My love for coffee is stronger than Museveni’s grip on power. You can’t separate us, ask the doctor in Pandya; he tried, but we will not let haters rain on our love parade. We are stuck together like chewing gum on hair.

A couple of days ago, I put some water on the cooker to boil some coffee. I didn’t want to stand there and watch it come to a boil. Do you know how boring that is; just standing there waiting for the endothermic reaction to complete? I decided to do other world-saving activities such as scrubbing toilets bowls and screaming at tiny humans to pick their toys from the floor.

My world-saving acts were very fruitful, but I forgot about the simmering pot of coffee as promptly as politicians forget their promises. The water evaporated, and my silver aluminum Kaluworks pot was now white.

Another minute and it’d have probably melted; I don’t know the melting point of metals. My mind blocked during the mole concepts class, and it hasn’t opened up.

Continue reading →

My name is Kambura. I was born on a rainy Friday in November in Nazareth Hospital. My dad couldn’t remember what it was called; he’d say he’s going to Jerusalem to see his newborn daughter. It still tickles Mom thirty-five years later.

My mother’s creativity had drained out in the labor that ended up being a Cesarean Section. Losing your creativity in delivery is no mean feat. The labor room is filled with uninhibited creativity —women who have never sang become choir soloists. Two-left feet swollen with edema break into dances, and the hapless husbands and nurses have to watch them do a naked Azonto. Peaceful women who can’t hurt a fly throw punches like boxers and insults like Mombasa touts. These sins are not recorded in God’s book; he did this to us.

He was like fudge – sweet to the tongue but bad for your teeth. The only reason I remember him is that he once said very bad-mannered things to me when we met during music festivals, stuff I’d not repeat here because I’m a former Presbyterian – confirmed and irrigated. I keeled over in shock, which also sent the message that I was cool but not as cool as THAT. That relationship was as strong as boiled spaghetti; we didn’t go far.

My mother was (is?) a teacher. Teachers don’t retire; they just change the venue from the classroom to your everyday life. Have you seen older people who used to be teachers? They exude the same authority they did when they were teachers. You meet them as you drive home to greet your folks with your kids in the backseat, and you start wondering if you have finished your art and craft homework yet. You still feel like you want to duck into a bush until they pass

Everyone still calls them ‘Mwalimu,’ and they hold your hand with both of theirs when they greet you. They still remind you that these fingers that are now signing deals and contracts with abandon trained them to hold a pencil.  

Continue reading →

I know it’s none of your business, and you’d rather be eating avocado, cursing Jayden for the lockdown or sanitizing your vegetables, but I’m interrupting your Tuesday to tell you that I’m seriously contemplating not getting another baby. I’m only telling you this because … I actually don’t know why I’m telling you this. But it’s about a Kisii.

As it is, I don’t understand how God thought it was wise to let me have kids. I mean, me, who’s always in-over-my head and can barely control my cravings for licking the sufuria that made fried meat, me who still misses patco, goodygoody and dextrosol, me who hasn’t figured out what I want to be when I grow up and who hates adulting – has children. Two! There’s a God in heaven.

The world is overpopulated, there’s a virus roaming the earth like the devil looking for someone to devour, we have debt we will never be able to finish, and the ozone layer is thinning – yet I brought two humans into this world. God is still working his miracles.

I do not have an economic or even environmental reason why I will not get another baby. My excuse is very simple. It’s a Kisii man. Specifically, the Kisii man who was my anesthesiologist when I delivered my second baby.

My duvet is ruined. I mean, a duvet I bought for a song in Kasarani hunters where they sold everything on the streets – from ugly burned chapatis, mandazi, fish to all species of cereals, suitcases, clothes, witchcraft paraphernalia, and drugs.

I didn’t see the last two; I’m a Christian, saved and immersed in many waters, struggling and failing terribly at praying and fasting and waiting for angel Gabby to do his thing with the trumpets. But I’m pretty sure someone was selling those on that stretch between the first street and tenth street. Hunters is not an estate; it’s a market where people never leave.

One of my greatest hopes is that there will be grapes in heaven; my love for grapes is on an illegal bar by now! Haki, if there are no grapes in heaven, I’ll have to see Noah aside and tell him we start a kitchen garden just outside Elijah’s mansion. Elijah is our best bet; we’ll need to appease him so that he doesn’t go all Ahab on us. We need the rain – if it rains there.

As much as the heavenly grapes are a cosmic tourist attraction for me, I don’t want to see them soon. I’m just fine with waiting for the Naivas offers for me to hoard grapes. I love heaven, I want to be there someday, but that day is not today. And when I woke up this morning, I almost felt like it was, which was not a very comforting thought, especially because I was to burn my way there.

Suicide is a grave matter, and that guy you admire so much, the one who is life-goals and looks like he never gets irritated by slow WiFi and has attained nirvana — he was probably thinking of it last evening as he marked his son’s homework. I know of a loved one who has consistently said that he cannot attend the funeral of a person who dies by suicide; that it’s selfish and cowardly. I have my own theory dotted with horrifying personal experiences that I don’t think I’m ready to open to the world yet. Me, who write stories about my past boyfriends and embarrassing life struggles, still has things she can’t talk about. Life is a bottomless pit.

I have seen a loved one attempt suicide, and it wasn’t once. Witnessing a loved one attempt suicide and living with the thought that they were at a place when even you couldn’t help gives your heart a fever so high that medication can’t help. This memory has remained stuck at the back of my mind like chewed gum under a desk, decades later.

A coupe of eye-glasses ago, little Miss T turned my spectacles into double amputees. She came holding the severed arms on the one hand and the ‘eyes’ on the other, feeling very accomplished. Her orthopedics dreams are very valid; she did a pretty clean job amputating the spectacles. I had to shop for new ones.

I roamed the online streets, looking for something that will not cost me many zeros — and we all know eyeglasses frames cost a little more than a Suzuki Alto Engine in these streets. I scrolled up and down Facebook haphazardly, like you do when you’re at the supermarket with plenty of money to burn. When your pockets or bank account is bursting at the seams, you don’t check prices; you don’t check brands, you don’t check for offers and budget packs; you just pick and drop things in your trolley like you’re cleaning out the shelves. You look at Geisha and Rexona soaps the way you look at the beggars on your car window; today, you’re only buying Dettol. Later, you thrust the ATM card into the PDQ machine without missing a heartbeat.

Winny shared a photo of her and her Dad taking a walk to celebrate World Mental Health Day. She said she vowed to celebrate with him, even if it meant ‘kuokota makaratasi pamoja.’ I love such people, such stories. We had a zoom interview for me to get her story, but the network was so bad; it sounded like the radio chewing the tape back in 1990. So I sent her questions and requested that she writes something.

The interview came back in sheng and with 17 emojis. This is my attempt to decode millennial speak. 

…

Everyone knew a mad man in the village; for Winny, this man was her Dad. 

One day, I came home from a school trip and went to look for my mom; I had bought her some yogurt as a gift. She was away at a neighbor, sharing the latest breaking news in the village. After a few words, she told me, ‘dad nacungire kiariki.’ That was the code word for, “He’s lost it again.” This is my earliest memory of my Dad’s illness.

Continue reading →