What I Learnt From Blogging About Myself

I started a blog about my life (some version of it, really), kept it up for six years and then closed it unceremoniously. The last part, I was told, was an anti-climax so I re-opened the blog. Before we dive all the way back into oversharing my life, here are a few things that occurred to me about writing a personal blog.

1. You can get trapped in performing your own art

My writing was meant to stretch the range of my craft. Yet, it would go into the world and represent itself as a window into my soul, sexuality, personal life or state of mind. Of course, my writing came from inside of me. So it was inherently related to me. Was it strictly a cry for help, an invitation to play naughty or a declaration of battle? Hardly. Yet, when it was interpreted as such, I felt compelled to respond as if it, in the first place, had been. I become a radical advocate for the perspectives I blogged from. When readers reached out, over my often bleak poetry, I took their sympathy. When some people extrapolated from the naughtier writing, I got carried away pushing my boundaries.  I am not entirely sure how to feel about all that but please be kind.  If, in life I imitated my art with you, destroy all evidence thereof. Please. It is the noble thing to do.

2. It improved my writing

Especially in the years when hardly a soul read it, the blog was good for my writing. They say writing is a muscle and it must be exercised. I have never been the kind to keep a journal. I talk to myself, instead. So, blogging was how I exercised that muscle. It improved my writing and perhaps because it did, I started getting some attention. That’s when things got tricky as above and below.

3. You create a first impression that is hard to get past

Piece by piece I collaged a seemingly full portrait of myself. It proved to be a trap. Often, when I meet people for the first time, the novelty is mine alone. To them, I’m a known character or more accurately, one piece of the character. What piece I am, depends on what post(s), they have read.  Jokes don’t land with people who have already decided they loath my feminist ideas. Trying to pass myself off as a fully complex human being with people who come to the blog for those sex posts is like trying to store oxygen by closing my fist. But perhaps the most disturbing consequence is being seen as fair game for harassment online. The trolls. Those trolls. May their groins itch forever and may their hands be too short to scratch them.

4. It may kill your patience for more rigorous writing

As an occupational writer, I used to be able to graciously take two, three, even five rounds of edits and copy reads. Having to research and report before writing was the minimum I could do. Then I started blogging -- typing out 2500 words in a single sitting and publishing it without a second glance. Now, when I have to write for an editor, their comments on my work hurt me.  In an almost physical way. Even just the anticipation of them, makes my original drafts stiff. Oh, and researching before you write… Isn’t that just tedious?

5. It is a real-time invention of your own history

On the occasions when people asked me why I blogged, I would say, “because I exist.” And, I maintain that is a fine reason to. Being as self-aggrandising as the kind of person who writes about herself for six years, I tend to remember all my life experiences as having been truly remarkable. I don’t remember chatting. No, I pertook of conversations that spun minds around. I won grand arguments or brought down the bar roof, trying. My one-off meetings belong in great literature, even if only for their off-colouredness. The interpersonal dramas that I have been party to, will definitely result in interesting scenes at my funeral.

The extent to which my memories of self are accurate, is irrelevant. I wrote them down. My life experiences as I want them remembered; as I want to remember them. That makes them real or at least the most real account of my life out there. A written down account. All other accounts are merely hearsay.  Now I know how all those dodgy people in history tricked us into erecting statues of them all over the place. And I have taken some of that for myself. It should feel corrupt. It doesn’t. It feels very good indeed. I don’t know if you can reinvent yourself but you certainly can invent your history. I recommend it.

Normal broadcasting of intimate details will begin shortly…

Emily Naluyimba

My girlfriends remember little boys they were 'shy for' in P.4 or shared packed snacks with in P.3. I remember her: Emily Naluyimba. I wasn’t shy for her. I just liked sitting with her, back when watching laundry dry, was an entirely legitimate use of one’s time. What else did one do with a Saturday morning in primary boarding school? Perched on the sills of shutterless school windows, Emily and I, watched other kids gleefully pair up to wring bedsheets; holding the rolled cloth as if it were rope in tug of war. I remember her going on about things I considered nonsense: how SST was going to be much harder in P.5, Jackie’s mother who lived in America, Faisal who gave girls bad touches because he was always in heat. It was nonsense but she was welcome to go on about it for entire mornings. The memory of her voice still makes me think of sunny mornings. 

Hailey and her 'Emily Naluyimba'

I loved Emily. That would be why I sent negative energy, before that was even a term, to the people in her life who were not perfect. I sent hate towards her stepmother who mistreated her (as all stepmothers seemed to do in those days). I sent a lesser dislike towards her little brother for existing and therefore making her responsible for him. When he lost his books, she was responsible for finding them, or crying about it when they could not be found. 

