Category: Dad

Dad, death, Life, Love, Prose

OÙ T’ES PAPA? – A DECADE OF LOOKING FOR YOU AND FINDING MYSELF

The Divine Bandit

“Knock, knock-knockin’ on heaven’s door”, before the Devil is done greasing his gates.

2237h, February 16th, 2026. Would it even be appropriate if I wrote this homage any earlier than a few hours to my personal and your anniversary’s deadline? This is despite writing it in my mind for these last 6 months or so. I have imagined sentences and lost them, I have recalled memories and kept them. Tonight, I recreate the past and immortalize you.

Hi Dad, Wakia Awa,

Time really does make good use of its wings and dashing feet doesn’t it? Passing faster than my grey hairs can pepper my mind as well as conversation. I was just updating you yesterday about the family was I not? It’s hard to imagine the 5 year salute has now doubled for the sum of years you have been away. I apologize for being so long gone. That half decade arrived like the flu but left a memory gap for which the CDC is yet to find a vaccine. All I possibly remember is that J&J became famous during the Covid pandemic but when Big Bad Boy Diddy huffed and puffed, the reasons were no longer as academic. That probably gave you a chuckle didn’t it? If not, I don’t claim to be the natural stand up comedian that you were.

Now that we are past the chipping of the ice or as I call it aligning my thoughts using filler drivel, allow me to get to the realness as you liked it. I have known you all my life as one never to waste words unless they made others smile or exuded well thought out ideas or responses. Something that a noisy child like me could never understand till I grew older. The quieter I grew, the more questions that arose especially from dear mum. I don’t believe she will ever reconcile that I am the same person and that in my change I have found my rest. In my solitude, I create and release the cacophony of ideas clashing and banging in my head. I get to rest when the internal noise dies down, even if for just a day.

Today, that noise threatened to overwhelm me. Here I was, anxious over a new project, excited to write about you later in the day and then mid way through the morning, I learn that a dear friend of 20 years left this plane to join yours over a year ago. I couldn’t figure out which emotion to feel, which feeling to express. On one side, I had lived long enough since you departed to talk to you or of you with a smile on my face. On the other, the idea of you also meant the reality of my friend’s exit. In the end I chose to compartmentalize, I owe you today. I apologize in advance because this note is also coated with grief deferred. I will cry tomorrow.

My first memory of you is probably not real but the amalgamation of years seeing that photo of you holding me while seated on the stones that would become our home to date. To be truthful, the memory begins not with you but your leopard print hat. I don’t even know whether it fits to be called a hat or where it had originated. All I know is that I was obsessed with stealing it off your head and wearing it. It covered my entire face and half my body. It also smelled like you and Sportsman. Though in retrospect, I thought of the combined scent as just you. The other half of that memory is me tripping over those same stones as I was prone to always falling over. It could be the same memory or a similar one as falling over was so regular that I also sat on a hot cooking stove or jiko at one point. This is besides the point but I also remember the last time I truly fell, in a ditch while jogging in the first week of high school. Soon after I would learn dance and grace, even though to date I still say my toes curl towards the ground because of how long I’d been trying to grab at it.

“Most of what I know I’ve learned from falling, from placing the brighter side of my hands against the earth and pressing until vertical. The ground has taught me more about flight than the sky ever could.”
― Rudy Francisco, I’ll Fly Away

From hereon the memories flow haphazard, complete and in pieces. For some reason, just like all African dads, you were to be feared. I played along and I think you always knew this. Especially how the entire family seemed taken aback when I would decide to keep prodding at your stomach and asking why it was round and still firm. I was almost a pre-teen while doing this so being a child was not my excuse or yours to errrm stomach it. Dearest mother was the disciplinarian, sparing no cane at school or at home. But again, just like most African homes, the least feared. If a cousin said they’d seen you at the shopping centre, a day’s work would be completed by all hands in the 10 minutes it took you to cycle home. If the front gate banged shut announcing your arrival, the chickens would be forced to roost and the dogs chained for the night acting like they’d eaten their dinner a few hours earlier. It is thus quite interesting that 1 of the 2 times you actually caned/whipped me or us (the hardened boys) had to do with not feeding our “pet” rabbits on time. I was slowly understanding that you could never stomach seeing an animal abused. This was why we had the lesson lashed quickly that whether it was pets of our own acquisition as the rabbits were, they would receive the same attention and care once they arrived in your homestead.

