JUST AN AMAH

I am seated by the pond with my back against the Sun. I am a shade or two darker than Lupita so I feel the harsh rays penetrate deep into me. There is a sweat dripping down my spine and a smell emanating from under my armpits. Little Mr. Two is seated on my laps chewing on some inedibles. Once in a while, Mr. Two adjusts his little buttocks on my laps, he wiggles. He is looking straight ahead. Maybe into the pond where the fish are creating ripples. Maybe they are dancing, or not. Maybe they are mating or making love. Except they are still too small, which makes me wonder if at all these pond-grown fish can actually reproduce.

Beside me, the Altman Code is beckoning. Little Mr. Two keeps crying ‘apaaa’ indicating his arm. He wants me to scratch his arm for him. Mr. Two is like that, he keeps scratching his little body and then suddenly stops, pulls your hand and says ‘apaaa’. You have to comply.

The path behind me is busy. Men keep walking up and down, so do women. Presently, a woman is walking down. She is clutching a hand of a small not-so-fat boy. The little boy’s gaze is fixed on me and Mr. Two. I say hi. He looks at the lady. The lady looks at me, Mr. Two, my brown leather bound note book, my pen, and the Altman Code, then walks away.

I chuckle. She is so normal, that lady. Normal people like her don’t care about amahs. An amah should not say hi. She should wait for greetings, never offer any. Everyone despises amahs except, of course, the little ones who sometimes forget to call you auntie and call you Mamii. When they become big, maybe too shall become normal, just maybe, and they shall no longer call you by your name and not auntie any longer.

Workers; all workers despise you. Even the violent-looking boy who blows his nose into his hands thinks he is superior to you. He sits on his mother’s sofa, reclines his back, puts his legs on the coffee table and stares at the TV, remote on his right hand and popcorn dish on his left. He thinks he is sophisticated. He imagines you should respect him because you don’t get to watch TV half as often.

I have not the time though. Because I am perpetually busy. When I am not cooking or scrubbing something, perhaps a pot or a corridor, I am washing or scooping poop that fell on the floor as Mr. Two was running about. Or maybe doing some other job away from my usual ones like making madam’s bed, undoing her braids or polishing boss’ shoes.

An amah is always fine, except the lazy ones who complain of headaches and fatigue and all that. She cooks but only what madam orders.  An amah doesn’t choose, she’s directed. Do this, do that, don’t that, always waiting to be told. However, when madam and boss are away, nobody is there to order you around. You execute the orders you were given in the morning, formulate yours and execute them too. When amah’s are alone they make decisions, they use their short-lived powers to be happy. If anything happens to Mr. One, madam would skin me alive, ask why I wouldn’t use common sense if I said I was waiting for her orders.

Sometimes I am teaching Mr. Two to make a faces or I am putting him to bed after sleep swallows him. I love it when Mr. Two sleeps, because it takes of some burden off my shoulders. The only burden being carrying all his weight from where he slept to bed. When he wakes however, I shall have to change his diapers. Mr. Two wets the bed. And his pee smells awful, I don’t like it. But you see, amahs don’t do what they like., so they have to like what they do. Like smelling a kid’s diapers seven million times a day. Amahs sweep the house, all rooms including the bosses’. Sometimes they sweep used condoms, used and dumped on the floor.

The clothes are not yet pressed, the chicken haven’t been fed yet. Mr. Two hasn’t had a bath. If madam lands home now, I will get a lashing. Madam speaks a hundred words per second and this increases tenth-fold whenever she is angry. She has a shrill voice, one that makes the neighbors fold their curtains and peep, just in case. I wonder what they think. Still I can’t help stealing away from the house.

I do not have a specific time when I wake up. It can be at three, if boss is leaving for an important meeting out of town, or at five; to prepare Mr. One for school. On most days, my alarm goes off at five, I really don’t like the sound of that alarm. Whenever it goes off, I immediately jump out of bed and finish my yawning and stretching between the living room and the kitchen. I clean the house and cook breakfast simultaneously. I don’t have enough time to do one thing then the other and if I wanted to, then I’d wake up two hours earlier. Madam will be snoring past six, till a few minutes later. On some days, she overstays in bed till the water I warmed for her cools down. Then I have to listen as she yells, asking if I’m fed up with work. She knows I can’t answer, and silence means no, I need this job. I don’t know why they can’t move to a bigger house, an expensive one with hot shower. I really don’t understand, they have money. As she rushes to shower, she throws a bundle of clothes on my bed. These need ironing. I do iron my ironing in the corridor. Mr. one wakes up at around six thirty. He takes his time deciding whether he will have milk with cereals or tea with bread. Sometimes he doesn’t want to eat, he just stands there rubbing his eyes. He wastes food, that baby. He never bites his slice of bread thrice (sophistication!). It’s once, he turns it in his tiny hand, bites for the second time then places it beside him, picks another slice.

Daddy drops Mr. One at school. He rarely gets late. Madam usually drives herself to work. She is perpetually late. Her mood is ever foul in the mornings. She spends one hour thirteen minutes and fifty nine seconds before the mirror; coating her face with powder after another. When she is done, her eyebrows are drawn up in a thick black; that’s why you might think she is always surprised. She dresses and undresses at least six times before she settles on an outfit. All this time, I am waiting outside her bedroom, her naughty baby strapped on my back. I have to iron all the seven clothes that she tries each morning.