It’s my first of those ‘cry about it’ memories that I hold dearest. Initially, I didn’t even know she had a brother. Then one day, I run into her shaking up a little boy who looked both scared and defiant. She was tired of looking for his books, she said. She was just going to let the teacher beat him up for it this time. He had no defence of himself to offer. They stared at each other for a few seconds.  Then she burst out crying. I was completely stunned. Up until that point, I had not realized that you could deal with your problems by crying over them. Really. The option just had never occurred to me. 

How would I have come to such a revelation anyway? Peer culture was that when teachers or parents beat you, the right way to react was, not to. You held your muscles tight, braved the beating and walked away stoic. It’s what we did. It was pretty clear that those who cried did so only to manipulate the adults into administering a lesser beating. Worth a try, I suppose, but I never saw it work. 

In the house where I grew up, nobody cried. Maybe they didn’t have reason to. I don’t know. I just never saw anybody cry. 

Once, at a funeral in the neighbourhood, I saw a mother cry over her lost baby. But that is a different kind of crying. All I remember taking away from it was the ritualistic dimension. After the funeral, I went home, took my dolls to the back of the house and lined them up for burial. I duly dramatically wept over each before burying it. I was throwing myself about, slapping my thighs, heaving loudly in preparation for the last doll burial, when I heard my mother’s footsteps approach. My instinct was to immediately cut the act and break into song.

So, no. Crying hadn’t occurred to me as a real thing until I saw Emily cry. It was a real gift. After seeing her cry, I started to genuinely cry over my problems too. It is a gift that I have drawn on, countless times since. Through those incomprehensible years of childhood depression, as regularly as I needed to, I found a quiet corner of the school and wept my heart out. Every month when PMS storms in, I take care of it by allowing myself a healthy bawling in the bathroom. On that night when I couldn’t be in the audience to watch my child perform at the National Theatre, I waited for my roommate to fall asleep, buried my face in the pillow and let it go for a good hour. It is how I deal with life’s impossibilities. I cry like Emily would.

Emily was also the first to teach me about heartbreak. It’s funny that they call it heartbreak. The term promises you a particular dramatic moment of righteous pain. Heartbreak is in fact a passive being left behind. It is learning that you are no longer on the same page with someone because your paths quietly diverged at an irretrievable point in the past. It is being made aware of that divergence in a manner too passive for you to push back or reform for. It is hoping, hiding from the truth for so long, that when you eventually accept it, crying about it isn’t appropriate. Heartbreak is an unmarked grave. 

I didn’t think she was gone when she didn’t report to boarding school one term. I thought her parents were just being late. That they would bring her in, the weekend after. They didn’t. Still, I didn’t grasp that this meant I would never see her again. P.6 started and ended. Still, I hoped. P.7 started and ended. It was some time in secondary school that I finally realized that I would never see Emily Naluyimba again. That I needed to find another best friend. It would be university before I would find another truly best friend. 

This kid's death and my most deliciously disgusting childhood memories

When we were kids, my village best friend… yes, monogamy is unnatural; I had a separate city best friend. My village best friend and I used to go digging for ant queens. An ant queen is a lobe of fat attached to an ant head. It is unbelievably tasty. Like most things that were unbelievably tasty when we were kids, it does look rather disgusting.  You sprinkle salt on it, wrap it in a bit of banana leaf, and bury it in warm to hot ash for a few minutes. It melts to a sort of salty mucus-like thing; like what we used to turn gummy bears into by rubbing them in the palm with the back of a bic pen. Yeah. Now imagine the gummy bear was cream in colour. Long story short: it looks like mucus. It tastes like mucus.  But, it is not mucus which meant we could eat it without getting slapped by the adults. I loved eating ant queens, also known as Namunswa.  The term later came to refer also to pedophiles specialising in incest. The ant queen is said to feed on ants; which technically are also its offspring. So somebody once had the bright idea of defending the fact that he defiled his own kids by pleading: Namunswa alya ku nswa zee.  Where am I going with all this? Nowhere. I just thought I would disgust you. 

But the thought came to me because of this story in the Daily Monitor reporting that a six year old accidentally killed his sister while hunting an edible rat. People eat rats? Yes, people even Instagram pictures of roasted rabbits. I have fond memories of eating namunswa, so I am not judging here, but let us admit it:  rabbits are rats. 

When my best friend and I went digging up anthills, we executed with a certain kind of division of labour. She, more handy with a hand hoe, because she lived in the village, used to do the digging. I used to provide the commentary that oiled the process. Leaning against the handle of my hoe, I would paint her scenarios of all the things that could go wrong while we are at it. “A huge hissing snake jumps out of the hole to your left!” “Becca finds us!” 

