i close my eyes so i can see...

It’s Friday, and I am up in arms. It’s also Friday, and I’m sated.

Let’s start with the sated, naturally. The beauty of being in a small town is I think the concept of the market day. I used to read back in the day those old African writ novels, talking about women really psyched up for market day. Come the day, houses were cleaned extra early, food for the kids prepared way in advance and at sunrise the journey began to the local marketplace. I think that still happens na huko ndani ndani… Me, I wait for 10am when the sun is up and scorching. Not too wise a move of course, but oh well. 

So in my hometown our market days are on Friday. Well, and Sunday, but that Sunday one is for food, and not at all as interesting. So Friday, like Friday needed any help getting awesomer… Anyhow, I went to the market today for the first time since I got back, it was hot as hell, but definitely worth it. And I got to do a few other things I’d been putting off on account of the heat. Yes, it’s that serious. No, I must not be joking. Or yes, maybe I just dislike leaving the house. It was worth it though, I got to buy a few more clothes I don’t really need with money I don’t really have… Ah!! Gotta love life….

Now unto the up in arms part. Here I am, totally minding my own business finally browsing through my newsfeed, still sated. Now, I am generally skeptical about most things I see on the internet, because many people will say anything for a million likes (I’m looking at you, those who tell us liking a photo will raise a dollar for whatever. Is that usually true? I feel like it should be a lot harder than that, getting a dollar, but what do I know right?) Anywho, so I see this totally horrifying picture of a man burnt to death. You know how after an accident and  they want to show the footage the news anchor somberly warns us that some photos may be really graphic? Yeah, those warnings are for me usually. 

I wish I could unsee that picture. But then I also don’t want to. Because I’ve kept silent on this gay human rights issue for too long. Maybe because I’ve got gay friends I’d give my kidney and part of my liver for. I refuse to think about them as gay I guess, I just don’t see that part of their lives. It’s just a thing in the air I don’t at all register. Would it be simpler if they weren’t, I don’t know, I guess… it’s always easier when you don’t have a face to attach to a concept, so that it’s just something you abstractly know about…

Anyway, last year Uganda’s parliament passed that controversial ‘Kill the Gays’ bill, it’s just awaiting the President’s assent, which assent he seems reluctant to give for some reason. I don’t want to get into all that; I wish to not thrust my foot into my mouth at this time. :) :) :) So that’s what captioned the offensive photo. Maybe he was burnt for other reasons; maybe he was burned for being gay. But Christ, HE WAS BURNED!!!! with people watching!! Who does that? It’s a human being; it’s a human being, goodness… What did he do that was so bad you’d stand there and watch him burn? 

(exit outrage, enter normal)

Nonetheless, I think: homophobia is a load of hogwash… you can’t put me right up there with racists and xenophobes, simply because I’m not comfortable with same gender PDA… I’m not a homophobe, I’m normal, jeez!!! Though I suppose if I burned you to death or passed a law to imprison you, yeah, I could start to believe you have a point. I think those activists may be being counterproductive towards themselves, calling everyone who doesn’t raise their banner and laud them a homophobe. If you kill, hate or ‘correctively rape’ another human being for being gay, you’re a bad person. Like how they did all three to Eudy Simelane. If you just prefer to not have it shoved in your face, not so much. There’s a big difference.

The beauty of writing for no one in particular is that there are no deliverables. You can just stop, without concluding, or making all the sense in the world. Though I suppose this might count as some conclusion. Well then, Beracchah rests.

our hope endures...

P.S:   I don’t know whether it’s the New Year, or the writing gig finally releasing my words from the confines of my head, but, hey, I’m writing chronically, and that’s always good news…

Tonight I got into bed, sat down and did my usual pre-vigil rituals, and decided that maybe this should be one of those days I sleep early. I’ve got no writing to do, which is most of what keeps me awake till wee. So I should sleep early, do tomorrow some service by being well-rested. After the usual running around the bed, lying prostrate on the floor, nodding eight times, spitting at the ancestors  :) :) :) and the full spectrum of my customary dealings, I was ready to go to sleep. 

So I’m one of those bad people who sleeps with the laptop next to the pillow, and today was no exception, except this time when I took it up to take a last lap round the necessary in-trays, I remembered this sticky note I’d placed on my desktop to look for this “Jesus to the World” song I’d heard on One Gospel a ways back. And it had just sat there… yesterday I couldn’t find a downloadable .mp3 version, you know, saving the bundles. I found it today, at the exact place I looked yesterday. Aunty Beaty would be pleased to caption this moment, she’s always telling me to “tafuta vitu kama girl”. I never do. 

Anyway, so here’s the song, Loyiso Bala is awesome. I literally have it on replay tonight, the whole night. Talk about self-hypnotization.

