live and let live

I attended mostly Christian schools all my life.

I hate that phrase. ..all my life...sounds like I have lived for centuries.

So any ways am inclined to justify my belief system by referring to the Bible…which to be honest I don’t read as often as I should.

...I am a bad Christian…I am in the secret service army of the Lord...no its already taken by angels...
oh well!

Growing up we were told sex before marriage was bad and if a girl got pregnant… oh boy! did they let her have it. She became the warning sign for risky behaviour.

Unakaa nje mpaka saa hii? Unataka kupata mamba kama philgona?'was what our parents said over and over and over…you get the picture!

If the they abhorred heterosexual relations before marriage, imagine what they thought of gay people. Yes it was that bad. So bad that they had rules in my school that girls should not hold hands or walk together for too long. Imagine how we used to treat the new girls in school. If they tried to touch you. You’d turn ninja immediately and jump. It was actually amusing to watch.

I wish they knew the damage this did. I mean we didn’t even know what gay means being raised in the village and all until we met them.(By them I mean the school administration)

Infact they only taught us about ma-lesi (lesbians) and gay men I learnt much later in college.

This made me so self conscious that I could not hug a chic right…i used my hand as a buffer to prevent our breasts from brushing against each other because according to me I would go to hell.

I heard talks of gay boys being beaten up in boys high school. What’s worse was when they were “ caught in the act,” the younger one lied that he was raped to absolve all guilt he had.sad if you think about it. Its bad when we discriminate against gays but when they do that to each other it must really hurt.

Funny enough lesbianism isn't as frowned upon by the society as gayism in men. This if you ask me is another sort of discrimination.Like when i googled the male symbol it was easy to find and a little extra information on gayism. When i did the same for the lesbians i got very little(Just incase you are wondering why i chose to use the male symbols and left out the female symbols) In Kenya we keep talking about the poor boychild... and now i am worried for the poor gay boychild.

... what do i know...

I mean how was I supposed to accept that gay people are normal when some of the words we use implied they aren’t. you see when I say I am straight am implying a gay person is crooked. or am I thinking too much?

Personally I think what bothers people is what some gay guy called “the yuck factor”. As in we are grossed out by the thought of people of the same sex getting it on…as if heterosexual sex aint freaky too.

I remember this one time another preacher saying we should not have oral sex as the mouth is meant for eating…
...and am thinking my “pink Cadilla “ is for peeing too and
…come on you what imean.

no offence to anyone .o.k. yes offence.

im tired and my eyelids are getting heavier...tomorrow i promise i will get to the point...

PEACE.

what i should have known about blogging but didnt and now im paying for it in instalments.

I quit my job in June.

…see me and my employer had creative differences. They were creative, I wasn’t. lol.

Anyway I found myself with a lot of time on my hands and quite frankly didn’t know what to do with myself. Then my awesome sister @antwaRogue, God bless her heart, suggested I start a blog.

To be honest until June I knew nothing about blogging. O.k. I had read a few but I didn’t think I really had anything to tell the world but after the first post I was a believer.

For the first time in a long time I was doing something I loved. I have so much to say. I have even shocked myself a couple of times. Like this time I started writing an article set with a title and all but in the course of typing the article took a different turn and became something else. Ive never had that happen to me before.

Usually am predictable and my every move calculated. Blogging has opened my eyes to so many possibilities and found out stuff about myself that I never even knew.

…wish I had done this a long time ago. oh well am here and its not too late.

Then I started becoming scared because I discovered I was in way above my head. My writing is in chaos and its formless and so out there.

Apparently there’s more to the writing process, than merely putting your raw thoughts on paper.

Who would have thought.I mean @antwaRogue never gave me a manual or something. Not that im complaining or anything. She just gave me a computer and told me to go wild and that’s what I did. I didn’t even know there were boundaries. I remember someone reading a few of my articles and telling me “they aren’t creative and a little bit too revealing.

O.k. he put it more crudely but for the sake of my fragile ego I have rephrased it.

After that comment left a bad taste in my mouth I decided to turn it down a notch and I felt very constricted. Being nice and appropriate has never been my thing. Saying what you think people want to read sucks! Breaking my back trying to please “them”.

Who are them by the way?