The 2nd time you would whip me with what I very well remember was a bicycle rubber strap was truly so well deserved that I almost thanked you when it was done. I was disappointed in my own decision making but also mostly in my creation. What incidence is this you ask? To those alive in Kenya in the 1990s, you remember a show titled Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman. Now her love interest Sully, whom we called Selly all our lives because there was no Google to prove us wrong, was known for possessing a native American’s tomahawk. Genius me decided that one of the old office seats in the store full of cobwebs and past use items was going to sacrifice a leg so my battle axe could gain an arm. This might seem crazy but I blame the fact that I’d already received a home made spear to the head before then. Boys! After a day’s toiling, my resulting weapon could neither fly in circles or stick to its intended target. My disappointment hurt than the beating but at least the lesson that nothing was ever truly useless stuck.

Fast forward to a few years later and I would soon learn that men are boys and boys become men through practice than the passage of time. You loved attending the ASK shows, bringing in various pamphlets on new age farming practices (Supa Money Maker pump comes to mind), all manner of new gadgets and gizmos and on this occasion you had brought a football or as we called it ball ya pumsi. Now, we had already broken enough windows with our home made sponge and polythene footballs playing one touch right in front of the kitchen, so it was a 100% risk to bring a real football into a compound with 3 boys, their cousins and family friends. Little did I know that on this day I would be suffering a similar fate to that of the long forgotten (ok, not by mum) window panes. You found us playing football at around 6 pm, darkness was creeping in but one could still make out the white bits of the football. A loose ball found itself at your feet and with the legs that had played football for ages when young and ridden a bicyle for decades, you unleashed a Granit Xhaka like shot for the goal post (the house wall and the water tank), only it didn’t find its intended target but my stomach. As I fell over, you turned into my big brother in seconds (our age gap is 40), quickly rubbing my stomach, declaring the game over in hushed tones and saying we should get inside without raising any suspicion. All this to escape the ire of dearest mother. As all this transpired, I realized you expected no tears from me and that kukausha was about to become my new reality. Men!

I cannot speak of you without bringing up your type of education and wrestling (WWF not WWE). Every Tuesday when the car battery powering the black and white Greatwall TV would have enough power, you’d steal me from the study room so I could explain what the current storylines were since the previous week. Mum thought you were pulling me from studies but I was learning new things through different mediums. On the Tuesdays, KBC would decide to disapppoint me, I would sit and listen to programs like Face to Face, In Search of an Answer and Professional View as you snored the day away on “Dad’s seat”. Also let’s just face it, I was doing no studying when in the study room as I’d never found anything worth revising for in primary school. My absence probably gave my siblings much needed silence to actually do serious work. As I came to learn about your past, especially your career, I started understanding why you viewed life as the teacher. From accompanying surveyors as a kanda ya moko to learning the trade through observation and questioning till you acquired your own instruments and licences becoming Mukabi Surveyor to many from Kinale to Gatamaiyu, from Ndeiya to Thikimu. Most of your lessons came unspoken, unwhipped, just you saying, watch me.

In the article about you in February 2017 I mentioned the phone call you made when I was 24 and convalescing from clinical depression. I do not know whether you even understood what the ailment was but you did not need to. I had a job but one day I woke up to an Mpesa message from you of Ksh 8,000. Considering I had once made you look for me for an entire day, (legitimately because I thought it was fun since I still had your money ready to send back) including through my siblings, after you wrongly sent Kshs 20,000 instead of Kshs 2,000 when I was in campus, I called you and asked the reason for the cash. I tried explaining I did not need money and the medical was covered by the company’s medical insurance. In very few words, you said that you knew that. You said I needn’t worry no matter how old I got, you would always have my back. Hearing ndukamakio nî thî îno (Don’t let this world worry you) coming from you hit like a shot at new life. A high that I carry to this day especially in these recent years. I have needed you and even when away you have remained available and accessible in my veins, my blood, my nurture and my memories of you.

