When Last Did You Draw Yourself?

I mean, actually take a pen and a piece of paper and draw yourself? I can answer that, a couple of hours ago. 

For context, I am three counties over from my house and having a blast. I took a step back from the hustle and bustle that is city life to the hustle and bustle that is not city life per se. Long story short, I was invited to my aunt’s place in the Rift Valley (and to think I saw the grand Rift Valley from Ngong Wind Turbines less than a week earlier!).

Of course, I got “lost” on the way because the matatu I was on used Nakuru lingo rather than English, and I ended up at Sobea instead of my normal stop. Now, I know better and will alight appropriately. For what it’s worth, I did not have a pin for her place because I had changed phones, and while I had visited them with my previous phone, I did not know how to use Google Maps as much as I do now, and your guess is as good as mine; I did not pin when I was in the house! So you can imagine how long they must have been waiting in the cold for me: it was an hour from 9 to 10 pm. I feel so guilty!

What I can say about Nakuru CBD is that it is already empty at 8 pm, and to me, that’s way too early to close shop. I literally got the last car and I wonder, do people really sleep that early in this quaint side of the country?

Anyway, it has been a blast, and you don’t notice that you have been inadvertently starving yourself until there is an abundance of food. Granted, the only food I cannot eat is chakula kidog,o but boy, if they want me to be fat, they should keep me here for a couple of weeks! Not to worry, Gracie will be well taken care of. In addition to the food, it feels so nice to eat food that has been cooked by someone else for a change, and I guess that’s why, while objectively, the food is not much different, but subjectively, it tastes waayyyy better than what I am used to eating. 

I have not been off-grid per se, as I am still connected to the internet, but I have had what I can call a relaxing couple of days. The major difference is that I have actually had, or rather, created time to read hardcopy books. I finished Koontz’s Frankenstein on the way here and promptly started Michael Crichton’s Sphere, and for sure that book has made me think a lot about my perspective on a bunch of things. The Anthropomorphic Problem is one of them (It is a good read, I promise!), and this is an excerpt of a paragraph from the book (not tied to the Anthropomorphic Problem though): “What we call ‘science’…is a rather arbitrary conception of the universe, not likely to be shared by other creatures. Our ideas of science were shaped by the ideas of visually oriented, monkey-like creatures who enjoyed altering their physical environment. If the aliens were blind and communicated through odors, they might have evolved a very different science, which would describe a very different universe. And they might have made very different choices about the directions their science would explore” [pg. 129].

Frankly, it made me rethink how I see how things work, or not work, for that matter. Case in point, I am an amalgamation of what I know, and I don’t really pay much attention to what I don’t know, as I believe is the case for most people. While I pay little attention to what I don’t know, you can imagine how huge the scope of what I don’t know I don’t know is. I liked drinking soda from plastic bottles because I didn’t know that there was a slight chance that soda from glass bottles tasted a bit better. Has my perception of soda changed because of that? Absolutely! I was so used to the taste of plastic soda because I was so used to it that I never even considered that there could be other alternatives. Take biology for example, we have evolved so much that we have nerves on our hands that can tell us when we are holding hot sufurias to stop holding the said hot sufurias, right? What if by chance, we never developed nerve endings? Can you imagine how entire industries would have been rendered useless? Or how we would have come up with a substitute for such, because since we cannot tell hot or cold, millions of people could die without knowing that they are dying? Or, actually, and I paraphrase an example from the book, what if the planet and its inhabitants lived in harmony and there was no need for any fighting whatsoever? What would happen to weapons if the base need to defend oneself would not exist in the first place? In short, this book is amazing and I can’t wait to finish reading it. So far, I can’t seem to keep it down. 

But lo and behold, I often keep it down because I have a very curious cousin, let’s call her Jason Snow, because that is the name she has for Gracie. Jason has been asking me questions since the day I arrived, and it is interesting to have someone be curious about you; I guess that is how my friends feel most of the time. If you know how incessant I am in asking follow-up questions, then pwagu amepata pwaguzi. People say holding conversations with children is hard but for two days running, I have been talking with Jason so much that her screentime has reduced by half (probably). 