I guess this are the things you should be warned about when you put yourself out there. Sometimes I wish I had used a pseudonym like all these other people are doing so that I can deal with negative criticism in private. It gets even worse when someone reads your article and the only things they get out of it is your grammatical mistakes. Ouch.

I think some veteran bloggers get annoyed when they see other bloggers struggling to come up. They feel like it’s a mockery of their work, a travesty of the art of blogging.

I have seen some of my old post and even I cringe so its understandable.

I remember asking one veteran blogger how to upload a picture. Oh boy! You should see the reply he gave me. I think I left my dignity in that chat, am yet to go back for it.lol.

A close friend read one of my articles and thought that it was a hit on her. She made me swear never to mention her here. The funny thing is that article had nothing to do with her. Now i have to think about every story i write if is refers to someone i know. Swear sometimes i feel like using the disclaimer that directors use at the beginning of the movie to avoid law suit.

There's this other reader who always reads my blogs and tear it apart every time. Its like the more critical he is of my articles the more progressive he feels. If it isn’t my Titles, then its my pictures , the length of the blog...there's just isn’t pleasing this person.

Wonder why he always gives himself a hernia reading my blogs while he could go watch paint dry.The weird thing is that that reader doesn’t even have a blog, go figure.

I swear if it wasn’t for my sister I would have gone Virginia tech on his judgmental behind. I mean if you don’t like a blog move on to the next there are millions of other blogs which are bound to tickle your fancy.

So these days I have decided to go with trial and error MO and let my imagination run free. And think outside the box.

Wait… ill throw away the box and just think.

Wonder why people always have to think next to a box.lol.

whose box is it any ways..i have never seen it.have you?

o.k. now am just talking nonsense, ill go now...

look what anger made me do...

In my last blog post, I talked about being dead to corruption of any sort and I may have mentioned that we need to die to anger. I’m a very good example of what anger can make you do.

Before you read on ,promise you wont judge me or look at me different.

Yes, I catch feelings sometimes. am human after all.

The first time I became aware of just how destructive anger is was when I was in primary school.

I cant remember the year though.

My cousins were teasing me about something for days and I was getting pretty annoyed. I was too afraid to say anything at first because I wanted to be agreeable, cool and didn’t want to lose any friends.

I let family and friends walk all over me and get away with a lot of things until I couldn’t.

The last straw was when my cousin got physical with me and poking me as she made fun of me. It was one thing calling me names from afar but when you come all up in my face then we have a problem. Though she was older than me, I grabbed her by the neck,dropped her to the ground and started choking her. She scratched my face , punched me in the stomach but I could not let go. It was like my belly and my face was on fire but I was stuck on her neck. The other kids tried to intervene but alas .All of a sudden she started having seizures and I got scared and let go. One of my smart cousins knew what to do and calmed her down ,She was so shocked that she never even cried.

It was the worst day of my life and to this date I still remember the scene very well: what I was wearing, what she was wearing, the exact spot where I threw her …

The next day she woke up very sick and had to be hospitalized and I felt so horrible.I thought it was my fault. I cried buckets that day. We never even went out to play the next day.The previous days events stuck on our minds.

I lost my innocence that day when i learnt that i had the power to hurt other people.Who would have thought that inside my small body there was a little monster that reared its ugly head that day. Its a lot for a small girl to fathom.

I later learned that she actually had malaria.

The other kids didn’t report me because they also said stuff to set me off and they knew if they told they'd be telling on themselves too. I was so mad at myself that the next day I bit into a bar soap.

Believe me when I say soap does not taste good at all.

That’s when I knew I had to change.

I mean I almost killed my cousin! how messed up was that?

I started reading books on anger and dealing with issues and not let them pile up. I started crying a lot too which seemed to calm me down whenever im annoyed or frustrated. Up to this day I am afraid to get into fights. In school I let people beat me up because I knew that my inner demon could come out and I could do a lot of damage.

Or maybe i thought i deserve the beatings for nearly killing my cousin.
A way for atoning for my sins.
A way to make myself feel better. i dunno...

Imagine me giving up a good fight because of what I could do and not getting beat up ,weird. I know.

Ive never even beat up any of my siblings or any child for that matter.

God knows i have wanted to light up their little tushies.lol.

Moral of the story, deal with your anger now before it takes over your mind and eventually your whole life.It will dictate everything in your life to a point where it distorts logical reason and your ability to control your emotions/actions and make you act a fool like I did.

