dang! I should have been stronger

When you are young, the first friends you make are usually your siblings and cousins. You spend so much time together that you know what they are like and of course how to press their buttons. Then you grow up go to different schools, get different friends and somehow you get disconnected. My sister @fuegocassey came home a few days ago during the school holidays and I was shocked at how different we have become.

For instance while I like showering later on in the day after mabati imekuwa moto, she likes to bathe first thing when she wakes up. And she wakes up EARLY! I now have to contend with squelching slippers reveille as she prances around the house gathering her bits and bobs to take to the shower. While I bathe with any soap as long as it lathers, @fuegocassey cannot dare bring any soap near her face. (No wonder my face feels like pizza toppings) She has THREE tiny towels; one for the face, another for the body and feet. She finds it appalling how a woman can take a face towel and scrub her a** then bring it to her face again. Yep! She a girly gal. She bought me some shower gel and was shocked to find that it is still new. I find the smell too strong and the sunlight soap serves me well. If it is good enough to wash my hanky then darn it, it can wash my a**. 

She love make up and whenever she is in the house it smells like potpourri. She believes that a lady should smell nice. I on the other hand have on occasion gone out without deo nshit and the results were...how do i put it...disastrous! While she gets a hernia if she leaves the house without looking really nice, I can leave the house without applying anything on my face and not feel like the sky will fall. I love comfortable and practical shoes but no... babygal has to wear the fuck-me-pumps. 

Isn't she adorable?

I’m not tech savvy. I can’t even update the virus thingy on the house computer which infuriates her.I can't even use the new touch screen phones that they have thanks to my fingers which are as fat as sausages! She types very fast while I type painfully slow unless of course you want me to type "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog".

While I like my bed black and free of pillows, she comes into the house and the bed looks like those beds I see in home improvement brochures. Don’t get me started on the huge stuffed animals; she even had nimo and crazy frog O.O!

She is constantly hanging around kids and knows every cartoon programs there is and oh she loves animations too and I’m not as crazy about them. She watches weird movies like Borat, The dictator, project X, Hangover, Dumb and Dumber, Vampire Suck, Scary movie among others which personally I find disturbing. While I love Kerry Washington, Fuegocassey thinks she "over acts". Now people tell me you don't love how she be loving on the president in the T.V. series Scandal, Or seduced whatshisface in I think I love my wife, or get the accent right in The last king of Scotland and how she faints dramatically in Django. These young people don't know good acting even when its staring back at them in the face.

I also don’t like how she uses my little cousins as mannequins. My uncle is always worried whenever they go to the salon together as her and baby Blessing try to find and re-invent themselves( btw Blessing is only 2 1/2 years old) I have seen the baby in scary yellow and purple braids. I didn't even know they made those!

She can’t stand loud rock music and thinks my music taste is shite. Good thing we can agree on reggae music! For now...

She has this congenial inability to suffer fools. She has no time for my tautology delivered with the speed of an auctioneer repeated ad nauseum. She keeps it short and simple. I avoid asking for her opinion because she shoots straight from the hip. Catching feelings is for the birds, she says. And she never knows the I-will-talk-to-you-later like other women or have a ventriloquist voice like mine. She voices her opinion there and then and more often than not speaks out of turn. If we are together and we meet a friend on the street and I start lying she will be like,” er that’s not what you told me earlier”. Then I have to choke on humble pie as I try to wiggle out of the situations she has put me in.smh! This one time we and in Kangemi and I tell some vendor to put for me some nyanya kwa jwala. She leans real close and tells me- we don’t call then jwala here! And here I am thinking the word jwala is universal (how do you spell villagitis?)

Fuego has this habit of drinking juice all day which she affectionately calls “her drink”. She leaves the glasses all over the house after every “drink”. This also means she takes more bio breaks and uses up all the water in the house. I have the water guy’s number on speed dial for anytime she comes to stay over. Its bad enough she uses all the water to shower without finishing up all the water in the rest of the house.

