WATER THERAPY

I used to abhor the dry and sticky feel on the roof of my palate and tongue that was also characterized by a metallic taste which is nothing but disgusting. Of course, it came with dry and cracked lips that I tried to ebb by applying Arimis on them but reverted to Vaseline because I feel embarrassed going to ask for that in a shop or is it a ‘livestock shop’ now that it is a milking jelly. How does a guy in the city go to ask for Arimis? I cannot even think about how to start asking for it. Ladies can easily buy it and they know where to get the product. Beauty shops? The Arimis I applied was given to me by a female friend while we used to work as salespeople. Me, I don’t know where Arimis is found. So, I just enter a kiosk in the hood and ask for a small Vaseline jelly. The blue one that is odourless. It’s perfect for parched lips, I swear. This reminds me of the song ‘Napenda Vaseline’. Does it ring a bell? It does not need an explanation. Because, when I was in high school, a friend intimated about it and I was left perturbed because I failed to comprehend what he was insinuating. Given that we never had internet on our computers back then, I could not google to find the meaning of what the phrase ‘Vaseline’ meant. I guess he thought I was omniscient about such stuff, but I was green and naïve about it. I let sleeping dogs lie and I guess the bugger was also kind of disappointed and bewildered that I never knew what he was intimating. He was from Nairobi, a cool place, and I was from Eldoret, a semi-rural town that has lost its sheen over the years. I only got to know the meaning years later. Anyway….. I love the way cold water normally moves softly down my gullet, stealing the wry tissue-layer coating the surface of my oesophagus every time I have a burning sensation on my throat. Back then, I used to press a small glass rim against my lips to quench my thirst. The fact that cold water has been branded the efficient thief of heat and thirst in some quarters is not a fallacy but the gospel truth. These days, I have changed my drinking régime. By drinking, I am not insinuating the sipping of ale. No, I am talking about drinking water. Only that it cannot be compared to drinking ale. With liquor, you can down more bottles in one sitting without much ado. However, with water, I swear, it will take you more than an effort to drink the same. Which is totally healthy if you can manage to stretch yourself to drink water in quantity. Oh yes! The quality also matters man. So why water? Obviously, we all know that we need to take at least eight cups of water in a day which we forego because it is not necessary. After all, in our ‘parochial thoughts’, we think that drinking water is a thirst thing as opposed to tendency even if you are not in need of it. I know that drinking water you don’t need kills the thrill of why we drink water when we become thirsty. Plus, water is tasteless. How do you just wake up and start drinking water that you don’t need? You cannot stand it unless you train yourself to be drinking it even when you don’t have the urge. Let me liken it to peeing in as much as there is lots of correlation between the two. You only pee when the bladder is full, otherwise, you may try to release or even force, but nothing comes out. The same case applies to water among some people. You only drink it when the throat indirectly says, ‘Hey, I need some water men.’ Basically, I have changed my indulgence in the way I drink water. I remember reading that glugging water after eating had the effect of hampering the stomach’s digestive powers and interfering with digestion especially if you down more than a glass. And a macrobiotic expert even confessed that it can lead to “acid reflux and heart burn” if you are drinking lots of water immediately after a meal. I don’t subscribe to that school of thought. Me, I drink water even after I have finished eating because that is what I grew up doing. Nowadays, I drink water because I love drinking. I drink after a meal, in between meals and the result has been phenomenal. There is a woman who confessed that drinking three litres of water a day took ten years off her skin. She was right. What she never said was that it also a diuretic (a substance which promotes the production of urine). Read about her here. My journey with water as opposed to hers has been one that is erratic and lethargic. Sometimes I drink more water, sometimes I don’t. But the other day, I noticed that cysts and zits had resurfaced on my visage in full swing. Actually, they were starting to disappear, and I was loving it already. Then, I looked at the mirror and saw some infected hair  follicles on my beard and remembered that I had reneged on my word to at least be drinking two litres of water in a day. So, before I started writing this article, I decided to drink a litre just like that. Drinking a litre of water in one swoop is bad for health. I know. It was just a nice way to remind myself that I should be drinking water to reduce on the dry and scaly skin that I have been having lately. Oh! I also aim to kill the profusion of wrinkles and loss of lustre on my glistening dark skin. All in all, my kidneys got a big relieve in the flush that helped rid my skin of toxins looking at the bigger picture. You see, drinking water has never made me feel this younger than I imagined. My once shriveled lips are now fine and moist. Well, poor dehydration made me have cheilitis and unending cysts which have reduced in frequency since I started drinking water. The pores that were prominent have kind of become less visible. Now I look better than the way an old friend told me that I had aged. I bet the sagging skin is fading, and a jaw line developing. I still have blotches, but I am thinking that they will be a thing of the past once I stick to a good regimen which I have never because I normally leave the straight when I just start something. The best part is that the colour of urine also turns from dark, to light yellow because of consuming mother nature's own clear liquid in apt quantity. Again, the stench that emanates from the loo when unflushed subsides because of the reduction in urea which is broken down into soluble substance by the kidney when you hydrate the body. And when it comes to the skin, the tightness on the surface palliates and a certain kind of radiance starts to permeate on the epidermis. You start having a healthy, moist and younger-looking complexion that is enviable. You don’t become flaky, parched and rough like people of the same age as you. PS. I never intentioned to write anything. But then, the gremlins in my system told me to write something. Now I am writing about water, because water is life, right. Well, I got a scholarship to advance my finance knowledge and skills and the results have been quite remarkable. I had vowed to finish the course but here I am writing, call me a digresser. Men, writing is addictive and fun. Especially when you have no limitations. But I will complete the course someday. And when I do, I will write about it. Hasta La Vista Baby. [Photo Source: Pixabay.com]