People who fly into a rage always make a bad
landing.
-- Will Rogers.

Two things a man should never be angry at:
what he can help, and what he cannot help.
-- Thomas Fuller.

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal
with the intent of throwing it at someone else;
you are the one who gets burned.
-- Buddha.

can my uterus breath a second? please? thank you.

I turned twenty seven in May. Yes am approaching the big three O and am embracing all the changes that comes with being older...

The stretch marks: My kid sister asked me if I was involved in an accident that gave me the marks on my back and I sat her down and explained to her what stretch marks are.

the worst 10 minutes of my life ill never get back.

Did you know that only 70% of women suffer stretch marks, guess the other 30% enjoy it.lol

...and apparently there's no cure for stretch marks but cocoa butter is good for improving the appearance.Life is so cruel!


Putting on weight or lets just say the being soft in the middle change: being addressed as mama as opposed to aunty by the kondis kwa matatu(taxi for some of you).

The students that I taught along time ago giving me seats in the bus.

they are so sweet

...dont get me started on my friends asking me if i am pregnant when the see the ka small bulge on my stomach.

...filling out forms and having to fill out N/A on the number of children and single for the marital status question. Why cant they just have different forms for single women?

...the hospital visits are torture.What with the doctors always asking if i am preggers before attending to me.

...i wasn't pregnant last month, and no i am not pregnant now and tomorrow doesn't look good either. If i get pregnant, i will let you know doctor. thank you

Being hit on by older men who don’t hesitate to say they don’t want jokes as they are seriously looking for a wife. I’ve even been asked for my five year plan on a date.

Jeez! When dating become so complicated?I only left the dating seen for a second. Its now more of an interrogation than a social affair.

Any way I was so excited to reach 27 and in my mind I thought I would be older and wiser making my own decisions without being influenced or pressurized by anyone. Live my life as a saw fit and not explain anything to anybody. I think I rejoiced too soon. I’ve learnt the hard way that peer pressure doesn’t end when you grow older, it gets even worse.

All of a sudden, am hearing talks of children and marriage and all that comes with it all over the place. My grandma wants to know when misee(my man) is bringing the cows. My mama wants two boys and two girls.

She doesnt ask for much does she?

My siblings are already telling me the stuff they are going to do to my children when they arrive. Its like everybody around me has plans for my uterus except me.
Even my neighbours daughter came to ask me where is my child. I’m guessing her mama put her up to it.

That heifer mssschew

...and people asking me how comes i don't have a child. How I'm i supposed to answer that really???

Don’t get me wrong I love children to def. I normally babysit for my mamas friends and we get along just fine, although this one time I forgot to feed baby Neema and she whispered in my ear, "aunty naumwa na tumbo” and I got the message.

See I understand baby language.

I look forward to being somebody’s wife and it would even be a greater honour to be somebody’s mother but not right now.

There are one or six things that I need to do first.

get a sperm donor for starters.

But in the mean time I wish everyone would just back off and let me breath a second.Who needs a biological clock when you have a family/friends like mine to constantly ring the alarm loud for the uterus to deliver the goods(forgive the pun)lol

i want to die

I got baptized in the year 2000 and it was one of the best moments of my life. I was pretty heavy back then.

again I don’t know the P.C. word they use for people who are fat nowadays.lol.

Had it not been for the very handsome deacon whose names escapes me now, we would probably have drowned.

I became a Christian and it was by my own choice no one pushed me to do it. I knew in my heart I wanted to live a better life than the one I was living and I could not do it alone.
I went back to school and sadly I didn’t change much. I still talked too much, cried too much,cussed like a sailor, ate too much...self control was a curse word in my vocabulary.

I started feeling like a fraud because I had promised during (mafundisho)

someone please translate this for me

that I would die to sin and live a new life in Christ but I wasn’t doing that. I was so hard on myself that up to date I haven’t gotten the courage to go and get my Baptism card. My pastor has been calling me and I keep coming up with excuses as to why I haven’t gone.

wonder if the Holy Ghost has snitched on me?lol.

It came to me in a dream(o.k. I was thinking about this verse in the bible, I cant remember it now but ill label it after I finish writing)that I needed to die. Not dying as in killing my self but stop catching feelings over irrelevant things. I want to stop being petty. I want to keep the most important stuff and ignore the irrelevant stuff.

