Hi,
you can call me Bitchfits and I love to listen to people talk. I don’t talk but
I make blog posts of my thoughts or status updates or tweets. You want to talk
to me? Yes, I’m on twitter. You want to meet me? No, I have a shitload of work
to do. I have beautiful eyebrows? Yes, I know.
I’m
now twenty years old and 14 years ago as I was playing with my friends, I heard
the mothers talking, “Sasa darasa zingine atafanya aje?” Yes I was the topic of
their conversation. Now I’m in campus and I will be in third year the new
academic year this September pursuing a major in Environmental Sciences. I wish
I knew where these women are now. See, I made it this far.
“Lakini hizi zingine nitafanya aje?” From
that day 14 years ago, I have never been able to shake of that statement. It
instilled and still does a sense of dread in me. I get afraid, very afraid,
“nitafanya aje?” and then I think of how far I have made it, but I do not get
my courage back. Because it is the roughness of the journey, that wore me out,
never fully recovered. It just gets worse.
Despite
doing a major in Environmental Sciences, my real interests lie in journalism
and I am already working on it, with impressive results to be proud of. I was
made the editor of the best online Kenyan campus magazine, and to recruit and
organize other writers. Yes that’s something! I’m doing it!
It
is in the achievement of my journalistic dreams that lies my biggest hurdle, we
all have hurdles I know, but some, we cannot jump over and it takes a miracle
to climb over with an unwavering faith and courage, which I do not have as I
sit here. What is her problem? You ask.
Many
years ago, a child sat playing on her own, a short distance from the house in
the front yard. Staring with glee at the colorful beads she had gathered and
very slowly picks one and places in her ear…oh now I have a beautiful earring.
Let me try this other one. Ohhh nooo! It can’t come out; maybe if I push it inside
it will come out from the other side. MAAAAMAAA!
Bathe
her and take her to the clinic and have it removed. It was. A few years
later…as she is getting a thorough beating, “how many times do you want me to
call you?” but I didn’t hear you!! “How can you not hear me and Leah heard?
Wacha mchezo!” she cries till she throws up. She really has no idea why she is
getting beaten.
She
goes to her first class in primary school; she is number five, then numbers six
then number two. In class two she is number four then number one and number one
again. The rest of the classes she is number one, two or three but she is
always number one in third term.
2005,
at the ear nose and throat centre. Oh she got something in her ear? Which one?
But she cannot remember. Let me see if I can find it. No there is nothing
inside, she doesn’t know what the doctor is talking about but she is not the
one doing the talking so she doesn’t ask. Oh let me check this side and this
side, I can’t see anything but maybe I can feel it. He takes a tiny plastic
funnel places it inside the ear and hammers it inside.
Ouch!!
She cries! Quack!! She screams in her head. Oh whatever is in her ear has moved
further inside I can only get the wax. She doesn’t understand, but she says
nothing. She also has a chest infection, she coughs up sputum. Oh, do you hear
the way she is coughing? That’s why she cannot hear you. I will spray her nose.
He
sprays her nose and gives her a mirror to look at the stream of mucus flowing
uncontrollably. This is what is making you bad but once your nose is unblocked
you will be fine. She nods her head but says nothing. She doubts. Take this
handkerchief and blow your nose when you going home. They leave. Her mother
looks at her hopefully, your nose is unblocked now? No, it’s still blocked but
she says yes, for the hope in her mother’s eyes is gut wrenching.
To
be continued…
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