Becca is my big sister. She really hated that I ate namunswa and has incredible follow through on her convictions. She swore she would catch us digging for one and shove my hand into the anthill. An anthill, despite it’s name, is more permanently a home for termites. Ants live there for about two weeks a year. All year long, termites live there instead. Anthill termites are like a science experiment on ants, gone wrong. They are ugly, ferocious, little beasts that breed in the millions. Once a termite bites into an intruder, it will die before it lets go. Seriously. We used to trap

The big guy is the termite

termites too.  By throwing our skirts and blouses onto the anthill. Once the termites bite in, you can take the cloth home and snack on them for days. They will not let go. Even though to snack on one, is to separate the torso sticking out on one side of the cloth from the head on the other side, they will not let go. In fact, you will need to eat the torso first while you wait for the head to die. 

So in my imagination, the worst that could happen was Becca catching us and proceeding to use my hand as a termite trap. I never imagined my best friend accidentally killing me. This is so very sad. 

Love is my Myth

Most atheists have little empathy for people who believe in deities. Not I. I empathize. I can relate. You see, I have a well loved myth of my own. I believe in love. Against repetitious evidence to the contrary in my own life, I believe that two adults can meet, truly see, love, accept, and choose to forever watch over each other in truth and with the best of intentions.  I believe it can just be. I believe it should just be. 

I can’t say I have actually ever known the kind of love I believe in. Don’t get me wrong, I have been loved. Severally.  But in the less profound meaning of the word. You know; the I-love-you-to-the-extent-this-works, kind of way? I do not feel shortchanged about that. I appreciated and still appreciate that love for what it was. And to be fair, I probably didn’t love much better than I was loved. But I always believed that even if it didn't happen for me, to me, love, that isn’t based on convenience nor limited by compromise, exists. Even though I am very prone to extrapolating my own experiences to the universal, in this case, I resisted it. 

Maybe I believe in love because we all need a story to keep us from despair, but I like to think it is because love is essential. To throw your lot in with another person may be your only chance. Because we are very small. Because we are inconsequential. Because the universe is random and doesn’t care. Because our size relative to the universe means that we will lose and be forgotten but our specie evolved a brain too large to sit easy with the real extent of our inconsequence. If we don’t believe in something that distracts us from our lack of consequence, we are done for, as soon as tomorrow. Some chose to believe in nation state. Some in gods. Others in their own power to self determine. I choose love. Love is my myth. Knowing that nothing I do with my life will ever amount to anything consequential in the grand scheme of things, I live for the chance to make another person’s inconsequence seem less so. And for my own sake, I hold out hope that someone will see it fit to throw their whole lot at my inconsequence. It seems possible to me that two rational human beings can agree that it is in their interest to throw everything they have at loving each other. 

But then again, for love to be essential, you have to buy my thesis that we are inconsequential. And that, I guess, is the major flaw in my myth. We don’t believe we are inconsequential. Our ancestors subdued the earth. We inherited consequence. We each have our own story of overcoming. We deserve consequence. For good reason, the people who raised us, or the messiahs we met along the way, told us we are wonderfully made. We are entitled to consequence. Each day, through grit and hard work, we win ourselves tiny territory in the arena against fellow men. We earn consequence. In the immediate lived world, for better or worse, we are consequential. 

Trouble is; we conflate the immediate lived world with the metaphysical. When love comes to us, we wonder: have we earned it? Do we deserve it? It is what we are entitled to? When the answer is no, and it will inevitably be no because none of it can be earned, we run from it. Worse still, we may take it, throw some time, some money, some sexing at it and correct our assessment to: yes, we have earned it. Then, like we do with the things we have earned, we start to deplete it. We toy with it.  We tear it apart just to see if we can put it back. We ruin it and go from being little but happy to sad and little. If we are humble, we will know what we did. If we aren’t, we will tell ourselves some other story. One that allows us to still feel entitled to the next loving heart that comes through the trenches.

So where does that leave me & my myth? Sigh… I need time off to reweave the theology of my myth. I am losing my faith. But just a tiny bit. Because what else have I to do with my time, but tell myself stories while I await death? 

Travel. Modesty

The internet alleges that  Gustave Flaubert once said, “travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” Wise words but they have never been true for me. Well, not until this time.

Before this time, travel did quite the opposite of modesty to me. It made me an insufferable party guest. My party trick is to load every minute with travel ‘advice’ for whoever I am talking to. “I am gonna say Kasese is my favourite town, but Kapchorwa is certainly worth seeing too. The mountainous backdrops of both are breathtaking yet quite different. Or you could go for broke and do a foreign trip. I totally recommend Ethiopia. It is kind of expensive but if you do go; do be a cliche and see the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela. They are totally worth it.”  I do my best to slyly let on how much of the world and country I have seen. I manage to both awe and annoy my company; which really is the point of party conversation.

Until now, the only reason I ever travelled anywhere was to add yet another bragging mark to my passport. It may be the best reason for travel, by the way. The whole ‘travel to find modesty’ thing isn’t looking good on me right now.

