Illegal immigrants!

When I travelled to Kampala in October last year, I was very disturbed to discover a number of illegal immigrants crossing back and forth from Kenya to Uganda without any immigration checks, no passports and no travel documents. As a matter of fact, they had not even paid for their transportation yet they were happy enough to edge us, the paid up passengers, off our seats and were threatening to help themselves to our water and snacks!

The strangest thing about these stowaways is that they were content to just go back and forth between the two countries, never disembarking. At some point I remember wondering whether they are originally from Kenya, or from Uganda.....or perhaps from neither. Perhaps they were from a different country all together.

My greatest worry however was that one of them might take a fancy to me and decide to get off the bus and follow me home. So as I got of the Akamba bus, I picked my luggage gingerly, looked it over and shook every item thoroughly to make sure I did not inadvertently go home with one of the border crossing, freeloading disgusting cockroaches that had infested the bus!

Wild Animals aren't wild!

Last month I spent 2 nights in the home of a friend who is absolutely "tree-hugging" crazy about the environment has created a perfect retreat for anyone who needs to "get away from it all". She has made every effort to ensure anyone who spends time at the camp comes in touch with nature and appreciates the beautiful balance of life that exists in the wild. I had to drive 3 hours away from Nanyuki to the middle of Laikipia wilderness to get to Suyian Soul camp. The further I drove, the freer I felt and when my phone lost transmission, I knew it would be a unique 2 days, absolutely gadget free.

My room for my time at camp was a beautifully built "banda" whose design revolves around the principle of creating as little disturbance to nature as possible. All the posts and beams in the hut were taken from trees that had fallen naturally and not a drop of cement was used to put the walls of natural stone up. Every piece of furniture was handmade and the decor with an odd feather here and an old warthog tusk there reflected the "born-free" living of the camp. Its compound was undisturbed bush and my neighbours were a pair of shy dik diks browsing close to the verandah and a swallow that roosted in the makuti roof and seemed to take pleasure in startling me at night by swooping over my head when I turned out the solar charged lights.

The most amazing feature of my room - the view from a "walk in window"

The most amazing feature of my room was the view. As I settled in and unpacked my bags, I noticed the large, almost "walk-through" window with the most amazing view of a rocky hill in the distance. The window had no glass, no wire gauze, no nothing! It was totally barrier free. As I looked at it in horror, envisioning a visit by the neighbourhood leopard, my hostess was quick to reassure me and told me that the wild animals always kept their distance from the human-inhabited areas. To make me feel safe, I left one hurricane lamp burning just outside my hut because, she said,  wild animals generally stay away from fires and lamps.

At the end of my stay, I realised that it was true, wild animals observe a code of conduct. They have their area and we have ours and generally keep it that way unless they are provoked or their lives threatened. A simple hurricane lamp shows them where their limits are and they oblige.

Wild animals are unlike human beings who cut through fences, break down walls and crash in windows, totally disrespecting each other's personal space. Wild animals do not kill within their own species for sport or food. They jealously protect their young, unlike human beings who abandon, molest and sexually abuse their young. When they are designed to live in pairs, as the dik diks are, they mate only with their partner and are constant companions, separated only by death.

“Wild” animals are not wild!

There's an Elephant in My Room

There's an elephant in my room, a very large elephant, I might add...actually, she is really quite humongous. She is not only taking up all the space, she is taking in all the air as well. It is getting really hard to breathe.

There's an elephant in my room, but somehow, only I seem to notice her. You come in and go out as if she weren't there. So I thought, if I ignore her, if I keep very still, if I pretended she is not there, then maybe, she won't be there!

There is an elephant in my room. At first, I didn't mind her all that much because she didn't take up too much space, and also, I thought she looked sort of cute – an exotic addition to an otherwise drab room. But last week, as I tried to leave the room, I noticed that I had to press hard against the doorpost. That hurt a little, so I begun to get worried and mentioned her to you, but you still couldn't seem to see her, so I ignored her and thought perhaps she wasn't there.

Yesterday, I wanted to go to bed, but I couldn't find the bed! The elephant has grown so big lately, she has covered my bed, my favourite chair, her trunk has no space, so now I have to leave the window open throughout so that it can hang through there. But still you don't see her and every time I start to talk about her, you get up and leave. You walk right through her as though she weren't there!

