The Art of Being There

The pursuit of happiness has discolored our view of what is important and what is not. Our priorities are not aligned. There are never aligned. Our priorities only become clear when faced with life and death situations or extremely difficult situations. The confusion about what is really important disappears and it is quite clear what you value. I guess that is what is happening to me at this time.

I can be very vain and I love to complain. The latter makes my work as an activist easier but is still one of my vices. It has been interesting to see how this has changed for me now that I am unwell. Interestingly, it has even become difficult for me to complain especially about being unwell.  I find that I cannot voice out clearly what I feel or even want because what I truly want is to be not sick. What I want is for my body to stop failing me but we don’t always get what we want.

Chemotherapy is one of the most fucked up ideas that I have encountered. Half the time you are not feeling well and complaining about this gets exhausting even for a professional complainer like me. You complain when you think that there is a solution for the problem that you are facing. Half the time when you are in pain or throwing up,there is really nothing to do. There are no easy answers, in fact there are no answers and there is no solution. That, is the problem right there. We have been tuned to fix problems as human beings that is why we have advanced as we have. When we cannot fix problems we lose hope, we are confused. We are like fish outside water. This is what happens when family members don’t know how to fix your problems. You can see how they are struggling to find the right words to say. They are practically begging you to just tell them what will make it all disappear. I swear, this is one of the most painful things to watch. I will take chemotherapy any day but not this.

The truth is there are no right words to say when I am in pain. There is nothing to do.There are no solutions to find. You can just be there. Be there and understand that somehow your presence is enough. Be there and know that somehow the silence is fine.  Be there and know that, being there is what reminds me that there is still hope and there is still life. It is not easy to sit still and do nothing when someone you love is in pain, yet when you have no strength to solve their problem, there lies your strength.

 

 

Reality of Dying

I think you hear that tomorrow is not promised so many times that we never actually think about it. It is true, you really don’t know whether you will be living tomorrow or not. I guess it is just easier to live as if you will be here tomorrow than the opposite. This means that most of us live with the assumption that we already own tomorrow. That is why we plan and save and think everyone that lives recklessly is irresponsible. We never think we are all a breath away from death unless we have been told we are dying.

I am no different. I have ambitions and the idea of being here tomorrow just seems more appealing than the opposite. I only started thinking about death when I was told I have cancer. When you are ill, death is not a concept, it is a reality. The cancer is in it’s early stages so my survival is almost guaranteed. However, one cannot help but think about the concept of death when you are told you have cancer.

To be honest, I fear death. The thought of dying scares me senseless. I am mostly scared of wasting away right in front of my loved ones. Unfortunately, that is what sickness does to a person. People can see life slowly leaving your body and that is not traumatic just for you as someone who is sick but more so for the people you leave behind. The distant look in their eyes of hopelessness when they see you in pain and understand that there is nothing that they can do. It is a haunting look and the hopelessness in that look is as real as the pain your body feels. This haunting look is enough to kill you before you even breath your last.The hopelessness slowly turns to exhaustion. Much as they love you because they cannot solve your problems, your burdens become exhausting. I see it in hospital corridors when I go for chemotherapy. Family members that have felt so much pain and watched their loved ones die several times, that death is their reality. It is not that they have stopped caring. It is that caring for you hurts them as much as it hurts you.

No one wants to get there. I don’t want to get there. I am already bothered by how much this illness worries those that I love. I cannot imagine  going through this experience for longer. I cannot imagine carrying a body that is slowly dying around because my heart just won’t stop beating. Sickness kills parts of you slowly. It not only comes after your body, it comes after everything. Your emotions, your dreams are not spared and by the time it is done, there is nothing left to die.

I will not die slowly. I don’t think I can. When I go, I want people to remember the me that made them smile, the me that gave them hope. I want them to remember how I inspired them to become better. Sickness robs you the ability to say goodbye in dignity. We are all dying, we are all making a journey towards our grave but the difference with being ill is that you don’t get to say goodbye in dignity. You also experience death before you actually die.

