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.
Tag: <span>Nairobi</span>
I don’t know about you but I can shed tears very easily. Very very easily. I will cry over every movie that is good enough. I will cry when a child sings a song in church or in Sunday school and does not even know the words but keeps on singing very joyfully. I will cry when I see someone in pain or difficult situation. Like a few days ago when friends of our family lost a beloved daughter. I sat at their living room listening to the stories from her friends and family and just couldn’t hold back my tears. I had a headache that night.
This Sunday, I found myself crying on a Metrotrans bus. We were just making that turn around Globe roundabout (can I still call it that?) and I saw him. I saw the little boy coiled into a ball near the huge metal pipe that straddles the Nairobi river.
I wake up at 8 am today. A record. You all know I wake up at 10 am on Saturdays. It’s getting harder and harder to wake up at that time nowadays. I have made a pact with myself that I will not neglect friendships in the name of resting away during the weekend. So I wake up, dillydally in the warmness of the blankets, chat with a friend, let miss cat join me as usual and then I finally make it out at 8:30 am. Someone congratulates me for waking up that early. Well in. I am up because I am headed for a wedding. A wedding I cannot fail to attend. Hannah’s wedding. If you frequent this blog, you know Hannah. Hannah almost always is the one who comments first on my posts. If she doesn’t do it here, she will do it on my Hangouts.
I am full. I am tired. I am chatting a million people. Lol. Lie. I am chatting five people. One is hormonal. The other is still at work. The other is from shovelling snow. The other one is complaining of too much work. The other one is lamenting over unpaid work. Millennials. We have problems. I want to sleep. But I won’t until I do this.
The past few weeks have been pretty intense. I moved jobs thus I had to change my commute. I miss the glorious Waiyaki Way, full of splendour and roadworthy public service vehicles. I had never taken it for granted — the fact that the Waiyaki Way commute was awesome. But now I think I should have appreciated the matter a bit more. If you know me well enough, you know I was the girl who said she would rather not work away from Westlands. I would leave the house anywhere after 8 am and arrive right on time. Well, the universe has a funny way of making a point. I was thrown smack in the middle of Karen.
Right where it would be hardest to commute. But then again it was not the universe. I would have chosen to stick to Westlands just as simply but I made a choice. A choice to get out of my comfort zone. Here are eight things that January commuting has brought my way.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, a start-up is “a newly established business”. Okay. But why is it that we don’t call all new businesses start-ups? Or do we? Is it even a startup or start-up? Microsoft Word 2013 thinks it’s the latter and so I agree. What I am trying to say is, the term start-up applies to more than just the tech companies by young individuals you read about every day. However, this post applies to such start-ups but in the developing world. You know you are working at a Kenyan start-up when:
You know advertising is powerful when you walk into the ladies and hope there is tissue paper and then when you see it, you think, “Tissue si tissue, tissue ni Hanan.” Epic fail. I hate that advert. Nevertheless it is engrained in my head. In fact, come to think of it, if I was responsible for buying tissue in the house, I’d actually try it out. I will try you out when I move out, Hanan. You can go ahead and thank that guy. What’s his name again? I know it’s not Otoyo. Wait. Think, Shiku, think. Colourful clothes. Luo accent. I give up.
Anyway, who goes into a public facility and makes away with an entire roll of tissue paper?
It’s been seven months since my heart was broken into a thousand little pieces. Seven months since I added too much salt to the food because my mind was somewhere else replaying conversations, trying to figure out what I did wrong. My dad did not even think about it as he went on his jokes about how he should have cooked the food himself. He always cracks this joke about me having, perhaps, gone and cooked the food in Lake Magadi.
Early this year I met a lady. A totally random lady. She made me get in touch with the scarce, yet crucial element of simply being human. Are you, or have you met those people who forget that everyone else is human? This city is full of such. This one was and is an exception.
Inhaling the air of Nairobi infuses its dwellers and residents alike with insensitivity to others. Whether the person in need is a friend or a stranger. That had been my notion all along. Until this day when this lady did something I’m yet to hear of.
You know your Tuesday will suck when you cross from one county to another and find that this county decided to be totally wet this morning. Why is that a problem? Because some of us walk for miles to get to work once we alight from the bus stop. One reason why I should work from home.
This Tuesday morning, I was up at 7 as usual. Yeah, don’t put on that face. You are probably seated in a traffic jam at the time but yeah, some of us wake up that late. 😛 Perks of living along Waiyaki Way and its extensions (read, Upper Westlands a.k.a. Kinoo and its suburbs.) Anyway,
Have you ever been so tired you get mad at anyone and anything on your way? So tired you wonder if you are sick? So tired you want to sleep and sleep on till all sleep is gone from your system? We both know that will never happen.
This has been one of those weeks. My level of tiredness is increasing as we advance into the week. It started on Monday. I wake up full of psyche for the bright new day. I will go to work because Saba Saba Day is a ghost from the past. If you are like me you know ghosts are not real. So I walk up Ring Road confident in my belief. The road is strangely calm. I walk into the Office Park compound. The car park is not as full as usual.
You know that bout of unwanted thoughts that invade you from out of the blue? That annoying urge to go far away from everything and just be alone. I have a lot of those. Especially on Monday mornings. I have nothing against Mondays. Actually, I kinda look forward to them. Mondays always breathe a new sense of being into me. Because you never know what will happen that week. You don’t know what weird man will honk at you as you take your routine 15 minute walk up that suburban Westlands road. You have no idea who you will bump into in the bus or on the street. Your employer may come up with a whole new way of doing things. You might even end up writing a post you had no idea you could in here. Your computer could decide this is the week it freezes a gazillion times between 9 and 5. The possibilities are limitless.
Today, I am feeling bad because I am still single. Yes. It happens. All the time. I always wonder how long this will go on. What my chances are of meeting someone while behind the keyboard for 3/4 of my days. The other 1/4 I am asleep of course. The thing about this feeling of desperation today is that it is different. It is different because I am no longer in campus. I am about a year old out here since leaving the great Moi University. That institution was quite something. If you frequent this space (or rather, the old blog) you know how I could go on and on and on about that institution.
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