Random Thoughts of a Girl in Nairobi

   I have been learning this recently. It’s so easy to look at the finished product of a process and not appreciate what it took to get there. To forget the cost. To assume that it was easy. In our Christian walk we often ask God to ‘mould’ us in His image. We pray for growth and strength and change. But we don’t always think about what that entails. Being moulded means being broken down into the most basic form and then being remade in the image of the artist. The substance is pounded and squeezed and pressed and contorted in new ways until it bends to the will of the moulder. It’s all fun and games until you realize that you’re the clay. And life is squeezing you and crushing you in so many directions and you look up at heaven and ask God if He forgot your agreement. You say that He’s taking too long to give you the things you asked for yet you also asked to be more patient.    And in the moment, you can’t see where things are going and what the fin...

   It’s officially 7 months post-graduation. The gifts and congratulations have stopped rolling in. Not that that was the focus of my attention. Man, I was just glad to be done with med school. Now I get to annoy my friends by wistfully saying things like, “When I was in campus…” or “when I was a student…”  As if that was a million years ago.  That heady euphoria is long-gone and replaced by a different kind of euphoria. I’ve been working and doing actual doctor things for the past 6 weeks and it’s surreal at times. It’s also really exciting. There are aspects of internship that I was prepared for and others that I heavily underestimated. Some things I just did not see coming. It’s been a learning curve though and the good thing is that I work somewhere where everybody is willing to teach. So I’ll highlight some of the things I’ve learned and experienced so far: 1.        You become someone’s boss. It is day 1 and you...

   I know that I'm opening a can of worms. No. Worms are too benign. Floodgates. I am opening the floodgates of a  very volatile conversation. It's something I've been thinking about for a while even before I watched my friends argue about it on Facebook a few weeks ago. At the time I just felt that I didn't have the energy to dive into it.  But I now feel that I have sufficiently collected my thoughts. Also, I've been busy.     Sexism and rape culture is a reality that can no longer be ignored. My earliest memory of being cat-called was when I was 15 years old.  I don't remember exactly where I was or who did it.  All I remember is feeling unsafe and disgusted. And in the subsequent times that it happened over the years,  I wondered if it was my fault. It happened whether I was wearing a dress or my oldest and baggiest jeans and an over-sized t shirt.  It's a thing that I and other women have somehow developed an unspoken rule f...

   I feel cheated by our education system. I have a problem with several aspects but I especially have a problem when it comes to the teaching of history. I feel like there are major parts that were skimmed over. Sure, they covered all the major bases about how Kenya was colonized and there were segregated schools for the different races. But it never talked about how Nairobi was basically partitioned into areas where the settlers lived, where the Asian community lived and where the Africans lived. We were taught about how colonialism was a good thing for us Africans and that they British might have overstepped their bounds a bit by mistreating Africans thus leading to the need for the Mau Mau rebellion. Maybe it was inappropriate to explain torture and human-rights violations to 12-year olds. But they glossed over the fact that thousands of Africans died due to outbreaks of diseases that had never been experienced in the continent before. That means that we had no immun...

   This meme is a running joke between me and my friends. Or my friends and I. We occasionally post on social media about how we have successfully 'adulted' for the day. ' Adulting ' being the act of successfully doing something grown- up that you've never done before.Keyword being: successfully. And I know that there is a section of baby-boomers that's sick of this millennial habit of constantly documenting our supposed triumphs for the whole world to see, but I'm pretty sure they'd be doing the same thing if they'd this technology at their disposal in their hey-day. Heck! who I am I kidding?! They did do the same thing.. through phone calls, letters and postcards.    But back to the meme. Being an adult is hard work.. the first time around anyway. I had an experience last year when I accompanied 3 teenage girls to the hospital. Reason being we were at camp and I was a counsellor and they had some injuries that needed to be looked at by a docto...

   This is a statement that many 90s kids growing up in this country might be familiar with. That and it's various variants: 'Hiyo iko na wenyewe' , 'not for the likes of us' and most recently, 'Stick to your lane'. When you've lived in mediocrity all your life it changes you. It seeps through your pores and permeates your soul. It becomes the glass ceiling that you place over yourself and your children. The thing that keeps you shackled in the dark when you had the keys all along. Maybe it's a result of colonialism. Decades of Africans being told what they can't do so much that they started to believe it. And even after they were freed, they never really experienced freedom.      You might wonder what these things that we've decided we don't deserve are. Back then it might have been certain restaurants frequented by foreigners, the idea of a family holiday to Mombasa or even the concept of demanding more from our leaders. I was t...

Some folks complain about 'adulting'. Introverts complain about 'people-ing'    When I was in High school we had an annual parents’ open day for the form two students. Basically all your teachers sat at different tables and you and your folks went round from table to table so that they ( your folks ) could meet the teachers and discuss how you’re doing and what-not. I was struggling a bit with some of my grades and it didn’t help for me to have the teachers for the two subjects I was struggling the most in: Math and chemistry – tell my parents that I barely participated in class. I was deeply offended. In my view I was doing very well at class participation. I was practically slaying class participation. Those teachers had it wrong and my parents were equally as wrong for not believing me. That’s what it’s like to be an introvert.    Of course the only people who can appreciate that deep struggle are fellow introverts and ambiverts ( Ambiverts are...