There's an elephant in my room. But it is only I that seems to see her.

Read me my Eulogy Now!

I've been waiting a long time now to  craft this entry with perfectly, but that time just doesn't seem to be coming around so I will just get on with it!

Last week, while I was still in the "waiting for the perfect words" period, I got an email from a number of girlfriends sending me virtual flowers and lots of good wishes. The email starts off by saying

"
I would rather have one rose and a kind word from a friend 
while I'm here,
than a whole 
truck load when I'm gone....

...and since this pretty much sums up what I had been thinking all along, I take it as a sign that I am supposed to write it right away, perfectly or not.

Late last year, I celebrated the 50th birthday of a dear cousin (who doesn't look a day older than 20) and one of  the gifts her long-time friend gave her was a reading of her eulogy. I thought that was really sweet and totally appropriate. After all, who wants people to say all the good things about them when they are dead and gone, and all that's left of them is their lifeless body that cannot hear a thing that is being said?

If you have something nice to say about me, say it to me now. If there are things I do that inspire you to be a better person, let me know. If my life's little victories spur you on to greater accomplishments of your own, share that with me. If there is any way I have impacted your life, tell me now. Don't let me go through life thinking that I may never have made a great difference in any one's life or that my life is lived solely for me. Don't let me die not knowing that what I have struggled through has been worth the while because it gave strength to you.

Read me my eulogy now!

And also....I would truly rather have a single rose from you now, than a garden-full of them when I am gone.

I want to be just like my mum!

Although she may not know it, I think about my mum a lot. She is the absolute best mum in the entire universe, so much so, that i want to be just like her!

My mum is creative. Although I never wore the trendiest clothes, I always wore the best clothes my mother could afford and I felt smarter than any other child alive. I find it hard explaining to my daughter how stunning I looked in a sun dress especially tailored for me from fabric left off from my mother's own dresses, with white socks pulled to the knees and my highly polished school shoes, the one good pair of shoes I had.

My mum is a great and adventurous cook. Whenever I manage to burn water or over-salt the tea, I think of the disgrace I am to this amazing woman who has always taken great pride her cooking. Left over rice or bread was amazingly turned into a delicious, sugary pudding, and it is from my mother's very own kitchen that I first tasted meat pies that actually have meat in them and a yummy crunchy crust.

My mum knows the value of time and she passed on this very important lesson to me. She is never late for an appointment – in fact, she taught me to always plan my travel and arrive 15 minutes early, a lesson I find that really handy since it means I don't turn up panting and sweating for important meetings, but rather have time to compose myself and have an advantage over everyone else.

My mum never has an idle moment. She is constantly on the move, making sure this is done and the other is planned for. Organising farm activities, household chores, travel time, meal menus, charity and social events. She runs lives life so purposefully, even her recreation time doesn't just "happen"!

My mum is full of love. I cannot think of a place I am more assured of love and appreciation "no matter what", than when I am with my mum. Even through my stormy teenage years, I never once felt less loved by my mum, regardless of what I did or said. If there is one thing I have learnt from my mum about mothers, it is that a mother's love never gives up!

The greatest lesson I learnt from mum, however, is to believe, love and respect God. Growing up, not going to church was never an option. You just went! And I might add, you never turned up at church in any old clothes – you had to go in your "Sunday best" and carry yourself with decorum. It is my mother's constant prayers and firm faith in God that set me on the path to discovering a faith of my own and now, just like my mum, I know that I was created for a very special purpose by a God who loves me and who always watches over every detail of my life.

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Everyone has some incidences in their past that they would like to erase...the kind that bring back the sinking feeling with the same intensity it had 10 years back each time they think about it. I certainly have a few of those! A sunny day suddenly looks dark and overcast in the shadow of past failures and memories of lost chances.

The extreme opposite of the haunting past is the unknown and looming future. What if I do not live beyond today? What if my bank account never hits the million mark! What if my children finish high school and I cannot afford to send them to college? What if I never get married and die an old maid?!

My verdict? The past belongs in the past. Only the lessons learnt should make it to the present. As for tomorrow – why die twice if you are going to have to die anyway? Don't let yesterday or tomorrow steal your joy from today!

What's love got to do with it?

