Ifehenia's blog

*sigh* picture courtesy of wamathai.com I have been having a great time settling into Kampala, though I suspect that the side of town I live, work and hang out at has a lot to do this. All the same, to give the devil his due, Kampala has been good to me. Before I go on I have to mention that since leaving my favourite radio stations in Nairobi, I while away my days streaming music online. I am currently listening to songs from the Grey's Anatomy soundtrack. That said, I hope my current emotional state doesn't seep into this post. Last week I felt comfortable enough to go somewhere on my own. A shopping center like place near town called Wandegeya to access my ATM (ain't nobody got time for Mastercard charges!). My main worry was how I'd tell the conductor to stop when I got there. I still haven't gotten the hang of pronouncing long multi-syllable words without pauses. Try pronouncing Wandegeya... or Kembabazi in a single breath! I kept mouthing 'masao...

Hello World, I feel as if it has been so long since I blogged that I should start afresh. To be honest I haven't been busy all along... but the past couple of weeks have been busy. I moved to Kampala! I have never lived more than 2 hours from my family... let alone out of the country. That said, making the decision to come here was a huge risk. I got so many goodbye calls, texts and audio messages full of well meant advice on how to handle Kampala life. If it were up to my mum I'd have moved in a truck full of supplies for the four month period. We struck a compromise at two suitcases! I am greatly excited: first by moving out here and finally getting to live independently and explore... and second, by the work that I will be doing here. For the next four months I will be working with Unreasonable East Africa as a Financial Architect... which is a cool super hero-ey way of saying that I will be helping a group of East African entrepreneurs, operating ventures that seek ...

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 ...

I have a black hoodie that Dad got me last year. It's about two sizes too big but the last time Dad bought me an item of clothing  was at least 10 years before that, so it meant a lot that he had taken the risk. I mainly wear the hoodie to bed or to go to the shops in the evening. The first time my sister saw me in it she joked that now that I had a 'Trayvon Hoodie', I should probably take care not to get shot walking around at night in it, and we laughed about it. We could afford to. Let's face it. The police post near my house probably doesn't have a gun... and if they did, you can be sure that they aren't doing patrols to keep the peace. What, with all those pubs at the shopping center where they can go extort bribes? Then there's the fact that no one is going to shoot me simply because I am black and wearing a suspicious-looking BLACK hoodie. This is Kenya, we are almost all black and can't use race as a basis to discriminate. When tribe and class is...

Turns out Green Day was wrong... Silence is not the enemy... If you've been following my blog you know that I just finished school...exactly one week ago, actually. As expected, I was starry eyed and full of dreams. All my life I have been prepared for this moment. For a person who didn't peak in primary school, high school or college; I figure the next few years will be my moment in the spotlight. I have become quickly disenchanted. You see, as I said here , I have spent the last four years in the company of highly intelligent people and in a place where almost everything runs like clockwork. In other words, I have spent the last four years in a scenario that was nothing like the real Kenya. In fact, make that eight years. My high school had this antique feel to it that made it seem like a prep school. Now it's dawning upon me that most people are pettier, duller and generally more difficult to work with than I had imagined them to be. I have to say it started wit...