   The hashtag #WhatADoctorLooksLike is sweeping the internet and with good reason.  In case you're not familiar with the story, I'll catch-you-up. Last week a man on a Delta airlines flight collapsed. So the flight attendant did what we've all watched in movies but few have seen in real life.  She asked if there was a doctor on board. A young African-American OBGYN ( The kind of doctor that attends to women during pregnancy, pregnancy related issues and all other female-specific health issues ) raised her hand because duh! She's a doctor. And even th The flight attendant saw her but automatically assumed she wanted to ask about something else, so she dismissed her and asked again for a doctor. She managed to get the attendant's attention again and this time informed her that she is a doctor.  So the unnecessary time-wasting and possible patient-killing Q & A ensued. Apparently the flight attendant was having a hard time believing that our young Afr...

Brusque - Synonyms:  curt, abrupt, blunt, short, sharp, terse, peremptory, gruff;  offhand, discourteous, impolite, rude   Being a Christian and a Nairobian is a delicate balancing act. On one hand I want to be kind and accommodating toward people. But on the other I'm hyper-aware of the rampant conman-ship we encounter on a daily basis. So you genuinely try to be concerned about the needs of other...but from a slight distance, you know. Just in case.    I met a woman in the bus the other day. She was sitting next to me and I probably wouldn't have spoken to her if it wasn't for the fact that the bus ran out of fuel and abruptly stalled in the middle of the road....at 7.30 pm in the evening. And yes I’ll admit it. Up until that moment my face was firmly glued to my phone screen. So she sighed and asked me how she would get to the hospital ( Kenyatta National Hospital ) considering that the ...

  Human beings are such ridiculously myopic beings. Whenever a public figure makes a mistake, we focus on that one incident and completely forget all the good they had previously done. It’s easier for us to focus on the bad in a situation and forget all the good. Even in our own personal lives. When something bad happens to us, we focus on it, lament about, worry about it, tell the whole world about it and promptly forget about anything else that was positive in our lives. I think the author of this hymn was onto that. Because the lyrics hit so close to home with an accuracy that is timeless.    There is something refreshing about counting one’s blessings. It’s a reminder that whatever situation you are in is really not that bad and that this too shall pass. It gives you the strength to go on. It reminds you that indeed God is still here and He is still good.    So I don’t know about you, but I’ve made a decision to do it more regularly. For myself...

   My first encounter with sexism occurred when I was 12 years old. It was report-card day at the end of 2 nd term and I was in class 7. This was an especially important report-card day because it was one short step to class 8 and everything was taken more seriously by the school. In-fact to prove just how serious things were, class 7s and 8s had to wear their school-uniforms while the rest of the school got to wear regular clothes! I was a bit nervous but not that much. I went to school with a pretty competitive bunch of kids so by this day after the marking, verification and revision of most exam papers; we’d taken the liberty of compiling a rough estimate of our total marks and averages. I knew I was in a good place. I just didn’t know how much.    For the first time in a long time, I’d come first in my class! I told you I went to school with competitive kids. It was hard to maintain the top position for more than one or even two terms. We kept on shift...

I've written about being in med-school before and the things you learn . But I've never written about how it inadvertently changes you. You: 1.       Start using big words in every-day conversations. Case-in-point: ‘inadvertent’ there above 2.       Choose comfort over style. Depending on the activities of the day you may end up choosing these comfy flats that you can stand hours in instead of cute ballet flats, sandals or heels. Those you shall reserve for the weekend. 3.        Lose most of your verbal filter. And therefore end-up often saying stuff that may shock non-medics. It's so normal to you that you only notice it when they give you the 'look'. 4.       Get used to strange meal-times. Early morning classes might mean breakfast at 8/9...despite the fact that you've been up since 5/6am. Lunch at 12/2pm because of surgeries or clinics become a regu...

  Forgive the apparent typo, but there really is no better way to express this than by the use of a recently-coined millennial verb. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the word ‘adulting’ made its way into next year’s edition of the oxford dictionary. We seem to be borrowing so much from pop culture these days. Now for everyone born before 1980, according to urban dictionary ‘adulting’ can be defined as ‘ doing grown-up things and holding responsibilities such as, a 9-5 job, a mortgage/rent, a car payment, or anything else that makes one think of grown ups ’. Okay? All good? Now that we’re on the same page allow me to make my list.    Successful adulting is: 1.        Pretending to know what you’re doing 80% of the time and actually knowing what you’re doing only 20% of the time. I have early childhood memories of my parents being total ninjas at stuff. I recently found myself in similar situations and shockingly reali...