The first step to finding modesty in travel is; being thrust into the hustle and bustle of a place, away from the safe net of the delightfully servitude driven world of conferences and tourism.

“Go to north-eastern Queens and find interview subjects for that story due tomorrow. Yes, Google maps is not kidding you, that is two hours on the underground train. Don’t forget, it’s the A train for 30 minutes, switch to the F at 42nd street, calmly endure underground claustrophobia for another 55 minutes. Take the bus to 159 on Union Turnpike.”

You will get there another two hours late because: you closed your eyes to deal with claustrophobia; then dozed off; missed the train switch at 42nd; eventually got onto the F train but later discovered it was moving back into town not towards Queens, etc. As you u-turn back into town having achieved nothing because you missed all your appointments, a little voice will whisper to you, “you really are not quite as clever as you have been billed all your life.” Modesty.

The second route to modesty is watching just how well the wheels back home continue to run despite your absence. Once, I was diagnosed with malaria +4. In the subsequent hazy hour as  I lay hooked to two IV lines, convulsing like a leaf in the wind, I become obsessed with the most natural of concerns: my daughter’s life after I died. Well, I know now what it would be like: pretty much the same as it is with me alive. Especially after the first few weeks, she will be fine. Anyone of the people who love either her or I will step in on any number of occasions; birthday parties, school mornings, Sunday outings. It will all be okay. I am not her alpha or omega. Modesty. A feel good kind.

The third way to finding modesty is trying to teach your 30+ head new tricks while also trying to figure out the train system of a new place you allegedly are part of. Someone once told me that I have a brain the size of Africa. Of course, I believed her because she was Brit and had that clever English accent that allegedly brought all things brainy to the continent of Africa. Okay, I believed her because I really did miss the modesty gene. Well, don’t worry. I am growing one. Yesterday, having watched about two hours of YouTube tutorials, in addition to the nine lecture room hours prior, I managed to import a file into one of these new fangled computer programs that software developers use. My professors require that I learn a thing called Python. It is not the snake but is just as scary. It is not Nicki Minaj’s derriere but is just as scary. I really don’t have a mind the size of Africa. I knew that when I did a little dance to celebrate importing a file. The bright side to finding out you are no genius is that it liberates you from wanting to apologise for lame references to snakes and Ms Minaj’s derriere in your writing. Back to the point...

The thing that is really most screwing me with modesty is anonymity. Nothing crushes an ego like the anonymity of being one of more than 8,000,000 random people. Having been fed on the social media rants of Africans who came to the US before me, I was sure I was going to be endlessly bombarded with solicitations for tales about my exotic continent, inane negative coverage of Africa in the press, non-nuanced charges about Uganda’s LGBTI rights record. I even looked forward to the tiny adventure that the police would stop and frisk me just because I am black. I have found that people are simply too busy to give a damn. In my head, I might be an exotic person on a wonderful adventure but I get the sneaky suspicious that to them, I am just another person trying to buy milk at the store. Really, people give like zero fucks about the details of me. Occasionally, the odd Indian immigrant has remarked, “Idi Amin expelled Indians from Uganda,” but no other significantly annoying mentions have shown up. I could complain that with, "Americans just aren't interested in the world beyond their borders" but that would be rich coming from me since I fall asleep (with disinterest) whenever I try to read the non-international version of the New York Times. Still, I was made to believe there were 8,000,000 people here eager to fetishise me in some way. Why isn't anyone trying? Now what am I to do with all these ‘stop stereotyping me’ educational tirades bottled up inside me?

Nobody invited me to Ug Blog Week, which just goes to show how poor you people’s taste in blogging is. But, not being invited never stopped me from showing up. Nor tardiness. So, UgBlog Week #1. In your face.

For My Genie, Who is Stuck in the Bottle

Written September 2015. 
July 2017 Update: She kicked that fucking bottle, has her first post-rehab job interview on Tuesday, and now I have come across this and I am tearing up like the skies above. 

I know;

• It is a disease
• You are trying but can’t substantially help it
• The demons pulling you in, have run down your family line for generations
• I am impotent. I could never rescue you.
• I will never stop trying to rescue you but I do it only for myself. I need to know that I am doing something however impotent. 
• The selection for who gets to beat it, is as random as the choice of who it catches in the first place
• You very well might lose
• A big part of you hopes you lose and get done with it
• Aah... that sadly familiar simultaneous fear and desire for the end
• Everybody who has given up on you had to, or they would have drowned with you
• But you are a good person and are not one with your illness
• I love you as much as I loved your mother and my heart will be all broken again if, like her, you lose
• I will love you forever. Just for the sheer stubbornness of love. But also for all the priceless memories that come with a lifelong friendship in which, I have never needed to hold secrets
• I write this only for myself; to help the late night tears along because my tears, are the only thing I still have control over.