She then leaves the house in a hurry, shouting orders over the clanging of her heels after which I usually walk to the door and feel myself exhaling as she drives away. Sometimes I even wave at the disappearing car, not because I wish her a safe journey but, because I just want her away. Her presence here spells noise, trouble and more trouble.

Then I set Mr. Two on his feeding table, mix his foods and start feeding him. He is mostly uncooperative. A small bowl usually takes an hour or so to finish. When he is done, I strap him on my back once again and start on the laundry. The laundry is usually light but with Mr. Two on my back, it always feels worse than breaking stones in a quarry.

As an amah, I am meant to be a good cook, know everyone’s appetite and be able to serve them food accordingly. I sit on the table last after everyone one is already settled eating. I must be ready to dash to the kitchen for baby’s milk, or for more salt. So I always ensure everything is on the table, even an extra plate and spoon. Mr. One loves his food salty. While I sit last to eat, I must eat fast, faster than Mr. One so I can once again start my duty of cleaning his hands and face.

An amah is always fine, except the lazy ones who complain of headaches and fatigue and all that. She cooks but only what madam orders. How Sad always being under instruction, Waiting to be told to do this or that.

THE WOMAN I SHARE A MAN WITH

I WISH

To tell you about….,

The woman I share a man with. The woman I share a man with, is not like other women; she is different in a nice way. She is not fat like you may think, no. She is slim, and tall. She is not yellow yellow though, she is dark like me. She has the nicest curves, and when she walks, her buttocks do a kind of a dance and this sends all men into reveries of infidelity. She is prettier than me. She is educated, and above all she is wise. She is wise; she has never ever confronted me even though she has heard rumors. I know she will never confront me, she is beyond exchanging words, and she is beyond public drama. I love her and admire her, and I am happy that we have at least two things in common, the color of our skins, and her husband. She is a rare woman, she is like my mother. She is the only woman who has been silent about my sleeping around with a man who is not mine, his man. It is like she understands. She even says hi to me when she sees me at the market. I once met her in the butchery, she was buying meat. She looked thoughtful, maybe sad. Her husband had spent two weeks in my house. He had also spent three quarters of his salary on me. She works in the bank, she gets good money, and I know this because her /our husband told me. It wasn’t necessary though for him to spend all his money on me. But he is man and for some weird reasons, he feels he should make me feel like a prostitute by paying me which is not good.

I have always wished that we could talk, me and her, you know, that we could maybe sit down, over a cup of steaming coffee, under a mango tree or any other tree that she wants, so we can talk. Can that happen? I want us to meet and talk woman to woman, talk for two hours maybe or more if she wouldn’t mind. I want us to talk about this man that we share. I want us to talk about lots of stuff, about his long beard and the way I love it. talk about his broad chest, about his snoring, about his groans, and then maybe, just maybe, we can work out a Rota, a sort of timetable, who knows, he may end up in her house three days a week and in mine the remaining three days and then on the remaining day, we can have a threesome. I am already imagining how it will be, you know the threesome. I will also take notes about other things, like how to make him eggs that don’t nauseate him, and how to make him stop eating omena. Then I might also explain why I do it. Why I am in it, why I will stay. You know she needs to understand that should he die (God forbid), it is her who will sit on the widow’s seat. It is her who will inherit most of the stuff; the money, the cars, his clothes, shoes, et cetera. Then I will re assure that I am free of all sexually transmitted bugs, and I am willing to be faithful for her own sake.

I know she will see sense in my words. She might even introduce me to her two fat kids, or invite me to her sister’s wedding. This should surely work. It will make her have peace of mind, and it will of course make me feel freer …………….well, it is just a wish.

 

STAYING TRUE TO DISEASE…..

I went drinking last night. This should be normal, and easy, except that I have a bad liver. My heart is also bad and my brain. i wont be surprised if I am told that my bones are rotten, and my blood is lighter. I have heard worse things about this body, my body. At ten I had rheumatic heart disease. I thought it was bad, montly injections and dyspnea., weren’t that bad apparently. At sixteen I went to india. Before you think I am better because I have seen the inside of a plane, let me tell you, I have no memory of india at all. Well, except for its very clean hospitals, its almost brown people with black long hairs, I don’t remember much. I had open heart surgery, my chest was split into two, my blood diverted into an artificial heart, then artificial valves were placed after my bad ones were taken out.
Years later, they discovered I had an an infarct, then epilepsy. My mother should have given up at the point when my heart was not willing to go on. She didn’t. I had to live. To grow a beard. To live practically on drugs.
I am mostly disciplined, every evening I bring out my array of drugs, my anti epileptics, my blood thinners, antibiotics and others whose work I don’t know. I put them in a small bowl and crush each tablet into a fine powder, then I add a little water into the powder and drown it in one gulp. A normal person should vomit, I don’t vomit because I am not normal.
It is depressing, limiting, saddening, annoying, and restricting being on drugs. Some days you might just decide to take a whole packet of those shitty tablets and pray to wake up dead. I have ever taken so many of them. I didn’t wake up dead, I woke up in the ICU. My mother was seated beside me with her hands over her cheeks, she was looking super sad. I made it out of ICU alive. That was a miracle considering I had taken a mixture of all my drugs. I swore never to kill myself after that.

