Random Thoughts of a Girl in Nairobi

This was my favourite line from this book. The quote that set the mood.  The point at which I sat down and went 'oh snap!'. I took longer than I should have while reading this book.  Which is a polite way of saying that I was distracted by the two other books I was also reading at the time.     This book was an insightful look into Afghani culture. When you've live in this part of the world and you've grown up with terrorism and Al-Qaeda as part of daily news, it's easy to think of the country as this god-forsaken place full of murder, refugees and patriarchy. You don't think of the people or the families or the culture. You don't think of the massive humanitarian crisis being faced on a daily basis. The details don't even occur to you. And I can relate to that as an African in 21st century Kenya fighting against the stereotypes about the continent that have been propagated by decades of Western sensationalist reporting.     This is...

   I heard about this book about two years back and promised myself I wouldn’t read it. It felt a bit morbid for me to be reading about a 36-year old doctor who had just been diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. I'd seen more than enough young cancer patients as a me med-student and I felt that it was just too close to home considering my chosen career path. Even my mom did a double-take when she saw that I was reading a book about death and dying. But apparently something changed in my perspective over the past two years and now I’m here on the other side of the epilogue. Let’s just call it life.    I’ve written about med-student syndrome in posts before and the bad news is that it doesn’t get any better once you’re a real doctor. If anything, the experience you garner makes it worse. A friend of mine had a persistent headache for two days last week with no other symptoms. It was probably stress-induced or something but in the back of our minds as docto...

  What on earth is reddish velvet cake? It's what happens when the chef gets a little too enthusiastic when adding cocoa powder to a red-velvet cake recipe. But I think what's important is that the cake turned out great...especially considering the fact that I totally abandoned the recipe and went with my gut feeling and what the ancestors told me to do.    I made this cake for a friend's birthday and it's honestly the biggest cake I've made to-date. I used two 12x9 inch rectangular cake tins. So now I can check that off my bucket list.     I've also been promising several friends that I'd sit down and start sharing my cake recipes so here goes. When I eventually find the right balance of cocoa powder to everything else and make an actual 'red-velvet cake' I'll be sure to do a follow-up post. But for now, … Ingredients For the cake: 4 cups self-raising flour 1 cup cocoa powder 1 teaspoon instant coffee (for flavou...

    This is a book about book-burning. A contradiction? Yes, I know. Part of what the Nazis did to spread their propaganda was to systematically burn books that conflicted with their message. And I have to say, it was a pretty solid strategy. Control all the information and lull the population into complacency…and then how will they ever contradict you if they don’t have any basis on which to form their contradictions.     As a species we rely so much on what the ones who came before us. It’s how we learn things and it’s how we’re able to invent things. It’s how we solve problems, correct mistakes and hopefully prevent them too. We’d never have come up with a treatment for malaria if someone hadn’t written down what they’d witnessed the Native Americans doing with the bark of the Cinchona tree. We’d never have come up with medical research ethics if the doctors at Tuskegee hadn’t kept records of how they performed horrific syphilis experiments on ...

   I haven’t written anything in months. Forget half baked-drafts shoved into my laptop’s archives to maybe someday see the light of day. Forget sentences started and typed mid-way only to be hastily erased. I haven’t written anything in months, except that one book review last month when I was essentially performing CPR on my creative side. I haven’t written anything in months and I’m still trying to figure-out why.    Part of it is probably the fact that this internship is very involving. Fine, that’s more than an understatement. If I’m not working, then I’m sleeping. Or reading. Or watching a quarter of a movie that will take me 4 days to finish. Or responding to texts hours or days too late. ( I’m going to take a moment now to apologise to everyone I ever gave grief about being a bad texter when I was in med school because I was running on student-time and you were trying to adult! I have become a bad-texter ).    I’m heading towar...

   I admit that I was late to the Trevor Noah comedy train. Years ago, when everyone I knew was ranting and raving about him I held back because I wasn’t all that into stand-up comedy and I was trying to resist peer pressure. Honestly, It’s the little things in life. But, when I eventually decided to give him a chance, man I was hooked. The man is HILARIOUS! And when he announced he was writing a book, I was all-in!    You know the hashtag #GrowingUpAfrican ? This book comprises every single meme posted about it; and then some. In a single chapter I’d go from uncontrollable laughter when he described ‘African-mom’ dynamics to cringing when he talked about the realities of growing-up during apartheid. One of the things I’m unlearning as an African millennial ( Yes, I’m not ashamed of the fact that I was born after the internet was invented ) is the history we were taught in school. I read books like ‘Mine boy’ and I crammed the facts but there was a kin...

   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 hope that as you read this you won't judge me too harshly for waiting until my mid-twenties to read this book. Truth be told, I also feel I should have read it earlier, but I was busy reading other things during my teens *cough* Harry potter *cough*. I also suffer from having a very large back-log of books I've been meaning to read. My wallet's current situation doesn't help either. Reading is an expensive hobby but we love it all the same.    This book took a bit of patience at the start and I kept on getting distracted, but when the story picked-up boy did it go! The main protagonist is named 'Jane Eyre' (surprise!) and the book is about her life. Her growing-up in basically an abusive household, going on to boarding school and eventually finding work as a governess (read 'private tutor'). This is where she meets Mr. Rochester who I spent at least 5 chapters trying to figure out if I should root for or not. Was he tall dark and handsome? Yes,...

   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...

   Earlier this year I posted this picture on Instagram: Because I'm a total bookworm and I'd seen lots of other folks doing reading challenges and I thought that this might be somewhat manageable ( meaning the list wasn't super long ). It would push me to actually seek out books more intentionally than before. Also, I'm a sucker for dares and challenges. Side-effects of being a very competitive person I suppose.    I kept track of my progress using my instagram and goodreads accounts. I will now attempt to take stock and see how I did. 1. A book published this year Harry Potter and the cursed child - John Tiffany A lot of people I know had mixed feelings about this book after all the hype. Personally I'd been waiting for a new Harry Potter book since I finished Deathly Hallows at the age of 17. I loved it, even the script-format. All I can say is: Broaden your horizons and literary palates people! 2. A book you can finish in one day Shadows o...

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...