Your life has been highlighted by moments where the sense of belonging evades you. You stand in the middle of AUS’s Main Building and your friend looks up at the flags around, “Which one is yours?”
“That one,” you point out the Kenyan one.
“Why do you have a cockroach on it?”
“It’s not a cockroach. It’s a shield.”
###
At the time, it was normal to walk into the student center and see groups arranged by cultural background. So people like you – the culturally confused – wondered where they fit in.
During your time at AUS, you only knew four people who were Kenyans of Yemeni origin (2 of them were your brothers) and maybe that was why you always found your home in the university library.
And it’s not like things were better “back home”. You couldn’t integrate with the original Kenyans of Yemeni origin in Mombasa because their mindsets were totally different. They couldn’t understand why your parents allowed you to go to university, let alone study a male-dominated field like engineering. Many of them actually saw you as a failure because you haven’t settled down yet.
“Women your age have three children.”
They even lacked the creativity to use another phrase.
###
Everybody new who meets you makes the same comment after listening to your story, “Welcome home.”
It doesn’t feel like home.
But then again, you’ve got to be honest with yourself.
Nowhere ever did.
As a country, Kenya is very frustrating because all you want to do is do your work and live your life, but then everybody around makes it so hard – employers, clients, the government, terrorists.
###
At the time of the Dusit D2 attacks you were at Westgate – out of all places.
Jan 16, you were too scared to step out of the house. Now you wonder, “are we even safe anymore?”
Apparently not.
Jan 17, you stepped out.
Life goes on.
###
Take a deep breath in.
Breathe out…
3…2…1…pause…
Continue breathing out…
3…2…1…pause….
Breathe out one last time…3…2…1…
Now reverse….
You are in yoga class the other day, and as you went through these breathing exercises, your mind was automatically turning them into arrays:
in = [9]
out= [3,3,3]
out.reverse()
###
Kickboxing class and the coach says, “C’mon guys. This is the last thing you have to do and then khalas.”
You smile, pleasantly surprised that this Kenyan actually knows the word khalas. “How do you know the word khalas?”
“I’ve spent time in Dubai,” he says.
Me, too.
Me, too.
###
When you were a kid, you once tried to navigate the world with your eyes closed. Needless to say, you ran into a TV table stand and broke a tooth.
Decades later and you’re still trying to navigate the world with your eyes closed.
Breaking your tooth was only the start. With time, you’ll learn that life will break a lot of things. It will break your heart. It will break your will. It will break so many things but your job will be to rebuild everything again…
“Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.”
L.R. Knost
###
Maya Angelou wrote a book by the title, “I know why the caged bird sings.”
It doesn’t know how not to.
###
I’ve always said that your life is the triple integral of your values, experiences and environment.
This post shows what I mean.