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LET'S DO NOTHING

Ta-da. I have finally used this word.

I have resisted the urge not to give in to the demands of the flesh once more. Yes, the priest was right, I should repent. But hey, am just a man.

Procrastination. Only a thorough manager knows how to instill disciple and ensure you never succumb by constantly putting you on toes whether you pay him or he is paid to oversee you do your duty.

Digress.

 “I will tell on you.” My niece uses this phrase when she feels aggrieved and thus, will tell those nasty things to her mom when she comes back.

Me I was used to “Ntakushtaki kwa mamangu.” Well, the language gap is real. I don’t remember doing that but there was one time when I ate at the neighbours and my little sister decided that I was disobeying my mum’s directive of not eating food from the neighbour’s. You see, the traced me to where I was playing at my friend’s place and called me to go for lunch. I dilly-dallied and ate at my friend’s place. My food remained untouched.

Given that my mum had warned all of us not to eat anywhere apart from our house, she saw this as an opportunity to see what would happen to me by ‘foolowing’ me to my mum. She told me on my mum and the strokes I received though a caveat never materialized because I continued repeating the mistake clandestinely. I guess the lashing I received worked in sometimes moderating my appetite when am in a new vicinity.

I really don’t know what was wrong with our mothers during those days. To this day, I have never found a rationale for why they never wanted us to share meals with neighbours when we were around the neighbour’s house.

By the way, back then, the food that was being cooked in our house was never as sumptuous as that which was being cooked at the neighbours. Walai! It’s not that we never cooked good food in our house. But, the food outside tasted more delicious than ours when I was a kid. Hata kama ilikuwa ugali na mboga pekee.

My mum never used to store canes under her bed like some mothers used to do because being a cheeky boy I would sneak and steal the damn sticks and throw them knowing full well that I was the main target.

So, when she got wind of the fact that I had eaten “Kwa kina Steve” and she had warned me never to do that again. She resorted to her common phrase, “Thiom kedi.” And when you came back, she would then say, “Nind piny” after inspecting the cane. I don’t remember ever taking a substandard cane. As opposed to the conventional wisdom, she would beat the hell out of you asking leading questions which you had to answer while crying lugubriously vowing never to repeat the mistake again.

