It's a sunday afternoon, you are chilling in the house alone, kila mtu ameenda shughuli zake and you've been scrolling on your phone for hours. Suddenly, tiktok and instagram become boring, the screen becomes irritating. So you decide to step out and touch some grass.

So you lay on the grass and stare at the sky with Ne-yo's so sick playing in the background, then suddenly the music becomes unbearable and you decide to turn it off. Then the thoughts start flooding in and because you can't sit with them for long you turn up the music again and shove those thoughts down the drain talking about “We'll cross that bridge when we get there.”

Except the bridge keeps getting closer to you.

I would love to think of myself as a person who isn't chronically online because sometimes it feels like noise but the minute this noise filters into the background and I'm left alone with my thoughts, I switch back instinctively.

Social media is a good distraction but then again you open tiktok and meet a 20 year old moving out and buying a couch worth 232 thousand Kenyatta shillings and you are left wondering what you are doing wrong.

How is another 20 year old is making big purchases in this inflated economy while you are still trying to figure out what to do with your life?

Everything around you starts to crumble.The uncertainity of the future creeps in, feeling behind compared to your age mates, career anxiety, research projects, school work, social life, money, the fact that everyone seems to be moving foward while you are still stuck in the same place trying to figure out what direction to take.

It all becomes too much so you dissappear to recharge, in your room with your headphones at full volume, phone on do not disturb. You might convince yourself that you are recharging, the truth is you are avoiding your own thoughts. We spend too much time surrounded by noise that silence feels threatening. At this point, no noise is loud enough to cancel the impending question:

Am I doing enough?

Truth is I don't have the answer yet. Maybe I'm not supposed to, we are all figuring out life. Getting overwhelmed and terrified occasionally then disappearing and coming back when ready is all part of the process too.

So if you ever find yourself staring at the sky or ceiling on a random sunday afternoon, feeling sad for no particular reason with thoughts hitting you at 1000 thoughts per minute congragulations.

You are officially in sad nigga hours.

Been there, done that.

So trust me when I say I know ball.

Till next time. Happy reading.

For as long as I remember, the most important people in my life had no titles, they simply showed up for me time and again and somehow along the way, they became significant figures in my life.

Which begs the question: Do friendship labels come along with certain expectations?

The Bestfriend.

I have always been more of a loner up until highschool where things changed, everyone had a ‘bestfriend’. The dynamic duo, the ride or dies, twins, pookies, you name it all. At some point I also had one, Ironically we never spoke after school.

For the few years we shared she was my person, any slight inconvenience and I'd go to her, every piece of good news was hers to hear first. Looking back, I realise I experienced the purest form of platonic love from through that friendship. She showed up for me with a consistency and kindness I never questioned.

Then highschool ended and life happened, slow replies, distance and before we both realised it we had become strangers with shared memories.

Is the title bestfriend meant to be forever or does it describe a person who was important to you during a certain season in life? Does losing touch or the title bestfriend make it any less significant than it was?

Does having a bestfriend make other friendships less important?

The Homegirl/ homeboy .

This one fascinates me the most, some may use it to describe a genuine friend, some may also use it to describe someone close to them, someone between friendship and romance. Sometimes they are a friend, sometimes they are a what if?

The label itself helps people keep someone close enough but also avoid defining what the relationship is, I know people who call each other homegirl and homeboy and have trusted each other with information they couldn't tell anyone else. The meaning varies entirely depending on who uses the title, which begs the question whether the label really is the important part.

Friendship shouldn't be confined to labels, it simply should be a matter of showing up for each other time and again, trust snd unconditional love. That is what matters and stays even after the labels are long gone.

Happy reading.

Till next time.

I was taken aback, not because of the question itself but because I'm in a better place right now and looking back I can admit I wasn't emotionally honest. And with that realisation came not only regret but also shame.

Shame because I couldn't bring myself to be vulnerable with someone I adored. Shame because I made someone question whether I was attracted towards them. Shame because I took a step back when they'd let me in all in the name of “it's too soon.”

And that is the thing about fear, it has a constant gnawing voice at the back of your mind convincing you that things are moving too fast. It tells you to slow down, keep to yourself and if you listen a little too well, it convinces you that you are not worthy of love and affection, so the first instinct is to pull back.

So, when is the right time?

