A few months ago, I recorded my futile attempts at ice-skating here on some outdoor ice skating rink in Germany. Today, I can happily say that I have learnt how to ice-skate! Praise the Lord. It was fun, hard work, some missed classes, and a lot of singing Philippians 4:13..Yes, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. And I can ice-skate! Check out the video below:
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Memories of Yesterday
I remember the last time I met him, before he went to rest with his ancestors. I had always loved going to see the old man, unlike my siblings who preferred to stay back and enjoy the flashing lights and tasteful decoration in the town during the Christmas period. To this day, I can’t explain why the desire to see him always gripped me. After spending time with him, I would have the sense that my existence didn’t really matter; that my knowledge fell short of some unknown mysteries. He told me stories of a world gone by, of my heritage, and of the painful losses that he had endured over the years. He told me of what I was, and what I could be. And on that last day I saw him, I understood what why my mother cried when he died, why she was the daughter he never had, and he, the father she never had.
On that last warm December morning, I went, as usual, to milk his goats. When I walked into his compound, I saw him sitting outside his mud-thatched hut, smoking a pipe and holding on to his rod. He was wrapped in his goatskin shuka, and spat intermittently as he pulled deeply on his tobacco pipe. Seeing me walk into his compound, he motioned me slowly to approach him, and asked me to sit down at his feet. I was surprised at this order, considering that I always only greeted him before proceeding to milk the goats. My heart began racing. I instinctively knew that he didn’t have good news for me. After all, his health had been deteriorating over the years, and his cataracts were slowly blinding him. Before I slept every night, I would ask God for long life, imploring him to extend the years of the old man. But I knew I couldn’t bargain for too long, and that one day, death would visit me.
“One day I will be gone,” he began, confirming my worst fears. I looked up to him and grunted an inaudible “yes”.
“See that stretch of land,” he said, motioning to the vast expanse beyond his own land. “It belonged to the father before the father of my great-grandfather. But he came and took it all away. I’m sorry that your children’s inheritance will be smaller.” As he said this, his eyes filled with tears, and one drop betrayed the turmoil that seemed to engulf him in his sunset years. My grandfather, whom I had never seen cry, intimated to me how his own father fought to retain his land, but was forced into servitude as a cook when the white master took over.
“We did our best child. But life has proved to be the winner. And his children are still there, and they have big cars, and fly in vessels in the air…”
“But grandfather we have a car too, and I go to school in America!” I exclaimed, reminding him that we had managed to come to the level of his former oppressors.
“I know, but where is your heritage now? You just started learning your mother-tongue, and your cousins have begun forgetting the past. You are the only one who’s interested in listening to an old man and I don’t know why.”
I was muted to shame. I didn’t know how to answer him, but I knew he was saying the truth. How do you explain the loss of a man who can’t be able to give his posterity the same gifts that his ancestors accorded him? How do you explain the loss in the richness of an entire generation?
“I’m sorry” I whispered, as tears began to trickle down my cheeks. He didn’t answer me. He stretched out his right hand, placed it on my forehead, and muttered a few words. I looked up to him, breathing in the warm tobacco-laced breath hanging over my face, and I knew that he had blessed me.
A few months later, he died peacefully in his sleep. I cried myself to sleep that night, wondering how I would continue my exploration of my past, and fearing that the “pull” within me would also die. I covered my eyes when they lowered him into his grave, and when we had to throw lumps of soil over his coffin. I continued covering my eyes in the next few months, so that I could clearly call to mind his image, and mull over the moments that I had with him, fleeting as they were.
The next Christmas, I went back to visit him, although I knew that this time, no one would be there. But I wanted to continue taking care of his goats, milking them faithfully each morning. I remember that first morning, when I walked to his hut with the fearful knowledge that I would see a ghost, and the more gut-wrenching knowledge that he was gone for good. I stopped for a few moments before his hut, and watched in consternation as a fat brown frog hopped in front of his hut. I laughed momentarily recalling that the frog was the symbol of the clan, and that many people had claimed with certainty that my grandfather would return in the form of a frog, and that from that time onwards, I was not allowed to kill any frogs. I looked intently into the frog’s eyes, wondering if I could see the glint in my grandfather’s eyes, or the yellow cataracts that had deteriorated his vision. Nothing. I couldn’t trace any of his spirit. But something more hopeful blossomed within me. I felt the “pull” within me strengthen, and suddenly, plans converged in my head, an idea for the future, and a wild hope for reclaiming that which had been lost.
