kenya – Page 2

What is love?

February 11, 2018

guka valentines day — Guka Ndogo’s valentine’s day feature – 2005, Kenya

This coming Wednesday is Valentine’s Day which is one of the highly debated holidays in our society. Some say its a capitalist exploit of love. Others say it’s the only holiday that celebrates romantic love. Most critics usually claim that they show their love to their partner 365 days a year and therefore, Valentine’s day is unnecessary. I think my stance is probably a mix of both. I don’t think Valentine’s day is that important but neither are some of the other holidays we have (Columbus day) yet we still choose to observe them. Either way, the most important thing on Valentine’s day and any other day is to understand what love is as well as what love is not. Therefore, I have come up with 10 personal descriptions of what love is to me.

Love is when my dad clipped my shoe laces in high school because i was lazy and refused to tie my shoe laces when they came untied.
Love is when my mom wakes up at the crack of dawn when we’re hosting parties so she can make all the amazing food that we love.
Love is when my little brother gives me the biggest teddy bear hugs just because.
Love is when my older brother made sure i had spending money in high school.
Love is when my sister in law gifts me all her nice clothes that she no longer wears.
Love is when my baby niece screams with excitement when she sees me after a long time apart.
Love is when my grandfather’s brother (Guka Ndogo) took care of his wife for 40+ years when she went blind. Despite being 95+ years, he died only after his wife passed away. Their renewal of vows on their 50th wedding anniversary was actually featured in the Daily Nation, Kenya’s premier newspaper.
Love is when my best friend would give me numerous car rides in high school when I didn’t have a car. Also, I can never forget that she’s attending 95% of my family’s graduations.
Love is when I take myself out to get a massage and take time out to treat myself.
Love is when I put my heart and soul into writing a blog post that touches someone’s life. On that note, I love all the feedback I get from those who read my blog.

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine’s day whether you celebrate it or not! 🙂 ❤

The American Dream: Is America really the land of milk and honey?

January 28, 2018

Having lived in the U.S. for almost 16 years now has been an enlightening experience. The expectations vs reality phenomenon is really real. To break it down for you, I’ll list 5 things my family expected when we were coming to America and the actual reality that we faced.

We all expected to have a better life in the U.S. In fact, the reason my parents made the decision to move was so that my brothers and I could have more opportunities. However, I can undeniably say that my first year in the U.S. was one of the worst years of my life. I would cry myself to sleep every night because I wanted to go back to Kenya. The home that we lived in while in Kenya was far bigger than the house we ended up in while living most of our years in the U.S. (It’s about the same now expect we had a huge backyard in Kenya due to building our house above our family farm). I can’t say that life in the U.S. is better (maybe a little easier because of a lot more technology).
Many people outside of America think that it’s so easy to make money in the U.S. This perception is especially true in so called “third world countries” (I never liked this label but it sounds much better as compared to what Trump said about the S*** countries.” The truth is the unemployment rate in these countries, including Kenya, is very high and therefore, it’s not as easy to get a job. So yes there are more opportunities to make money but what they don’t tell is that the cost of living in the U.S. is high as well. Therefore, my parents who had great careers in Kenya, my dad as the principal of a high school and my mom as a teacher had to work 2 jobs when they came to America just to make ends meet.
One of the opportunities my parents really wanted for my brothers and I is better education. I wouldn’t say that the education system in the U.S. is better because you get a better education based on your income and where you live (this rings true in Kenya as well). However, I will say there are way more scholarships and financial aid opportunities in the U.S. so it’s much easier for someone to get higher education here than in other countries. My parents were able to get both a bachelors and masters within 10 years of living here which greatly improved their job opportunities. In Kenya, more education doesn’t necessary guarantee more jobs due to corruption and few jobs.
My parent’s greatest fear was that my brothers and I would lose our culture. I can’t say that this happened but we did lose some language skills in term of the tribal languages that we used to speak. We all still speak some Swahili so at least we have that. In terms of culture, we all still love Kenyan food, music, and keep up with the news. We also go back at least every 3 to 4 years so Kenya will always be a part of our lives.
The last expectation is something that I’ll have to wait some years to find out. We all expect to retire in Kenya someday but it seems with every passing year we’re even more rooted in the U.S. In fact, we’ve become so used to the way of life in the U.S. that we sometimes get frustrated about how some things are run in Kenya. However, east or west, home is best (and in our hearts, Kenya will always be home).