The truth is there is no right time, attraction doesn't follow a timeline. For some it takes days, for others months or even years. The presence of attraction isn't justified by how much time has passsed but by one's willingness to stay true to their feelings and to the person in front of them.

Maybe that is what emotional honesty is about, having no idea where things might lead to, but having the courage to let the other person know where your heart currently stands.

Happy reading. Till next time.

I mostly listen to rap music, but I'm also a sucker for love songs, which confuses people more because, to them, the two shouldn't coexist.

I remember mentioning to a friend that I really enjoy love songs and she asked me “how come you enjoy love songs and you've never been in love?’’

I've been thinking about that question ever since. Should I experience love in order to enjoy love songs?

What's the need of associating a certain love song to someone you are, or were, romantically involved with?

It has always been quite the opposite for me, I actually enjoy love songs because I think of love as a feeling and feel the lyrics in my heart. Music is art and it doesn't require a lived experience to be felt. It leans more on imagination and emotional vulnerability.

Maybe the real question isn't the lived experience but how we limit ourselves on what we should feel while listening to different genres.

The thought that rap and love songs can't coexist is absurd because rap music also talks about love, heartbreak and vulnerability, although in a different manner. It is all about internalising the message and not trying to prove that you have lived it.

Music is diverse and we shouldn't limit ourselves when it comes to arts. Lately, chai ya saa kumi by Ywaya Tajiri has been on replay, what a banger!

A while back I was attending a lecture in college when a question was fired at my coursemate.While the guy struggled to properly form full sentences in english , he had the right answers only to be casually dismissed. The lecturer said something along the lines of ‘Think in english’

A year later I still think about that class daily and about how English has been elevated as the language of intelligence , authority and professionalism in Kenya.

Pre colonial Kenya .

Back in the 1800s before the coming of the British, Kenyans lived in communities and each community had it's own native language , trade was carried out among different communities and how was that possible without a common language ?

It so happened that non verbal communication would take place , much of this trade relied on gestures and demonstrations of goods to arrive at a shared understanding of their value since these communities spoke in different languages.

At the time, multilingual traders also existed who helped people from different communities come to an agreement on the value of goods. Later, with the arrival of the Portuguese on the East African coast, Swahili increasingly became a common language of coastal trade. Over time, it spread inland as other communities began adopting it as a language of commerce.

Modern takes on fluent Swahili speakers.

Yesterday a friend of mine was sharing a dilemma with me and used ‘kana’ in the process and I burst into laughter because honestly, who uses kana in this era, right ?

In the coastal region , places like Mombasa and Kilifi communication is mainly through swahili , kiswahili sanifu to be precise and it is totally normal.

Go on vacation and come back 3 days later with a coastal accent , something along the lines of ‘Da mwenzio , mbona sikuelewi ?’ suddenly it sounds cool and admirable right ?

So why should it be a laughing matter when someone from the luhya community speaks the same swahili fluently?

I'm not saying that I don't participate in the mockery, I actually do and enthusiastically so ( mnisamehe) but you see the contradiction , right ?

Elevation of English in the kenyan education system

I may not know about you but during my primary and secondary school days a whopping four days of the week was dedicated to the speaking of English .Failure to do so would land you in trouble.

In my school punishment for speaking Kiswahili was a ‘gunia dress ‘a sack stitched into something resembling a dress.

The real punishment wasn’t the sack.

It was the isolation, because no one wanted to be associated with a ‘Kiswahili speaker.’” ‘

Now notice this ,each subject in the Kenyan curriculum is taught in English apart from kiswahili ?

Meanwhile the neighbouring Tanzania was first colonised by the Germans and later the British yet somehow the curriculum is largely structured around kiswahili .

I honestly cannot imagine what that is like , unasomaje maths kwa kiswahili ?

Something else I also noticed while participating in public speaking during my primary school days was that the topics given out by the adjudicators were always in English . Sikuwahi ona public speaking ya kiswahili ( My observation)

The ‘ kiswahili kitukuzwe ‘ slogan is merely what people say but no steps are taken towards preserving and elevating swahili as a language .

English is now used as a measure of intelligence , you cannot face an interview panel and speak swahili without it sounding ‘unprofessional’

As I write this I also hope that I can fully embrace kiswahili as a language and take it to levels that it deserves meanwhile tujifunze tofauti ya I'm na am hata kama hio ni lugha ya wakoloni , peace out.