“I’ll teach my children about you, and about our dignified past,” I promised myself, as I skipped over to the goat pen with the new hope in my chest.
“I’ll live out my heritage, with pride, until I sit again at your feet in the land of your ancestors.”
**This is a fictional story inspired by the movie Milking the Rhino. But that doesn’t make it any less true**
On that last warm December morning, I went, as usual, to milk his goats. When I walked into his compound, I saw him sitting outside his mud-thatched hut, smoking a pipe and holding on to his rod. He was wrapped in his goatskin shuka, and spat intermittently as he pulled deeply on his tobacco pipe. Seeing me walk into his compound, he motioned me slowly to approach him, and asked me to sit down at his feet. I was surprised at this order, considering that I always only greeted him before proceeding to milk the goats. My heart began racing. I instinctively knew that he didn’t have good news for me. After all, his health had been deteriorating over the years, and his cataracts were slowly blinding him. Before I slept every night, I would ask God for long life, imploring him to extend the years of the old man. But I knew I couldn’t bargain for too long, and that one day, death would visit me.
“One day I will be gone,” he began, confirming my worst fears. I looked up to him and grunted an inaudible “yes”.
“See that stretch of land,” he said, motioning to the vast expanse beyond his own land. “It belonged to the father before the father of my great-grandfather. But he came and took it all away. I’m sorry that your children’s inheritance will be smaller.” As he said this, his eyes filled with tears, and one drop betrayed the turmoil that seemed to engulf him in his sunset years. My grandfather, whom I had never seen cry, intimated to me how his own father fought to retain his land, but was forced into servitude as a cook when the white master took over.
“We did our best child. But life has proved to be the winner. And his children are still there, and they have big cars, and fly in vessels in the air…”
“But grandfather we have a car too, and I go to school in America!” I exclaimed, reminding him that we had managed to come to the level of his former oppressors.
“I know, but where is your heritage now? You just started learning your mother-tongue, and your cousins have begun forgetting the past. You are the only one who’s interested in listening to an old man and I don’t know why.”
I was muted to shame. I didn’t know how to answer him, but I knew he was saying the truth. How do you explain the loss of a man who can’t be able to give his posterity the same gifts that his ancestors accorded him? How do you explain the loss in the richness of an entire generation?
“I’m sorry” I whispered, as tears began to trickle down my cheeks. He didn’t answer me. He stretched out his right hand, placed it on my forehead, and muttered a few words. I looked up to him, breathing in the warm tobacco-laced breath hanging over my face, and I knew that he had blessed me.
A few months later, he died peacefully in his sleep. I cried myself to sleep that night, wondering how I would continue my exploration of my past, and fearing that the “pull” within me would also die. I covered my eyes when they lowered him into his grave, and when we had to throw lumps of soil over his coffin. I continued covering my eyes in the next few months, so that I could clearly call to mind his image, and mull over the moments that I had with him, fleeting as they were.
The next Christmas, I went back to visit him, although I knew that this time, no one would be there. But I wanted to continue taking care of his goats, milking them faithfully each morning. I remember that first morning, when I walked to his hut with the fearful knowledge that I would see a ghost, and the more gut-wrenching knowledge that he was gone for good. I stopped for a few moments before his hut, and watched in consternation as a fat brown frog hopped in front of his hut. I laughed momentarily recalling that the frog was the symbol of the clan, and that many people had claimed with certainty that my grandfather would return in the form of a frog, and that from that time onwards, I was not allowed to kill any frogs. I looked intently into the frog’s eyes, wondering if I could see the glint in my grandfather’s eyes, or the yellow cataracts that had deteriorated his vision. Nothing. I couldn’t trace any of his spirit. But something more hopeful blossomed within me. I felt the “pull” within me strengthen, and suddenly, plans converged in my head, an idea for the future, and a wild hope for reclaiming that which had been lost.
“I’ll teach my children about you, and about our dignified past,” I promised myself, as I skipped over to the goat pen with the new hope in my chest.
“I’ll live out my heritage, with pride, until I sit again at your feet in the land of your ancestors.”
