THE DAY I TOOK A GUY HOME

My girlfriends are getting married, and the number is fast rising. I wonder sometimes if I will get married……………because I want to get married someday. It’s a good feeling to know that I own someone, my someone, my person, the one maybe??? Oh well, one of these fine days I will sit down with my married girlfriends and ask them how they did it. Trust me, after my grandmother’s funeral fiasco where some friends of ours (the second generation’s friends, the first being my dad and his siblings), male I might add, came to grieve with us, I am not looking forward to it.

Now you are wondering, what’s with the title? No? Oh, I have a little story to tell. Buckle up. I took a guy home.

It was my birthday, so I must surely remember the day very well! See, I had decided that I was going to celebrate my mom’s life, and honour her. The previous day would have been her 47^th and I had missed her. So I saved enough money and purposed to travel upcountry for the weekend. That, and the fact that I fell off the bed. The bunk bed at campus, straight to the floor and at 4am!!! Maybe a warning, well too bad I am not superstitious.

A few months earlier I had linked up with a dear friend. A very dear male friend. We grew up together before first we moved to my dad’s paradise in the savannah bushes of Embakasi then they also later moved. So we lost touch, before a brief meeting during school festivals and now in campus. Yes, a loop. Almost like a doodle, I agree. So when I told him of my plan to go home, he wanted in. He was evidently distraught that he had missed the burial, what better way to make it up. Yes? No, so wipe off that smile from your face.

So the journey began at the break of dawn. I was sore from the fall, but still determined to get home. The excitement died down, I remember sleeping. Then waking up. The driver kept playing the same album over and over and we could even sing along by the time we got to Kisii town. I called my dad to update him when we got to Narok, he was not amused. At all. A small lunch detour at my aunt’s, and at 4pm we got home.

Greetings, shopping received and a cup of tea later we were at the gravesite. Sombre, I hadn’t been to the gravesite since the burial. A few hours, flashback and waterworks we planted a tree and went back to my gramps house. It was getting late. We needed to exit. But not before the interrogation. My grandpa and the young man, my grandma and me.

“So is he handsome? (My grandma is blind) Where does he work? His own company, so he earns good money? Have you known him long? Since childhood, so you know him well? What of a car? Is it big? He drives you around? Hehe!! (She breaks into dance and chants some praises, wedding ululations………) Is his house big? So you have moved in with him? Why did you take so long to bring him? How many children will you have?...............”

We leave, I don’t ask him what went on while I was out. Clearly traumatising for the both of us. So I get back to Nairobi, I am declared persona-non-grata in my dad’s house. He doesn’t even pick up my phone calls. I am broke. And sore all over, purple in some places from the fall on my birthday from the upper deck. It really hurt.

Things are okay now, we can even laugh about it. But no, no guys to my home please! Thankyou. 

So have you taken a guy home? Do share.

MATERNAL HEALTHCARE: Let's join the First Lady in this campaign

(It's been about a month since I wrote this, some of you may have read it. But watching the news today, I felt compelled to have it posted here.)

 
It's that annoying buzz in the dead of the night, 2.47 for heaven's sake! And I don’t want to wake up. Then again, it's a call. Not an accidental alarm ring. Especially not from a secret crush "forbidden fruit" or an insomniac friend, but your step and you just have to pick the call.

So my senses straighten out. I remember last night's anxiety, I was so laden it was hard to breathe. My heart was beating hard and laboriously. Yes, beating like a Timbuktu drum, like it was misplaced and I wanted it to come to an end. But that's why it's called anxiety, kinda like an extremely crippling fear of the unknown.

In that short period, it feels like an eternity. The phone is still ringing. My head is still analyzing. Maybe it's news about grandma. Maybe she's, you know............... See, she suffered a stroke just a day ago and she's been aspirated. It's wrong to say she hasn't yet been able to open her eyes because everyone asks, "But she's blind? No?" And I am wondering, don't some blind people have eyes? Yeah, ignorance is bliss!

The phone is still ringing. I compose myself. Surely God will let me fulfill my promise. See, in our last conversation grandma prayed that I get a job soon and buy her a cardigan for my graduation. I had better get those CV's out before I run out of time!

The phone is still ringing. I pick up. My hand is shaking, I almost drop the phone (on the mattress, I’m in bed). My heart stops (this is just for dramatic effect), I can hear my labored breathing. There is pin drop silence........

Good news; my grandma is still alive and kicking (no pun intended, since she's immobile). And bad news. My neighbor just lost his wife in childbirth.

It's not happy news, trust me. Just because one life has been spared, doesn't make it any better. So when the first lady goes on a marathon to raise money for improved maternal care, shame on you and shut your pout if you think there's better things that a First Lady can do other than running to raise not just money but awareness on improving maternal care.

RIP Mama Kwamboka.