In 1984 Tina Turner's hit single "What's love got to do with it" made it to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for 3 weeks. Its popularity even today (it is ranked No. 38 on the Songs of the Century), seems to imply that there are many people who agree with her, love is but a 'second-hand emotion' and that a breakable heart is of absolutely no value to anyone! I assume she is referring to romantic love and going by her life story, she has been to the 'school of hard knocks' and back again as far as that is concerned, so I will not fault her for her sentiments.

Judging by some very interesting events unfolding around me lately, I may be able to give a clearer picture about what love has to do with "it". Unlike I had expected when I asked what this thing called love is, I cannot answer Tina in a single statement but instead, I can tell her..

...When she spends more time on the phone with him....
when he hops onto the next bus out of town, to be with her...
When she smiles mysteriously, seemingly at nothing...
When he steps out of a meeting, just to call her...
When she enjoys making a home cooked meal after a long day at work...
When he starts making plans for his future with her in all of them...

Then, I think, it is perfectly safe to say, Tina, that love has everything to do with it!

Comment, comment!! Do comment!!

After sitting here, impatiently drumming my fingers on the table and waiting for all you loyal readers to comment on my posts, I discovered (thanks to you "B") that a technical glitch had disabled this function.

The good news is, I have sorted it out. The bad news is....I have missed out on your valuable feedback!

So now please, comment away my dears, I am dying to hear what you have to say!

My Terminal Condition

I just found out that I am suffering from a terminal condition. I watched my mother grapple with it, but I never thought it would happen to me. Certainly not when I was sweet-sixteen, fancy free and knew everything a girl needs to know about anything that really mattered, like music, clothes, love, guys......which my mum knew nothing about.

On the chance that someone else out there may be suffering the same disease I have, in total ignorance, I thought I should speak out and share my experiences so that you know you are not suffering alone.

The first symptom I realised I had is noise-intolerance. For some strange reason, my ears have become sensitive to noise. Especially the noise my daughter chooses to call music. Every time the volume button hits 12, I have to scream "turn that thing down", just like my mother did, or else I shall surely lose my mind.

I also noticed that I have now acquired, just like my mum, the most overwhelming urge to rest my eyes in front of the TV especially after 11pm and particularly during a movie. Mum always does that and I have been  assuming that she is falling asleep and ask her to give in and just go to bed. Every single time she replies "I am not sleeping, I am just resting my eyes".  I never understood it before, but now it makes perfect sense to me!

Another symptom I noticed I have is that I seem to have suffered a total loss of the sense of  what's "cool". I first noticed this when I tried to surprise my daughter by buying her new clothes. It was not her birthday, not Christmas, she had not had to sing about it for some months, no special occasion.... I was just being cool. I felt really cool about it until I noticed after some weeks that the "totally cool" clothes were not being used for anything else apart from staying in the house. I mean...the jeans. I would have killed to get them (in my day), close fitting and flared at the bottom, totally "hip" there is no way MY mum would have bought them for me, and they cannot make it past the door?!!

The most disturbing thing I noticed, however, is that I must be losing the ability to speak intelligibly or perhaps I suffer permanent voice loss! Every time I issue instructions to the kids, they either cannot understand or they cannot hear me. I am very sure about this because I find myself having to repeat the same instructions over and over and over again, before I finally get some response. Just to prove my point, my Saturday nights go something like this:

9.30pm – "Its bedtime, turn off the telly, tidy up and go to bed"
10pm – "Girls, I said it's bedtime, turn off the telly, tidy up and go to bed!"
11pm – "DID I NOT SAY IT'S BEDTIME?!!! TURN THAT TV OFF OR I WILL MOVE IT TO MY BEDROOM FOR GOOD. AND TIDY UP BEFORE YOU GO TO BED!!"

Finally, they do go to bed, but I think my speech must have got warbled up at the end because the living room, the bedroom and any other room they have been to is in a thorough state of disarray!

I don't know what this condition is called, but I have watched my mother live with it. To anyone else out there who finds themselves in the same predicament – you are not alone!

Time doesn't heal everything

It is often said that time heals everything. I don't think it really does.
Time doesn't heal everything, but time changes the way you see everything.

Time changes the way you see your baby as she walks down the aisle on the arm of a man as they promise each other 'happily ever after'...