 

 

Every struggle needs feminism

Source: Every struggle needs feminism

 

I have struggled with defining feminism myself because every single day I discover something new that should be included in it.

What Happened to Being Your Brother’s Keeper

The news headlines can make you lose hope in humanity. I am losing hope in humanity. The chaos that we have created and are still creating is beyond imaginable. The fact that terrible things are happening and few people seem concerned and a majority think it is not their problem because it does not affect them.

A while back when coming from the salon in town, I was attacked by goons that were coming from a political meeting in town. One of them held me and was threatening to strip me. I have gone through a lot of trauma and that has affected my response mechanism. My reaction in such cases is always freeze and in that moment time stops for me and my body shuts down. I cannot respond and sometimes cannot feel anything. This time, I could see what was happening around me but my system had shut down. People scampered for safety. Shops closed and people almost fell over one another. In other words everyone was thinking of themselves.

I saw that and knew that I was in trouble and it would take a miracle for me to come out unscathed. My miracle came in form of a young Muslim man who rescued me by fighting off the guy. He is my hero. When everybody was thinking about their safety, he thought about me. I did not know him but he was willing to risk his life to make sure I am safe.

His actions are heroic because our society is made of selfish people whose radius of care only includes themselves. We live in a society where individualistic agendas reign supreme. Finding people that care for their neighbor is slowly becoming extinct. What seemed natural a while back like helping people in need is unnatural. Heroes are no longer people that do extraordinary things, our heroes are people who do the ordinary things because we have fallen so low as a society that normal is extraordinary.

Today, a story was in the local media about a father who has been abusing her daughter for three years. For three years, she has been sleeping outside, barely eating yet the father has neighbors that have beds. When the story came out, everyone was talking about the father from hell and I was wondering where the neighbors were for three years? How do you sit and watch someone abuse another person for more than a minute and still be human. Where were the neighbors to offer a bed for those three years? Where were the neighbors to protect this girl from someone who is clearly a sociopath?

How can we call ourselves human if we can let this happen to another person for three years as we watch? As if that is not enough, we have the guts to tell the story and not feel guilty. Empathy is a natural human emotion and this is supposed to kick in as soon as we see someone in pain. However, if it takes three years , you are no difficult from the abuser.

Hungarian police are throwing tear gas cannisters at children because they are following the law and the world is watching. We watch as people die and we have the power to assist but it is easier to remain quiet. It is safer for us because after all it is not affecting us. I mean, what happened to basic human rights? Are we arguing about human rights? Is that where we have reached as a society?

The truth is that we are connected and if we lie to ourselves that keeping ourselves safe does not involve keeping our brothers safe, we are lost. The truth is that the trouble that is killing your neighbor might soon be upon you, who will rescue you then? Self preservation has never worked and will never work.

The people that are going to change this world are not the smartest or strongest people but people with big hearts that will go beyond their comfort and assist another human being.

Just don’t do it

I totally agree with the idea that women do not have to adopt masculine traits to earn the respect they deserve.

language: a feminist guide

This week everyone’s been talking about an article in the Economist explaining how men’s use of language undermines their authority. According to the author, a senior manager at Microsoft, men have a bad habit of punctuating everything they say with sentence adverbs like ‘actually’, ‘obviously’, ‘seriously’ and ‘frankly’. This verbal tic makes them sound like pompous bullshitters, so that people switch off and stop listening to what they’re saying. If they want to be successful, this is something men need to address.

OK, people haven’t been talking about that article—mainly because I made it up. No one writes articles telling men how they’re damaging their career prospects by using the wrong words. With women, on the other hand, it’s a regular occurrence. This post was inspired by a case in point: a piece published last month in Business Insider, in which a former Google executive named Ellen Petry Leanse…

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Being A Black Feminist Woman

I don’t know when I started referring to myself as a feminist but these past few years I have been more conscious of the responsibility that comes with that word. I am more aware of the expectations and the misconceptions that come with it. I know that as a black woman living in Africa there is still more that needs to be done before women can achieve equality and it is women like me that need to achieve that. I understand that it is women like me that understand the both the pain of being broken and trodden down as a black woman and the joy of somehow finding your voice and strength to still fight for your dreams that will make the difference. I also understand that as black women whether we like it or not racism is a battle that is wrapped within our battle for gender equality.