The last time my mum did beat me with a cane was probably when I was in class five or six. I cannot remember very well but when I officially became a teenager, she resorted to revile as opposed to the rod. But occasionally, being the terror squad in the house, she would slap the hell out of you unawares when she was feeling really irked or provoked by your behaviour. Which came once in a blue moon because during my last years in primary school, I became a boarder and that meant less stay at home. Hence, I never came into much contact with her because of the a must ‘holiday tuition’ and the normal school term.

But I appreciate her because she played her role decisively and although she spent most of her time in ‘shags’ just like she does nowadays, her role was pivotal. My old man on the other hand was this easy guy who never saw fault in stuff like eating at the neighbours. Having grown up in shags himself where eating was communal as opposed to the current state where it is capitalistic, he did not see any evil in you eating at the neighbour’s. And he probably did cane me less than three time if I can recall my childhood.

Once he caned me when I was probably six having developed tantrums by crying ludicrously but he was more of a gentleman. He would cane you not more than five strokes and then leave you there. The second time he whipped me, I had been frustrated that he was only buying my sisters clothes from Uganda and I was not being bought any. Being the only naughty boy, I decided not to take it lightly when clothes were bought three times and I was not having any. I pulled the cry card, unfortunately, it backfired. So, he did it because my mum kept pestering him to do it.

My mum was the savage type. She would cane you continuously until her arms got tired. Of course, after the act, she would be motherly and ensured you reconciled because she was not the type who liked keeping grudges. She would then sit you down and ask if what she did was right and you would answer in the affirmative. Plus, when she became endowed, she would buy you new clothes which to us was the best thing ever.

But me, I was like ‘Dennis the Menace’. I loved making trouble more than I loved sticking to norms. I was the kind who had overactive energy and loved engaging in fistfights whenever possible. Once there was a certain boy who did beat me and each time the hood boys who were at the fight saw me after the incident, they would comment, ‘Si wewe ndio ule kijana ulipigwa kama drum.’ The boy was older and bigger than me. Man ile kuchochwa nilichochwa nipigane naye, ni God tu ndio anajua ka nini nilipata kichapo cha mbwa. Normally, the little ones did face my wrath and I would beat them out of their senses when provoked. Even some unlucky bigger 'weakpoints'.

I remember going to play where I had beaten some two boys, and their mum on realizing that I was around came out with a broom stick which she used to give me several strokes because I was constantly beating her two young boys. I went back home crying thinking my mum would use her “lioness lethal force” on this neighbour but she ended up doing the opposite.

“Onyali,” she told me. I stopped crying and went to our bedroom where I did that snuffling thingy because my mum had warned me not to make any noise in her house lest she bring the cane for more dosage because she had also warned me not to go to play outside and I had sneaked.

I guess the phrase, “spare the rod, spoil the child”, was her mantra. Years later, when I interacted with my maternal grandmother, I realized she was the lenient type. She was slow to anger and never did I see her getting as irate as my mother ever does. To date, my mum still has that aura of ferocity especially to those she does not hold in high regard. Not that she does anything sinister but the way she addresses them just tells you how much she thinks of them.

I now wish that the very whips that I used to get from my mum would whip me into shape, to stick to the rote even when I am not feeling like. I err countless times I gave up on abiding by rota. I know the number of times I have departed from one in the recent past. It’s hard saying you will stick to doing some stuff because you might stray in the middle of it like I normally do. I have strayed doing many things mpaka huwa najiuliza kama ‘am serious with life’. But it’s never that serious.

Hasta La Vista Baby.

[Picture Source: My Own]

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STARTING AGAIN

We all spire to achieve self-actualization. A utopic world where things work for us effortlessly as opposed to us working through thick and thin to make ends meet to survive. Indeed, in that stage, all you need is to continue relishing the near flawless life people think you have hoping that you never destroy the robust reputation you have created hitherto. And that means influence and power. They come naturally and at that stage in life, you become a sage. Not just that, but also one of repute and admiration. That is what the few of us who know about such a state aspire to be in even though it may be boring. Because of the constant scrutiny that people have over your life.