While my brother and I take three square meals a day, she eats small portions throughout the day which of course means more dirty plates. If she doesn’t get her elevenses somebody is - gonna get a hurt real bad *Russell Peters voice*. She is also very particular how she cooks her food. While I boil the vegetables to death, she likes hers steamed and crunchy. She likes it to maintain colour and all the iron, vitamin K and I don’t-know-what . Me thinks fibre is good for digestion, who cares about the rest! You also don’t serve her food all willy nilly like they do for that dude in the movie XIII. Presentation is very important to her. You don’t just waltz from the kitchen and throw the food on the table kaka jakwath miyo dhok chiemo, you gotta have some grace to go with it. Her motto is that – if it don’t look good, it prolly doesn’t taste great either. The Ugali has to be on one side, mboga kando then nyama kando. She hates when her ugali gets all soggy like babies food. The fact that she is a nutritionist makes it even worse. She doesn’t approve of my brother and I eating ugali from Monday to Monday, she whips out words like “diversify your eating habits”. Me thinks ugali, mboga and nyama is diverse enough.

While she likes going out and having fun. I’d rather stay at home and watch movies. (This one time mama found her on top of a kipikipi ( motor bike for some of you) giving the boda boda guy a ride- WITHOUT A HELMET!!!!. How she learnt how to ride a motorbike is still a mystery. Mama almost had a heart attack when she saw the speed at which she was going. While I'm content with flirting with death once in a while, she actually seduces death) The only time I go out is if the party is at a friend’s house because if I get tired I just turn in the guest room. While fuegocassey is carefree, I’m very OCD about certain things. For example when she leaves cups all over the house after she has had her “drink”, I go into spasm of anger seeing them .

After many days of me chastising her I noticed she started being confused. After every drink she had problems trying to remember to keep the glass in the kitchen. I then realised how living with me and my OCD behaviour was beginning to be unbearable. She has for along time bore brunt of my angry outbursts. Her many attempt to encourage me and look at the positive side of life has been met with “mimi nakushow tuu reality”( Btw that’s the shite pessimists say to suck the life out of happy people) Just because your reality sucks, don’t mean you have to ruin it for others whose lives are awesome.

Instead of me taking caring care of her as a first born, the roles have been reversed and she is taking care of me. She has been paying bus fare, buying food, bringing me movies and even taking me out to eat. And all this time I’m bitching how my life sucks. (Like the song “because of you’ by Kelly Clarkson, I never thought of anyone else I only saw my pain. And being older I should have known better than to lean on her when she is so young)

I wasn’t even careful enough to protect her from stuff I was going through last year. She has now started worrying about things she shouldn’t even have to worry about at a young age. Instead of looking forward to her graduation, she is worried about how she will get a job; and preferably not end up like me. She thought I would end up doing something with my life and not a whingeing fool staying up all night and sleeping all day. Sprawled on the couch b*tching about how the government hasn't provided the youth with jobs. Like I expect Mr.Kibaki to knock on my door and hand me a job contract.smh!

When I noticed it; it cut me kabisa. I have ruined her innocence and zest for life. I now see how anxious she is and it’s all because I didn’t have the wisdom to do better.I now realise that I should have been stronger. I should have at least pretended to be coping well. Just because my life sucks don’t mean hers will too when she gets to be my age. We are too different people with different abilities. I have tried to make amends but it doesn’t really mean much because I don’t exactly walk the talk. I’m currently reading John Gray’s book Children are from heaven to learn how to be a good big sister. I would really recommend this because as it has some really good insights on parenting. The book says children learn from role models not by lectures. And yours truly has had to learn that the hard way.

They say don’t worry that kids don’t listen to you, worry that they watch you. If she has been watching me then ...Houston, we have a problem...Sigh! But thank God she has more sense; I bet she will do just fine. And from now on-wards, I will be stronger and I just hope it’s not too late.

This post reminds me of this song by Amy Winehouse about a lady dating a b*tch ass ninja who instead of taking care of her lady it was the other way round...enjoy!!! And whatever is going on in your life, try to be strong- if not for you then for your family and those who look up to you!