**This is a fictional story inspired by the movie Milking the Rhino. But that doesn’t make it any less true**
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Of Scholarship, First Ladies, and God
I am tired of thinking. I am tired of rediscovering new knowledge, coming up with new theories that defy my previously held notions. That’s the problem with scholarship, with academia. You think, you come up with something, but then after some time, it doesn’t hold anymore, and you have to think of something new. After some time, it gets tiring, and you realize that your life is made up of contradictions, of more grey area than black and white. And gradually, all the thinking tires you out, because deep in your heart you knew the answer all along.
Seven months ago, standing in front of her grave, I had the crystal clear understanding of what my life should entail. All the questions of life seem answered in that moment, the moment of bowing down and laying a love wreath of red roses upon her resting place; the moment of burying my last letter into the dark unforgiving earth, a promise to God and to the friend I would never come to know in my adulthood. I looked up to God as a tear dropped down my cheeks, and I knew then that as always, He should remain the center of my life if ever I am to experience peace in my often-tumultuous life.
Fast forward to 2012, and Ida Odinga asks the ICC cases to be held in Kenya. Finally, I thought, someone has thought of the other side; the side that haunts me as a child, a scholar, and an individual who hopes not to judge others. She’ll make a good first lady, someone comments. It’s all about the balance, I say, the balance to empathize with both sides. But not everyone strives to strike this balance, to empathize with everyone. And those who do, end up with an eternal headache, scorn from others, and the curse of being misunderstood, misidentified, and stereotyped.
I’m tired of thinking, of remembering, of wondering. There comes a time in life, when the burdens become too much. But we have a hope, because He said that His yoke is easy, and His burden is light. And so I walk in academia, in scholarship, in the realm of first ladies, and I look to the author and the finisher of my faith. He will bring me safely to the end, I remember. He will never leave me nor forsake me. I remember the peace He has often filled in my heart, and I know that all the questions in life will crystallize in one answer—the answer of His Lordship, of His Son Jesus, and of His Holy Spirit.
I love you Lord, and I ask that your peace that surpasses all understanding guard my HEART and my MIND in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7)
Seven months ago, standing in front of her grave, I had the crystal clear understanding of what my life should entail. All the questions of life seem answered in that moment, the moment of bowing down and laying a love wreath of red roses upon her resting place; the moment of burying my last letter into the dark unforgiving earth, a promise to God and to the friend I would never come to know in my adulthood. I looked up to God as a tear dropped down my cheeks, and I knew then that as always, He should remain the center of my life if ever I am to experience peace in my often-tumultuous life.
Fast forward to 2012, and Ida Odinga asks the ICC cases to be held in Kenya. Finally, I thought, someone has thought of the other side; the side that haunts me as a child, a scholar, and an individual who hopes not to judge others. She’ll make a good first lady, someone comments. It’s all about the balance, I say, the balance to empathize with both sides. But not everyone strives to strike this balance, to empathize with everyone. And those who do, end up with an eternal headache, scorn from others, and the curse of being misunderstood, misidentified, and stereotyped.
I’m tired of thinking, of remembering, of wondering. There comes a time in life, when the burdens become too much. But we have a hope, because He said that His yoke is easy, and His burden is light. And so I walk in academia, in scholarship, in the realm of first ladies, and I look to the author and the finisher of my faith. He will bring me safely to the end, I remember. He will never leave me nor forsake me. I remember the peace He has often filled in my heart, and I know that all the questions in life will crystallize in one answer—the answer of His Lordship, of His Son Jesus, and of His Holy Spirit.
I love you Lord, and I ask that your peace that surpasses all understanding guard my HEART and my MIND in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7)
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Your Story
It all started one day when you took your SATs and then you got your admission letter got on a plane and went to study in that far away land. You heard it was the land of milk and honey but you mostly went because you were eager to run away, to let your heart roam free and wild. You went with no inhibitions, carrying your name, your hopes, and the stern warning to uphold your family honor. No pregnancy, no drugs, maybe a white man so you get good-looking kids. And so you went.
You failed your first term. You took biology and chemistry but nothing sounded the same. The accents confused you; you didn’t know that a library is actually a laibry and not a laibraaary or that you should be drinking warrer and not water but still you persevered and you preserved your thick tongue. You learned to switch when you needed to so that your friends back home wouldn’t laugh at the girl pretending to be a foreigner, or the people in your new land single you out as an alien who hadn’t yet mastered their tongue.