Parents. They all have an aspiration to see their children doing well in life. Even deviant and runaway ones at some point feel the heat and sometimes find a way to be part of their kids’ life no matter how remote that association may be.

That said, there is a generation of parents who are really having it rough. Especially the proletariat ones who thought that taking their children to university was a breather once they finished school. Guess they overlooked the phrase that “quality matters”, when they were taking their progeny to campus. After finishing campus, they must now contend to seeing their graduates sons and daughters wallowing around jobless instead of taking a glimpse at a picture hanged on the wall, smiling exuberantly. That’s how folks from where I come from believe they should be seeing their educated and learned daughters and sons other than the possibility of being called every now and then when they are far.

It's like life has made them to start afresh. Albeit, finishing university would mean a good job, and hope for abundance. Hope that they will take care of their parents and outdo them once they come of age. But that is now a fallacy. Parents are still the ones who take care of their children years after completing university. There is a certain notion that they are people with the money because of their age. They give us pocket money, clothe us, and house us not forgetting that they feed us. Plus, a whole other bunch of stuff that only them parents know about. It’s worse when another parent thinks a proletariat parent has connections and the strings to aid his child secure a job when in reality he wishes he would nail his son or daughter a job. Skewed perception huh!

But for a bloke or lass whose folks never made it to be proletariats or one who is independent, it means fighting by crook and cranny for or to be what he wants in life. This is the individual who never fears anything in life. He takes what comes his way and moves on by horning the skills learnt into an incoming generating project. The degree of satisfaction varies among these individuals but one thing that remains is that they keep the spirit burning. The zetetic ones forget about employment and hustle hard in their own business. For the unlucky ones who think that crime is the ‘it thing’, hessy wa Kayole or Dandora or Githurai will use his metal, a small, discreet and deadly ammunition as perfect mechanism for dispatching these outlaws for good. Later, unethical bloggers will post the gory pictures of lads barely past their mid-twenties having bit the bullet on their blogs. Those reddened holes oozing with dark congealing blood in a lifeless body. Is this abetting or reducing crime? Sad that the trigger happy hessy feels that a gun is part of himself as opposed to seeing it as a tool of death.

Hard questions that I am not sure I can answer because I am not an activist. As an addition, kids of some nimble proletariats have made it in life and that only means that at times, parents can play a vital role in making their sons become individuals of societal admiration if they do things well.

Away from parents and feeling sorry for those who would wish to have jobs but end up sleeping most of the day because they have nothing to do, there is an elephant that I am currently dealing with. It has refused to get out of my house. It has stuck on me like a black stein on a white shirt. Until I finish taking care of it, my mind will be unsettled. So am starting it again after I had my chips. A situation which I had to chance my arm at even though I was not well prepared for the battle.

I am upbeat this time round that I will ace the test given that I am planning to do things the hard way as opposed to the more lackadaisical approach that I took in my intent to be a victor. Starting again what you have done before can be tricky. You feel like you know it but given that you never made it, you must have the conscience of a novice.

Thinking of redoing my CFA Level II exams was not easy. I had thought of giving up till some time in future. Now I am buoyed and confident that I will not let this chance go to the dogs. I want to make the best out of it. And that means starting early so that I am not caught up with the frustrations of the last-minute man. What I am sure about is that this will be a painstaking battle which am preparing for with the zeal of a warrior on oath.

I want to forget that I was having a hard time before. I want to remain focused on the goal. I am sure I will make it and it is not something that I am in doubt about. I will give it the best shot and aim like my whole life depends on it even though it does not. Even when hope seems to be fading, I will make sure I am committed to the course and be diligent. Lastly, I will increase the man hours and work on my speed and accuracy.

That to me is what I have learnt while being an online worker in what I do. That speed and accuracy counts a lot in whatever one does. And once you have aced the two, my friend.

Hasta La Vista Baby

[Picture Source: Google Images]

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