This is going to be a long one so vuta stool tafadhali.
I talk about Voi a lot. I’ve realized though, the frequency is dropping.
Tonight, I am trying to understand why I had such a huge attachment towards Voi. My first impression about Voi was “damn it is not picturesque”I would occasionally find myself saying “I miss seeing actual grass” then I would randomly say that it was too dusty and hot. Both true. Dusty because it is semi arid. And hot because? Still semi arid or it neighbors the coast? I have no idea, I’ll do my findings tomorrow in the middle of the day.
For context it is now 11:09pm.
As I think about it, I’ll never fully understand the depth of attachment I grew for Voi.. I remember the first time I went down there, it wasn’t scary. I was nervous for sure, but I was not scared. I was in the company of my uncle, my mom’s elder brother who’s into a lot of biochemistry and spends a lot of time in the labs, we call him Boston man because he has a heavy American accent. Accompanying us was his friend, an architectural engineer who was supposed to be designing the biotech plant. Very cool men. Simple. Easy. Arrogant when necessary.
At first I fell in love with Voi. It’s so hard not to when you’re just visiting, or when you’re visiting for the first time.
Then on our way back, my uncle repeatedly asked whether I was sure about really working in Voi. Honestly he could have asked a million times and my answer would have been one, I didn’t have a choice at that time. I needed the job.
And so I got back home and started immersing myself into the last days of entirely being home, and I would think “so eventually this is what adulthood is all about, constantly being nervous about the things we’ve been so accustomed to”
I had a boyfriend then, it was one of those relationships where you find yourself questioning “is this a forever I’ve singlehandedly picked for myself honestly?”
So the conversation between me and the then boyfriend surrounding my move to Voi had been a tense one, I had been given an ultimatum….”stay and I’ll set up a solid business for you or leave for Voi and we break up” believe me when I say it was a tense conversation. The ones you peeps refer to as “hard conversations” and honestly I’ve never gotten into a relationship thinking it was ever gonna end but with this one, I just had an ish ish feeling.
Anyway eventually we ended up laying our “terms and conditions,” and eventually I,bringing my usual dreamy thoughts about the insane road trips we were gonna have around the coast and one way or the other the ultimatum was settled.
The separation anxiety was insane, I’d gone visiting him then I got back home in preparation for my travels. Immediately I got back home, boyfriend drove back. Came to my place and we headed back to his place together. My mom found this amusing. I was sort of excited. At least we had like 12 more hours together.
The next day we came back, I packed my luggage and he drove me to my bus. My brother came along. I was genuinely sad.
I kept thinking about my mom. Home. My routine while at home. How being in a long distance relationship was gonna be a lot of work. And how I was gonna settle in Voi.
I cried so much on the way. I couldn’t even sleep. Thoughts came in different dimensions and all of them were fighting for my attention. My nervous system was in shambles just to say the least.
I arrived in Voi eventually, too exhausted. Tamara picked me up. We’d briefly smiled at each other during my short visit with my uncle the first time. We exchanged contacts and that was how I made my first friend in Voi. She picked me up and the first order of the day was me finding a house. (Honestly I had made a few others with whom we’d partied so hard together on the night before traveling back when I’d gone visiting with my uncle. So to be on the safe side under those circumstances, Tamara was the safest choice in a good way. A girl needed to lock in alright)
I didn’t care how. I didn’t care where. At this point I just needed a shelter, not even a house.
We checked three houses on the third, I was like “I’ll pick this one, I like it” to be honest I didn’t like any part of it. I was just too tired and I didn’t care much about what tomorrow held for me.
The caretaker though, I didn’t like him. There was something scary about him. Most importantly I didn’t like how he kept insisting “msichana mdogo kama wewe kiuishi pekee yako hivi sio vyema, na venye we ni mgeni” honestly that sounded more like a threat than a concern.
Around midday, we ended up in sagalla, at Tamara’s grandmother. That was where I was gonna spend a few nights because most of my things were arriving by courier and it was going to take a few days. I was grateful. Because amongst the many fears I had, spending the night alone was top 3.
I’d held myself together for so long and it was slowly becoming too overwhelming. I remember honestly telling Tamara, “babe I think I’m gonna break down” and her in her ever jolly tone she asked “mbona lakini? Wacha hizo”
Then Asif on cue my mother called”my literal heart” I only managed a gaspy”hello” and I broke down. The bad kind. So Tamara had to continue the conversation with my mom who was now shocked. “Mao” Tamara began. In normal circumstances I would have laughed so hard because the irony is “mao” in maragoli is more of an insult. I didn’t have it in me that day but a little later after a few days had passed by I had to explain to my mom how that was their way of addressing an older woman, it showed respect.
And so Tamara and her cousins ended up singing and dancing just to cheer me up. I felt so guilty for being too much but I was genuinely grateful.
