I came across a pin that had these insightful and fun questions and decided to respond to them. So, ten questions and ten brief answers, here goes:
What color do you talk in?
Orange and sometimes black
Radio or mp3?
Definitely mp3, radio’s lost it’s lustre
What movie character would you choose to be your parent and why?
Look I already have a Mom who is a Kenyan version of Madea, but for some reason, I wouldn’t mind an extra dosage of crazy, as long as I don’t have to bail her out of jail.
Would you rather have clouds for feet or suns for hands?
Clouds for feet
If you could breathe music, which artist would you choose to inhale and which would you choose to exhale?
Are there things you wished you always had in your bag?
They may be things you have but just don’t always carry them around or they could be things that you do not have but wish you certainly did. I have shared what’s in my bag before and thought why not share the 10 things I wish were always in my bag:
1. An extra vest. I am not a sleeveless kinda girl, but of late the heat in Kisumu has me seriously considering a wardrobe change mid-work.
2. My antiperspirant. Look I believe in applying this stuff once, but sometimes when I see the patch of sweat on my t-shirt, I wonder what I’d be able to do with this in my bag.
3. A pair of flip flops, because hey, I am all about being laid back.
4. A platinum card. Now, who wouldn’t like access to cash that they could spend once or twice on themselves without having to make a mental note of how much goes to what and what?
5. Enough space to carry everything in my bag without being weighed down by it. I need a bottomless bag, like the one that Mary Poppin’s had.
6. A first aid kit. I just saw that the one I want is the size of my lunch box and goes for Ksh. 1295. I’ve got my eyes on that one!
7. Thermos Mug/ Cool portable flask. Look, I am all about my coffee, I’ll have to invest in this. I got one from my Mom for my birthday last year, it’s a cool 500ml black flask, but you know the gods of sheer sleek design be tempting us mundanes on Supermarket shelves. The one I am visualizing as I type this costs Kshs. 1345, so I’ll keep that in mind too!
8. The mute card. Have you ever wanted to mute people for saying something outrageous in public? I need a ‘disappear card’ too for all those trolls on social media.
9. Sunglasses (look, I don’t own a pair, and I am thinking of getting one)
I don’t know what type these are, but they sure look like something I could wear and maybe not cry-when I either (a) lose them or (b) break them
10. Food Container that has fresh fruits. Look, this is just my way of admitting that I am weird, because I am the Queen when it comes to freelancing. No, I do not mean work when I say freelancing, but I can eat while running, sprinting, walking, in a matatu, just snacking! So, this container wish is all about trying to act composed.
What are some of the things you wish were in your bag?
Let me tell you about the time when eating sim sim saved my life.
This was around 2013 and I was working for an organization that had just embarked on community entry in Siaya. It was my duty to work with the local administration and this included doing a census of every village I was assigned.
Have you ever visited fifty four homesteads in six hours?
I visited more than this and given the varying terrain, it meant walking for hours, meeting and greeting everyone I came across and mapping my way through each homestead whilst keeping an eye on landmarks.
On this particular day, I had carried one liter of drinking water and two apples. We got to the location, some place called Boro and had to make our way around a village there and then proceed to another village near the Lake, miles away at Harambee. It sounded like something simple, but by midday, I had already emptied my bottle of water and we had just arrived at Harambee.
I had to visit at least a hundred households by four and I had already consumed my second apple.
It gets to three in the afternoon and we have covered more than half the homesteads. Yes, all thanks to this Village Elder who insisted that I call her “Min Rosa,” and who walked like she was floating on water, especially when we’d be climbing rocks, or walking through cassava and maize plantations. We get to this plain field and I put my bag down and ask her if there is a shop around.
At this point, she looks at me, places her hands on her hips and says “the only shop we have is at Harambee, it’s two hours from here.” Now by this time, my knees are stuck to one another, my breath is coming up short and I know for sure that I am going to die of hunger, thirst or the heat. I am in Siaya somewhere near the lake and hippos love strolling the main land in the evening, and I don’t want to meet a hippo or get eaten by one. I also know that in my condition I cannot outrun the creature!
Min Rosa just stands there, then she says “give me a minute, let me send word to my home,” and she takes off.