THE MOTHER OF ADELLE

My grandmother calls me Adelle. I keep reminding her that I am Anna, her grand- daughter and not Adelle, her daughter. She has the mind of a chicken though. She always forgets as soon as I remind her. The doctor says she has amnesia, old people’s amnesia. I have decided to stop reminding her. I have also resolved to respond when she calls me Adelle even though I am not Adelle. I forget most of the times though. I am not used to being Adelle.
She loves sitting outside her house in a small mat. During early mornings, she loves to sit directly under the sun. I always place a jug of uji by her side. She turns away every time I hold a cupful of uji before her. So I have to beg and coax her. She agrees and drowns a cupful. She throws away the cup when she is done. This means she doesn’t want more. Then the drugs, it takes hours to get her to swallow only one tablet, every morning; she has to swallow four, two for her hypertension, one for pain, and one for? I can’t remember why she swallows the other one.  On some days she will swallow all of them at once, and then vomit all of them. On some other days I have to grind them into powder form and stir them up with a little water before she can swallow. On some other days she will just refuse. So I sit beside her, close to her good ear and shout to her, call her the mother of Adelle, call her a mzungus, then make her swallow her life saving drugs. If I tell her she will die for not swallowing her tablets, her eyes glint. They always look like they are smiling. I know she desires death. So I never tell her about dying
I miss the days that have gone. She recently lost speech.  So she gestures all the time.
She has never had a bath and is not planning on having any. When I put water in a basin to wash her feet, she turns the other side. Sometimes she glances at the water then at me, and starts crying. This is how I know she doesn’t want to shower.
I have problems dressing her for doctor appointments. She doesn’t wear panties, she always removes them. She likes her flabby breasts sagging over her chest rather than being held in place by a bra. She has a white camisole that she forever likes wearing. She never removes it from her body. It used to be white, these days it is black.
She says the same thing for a little too long. She pisses on herself and never feels the urge to move away from her urine. I never let visitors into the house on early mornings. I don’t want people talking.
She falls asleep in the middle of conversations and when she wakes up, she calls Adelle. She can no longer recall my name. She insists on calling me Adelle, while she used to say I look like my father, tall, light with a gap between my upper incisors, not like the short plump Adelle.
She used to tell me about Adelle, on these days that have passed. I know she loved my mother, she missed her even. Every day she would talk of a lifeless Adelle, squatted by the kitchen fire. A placenta hanging from between her legs, her eyes wide open. She wanted to push, she would say. At this point her eyes would be moist, her voice distant. This is the point when I would move close to her, and put my hand around her shoulders. Then she would look at me in the eyes and say, but you have her beautiful eyes.
So every day I would take the mirror and look at my mother’s beautiful eyes. Then I would imagine life with her. Maybe it would have been a little different, a little better even. What if she would have lived? Would I be having a father? Would I have lived with grandma all this long?
I remembered the day I grew breasts. How grandma had told me to walk straight, to drop my stoop. But I had feared they would swing, flap on each other. They did, and the boys laughed. But she told me to ignore them. She should have bought me a bra, she didn’t and I understand. On the day when my period came, she should have told me to record the age, exact age when I became a woman, she should have told me to always chart those days. Above all, she should have told me that it would always trickle down, out through my birth canal. She sat me and gave me a lecture about me, about becoming pregnant and about becoming a mother. She was only making sure that I don’t embarrass myself, and her. Or maybe that I didn’t have to die during giving birth like my mother, she was just making sure that I don’t die of postpartum hemorrhage during the process of bringing a life here, like many other young girls.
My grandmother; She tried to raise a child who had killed her own. I can’t complain, I cannot, and it will be disrespectful. And because she was there for me, I will be here for her. I will sit next to her and do the needful. Meanwhile I will think of the little girls who were not as lucky as me, I will think of those who were never told that they cannot play with boys after seeing the color. I will think of teenage mothers, heavily pregnant and the risk of the pregnancy to their own lives. Teenagers shouldn’t become pregnant; they should just sit around wooden tables on evenings and read from the light of the lantern. This is what my mother should have done; she could have been alive right now (maybe).
PS; no woman should ever lose their own life while bringing a life to this world. A mother should give birth and live to nurse the child.
……………………………………………………..BEYOND ZERO………………………………………….. 

