Random Thoughts of a Girl in Nairobi

   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 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...

   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...

  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...

  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...

   The other day I was in a Matatu headed to town, my nose deep in a book. This gentleman sat down next to me while having a lengthy phone conversation. At some point during the ride he finished his conversation, disconnected the phone and turned to me. Our conversation went something like this: Him:      How are you? Me:         * pretends not to hear *                 ( Because this is Nairobi and I’m not particularly in the habit of talking to random strangers. Also, he might be trying to hit on me. There was something about the way he said that statement; how are you? ) Him:      * A bit louder *                 How are you? Me:        * sighs inwardly, replies tersely *    ...

   And by that I mean a generation that literally has no hope. And that’s ironic considering the sheer number of campaigns aimed at making us feel better about ourselves. Campaigns and strategies that we cling to with all we have. And it helps for a while. But you can’t put a band-aid on a bullet-wound and expect the bleeding to stop. It’s not practical because that’s not what bullet-wounds need.    We've lost hope in the prospect of wholesome relationships. We've lost hope in our parents. We've lost hope in the very systems in put in place to govern our society and help us live our day to day lives. Because most of us have been hurt ten times over or have seen the hurt in those closest to us. We tweet daily about corruption in the government and all the things wrong with the systems in place and rarely do we see our outcry come to fruition.    So it’s become easier to not care. To drink away into oblivion because it’s not necessarily our prob...

  As Christians sometimes we avoid doing the wrong thing by talking ourselves out of it.  Like I won't lie because I'm a bad liar. Or I won't have sex outside marriage because I could get pregnant. So we walk around pleased with ourselves for upholding the commands that we've been given in the Bible. It's a means to an end, so that makes it OK, right? Wrong.     It's a weak defence against sin. It's easy to talk yourself out of something wrong. It's just as easy to talk yourself into it. Rationalisation is a very shaky fallible foundation. Just like that guy who built his house on the sand. In the end everything comes crashing down. The truth is that we are meant to do what the Bible says because God says so. Simple. It makes it much harder to sin when you know that doing so would be an offence against God and not whatever shaky man-made beliefs you may have. This is something that I was reminded of yesterday Needless to say, it was a total li...

   A lot of creatives may claim to love all their work equally. Yeah, right! I'm going to be human and admit that that's not true in my case. 2014 was an interesting year for me. A lot of changes were made and I did a lot of growing. I discovered new things about myself and I let my writing take me where-ever. Therefore, as we countdown to the new year I feel it would be appropriate to make this post. These are my favourite blog-post of 2014....from this blog: 1.  Trust me, I'm no expert  ( I was just in that place ) 2. Things to do while stuck in Nairobi traffic  ( Rant of the year ) 3. That falling in love feeling  ( Poetic-much! ) 4. My first Foodie Fridays 5. The documentation of my hair journey: Naturalista experiment part 1 and part 2 6.   Book reviews  ( Something I've always wanted to do ) 7.   I tried to be a football fan and failed  ( World-Cup fever ) So totally feel...

   We have just a few days left in 2014 and it has just dawned on me that I don't really believe in making new year's resolutions. In the evening of the 31st my mom and I will have a conversation where she'll ask me what my resolutions for 2015 are. Then I'll probably wrack my brain for a minute and say the first thing I think of. Something probably involving being less messy in my room (S he calls it a mess, I call it organised chaos ). I'll also probably mention something outrageous like getting a neck tattoo. But that's beside the point.    See if I really wanted to change my habits or behaviour I wouldn't wait for a sometimes over-hyped holiday to do it. I'd do it the moment I realised there was a problem. Or the moment someone held an intervention for me. But I wouldn't wait for the mass positivity of a made-up event such as 'New years resolutions' to spur me on. Let's be honest, it simply doesn't provide enough motivation...

