Hold up. How can I be writing about how the fourth trimester is going two years later? Well, because time flies, you forget to write about it, then you find…
Tag: <span>Women</span>
Yes. I coined a term for my new life. If you have been here long enough, you know I used to write about singlehood every month, with unashamed contentment. Then…
So, a few minutes ago I was lying in bed, stalking someone I bumped into on the streets of Nairobi today. Stalking them online. I have a reputation for that. Eventually I landed on my blog and thought I’d read some old posts. Then I started editing some typos from months back. Then I ended up on my ‘What’s in My Bag’ post from 2016. And then I asked myself, what excuse do I have for not writing a 2017 version? After all, I think showing what’s in my bag this year might lead me to tell you all something I should have told you if I was writing as expected. So here we go.
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.
You get a good amount of rain on you today. In a skirt. You shiver alright, but you have to go to church. Today is an interesting one. You have been separated into groups. You are in the 20+ group. The crazies. The facilitator decides you are going to break into smaller groups and discuss relationships. In the end, it is very clear you are one of very many singles. Too many. It’s a bit sad. It seems the issue is not really the men, like you’re all trying to believe. It’s you. The men also have their own issues, but from where you are seated, laughing at the shouting match, you nod at their points, while your fellow girls shout them down. It makes you wonder why you are in the group claiming independence and lack of compatibility. Why won’t you find someone who is compatible? One guy stands up and says girls are confused and do not know what they want. Reason, one girl said we want simple acts of love, another said guys are broke. You sure are confused. Or maybe you all just want different things.
One year ago, I wrote this post. I remember because of this awesome tool I use called missinglett_r. This amazing website lets me schedule blog posts for an entire year. I just sit back and relax, waiting to discover what it has posted on my Twitter after someone comments or retweets. So if you’re a blogger, you know what to do. It is mostly free. You’re welcome. 😉
Anyway, we were talking about singlehood. As usual. Maybe I should stop talking about it, right? In the meantime, as we chew on that thought, let’s see what has changed since one year ago. Am I still gaining weight? Nope. I have made a conscious decision to stop myself from doing so. It is not quite healthy, gaining weight ovyoovyo, to be honest. Regardless of all those all-up-in-your-biz mamas who keep asking why you are not eating during family get-togethers. Don’t listen to those mamas. They want you look like them, which is not healthy at all. Maybe they could avoid it themselves and it’s culturally acceptable to gain weight as a symbol of “having arrived”. If you can avoid blowing up without making a huge effort, then avoid it. Not even for the look but for the health of it all. Your future babies need you in one piece. Exercise. Eat natural things. Give natural yoghurt a shot. That thing sucks but it’s for the greater good. Tell yourself that, it will keep you going.
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.
The not writing was getting toxic, so I am back to writing as often as I possibly can. Last July, I wrote a similar post. Can you believe it? It’s been a year! Then I just read it and realized, boy do we change! Just wait and see. Also, this is now, officially a yearly post.
1. Quarter-full bottle of Stoney Tangawizi
Depending on how you look at is, that is. It is three-quarter full if you subscribe to that school of thought. I am not a fan of soda, but sometimes, I insist. This is from Friday. Imagine. And it’s still fizzy.
Takeaway: Plastic bottles are not that bad, they keep stuff fresh. Just dispose them of correctly.
2. Notebook
This is still here, as was last year. Only a different notebook. Kartasi. More or less still new. My other bag has one that I used for sermon notes yesterday. Paper Factory brand. Those are the cutest notebooks!
Takeaway: Oh, Shiku has another bag! What?!
It’s been a minute since you thought about this topic.
Lie.
Everywhere you turn, that topic is bound to crop up. Think back to this Sunday. The first thing that happens when you walk into the church compound is a friend telling you that he dreamt of attending your wedding. Somebody say amen? He insisted on it, even after bumping into him again after the service, even though the last time you talked was ages ago. This is not the only dream that someone has told you about btw.
You know exactly what you want. But so as to make things sound complicated, to not hurt people, you tell them you don’t know what you want. People here being men. You know you want a man who knows what he wants, not just by word but by action. You want someone who, right from the start, made his intentions known. Someone who is decisive. Someone who does not practise certain rituals that you do not approve of. Think about something like drinking. Not milk. Alcohol. This, especially, is becoming increasingly hard to have as a “don’t” on your dos and don’ts list. It makes you wonder whether your list is too prefect. Like seriously. You know exactly what you want, you just haven’t found it yet.
I would wonder what it’s like to be a woman, to do nothing but wait for a man to come knocking. That’s what you men think we do, right? Nothing but wait for you? Yeah? Well, if I were a man, I’d think the same too, so I don’t blame you. I’d think deeply before making my intentions known to any lady, because I would know that she would go ahead and tell her friends all about what I did and said on our first date. If I were a man, I would not pretend to understand women and their cycles. I would not play hard to get. Why would I do that when the woman is also playing the same game? I would know that’s how people end up in the friendzone. I’d pay for dates. I’d let her pay if she really insisted on doing so and near caused a scene. I’d not pull chairs or open doors for her. They have hands for this. No point having awkward situations because she’s not used to it. I would, however, give ladies way, and general gestures they are used to.
Depending on whether you live in a cave or not, this may or may not come as a shock. It started as a bluff. Everyday I’d wake up and joke about it. I’d comb my hair different just to see what people would say. During the combing, half my hair would fall to the floor of my bedroom. It was just sad. A visit to the salon would make me feel stupid. Nothing would change despite leaving money behind with the hairdresser. The pixie cut lost its form. A colleague asked me if I go to the salon at all because it looked bad. And that was the end of me and that pixie, in my head. Everyone thought I didn’t care about my hair. That was bad. I stopped going to the salon. I would wash am treat my hair myself at home, contemplating my next move.
Don’t you just love the feeling when you get home and loosen all your clothes and feel free to be you? You know, get rid of that annoying bra that you only notice is tight at 7 pm? That pair of pants that gets real tight at the tummy when you sit in your swivel chair after lunch? That pair of shoes you bought this weekend that only became tight when you walked out of the shop? I know you know what I’m talking about, girls. I don’t know about the boys in the building and whether they ever wear things they can’t wait to get out of, but hey, who knows, right? Maybe they will tell us.
You sigh a lot nowadays, whether in text or physically. You rarely feel anything anymore. You have lived long enough to know some things are not worth wasting your emotions over. Even when you do feel something, you’re human after all, you move on very fast.
You have a crush in the office building. He looks like a sweet chap. But every moment you get, you ignore him, pretend not to see him, unless your eyes lock and you have no choice of pretending not to have seen him. Hi there. He probably has a girlfriend or wife, in all likelihood.
Sigh. It’s mid Jan. How did that happen? You struggle to get out of bed today, as always. You remember sleeping without answering all the texts on your phone. One was about an engagement on Facebook. Facebook will never leave you alone, will it? Despite you not logging in for two months. The other was a good night from another friend. You wanted to reply but couldn’t. Not that you had something else to do except read that book that has you glued to its pages and lying in bed in all sorts of awkward positions.