fast that you start losing your sensory abilities – you cannot feel the spoon that’s in your hand and you fail to coordinate the digits on your hand but nothing. Before you know it, a sharp migraine fills your entire head causing you to slump on the table, weak and helpless.

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First of all, calm down. I am here. Still.

Second of all, here is why I have been away for forever. It involves Malindi, Kibera and meetings. In other words the startup on some serious adrenaline is still at it. We’re still at it. 

Third of all, withdrawal symptoms include a swollen lymphatic glands from falling while running down a dune, mosquito bites that showed up when I got to Kikuyu (the irony), sleep deprivation that led to my waking up at 0717 hrs today but still got to work on time and, as always, bad hair.

Lastly, if you think Obama is not going to show up herein, think again. Sorry if you thought this was the breath of fresh air you needed from the Obamamania. I feel you. I really do.

Oh yes, Google+ is still up there with the stars. Courtesy of it, I decided I was going to actually kinda blog about this. Here we are. Here you go. Let your fingers do the walking ↓ 


Consider your regular dose of thoughts and stuff served. Get busy people. It’s going to be a looooooong weekend.

shikungigi