A Facebook Photo, Comments and a Letter

Dear Dennis,

I saw your comment on Facebook. It was blatant. Callous. But true. The photo of me looking ‘malnourished’ as some people have said, holding on to a microphone as I did my sign-off on an important TV story then, is the testimony of a journey that I have relished.

It is funny. I know. I have grown. Physically, emotionally and mentally. I have grown to a woman who has the hindsight of life fairly well lived. That photo was a culmination of many things. It is defiance. When I was expected to join the Nairobi City Council now Nairobi county, I did not. I would have. It was the easy way anyway. I declined. For reasons best known to me, I was not going to follow the path of my grandfather, mother and then me? Hell no.

Grandpa, God bless the soul of that mighty man, wanted the best for me, you and all of us in his brood. That man, who I bare his name has left an everlasting imprint on my life. Not just because he gave me his name, but because he was my first teacher of feminism. He taught me how to give oneself without expecting anything in return. And when my mother inherited him, when all his daughters inherited him, my heart sang a happy song. But that is not why I write to you.

I write about the photo. It is my journey. I remember how my sister and a few of our cousins made fun of me. It didn’t break my heart actually. We all laughed about it. I would wake up early so that I spared my bus fare for lunch. It was a paltry Sh20. My dusty feet would cross Tom Mboya street and on to the ‘idlers’ corner outside the Hilton. I would take out a piece of cloth that I always carried with me in my bag and wipe my shoes. I knew deep inside me that I needed an escape. Surely, Ziwani, with all its fair share of fame and shame, was never going to be my story.

I feared, like many of my age did, that I would fall into the viciousness of drugs, gangs and perhaps get married to a man who had a wife in the village and I would be his town babe. I would be lured by the sharpness of his suit. The way he walked home after alighting from the bus stop at Sterehe Boys Centre, carrying a newspaper and a quarter kilo of meat. I would peep and see some Dania and two tomatoes, onion and avocado. He has no time to go to Gikomba. He is a busy man. That, in our eyes, was how we measured a man who ‘had it together’. That was the good life before we became aware of how red meat is not good for our health.

One day, perhaps in church or somewhere else, he would ask if we can meet at the red kiosk by the road. He would buy me a Fanta orange and tell me how he lives alone far from our house. He knows my uncles are the lethal kind. He knows they will kill him if they find him here. He knows my mother will not wait to reach him. My auntie, your mother, would slay him with prayer. Lord. My family. God bless this awesomeness.

Still, I would be consumed by the passion of the moment and give him a child. Before long I would be a mother of five and counting and the idea that I would one day drop dead and not have a place to be buried would start to kill me inside. I do not want to go to a public cemetery. It is not a request. It is a demand. I want to hang around guys I know at least. Perhaps we can toast to a good life free of all the earthly troubles. The thought that I belong nowhere really would be the one that pushes me to start something for myself. A kibanda selling bhajia perhaps. I need money to buy myself a place. My own space. Because, of course, I am not allowed to go to the village. His village. After all, I am his town babe. Illicit.

My children would look like him. It is what happens with affairs. I would be the woman everyone in the city knows because I am trying to make myself accepted. Validation. One day his village wife will come. You know how that ends.

It mortified me. Every time I heard gossip about so and so’s daughter having got pregnant, I shuddered. It was as if it was a contagious flu and I would catch it too. It is hard being a woman in a hood like ours.

When I heard about the boy who lived with his grandma having been shot in the neighbourhood, I got sick. I knew his name. I knew his face and his love for shoes. I worried for you and your brother. Will some crazed cop stop you at 6 pm and you refused to stop because you did not know how it would end? Would he then turn his gun on you and plant his own and claim that my precious cousins were in a gang? Would he stare at your eyes as you pleaded for your life and pump bullets?

How could this be our story? It is unwritten. It is there hanging like a sad cloud waiting to pounce on you when you least expect it. Thank God we came from a clan of carers. I thank God for the men and women who raised me. The ones who loved me and you and all of us in that extended family to a fault. We were sheltered. Our eyes and ears though were still there. Soaking it all in. It is our home after all. House number 299. Now, in America raising two black boys, it feels like this is a street I have travelled. The fear is palpable. I have had the courage to discuss with the older one, telling him that he must always stop when the police beckon. My heart aches. But this is now. Back to the photo.

My dash to college had stopped being the highlight of my day. It was my afternoons that I looked forward to. My attachment at the Nation Media Group was epic so to speak. Writing this now reminds me where I started. It was hard. But then there was the promise of one day making it. I am an optimist. It has won and failed me many times but still….

I stay. Hooked to the promise of a better tomorrow. I am not a convert to the self-help industry yet. I have grown knowing optimism sustains my soul.

How I began journalism and was trusted to embark on ‘big’ assignments is a story I hope to write one day, when these voices in my foggy head stop telling me I am yet to refine my craft. I am not yet there. Big assignments, of course, are mine to define here. I give my work my best. When I tell stories, I tell them from a place I almost know. I have been there. When I obsess about health, it is because I have known the best also. It was there. It was awesome. When I go to places that you guys think I should never risk going, it is because that is what I am called to do. I do it from a place I know. When you look at that picture now, look at it from what I have told you.

And by the way, that was my first skirt suit I bought at a shop on Kimathi street that has since closed. It was the first treat and break from my visits to Gikomba, rummaging through second-hand clothes imported from America, UK and wherever else they collect them from. It was slightly below the knee and made me insanely uncomfortable. I am still trying to get inaugurated to the ladies club but hey…..it is never that serious….

From a warmer Amherst,

Me.