HER DEATH-DAY/MY BIRTHDAY

“You did not cry like other children. When you fell down on the floor next to those three stones there, you were silent. We thought you didn’t make it out alive.  Mong’ina, may she rest in peace, is the one who took you and rubbed your back. She then sucked your nose, and then you cried a hoarse cry. You cried hoarsely, you cried as if there was some sputum on your throat. You did not cry like a baby Sabina, you cried like a tired old mourner. You cried for a minute, only one, and then you closed your eyes. We cut the umbilical cord with our kitchen knife the one that fell in the water hole. We used a string from an old sweeter to tie it. It fell after six days. .
It was around two in the morning. The placenta did not come out. It was a difficult labor. You were a difficult child”. “Like my father maybe,” I interject. But my grandmother spits and goes on. She too has a problem with a man he doesn’t know. She has a problem with my father.
I wonder if she sits down and tries giving him a body like I often do. I do not know him. But every time I try to envision him, I see a tall brown man. I see a man with a gap between his upper incisors. I see a man with broad shoulders and a flat stomach. I see a smart man. My grandmother says I look like my mother, except for my gap and my light skin. That must have come from this man that I don’t know. Does this man know that I am there? Does he think about me? Does he even miss me? No. if he missed me, he would have come to look for me, this man doesn’t miss me, maybe he doesn’t even know that I exist. That is what I tell myself when I want to get out of this reverie of a father, my farther.
“I should have known it would be a bad night”, my grandmother continues.” There were no stars on the day when you were born. The moon was also hidden below dark heavy clouds. Everyone was tired, we had spent the whole day planting.” Now this, this information about rain and planting helps.  So I know I was born on a planting season. It was also during the rainy season when I was born. That should help me get closer to my birth date, but there are two planting seasons and two rainy seasons, so I have to choose between March and July.
“She called me in the dead of the night. The pain had started. I couldn’t do it alone, so your grandfather went to call Mong’ina.  Those days we had no mobile phones. “This is another clue, I was born in the pre mobile phone era, early nineties, or late eighties. “She came. She came with her daughter in-law. We sat her here in this very kitchen, on a small stool. For hours she; sat quietly, head bent, hands over her belly and feet wide apart. We sat across from her. Adding logs and logs to the fire. She grimaced with every contraction. But she didn’t rant. She talked, called the names of all her female ancestors, when she exhausted the lists; she called all her brothers, uncles and cousins. This is the point she should have named her lover, your father. She didn’t. She just exhausted those names and started singing. So I stood behind her and asked her to name him. But she kept shouting no. then she pushed. Suddenly, when I looked, I saw a leg. Fear ran up my spine (not down). All the women opened their mouths and closed them. No one spoke. She just squatted around the fire and kept pushing, the pushing punctuated with deep sighs”. Silence. I look up and see tears in my grandmother’s old face. I want to cry too, I want to cry because she is crying, not because I am an orphan. All my life I have grown calling her mama, because that is who she has exactly been. Seeing tears on her old face makes my heart crush into several pieces.
So I was a breech. My mother must have been a hero, she brought me out. In normal circumstances, I shouldn’t have made it out alive. But I did, I made it alive a little quiet. My mother, when it comes to this part, granny’s voice becomes deep. Her eyes become watery and she avoids my eyes. She cries, not the usual sob. Tears only form in her eyes and flow down her nasal lacrimal duct into the oral pharynx then she swallows, she swallows tears and pain.
“She died because the cord that connected you to her refused to come out. So she bled and bled until there was no more blood left in her.”  Postpartum hemorrhage. “She was a fighter, she didn’t give up immediately. But after all the blood had come out of her system(Is it even possible to bleed all your blood), she just lay on her back, glanced over you once and breathed her last. You, you were asleep with hands in your mouth“(I must have been a ravenous baby. So my mother died on my birthday. She also died without ever holding me, without ever nursing me. So whose breast did I suckle? I should ask this question, I want to ask, but I know the answer, its answer, I did not suckle.
So I won’t celebrate birthdays for so many reasons. Apart from the obvious reason that which each passing year I get closer to my grave, closer to my death, I do not know exactly when I was born. Because it was a sad day when I was born. I don’t think there was really anyone to hold me. My mother was dead; she was probably lying in a pool of her own blood. I had caused her death; I don’t think my grandmother wanted to see me. It was such a dark day. I can’t celebrate my birthday ,cant be happy on my mother’s death anniversary, I can’t light two sets of candles, I can’t be happy and sad at the same time, that is not paradoxical, it is not even ironical, it is wrong, it’s wrong to celebrate.

DESCENDANTS OF PARROTS-KENYAN IDLE MEN

Kenyan men should learn the art of silence. Someone needs to teach you the meaning of the old adage, speech is silver, and silence is golden. You, brothers always accuse women of talking too much. You do what Jesus said; see a speck in another’s eye while you have a log. Women talk to other women, silently, I have no problem with the kind of talking that women do, my problem is with men. Men seated by the roadside are the worst gossipers. They wake up early, leave their pregnant wives fetching water and go to the roadsides. Some go to wash cars, others to look for menial jobs, other to sell sweets and groundnuts, others to just pass time before lunch so that they can go back to their houses for the afternoon fill. These men are ill mannered, and their talk is stupid. They make themselves political analysts, economists, Google maps and marriage advisors. I don’t mind them talking of politics, something they have no understanding about. My main issue is their big mouths, and the way they feel like they should throw words at the females passing in the roads.
First they call you like chicken. Whether you look at them or not, you are doomed. If you look at them, one or two of them will wink at you. You are supposed to wink back. Of course you can’t win back because you are sane. They don’t take being assumed so easily. Girls with nice buttocks will be called matako, matatu ya wengi, Malaya, one of them will ask you; who was riding you last night? Now you are a woman and this is Kenya. Our parents advise that we should never answer them back, they are men, they are stronger, and the weak you should only walk away. Abuses sting, kwanza those that are accompanied with loud satirical laughs. You will start wishing for a smaller ass, and buttocks that don’t dance as you walk if this happens to you twice. I happen to have a chest that protrudes before me as I walk. Sometimes my breasts swing this way and that way, especially when I am in a hurry. I should never feel ashamed. I never asked for a larger bosom, I got it for the benefit of my babies (and my husband maybe). These men who sit by the roadside don’t understand. They think I should look up when they call me like a chicken. They believe I should smile at them, and nod to their stupidity. I don’t, so you see, they call me a cow that has just delivered; one asked me umenyonywa Na wangapi? (I am not a prostitute and these stings like salt on a raw wound). Others like telling me to hold them, they are going to fall. Men, in groups are more stupid than a pack of rowdy school kids; they are as foolish as sheep. Their mouths are so rotten, every word they utter stinks. They look where they should not look and complain, they talk when they should be silent. They fool each other into stripping poor girls and forcing their rotten stinking selves into women, and then they run. How do you live knowing you have de flowered someone’s daughter? How do you call yourself a father of a girl while you don’t have even a morsel of respect to girls? Is your will power that little that you cannot control your erections? Does your brain work every time or are you a psychiatric patient roaming the earth loose while you should be locked off in a mental institution under drugs?
I have no problem with men. My father is a man, I love him. My brothers are men, my grandfather was a man. Most men are good. But some men are a disgrace to the male gender. They are so unmanly that they find it pleasurable hurling abuses at young girls who are their daughters’ age mates and others who are old to be their mothers. They never weigh anything, never sieve their words, and never stop to think of their effects. They just talk like they are having verbal diarrhea. They only abuse women, they never dare any men. My question is, to which planet do they want us to shift beautiful women to? Someone can’t be brown and in peace; they say umejibleach ( kutoa tint)when you refuse to listen to their nonsense. If you are dark they call you a sack of charcoal, and if you are between dark and brown they say umekosa rangi. A woman can’t rock an afro and walk in peace, they will call you manywele if you are strong enough to hold your peace and walk away from nonsense.
Why, men why? Touts pull at women in bus stops, never men. Professors fail female students for refusing to sleep with them. Even chokoras prefer disturbing women than men. Being a woman in this country is too much work. It is emotionally draining. It is unrewarding. I am just tired of being guilty because of my breasts. I am tired of being too careful. One day I will slap a man and kick his balls so hard. He will never forget me because his balls will rotate. He will get a slap and fall asleep instantly, only to wake up hours later without testicles. He will permanently remember to respect women, where he came from, but before I do that, tell them. Tell these men who sit in groups to grow up, but if growing up is too much to ask for, then tell them to mind their own business. Tell them to talk their nonsense with each other, tell them to keep their voices low, tell them to shun from abusing hardworking citizens. Tell them to stop drowning in foolishness of the masses. A group never dies unless there is an earthquake. One day a single man will be caught. He will serve as an example alone. Be warned idle citizens.

