REHANA BLOGS

Today morning, at about 8.00 am, when everyone was on their way to work, I was on my way to scout for a job; another day of tracking through projects online, and writing proposals for the ones I felt I felt I was right for. It happened such that I was brooding about the changes that seem to have taken place in this country in the last three months, when I was stopped by a lady officer, who had somehow noticed that the left corner lamp of my car was missing. ' Hili Gari halina taa. Taa likowapi? ' She asked in Swahili. This translates into, 'This car has no light. Where's the light?' When you're stopped by a police officer in any part of Kenya, you should know that you're probably going to end up leaving the scene with a lighter pocket, or wallet, as the case may be. ' Taa imeibiwa, mama. Ilichukuliwa huku posta. ' I said. 'The light has been stolen, Mam, it was taken at the post office.' There was some kind of irony in that, I thought. To hav...

Did I mention that I was a Murph? Well, what happened this weekend merely seems to enhance the fact that I am, in fact, a Murph. As in, I’m a person who is the living, breathing true-to-life proof that Murphy’s Law persists. Since my sister was in a wedding, I volunteered to baby-sit her daughter Alishba, in the process giving up my social life for three days. Three whole days, each of which was exactly twenty four hours; seventy two hours which were more than enough to make me take a firm stand in what I now call the Motherhood is the Toughest Job in the World Cause. How was I ever so ignorant as to think that taking care of babies is a breeze? How did one small baby manage to create in me an exhaustion that is on par with jetlag? And after the whole weekend, I’ve come to the conclusion that Like Aunt, Like Daughter. She seems to be a Murph too. Which I a pity. This world surely doesn’t need more of us. Alishba is ten months old. She’s a fast crawler, and her favorite place is her...

It always seems so ambitious to have a list of the things that you want to do before you become ancient. It is a marvel of our youth that we subject ourselves to big dreams, and when they don't materialize, we tend to blame ourselves, never imagining that maybe we set goals that are just too high for the average youth. nonetheless, we do it. I do not mean to sound extremely uninspiring, I just speak the truth. Nonetheless, here’s my list of things I want to do before I’m 25. Some may be weird, I know, but if you can’t be weird, that you can’t be telling the truth! At least, that’s my philosophy. So here it is: 1) Ride a Motorbike 2) Go bungee-jumping over Victoria falls 3) Eat a triple fudge banana split all on my own 4) Get a pet 5) Google up 3000 different subjects 6) Do a photography course 7) Perform in a drama 8) Write a book on life in college 9) Go camping in the wild 10) Tour Europe 11) Rea...

Tomorrow, I’m going to Malindi. I’ll laze around, have a nice time by the beach and swim in the sea. My muse will act up, and when I get back, I’ll have plenty of interesting stuff to write up on. In fact, I’ll probably have to take a paper napkin with me, in case it’s the big one. You know, the BIG ONE. Like a book. Like Harry Potter. Only, instead of the small, noisy café with the small baby, I’ll be out by myself in the open, with the sound of the waves in my ears and the feel of the soft, silver sand between my toes. Great incentive to be lazy, but greater incentive to feel inspired by all this bounty. When the doors to the mind open, I’ll be there, with my pen in my hand, and the paper napkin on the sand. On the other hand, maybe my muse will decide to play cat and mouse, the way it often does at night. I’ll be thinking of a great idea for a story, but when I pick up the pen, the story’s gone; vanished on wings of silvery moonlight. Once lost, it hardly ever comes back. But when...

In the entire span of my short life, I have missed five flights, two international ones included. Maybe there’s an art to it, I wouldn’t know. It seems remarkably easy, after the first time you do it. And sometimes, it’s just the first flight that matters, and all the connecting ones are lost too. Sometimes, you land in different cities, and sometimes, your luggage gets left in Nairobi, three connecting flights away. In that case, it never helps to make a fuss; you might just as well go on to your final destination, and include the lost luggage in your nightly prayers. In time, it shall make its way to where it was supposed to be in the first place, and if you’re lucky, it’ll only be slightly wet. If you’ve had the foresight to pack it up with plastic paper to avoid moistness, odds are that you won’t be missing your flight in the first place. If you have a habit of chatting all the time, as I do, you have to be more careful. Once, I began chatting with a colleague, and the next thing I...

Sometimes when you meet a person, you instinctively know that that person will feature in your life henceforth. It’s like a decision taken that cannot be accounted for by personal choices; neither taste, nor religion nor race. It’s more a subconscious understanding between two people. If I were poetic, I’d say that it was a meeting of the auras that surround us, before it becomes a conscious meeting. When you read The Fountainhead, you come across this scenario, where Howard Roark meets Dominique’s husband for the first time. He comes prepared to hate Gail Wynand for being his lover’s husband, and yet, that first time the two meet; there is no consciousness of anything apart from the feeling that they’ve known each other forever; that perhaps they were part of the same soul in another life. Past relationships cease to exist in that moment, and Dominique becomes just another person in both their lives. It is an inherent feature of human beings in this world that we tend to believe i...