With impotence that I am all too aware of, I send my life force out to you, love. May the random chaos that is life, pick you. May I get to tell you another of my raunchy secrets. Get well.  By randomness. By design. By science. Somehow, do.

It's wonderful to be here and awful not to be there

It really is nice out here. The university is magnificent and stately. The public transportation system works and on some days, you’ll even enjoy it. Like when performers come aboard and give you a show for your change. My teachers are awesome. If they were to kick me out of the program next week, I would still come home having gained real skills that all those years of journalism practice never taught me. But, I miss home so effing much. Never mind that it’s been only 20 days. I miss the big things.  Like being secure, not having to prove myself in any way. I miss the little things like getting Hailey ready for school in the morning. I even miss things I didn’t know I liked. Like seeing black people all over the place or seeing the faces of familiar waiters. I miss not having an overwhelming variety of choices on the menu, knowing what to order, knowing what my change should be. I miss not being too tired to send checking-in texts to my friends at the end of the day. I miss home so much I can hardly speak of it. So failing to, I am going to borrow Oscar Hammerstein II’s lyrics from Allegro

It's a darn nice campus

With ivy on the walls

Friendly maples

Outside the lecture halls

A new gymnasium

A chapel with a dome~

It's a darn nice campus...

And I wish I were home!

It's a darn nice campus, 

I'm going to like it fine 

Darn cute coeds

They have a snappy line; 

Darn nice fellas, 

As far as I can tell~

It's a darn nice campus...

And I'm lonely as hell! 

It's a darn nice campus, 

With ivy on the walls, 

Friendly maples

Outside the lecture halls

I like my roommate

And you would like h̶i̶m̶ [her] too

It's a darn nice campus

But I'm lonely for you.

Oh Nai

You are the thick silence of the rift valley
on a long bus ride in a dark starry night
you are hope that he'll ask and I'll say yes
you are the pained confusion of a night years ago
when I deflected as he made to pop the question
for how could I say yes, when mama lived so far
yet how could I say no, when I'd travelled so far
Oh Nai ---you are home that never became home

And now he runs breathless across the street
he holds me tight, kisses me lightly on the lips
in the car, he tells me of her & a marriage to come
he speaks of the newness in being called daddy
we cruise the highway like in a date with the past
we laugh like the old friends we always will be
i say I'll return to put his marital plans to the test
we park & kiss; passionately soft like old married folks
"return soon," he demands;
"i will," I lie to, for both of us
Oh Nai --- you are home that will never be home

I've got new love back home;
much too much to lose
he's a little girl's daddy now;
much too much to steal
Oh Nai ---you are home that was only ever a dream

The five stages of drunk texting grief

First of all, if you are going to drink and use your phone, call don’t text. It is a ‘rules of evidence’ thing. If someone out there wakes up the following morning to allege that you uttered unworthy things while in a drunken state, well then, it just would have to be your word against his. All we would know for a fact is that a call was made by the accused person to the complainant at a certain potentially unworthy hour.  That however would merely be circumstantial evidence that doesn’t prove anything in regards to the core issue of contention. Were unworthy things uttered or not? That, we wouldn’t know. A text message on the other hand, woooiiii...  It leaves you with absolutely no room for rebuttal. Just brace yourself for the grief to follow.

1. Shock and Disbelief

So you turned away for a minute, typed things into your phone, touched send and the message actually went!

Horrified, you turn to your drinking buddy and say, “the message actually went!” Because she’s had about as many shots as you've had, she offers some wildly disproportionate and incomparable consolation such as, “Hitler killed six million people.”

2. Denial

Strangely, the awful consolation does actually speak to you. You relax. This has been a terrific night. A terrific night. You tell her how much you love her and how grateful you are for her company. “So many times I just don’t have anyone to bounce my thoughts off. I am so happy to have that tonight,” you elaborate.

3. Phenomenal Problem Solving

It’s the morning after. You half open one ka-eye, sneak a look at your message log and yes, the message really did go. Yes, it was delivered to the recipient device. But, the blue ticks haven’t gone off yet which means no human has actually seen the message. You still have time to think about remedies and mitigations. So, you think, think, and think some more. At last, you come upon the bright idea to delete the message from your own device. That way, you’ll never know whether or not an actual human ever saw the message.

   

4. Bargaining

You’ve now had some breakfast and your thinking has attained a discomforting level of clarity. So, you sit down with a warm cup of tea and start composing a mitigating/remedying note. First, you deny responsibility. “My buddies were so zonked last night they typed that shit.” Delete. You contemplate humility but that, “I am really sorry I directed my drunkenness your way,” text just sounds lame. Delete. You attempt humour. Fail. Delete.  Defeated, you nonchalantly kinda sorta let yourself off the hook with, “it is what it is. I’ll just wear dark shades for a day.”