As I bid you farewell for now, I find myself wanting to tell you more stories of how you made me and who you made me become. Several people have found me too rational in situations that demand full blown anger, asking how do I manage to do that. On this through you and your sons, I learned to never start a fight I am not willing to see to the end. Most situations are simpler or non essential when you take a step back and a full breath. I also learned that family was the line. When a high school going bully would attack me on my way to school and smash my books into the ground, you turned up at his home, sharp panga in hand to have a stern talk with his parents. When I changed primary schools, I would learn that the reason no one wanted to even have the newbie fight with me was because no one was going to start a fight with Dave’s brother. They had already learned this lesson first hand when he’d changed schools earlier. And when older, grown adult bullies decided to waylay me and some other new initiates on the way home, your eldest son, sharp warning in tow delivered a similar warning as you had in another homestead 3 years prior. Through you and them I learned to conserve my energy, to deliberately direct it only where it served a true purpose that I believed in.

Awa, I miss you. Your rough hard-worn palms whose cold touch as you lay gone from this life finally broke me on that fateful morning. I have never told anyone this but I lost you twice and then some few more times. To date I have never known whether it was lucid denial, but I would still get confused whether you were still alive on certain mornings years after you were gone. A few months after you passed on, I had a dream, an event spanning a whole 2 years but in one night. In the dream, you never left, you had survived what had taken you away in reality. We lived another 2 years together then I woke up, lost you all over again and kept losing you every morning after when I had to remind myself of reality. The reality in which you no longer existed.

Thank you for the lessons, thank you for having my back, and thank you for making me, me. Sending some greetings for Alex and Wanjiku who travelled before you. Some further greetings to your own dad, Njoroge Mahinda whom you always made fun of as using Njogero Mahindi as his signature. I can’t forget how it tickled me to the point of tears the first time I heard you say this. Once more, you were the comedian and I your willing and receptive audience. Jusqu’a la fin.

Koma thayû Baba

#IAmKenyan, Culture, Dad, death, Deep and overstood, Kenya, Life, Politricks, War

SWEPT UNDER THE FLAG 🇰🇪

The Divine Bandit

“They buried the bodies.
Then waved the flag.
But the soil remembers.”

REX:

Albert, it feels weird waking up and opening my eyes not to screams or smoke, but to songs.
Melodies that arrive through justice not tear gas scented winds.
Without a need to run, I was lazily strolling this morning, digging my toes into the wet grass.
Here, where no toy soldier lurks ready to make the air sting with sound.
Calm, my heart no longer beating as a countdown to the next stray bullet.
And just as I started feeling homesick, there you were, smiling like the Kenyan sun we used to bask in.

ALBERT:

Behind you bright-eyed and full of life, came all the ancestors.
Wangarĩ stood like a mountain, arms open and ready to embrace the giant you are.
JM proudly patted your back as Mboya’s voice boomed out warm praises like a firelight.
Ouko laughed and whispered to me, “You came too soon, but you came right.”
Father Kaiser holding my face, hands heavy with unspoken truths.
Matiba and Were chose not to speak at first.
You could tell that they had been waiting.
Waiting to see more names carved as a national sacrifice.

ALL:

We ended up breaking bread on the tables forged from blood and broken dreams.
We listened and drank heavily from stories aged in prisons and protest.
For the first time in a long time, we felt honoured not hunted.
Dining away from the prowl of death squads and tribal division.
We not only witnessed but understood the legacy that should bind.
We knew what it meant to become part of the sky, not just lost in it.
For a brief magical moment, heaven tasted like our vision of home.

ALBERT:

That sweet moment barely lasted, our joy curdled when we hazarded a glimpse down.
Piercing cries going past the ear to sear the brain and not from memory.
Visible fresh cuts and bodies still getting dressed in flags.
I saw parents still asking for their sons back.
The bodies of their daughters picking up the political slack.
I saw tribal gods rising from new and old graves we helped bury.
Worshipped by those who profit from our collective pain and misery.

