I love to read articles about understanding men, mostly from the home page on MSN. Every time I discover some delicious new fact about our Martians, I try it out on my better half. His response is always something like, ‘The trouble with women is that they take all their man-talk from other women.’

I always want to yell,  ‘Men don’t talk about their feelings, so we have to discover them through other women … or gay friends!’ And somehow I don’t think man advice from a gay pal counts for much, because their thought process is painfully close to mine.

Unless of course he’s a guy-gay, in which case he probably knows nothing about women.

When the movie first came out in 2003, I swore I wouldn’t watch it. My swearing didn’t have any particular motive. It wasn’t about being macho and resisting chick flicks, even though I had just watched that traumatising movie with Renée Zellwegger. I don’t remember what it’s called, but it had a lot of pink, and one scene had a simulated split screen lap dance dry humping thing … which some people found funny, but I found incredibly sad.

The real reason I avoided 10 days is because from what I could see in the preview, I was definitely a 10 days kind of girl, and nobody needs that kind of affirmation. Read the rest of this entry →

I’m not a big believer in internet dating, even though I’ve met a lot of loved ones that way. The whole concept just seems contrived and artificial. Though, for the record, I’m not big on offline dating agencies either.

It’s a bit different when you’re not going online specifically to find a mate. I found the love of my life on a website for writers, and what started out as an exchange of style and prose ended up in a beautiful relationship.

This story – the one I’m about to tell – started with a pretty girl looking for a dance partner. The reason she couldn’t find one offline is that she’s tall. Really, really tall. Naomi Campbell in spiked heels is a dwarf to her kind of tall.

The girl’s name is Keisha, and she’s 6 foot 5.

Keisha wanted to find someone to dance with for … whatever reason. The online stories don’t say. She went on a site for tall people, and a guy named Wilco responded to her question with ‘I’m 7 feet tall, is that enough?’

Years later, the couple are happily married with two beautiful [and  extremely tall] multicoloured babies. Read the rest of this entry →

I’ve been trying to get my hair coloured for a while, and I finally gave up  after four tries and three thousand shillings. I didn’t want to pour more money down the sink. Plus, I was afraid my hair would fall off. Hair colour can do that sometimes.

The saga began with a mix of two colours – ultraviolet black and aubergine. This was followed by some food colour, more aubergine, and some wailing with mirrors.

The first time I dyed it, the hairdresser said it was coloured, but my baby girl said otherwise. I couldn’t see purple either.

The second time, it started out purple, but darkened with the food colouring. And the third time, they let it stay on too long, so the effect was fade to black.

After each session, the hair-people swore that my hair had turned, but I was dissatisfied. They told me to be patient, and that the colour would ’shout’ after a few weeks.

Some days later, my baby finally admitted my hair was a little tinted. I didn’t believe her.

Even when some random dude using roller blades on the road to Kibera made a comment, I wasn’t having it. He said my hair was really pretty, and asked if I’d bathed it in Kiwi.

Well, not in those words exactly, but that was the idea. Read the rest of this entry →

So … I haven’t been to the gym in two weeks. 

I have a  perfectly legitimate excuse. The first week, I had workshops, so I had to leave the house earlier. The second week, my cheques hadn’t cleared and the gym subscription had run out.

I bumped into the gym instructor three days into the ‘wallet-fast’ and he told me I could come in anyway. I didn’t take him up on it. It was partly guilty conscience, but mostly oversleeping.

Somewhere amid my hiatus, I had to go to a clinic for a routine tune-up. As usual, they checked my temperature and BP, then asked me to be weighed.

I’d gained 1.5 kilos!

Either those two weeks really did something bad, or the hospital scales were wrong. Because on my home scale, I still weigh exactly the same as I did six months ago. Weird.

Maybe it’s my home scales that are broken. Read the rest of this entry →

A few days ago, I was at a workshop, and we had to set up a DVD player. I was in charge of logistics, so I got the machine then asked for some boy in the know to come hook it up.

My statement offended some ladies in the audience, who felt I was stereotyping. I hadn’t given it much thought, so I revised the statement and asked anyone who could get it working to come do so.

Three girls huddled around the machine, trying to match the red wire to the white wire. Two of us, me included, spent a few seconds asking why it didn’t have a yellow wire.

In the end, one of the guys came and set it up. Oh ouch.

Even the staunchest feminist admits to having a guy to fix her light bulbs. I’ve always been really proud of changing my own, until today.

See, I have had many, many, many adventures with light bulbs, but I always blamed the glass. When I used three bulbs for every change in Dar, I assumed it was because the bulbs cost two bob Kenyan. And the house had faulty wiring. Why else would the first two bulbs I replace blow within seconds – every single time?! Read the rest of this entry →

I’ve always had weight issues. In high school, I went as high as 80 kg … and yes … I have heavy bones. But my optimum weight is 60. It looks good, it feels great, and at 5 foot almost-six-inches, its BMI is 22. I think.

Right now, I weigh 70. It’s very distressing, since even while pregnant, I didn’t go over 65. Somewhere between sun, sand, and Morocco burgers, I gained ten kilos. Luckily, the excess weight doesn’t show unless you look very closely. It’s mostly centred around the middle, and corsets do wonders to hide that. But corsets can’t stop heart disease, fit under bathing suits, or solve bedroom shyness. So now, my target is to lose 10 kg.

I’ve been hoping to do it through sheer will-power like The Secret says. After all, wisdom claims that all weight is gained by thinking fat thoughts. I don’t know about that, but considering I’ve had four years of coastal cuisine and no exercise [I lived five minutes from my office], I should be a lot heavier than I am.