5. Non-Acceptance

Under the shower, you really ask yourself, “but is it fair that a human being should have to hang their head over a mere text message?” No it isn’t fair. You are a complete human being with many good qualities even if holding your liquor isn’t one of them. You re-open the matter with a mental note to check buzzfeed for a list of things that one can do following a drunk texting night. Maybe they’ll make you laugh. Maybe, you’ll deal with the matter by sending this link to the owner of the device to which your message was sent. Let’s not forget that we don’t even know for a fact whether or not a real human ever saw the message anyway.

Hey look, my fork and spoon joined the Miss Uganda debate!

This morning over breakfast, my fork and spoon joined the hottest conversation in town lately; the dissection of the new Miss Uganda.

Fork: She’s ugly. She looks like a Musoga, even.  

Spoon: Indeed she looks like a Musoga! You just have a colonized idea of beauty. She is beautiful in exactly the way an African should look. 

Fork: Waa? She’s just the way only half an African should look. She needs some curves somewhere.

Spoon: Anyway, she has inner beauty

Fork: You mean she has cute intestines and a sleek kidney?

Spoon: Idiot, she graduated magma cum laude in computer engineering. And when you wake her up at night, she doesn’t scrowl at you. Infact she’s not one to need coffee before she can smile in the morning.

Fork: Irrere. It was not a national science contest or a canonization of saints. A beauty contest is exactly that. They had a girl called Flower Violet in the contest. Who chooses a Kalunguka over a Flower Violet in a beauty contest?

Spoon: The UPDF, in its capacity as the overtaker of agricultural extension services. This isn’t about the beauty of just beauty.  This is about promoting Ugandan values; agriculture, militarism --- all that good shit. 
♫ ♫♫Talalalalala… she’s not just a pretty face. She can even milk the cows. ♫♫

Fork: ♫♫♫Nanananah… and when she grows up. She’ll marry Mr Uganda. Who’ll hunt a squirrel or two… in the boot camp to stardom. Nananana… she’s not just a pretty face. And he won’t be, just a heap of brawn.” ♫♫♫

Spoon: You are just disturbed by the ghost of the Brazillian who haunts you asking for her hair back.

Fork: Well, perhaps the new Miss Agro-Militia can learn a thing or two from me. When you don’t have it, fake it. That way, only FatBoy hates on your weave not the entire Ugandan internet.

Spoon: Okay, you win. But fuck, did I just spoon your fake eyelash into the mouth of the madame de la maison? We are so screwed!

Madame de la maison: Okay, kids. I’ll now let you join the rest of your family over here for the rest of the day. Enjoy it. 

Madame de la Maison speaks under her breath:   We really should not be holding beauty contests. What shit is that? Hey, lady; step over there and I will gawk at you for a few minutes before I decide if you are worthier of my gawking than the other ladies in line. What shit is that? It just ruins my mornings and several days of my interneting. 

In Case I Eventually Check Myself Out…

Edit Note: I first wrote this in October 2014. I am republishing it because the term Mabirizi trended on Twitter last week, as people cracked jokes about the fact that a man jumped off a 7 storey building and as the tweeps put it, "failed to die." He died in hospital the next day and Red Pepper reported that his dream had finally come true. These kinds of statements show how much our heads failed the whole point of education. When we are confronted with what we don't understand, we mask our ignorance with callous mockery. Had we not missed the point of education, our instinct would be to Google it, pick up a book or ask someone who might know. But many of us missed that point by miles. 
Anyhow, the old post:  

Yet another person has committed suicide under circumstances that allow the public to know about it. This time it is a young woman who jumped off Workers’ House. Two months ago, it was a famous actor. Naturally, people on social media are falling over themselves to showcase their ignorance and callousness regarding the subject of suicide and the mental state that precedes it. To paraphrase some of the postings and comments that followed these incidents:

On Robin Williams: You see them happy and rich but when they are dying inside. Okay… also dying inside are all people with terminal illnesses such as cancer. Would you like to gloat about those too?

On the 26 year old Asaba: Do people jump off Worker’s House because of adrenaline?  Who knows? Maybe let’s Google that?

On Robin William: One thing I am grateful for is that here in Africa; we have social structures to support us. Indeed. Is this why nobody has ever committed suicide in Africa?  

On Both: It is crazy and selfish. Right. But posting the picture of a dead person on your page to get a few more views and likes to massage your ego is neither crazy nor selfish.  

Following all the local social media callousness that followed Robin Williams, I set out to write a post about depression in the irrational hope that perhaps I’d get through to the humanity of those people whose sense of humour didn't rise above correlating his suicide with his three marriages. I did try but halfway through I was crying over my keyboard in the office so I put it off. I have been stewing on that post since, so here goes a second attempt. 

