Ifehenia's blog

  My grandma's sister, Cucu Nyokabi, passed away last week on Friday. 29th Jan 2021. She passed away at the age of 107. I found out first thing in the morning, when I opened my WhatsApp to see dozens of messages from my cousins. Multiple WhatsApp images captioned, "RIP cucu". Even though she had a long, wonderful life, the messages still caught me by surprise. "Say it isn't so", I murmured to myself as I scrolled through the few images that couldn't even begin to summarize her life. She was my grandma's last living sibling and I felt like this was the end of a generation. I am named after my grandma, so in a way, Cucu Nyokabi was my sister. Those are the words my aunt used when she called me to update me about the plans for the burial, "Will you be able to come and bury your sister?"  In the past few days, I have been thinking a lot about my grandma. My Cucu Nyokabi looked exactly like my grandma. My cousins and I were really fond of her be...

Today as I walked to work I was musing about my skinny arms and how they rightly describe my physical strength. It got me to wondering how I will ever manage motherhood with such feeble arms. Even holding infants tires me after a while. I have this theory that motherhood equips you with super powers. The moment you push that baby out, there is a glowing light that only you can see and the motherhood fairy blasts you with her wand, making you invincible. From then on, you acquire super human physical strength. Your baggage:body weight ratio can now exceed an ant's. Physical ailments can't hold you down any more. You lose all sense of gullibility and can suddenly see through all the BS. Suddenly you have an ability to see the best in this one human being no matter what the rest of the world sees. The basis of this theory is my mother. She is the strongest person I know, both physically and emotionally. My mum can lift a 90 kg bag of maize flour that would leave many young men...