Despite thinking thin thoughts, gorging on chocolate, and watching UK’s Biggest Loser for three months, I haven’t lost [or gained] an inch.

Enter my good pal, who talked me into joining the neighbourhood gym. It’s right next door to my flat, they open at 5.30 a.m., and they throw in free stretches after each workout. I’m not talking hands-in-the-air-and-reach-for-the-sky here. I’m talking actual stretches. They grab your limbs and yank them till you squeal. Then they pound on your back and massage it. It’s heavenly! When they’re done, your skin feels like jelly. I work out from 6.00 to 7.00 each morning, sometimes 7.30. Then I get stretched and rubbed, no gutter intended. After that, a protein drink, a nice hot shower, and off to work. Read the rest of this entry →

For a while now, I’ve wanted to dye my hair purple. I got the idea from a close pal, who also got me enrolled in a gym. I’d always known that if I had caucasian hair, I’d wear it spiky and tinted, but I’d never seriously thought of colouring my dreads.

Once I settled on the idea, I had to find the right shade. Most shops have brown, black, Burgundy, blonde, and – believe it or not – grey. I did manage to find ulraviolet-black, blue-black, and something called aubergine.

At first, I thought I could go ultra-violet with highlights of aubergine. The latter looks like a maroon shade of purple. But the salonist said if you shampoo between colours, the second colour is nullified.

I started out with ultraviolet and planned to add the aubergine two weeks later. But by day 2 I was impatient and decided to try it anyway. The ultra-black was just, well, black! I wanted something more … colourful.

Sunday morning, after almost an hour with purple on my head, we rinsed it off and saw … black. The colour didn’t catch! At least, it  didn’t catch the hair. But for the next one week, everything my head touched turned to purple. I had towels, windows and gym mats in that hue. Stress! Read the rest of this entry →

As a freelance writer and editor, I mostly work from home. However, one of my clients requires me to be in their offices for a few hours every day. Their office is situated near a funeral home, which makes it really hard to work on Thursdays.

Some time last week, I was walking by the funeral home when I saw this guy. He was cuddling a little girl who looked 4 or 5 years old. I noticed her because she wore a bright orange jacket and had beads in her hair.

I had my earpones on [X FM Baby!] so I couldn’t hear what they were saying, and she had covered his face, so I couldn’t see if he was crying. They stood a bit far from the proceedings, and I wondered if he was protecting her from the corpse.

But as I watched them, I realized that maybe she was protecting him. As long as he held that baby, as long as he shielded her from pain, he didn’t have to deal with his own. He could stand there all stoic and be a man about everything.

They were swaying, like they were slow dancing to some song that only they could hear. And when a lady came by and picked up the child, I saw the man’s face change. His barrier was gone, and the weight of the moment seized him. It was painful to watch.

People have different ways of dealing with death. I’ve never been afraid of it, probably because I always had a strong faith, so I knew where I was going. Lately my mind-frame has changed, but I still have a set image on the afterlife, so it doesn’t really scare me. Read the rest of this entry →

I have a nasty temper. I usually display this temper by throwing things at people; often, very expensive things. This is why I love Nokia. Whenever I smash it on a wall, rock, floor, or annoying-person’s-head, the phone dismantles into six distinct pieces; and once I hunt them down and ‘remantle’ them, the phone works fine.

For this reason, I always buy Nokia. And given my jinx for all things electr[on]ic, I’m strictly basic. No smartphones for me. So my Nokias are usually mulika mwizi – phones whose most advanced feature is a flashlight-torch. I am currently sporting three 1200s a 1680, and a 1202, though recently, I had to cave in and get an LG. I think it has radio.

The reason I have so many handsets is a story for another day – but I walk with three at any one time. So when my Zain handset started acting up, I was more than a little annoyed. For two days, my phone kept going off despite charging. And on the third day, when I finally got it to stay on, it asked me for a security code.

Security code? I never use security codes!

Since my phone had been on a communal office charger for two days, I thought some prankster had played a practical joke and programmed the secret code, especially when the standard 1234 and 0000 didn’t work. Nobody at work fessed up, so I spent two more days punching in random numbers to get my phone open. I tried 6-digit, 8-digit, 9-digit and even 10-digit combinations with no luck. Eventually, I called a pal who suggested I try 5, as in 12345. It worked!

Then the trouble began.

My phone was on alright, but the keypad was noisy, and the clock was off. I always set these features, so I started to think this wasn’t my phone, especially since I had left it on the desk all weekend. It crossed my mind that some genius had forgotten their security code, and had simply switched my uncoded handset for theirs, but that seemed paranoid, even for me. Plus, no one at the office has a 1200. Yet now here I was with wrong settings and a timeless phone. Read the rest of this entry →

There’s a popular joke that if you want to know how your wife will look in twenty years, just study your mother-in-law. It’s all very well if your wife’s mum is Njoki Ndung’u, less cool if she is, say, someone else.

I don’t know about boys, but girls seem to go through various ‘mummy stages’. Initially, you want to be like mum. You want to dress like her, wear your hair like her. You spend hours flossing her heels, wearing her make-up and begging her for matching outfits.

At some point, for some reason, you rebel. You turn tomboy, shave the hair and burn all your dresses. The girly things get progressively shorter [or for supermodel progeny, progressively longer]. I don’t know if it’s teen angst or a desire to be different, but at that point, sura ka madhako becomes a very deep insult.

Then, years later, with no conscious effort, you become Mum. It could be some latent gene that’s activated by childbirth, or it could be an age thing, but you suddenly notice that you cook, clean, and discipline your children just like your mother did. You style your house in the same way, say the same things, buy the same products, and even pick the same [previously] annoying habits. Read the rest of this entry →