So, statistically speaking, there is a chance that when I die, it will be at my own hands. No, I am not suicidal. Not right now anyway. But, I do suffer from depression and a huge proportion of the people who take their own lives are depressives. Also, I notice that I have a markedly different reaction to news of suicide than most people. Yes, the image of a young woman jumping off the 14^th floor of Worker’s House is chilling to me too. As is hanging one’s self. I doubt I would do either. But my chills are brought on only by the how not the what. That is; I think, there are less horrendous ways of committing suicide, not that there is something intrinsically wrong with suicide itself. I figure that death is death whether it comes by suicide or cancer. Clearly I am further out of my mind about this than most people are but that’s the story.

I suffered my first serious episode of depression when I was 10 or 11. Following a not particularly noteworthy beating from my mum, I tried to run away from home and failed. I didn't think it through well enough even for a 10 year old runaway. I ended up at the home of one of my mother’s colleagues, who of course sent for her. So I was a runaway for what? Two hours maybe? What followed however was not a joking subject. I fell into a sadness so profound that I literally couldn't speak for about a month. Whenever I tried to, tears just streamed down my face. Imagine my mother’s terror – she never laid a hand on me after that. Imagine my own confusion. The profound sadness did pass but was then followed by a year of inexplicable ill-health. Vague illness kept me in and out of school for much the year that followed. I even developed the very grown up disease called ulcers. I was constantly crying at little to no provocation.

Even prior to all this, I hadn't been a particularly happy or easy child. My grandmother used to swear that the first time I spoke, I said a full sentence, repeated it thrice and it was, “Nja kuffa.” (I will die!) Take that with pinch of salt. I, proudly, come from a long line of storytellers. Still, I was a pretty sad child, even to my own recollection. Now, of course, as with most stories of childhood depression, there were familial circumstances on which my apparent sorrow could be blamed. I will not go into those because I have come to think of them as mere triggers for an underlying condition that would (and still does) anyway come to the fore regardless of what is going on in my physical world. 

I may have suffered another episode around the age of 14 or 15 but that wasn’t clear cut sorrow. It was more in the form of swings between hyper happy and sulky. Plus teenage is so confusing for everybody that even with hindsight, it is hard for me to pin down what was going on. Still I remember certain things that have come to characterize my depression in the years after – waking up to weep in the middle of the night about something that wouldn’t make me cry ordinarily, the feeling that I was drifting aimlessly through life and this would be my eternal lot in life, a deep craving for drugs in the belief that they’d make things alright (I am still managing to stay away from them, save for the occasional recreational joint of weed). The thing is that the above feelings were completely unfounded. As far as teenage goes, I was pretty successful at it. I routinely topped my class and was well acknowledged (admired even) by my peers and teachers. My parents thought me a well behaved child yet I was still managing to sneak off to daytime discos at Little Flowers & Club Ambience. I once even harbored a friend for an entire day before we jumped the fence and successfully got into Club Silk that night. At 15! What else does it take to be a successful teenager? Yet, that inexplicable sorrow never quite left me. For stretches of weeks at a time, I would find myself crying into my basin of bathwater for reasons that I don’t recall. In any event though, teenage certainly wasn’t the worst time of my life.

I think the trophy for worst time of my life would go to the period between 27 and 29 years of age. I honestly feel like I lost three years to the sheer effort of keeping out of the darkness. During this time it got so bad that flashes of my slit wrists crossed my vision at random hours of the day. That, plus the waking in the middle of the night to weep my heart out. I didn’t even trust myself to take care of my child – hence a few shameful parenting decisions hereabout. In addition; more than a few other shameful personal choices that shall remain unsubstantiated. My older Facebook friends probably remember those ‘my life is pathetic’ updates and blog posts! Some, bless their hearts, went as far as coming out of the internet into my life to support me. Thankfully, though, this episode happened then not earlier. Around the age of 25, I had started to learn about depression as a disease. I came to learn that it wasn't just a personal tendency to be sad but rather an actual physiological disease that stems from underlying chemical imbalances in the brain. I came to know that it can be treated or managed. Just as importantly, I came to name the thing that occasionally took over my life just for its just. When it first returned in my late 20s, I of course didn't recognize it right away. I blamed my disorientation on my personal and work situations, the stresses of adulthood/motherhood, childhood baggage, the media and all its bad news, the existence of awful people like those who sprayed Dr Besigye’s eyes with pepper spray every few days etc. So I slogged it out for two whole years. However, when the slit wrists started to flash before me, all the learning I had done about depression was triggered into my consciousness. I recognized that I was sick, not sad. This would be the part where I tell you that I took that insight and started fixing things.  Except, fixing things was more like:

Go into panic mode.

Make unjustified and unsustainable changes to your life.

Fail.

Go into erratic mode with the changes and decisions.

Calm down when you’ve amassed a tidy pile of random meaningless experiences.

Make changes slower and more deliberately now.

Start to see that glimmer of calm light at the end of this section of the tunnel.

