When it comes to sick days…

I’m on the fence about my sick days.

It’s a really hard time for me when I’m sick because the love I receive becomes confusing.

I have only ever missed a total of five days from school and one of them wasn’t even a full one; make that two. My first was when my granny passed away and I missed the first hour of school to be told the news. Just in case you were wondering, yes, I did get and have to do homework that same day.

The second through to forth day are linked together. I was getting confirmed, and it was school holiday tuition, so in a way those three days [Friday from 11:00am to Monday 7:45am] don’t even count.

The last and final day was an actual sick day. The thing is I had been sick for four days but my parents really took me seriously when I called up at 3 in the morning from my hostel, shivering, close to my death bed-I always told my friends that this would get my folks attention, granted they arrived at 8am.

It turned out to be Malaria. [Remind me to tell a certain friend’s dad that Coast has a lot of mosquitoes, enough to give me malaria].

I don’t know. I milked the heck out of this day, so in the end he helped [my friend’s dad that is].

I’m a really, really lazy person up front so when it comes to sick days, it becomes worse. I wake up feeling like the world hates me and so I decide it doesn’t need to see my face. I lose my appetite because I can’t move and I generally stick to my bed for as long as I can. A simple swelling on my lip and I can go into hibernate mode.

I start off my day with the words, “I’m going to die,” My already depressed mood, supercharges and becomes worse.

Oh yeah, there is worse.

I’m sick now, so this is really using up my energy.

All I want to do then is sleep but I also want the needed attention I deserve. So I text my mother because that’s all my tired fingers can manage. Calling would require searching up the contacts list and gosh, that would involve thought. I wouldn’t want that to strain me.

Me: mum, I’m sick

Mum: what’s wrong? You’re allergies?

The thing with my allergies, is because they are allergies, they can go on their own or just be stopped by a simple anti histamine and therefore my mother won’t take me seriously enough to make an effort to comfort me.

So no it is not my allergies, until there are no other outs.

Me: I don’t know. My throat is soar and I have no ability to breath [translation: a blocked nose]

The first thing my mother notices is the spelling and thus moves on to ignore the actual reason we are talking in the first place.

Mum: how many times must I tell you it is ‘sore’ not ‘soar’?

Me: and I can’t find my inhaler [I choose to ignore her allegations and quickly delete the message along with the proof]

Mum: it must be the weather. You’re allergies are usually bad at this time.

Yes they are but I learnt that my mother says this at whatever time of the year. Whether it is sunny, raining, cold season or dry season my mother will never fail to say, “Your allergies are usually bad at this time.”

Me: yeah.

I give in and try for another tactic.

Me: dad, I’m sick.

My father unfortunately isn’t as faithful in the sick front. He doesn’t reply immediately, he doesn’t pick out my spelling mistakes and for one thing, I don’t even think he knows I have allergies.

So I wait for around six minutes to the whole day passing by [the latter being more likely] until he calls me. What if by this time I have collapsed, adopted a monkey or decided to move to Canada? What would he say then?

I pick up the phone regardless.

Me: hi. [I put a load on the sick voice to make me more believable]

Dad: hi baby. How are you feeling?

I’m maybe relatively better but who wants him to know that. I’ve been waiting for this the whole day. I’m going to play it out.

Me: my nose is still stuffy and I am coughing like a choking cow [yes I have time to come up with a dramatic way of putting it]. It is not good.

Dad: woi, that bad.

I just said it wasn’t good didn’t I?

I groan instead. He might decide to be more sympathetic to that reply.

Dad: Let’s just see how it is tomorrow.

Wait what? That’s it? That is all I am getting for being sick the whole day? Are you even going to buy me Piriton-I think this is the only medicine I know-?

Me: oh, okay.

Figuring that my father probably shouldn’t have been my escape, I go back to my mother for one more last chance before I give in to the truth.

Me: I think it must be my allergies.

At this time, it seems like texting her at night is a way of showing her I’ve been deep in thought about this even though the most strenuous activity I probably did was turning the pages of the novel I was reading.

Mum: okay. That means it’s not so serious. I’ll get you something to help but sleep now so that you have enough rest. Goodnight.

Oh shoot!

There it goes my golden opportunity wrapped up in a single ‘goodnight’.

I told you when it comes to sick days, the love I receive is confusing, sometimes I don’t even know why I try.

And so, because I slept for eighteen hours and haven’t eaten, I lay awake in bed for the rest of the night, trying to cajole my lazy ass to get up and get us some food before I really die of starvation.

But I never get up, laziness is a skill.

How I learnt to survive the wilderness

I know you won’t believe me but this story is one hundred percent true.

It all started with a showerhead.