REX:

With 6 foot chains, long enough to link our souls to the soil.
I saw the puppeteers in new tailored suits but same old threads.
Countering suits and whispering poison into hungry ears.
I saw them still peddling salvation by tribe, but ignorant to the signs.
Only familiar with airlines, their 5 year tickets forgotten at the front lines.
I witnessed poverty still being planted then fertilized like a seed for loyalty.
Where there was no prison for the mind, I saw entire counties turned into cages.

ALL:

Are we just dead heroes, martyrs or the silent messengers?
Meant to dismantle their play at the tribal theatres?
Should they still die for men that won’t bury them?
Leave through a nightmare disguised as a dream?
Can freedom be found on flags raised by liars?
Or does it germinate in clarity of resistance, their refusal to forget?
We are their past, presently, their future is still dying.

8th July 2025

Dad, Life, Love

5 YEAR SALUTE

The Divine Bandit

I furrow my brow a lot. Mostly as an involuntary reaction to filter out the glare of human “stupidity”, incompetence, ignorance and prejudice. And also, the sun. 😅

I’m light sensitive you see. I have every type of “chromatic” in my glasses. Even my stunnaz/shadez/goggles (80s, 90s kids 🤭) are prescription. You can also be sure for reason number one. I have used it in the mirror too. I am quite self critical.

I didn’t really ever notice it that much till my dad passed away. 5 years today. The photo chosen to be used for his obituary was one where he was doing exactly that. Sure, the sun was in his eyes. However, he could also have been doing it because someone had forced him to wear a tie that day. Probably one of my sisters or all of them. It was hard to get this man to agree to something. I wonder who else I know with the same need to see logic before agreeing to something. Cue mirror again.

The moment I saw that photo on the family group as it was being chosen for the newspaper, it finally hit me why it looked so familiar. I had seen it in my own photos before. Photos as old as when I was just a toddler. You see, my dad didn’t really take many photos of himself. With his old camera and then newer shinier black Kodak camera, he took most of our photos when a studio was not available. Getting him to pose for one was another story altogether. And the few photos I had from before had never captured this moment. Since that day I started a quest to find as many photos from the family albums where he is doing that. They are not many but I found some more.
In fact by watching all my siblings. I realized they all do it. Even the ones who don’t wear spectacles. With time I even see it in his grandkids. Especially in the boy named after him. He usually does it when he is hell-bent on not doing what the mum is saying. Coincidence? Methinks not. Sure enough most humans probably do it. But it is the uniqueness of the lines that form on their faces that makes my heart skip a beat. The lines that remind me of you.

Today I celebrate you. As you celebrated all of us and our achievements. You probably wrote our CVs out to people you met as you spoke proudly of your children. I have met people years later who only knew me all the way to the personality core, just from your words.

It is why today’s words will not be sad as that poem from years back. It’s why I can manage a fair amount of jokes as I write you this tribute. I remember the number of times you had me guffawing at the jokes about politicians, wrestlers and most frowned upon by dear mother, religion. And so, today amid the tears that we can’t dry or deny, I get to smile. I get to know that one emotion can be expressed as two. I also get to see that furrowing our brow is more than just a reaction or a way to judge. It is a way to take a stance. A way to strive forward through hardships. A way to turn up even when we might not feel like it.

A few quick updates.

Your 2 elder sons have since decided to wear caps as much you did because your warnings on baldness fell on deaf ears. 🏃🏿‍♂️🏃🏿‍♂️😂
The other one (mirror moment) won’t shave his hair because he is caught in your spirit of the 60s. He also didn’t heed your warning on early grey hair.
There’s 2 more grandkids. You would have loved to meet them.
Your family has grown so much we take the family photo in panorama.
It sure would have been a lovely excuse for you to avoid more photos. 😁😁❤️❤️

We still miss you in our midst.
We miss your toughness. We miss your kindness.
We miss your glares. We miss your cares.
I miss the furrows in your brow that said: “This is how I got you this far.”

Koma thayû baba.