Time changes the way you see your indomitable parent who now needs your help up and down the stairs because their body, well, it just no longer is what it used to be...

Time changes how you see a painful break up which you swore never to get over, with your teenage sweetheart who is now in his third marriage.....

Time changes how you see your younger sister on whom you spent years "knocking sense into her head" but whom you now call up for advice every now and again....

Time changes how you see a lost opportunity you had to go to college, when you decided to devote your time and energy getting to know your very young kids....

Time changes how you see the death of your closest and dearest when you realise it is 20 years later and you still have great memories about them and they seem like they happened just yesterday.....

Time doesn't heal everything, not completely, not always...
But time changes how you see everything, completely.....always.

Butterflies!

I have always loved butterflies. They are such fascinating little creatures – beautiful, delicate, diverse. They are so free spirited, flitting about, dancing in the sunshine...

My romance with butterflies goes way back and runs very deep. As a matter of fact, there is a family joke about butterflies which my elder sister loves to recount. She tells of how I was always chasing after them, totally oblivious to the rest of the world. She once sent me to buy milk at a shop slightly over 10 minutes walk from home to and fro. After almost an hour I came with glowing eyes, excitedly describing the butterflies I had seen and how I had followed them through the grass patch on the way to the shops, but with no milk!

When I think about it now though, butterfly chasing is not always such a productive occupation. For one, they are so delicate, you never really want to actually catch them  because they will get destroyed in your hands – so for all your labour, you have nothing to show. Then again, butterflies never keep still. They are always on the move, flitting from one flower to the next and you never have an idea which the "next" will be, so you are on the move, not knowing where you are going!

Some details in life may be fascinating, but they could lead you off the path you got on when you begun your journey. I like what a friend of mine tells his team whenever they embark on a project – "No chasing butterflies" – and they all know what he means!

Less is more – In Favour of the Smaller Picture

Brian Munene, 13 years, is mentally handicapped and epileptic; the first born of two. His mother is single, unemployed and unable to cater for the needs of her children. His brother is blind.

Enough has been said about thinking big and aiming for great things, reaching for the sky, achieving great dreams. But sometimes looking at the bigger picture can be paralyzing!

I was recently asked to play a bigger role in the running and management of a home for children with mental and physical disabilities. While I know that the founding of this home is a very noble and caters for a very forgotten yet special group of abandoned children, I balked at the idea of being held accountable for making the "bigger picture" happen!

The home has 30 children living on rented premises and has no steady source of income. Being part of the team means that I accept the responsibility of seeing to it that these children have a roof over their heads, food to eat, someone to care for them and clothes to wear. It means that I have to see to it that they receive physiotherapy, get basic schooling, learn a skill (for those that are able to) and generally feel that they do belong to this society despite the fact that a number of them were abandoned and even left to die due to the extreme nature of their disabilities.

Yet, when I think of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a person who dedicated her entire life to making other people's lives count and who even after her death continues to inspire me, I do not see her "reaching for the sky" or "achieving great dreams". Rather, I see someone who was focused on doing whatever little she could using whatever little she had and as she did so, all her small acts of compassion formed the magnificent quilt of love, devotion and dedication that spans decades and encompasses continents!
Less is more! I am going to focus on my little piece of patchwork for the moment, and who knows what kind of a quilt I will make?!

As Marian Wright Edelman puts it:

“We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.”

 

A Very Bra-zen Story

I got a very thought provoking email from a friend the other day.

It was a story of a man who went to buy a bra for his wife. When he got to the lingerie shop, the poor man was totally bowled over by the sheer variety – there were so many colours, sizes, shapes, styles and fabrics to choose from. (Coming to think of it, no wonder we girls spend 6 hours shopping for one pair of shoes which we eventually do not actually buy on that day, but return a week later, to repeat the process of choosing...and end up buying the first pair of shoes we looked at the last week! But then again, that is a story for another day.)

Anyway, back to my email. The shop attendant, seeing the man's utter dismay tells him not to worry because despite all the apparent variety, there are basically 3 types of bras – the Catholic type, the Salvation Army type and the Baptist type.

Unfortunately, this helpful advice got the man in a total spin, so, to put him out of his misery, the attendant explains it to him like this:

The Catholic type support the masses, the Salvation Army lift up the fallen, and the Baptist type make mountains out of molehills.