And I should point out that by wilderness I don’t actually mean, there was anything wild there; except of course the showerhead.

When we moved into our new estate, close to twelve years ago [now I feel old], we had a central heating system. This meant all the showers in the house used one heater and yes, that’s right they all worked.

As time moved and my dad decided he was becoming modern, he took the heating system down [not literally though, it’s still there and I occasionally press it just to see if I can] and installed one of those instant showers into the guest room. It was so exciting [my sister says that strange things excite me, which would explain why I was the only one expecting a birthday cake at the time] and it was also very frustrating as we all had to share just one bathroom.

At first Bob-I’ve decided that’s the showerhead’s name- was super cool. All you had to do was press a button and the water became hot.

In case you’re wondering, why Bob, it’s because I named almost all my first toys and other riff raff Bob when I got them, I’ve just gotten used to it.

I guess though that over time, Bob, felt he wasn’t being appreciated very much.

Nobody, in this case my family really explained to me what was happening until I experienced it firsthand. I had skipped down the stairs and was ready to take another nice hot shower [mind you my room has a bathtub but here I am…showering]. I turn on the switch then proceed to the tap.

At a ghastly speed, a spray of water rushed to my face as if I was being hit by a wave in the sea [bam! Wilderness people, WIL-DER-NESS]. I didn’t know what was going on and consequently what to do. In hindsight, I really didn’t need to take a shower then because I was already soaked and so was the floor.

It all advanced in slow motion from then.

I braved up, which meant that I had to stop screaming for my mum and use my sensibility to scream for my father. It didn’t really help that neither one of them was home. It was up to me to save the day from a flooded bathroom. My superhero needs have really been neglected.

I fought hard in pushing the water out of the way even though that really didn’t make sense and wondering where Moses was at the moment. Maybe ringing him up would have helped in the parting the water department.

It took close to three minutes to finally get to the point where I could feel the tap and finally turn it off. I then learnt that I had to open the tap to a certain level so that it didn’t simultaneously burn off the skin of my butt and drown me.

Bob sure didn’t like this because he seemed to have another trick up his sleeve…trick up his pipe? You figure it out.

It is perfectly clear that when you enter the shower, red is for hot and blue is for cold. Kind of like the blood that flows through the arteries and veins, in books that is. Bob was having none of this you can imagine. One minute you’re turning the hot tap on [on?] the next minute, you’re covered in ice cold water.

I cursed, a lot.

That day I had to shower with cold water.

A few hours later, my mother says in a by the way manner that I didn’t have the time to complain about, “by the way, you have to turn the cold tap on because 
Bob has decided he’s not just your average shower.”

And that is how I learnt to survive the wilderness, crazies.

I’ll admit that if you took me to a forest now I’d probably come out of there hating you and looking worse for wear so don’t you dare take me there.

Also, my mum didn’t actually say Bob.

The thing about Zozo

So, Zozo is my big sister’s new dog. She’s now one year and without a clue about it. She loves with all her heart, she likes to run and play and she’s only slightly afraid of cars that rush at her[that being just me].

But those are the few good things about her.

She has some horrible traits.

Zozo hasn’t mastered the art of going outside and has taken my sister’s bed and brother’s bed as the occasional piss/poop point. We’ve discussed it and she’s decided to leave my bed alone. She also licks a lot of things, which was fun of course until I watched her one day licking her own puke at which point I decided my face was out of question and so was the rest of me. She also whines a lot, she’s afraid of my cat Twain and worst of all she’s a dog.

I’ve never loved dogs, in fact Zozo is lucky she came at this time of my life, my heart has softened.

I never always hated dogs though. It all started when we moved to the big house and we got our first dogs. I was super excited and not really sure what a dog was like at the time. I didn’t want to continue on my streak of young impressions or I’d be looking around in the super market for Scooby Snacks.

We got three dogs, Chaos [inappropriately named by my brother to make him sound tough yet he turned out to be the sweetest of all three], Rambo [dad’s idea, don’t even ask] and Lu [the only girl and named by me because I was really into ‘Mike, Lu and Og’].

I loved Lu with all my heart. First of all, I thought I had given her the prettiest name and she was the only girl dog. I thought we’d be BEST FRIENDS FOREVER. How did I know that she wasn’t chanting the same thing I was but rather was going all ‘best friends? Never!’

Also, they were all being trained to be guard dogs. I was eight what did I know?

So, they grow up and they grow up real fast. One day I’m feeling really jolly, it’s Saturday, mid morning and I have decided to visit my family- friend, namesake neighbour to enjoy the rest of the day with her. I skip out of the house, skip out onto the lawn and it all happened so fast, but of course in slow motion [most of my moments happen in slow motion, you’ll come to learn].