AH, Dad, Deep and overstood, Life, Love

Counting Pills

The Divine Bandit

Blink once, blink twice.

Waits for purported papi’s arrival.

Gate no longer slams, my new hell.

Conversations lately found in my hair.

Our little talks forever lost in my kinky knots.

I use death ropes to hang onto my survival.

For the story is only mine to tell.

Abba, in my goblet, I sip your tears.

Comprehending your pain more than most.

 

Blink once, blink twice

I lost a friend without going wrong.

Rewrote the present into a curse.

Ducking uglies and swooning over never lays.

Tough decisions found in spicy contempt.

I slew dragons and kept their memory in song.

A nostalgia killing arrow should’ve felt worse.

Learnt that soft hands have torturous ways.

They’ll strangle the neck they lovingly crept.

 

Blink once, blink twice.

All’s fair in life and its end.

Crosses smash into the wizard’s cape.

Moons and stars tumble down the temple.

And on it I release the last time I led.

Smiles come cheaper than you can spend.

I lose them; she’s on the other side of the tape.

I find a hard sword and the fall is that simple.

Dying in the fiasco of words I actually said.

 

 

Dad, Deep and overstood, Life, Love, Prose

When the saints march out. Oh!

The Divine Bandit

As I write this story, it is exactly 24 hours before the exact time I was born in 1987. If I do remember well, my mum told me I was born at 2AM, on a Sunday at the AIC Kijabe hospital. And since that day, my love for cold weather was born.

I say that because I showered with cold water since high school in Kikuyu, even in June, Kenya’s and especially Central Province’s coldest month. I would follow with the same routine in college till I was diagnosed with pneumonia in the 3rd year of University and warm waters baths had to become my lifestyle after. It is safe to say that I never felt really clean for about a year after.

After university, I quickly moved from Buruburu, where I had had to mostly use just a bed-sheet to ward off the heat at night, to Kinoo. This was me following the cold and I would fall in love with it for the next 6 years. After the events of October 25th 2016, I had to move again in search of colder pastures. Because of exactly that I cannot feel safe revealing where I currently reside online but I can assure you that this new lover is the best of ice queens I have ever met. However this is not the reason we are all gathered here.

I am here writing because I feel I should write something as the elevator dings for me to get onto the third floor. I have been a poet all my life and hence misunderstood via grammar; misunderstood via my art. The stories of my life I have told in those words have been missed. Mostly by fans who don’t know me, disappointingly from other poets and expectedly by my family.

It is how then I found myself in Jackson Biko’s Master Class in writing last week. Yes he is also known as Bikozulu. That is like calling me edudivine but I digress. The classes were being held at the Nairobi Safari Club where I think I had a 3 day crush on our service staff manager. Lucy (name changed to protect identity), if you are reading this, oh wait! How will she know it is her if I change her name? Dammit Edwin, you are such an idiot sometimes. Do I really call myself Edwin in my thoughts? No. I call myself nugu when I am doing or thinking something stupid. So please, take it affectionately when I call you nugu when you are being an idiot.

***

When you enter the Nairobi Safari Club, you feel like you just stepped back in time. Not in a bad way. The uniforms that the staff wears are immaculate and remind you of that greyish material that the once popular Kaunda suits were made of. There are antique wall hangings and paintings that line each wall including in the lifts as you would later find out. The rugged carpets on the floor bring on this sense of nostalgia, like you are at high tea with Tom Mboya discussing what next after the British ended their rule.

There are some sparsely thrown in parts of the decor that are very modern. I think they are inserted here so as to jolt you back to reality so your life can move on. But one thing is for sure. This hotel reminds me of my father.

***

On February 15th 2016, my father went to sleep after having had one last conversation about the cows and chickens. Some stuff about the weather was thrown in too. He never woke up. I still am yet to figure out whether it was a fortunate or sad thing that I might have talked to him last.

I wrote a tribute to him. In the best way I know how. I wrote a poem. One I could barely finish to read to the people gathered at his burial because yet again I was killing myself with my own words. However, that piece came nowhere close to saying how much I love/loved this man.

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In this lost train of thoughts, maybe I will do a better job.