After falling off my seat and howling with laughter, I thought about it critically and came to the conclusion that none of those bras quite fit me, I neither have masses nor am I fallen and as for mountains, I have no desire for any such things. I need to find myself a bra!

I'm thinking perhaps the Quakers. They consider outward rites and symbols unnecessary (and even a hindrance) to spiritual experience and value simplicity.......

It's all about choices

©Copyright The Suyian Trust, Nairobi Kenya

As I struggled to choose what to wear to the office one morning, it suddenly struck me that life is all about making choices. My alarm clock had gone off at 5 o’clock and rather than get up immediately, I had chosen to spend a few more minutes in bed. As a result, I was behind schedule, running late for work and with hardly enough time to have my breakfast.

Life really is about making choices. We choose to hope or to despair; we choose to love or to hate; to fight back or surrender; to believe or doubt; to move forward or to hang back; to embrace or to push away; to give or to take; to receive or reject; to forgive or to hold grudges.

The ultimate choice we make in life however is the choice about the very life we live.

Each day we get to choose whether we will take in a new breath and believe that tomorrow will be brighter and filled with purpose or give up and accept that the obstacles and today’s losses are all that there is to it.

What is this thing called Love?

Some months ago, I got tired of watching the flurry of activity going on around me and having none of the action. Days had gone by without a single one of my "facebook friends" saying or doing anything in my corner so I figured out the best way to get everyone's attention would be to talk about something we all understand. I decided to start a conversation about LOVE.

After posing the question "what is this thing called love" I realised soon enough that nobody seemed to really have the foggiest idea how to define this so called "universal language". I got a few fumbling answers, some text book responses, but nothing satisfactory. Still, I was happy, at least someone was reading and posting something on my wall.

Next, to spice things up, I came up with a philosophical sounding conclusion saying something about love not being an emotion but a decision...really serious high sounding stuff, if I may say so myself. Now that really caught everyone's attention. All of a sudden, they "knew" what love was, or perhaps what it was not....and I got some colourful analogies of how unanticipated love is, most of which I dare not repeat here.

Finally, thoroughly fired up by the attention I was getting, I posted a very romantic quote and not unexpectedly, my "facebook wall" became a hive of activity....My mission was accomplished.

What was really funny about all this though, is that everyone assumed it was romantic love I was asking about. Nobody spoke of the different types of love that we have – a parental love perhaps, the type of love that believes in you even when to the rest of the world it is evident that you have clearly lost your way; or filial love – the kind that you have for your siblings because you know they are yours no matter what you do, and there is just no getting rid of them (love you sis!)....or the kind of love that makes a sister or a brother out of a friend (much like you, "L").

I pose the question again, "What is this thing called Love?"

The Animal in You

I once remember my colleagues returning from a training seminar on group dynamics and all they were talking about was animals. Apparently, during the seminar they had been taught a principle which categorized people into different groups that related to animal characteristics. There were about 12 of them, but the ones I remember distinctly are:

The donkey: these are people that are very stubborn and will not change their point of view
The lion: the kind of people who fight whenever others disagree with their plans
The ostrich: the type of person that buries his head in the sand and refuses to admit any problem at all
The cat: this type of person is always looking for sympathy
The tortoise: who withdraws from the group refusing to give ideas or opinions
The peacock: these are the ones who are always competing for attention – they think too highly of themselves.

So next time you meet someone, be sure to take a closer look at them. You might actually be face to face with a housefly – a regular pest that always turns up when they are not wanted and sticks their hands into everything. Or perhaps you might be dating a butterfly – hardly sticks to one thing, always flitting from this to the other. Or you might be lucky enough to meet a tiger – the kind that has a high level of social tolerance so their fights are kept to a minimum.

Or maybe I should be asking, what kind of an animal are you?

Venus and Mars Collide

I cannot think of a time I was more embarrassed than earlier this year when my attempts at showing appreciation of one of my friends went terribly sour!

At the dawn of the new year, as you were making your new year's resolutions all of which by now are broken, I was doing something far more exciting. I did a thorough inventory of my friendships and came to the conclusion that there was one friend I was treating particularly shabbily.