I hope this breakdown helps those who want to come to America and are not sure what to expect or the Americans who wonder how others perceive their country. 🙂 ❤

The 1st time I realized I was dark-skinned

January 10, 2018

This post was inspired by Gabrielle Union’s book “We’re going to need more wine”. Despite being absolutely gorgeous, she grew up being told she was “pretty for a dark skinned girl” or “pretty for a black girl” in a small suburb in California. This led her to wanting to try to assimilate to her white suburban peers who occasionally used the N-word in front her as they did not perceive her as a “regular black person”. This led her to wanting to be the best black person she can be. Even in Hollywood, she felt that it was her against all the other black actresses. This led her to later admitting during an acceptance speech for an Essence Fierce and Fearless Award that she was in fact a mean girl, far from the uplifting person that the award described.

I could really relate to her story as I went through the same thing in middle and high school where some people didn’t consider me black because I was African. People would speak ill of black Americans in front of me because I wasn’t considered one of them. This led me to feel like I didn’t really belong because I wasn’t black enough for black Americans and I wasn’t Asian or Hispanic or part of any other minority group in my schools. But despite all this, I never realized I was dark skinned until like 10th grade (form 2 for my Kenyans).

I was probably 15 or 16 at the time and I was riding the bus from school when our bus driver had to include another bus route in our trip because the other bus driver called out of work. So this light skinned black American guy sits next to me on the bus and starts to talk to me. He had cut stripes in his eyebrows like a lot of people did when Soulja Boy popularized it (see picture below). I could tell that we went on the same level mentally but talking to him was better than watching trees go by in the window. He seemed obsessed with his looks as he kept asking me if I thought he was cute. He also asked me to tell him if he looked more like Souljah Boy or Chris Brown. I told him I didn’t find Souljah Boy attractive (the gangsta look is not what attracts me to a guy) and that I didn’t like Chris Brown anymore since he beat up Rihanna (mind you I had a huge crush on Chris Brown in 6 and 7^th grade before that horrific beat down happened).

soulja boy

Eventually, the guy gets a call from one of his friends on his cell phone ( we weren’t really supposed to be using them on the bus but the bus drivers broke that rule too so no one cared as long you were discreet). So the guy start to describe where is at and what he’s doing. At some point he says “I was talking to this pretty dark skinned girl, I wish you could see her”. Oblivious to me, I didn’t actually think he was talking to me and I started getting mad wondering why he would be talking about another girl while sitting next to me. I didn’t realize that “pretty dark skinned girl” was me until I saw other girls on the bus looking at me while seeming jealous of me. Shortly after, we reached his bus stop and he got off while saying that he hoped to see me again. I said “cool” but deep down I was still in thought about whether I was dark skinned or not.

Now that I think about it, I think the gradient of skin color depends on each individual person’s perspective. For the guy on the bus, he probably saw me as dark skinned since he was light skinned with a yellow skin tone. Growing up in my family, I always knew I was the darkest when compared to my two brothers. My mother is light-skinned while my dad is darker skinned so I think when I grew into looking like my mother, I assumed I was light-skinned like her. I knew to non-black people (especially whites and Asians), I was automatically dark-skinned to them just like most black people but it gets complicated when the person judging your skin color is of the same race. In Kenya, people are split into three groups: yellow, brown, and black. In Kenya, I knew I wasn’t yellow or black; my mom still refers to me as brown.

What has actually helped me understand my skin tone better is make-up. In the world of makeup for people of color, there is one key term called undertone. You can be of the same skin color with someone but have different undertones. Usually the main undertones are red or yellow. I have worn makeup with yellow undertones that make me too light and makeup with red undertones that make me too dark. I recently solved this dilemma thanks to the Fenty Beauty foundation which won an award for “invention of the year” by Time Magazine. I wear the number 410 or 420 in Rihanna’s makeup line and these numbers correlate to a neutral undertone. So there you have it, I am neither light nor dark. I am neutral; somewhere in between my mother and my father. And I hope we may all be neutral in judging people by the color of their skin. And please don’t be one of those people who says “I don’t see color” unless you’re blind. Most of us have been blessed with sight so use it to see someone for who they are rather than to discriminate against them.