Nevertheless, this song reminds me of some devotional I read by this 19^th century guy, Oswald Chambers. “And the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends.” And he was saying that there is no better time to pour oneself out for others than when you things aren't working in your life and faith as you hoped. Hhhmmm… some paradox. When you have a sick person in the family it’s easy to forget that outside of you guys life goes on. Your view of life compresses to them, a day at a time. Because if you count the weeks turning into months, it’s easy to feel like there comes no end in sight. 

But life goes on, other people hit bumpy patches on their road too… my friend’s mum is in ICU, another is sick, another’s mum suffered a heart attack… Others are hitting bumpy patches. Life goes on. So here’s what Loyiso says:

Because our hope remains,

As we receive we freely give away

As we are filled we are sent out again

Taking Jesus to the world

Jesus to the world, Jesus to the streets

Jesus in my hands, meeting others’ needs

Jesus to the world Jesus breaking chains

Because our hope remains

I’m taking Jesus to the world

Rather than fixate on what’s going on in my life, I should be doing what I can for someone else. So there, we have watched, we have prayed, we have almost lost faith, we haven’t… Still we stand… and now I’m taking requests, :)))))))))))) anyone who thinks I can be an answer to their prayer, ndiye huyu mimi, ready and at your service. Lol!!! No, seriously though… There is much gain from intercession. 

My mum is a staunch believer in herbal remedies, meaning over the years I’ve seen some ‘interesting’ concoctions, the best of which has always been aloe vera. When I have anything from rash to woman pains, there she comes with it. I promptly remember that I can manage the pain after all, coz that stuff is magic, lakini…. She just smiles and says “When you’re in real pain, utaikunywa tu”. Anyway, this one time it was so bad I woke her up at 5am like I was three all over again. As usual, she sent for the herb, which she has conveniently filled our backyard veggie garden with. When it came, I drank it, no question and no hesitation. She’s right, again.

My point, sometimes when you’ve tried so many things and someone tells you this will work, you do it in a heartbeat, just because it might work. This is where I’m at. So if God says look out and be a blessing, I’ll do it. Help me Jesus…

hail to the geeks

DISCLAIMER: It’s a hot Saturday afternoon, I’m sequestered, lain on the coolest place I could find - the floor, listening to rock music from 2004, enjoying my own company. Ergo, I’m not sure what I want to say. So I might say nothing at all.

I met a geek. For some reason I’ve always liked geeks. Geeks, not nerds, not sure there’s a difference, but oh well… so geeks, you know, text-book (preferably IT) geeks, socially awkward until they’re talking about stuff they actually know stuff about. Maybe it’s got something to do with my brothers, who knew stuff about stuff, and were very smart, or very talented. Growing up two were, actually still are, musical geniuses who can probably play any instrument. Everybody says it’s my dad, most of whose photos from back then have him wielding a guitar. The other was THAT BOY, you know, the one who the headmaster offered Kshs. 300 to anyone who would ever beat him. But no one did. For the three years he was in primary after we moved to Mumias, he was first. And me, well, then there was me. 

I guess I just loved looking at them being them, and wonder where I fit…. So I became a mass of contradictions… few things have changed since. Anyway, I sorely digressed. Refer back to before, I was saying geeks. I think I might marry one one day :) :) :) :) so we can be socially awkward together. Crowds freak me out, strange crowds. The only time I have a voice is on paper. So, I was writing about this data protection program last week, computer stuff, about which I know just enough to get by, and I discovered I was strangely fascinated. Somehow I think that in the course of my travels, I’ll have done so many things, before I finally settle into being me. Which suits my ends marvelously. 

But I guess I just have one of those minds. I’m ridiculously fascinated by knowledge, any knowledge. Okay, knowledge about how stuff works I guess. I figure I might tie myself because I’ve not read as wide. But every time someone is talking about how stuff works, I’m all ears. Doesn’t matter whether I understand or not. I don’t think anything’s more on-turning than a man in his element, doing the thing that he does best, or talking about it. It’s the reason I loved what I did in campus, even though I haven’t found much use for most of it yet. If nothing else, I get to continually poke holes in my mum’s internet-derived theories about what’s good for the body. That, and those times we'd be studying ridiculous pathways, and I'd see something totally cool, and go like, "Hey Creator of Man, I see what You did there, good one!" It’s almost reward enough :))))))

So anyway, I’ve been blog housekeeping, and combing the hindernet for a template that has my name written all over it (it seriously wouldn’t hurt if my name was written all over it), but then as a result I’ve got some of these things I have no use for. Like that ‘follow me on twitter’ up there that doesn’t work, and is of little use, because my twitter account has 3 tweets :))))))) and I don’t want anyone to find out I actually have one. Oh drat and double drat!! More so after visiting my brother’s and finding that he’s got 9694 tweets. Where do you even catch up from right? Hence how I started this conversation about geeks. There, now we’ve gone full circle. We can stop.

