May I waste your time?

 

Tell you what; some words were born knowing what their life purpose was going to be. In their 20’s, they didn’t wake up at 3:37 in the morning, their bodies drenched in cold sweat, feeling like their hearts were going to explode out of their chest. They didn’t have to regulate their breaths while having to whisper to themselves ‘be still my beating heart’. They didn’t stay up all night or morning wondering if their dreams would one day love them back. In one of the sessions with their therapists, they didn’t break down about their job path/progression, and then be told that they needed to separate their identity from their career. No, they knew exactly how and when they would achieve their purpose, and that’s exactly what they did. These words married within themselves and named their children after them, no suffix ‘jr’ at the end, and their children named their children after them. They were simply born into generational self-actualization. (Stay with me Mirish*, I’m heading somewhere with this, I think)

 

I have this thing where there are words that mean exactly how they sound while others, not so much. Take the word diarrhea for example, such a violent word. You can’t confuse it for any other action than… err, diarrhea itself. The act is just as strong as the word. Let’s say you’re in the waiting room of a train station, and then you happen to eaves-drop on a conversation between two friends.

 “Babe, you look so tired kwani what’s up?”

“Heh! I’ve been having serious bouts of severe diarrhea”

 

Even the non-English speakers will know that something nasty has been mentioned. Everyone who happens to hear this, you included, will contort their face and try to ambiguously move one step further from our poor babe. In the train, after our girl visits the toilet, no one goes in after her. Even though woiye she was just in there for a short call. Nobody is willing to risk it. Simply because of a word that means what it says. For purposes of historical record, that’s the time period that people came up with euphemisms for the word, because for all her life, the train girl was known as diarrhea girl and lived an isolated life. No one else wanted that trauma, so from then on, people referred to it as driving, the runs, but my favorite is: I was riding round the block. (Also, there’s no need to Google this, I did my research well). 

Another word like that means how it sounds is Kisirani. The Swahili word. It’s not a word that I would say rolls off one’s tongue, it more of summersaults out of one’s mouth to immediately attack the person on the receiving end. The last time I heard this word, I was in the salon, two weeks ago. Thankfully, it wasn’t directed towards me because otherwise I would have needed said therapy, to be told to separate my identity from the word.

 

First of all, at that salon I went to, the women there were savages, not only to my head, but also to each other. I went to those Kenyatta Market types of salons, the ones where there’s a main lady who does the installing of braids, then the others who are in a paid partnership, do the finishing up of the braids. I love it because it means less time in the salon. Anyway, while they were working on my scalp, I could feel that there was a bit of power play going on amongst the ladies. The main babe would keep commanding the others, “songa hapa”, “malizia hizi kwanza” and from her tone, these others weren’t particularly feeling her vibe. So they’d all sort of stay in one section together, which meant for a bit of the time, my hair was really being pulled. Remember that fahali wawili methali? Okay, let me remind you, since I’ve been doing my research (and also I got an A in Kiswahili, plus I’m Luhya, we know our Kiswahili, ref: Bien). The methali goes like ‘Fahali wawili wakipigana, nyasi ndio huumia’. So in the salon, my poor tiny head was the nyasi at different points in time, but I didn’t really care because they were moving quickly. It was the cost I was willing to pay because of this methali : mapema ndio best.

 

Okay, back to the kisirani word. One of the ladies had come with their baby, about 2/3 years old. At some point, toto started getting fussy and would rub her eyes while crying loudly. She continued this for a while and that’s when the bomb-shell was released.

 

“Huyu mtoto wako anakuwanga na kisirani, si umnyonyeshe”

 

Whoa! I felt that one. Everyone in the salon went quiet for a while, even the baby. The mother didn’t say any word back, nor did she breastfeed her baby, but I could tell from the silence that it hurt her. Thank God my head was bent and I didn’t have to meet her eyes in the mirror at that moment, because I don’t think she would appreciate me telling her ‘wah, pole’. Moral of the story, don’t tell me or my kids (which ones? lol) that we have kisirani, no matter how kisirani.ish we behave. This also means that my esteem wouldn’t survive one day as a Coasterian, or worse of, beefing with one of them because we all know they're the heavy word champions.

 

Moving on swiftly, we have another word: blouse. It just sounds like a… blouse, and something I never want to wear. It sounds like wearing something that has too much print and makes you sweat easily despite the weather.

 

In this world of many scares, my biggest nightmare is this conversation ever happening, and me having to hear it;

 

“Did you see Liz in the afternoon?”

 

“Eish, yeah, si she was the one wearing that purple blouse?”

 

“Yeah, kwanza the way she was complaining in that gava office, she usually has kisirani”

 

“Sana. By the way, I even heard her say to her friend that she was battling severe diarrhea?”

 

“Oh goodness, not the runs! I understand being unwell and getting impatient at Nyayo house people, but I wonder what life has thrown at her that she had to wear a blouse, kwanza a purple one”

 

Guys, how sad is that exchange? Three triple threats used in just one conversation. This world would seize to be my home.

 

There are other words like the ones above, they sound exactly how they mean. They do what they were born to do. Some of them are not necessarily harsh. I have a list of them, like onus, staccato, (I love that word, but when can I ever use it in a sentence?) clumsy, temptress, etc. I would have gotten more into them but I feel like I’ve already wasted enough of your time on a Wednesday morning, plus I imagine you guys are trying to beat deadlines before tomorrow’s public holiday. However, do you guys have such words? The ones where when you instantly heard them, you knew exactly what they meant without even having had to be explained to.

I know the comment section here is messed up for some reason, but you could dm me on IG. I’m curious to know.

 

Assuming this a book, since I’m now.... a writer, here’s the foot note lol

 

Mirish*- my home girl for life, who texts me the sweetest things on Tuesdays e.g. ‘today is Tuesday, which means tomorrow is Wednesday which means we get a post.' So if a post has 10 views, 9 are mine, 1 is hers.