Thank you for reading. 🙂 ❤

INCEPTION

December 15, 2016

-originally written on June 2, 2011

So on MAY 17, 2011 I graduated from HIGH SCHOOL which means I am officially college bound. Ironically it was also my father’s 50th birthday but that was unfortunately overshadowed by my milestone. On the upside, he never remembers his birthday anyway and he still looks like he’s 40 which means I am destined to age slowly (crossing my fingers for no wrinkles since gray hairs do not run in my family). That’s right forget the crap about embracing age and the nature that comes with it (poor eyesight, aching bones, foggy memory etc), i want to be youthful or semi-youthful forever!

northeastern-1 — Northeastern University, Boston, MA

Anyway, let’s get back on topic and away from my fear of aging, So in 3 months since school here opens in September, I will be an American campus girl ( allusion to savvy’s Kenyan campus girl which inspired me to start this blog). I am excited to move from Alabama which is not a very vibrant place to Boston which is one of the most lively places in the U.S. I’ll be attending Northeastern University to study Pharmacy and they have an awesome program that will enable me to become a Doctor of Pharmacy in six years. So can you imagine that, me as a 24 yr old girl ehem woman/lady that will be referred to as Dr.Mercy! I am beyond excited, not so much because of the title “DOCTOR”, but because of the lifestyle and the flexibility that a pharmacy career offers. I want to first assure you that I am not a GOLD DIGGER but alluding to this phrase that i have recently coined “there’s nothing wrong with being a gold digger if you are digging your OWN gold”.

Either way, like everyone else in this world, I have a dream (MLK voice) where I live without the worry of money. I am not saying I want to be Oprah or Donald Trump rich…I just want to be comfortable. In the U.S. as a single person it is possible to live comfortably on 30K considering you have a normal apartment etc. The starting salary of a pharmacist is between 75-79K and the median salary is 100K which means that this dream will essentially be reality if all goes well. Bring a husband and kids in the picture and a picturesque house and Voila!, that’s the so-called American Dream that you have possibly heard of. Of course kids will come later since by my standard 24 is too young to start a family i am leaning on earliest at 26 and latest at 28. That gives me 2-4 years to settle down, “figure myself out”, and most importantly enjoy my dwindling YOUTH. Also, just so you don’t think I am a self-centered selfish person which isn’t 100% wrong, I plan to come to work with the WHO (World Health Organization) or Doctors Without Borders to facilitate medicine in developing nations. Haven’t worked out how i will do it but I do know that in order to do so, I think I should work in some pharmaceutical development company and somehow guilt them into giving out some of their samples to people in need in developing nations whether it be TYLENOL or some Anti-biotics. Anyway don’t be frightened into thinking that, à la “The Gardener ” (google movie for reference), experimental medicine will be distributed to these poor people as a ploy to use them as guinea pigs. I think the transparency will be the key in making a sustainable impact to the disenfranchised communities that I want to help. I’m all about sustainability in terms of outreach as exemplified by philanthropists such as Bill Gates (who I really look up to, like the rest of the world).

Anyway, this is the most challenging part of my dream because it doesn’t rest solely on my abilities.

the American Dream

After starting a family and raising my kids to the best of my abilities, I plan to retire at the age of 50 or 55 despite the fact that the retirement age in the U.S. is 65. Following my retirement, I plan to return to Kenya and live somewhere nice, maybe Westlands or Nyahururu and maybe try to get a position in the Ministry of Health that actively aims to help people or just start a chain of Pharmacy clinics in Kenya.

Either way something inside me tells me I am destined for greatness and to produce great change…so if Kenya’s government has not gotten its crap together by say 2040 then I with the help of the disillusioned Kenyan masses want to start a revolution where we demand honesty and accountability from the government instead of sitting in front of our TVs and taking whatever they throw at us with our 4 o’clock tea. In essence, I just want to be a part of something that gives back to the country that I owe my entire existence to. I love KENYA and I want nothing but the BEST for it.

So my fellow readers and Kenyans, I apologize for indulging you in 5 paragraphs all about ME although i am guessing that’s what I usually do so in that case Thank You for indulging in 5 paragraphs about my hopes and dreams. I wish you all the best in your dreams and future. And in 50 years I hope to come back and tell you all that everything worked out perfectly despite life’s unending surprises. In the meantime, what are your dreams, and have you achieved them? If not, how do you plan to do so?