It is said that during the suffrage movement, black women were made to walk at the back. Therefore, while I accept that universally women are fighting the same issues but as a black woman, I carry an extra baggage. I will not achieve true equality until I am respected for the skin I wear. I know that there are black feminists that have chosen to stop calling themselves feminists because of some of the discrimination that they have faced from white feminists. I still chose to call myself a feminist because I don’t think this world needs anymore division but I definitely feel that the feminist movement needs to address the issues facing the black woman. The truth is that what I experience as a black woman, my problems are quite unique to people who look like me.

I think when women like me start speaking and making our issues part of the feminist agenda things will change. I am so proud of my feminist sisters in the continent who are finding their voice. I am more proud of those that are also teaching other women to speak because it will take more than one voice to achieve equality.

We have a long way to go but we have definitely made big strides in the right direction.

Today I listened to myself speak
I heard the woman within me
The woman that knows pain but still believes
The woman that is broken but still understands being strong

Today I found my voice
Today, I understood its power
Today, I speak not about my pain but our pain
Today, I hear our voice echo
I hear our voice bring change

Dealing with Depression without Jesus

Growing up we did not question the existence of God. How could you? The reality that there is someone in control of my life and there for me even when all else fails was a good illusion. The reality that there was a prince of peace when sadness overwhelmed me was just what I needed. The illusion that Jesus would come and deal with all the injustice that I perceived was done to me got me through the day. The balm of Gilead as Christians call Jesus numbed the pain of my depression everytime the thoughts started running in my head.

I have been told many times that I was not a good Christian and I admit I am not. However, one of the reasons I loved the idea of god was because he made loneliness a little bit easier. In times of depression, prayer for me was therapy. After a few tears and chanting of words, I felt better. The weight seemed less and I almost forgot what I was going through. At the moment, I could have easily said that Jesus healed my depression. However, it is not healing when the pain comes back to haunt you. It is not healing when you do not deal with it. One of the worst lies I came across when in church was the illusion that solutions for problems are easy. There is no shortcut to problem solving. I am discovering that all those times I numbed my pain. All those times, I did not deal with the self doubt, the low esteem, I only worsened the problem by pushing it at the back of my head. That was not healthy.  Problems do not disappear. I am learning that the hard way. I remember the first day I had an in-depth conversation with an atheist, the first thing I asked is how they dealt with depression seeing that there is no Jesus to turn to. He answered calmly and told me that for him there was no expectation of a savior coming to solve the problems so he just dealt with them. I could not fathom how one could do this and I asked whether it was lonely and whether it felt empty because that is what I was afraid of. I was afraid that Jesus gave me a reason to live because he kept me from my thoughts of depression.

However, I have discovered this is not true because I am dealing with depression without Jesus and I am not yet dead. I must be doing something right and I must have another reason for living. I am lonely but I have always been lonely so that is not new. Jesus never finished my loneliness, he gave it purpose and he reminded me that I was not alone. Like an addict everytime I was in this state I went for my usual fix. My fear of being alone with my thoughts and my problems drove my conversations with Jesus and my prayer. I am still afraid of being alone because I have never been safe alone. Every painful thing that I have gone through have happened when I was alone. This time instead of talking to Jesus, I am asking the questions I should have asked before. Why am I afraid? Is my fear justified? Where am I broken? I am not busy trying to find a quick solution or run away from it.