Heck i need to grow the hell up.

During the days when humans gave God animal sacrifice only dead animals were placed on the altar. The altar is for dead people. When you are dead your not reactive, but rather its Jesus who lives in you. So just as the animal is dead on the altar so should we in terms of “worldly things””. Dead to jealousy, dead to anger, dead to negative criticism, dead to any form of corruption in our lives.

I now have a new resolution.Forget eating healthy, forget getting pregnant... I want to die. Believe me am going to die even if it kills me.lol

My favourite love songs

I was never good in music in school. It was almost as bad as Kiswahili. I envy kids nowadays who have Art/Craft and music removed from the Primary school Syllabus in Kenya. In spite of this am able to appreciate good music: even though I still don’t understand the intricate details involved in making music .I love listening to love songs. Who doesn’t?

Below I have quoted a few of my favourite and why I can’t seem to get over them, some after many years. Those songs that take you to that good and happy place:-

1.No words to say_Tracy chapman
This reminds me of when love sneaks up on you. you are caught you unawares but you really don’t mind at all. You thrown caution to the wind and just go with it.

...This feeling I have for you Deep in my heart,
safe from the guards of intellect and reason...
Im no longer the master of my emotions...


2.Open Arms – Tracy chapman
I especially love this one for its simplicity. It doesn’t include someone making impossible promises but simply offering you open arms. And sometimes this is all you need. This girl Tracy Chapman knows how to use words.

...If love is what you want baby here iam
If its time that you need...
baby ill stop the clock.


3.You are the one – Tracy Chapman
This is perfect for when you are in love with someone who you know is wrong for you but you don't really care.People have warned you about him/her but who cares.Reminds me of this time after high school when i fell in love with a twenty eight year old guy and all hell broke.

Thats a story for another day(read blog post)

The words that best describes it is sound-proof love . You cant hear what everyone around you is saying

...think you are cute and misunderstood..
Stay as you are don’t change a thing..
I wouldn't change you if I could...
I like it when you play with me.


4.Someday – Franscesca Battistelli
It says the things I always daydream about and want to tell a guy but im too chiken to say. I guess its up there with asking a guy “where is this relationship going?”
It about the simple things you like doing with your man

...Washing cars,
watching stars,
going to the store...


5.Run away – The Corrs
This song had me at the intro. i didn’t even have to listen to the rest of the lyrics to know that I love it. It also happens to be my B.F.F's fave song back in college, he introduced me to soft rock too.

...say its true there's nothing like you and me...
am not alone tell me you feel it too and I would run away...


6. Village girl – Valerie Kimani
So beautiful, the guitar at the beginning gave me goose bumps. Its about a village girl in love with a city boy. It the stuff the scripts of the many soap operas we are subjected to in our local T.V stations every night are made of.


7. Make me better – Fabulous feat Neyo
I have always taken Fabulous to be a good bad boy. This song is sweet but it also maintains the gangsta feel. Telling a lady you love her without sounding mushy. The stutters and the bad grammar is enough to make @greatrnk have a hernia.lol. And the feminist in me especially loved the phrase

...Beside every great man you can find a woman...
( geddit beside not behind)


8. King and Queen - Richie spice feat Alison Hinds
I’ve always loved Richie spice, I only wish he smiled more in his music videos and stop being too damn serious all the time. Like in this song he doesn’t smile at his “wife and child”. It’s a good thing he’s so very talented that people over look this. The music video portrayed the black people in a positive light.No one being shot, no one selling drugs...you catch my drift. What? I didn’t throw it? O.k. i'll stop now.lol


9. He heals me - Indie Arie
I loved the way she talks about being in a relationship where you are accepted just the way you are.This is what i wish for every woman,to feel safe in a relationship and enjoy it completely.

...i have no idea how long he'll be here,
but for the first time in my life am not worried
about the future cause he’s already changed my life…
...

God I love this song.


10.Head over feet – Alanis Morissette
Remember when you fell in love with a guy the first time that you met but didnt respondas you were busy playing hard to get.Then you get tired of playing hard to get and have decided to let him know whats up. The only time I loved the phrase..Friends with benefit was in this song.lol

...you have already won me over in spite of me..
...You are my best friend,best friends with benefits...am aware now...

me and my big mouth

Relax people its not what you think

It all started a few days ago when I made fun of my male friend who always puts photos of cars as his profile picture on facebook. I may have asked him (or rather told him)the reason why he did so is because he thought he was ugly. I didn’t stop there, I went on to nudge him as I laughed at my own joke, which I thought was brilliant lame Unfortunately my male pal did not share the humour in my observation. what was up his up his arse? If anything he was pretty pissed and he didn’t say anything.