DEAR FUTURE HUSBAND

Dear future husband I hope when the business of giving birth is over, you will walk to the hospital and have vasectomy.
On days when mama was far, I had my daddy. So at the tender age of six, I felt the love of my mother from my father. He cooked, he washed my clothes, and he taught me how to shower. He taught me how to be a child; he made my first toy, Katrina. He helped me sew Katrina’s first sweater. He taught me how to tie Katrina on my back. Then one morning I woke up and there were two round swellings on my chest. He bought me a bra. He bought me my first pack of pads, and taught me how to wear them. He did all this and he is still a man.
Washing clothes, scrubbing floors and cooking pots doesn’t make a man a woman. A man who cooks is just a man who cooks, not a woman. A woman who has dreams is also that, a woman with dreams, not a feminist.
Future husband, I am a woman who has dreams. I know most of my dreams will come to pass. I am letting you into my life with a condition that you will complement me because I will do the same for you.

I have no problem with waking up at six. I am not lazy and marriage will not make me lazy. I will cook tea all mornings. I will never complain about having to wake up to cook tea since I do not trust any other person to cook my tea.  Here is why, I don’t like milk that much, so I always get excuses to not take tea. I have to cook my tea to make sure it cooks well. While I am up cooking tea, I don’t expect you to be asleep. I don’t expect you to be in the kitchen with me though it could be brilliant having you there. You can be ironing our clothes, spreading the bed or holding the baby while I prepare breakfast. I hope we will have hot shower in our house, but in case we won’t be having it, then I will boil water for us to shower. But I will not be the one to carry it to the bathroom. That will be your work. If you have a question about this, then just ensure that we have instant shower before our marriage. I will not pour tea in your cup for you; I will also not apply jam or blue band on your bread. In our house, it will always be self service, except for our children and on days when you will be sick. On normal days, you will serve yourself that will save me from the headache of estimating your hunger, and the extent of your appetite. This will help you on those days when I will not be at home. Washing dirty utensils will be the work of the house girl. But on those days when she will not be around, then it will be our work. We will all stand before the sink and scrub the cooking pots. I will not do it alone on cold nights while you will be tucked in bed, dressed in warm pajamas, a scarf and gloves. No, never.
About children, I want four, if you will want five, I will have no problem. But I will not deliver your mother, father, grandfather and all those other relatives you might want to name our babies after. If I get girls only, I will stop at four or five. A child is a child. I have no obsession over heirs and whatnot.  I will equally take part in naming our children. We are not going to name our children after any dead person. We will not also name them after any living person. We will just give them nice African names, names like Taabu, Mapenzi, Furaha, and Mazuri. No son of mine will be called Christopher Hawking. He is African, he is African.
I always slash the grass around my house. I fix my bulbs when they blow. I ring the alarm when I hear people outside my house. I will not expect you to be electrician, plumber, and protector. So I don’t expect you to make me cook, dishwasher and washing machine.
I will be a working lady. I will not add your name to mine coz three names is too much; having a fourth one will be ridiculous. I will always work. I will be expected to be consulted when big decisions are made. I will respect your mother but I hope she will never at any one point consider moving into our house, unless of course she is sick. I will always work, so I won’t ask for money for any of my businesses from you.
I will help the children with homework on someday but you will have your days too. I will never be the one to spread the bed if you wake up after me.
I will expect you to be in the house on time. If you will need time with friends, I will expect you communicate in time. Otherwise, I will not sit up many days waiting for your footsteps so I can open the door for you. If you come home late, you are also the one to warm your own food.
If you cheat on me, you go or I go. You beat me even once you sleep in jail.
Otherwise, it will be a good marriage. I hope you will love listening to me as I read your stories. I believe you will never feel henpecked sitting over a jiko cooking chapattis as I cook the stew. I hope you will enjoy me dropping you at your work place as much as I will enjoy you dropping me at my place of work.
Above all, I believe you will tell me the truth. That you will tell me that my hairstyle is great when it actually is.