What do we talk about? Well, for starters, how I am 75 years old, and she has tried everything to debunk that, and she is one really creative child! We also discussed how I don’t want to wear pink because, while I don’t not like it, I don’t want to, which transitioned to the fact that I don’t have any pink clothes. In comparison, she mentioned that she cannot wear green because she doesn’t have any green clothes. If you can guess the thread, I also said I don’t want to dye my hair pink because my hair would not match my clothes, and I have black hair because I have a lot of black and black-adjacent clothes. We also had a drawing competition where I was ranked 6/10, and in order to boost my grades up, and I kid you not, she took a picture of the drawing and held it by my face to make some “improvements”. I got some teeth, stronger eyebrows, a lot of wrinkles, a left hand, and a solo strand of rasta by my left ear. In the end, I, through her eyes and her adjustments, got bumped up to a 10/10. I have to say, it is now PERFECT, IMO.

So, back to my question: when was the last time you drew yourself? I, for one, did not have the bandwidth to draw myself before today, and well, drawing with someone is fun. You should try it sometime.

I have had such in-depth conversations with her over the past couple of weeks that I haven’t had with many adults, because one recurring question she always asks is, “Why this and this?” It really makes you think to the core of what you are thinking about. For example, why are you reading this? Because I shared it on WhatsApp or Instagram? Because you found it in your Updates tab in your email as you sift through job applications? Because you got bored and remembered I write stories? Because you have no choice but to read all the stuff I write (Nyx hii ni yako)? The reasons are many, and there are some I can’t even fathom because I know I don’t know, and what of the ones I don’t know that I don’t know? As for me, I will read this in a couple of years because I’ll have nothing to write for that day and decide to recap this blog. 

She asked me if I have a dining table at my place, and while I had never even asked myself that question, I had a clearer answer: they are super expensive, and at the moment, it is not high on my list of priorities. My main employer is playing some games that I don’t like, for which I have to budget every cent. I know she won’t remember this, but I’ll get her a dining table in around 17 or so years when she has her own house, so she doesn’t have to think about it.

Why I like reading came up a lot because for a household that had everyone on their phones, I was the only one with a hardcopy book for my entertainment. I like reading because it is fun when you read books that you actually enjoy. I also like reading books because it allows my imagination to wander. We both read a paragraph from the book that had a submarine and shrimp scene and our imaginations could not have been any different! My submarine was grayish-black while hers was blue. My shrimps were pink while hers were red. The fishes around my sub were just chilling and the fishes around her sub were swimming! All that from one paragraph that we interpreted and pictured very differently! It shows you how perspectives can vary a whole lot!

One other thing I have appreciated from our experiences is that I don’t see myself in her, but I see her in me. Of late, I have been asking A LOOTTT of questions to a lot of people because I am genuinely interested in what they have to say. So if I tell you I have some follow-up questions, they are not for you, because in my story, your story is incomplete, and I need more information for the plot. 

I also know that I have still got it in me because I have made her laugh a bunch of times and do you know how hard it is to make a young person laugh from conversation? If I made her and her older sister laugh, I can still make anyone laugh. I came here to eat but I have all the sauce! 

I have appreciated hosting and being hosted more because that is a sword that cuts across both ways. Plus I have been hosting different people for the last couple of months that I might have forgotten how it is to be hosted for a lengthy period of time. If you are hosting people, I am sending a million hugs your way.

What more can I say than always stay curious and drink soda from glass bottles! And if you were to rate a drawing of myself, how many marks would I get?

From Me To You

To all the November babies, I hope you never lose your curiosity, and I hope you find someone who will always be curious about you, and when you hang around children, may you always have rich conversations with them because they want to talk with you, not because you are talking to them.

If you have not subscribed, what are you waiting for? If you need more incentive, please read my last story on why I was so mad because I seem to understand the “why” of a lot of stuff.