A. M. K

Chocolate fudge and Vanilla ice cream. That is what I ate the first time he left. I went straight from the bus park – the human-car-bodaboda-bicycle-wheelbarrow-vendor-bus wild misalignment that is downtown Old Kampala to the neat crowds of Café J that was now almost empty as they prepared to close.

I had paid the parking ticket at the bus park on the way out, too expensive for the twelve minutes I had spent there. I left him in his seat, on the fifth row on the right on a cushion with peeping brown foam out of its tattered red covers. It was coming to 8:00 p.m., on the usual heady Kampala night- especially in this part of the city where everyone was always sweating and moving, where the whistles from the mugged men wrestling heavy cargo on their shoulders reached you two seconds before they swiped by you, almost taking your head with them. He was on his way, on an overnight bus to Kenya- indefinitely.

Indefinitely– a vague word that was always used in the same sentence as suspension. The first time I had heard the word was on a Monday assembly as I stood in a uniformed column of children listening to the authorities speak. They were reading a list of names of students who had been indefinitely suspended. “What did it mean?,” we whispered. “How long would they be sent home? “

Now, I knew what it meant. It meant that there was no period of time to wait for. There were no time limits – an undefined amount of time.

As I maneuvered out of the park, I had narrowly missed being flattened by a heavy towering bus swinging from one side of the road to another. The driver, completely unaware of the small white car underneath him, had rolled his small black steering wheel strenuously from the left and then to the right, attempting a pinpoint turn on a one lane road as he entered the same ragged sky-blue metallic gate I was just driving out of.

I rarely ate cake, then; and certainly not cake and ice cream! My four years away had included a vow of loneliness and food restrictions to cater for a derailed sense of identity. Looking out of my window, within those four walls, I silently chose the company back home over the overbearing alone-ness in this new world.

There was a feeling of emptiness only the rush of sweetness could suspend. In the cool neon lights reflecting on the black marble table, sugar quickly filled the spaces in my heart. I had done this before. I could do it again.

My adventure with American consumerist culture and unattainable perfection coincides with my journey out of my twenties, the need to control, the allure of perfection, – skin, shape, perfect endings – to conversations, to relationships, to life; and the second semi-apocalyptic wave of covid 19 in the country [and earlier, the world] these past two months.

Like most other teenagers, I battled with self image and self expression. When I learned to talk I said too much and when I tried to keep quiet, I sometimes expressed myself with strange things like the short lived relief of breaking glass [before you have to search for every last piece]. When I discovered the impact of food and exercise, I became adept at cutting out bad food and felt a little more ‘healthier than thou’ when someone in the supermarket aisle picked the junk food I had managed not to pick after my own dizzying battle with myself of Should I or should I not? The more chaotic I felt at different periods of my life, the less I ate and the more I controlled what I did not eat.

Goop came to me at a time when I was new to juggling career and motherhood. Their podcast made me feel a little bit more sane because it talked about intricate details of things I wondered about. There was an episode on hormones, thyroid function and imbalance after pregnancy. I listened to it like I had just received a revelation about my life. I would get home and remain in the parking lot listening to one more last word. I looked forward to the daily grind of shoving errant third lane drivers into pavements and in the way of rushing trailers during the morning’s traffic jam because of these podcasts. Finally I noticed that at the start and in the middle of the podcasts, they were selling something tangible- something perfect. Months before when I had read a review of Marie Kondo’s work, I had left feeling annoyed and disturbed at the writer’s cynicism. It was a video about folding clothes and the comment was, “Well, she must be selling some thing. She’s probably selling boxes.” What I did not know was that the commenter had more experience than I did with consumerist culture. They were American after all.

The first thing I got myself was a Schmidt’s deodorant last Christmas. I had dreamed of what it would feel like to stop worrying about what my natural brand deodorant was up to by lunch time. Due to my health concerns with conventional deodorant, I longed to finally be a part of Jean Godfrey June’s cohort of Schmidt’s wearers- her teenage son and her musician boyfriend who played in a band- all potential victims of excessive sweat. I was promptly disappointed. Even the cheapest commercial brands did not leave white streaks anymore. The stick melted and the odor of green tea in my arm pits not only made me question the choice of smelling like green tea but it also merged with me to create a much deeper funky scent accented by a hint of green tea. I convinced myself that Schmidt’s was not made for the African sun and our Ugandan humidity.

Stepping into the huge shoes of any new age is daunting, but especially if its a big rounded number like 30. Apart from viewing myself from the lens of what my 8 year old self would think of me- that is, a grown woman- I have the ultimate questions of a to-be 30 year old, Am I making it? One of the areas where I have constantly questioned myself is the goals I set myself and my impact in the work place. Coupled with this, is the constant need to prove that I am self reliant, that I am something to be proud of, that I turned out well, or in more colloquial terms, that I did not waste school fees. Amidst this, you start to notice the balding, the greying, the hunching, the glazing over of eyes once strong, of the axis upon which our life, support, self worth and validation once revolved. Anyway…Where are we going after this place is over?

So, in line with the above, I decided to buy a belated birthday present for one half of my life forming duo. I bought something that I could buy, but not something I could afford comfortably; like, if the government bought cars for the Olympic medalists whom on their normal salary could not afford to fuel for their cars. Through the sample kit I received with the package, I, in a shorter time frame than I had originally planned, experienced my long awaited first taste of one of the best advertised lotions on the website.

There was tingling and slight burning immediately but I looked a bit different [maybe the allusion of fancy?] the next day so I continued with it. If it had been that pink lotion that my aunt had brought my mother and me from a certain mama lususu some years back, I would have questioned it sooner. No, this was a high end product by well researched wellness focused wealthy people who in the words of Gwyneth’s mother about good marital matches, ‘do not take fixer-uppers.’ By day three, I had broken out in a rash and my skin was red from what I eventually learned was the 20% Ascorbic Acid in the cream. Still, I did not throw it out immediately. It has taken me days to accept that I bought into the world of aggressive marketing and organic 100% pure naturally derived wellness consumerism.

When I finally accepted that I had been confused by money and unattainable perfection, I found an article that explained everything to me, including a statement which should not have shocked me but did – A new moisturizer can’t stop you from getting older. Embedded in my new found interest for clean beauty was the fear that my pre-30 year old face might be my best face and that I will soon join that dark oblivion where mammy caricatures endure- no svelte, no edge – just sexlessness. Most fellow millennials still can’t believe that we are not the babies anymore, we are actually the ones having babies,; and yet for women our life armor still includes beauty. I have not yet been convinced by microblading, false lashes, wigs and makeup, probably because my dream list is more acupuncture, supplements, anti-oxidants, more sleep and face yoga. I think it has to do with the disappointing feeling that comes when you rub off the concealer, the primer, thefoundation, tinted moisturiser, blush, mascara and red lipstick. An un-contoured face becomes like an unfinished painting.

The beginning of the thirties comes with, the more important things, like the rush to collect and compare even more financial and career accolades as success indicators. Moisturiser should only be a small part, but clearly, it isn’t.

Author: A. M. K

à la mode

A new moisturiser can’t stop you from getting older