   I’m going to make a confession. For the past approximately 4 years my hair has entirely been in braids. I’d undo one set of braids and get another re-done literally the next day...for four years! Don’t judge me yet because mine is a story many of you might identify with.     Like most African girls, I was told growing-up that my hair was ‘difficult’ or ‘too much trouble’ and therefore the only way to make it manageable was to relax it. I’ve only relaxed my hair twice in my lifetime and both times it ended with a haircut because the breakage was so bad. The first time was in primary school and the second was in form 2 of high school. You can only imagine how frustrated I was both times. The non-stop braiding regime began after high school. The aim being for me to grow my hair to a certain length then probably relax it ( again ). It’s not that I have anything against short hair; it looks incredible on some people. It’s just that some girls prefer flowers...

I dove into this recipe feet first and with both eyes closed. I’ve cooked rabbit before but I wondered how it ( and meat in general ) would taste after being marinated in passion juice! Strange, I know, but it also was a huge success! ( Whoop whoop! ) So here goes: Ingredients ½ a rabbit cut into pieces 1 large onion 2 large carrots 3 medium sized tomatoes 1 large capsicum 1 medium sized courgette ¼ cup cooking oil 1 teaspoon of royco For the marinade 1 cup fresh passion juice 5 cloves of garlic 1 heaped teaspoon of salt 1 heaped teaspoon of black pepper Instructions 1. Crush the garlic and mix with the other marinade ingredients. Place the rabbit pieces in a bowl and pour the marinade over the rabbit. Cover and refrigerate for 3 hours, turning the pieces after an hour and a half. 2.  Pour the cooking oil onto a heated saucepan and add the rabbit. Fry at medium heat until browned.  3. Add the rest of the ingredient...

   At some point in my childhood, I developed vampire teeth. Don’t get it? Let me explain. You see, it was that point after I’d lost all my milk teeth and all that was left was permanent teeth. I think I was around 9. My lower jaw was fine, my upper one, not so much. My upper canines couldn’t come down properly, so they were suspended somewhere midway between the other teeth. Hence the term ‘vampire teeth’. My brother on the other hand was born with perfect dentition so yeah, I’ve been a little jealous.         It was mostly a private joke between my mom and I. I might have even once pretended to suck someone blood ( lol! Don’t judge ) but things got serious when I was 11. Maybe it was the whole puberty thing and my mom decided she didn’t want her daughter to grow-up with weird dentition. For the sake of my self-esteem or something. I don’t know but I should probably ask her. When I was 11, she decided that I needed to see a dentist. I was ...

   It’s more than obvious how much the internet has changed our lives. People of my generation will never know what it’s like to completely lose touch with old classmates or spend hours looking for information in a pile of books because all of that is a click away and a seconds away ( Depending on your ISP speeds ). But today the one thing that does stand-out for me is the effect it has had on parenting. Apparently nobody saw this coming! ·          Punishment Remember those days when you’d do something wrong and your parents would lecture you or beat you or take away something you loved so they could teach you a lesson? Those strategies only worked to a certain degree because some of us zoned-out through the talks, developed immunity to pain and learned to survive without those things we’ loved’. What does the internet parent do for effective and full-proof punishment? They just embarrass you on social media. Take for example t...

   More like accepting things as they are per say. I know that we’ve grown up as the generation that’s been told ‘ be all you can be’ ‘never give up’ and my personal favourite ‘Quitters never win and Winners never quit’ . But let’s just be honest about this for a second. Even the best laid plans backfire  on a regular basis. So we can’t afford to walk around starry-eyed with our heads in the clouds believing that every single one of your dreams will irrevocably come true.    Now don’t get me wrong, I know that I probably have a bit of a reputation for being that girl who cheers you on no matter what, but there are just some things that lie in our circle of no-control and hence there nothing we can do about them.  So what am I suggesting? I’m suggesting that you move on to the next best thing. Like maybe you love music, but you can’t carry a tune in a wheelbarrow( here I go quoting the Time traveller’s wife ), you obviously can’t become a singer so pl...