After a few weeks , he swung by and calmly told me how my joke was in bad taste...blah blah blah. I cant remember the rest of his speech because I felt so horrible for hurting his feelings.

I always thought men are strong emotionally and are immune to bad jokes told at their expense.Men call each other bad nick names all the time. The men in my family let me get away with stuff so I have never really know just what a potty mouth I have until this dude brought it to my attention. Which brings me to my other point, apparently men hate it when women call them “dude” but its okay to call other that.what! This was brought to my attention by @antwarogue in her blog which was not titled as she went cold turkey on men.

She claims she hates men but we know better.lol

The more we talked the more he reminded me of other incidences where I suffered a severe bout of verbal diarrhea. Here I am going through life thinking am all that and a bag of chips and then some while busy robbing some men off their self esteem. He claimed that in college I asked some guy if he was gay .You see he had shit loads of teddy bears on his bed.

Who does that?

Which confused me further. Men ask each other all the time jokingly if someone is gay if they do something feminine: and the “no homo” disclaimer(whats up with that?) but if I say it they want to rip out my uterus and hit me with it. Just when I think I have understood men they switch it on me [just confuse the enemy(read me)].

This is like the word “nigger” its okay if a person of the black persuasion says it.If other people say it, its racist..come on people you are killing me here.

Any who in the mean time I have decided to put my lips to better use:build up people,blow..blow kisses..yes blow kisses etc and stay away from those words that make my male friends want to chase me down the village with torches and pitchforks like Frankenstein.By the way do they have “loud mouths anonymous?" and if yes who is going to sponsor me? I cannot do it alone.

the gift of time

This blog is dedicated to Cyril Ochieng. No he is not dead, he asked me a question and demanded that I answer in detail. What better way to answer a question that through a blog.

Our Saviour has granted us a lot of gifts and one of the best is time. There are things that you go through in life:some good, some bad but what they both have is common is time. When you are going through a good time its precious and moves way too fast. When you are going through a hard time it can be cruel and painfully slow.

For instance if a loved one dies, no amount of encouragement/ prayers/ counselling can make you feel better only time can do that .As time goes by you get to accept their passing on, heal and get strong enough to go through life without them.

If you break up with a friend and people try to encourage you to dust your self and get back on that horse it doesn’t fix your broken heart, again only with time do you heal and move on.

When you were in your were a teenager and like me you had the horrible acne, weight issues, shy, awkward and high school was torture,no matter how many times your mother told you that it will get better you still felt like chicken poop and wondered whether you will ever fit in. But with time you grew up and most of the things that bothered you then seem so trivial right now.

So to your question Cyril :why do chiqs play hard to get yet you can clearly tell they are in to you. The answer here again is time

Let me explain…

The same words that good guys use is the very same words that bad guys use.

i dont know if its because the vocabulary for love and the endearment words are limited or..

So sometimes its hard to tell them apart, but time shows you the difference. The good guys are always patient, never in a hurry to “seal the deal”.
The bad guys on the other hand will only put up with you for sometime because they want to move on to the next .

After all there are so many girls and so little time..


I did some training on Fraud in Banking and one of the things they told us was that fraudsters are always in a hurry. They are in a rush to be served and can even cut the line in the banking hall. They also go into far too much details because they planned their story before hand whereas honest people dont do any forward planning about what to say.We were told to be wary of such people and i also find this advice to be true for relationships too.

So Cyril the girl wants to make sure that you are serious and not looking for fun and pass time.

On the other hand there is this new breed of bad boys who are meticulous, patient and know how to reel you in and are willing to wait for you.They can take weeks,days,months and yes even years to get you where they want

Its sort of a long con and for that kind of guy only Jesus can save you from him…sorry cant help you there as I am currently recovering from bad-boy addiction, but TIME will teach me and I will get back to you with the answers for the long con badboy(again i made that word up,coz you see i had alot of time on my hands)lol o.k. ill stop now.