LIFE IS TOO BEAUTIFUL..TO GO BLIND

The evening that I passed out turned out to be a blessing, the passing out triggered my parents to transfer me to a school nearer home. I had taken supper before my evening dose of insulin.  I started feeling weak, shaky and sweaty thirty minutes after the injection. I knew what it was; hypoglycemia.  I walked to the dormitories, for the sweets. The sweets, I was the only one allowed to have snacks in school, a diabetes perk, this made most of my classmates to envy me, and my diabetes (adolescence stupidity). You see all they used to think is that diabetes is a cool disease, a disease of rich kids whose fathers drive them in big cool cars to the hospitals for monthly check ups. They were adolescents thinking in terms of sweets and special diet and exception from manual work and cross country races. But they never saw the other side of it. They never saw the side of living on injections, or sitting on hospital benches outside a room written ‘diabetic clinic’ amidst old, fat, blind, single and double amputees. They didn’t know how diabetes is restrictive, in terms of what to eat; I can’t remember the taste of chocolate, my mother forbade me from ever taking that stuff, I disobeyed her only once and ended up in hospital for three days.
Our dormitory was quiet. People were still in class, evening preps. I walked to my cube. My box had been broken into. My stuff was strewn all over the floor and my sweets were missing. I passed out. I regained consciousness in the sick room. An IV set was connected to my left arm and some fluid was running down, to my veins and unto my heart (maybe). The nurse was seated at the corner looking at me.  She looked angry. Perhaps she had every right to be angry, except I didn’t ask for the diabetes… It was ten; probably she had just served her supper and had no time to eat. It was cold; perhaps she had had to disengage herself from her husband. Maybe she was thinking of her newborn child. She was angry but she had no right to be angry. The fluid continued running. My mind wandered, back to the dormitory, I thought about my broken box, and my missing sweets. A tear or two trickled down my face. I wiped it with the back of my hand. The nurse looked at me, and then spoke, “you had hypoglycemia”. I knew that, but I kept wondering why I had fainted, was it shock or hypoglycemia?
When you have diabetes, sometimes your sugars become too little, you become dizzy, you get diaphoresis, your heart beat goes over the roof, and then you pass out. Sometimes your sugars become too high, you become dry as a bone, you urinate as frequently as a baby, you vomit, and your stomach might also ache. In both cases, you end in the hospital, and fluid is pumped into your veins. This diabetes is a funny disease. I wonder why it chose me of all the people.  I wonder why it came to me too early, before I could eat enough cakes, and chocolates and fries and red meat and sugar, I wonder why it came before I was an adolescent, before I had tasted alcohol(just tasting), before I had schooled enough.
All the people I see in the clinic are old enough. They are mostly married with grown up children. Diabetes came to them after they had lived. These people are also fat and most have wrinkles. They seem okay and at peace, even the amputees, even the old man I saw in my last visit to the clinic was fine. He was laughing heartily; his companion (probably a grandson) had cracked a joke. His grandson was handsome by the way. He was just the way my dream man should be, tall enough, proportional head, oval face, no acne scars(since I have enough for both of us), smooth faced and a mildly haired chin, ooh and dark, he was also dark. He should have seen me, but he kept his gaze on the old man on his wheel chair and the urine bag on his laps. He kept his eyes on him and kept smiling at him as if he was a baby, being baby sat. I was annoyed; with him, but mostly with myself. I was annoyed of myself for looking like a nine year old while I am nineteen, a whole nine plus ten. I was annoyed that I have a pair of two flats on my chest than no one can rent. I was annoyed that my pelvis didn’t widen enough, and that I have no enough fat for deposition over my pelvic bones.
When I asked the doctor about my lack of contours and curvatures she smiled. I got annoyed, and only half heard her explanation about genes and the insulin and blah blah, this is a good looking man I had just lost and here she was smiling like a monkey eating a banana. I am a child, I deserve a normal life, but I have diabetes. I have type one diabetes; my doctor says my pancreas can’t produce enough insulin. So I live on insulin injection, everyday in the morning and evenings. I walk around with sweets because although I have a sugar disease, sometimes I don’t have sugar (ironical right?). I feed on organic food, it is nutritious but it is very boring to teenagers. I should live a relatively normal life, I am trying, and if people will stop feeling sorry for me, I might live long, long enough to be a mother( I pray that  a tall dark, round faced man looks at me twice and winks, I swear I will walk to him and give him my number. He will have to learn how to inject me with insulin first, then I will tell him why he should date me, I will not be like other girls, I will never crave chocolates or cakes or ice cream or milk shake, see? He will be rich because he will save ALL that money). I will live long enough and I will not become blind or be amputated, because I always check my feet, I also see an eye doctor regularly, I am doing my best, I got diabetes, I don’t want blindness and amputation and renal failure. Diabetes is enough for me.
PS; THIS DIABETES SHOULD HAVE WAITED TILL LATER. IT DIDN’T, I WONT GIVE UP, I WILL TAKE MY DRUGS, I WILL GO TO MY CLINICS, I WILL FOLLOW THE DOCTOR’S INSTRUCTIONS. I WILL LIVE; I WILL GO TO THE END OF MY LIFE WITH MY TWO FEET, MY SIGHT, AND MY KIDNEYS.
It is a diabetes day today……..to all the diabetics young and old, this battle is for fighting, life is too beautiful to live without eyes………………….