Look inside and see the girl we lost

Look inside and see the scars that bleed

Look inside and understand the pain 

Look inside and see the girl

She is broken but she lives

Do I have the answers? Not yet but I feel better. I have accepted where I am. I am in a place where shadows of my past are still haunting me. I am in a place where my thoughts are weapons that can be bring me down. I have been running from them but they are my thoughts. They are a part of me and I should be able to accept that before I know what next. I am still depressed and I know this is not going to end soon but I am not living a lie. A lie is what I took myself through when I thought prayers could get me out of this situation. Now I know what it feels like to deal with depression without Jesus and I am glad that it is not the nightmare I imagined.

Happy and Beautiful

I define freedom as the ability to choose without fear. Freedom is having more than one option. Therefore, anytime I feel like I have been pushed to a corner and I have only one option, I know I am not free. This is a feeling that I am familiar with. It seems that I always find myself in these positions. Therefore, I can easily say that I have been a slave most of my life. I am turning thirty soon and not being able to control things that are happening to me is one of the most heartbreaking things for me. Yesterday, I found out that I might never be able to have children. That the choice whether to have children or not has already been made without my consultation. This got me angry and depressed and I hate both of these feelings.

I grew up wishing for two things: to be happy and beautiful. I thought they were simple and easy to achieve but in the thirty years, I have lived these are the two things that are most elusive to me. I have given myself all those pep talks about beautiful being superficial and that it lies in the eyes of the beholder but the haunting thoughts never leave me. I grew up understanding that I was not the pretty one. My small sister was. I was the intelligent one and I had to be satisfied with that. At some point I decided to accept that intelligence is also sexy.  I decided because I had no choice but to do that, the other choice was to complain for a lifetime. Some men are attracted to intelligence. Life is fair that way.  You don’t get everything. However, I have a problem in not being in possession of the one standard that the world uses to categorize women. Pretty or beauty is what is used to define a woman and when these words cannot be used to describe you, you might as well be a man.  Growing up, I had more than one person remind me that I was not the beautiful one in my family.  We like to believe that there is no standard for beauty but there is. The standard is different in different parts of the world but the standard is definitely there and when you do not meet it, you will know. Most people agree that Beyoncé is beautiful. When there is no consensus about whether you are beautiful or not just remember that you have not met the standard. I have fallen short of that standard many times. Therefore, I stopped fooling myself and accepted that I wasn’t but that never stopped me from wanting to become beautiful. I wish it did.

I know what it means to be happy. I know the feeling of riding on a cloud and never wanting to come down.  I also know the feeling of being robbed of that happiness. I feel that happiness is a fleeting feeling for me. As soon as I grab hold of it something has to come and rob it from me. I am depressed and the feeling of overwhelming sadness that does not go away is familiar. Depression is a darkness that calls out and right now it just seems easy for me to feel that way.

I might never have kids. I have to live with that reality whether I like it or not. My body will not allow it. I have never been a quitter but it seems my body is a different issue. I could always adopt children but I will never have my own. My choices have been taken away again and there is nothing I can do. When you live in my community where a woman is defined by her beauty and children then you would hate to be me. I am not considered beautiful and I will not have children. I guess, I am officially fucked up. According to my society defining me as a woman will be a hard task for them. I guess, I have to work on defining myself.

What kind of woman am I? What is my standard of beauty? Clearly based on the society’s standards, I fail but that is not all there is to it. I have to believe that or be depressed for the rest of my life. I have to create choices for myself to become free.

New Year Resolutions

The new year is just a few days away. The reality is daunting. Each year, my question is always what I did with my time the past year. Each year, I always have regrets. Looking back it always feels like I could have done more. I could have pushed myself a little harder to pursue my dreams. Each year, I know there is nothing I can do to regain time lost and in a state of panic I always set very ambitious new year resolutions. These resolutions are forgotten as soon as I put my pen down. I only remember them now when I am taking account of the year that has passed.

Last year, I got tired of feeling like a failure for never achieving the goals I set each year. I decided to do something different, instead of resolutions I decided to set a theme that would guide me the whole year. This theme or mantra if I may call it would be the backdrop that would help me make decisions that year. I did not have to remember ten things but one thing that would be a guide. The past five years because of being in church I felt that I had stopped living presently. Being in the church, I always felt like I was being prepared for the future while being denied the pleasure of living in the present. Therefore, this year my theme was to live in the present, to enjoy the present as much as I can because it is the only thing that is certain.