2016 was a bad year. No, seriously, it was a bad year. I know some people go through worse daily or have gone through worse before and are still here. But I still find that losing my father, being robbed twice and then carjacked at gunpoint (And a bullet shot next to my head that ends up destroying the car’s exhaust I might add) then losing the love of a woman I never had to try at all to love as the lowest point of my life to date, to 30.

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Most people might sink into depression about this as I did. I was however sooner out of it than I had expected. One week I was booking to see a psychiatrist, the next I was up and away and continuing with life. I don’t know why but I peg it to the fact that I am too used to being depressed. And it is not even the clinical depression that I had suffered from nervous condition drugs some years back. It is what I could not describe before but finally found the word for. Existential depression.

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Existential depression is a depression that arises when an individual confronts certain basic issues of existence. Yalom (1980) describes four such issues (or “ultimate concerns”)–death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness.

Death is an inevitable occurrence.

Freedom, in an existential sense, refers to the absence of external structure. That is, humans do not enter a world which is inherently structured. We must give the world a structure which we ourselves create.

Isolation recognizes that no matter how close we become to another person, a gap always remains, and we are nonetheless alone.

Meaninglessness stems from the first three. If we must die, if we construct our own world, and if each of us is ultimately alone, then what meaning does life have?

I lie up sometimes and question everything about life. About whom I am and who I am supposed to be. I resent materialism. Consider it the evil that fuels capitalism and thus a world where one person can hoard millions while their “brethren” die of hunger and diseases. An earth where most people need to eat, drink, make merry, line their pockets before they consider throwing out a morsel to those in need. It is a strange place, this one. We are running out of good enough land to be inhabited but we have golf courses ranging into thousands of hectares of great fertile land while some are doomed to be born homeless and die as squatters.

As such it is not completely surprising that I would find myself wishing for a simpler life. A life well lived rather than a life over loved.

These tiny seeds that waft into my mind and germinate on many a cold and moonless night are watered by all sorts of things. But art takes precedence. Be it the connoted themes of movies where they try to clean the earth and make love the only thing that leads again. Or the music that carries me to seas uncharted almost every single day. I can effortlessly say that these 2 men in Kendrick and J Cole easily trigger such thoughts even with just their song titles.

Is it wickedness?
Is it weakness?
You decide
Are we gonna live or die?

While we remain united as humans, we will never have to tell our history as A TALE OF 2 CITIEZ or remember many we have lost to the FIRE SQUAD. We might have grown up with NO ROLE MODELZ. But APPARENTLY, it is healing and heartwarming to LOVE YOURZ. This would all work if we all made such a NOTE TO SELF.

It is in our BLOOD and DNA to be better than we act currently. This will not be us stepping out of our ELEMENT. We may first need to FEEL other people’s LOYALTY. Forget all our ego and PRIDE. In other words be HUMBLE. We need to forget LUST and embrace LOVE. Most of all we need to FEAR GOD. Only then will we know our “duck” WORTH.

My mother was happy to hear that I stopped drinking alcohol. I did it because I needed more time with a clear mind to think on these things. I also no longer saw the sense in adding a depressant to this already low hanging rug that life was trying to walk all over. It is good she is happy. She is one of the few little lights remaining in my life.

Just with that thought, I am now far-away in the land of the Passengers taking photos as per The Script wishing if he could see me now. When I try to remember the last time I hugged my father. I am reminded of his phone call one day when I was 24, my father said: “Don’t you worry, child.”

I hope heaven’s got a plan for me.

For Gianna & Pietro – the stars that never got to shine

Dad, Life, Love, Prose

#MisimuZangu

The Divine Bandit

I don’t know whether I was nominated for this. But seeing as Veon Ngugi tagged me in her post, I had the inkling that I should say something. I still felt that a lot about my personal life has been written down in poems but reading Ivan Irakoze’s post brought about the fact that there is only so much that we share in those rhyme schemes gets understood at the level we would love it to be.

#MisimuZangu is about sharing something personal. Sharing something about dreams. Sharing about ups and downs. So essentially sharing about life.