THE PEOPLE OF PARIS…….OUR PRAYERS ARE WITH.YOU……….WE HAVE BEEN HIT IN THE PAST WE KNOW HOW IT FEELS

TWO MILLION SPERMS? INSUFFICIENT

Burials should be sad,, not boring
There will be many plastic chairs housed in three or four large tents. There will be a smaller tent closer to my house. I will be resting inside my coffin which will be on top of a glass table. A photograph of me will be dangling from one of the posts. A blue book with columns titled; number, name contacts and comment, will be on the table, open. There will be writings in it. Some will write long sentences praising me, saying how I was good, how I carried them in my car; they will talk of my smile and the gap between my upper incisors. Others will simply type RIP. There are those who will take the pen and sob, and then they will write nothing. There are those who will write bible verses. Someone might write” fuck death”.
My brother will be seated next to me; my coffin. His eyes will be red like those of a weed smoker. He will be sniffing a lot. He will turn away at the sight of women crying. When mama’s turn to look at my face for the last time will come, he will walk into his room and remain there till that small window, that window through which people could see my face will be closed. Then the strong men will carry me to my house. They will lay me down close to the hole that will be to the right side of the main door. The preacher will read a verse and pray, maybe he will only pray, depending on whether he will be in a hurry or not. Then they will lower me into the earth. The righteous man of God will be the first to throw earth onto the hole, my final resting place. He will be intoning, from soil you came and to the soil thou hath gone……. Then they will want mama to throw the soil. She will not be easy to deal with. She will start screaming, though her voice will be too hoarse. She will sit down and call my name. She will sing. She will pull at her hair. Her wrapper will fall. Her buttons will fall and her breasts will sag out. She will not care. The women will pull her to the side. She will bite them. She will call them names. They will overpower her. They sit her down, she will sit, but she will continue wailing. Other people will throw the soil. The faithful will sing, they will sing it is well, and kijito, and what a friend. The soil will be filled with hoefuls, and jembefuls, and handfuls of soil. The end result will be a mound, the amount of soil displaced by the box containing me. My friends will drive back to town after taking photos and planting flowers over my grave. My mother will be led to her house against her will. My brother will retreat back to his house and lock himself in a room with plenty of brandy. Few men will do wakes for three to five days. The fire will be lit outside my mother’s house. The people will sit outside my mother’s house.
They will talk about things; busaa, the president and a looming health workers strike. They will not talk about me. They won’t even wonder that I am dead and have no family. The story will be discussed weeks later. Young children will tell each other when going to school. The women will talk quietly about it when harvesting the millet. The men will also talk, to other men and to their wives. My mother will hear these stories. She will just listen and say ah. She will be wondering too. I wish I can tell her, but this, this is a great secret, one worth going to the grave with.
Before I die though, I will live. I am not suicidal. Listen here, my doctor said I am suffering from depression, gave me anti-depressants and told me to adopt a baby. I am not depressed, and I can’t adopt a baby. I know I can’t get mine and that is fine. My not sleeping and lack of a baby are not related. That my wife left doesn’t bother me. The doctor however believes I am depressed. I went to the hospital because I have been having amnesia and constant headaches. I do not know how we started talking about my wife, a wife who only existed in my previous life, a life where I was a husband. In this life I am a man, a rich man living in my house alone. I am single and not searching. But the doctor insists on my history, a history that is buried and rotting by now. He insists, he is a doctor, I can tell him what his colleague said/decided. It’s about my sperms. I have two million, only two million. Normal people have a low of sixty million. Twenty million is the least I need to make a baby. Two million followers on twitter, means you are a little more than popular; it means you are a socialite or better still, a celeb. Two million shillings in the bank means you are rich enough to own a car and a house or a wife, not all three of them. Two million sperms however means you are dead, gone, bure kabisa; it means you can’t make a baby, unless you agree to borrow sperms or try making one in a test tube before transferring it to the womb; a very very long process I hear, and you must be ready to co-operate with the doctors, even when they are asking you for your semen on a cold Sunday afternoon after church, I speak from experience. You see I only went for this seminalysis madness because of my mother. She has been sickly of late and the only thing she asks from me every time I visit is a child. Looks like she will die without holding one from me, because the doctor says I have only about two million seeds, two million per one mil of semen and that young girl, who looks like she stopped suckling yesterday, says it is too little. So, how much do I need I ask her? Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Did she just say I need a minimum of twenty million sperms! Twenty million minimum and sixty million to are considered normal!  Crucified Christ, I have only 1/30 of normal! In other words, I am seedless, yaani, I shoot blanks most of the time and sometimes, my semen has traces of sperms. Why, why have I been pouring out all my life? Why have I been wearing latex? Why, why me now? Who is this who has been sucking all my sperms away? How do I walk in the market with a seminalysis report written “inadequate sperms”? How can these sperms be inadequate yet they are two million of them? Two million and yet none of them can be fast enough to fertilize an egg. Ah. And that young slip of a doctor with bushy bushy hair thinks she comforted by telling me that I am lucky. Lucky to have two million sperms. I am just like those ones who don’t have any, because like them, I can’t put a baby inside anyone’s womb. I am no better with those ones whose sperms have no tails or heads, why the hell do they even need tails and heads? I can’t imagine I spent three hours masturbating and another two hours milking sperms into a container only to be told that I am sufficiently crippled down there, and the way I have been avoiding tight pants and fires and all that blab la. A cook spends all his life next to the fire and his sperms are normal, more normal, and adequate than mine who has been spending all his life away from from fire, what a paradox!
Well I removed my wedding band, coz Naomi also walked away. She says she is searching for a real man, suddenly; the definition of a real man has changed to someone who has sixty million plus sperms, isokey. Me with my gentlemannes I am left here wondering how this curse got me. I am racking my head, replaying my arguments with my late mzee in my mind, I can’t remember any instance he mentioned infertility. I can’t even remember any of our neighbors at home who can wish me such.

