(:

 

Awuoro!

 

This whole blog post was about to be in Luo. I’d heard Okello Max’s songs before, I liked them even, and they were on my Spotify favorites for a while. And then, he dropped his album ‘Boss’ and I couldn’t stop listening, despite barely understanding what the songs meant. There was the usual asking my luo friends what some words meant, but I had to do this slowly before they realized that I was using them and that the friendship was one-sided. 

From Okello Max, I discovered Coster (not Coaster hehe) Ojwang’ through their collaborations and again, I couldn’t stop listening to Coster. Hyper-fixation and dat. Both artists primarily sing in dholuo (I feel like a criaz historian using that word - dholuo). So that’s almost six months of at least listening to one luo song a day. Surely by now, I know some luo. It also helps that in highschool the song we danced to for house dance was a luo one but unfortunately till this day, my proposal to recreate and perform it to any of my lakeside friends has been immediately shut down. 

Anywayz, some time back, I experienced Coster Ojwang' live and had a spiritual experience. Like I always do with intimate gigs. Billy Black is another artist who moved my soul during his live gig. Story for another day.

 

I digress…

 

Awuoro!

Is this the same Nairobi and the same adulting process that our folks went through?

On Monday, I was running an errand for my pops at NSSF. He was finally completing something that he'd started when we were kids. For some reason (pms), it made me feel sorry for him. I thought about how difficult adulting has sometimes been for me, then I imagined being in his shoes at my age, 29. By this time, he was married, with one child who in the next three years, they would find out is autistic. In the next 12 years, he would have five children and be responsible for not only himself, his wife, his kids but also some of his relatives. Yikes! Then I imagined how lonely he might have felt being in a new town, as a first generation Nairobi migrant. Having to go through the whole adulting process. Personally, I'm a softie. Maybe to him, the whole experience of being in a new town was fun and exciting and bursting with many opportunities and he was happy to make it out of the hood. But one thing is for sure, adulting is a lot of the times difficult for everyone, I assume. 

Then I thought about my mum, at my age, she was a mother of two, expecting her third child. By now, she already knows her first born is autistic but this doesn't scare her from getting more kids. She knows God will help her. In the next 10 years, she'll have a total of five kids and be responsible for them, her husband and other relatives. At 29, she's also in nursing school, or has finished and is practicing, she is also in the church choir. Literally, no days off. She's grown up in Nairobi so she doesn't have to deal with the culture shock that is Nairobi. To be fair though, I've grown up in Nairobi but still get culture shock of just how fast paced it is. 

I don’t know how my folks survived adulting. But they did. Obviously if I go to them with these questions and admit how adulting is beating my ass, they'll ask me about the last time I went to church hehe. To be fair though, it's post pms and life is worth giving another shot. It can be difficult but it sure has its many fun and exciting moments and weird moments as well. Like on Tuesday, after teaching a baking class as I was leaving that house, unbeknownst to me, a boerboel would meet me at the door, immediately come in between my legs and lift me with it's head. My entire heart left my body. Thankfully, it did not bite.