I am 29 and of course to some of the toddlers whom are part of this challenge. Not looking at you Ngartia J Bryan. 🙂 I might seem to have everything in order. I told a story to the members of the possibly defunct Sanaa Book Club and they were all insistent on the fact that I should share about that life. And maybe that would give someone going through the same some bit of hope or last push that they need.

In a nutshell because as brave as I have become since, I still do not like telling this story in its long form. In 2011, I was diagnosed clinically depressed. It was a shock to not only my family, my workmates but also my friends. Because if you’ve met me, you probably do know that rarely anything gets me down. Probably never did have anything till my dad passed away earlier this year. But the feelings about that are not something I am yet capable to write about. You can only bypass so many grammatical mistakes with another set of clear meniscus on your eyes.

The worst part about the depression was that it was caused by medicine. Medicine I had finally decided to take to cure the migraines I had lived with for the last 10 or so years. Migraines that had been the first reason why I had to start wearing spectacles. So the cure had brought up a side effect that you will never wish on your worst enemy. I remember that morning when I woke up and switched off my phone and said F my job, F what people think, F life! Because from a point where I had become unable to wash a cup or rinse a glass. I now could not get out of bed, nor turn in it. The effort was too much to my mental.

I’d like to tell so much about what happened between 2011 and before the treatment started working. But I can only remember so much. I still have blanks about the year. But I came to finally, having spent 600k, with no recollection of where or on what but a bank statement that proves I did make the withdrawals. Imagine an 8 month hangover or amnesia. And the worst part about it is I was well to the outside world. I won awards at work. Got the best of recommendations for my projects. But in the end I managed to turn that around. Healed, I am now here. That money is a thing of the past. I have love in my life, and a car, oh yes aptly nicknamed Lagertha. It is rare to be debt free. And neither am I. But I am here to tell all people who read this and those tagged too. There does come a better time. It is hard work but the struggle is beautiful.

The more current personal fear that follows me to date? It is that once you have been depressed. You fear being sad, you fear expressing sorrow. Because you are afraid that the sorrow might stay. Again. And that is how I missed the funeral of the uncle I am named after. Rest in Peace Daudi Kimemia. Yes that is my name. Mukabi is my father. R.I.P.

But we trudge on. About to hit the 3rd Floor, I can look back at my life and say I am ok with having lived it. Because it made me the person I am. And I love this person. My self love has enabled me to have a larger heart to love others.

I will leave you with one quote I wrote when I was 14 and started writing poetry. As this life smashes you against currents and rocks, as you wait for the tide to rise and lay you on higher ground.

“A wise man does not test the sharpness of his sword on butter”

Dad, Life, Love

#MisimuZangu Hii Ngoma ni ya babangu

The Divine Bandit

When I wake up at 3 am and sit up to scribble a nightmare inspired poem,

The neighbours think I’m just a troubled person.

Like cravings, the need to put these words down floods my mind.

It is all I can think of at the moment.

It is 20 minutes to 5 pm, the time when I hurriedly leave the office.

Because I know, there’s a one hour workout session

That is quickly followed by a light meal, a look at the telly, some reading

And sometimes just directly take a 9 hour nap.

I am writing this as Eric Wainaina blares in my ears.

I have never really listened to music at low volumes.

I have to hear each instrument used

Whatever drum thump that everyone would choose to ignore.

Maybe that is why I am not a fan of music videos.

But here I am typing with  tears welling up in my eyes.

I keep breathing in and fluttering my eyelashes to keep the tears away.

All this because Eric dares start his Twisty song with:

“Hii ngoma ni ya babangu”

Because to date the words dad, father, baba, papa cause the deepest of emotions to come crawling to the surface.

And sometimes I hate myself for it.

Sometimes I just let the tears flow.

Because it really is cathartic.

It does not really heal but I feel more able to deal once that bitter bubble is burst.

It is the  most childish of ways, but my hair to me is the legacy of what he was in his youth.

And how when I live my dream I can still see myself in him.

Funny thought is that I really wanted to play football professionally and did not.

But he did.

Talk of your parent living your dream on your behalf.

