Urban babe in the bush
… here I am, 6 years later, overlooking the Serengeti plains from my office window. I knew my hundreds-of-thousand-dollar-degree would take me places, but I did not imagine it would bring me to a job in the Serengeti.
Yet here I am, an urban babe in the bush!
One year of blogging
Listen, it’s been a while since I’ve written here and I can bore you with excuses or I can just pretend like I’ve been here all along and tell you about what I wanna talk about.
I say it as if you have a choice lol😂 I’ll just get on with it!
Battling with anxiety and depression in your 20s
To my family if you are reading this, please do not freak out, I promise I am fine, alive and breathing.
It’s been almost two years since I first self-diagnosed depression, yet, I am still healing. I have fallen in and out of depression since then, but I have also become better at helping myself heal. Though I am going through yet another rough patch, I thought I should still share my self-care methods with you.
On hair and spirituality
If you had been following my birthday month countdown (which you should have. Jokes, do whatever you want 😂 ) you would have noticed that a lot of it was reflection notes. I wanted to sum it all up with one more reflection on two things that I have been thinking about critically recently. When I initially drafted this post, it was titled Birthday Reflections. Birthday, because I specifically wanted to conceal my age. Age is one of those things that breeds a lot of insecurities in me... it is quite up there with language and financial status, but I shall not get into those. However, let me tell why age is one that causes so much anxiety in me.
Road trip-ing in South Africa
By the time you are reading this, I would have had a great Easter with one of my best friends in Johannesburg, come back home from a week-long road trip, and had a whole week of classes. That’s right! I went on a road trip! I flew to Johannesburg, spent Easter there and then drove (well someone drove) all the way back down to Cape Town.
A symposium, a period and a worldwide web surfing session later
Hi, lovelies!
I missed you on Friday but I promise it was for a good cause. I spent the whole day on Friday at the Dreaming Feminist Futures Symposium and didn't get a chance to post here. I promise not to make a habit of this but this was not one to miss. Although I do not have any pictures or anything visual to share with you, I have a whole entire Journal. Each year the Africa Gender Institute hosts a themed symposium like this and with it, they release a new issue of Feminist Africa. This year's issue is the 22nd one and it is titled Feminists Organising - Strategy, Voice, Power. I am so excited to indulge in the readings and I hope you will too.
How I feel about self-preservation
Some muesli in low-fat plain yoghurt and coconut sugar later I reflect on how I've been feeling about self-care in the past two weeks.
Context: The past week had about 5 assignments and 2 of them were major assignments. In simple terms, hella hectic. For those of you who can relate to college madness to that level, you understand how stressful weeks like these can be.
A dress and a meal for one
Before you say anything or think anything... I know I am trash! A whole week of silence and I still don't post on time! 😂
Well, I am here now and that is all that matters!
Let me begin by saying, life has and is proving to be more demanding than I anticipated. I've been occupied with so many things yo!
Wrapping my head around privilege
As part of African Leadership Academy's decennial celebrations, I and a couple of other alumni of the academy were asked to share our stories. We used to do this even when I was back at the academy. The process of sharing your entire life's story requires an extreme level of vulnerability and I was never brave enough to be that vulnerable. That was then. This time when I was asked, I wanted to share! The request found me at a place where I was already reflecting on my whole existence. Sharing my story gave me a great space to contextualise that existence and so, I reflected.
There were two things that kept popping up in my brain as I reflected, opportunity and privilege. Hold on to those ideas, I will come back to them.
Hiking Rhodes memorial at dawn
I challenged myself to go on a hike loves. If you know me, you sure as hell know I do not sweat on purpose. Yet here I am, 6 am on a Saturday morning walking up to the Rhodes Memorial at UCT. Even though I voluntarily signed up for this, I cannot help but say how bizarre I find the whole idea of hiking and camping “for fun.” I understand that my opinion is absolutely my own, so take it as just that, my opinion.
Crossing the line between content curating and creating
Ever since I started writing blog posts on this website as opposed to my old site, Have Words We'll Travel, I have been border lining content curating; what I have defined as simply piecing together things to make content.
You see, the writing that I do here is a little different (well a lot different actually) from how I used to write. My old site used to be about two things, my creative writing and my photography. Since the blog was about my work, I tried to actively remove myself from it.
Home missing
By the time you are reading this, I must be on the plane to Cape Town already. I am moving. Again! I am not complaining... how can I? I chose this. However, that doesn't make it any less painful. Moving is scary and very unsettling, especially when you are moving from places you love. I love home and I love being home. The more I go the more I long to come back. I am telling myself, "it’s gonna be okay Bernie, you have done this before...6 times". Yet, I am here tearing up. I guess you just never get used to leaving.
My journey to fashion
If you grew up in Tanzania then you understand how important it is to get a new dress for Christmas (if you are Muslim, for Eid).
It's 11:49 pm on the 24th of December, 2002 and I am holding a torch for my mom whose back is bent over a practically ancient singer sewing machine. We are making my Christmas dress. Flower printed chiffon over a pink satin. We are making a high-waisted pouf dress with a huge bow at the back.
On a daladala in Dar es Salaam
“Pee peeep!” The bus honks to the vendors who have placed their magunia with madera and jelojelo products. It finally comes to a stop right in front of me and I hop on before the many people who have been waiting for a bus to town start fighting for a seat. “Ta ta ta!”-the sound of my shoes in motion as my feet meet the rusty iron of the Tegeta-Kkoo bus. I head straight to the empty seat at the back. I slide in as fast as I can because, a second delay and I am one of the people standing back to back from Tegeta to Kariakoo.
Confessions of a bilingual orator
I am what you would call a bilingual orator. A two-language speaker. The two languages I speak find individual chambers in which to stay in my brain without mixing, but the two depend on each other and form one whole language with which I speak, with which I exist.
My spirit, it speaks Swahili. I learned my Catechism in Swahili. I can only communicate with God in this language, because it is the language through which I was introduced to Him. Do not ask me to pray in English. I can try, but chances are I will fail miserably. I simply do not know how to. I have heard what other people say when they say prayers in English, and they are no different from my Swahili prayers. But I, I can never say those words to God in English and mean them the same way as I would in Swahili.