Ifehenia's blog

Jodi Picoult is one of my favourite writers ever. I am learning how to tame my youthful exuberance and someone I know pointed out to me that if I claim that something is the best thing ever, I can't then go on and give that title to five or so more things. Adulting is difficult! All these rules. I will, therefore, refrain from calling Jodi 'my favourite writer ever' and add the prefix 'one of'. From experience, I know how crafty Jodi can get. She will get you to care; to invest your feelings in the characters that she weaves around your heart and soul. You will prefer to have coffee with the suspected pedophile from Salem Falls , instead of paying attention to your date. You will get out of your Friday night plans by washing your hair when the real reason is that you can't let that sad, little girl in   Leaving Time spend a Friday night alone. She is all you have You are all she has! I know Jodi and I have been working on building up my defences. I start re...

Those who get my weird... and are on my wavelength. I have been asked to stop claiming my social awkwardness. I have been told that I am not a misfit. I have been convinced into embracing this improved version of myself that has evolved into a social animal. After all, I can make people laugh and I have a supposedly charming smile! This doesn't sit well with me. Not entirely. You see, now that I cannot blame it on inborn social awkwardness, what can I attribute some of my quirks to? I am a paradox socially. I can talk for hours but still remain withdrawn. I can love you deeply and not be there for you when you need it the most. I am a great texter (amazing content and good grammar) while managing to be a terrible communicator. I will braid you hair and share my food but will not take you shopping or be your 'wing woman'. I will vet your significant other and ask them all the hard questions but I will not be friends with them. This paradox makes me a great friend. Y...

I feel, and have always felt so-so about online dating. It could very easily go either way. I know we millennials, with our 5 minute noodles and instant coffee, are supposed to prefer the convenient world of online dating but surprisingly, I do not. It may have something to do with my old soul. I still think that The One is more often than not met at a party, in a coffee shop or a cute little bookstore. My problem with online dating is that the person, more often that not, will not look like their pictures. While they may be still be funny in person, their voice won't be that deep, husky baritone that you hear in your mind when you read their messages. They will definitely be shorter than you expect! Better the devil you know can see . Once in while, however, I am proved wrong. Of late I have been feeling the need to move on from Kyle. It's been a great 5 years but I am learning how to let go. We've been through a lot, Kyle and I. He's stuck around longer ...

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...

Fun || Paramore Funny how they call it the pearl of Africa when there are no street lights. Aren't pearls supposed to be brilliant? Don’t mind me, I am not in the best mood at the moment. I have to get down to writing some reports for work… and I am actually glad for the chance to put all my concentration into that and not have to think about anything else. I’ll probably be able to push that into the better part of the weekend. And when that is done I can pour my heart and soul into cooking and making small meals for next week. I can also clean compulsively. Unfortunately, I braided my hair on Wednesday so I can’t turn the next idle day into wash day. What I am trying to put across is how mundane my life can be. Strangely enough, 12 hours ago my life seemed pretty great and interesting and I couldn't wait for the weekend to begin. I had almost forgotten how that one person has the power to turn my most exciting day into another grey one using a simple statement, “Sorry...

RIP Guka Kibira. Up until last week when I read bikozulu's blog post on a kikuyu burial , I had never questioned the sense behind our burial customs. Now that I viewed them through a fresh pair of eyes, it is a wonder that I have never questioned the logic behind taking photos at a funeral... posing behind the casket! On Wednesday we buried my grandfather, my mom's uncle, and it was a sober, dignified ceremony befitting the respectable 87 year old man. During the now infamous photo session, the MC called for the late man's nephews to take a photo. he mentioned one of them by name: KiMuriithi Kinene (The big Muriithi), jokingly referring to him by his childhood nickname. As an aside, he added that Muriithi was clearly still kinene (big). I glanced across at my mum, remembering this set of pliers that Muriithi had left at our house when I was only six, and that we had taken to calling KiMuriithi Kinene . I can bet that you are imagining Muriithi as a hulking, big-b...

Last night I was chatting with my mom when I told her that one of my former lecturers was got married recently.  " Kwani how young is she?" my mom asked, as she continued to peel bananas with a deftness that I will never master. "He's a man," I replied, wondering why she had instinctively assumed that I was talking about a girl. "Then you said it wrongly. Men don't get married. They marry," she went on, all grammar-Nazi. This conversation, like almost all conversations at my house was going on in Kikuyu. I have to brag that my Kikuyu is really good. Much better than my Swahili. However, I have never understood why when referring to marriage, in Kikuyu the man is always the subject while the woman is the object. Isn't this great institution supposed to be a partnership? Why then is it always the man doing the marrying while the woman is said to be getting married as if she is making no active choice in the matter? Pet peeve right there....

Hi 17 year old Ivy. This is your 22 year old version. 5 years older, 50 years wiser. I hope you would be proud of what I have become were you to meet me. Your mind had been so focused on KCSE so I want to just tell you that you did it! You passed. scratch that, you did exceptionally well. What will surprise you more is that there are greater things in life than that exam that was the sole focus of your life for four years. Remember that 5 -year plan that you had in your journal. The one in which  you planned to have an Actuarial Science degree from UoN in five years time? Well, you almost have that degree, but it will be from Strathmore and not UoN. Maybe you had some sort of premonition about it when you stuck that flier you got at the career fair in your locker. Campus wasn't the rave you expected it to be. I mean, you met some pretty cool people but I sincerely hope that those weren't the best days of your life because that would suck. In a surprising twist, you fell ...

Augustus Waters and Hazel Grace Over the weekend I got this amazing app from my sister where I was able to download every imaginable e-book for free: The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimananda Ngozi Adichie; The complete Divergent Series by Veronica Roth; Good Morning, Mr Mandela by Zelda la Grange; There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra by Chinua Achebe; The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason; I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou; The Railway Man by Eric Lomax; The Fault in Our Stars by John Green; among others. I was ecstatic. This was heaven to a poor person like me who loves books way above her budget. I immediately started on The Fault in Our Stars (TFIOS) because I really wanted to read it before watching the movie. From everyone’s tweets I already knew that it was a sad and depressing story so I vowed not to get attached to the characters from the very beginning. I tried to keep Hazel Grace, Augustus Waters, Isaac and even Patrick-who-w...

I’m late to the party… but I think one week is well within the grace period. The World Cup is here! The very first one since I completed high school, and like with everything else that I have experienced post-high-school, it really felt much more exciting when I was on the inside. Maybe it was just the vuvuzela orchestra.  Richard: SI unit of the underdog It is no secret that I root for the underdog… always have. Maybe I do it just to be the different one with the dissenting opinion. Whatever the reason, I will be the girl cringing every time Richard Jenkins embarrasses himself and the one crying softly when he finally launches the fastest, most lossless (is that a phrase?) compression software on Silicon Valley. However, for once, I will be rooting for someone with a real and apparent shot at winning. My support for Brazil is completely non-football related. Don’t get me wrong, I am convinced (largely by my boyfriend) that Neymar is a football demigod.  Even with...