But the best part is how much more protected I feel.

He is watching every single day.

I feel shame when what I do does not make him smile.

But it does not beat the sense of achievement when you manage to do something he really wanted you to do.

I just type away without even editing.

That will come later.

And truly I have no idea why this piece is in a poetic kind of stanza.

Maybe it is because I am used to writing like this.

My friends say I type texts in a staccato manner.

That is mostly because the thoughts run over each other sometimes.

Like a bunch of seeds looking for the one egg to fertilize

I can feel my breath becoming lighter now.

As the clock strikes 4:55, I find myself asking why I even started typing this.

Maybe it was just because of that one song

Maybe because I can hear his song

Maybe because I am his song

As he has been mine before

I don’t know.

All I know is this tune keeps playing.

And I am yet to find my harmony.

Why all these feels today you dare ask?

Because of the below:

Life as it is, comes in phases.
The good, bad, ugly and beautiful keep recurring in different forms.

Misimu-Swahili for seasons – is everything making up the season’s in the life of Gufy as a Performance Poet.

A collection of 5 spoken word poems cutting through basic scopes of life. From politics, love, religion, childhood dreams, death and God.

This collection aims to re-live the thoughts and beliefs of a young man in search of an end game.

Misimu is Gufy,
Misimu is Us,
Misimu is Poetry we relate to.

#MisimuZangu

https://www.facebook.com/events/579418178897716/notif_t=plan_user_invited&notif_id=1469625780162119 

Dad, Love

Peter Mukabi Njoroge 1943 – 2016: THE ROCK THAT MADE OUR HEARTS BLEED

The Divine Bandit

The day our father died.

There was no thunder or lightning.

No previous night’s rain to bless the world he was leaving behind.

The day our father said goodbye to this world;

There was no group of friends and family around his bed.

No last kiss on his forehead or a hand to offer one last comforting squeeze.

The night our dad went to sleep for the last time;

He did not inform anyone that this would be the last goodnight.

That he would not wake up from one last dream.

 

Because you see, before our father died;

His smile had been the lightning to many a sad heart.

He always had a way to shock you out of your cocoon

His voice thundered with a hearty laugh;

That always followed one of his sly jokes.

He was a blessing to his children.

And he had a way of raining goodwill on the rest of those who knew him.

Our father did not need to say goodbye to the world.

Deep down he lives in each one of us.

We can still see his smile, feel his calloused hands.

And in both of them, we get the strength to know;

That he intended for us to live on and achieve our dreams like he did his.

 

Our father.

Your husband.

Your brother.

Your uncle.

Your grandfather.

Your late son.

Your friend.

 

He was but a man.

But he managed to be more than that to each of us.

He was a helping hand.

He was the joker in the crowd.

He had aged wisdom.

He was a force to reckon with.

This man had careworn palms.

Yet he held kids and showed his gentle heart.

He had a quiet simmering temper.

With which he stood up for friends and family.

He could discipline with one look.

And love with one phrase.

He fought wars with himself.

Won battles for each one of us.

He was the calm to our storm.

He was the gentle breeze in our sails.

He made ways for all of us with his will.

Taught us that it was allowed to dream beyond our means

 

Our father was in no way perfect.

But each of his flaws made him unique.

In being the man he was.

He mirrored the attributes of his children

Orphans will sing the whole-hearted giving nature of Virginiah.

We found your silent wisdom and maturity in Jane and Carol.

The sounds of clashing hammers lead us to the workaholic bee in Dave.

We shall gather on warm nights for advice from the boy you made a man’s man.

Who deserves the name Kelvin for always striking when the iron is hot.

And when this family needs to smile again;

Irene and I will be at our wit’s end to make sure of that.

 

I am sad.

As most of the people here are

But I stand here to celebrate you.

For giving us the best of your years

For being the best of dads

I know you can hear us.

Let not these cries dampen your soul.

Let that crooked smile never leave your face.

And when the skies light up with stars tonight

I will remember that twinkle in your eyes.

That always spelled mischief.

That twinkle that said,

There was something you hadn’t revealed fully.

I hope you can finish the story for me one day.