By default making the decision to live in the present has allowed me to take a closer look at my idea of hope. What do I hope to achieve? Whom do I place my hope in? What makes me hopeless? Living in the present had also allowed me to look at the present me. It is easy to hope about who I will become but I have to fully accept who I am today. I have gotten an opportunity to take a closer look at my scars and the brokenness that I have lived with for years. I am not who I thought I was because in the past I looked at myself with false hope blinding me. The false hope was that by somehow denying I was broken and hoping to get better, I would do so. The truth is I didn’t get better. My wound festered and each year, I got better at covering them. This year, I got to face my issues and started fighting my ghosts. When I say I am better, it is not a statement of hope bit truth. I am a better person because I chose to live in the present and allow myself to see what it has to offer. As for hope,this year I have let go if false hope. I have lost hope in people and still found hope in some. This year, I have questioned my faith in Christ which was the cornerstone of my hope and discovered that my hope really was not Christ. That was a false statement. This year, I have learned and grown.

Welcome, new year.

Strip Me Not!!!

The past two weeks has seen a number of women stripped in different parts of Kenya for being indecently dressed. This has sparked a huge debate on social media and the country in general. The debate has raised so many gender issues that as a nation, we deluded ourselves that we had dealt with.

http://bit.ly/1vER2uP

Kenya prides itself as being one of the most developed countries in Africa. Their social values are considered forward but listening to people these past week has made me feel like we are living among animals. The arguments that people are using to justify such a lowly act of stripping a woman have left me dumbfounded.

First and foremost, you cannot use African culture as a defense. Most of the African tribes walked naked before colonialism and some still do and those societies do not have men running around behaving like dogs on heat. When you watch the video, you can clearly see that the perverts that did this were more concerned with touching her breasts and vagina that were covered with clothes. This was a flimsy and unjustified excuse for men to sexually violate a woman. I have been sexually violated and I know first hand that these people do not need anything to do what they do.

If I hear any other person claim that she brought this on herself, I will puke. Here is where most Bible thumping Christians fall. According to them we should raise men that cannot control their urges. However, we should teach women how to dress in a way that will not seduce men. Dressing ‘seductively’ is having an agenda to seduce. This is complete bullshit! First Kenyan men need to get off their high horse. Women do not dress for men. We do not wake up every morning thinking of the outfit that will please all the men we meet. Hard as it is to believe, when I wear that mini, it is for me. I feel good in it and I think that is a good enough reason to put it on.

Again and again the church disappoints me in taking a stand that is altogether stupid. When did social justice stop being an issue for the church? The church cannot define modest and therefore cannot hide behind that concept to justify the acts of these hooligans.

A Facebook group started by Kilimani mums organized a protest. I have gone to the streets before and I know that organizing a protest is not easy but these women proved that nothing is impossible when people with a cause come together. The protest was well organized and peaceful and in the end, we achieved what took us to the street. We handed our petition to the police and chief justice.

Protesters holding a banner during the protest

One of the highlights of the protest for me was to see women refused for this issue to become a political issue. The women political leaders including the current women’s representative was quiet during the whole storm. She did not give a statement to condemn these actions. Rachel Shebesh like any wise politician was waiting to ride on public opinion. Since it was divided, keeping quiet served her political interests. However, Esther Passaris chose to speak up and went above and beyond to support the campaign. The protest attracted both local and international media attention and Shebesh now felt that joining the cause would benefit her so she showed up during the protest and wanted to take over the agenda. Women vehemently rejected her plea to address them and only accepted listening to Passaris. This was a relief to me and a sign that we citizens of Kenya have the ability to make these politicians irrelevant.

Esther Passaris matching with other protesters.

Gender issues continue to plague our country and although the protest was successful, there is a huge task ahead of engaging the whole society in a healthy conversation about gender to encourage change.