I lie down and think of all the jobs that I could be doing. I think of the way I knew I would be a Counselor and now I was dying of thirst in a remote village in Siaya.
Hunger is a beautiful tormentor.
See, as I am lying on that ground, I see this wild plant(Lantana Camara), the Luos call it “Nyabende,” they have these tiny seeds that look like blackberries and are quite tasty. (Don’t ask). The plant itself is a treasure because you could use the leaves as a broom, as an air freshener for your pit latrine, or as tissue paper (and it’s pretty rough on the ass). So, I look at the Nyabende all around me and I think, well, this is like the situation with the Israelites, even though I could use some chicken and chapati, nyabende is just as well.
Nyabende aka Lantana Camara/Photography Art Plus
I try to get up, but cannot move my upper torso. It was like a failed sit-up. So, I keep trying but by this time, I know two things for sure: my vision is blurry and I cannot feel my limbs.
I stay there for a while hoping it’ll pass, but the more I try to blink my eyes, all I see are dark shadows. At this point, I remember, praying, asking God not to let me die out in the sun miles away from my Mom.
When I come to, Min Rosa is on phone beside me, my t-shirt is wet, so is my face and hair. There is a small girl with a blue basin seated beside us and she is looking at me like I fell from the sky.
“Did you get your friend?” I finally ask Min Rosa.
“Yes and now, you decide to die while I have turned my back? Why couldn’t you shout my name? You know the heat is too much but you did not say a thing, we could have asked for a glass of water at the last house we visited, why would you want your people to send me to jail? I have two children and a lazy husband, who will go to the farm when they send me to Kodiaga…”
I remember turning to the girl and asking what she had in the basin. She removed the lesso and right there were these round balls of sim sim. She said she was taking them to the market to sell and I reached into my bag, gave her a hundred shilling note and asked her to empty the sim sims in my bag.
Before she started emptying them, I had already eaten three balls.
I ate some more then it dawned on me that I had no water, so I had to ask Min Rosa to make a stop at the next home so we could ask for drinking water but she shook her head and said “Jogo jojuogi, kidwaro lokri jajuog piti piti to temie” (they practice witchcraft, if you want to be a witch, running naked into the night, then try).
And that is how sim sim saved my life!
By the way, this is what I was talking about:
Wait, did you know that Sesame is gluten-free? Like these seeds are so awesome that the greatest producer of Sesame is Myanmar? Oh, wait and yeah China, India and Mexico too.
It means I got to do most of what I wanted done, and that a cup of coffee was involved, a few good conversations and a walk around town.
However the best part was being able to listen to Kiss Daniel’s Laye without breaking into dance on the street. If you saw some girl in a grey t-shirt, khaki shorts, black ngomas and a maroon back pack dancing in the ‘Plastics aisle’ at Choppies in Kisumu, please don’t rule her out as crazy, she could have been me.
This song right here:
Let’s get a move on, so I have not done much writing given that I was unwell earlier this week. What I have done so far is to take notes and I realized that when you are half dizzy, you can actually come up with some pretty solid stuff, even though I can barely make out what I wrote, I feel quite refreshed.
So, I sent my entry for this years Miles Morland Writing Scholarship. I’d like to submit another entry too for the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize. If there’s one competition that I have never failed to submit an entry, it’s got to be the Commonwealth Short story prize, but hey, it’s always a great feeling piling up the regret letters, looking at that email banner and smiling thinking…”I’ll win this.”
On reading:
I am looking forward to reading three titles this weekend:
McMillan Cottom has crafted a black woman’s cultural bible, as she mines for meaning in places many of us miss and reveals precisely how—when you’re in the thick of it—the political, the social, and the personal are almost always one and the same.
How do you recognize the love of your life? Do you have butterflies in your stomach? Do you see showers of sparks and fireworks as soon as he steps into the room? Or, is your big love composed of something quieter? Annie longs for nothing more in her life than someone to love her with his whole heart. With Holden, this wish seems fulfilled, and the two build their own world. But how much pain can happiness bear? When something utterly shocking happens, Annie’s life becomes unstable, and nothing is as it once was. Then, she unexpectedly bumps into her teenage love Seth, and her life is completely thrown off balance—especially when fate intends its own tragic story.