Maybe the above did fix things. More likely, once again, the thing took three years of my life and then left. Nonetheless, I think knowing what was happening to me when it was happening really helped me cope. That’s one reason why mental health education and services are so important – not just that famed African social support structure. So the worst of that episode is behind me. Still, even today, after a slight disappointment or unwanted change in my life, I might catch myself involuntarily pining, “I just wanna go home.” This is a scary and stunning thing to hear yourself say involuntarily especially when you are sitting in your own living room. I am not naïve about what ‘going home’ means there.

I definitely plan to keep this beast at bay and outlive you all and, I am quite the achiever so that’s probably gonna happen. But if one day it stretches my mind so far out that I go beyond the flashes to actually slitting my wrists (yikes!), I want all random social media peeps to be reminded of the below when they post declaring me selfish, seemingly happy but dying inside or an adrenaline junkie.

1. I have been keeping this beast at bay since I was 10. When they call me selfish, ask them what struggle they've fought so determinedly for so long.
2. At that point, I will be just as dead as I’d be if I died of cancer. Remind them of that.
3.  Because of the number 2 above, I wouldn't be reading their status updates so do point out that their moral lesson will be kinda lost on me.
4. Related to number 3, I wouldn't be suffering the ignorance and callousness of people like them anymore. Joke then that death isn't without its minor benefits
5. Most emphatically tell them that I have lived a pretty darn good life. Depression isn't a full time illness. Despite it, I have squeezed some pretty fun experiences into my thus far short life. Tell them that I have abseiled besides Sipi falls, been inside the Taj Mahal, climbed (a certain number of steps on) the Great Wall of China and have lived inside a lover's t-shirt. Tell them I lived a life. What do they mean I was dying on the inside?   
   
   
   
    
   
   
   
    
   
   
   
    
   
    
   

If however you were to be a person who actually knew me, loved me and wanted me to hold onto my life just for you; I wouldn’t know what to say to you except that life is rough and we aren’t always in control of things. I’d just hope that the very deliberate effort I put into making my connections worthwhile will keep your heart warm with some pretty awesome memories made just for you. And I’d hope that the knowledge that nobody gets out of life alive, would help you keep your perspective.

Eh! Nga now this sounds like my will. I am not dying or planning on it. I am not even sad or depressed. Yes, you even can buy me coffee and beer. Yes, both. Tuli mu future! Let’s live while we are still alive.

Update: I thought I'd share this collection of portraits that illustrate the duality that living with (at least some forms of) depression can be like. http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2014/10/28/liz_obert_dualities_looks_at_the_hidden_and_visible_worlds_of_people_living.html 

From a Balcony in Addis

From a balcony in Addis, I partook of a sad homecoming. A truth I had always known strolled back into my conscious mind.  Callously casually, the knowledge that I was alone, and never could otherwise be, came back to me like one would stroll into their own yard after a normal day at the office. I could have wept. I could have screamed. I could have sworn a string in rage and refusal. But any of that would have been too dramatic for so ordinary an entry. So I silently shade a tear and sat still as I felt it calmly find its old place in my soul. Without further opinion, I turned my attention to the street below.

From a balcony in Addis, I silently watched a crowd beat up a man. The street was hardly lit. The shops were closed. Happier people had long gone home. It was that thin hour that’s spared for those whose luck has been thin. He was one like them. They were ones like him. Callously casually, they kicked and pulled at him with not apparent method or purpose. He writhed. He wriggled. He didn’t fight back. He let a sound. In a random moment he found himself correctly positioned for the space between the legs of one of them. Without ceremony he wriggled out of their snare, through that dishonourable space and into the dark of the silent night.

From a balcony in Addis, I stepped back into the unlit room. For no other reason but to escape the chill of the night, I crept to the bed. He lay quietly breathing. A slit of light from yonder illuminated his back - a long stretch of tight jet black skin that seemed to shimmer against the white of the sheets. I gathered the covers off the floor and tacked him in. Quietly I crept in. Deterring pretence of anything we weren’t, I turned to face the other wall. He’d be gone when I woke. I’d be gone within the week. An easy conversation at a museum had led to a mostly quiet evening in a dimly lit bar and later on, an inconsequential tumble between these same sheets.

He wasn't gone when I awoke. He sat atop the bedside drawer in the shape of the threadbare multi-coloured cotton band. That which had the day before carressed the disproportionately thin wrist of his arm. Gone from my side of the bed was one of two most clumsly crafted earrings. At the bar, he had sought to tease me about being the cute tourist who buys clumsly strung crafts in search of local authenticity. I’d disappointed his tease when I said I had made them myself - back home. In the earring’s place, on hotel pad paper, was a note that only said, “If ever…” From a balcony in Addis, I bathed in the beauty of the glorious morning sun soaking an ancient land.