This particular friend is quite resourceful in a profession that I am new to, so from time to time, I call him up when I need technical help. This is not a bad thing, of course, what are friends for? However, the problem is I had only looked him up specifically when I needed help, and never otherwise (tsk! tsk!)

So, in the spirit of new beginnings and making amends, I purposed to call him up when I don't need help and just have a good old chat. This seemed like a perfectly grand idea to me until the last minute of the evening we were supposed to meet up for a drink and a chat when this friend balked!

After replaying the incident several times in my head and with a few consultations here and there from member of the less fare sex, I think I may have unravelled the mystery. He thought I was hitting on him! A single unattached woman, on a mission, offering rather assertively to buy him a drink, out of the blues, and not asking for any favours as was the custom, may have been all too much for him!

I have since abandoned that mission and set out on one that I hope will be greatly beneficial to the entire human race, well, perhaps the entire woman race - an in depth analysis of the theory that men are from mars and women from venus. Any volunteers, guys? I promise, I won't offer to buy you a drink!

Life is a Bitch, and then you die

For some reason, today I am reminded of a very foolish business venture I once undertook at a time when I had no money to loose. Not that I ever have money that is designated "to loose".

Anyway, I committed a tidy sum of money, tidy, considering my financial state at the time, to taking part in an exhibition that was supposed to make me lots of money and give me contacts that would help me sell my hundreds of handmade cards. (If y'all are really nice, I might show you my handiwork sometime). The idea was all really brilliant, an exhibition of different arts and crafts in an up-market residential area where people supposedly have a better art-sense and yes, have deeper pockets. There was only one problem though – not enough publicity was done for the event!

So there I am on a Saturday afternoon, having spent the better part of my morning selling nothing, and watching the dark rain clouds gathering. (I thought that only happens in movies). Life sucks, right? Wrong!

If you asked me how my day had been, I would honestly have said "great!" And it had. You see, there was this handsome guy with a voice to die for, who had paid me special attention the whole day (girls, stop rolling your eyes on me, you know what I mean). I mean, the guy did a double take when he saw me, despite my faded jeans, hustled look and no make-up. And after that, he spent most of the time at my stand, talking about the cards, my work, his life, and I don't know whether he was so funny or I was suffering a heatstroke from the day's earlier sun, but he made me laugh a great deal.

The moral of the story? Life is a bitch and then you die...or life is an exciting adventure packed with unexpected twists and turns. You choose. I did.

Only change is constant!

I have a famous quote I coined...well maybe I didn't really coin it...but I like to quote it often, like my personal mantra. I could have said this to you before and I will probably say it again

"The only thing that remains constant in life is the fact that things are always changing"

or more simply put,

"The only constant in life, is change."

Yet, for some reason we all fear and resist change with all our might. We lift our cheeks, colour our hair and cling to people whom we should have let go of a long time ago!

Yeah, letting go of people can be one of the hardest changes to accept. Perhaps if we borrowed a leaf from nature, then we would move through life more gracefully.

Just like trees shed leaves in fall to put on new ones next spring, whether we resist it or not, when a person's season is over in your life, they may need to be shed.
Now, before you go ahead and decide to shed me, remember, that not all people in your life are leaves! There are always some people in your life that are meant to be there forever. They are like buttress roots, holding you firmly to the ground.

So go on – find out what season it is in your life, figure out what part the people and things in your life play – then boldly embrace change!

My Pet Dog, Procrastination

You would not believe the number of blog entries I have written in the last month. They are absolutely numerous!

Ever since I begun riding the blogging wave, every conversation I have, any discussion I hear or any argument I get into is a potential blog entry –

You: "Ethel, how soon can you print my cards?"
Me: "Ah! Cards! Now, that would make a good topic for blogging!";

You: "It looks like rain today!"
Me: "The weather...hmm...I think I can still create an interesting twist to talking about the weather"

You: "I broke up with my boyfriend last night"
Me: "Relationships! What curious things they are....I will definitely write about falling in and out of love!"

So where, I hear you ask, are all these amazingly interesting entries? Ummmm, well....my dog ate it! Honest, he did!

I didn't get to blogging right away, and somehow the Procrastination ate up all my ideas and now I cannot even remember what I was supposed to be saying in the first place...So you are reading the rumblings of a mind that is exhausted from searching for what it had been thinking about yesterday, and the day before and before that.....and before that.......