The template comes in three parts provided in three books: 1) The Archetypal Big Debt Cycle (which explains the template), 2) 3 Detailed Cases (which examines in depth the 2008 financial crisis, the 1930’s Great Depression, and the 1920’s inflationary depression of Germany’s Weimar Republic), and 3) Compendium of 48 Cases (which is a compendium of charts and brief descriptions of the worst debt crises of the last 100 years). Whether you’re an investor, a policy maker, or are simply interested, the unconventional perspective of one of the few people who navigated the crises successfully, A Template for Understanding Big Debt Crises will help you understand the economy and markets in revealing new ways.
I am in my feelings this week. I think it has something to do with being sick, because for someone who believed that she’d not be struck down by Malaria, well, it proved me wrong. The past three days have been as nauseating, sweaty, dizzy and full of a bitter after taste as only Malaria can serve.
I discovered that I love oranges.
Yes, well, I am more of a banana girl, and oranges were just not my thing, until Sunday evening! So, yeah, I definitely like oranges.
Unsplash.com
Before I get ahead of myself, let me state that inasmuch as I never liked the fruit, my favorite color is Orange and I can drink Fanta Orange any time!
I know, I am in my feelings and if you are like me, you’ve probably counted the number of “I”s that have made it into this post thus far.
It feels good to write today and staring at a computer screen without getting a major headache is the most welcome relief.
I wanted to write another short story series for this coming week, something that’s closer to my heart in life, a bit of my life experiences that meant something and in a way still do, and now I am glad that I can finally settle down and get to it. (It’s a bit different from the Love in the Office series).
My music playlist has shifted these few days and I find myself listening to these five songs on repeat and I’m stuck on them:
My friend says that I am a ball of energy and she can never contain herself around me. She also adds that I have my guard way up high that I never let anyone in, and she fears what tomorrow holds for me and I always tell her not to worry and stuff my face with cake. Well, I am in my feelings, and I’m taking each feeling as it comes, for now, I am looking outside the window…knowing that it’s coming to rain and I feel like I could write this new feeling a letter and give it a piece of my mind.
I was talking to small scale, Capsicum farmers in Vihiga this past week, and my intention was to get their views on horticultural farming. It was almost noon as I approached them. They had been told someone was coming to talk to them and interview them about farming and the perks of farming, but they were never told it would be someone “as tiny” as me (their words, not mine). So, I sat down, pulled out my notebook and made my intentions clear- I wanted to hear their experience, both good and bad. I would jot down one or two things, ask to quote one or two phrases, take pictures and share the final review with their sponsors.
One of them asked “Where do you take this information? We have been interviewed and our photos have been taken so many times, but nothing comes out of it.”
I nodded, knowing that when he said something, he meant monetary gain and having worked in various communities across Western Kenya, it is no secret that non-governmental organizations have in the past, and some still do, give handouts to people in areas of intervention.
However, he got me thinking about the surge of doing good and posting it on Facebook. There have been many posts that filled my feed which involved someone posting a story about ‘hey, I saw this homeless guy, and bought him food,’ or ‘this woman in a wheelchair was having a tough time crossing the street and I helped.’
So, do we do good for good or for good’s sake?
Is it for the number of likes, comments, retweets, reposts or shares that we flaunt what we did to the gods and goddesses of social media?
As I was looking into what’s been written on good deeds, I also learned that museums and historic sites banned, visitors from taking pictures for varied reasons from copyright to maintaining order. I digress, but it’s not to say that there is no power or benefit of doing a good deed.
I still struggle with this because I have done it in the name of work, in drafting donor reports, success stories and following leads on impact stories for various organizations that I have worked for. It still baffles me ‘should we give with one hand while taking a picture with the other?’
At what point should we do a good deed and not tell a soul about it or expect a good deed in return?
For what it’s worth, there’s this beautiful saying we have here in Kenya that goes “Tenda wema, nenda zako,” if I were to directly translate it, it’d be something like “do good, go your own way.”
Do you do good for good or for good’s sake?
Honestly speaking, I don’t know, not anymore and sometimes I wonder, where does that leave me?