to Sir, with love

I think staying up late has become to me some sort of religion, every day I must fall asleep the same day I wake up. It’s definitely one of the things I miss most during early morning seasons, so I guess it’s awesome that I can indulge every day for a while. This evening was one of those super laid-back evenings. Just Aunty BT, mum and I, and a whole lot of giggly lady stories and laughs… It’s ironic that our home is now a ladies’ den, because I only have brothers. I digress. I don’t think we’ve had an evening to just live and let live, laugh till tears roll down our faces in a while… Mostly you’re busy getting this done, that done, finding out whether he needs something… You know even though  nobody wants to admit it, one gets drained serving. Martha did… and I don’t think it was coz she’s a bad person either… On occasion you just need to have time to get to those things that you never get a minute to do, because between nursing and work and normal chores and classes, something will not get the attention due it. 

So today we dealt with those, the huge pile of laundry for ironing that almost displaced us from the room, shelves and what-nots that hadn’t been touched in forever…Getting ready for his return… doing chores whilst listening to Joyce Meyer and her funny practical home truths, hhhmmm…. Do your responsibility and cast the care… many people cast the responsibility and keep the care… The son who started out demanding to be given, and matured into “Make me one of your servants”. 

Anyway, we were reflecting on the last few weeks, and what we’ve seen dad work through… it’s just amazing… when I came from Nairobi soon after he fell ill I remember my heart stopping for a while. Okay, nearly stopping for a while. But here he is, talking some, he didn’t even have a voice then, eating some, gaining back some of the weight, slowly mending… I think I’ve been too engrossed with the worry of “When Lord when” to actually call the progress like it is... but I see it now… And he’s an amazing man, the other day when I had to leave him at the hospital, he was the one trying to calm me down, telling me that he’s there because there’s no other way to treat him, and that I shouldn’t worry it’s not a huge deal… 

I’m the baby of the home, and after high school I’ve spent most of my time around home, so maybe I’m a little ‘contained’. Dads are supposed to be Superman, and I thank God because he was that, and so much more… from those times when he’d jav from Eld with milk and a bunch of other stuff every Friday, leaving early Monday morning… As much as time permitted he was there, he’s always been around… And I count our family as one of the more fortunate ones…

So tonight I lay aside the worry, I cast the care, I am doing what is my responsibility at the present time. It is well. Because Romans 8:28. Si.

my hometown...

I should stop this wanting to blog on holidays thing. It makes me seem like I write for special occasions. But I guess writing is like a bathroom break, you gotta go when you gotta go. Well, I may not have the gene encoding excitement over the calendar, but 1^st Jan is one of those days even I consider. Consider, not go bananas… I used to think it was another chance at a fresh start, until I discovered it was also just another set of 24 hours, much like my birthday and all else in between. You start anywhere, where you are at the time you decide to start. And the millions of corny forwards!!! Anyway, I’m taking these genes back where I got them. I need feelings.

There’s a baby in our house today. That happens every once in never, so I guess it’s special in a way. Until it’s nightfall and the little bundle of gladness would rather cry than sleep… with a headache the size of Russia, it’s the last thing I need… but then we recall, children are a heritage from the Lord, and blessed in he who has a quiver full of them. Though I’m certainly glad tonight our quiver is full of just the one :)

 

It rained too, after sweltering heat these past weeks, and the coolness is definitely something I enjoy… May it multiply in the new year, that, and the lovely sunsets, you gotta love the sunsets in Mumias. I haven’t seen anything quite like them. Except maybe the full moon rising from the basketball court in high school. Every full moon we stole away after prep to just go see it rise, so close you could just touch it... Maybe it was that much more priceless because we were where we shouldn’t have been, but whatever… Yes, that far back. Yes, I still remember… Good times!

My pops has been sick for some time, it was bad, and then good and then bad, and now it’s somewhere in between, good health taking it’s sweet time showing up…  What that has done over time is put us in a kind of time warp, moving from one day to the next, praying and monitoring. Most days are good days :) In a way I’m thinking my circadian rhythm is way off course, when is today? (It’s against the law to drug babies who are not sick, no? Drat!!!) I keep thinking Tuesday, I was sure this year Christmas was on Tuesday, which means I went a whole week a day behind. It probably doesn’t help that we’re watching soccer at 9pm… those news guys tell us the day and time, though much good that does with only 3 hours left to the day I guess… Anyway, mum’s been a dynamo of strength and calm, even though we know she feels all things but… More than anything, I want him to be back on his feet… My lips to Your ears Lord…

Replaying Bruce Springsteen’s “My Hometown”. Seems apt to play Tree Hill music when narrating one’s life, walking down the trodden paths… Well, it’s a new year… I won’t have the flu for the rest of the year (thank God the baby slept!!)… But it’s gonna be awesome…

w00p w00p!!! Happy New Year!!!