Out of nowhere, a dog appeared from my right side. I turned to face it, saw Lu, looking all fierce. My heart rate increased my sense to run out the door decreased and I instead ran backwards. I was in sandals, not really your day to day running shoes, and they were slowing me down. Also, Lu was pretty fast.

Instead of running to the recently opened front door of the house [and later learning that they had been taught not to go too close to that particular door] I ran to an abandoned car [Sparky] we kept for memories, and there were memories. The car of course I didn’t think to open and so I was trapped in between a rock and a hard place, actually a dog and a sad case.

Lu proceeds to jump up and give me a little face to face action. The next thing I knew, I felt pain, I heard the watchman cry out in his hero moment and his only one to this date and Lu got off, victorious.

“Ameniuma! Ameniuma! She’s bitten me!” I cried out in my very non Kiswahili sounding voice. The watchman came up to me to inspect the wound. His reaction perplexed me. Why the hell was he laughing at a little ten year old girl? Did he really think it was funny? Huh, was there a law against watchmen who laugh at innocent, hurt, little girls with pretty ponytails and awesome sandals? “Mbona unacheka?” I asked wanting to know right there and then what was funny.

“Hajakuuma.”

Say what? That can’t be right? I was there when it happened.

Apparently so was Lu and all she did was scratch me; a scratch not even deep enough to have bled for a microsecond.

What???

I didn’t take this too well. I told my family-friend, namesake neighbour that I was skipping our meeting. I went to my room and pondered over my battle wound wondering about Lu and her mistaking me for an escaping burglar in the daylight.

She ruined things for dogs everywhere.

And consequently I stopped loving her because she attacked me.

Also, she had puppies… Chaos you bad dog you!

Then she ate them all…yuck!

The kid that believed animals could talk

I don’t know about you but when I was five, I had this feeling that even when I was out saving the world-because I was just that awesome- the people who really had it covered were the power rangers. I don’t think you understand. I loved those guys so much I dedicated three out of five days of my week in school to act like I was one. Only three other people understood the seriousness and level of skill it took to handle such responsibility and I love them all for that…stay strong, red, blue, and pink.

This was actually a normal occurrence for me because despite the many teachings in church that superheroes did not exist, I believed and along with that many other things.

Things I believed when I was a kid:

  
1. My brother told me that he and I were in my mother’s stomach at the same time. We used to play football [my dad played football, so it wasn’t hard to fall into this trap] and because he was a better scorer than I was, he got to get out first and that’s how I ended up being the last born.

2.  There’s this mark on my shoulder, it’s a chicken pock and for the longest time, I swear my brother convinced me that I was burnt by the house help and for a week I hated Jano [R.I.P] because I thought she hated me, only to find out the truth from my mother.

3.  When I was around six, my friend once told me that if I swam with gum in my mouth, I would get stuck in the water. At first I thought it must be a chemical reaction that takes place, I think I even gave up on gum altogether, how could it not be chewed EVERYWHERE? Then ten years down the line I realized she meant it’s because gum is sticky. I really took a lot of people too seriously.

4.       There was a farmer in my room. He always stood at my door and watched me sleep. Reality: my gown, lights and shadows playing tricks on me.

5.  That maybe, just maybe, I could be a cartoon when I grew up, preferably with my own show like bugs bunny.

There are some things I’m not proud…so don’t judge me

But there’s more, turns out I wasn’t the only one…

Things my friends believed when they were younger-I’m never alone, that’s why it’s birds of a feather…

1.  That when there was thunder, God was doing the dishes… really? All his angels were there just to sing?

2.  That if they planted a tooth in the backyard they would get a tooth tree/teeth tree? And so they could trick the tooth fairy into coming every night then they’d be rich…really? [picture my voice going deeper after each ‘really’]

3.  That when it rained, God was probably crying, God was melting the sky…you know what God, start telling these kids to get with reality…you were actually in the…loo---king for food.

4.  That people with big stomachs drunk a lot of tea…I’m not even sure this was a sane childhood environment…

5.  That when she grew up she would be a mermaid, live in the sea, have human friends and marry a prince… this is what Disney does to people.

You know what…after hearing these seriously depressing childhood stories, I can’t feel ashamed anymore, especially when I’m not going to let my kids live with my brother for even a day so as to avoid seeing what it is exactly they come home with.

I can do the tricking myself.

My third attempt at being charming...

My third attempt at being charming

Dear readers,

Hi.

Hahahaha!

The world moves.

Bet you want me to say more.

Well, I actually have nothing to say right now so…

Awkward…

Yours sincerely,

Me.