But one day you got fed up and decided to assert yourself. You got tired with how they showed your home, how the suffering got more airtime than the innovations. You got pissed when you saw the service trips they all took, to go and give back to the ‘global community’ they were born into. You saw it as a measure to boost their own self-esteem, to assure themselves that they are indeed good people who care deeply about the world. You clicked your tongue and cursed them, and you changed your name.
You logged into your social network accounts and revolutionized your identity. You dropped your baptismal name and took up your ethnic name, so that you had to spell out your name every time someone asked you your name. You didn’t mind that part. The process of reowning your name was important to you. It helped you assert your Kenyanness, your Ugandanness, your Tanzanianness. You knew you were African when you said your name. That you also had a history, and more so a story that they didn’t know, would probably never know. But truth is you were never that African when you were in Africa. You didn’t even assert your nationality so openly, so brazenly, oh so passionately. But the air in that place shaped you, the people chiseled you, the environment transformed you. That nameless thing took hold of you and told you you needed to assert your identity, so that you never once looked back and analyzed yourself, and thought about the changes taking place in you. Like a son of fate you took it in your stride. You grew locks, then got tired and put on an afro. And you smeared coconut and shea butter on yourself. “see my ebony skin’ you seemed to say ‘see my healthy natural hair’ your body screamed ‘look at me! I’m the African queen’
And then you stopped going to church. You were once the youth leader way back when, and you advised people on the way they should go. Kids looked up to you, pastors adored you. In fact, five pastors came to pray for you on your farewell party. ‘take care of babylon’ they said ‘serve the lord, he is with you always’. But then you changed your mind after all, what do those pastors know anyway. They are being brainwashed by those beliefs. Who is God anyway? You asked. An invention to colonize the African mind. Yes, Jesus was not an African anyway, he couldn’t be your hero now. And so you reformed your beliefs, and decided to venerate your ancestors. But then you remembered how funny those Maasai men looked when they came to pray in Jamhuri day celebrations, and you shuddered at the thought of being like them. And so you decided to be an atheist, but you preferred the term child of the universe. More classy, more acceptable, at least your parents wouldn’t freak out at what Ulaya did to you.
And one day you met him, and you knew you had been holding on to your honor for too long. What was that honor anyway? It’s important to liberate your mind. After all, you had been wearing miniskirts, and tank tops, and…oh well who cares. So you lost it, and it felt great. And you were free, and now you could live life.
The years went by, and you went home for the mandatory visits. You were born with half a silver spoon in your mouth and it wasn’t too hard to get the flight ticket and so you didn’t understand what the other Africans meant when they lamented that the ticket price was too high. You loved going to Boston to party and meet with other great African minds. There was always an African event going down somewhere. And you went to dance to your Africanness to praise your roots to get wasted on Tusker and Heineken and bounce along to the latest Nigerian hits. And in your intoxicated state, you ranted about your homeland, how the corrupt leaders fleeced all the aid money, and how the poor remained poor. You all swore to be the difference, to go back home and overthrow, take over and bring a change that the common mwananchi could believe in. You spurn your dreams, sewed it together, and set it on the timetable of life. Plan A, Plan B, Plan C and Z.
The years went by once again and you graduated with your political science degree. Unlike the others, you went back home straight away. You lived your promise to change your homeland, and you wouldn’t let the promise of big bucks in Wall Street deter you. You knew what you had to do and you didn’t hesitate to do it.
But yours was never meant to be a long life, and the end came suddenly, on Waiyaki way, on Sunday night, when Ben or was it Patrick told you to drop him home coz he had a late night and he couldn’t stay up with you (you had your Mondays free after all). And you agreed because he said his car was in the garage and you were his baby after all, and he told you he loved you and you were sure he would put a ring on your finger and you would run in the next elections as a Mrs. So you hoped in your black Lexus and you turned from your apartments into Thika road, down the looping bend to Waiyaki way. But you had a wine glass too many, like you did every Sunday only you forgot that it was 1 am and you should have been in bed, and when you saw the lights you tried to swerve, but you swerved when the metal had crashed into metal, and two blobs of gleaming light shone in your eyes, and you wondered if you were staring into forever. And you wondered about that voice that carried you into the heat of eternity. It wasn’t Patrick’s, it didn’t sound like Ben’s. It sounded like a nursery school rhyme, like the voices from the past calling you back and forth, reminding you that those who call on the name of the Lord would be saved.
And so you screamed His name, and then you were gone.
And so you screamed His name, and then you were gone.
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