Njambi and Njugush :-)

I have always had this idea of how it would be to live alone you know no roommates you are the only one who has the key to the door how cool right? Trust me not cool. I figured it will come with freedom like you can eat from the sufuria, decide how to arrange the house, when to cook………….but truth is  living alone sucks. Now more than ever I realize home is not a place it’s more of the people that live with you even if its people you share space with and rarely talk to. How I know this I have lived in a lot of places with different people some places felt/still feel more like home as compared to others.

Rhamu: I lived here and taught Hemedy who developed the art of conning me because I’m his big sister and was his teacher then. unajua tumeambiwa tulete pesa ya kununua leakage ya English and when KCSE was done with he tells me the way the paper they ‘bought’ not even 1 question came in the real paper and that he just needed the money, he will bully form ones by letting them line up and get the food then he takes their plate and walks off with it and these form ones will tell me and I will warn him and he’ll say wachana nao, eating at oscars what was it with eating/serving raw onions with food??, his math teacher will tell me how he is doing badly in math so that I could give help him out if he only he knew this boy doesn’t actually see me as his teacher and that he would seat and listen to me outside class would be a miracle, how we used to laugh at the drama in his IRE classes, student asks a question, then the IRE teacher stares at the ceiling board and goes like ‘God knows’  and that’s the end of that question. He still calls me madam and tells me they had nicknamed me ‘you and me’ and the way I thought I was a nice teacher surely I deserve better than ‘you and me’.

Me and Mresh  lived in Elwak  for 2 years, We have these very fond memories from the ‘white city’ the way Mresh was the supuu of the town and me well the sister of  the supuu, fries at Haj Dayow’s, the market and my love for diracs, we discovered malado and thought it could act as peanut butter but later found out its not food, at some point I thought I would forget swa, so I will sit in the kitchen and converse with myself in swa  (almost everyone even at work spoke garee) but upside I can hold very very serious and deep conversations in garee. I hear songs that are Elwak seriously(and Moyale always doing the translation for me :-)), Mresh sings some songs and goes like hiyo nyimbo ni ya nani?? Meaning who sang that song to who, people in Elwak were rooooooooomantics. Mresh more than me has friends who keep in touch and tell her what going on there, we must visit Elwak sometime  Insha aa Allah if for  nothing else the fries  and to see everyone’s babies and wives/husbands this hearsay is killing us right?. Habaswein and Wajir I made some good friends that I don’t see much of but still I talk to some, learnt a lot of the little somali I know, in hindsight there were some very hot dudes there,I should have maybe talked to one of them nicely :-). Dadaab was/is EPIC what!!!!!!! All those house parties, icecream, cakes, fries the place cannot be categorised as fieldwork that would be an abuse to people who are actually in the field, Luuq taught me fear of people you’ll go to the field and if you see a car behind you,you wonder wether it has AS in it, phone calls from AS asking for cash, attacks by them, public executions, I remember the first few months I would think how going there was the worst decision I have ever made and I would complain to my friends and one of them told me you never know God’s plans maybe it’s to launch you on to better things I lived there for more than a year got used to it and as for bigger things I learnt a lot. Nairobi is an in between Mresh and Murshid live in the big city they make it home .Isiolo is HOME my mum lives there.Why all these places mean home they are people there whom are friends and family who love me I think and whom I’m sure I love, we have memories and can sit, talk and laugh about the past.

Back to the story of living alone, first there is no one to tell anything like what went down at work or who you met, you instead think of what to cook considering you are on a diet and settle on pasta and tuna why because it’s easy and the downside it’s not exactly a diet kind of food, but it’s easy so it wins however once I sit to eat guilt sets in and I think how can you loose weight eating all these pasta…………negative self-talk I put the plate away but there is no one else to eat it and throwing away food is worse than not eating it. So I eat and sleep feeling guilty, the cycle repeats itself maybe I need to get a room-mate but who? or stop cooking and loose weight(sounds like the  plan). After eating what to do? I have watched a lot of movies and series in less than 1 month so no, sleep it’s still too early, I look at my phone and think of people to call but calling every day is crazy right? You have nothing to talk about, WhatsApp I chat but peeps are  mostly busy because to think you are lengaing me is too sad just to let you know people WhatsApp shows seen and read so I know you have read my messages reply!!!!!!!.The silver lining in all these is that I have discovered the real house helps of Kawangware, washa akina Njambi  na Njugush wakuwe my new friends as I work on getting friends and making new memories :-) :-)