Earlier this month, I applied for the Sauti ya Dada Workshop and I was excited when they accepted my application and invited me to the workshop. I got on a Guardian tablet and braved six and a half hours of travel to be in Nairobi. Why? I love writing and this was an opportunity for not just experiencing something new but also committing myself to writing and exploring non-fiction and long form writing.
I woke up on Saturday, layered up (because the gods of chill visit Nairobi more than they do Kisumu) and got to the PAWA254 hub thirty minutes early. We were twenty phenomenal women writers; different races, tribes, ages, professions and all of us shared one thing- love for writing.
The session was led by Nanjala, a Writer, and the one message that she constantly shared was the need for more women’s voices in the non-fiction writing field.
The challenge was “Would you still write it, if nobody read it?”
I learned more about establishing an argument, conducting focused research that would substantiate my argument. Then there was a session on the Basics of Storytelling and Interviews by Buzzfeed‘s East Africa Correspondent, Tamerra. Her approach and insights on writing for an international audience was great in providing a grand scheme or better yet, worldview on writing. The next sessions built upon data, fact checking, pitching to editors and what to expect when it comes to writing op-eds and long form essays.
The Sauti Ya Dada workshop took place today at PAWA254 UBUNTU space. The workshop seeks to train women in writing for the public sphere with a focus on long form and non fiction and was facilitated by @Nanjala1#WomenInWriting#TheWriteChangepic.twitter.com/c6SGiKxP0Z
Here’s my personal take on this workshop; it is crucial to share experiences, knowledge and skills when we can and now more than ever there’s a need for more women writers, the best way to look this is up, is to simply take a daily paper or long form publication and tell me how many of the long form articles are written by women.
The team at PAWA254 are doing a phenomenal venture in reaching out to diverse people and providing a platform for free expression whilst enhancing human interaction and rights.
The question still remains, “why do I write?” but it’s gotten more profound with “for whom do I write and what do I expect my writing to do?”
It’s Saturday and I came across this fun tag on Victoria’s blog Be Careful of Books and I loved her responses. So, let’s get into it:
Photography: Andrew Neel
What do you write?
I write a variety of things from short stories to novels.
What do you mostly write about?
I write about life’s challenges and often make sure I mix up my characters. However, there’s always one who is playful that somehow makes light of a difficult situation.
What’s you favorite thing about writing?
The fact that I can create a world that’s either a mirror image of what I live in or sometimes that I can use words to make myself laugh, cry, get angry or swoon.
What/Who inspired you to start/keep writing?
Grief. My sister and I watched our Dad take his last breath and being a Daddy’s girl, I could not comprehend the drastic changes that came with his passing. I was nine years old and whenever I yearned to talk to him, I would write him a letter, tell him about school, our lives and I just kept writing.
I kept on writing because I realized that there were days I could act as though I had nothing to jot down but sometimes, I’d find myself waking up in the middle of the night, or noting things down- so I guess, I tried to shake it off, but the writing persisted.
Who’s your favorite character you’ve made up?
Ukweli. He’s a Seer, a Prince and the King’s brother in The Currents Series I published a while back. I love how conflicted he was but he stuck to his calling, I’m restless and do not commit easily, so creating a character that’s my polar opposite is an achievement that I still cherish to date.
When did you start writing?
When I was nine, but I started exploring creative fiction when I was twelve. My Mom bought us books to read and she always had epic folk tales to tell us.
First story you wrote?
Butterfly Gossips. It was this awesome novel I wrote about twins: Sasha and Tasha who fell in love with the same guy. I was in Form 2, for heaven’s sake and aside from the story, what I remember vividly was the poor art work! I leave sketching to those who wish to indulge.
Do you have a Writing Schedule? Like, do you write everyday or just when you feel like it?
I have a schedule and I also write when I feel like it.
The schedule is very important for long works of fiction, like if say, I am writing a book or an article. Sometimes, for blog posts, I write when I feel inspired to share something.
Do you want to be published?
I have self-published. For years, before I explored self-publishing, I reached out to many traditional publishers here in Kenya and the feedback was either negative or non-existent, but I’ve taken the path of self-publishing and I like it. So, I’ll stick to it for a while.
All done, and I’ll leave this to any writer who’d like to give it a go.
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nilichoandika 