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The year
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The year

A. M. KLeave a comment

It’s quiet in here. Everyone’s asleep. It happens so rarely that sometimes I stay awake, against better judgement just to catch the waves of my own mind. It is in this quiet that I realise that it’s not just the house, my only social medium has been blank for more than two days. I guess when the [both real and phantom] battles cease, I have nothing left to occupy me. Maybe, I should resign from saving everyone else.

I wonder if sometimes, the noise outside, muffles the deep fears and insecurities we hold in the dim un-swept tunnels of our hearts creating such a cacophony of life; rivalries, intrigue, ruminating among the rumuor-mongers, crowning antagonists, felling the weak and watching silently as it all falls apart, our way of trying to rein it all in; and maybe, the consistency of love and domesticity so terrifying that, if everything is okay, then something must be wrong.

It is almost exactly a year ago that I was certain that I was at my most tired and most sleepless, taking care of two children without the mellowing presence of a fellow adult, especially the fellow adult with whom we shared the efforts of their creation. Then we had met again and I always say to him when asked why I can’t sleep, You can’t expect a car moving at 180 kilometres an hour to just stop. For that reason, I acquired his left-over melatonin tablets and bought a sleep inducing pillow spray in preparation for the year ahead. Then at the stroke of the New Year came, she came. Though I was convinced that it could not be, I knew when she did, landing on my uterus with a cramping thud. The first test had said most probably not, the tracking application had said nearly impossible and God must have known I was tired, but on the way back home, thousands off feet above the ground, somewhere in a desert sky, it was clear as day. I turned and saw that the youngest child had finally fallen deeply asleep and the eldest, still awake. “You’re having a baby sister.” His eyes beaming, excited. He immediately gave her a name. There had been so many signs. I was unusually hungry. I was starting to getting lost. I wanted to see the sea again, and I had been a well of tears at the airport when I said bye.

©amk

So we went back home, the four of us. I walked out of a place that I had been a part of for eight years and I left with my heart in my hands. The first morning after driving the children to school and having nowhere else to be but home, I walked in to the house to find a small damaged phone blasting the music of the day, as aggressively amorous as it came. The house was mopped. A few dishes were still in the sink. I was an intruder in my home and unknown to the new maid, I was here to stay.

She was hardworking. No cloth in the house was left un-ironed. But, the volume was turned down and I preferred that she iron the clothes inside out and also, after observation, of a game about splashing water on the young one’s nose so he playfully could decide whether to laugh or breathe, that I be the one to bathe the boys from now on. Then one day I confronted her about lying. If she could not be honest about the small things, how could I trust her with the children? I asked. Her eyes dark and burning, she began to shout. She asked me what she had lied about. I told her. She clucked her tongue at what I had said and aggressively turned back to washing the dishes. The clucking, how to describe a sound that has no vowels; a loud knock of a knuckle against a wooden door; a well known gesture of disrespect. She and I coming from amongst closely connected community, the interpretation was shared. I retreated to my room. I decided to only speak when I had to and whenever I annoyed her with an inquisition into one or other thing, she knocked things around loudly, and if in that moment, she happened to have a knife in her hand, she wielded it so expertly, swinging it and landing it with more force than the pumpkin or sugarcane needed.

On that first day when I had come back unexpectedly, between the songs on the phone-radio, there had been a commentary on the local news about a young woman, from a fairly distant trading centre, her first name rhyming with the woman in my house, her second name, of the same background. The woman in the story, a ‘woman of the night’ had killed a man in a fit of rage and run away. It crossed my mind that it was not impossible to harbor a fugitive, after all, most of the strangers I had received, were casually and contentedly lacking any form of identification papers.

My sleeping had got worse. The melatonin had gone to waste and the sleeping spray, untouched for months before I sprayed it and could not bear to breathe it in. At night, I looked forward to daybreak, the sound of neighbours hooting and policemen blowing whistles at the junction; and now that the burning January month (s) had ended, it became easier to sleep once the sun was out. One hot afternoon I woke up and the house was quiet which was unusual for a house with children. Through the glass doors I saw the littlest one busy on the smart phone I had requested be kept away from them. The older one snuggled a little too comfortably on her lap. The instant she saw me, she seamlessly grabbed the phone and kept it, startling the toddler, who began to cry but quickly stopped on account of some signal I could not decipher and the five year old tried to cover it up with laughing. She had taught them so well, undoing the years of training honesty in only a matter of weeks. In the wee hours of a morning days before, in drifts of sleep, I had heard her damningly loud ring tone somewhere close, where it should not have been. Things were starting to lean into the whimsical.

She cooked the only food I liked- katogo. It was the only meal I could eat twice consecutively. She had observed that; and the children had learned the word because of her. It was a Sunday and this time I had gone without her. I barely heard the sermon but it was clear to me when I left the gathering. She welcomed the children with enthusiasm, talked to them as she did everyday and said nothing to me as I stood there watching them. I walked away, counted the money I had. It had been two weeks after the month began. “You’re going home.”

“Of course”, she replied smugly. “I was already on my way out.”

*

The children have seen me dance before and perhaps, it had been something I did frequently, with much vigor and determined abandonment. In that moment, they can’t find ‘mummy’ so they get tired quickly, sleepy, the music too loud, someone needing to be held. I had attempted to dance that year but it was the way the children looked at me, standing quietly on the side that it appeared to me that I was not dancing, I was breaking. It was two months later, in the seventh month of that year after I knew that everything would change that I found myself, with child, taking a chance on the bygone fashion of a previously popular song to the astonishment of the people around me, the confusion on their faces clearly telling, that it had been a very long time since I had truly danced.

©amk

They say that sometimes things fall apart so that better things can come together

Remembering the pregnancy tests in O’level- always an ambush from the school nurses. All gates were locked, everyone rounded up, dormitory by dormitory. The pressure with which the nurse fell onto your stomach may have been more of a strategy than a test

*There is something about The Hallelujah Challenge that I haven’t yet figured out. I can hide on any other day but on the day after the dancing, minutes after the dancing, my heart and its contents are left open like an unguarded gate. It’s on again.

A new moisturiser can’t stop you from getting older
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A new moisturiser can’t stop you from getting older

A. M. KLeave a comment

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.