I can tell what you are thinking, that I am suicidal. I am not. I want to die later, not now. I want to die silently, pain free, in my sleep maybe. I want my mother to be alive when I die. I want her to be there because I want someone who will cry genuinely. If she dies before me, I will ask that my body is cremated and only my brother to be there. Otherwise, my burial will be a boring event, burials should be sad not boring.

ANNA YOU WERE UGLY

Anna do not forget that I have seen you grow up. You were such an ugly baby. You had a cushingoid face; the fat under your cheeks was just too much. Your nose was perpetually wet, wet with colorless transparent mucus mostly, but occasionally with greenish yellowish thick mucus. When I first brought you  here, your eyes were red as fire; it is probably because your mother cooked with firewood, or maybe because of your dusty house or both. Your hair was clean shaven, and one could see all the corners of your rectangular head. Your neck was black with layers and layers of dirt. I remember I asked you when you last had a bath. You didn’t answer. You just drew something on my carpet with your long feet. This drew my eyes to your feet. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, your feet; they almost made me faint; thank God there was a chair behind me. I collapsed into it and looked at them closely. You had long feet like a man’s, they are still long, and I swear those feet will look better on a man, not you. Your feet were dirty; the layer of dirt on them was thicker than that on your back. The soles had mega-cracks, cracks big enough to hold a forty shillings coin. Your nails were long, black and unshapely. Your hands were no better; they too had numerous tiny cracks. The nails were shorter however, thanks to your constant biting. Your mouth, I couldn’t look at it, the smell coming out it as you talked was enough to tell me in there were layers and layers of sour milk, sukuma- wiki, and porridge on your teeth, tongue and palate. You were wearing your mother’s discolored oversize top, with nothing beneath it. When I asked you to go take a bath, you bent over to pick that top; your mothers top. You shouldn’t have bent before me; otherwise I couldn’t have seen the cleft between your buttocks. I couldn’t have seen the green that I saw and pellets of millet, so before you came here Anna, you were not only ugly, you were dirty, you didn’t know what tissue paper was and you used to eat millet, like the old women in the village.
Anna, when you first came here, you had the manners of a manner-less village boy. You refused to shit in the toilet, you hadn’t used one where you sit and shit. You used to poop in a piece of paper and then throw in the garbage pit. You used to chew with your mouth open, and disgust everyone, that is why I preferred you having your meals in your room. Otherwise, Naima would have picked bad eating habits from you. You used to eat bread badly, dipping it in tea and then retrieving it with your dirty hands. You used to eat too much. Before you came here, I used to cook with small sufurias, I had to change to medium sized thanks to your appetite. You spoke bad Kiswahili and no English at all.
You were a little mess Anna. You should thank me now for your long black hair. You should thank me that I made you shower every day, otherwise you could be having three layers of skin, even that mole on you upper lip wouldn’t be visible. You should thank me because you no longer smell terrible. You should thank me for those oversize hips you have now. Those hips are thanks to the food that you have been eating here.
If your mother wouldn’t have died Anna, you would be still back in the village, wrapped in torn clothes. Your head would be still bald and all of its corners would be visible. Your soles would be cracked to the point of bleeding Anna. May be you would be married, or you would be having three children already. You should thank God for me.
I am the one who taught you that bread shouldn’t be eaten from a paper; I taught you that armpits shouldn’t be hairy. I taught you a lot of things Anna. These things, you mother wouldn’t have taught you. She was a village woman, and village women shave their heads and forget to shave down there. They buy skirts with marching tops and forget to buy bras. So they walk with their breasts swinging all over their chests, and sometimes hitting each other. Nursing mothers walk with milk trickling down their bellies. That could have been you Anna, but I saved you.
Anna, you were such an ugly baby, remember it is my soap, my oil, and my sprays that have made you beautiful.  Before those winks and stares from fat men make your head swell up, remember where you have come from. You will not disobey me. You will not exchange words with me now that you have learnt how to speak English. You will not get married yet. You will not leave this house before Naima gets married. I brought you up. I scratched the layer of dirt off your back for months before you finally became a “person”. I took you to a teeth cleaner. I am responsible for whatever you have grown into.
Tell that man who wants to marry you to wait. If he refuses tell him that you were an ugly baby. Tell him that it is me who taught you how not to snore. Tell him I bought you your first handkerchief. Tell him that you are ugly without your hair. Tell him you have not always been beautiful; tell him beauty caught up with you as you were growing here in my house. Tell him you are unlike Naima who has always been beautiful ever since she was born, who has always known how to sit properly, and how to chew like a girl. Tell him you will get married after Naima has been married, she is two months older than you after all. You will get married two months after she does her wedding, it is only fairer that way Anna.