That was my first actual day in Voi
I only had a few hours to get myself together because the next day work was waiting for me. I was going to tuckle that side of anxiety once I reported.
It is now 12:10am and I am exhausted.
Long story short, the scary caretaker ended up being extremely inappropriate… When I respectfully corrected him about being vulgar with me I woke up in the middle of the night to him chanting and doing some woowoo weird stuff outside my bedroom window. That was the LONGEST and most scary night. Thank God Tamara had spent the night. Fear alone could have killed me that very night. The Weirdo was so determined and our efforts of trying to disrupt him bore no fruits. We switched all the lights in the house on thinking he would be embarrassed and stop but that just seemed to motivate him. So Tamara being religious decided we do a devotion, for God to intervene. We prayed and somehow prayers just inspire some confidence honestly.
We left the weirdo to his devices, the bottles he was hitting …the metal scrapes he was rubbing on the floor…..the curses he was hauling to me ….the chanting and everything else he was doing that we couldn’t see. Eventually, I didn’t sleep.
Two days later I was on the move again. There was no way I was going to stay there. Luckily I found a house just around my workplace. A bedsitter, it felt more secure and candid. Which several months later I had to move again because one dreadful night as I was asleep in the middle of the night I woke up to my curtain moving, only to wake up and find a creep on my window. My curtain drawn, and my windows wide open, in the middle of the night. In my very skimpy red nightdress. I confirmed it was around 3 in the morning. That was the day I knew I could actually wail like a real maragoli woman. I screamed so hard. The creep ended up jumping over the balcony, and because I was wailing calling for help while standing at my door I could also see him staring back at me from the empty space just Infront of the building, where he’d ran to after jumping over and God!! That was among the most traumatic things I’ve ever had to endure. Him standing there watching me and all I could think of was he probably had a gun and he was gonna unalive me. Story for another day this one.
Kids would greet me with “Shikamoo” and I would stutter so bad, ending up responding “Shikamoo” back. I would be so mortified then I’d laugh so hard at myself because honestly who the hell still recalls “marahabaa”
A little over two weeks in Voi I ended up breaking up with boyfriend, not like I had anticipated but every inch in me felt like it was gonna happen eventually. Things between me and him became so unbearable the minute I stepped in that bus to Voi. His major threat after I brought up the break up being he was going to locate my workplace and he would end his life as I watched.
And so life went on. Happy to report that, at work I was deeply hated by a majority of colleagues for simply just existing. A lot of awful things were said to my face, and behind my back. I would go back to house most evenings and break down painfully. The next day I would show up at work and smile with some of the people who’d spoken pathetic things about me. I figured that was the best way to survive. I hate that then, I didn’t have it in me to stand up for myself, I wish I experienced some of those things now.
Anyway bedsides that I made my darling sweetheart friend Pauline. And despite everything I also made a lot of beautiful memories. It is there that I learnt how to immerse myself into physical friendships even though 99% of the time my life revolved around work and back to the house (site. Kwa nyumba. Site. Kwa nyumba tena).
Somehow my crib turned into a meeting point.
There were days when it would be so full and I would be so overstimulated but equally fulfilled, to be once in a while the person people came to. My most introverted acquaintances found this annoying, I remember one of them telling me not to always allow people in my space like that. But I knew one way or the other, eventually it was going to someday come to an end. Most of us were just a bunch of conflicted twenty something year olds who needed to at least get outside our heads once in a while. And honestly the conversations were banging. One thing about me, I am a whisperer for geeks, nerds, weirdos and intellectuals. Most of them you’ll never find them having small talks. They don’t give much care to what most girls worry about.
A week earlier before traveling to Voi, a cousin of mine..a therapist by profession had given me a pep talk about not being so much an introvert. I thought it was helpful but later on while in an existential crisis I ended up hating ever having that conversation. Because what was so wrong about being introverted?
While in the depths of an existential crisis anyway I ended up falling purely and deeply in love. Twin flame with dreads. This only made it worse for me and the people who hated me (colleagues )and knew more about him. If anything, I fell in love with him, the nothingness. I fell in love with the soul. I fell in love before I could even make out his face, all I knew was his dreads. I would end up telling him this later. But according to busy bodies who knew me so well, they could bet their lives that I was stuck with him solely for his background.
What was “background” anyway? Background and an old soul, a weirdo (who doesn’t give a flying fuck about these material things that seems to worry most people to death,) like me in one sentence? Madness. A little over one year later, the accusations about his background became so extreme and so I needed to have the conversation with him. I genuinely didn’t give any flying fucks about his background either. I was more concerned,… if anything I had dedicated my essence to knowing his inner workings more than anything else the eye could see. If only his background was as vital as the things we were navigating together.
My love story with him will only ever be so understood by him and me. As it should be right? A beautiful love story that got me questioning the relationships I had ever gotten into before. And that marked the beginning of the self awareness and the self I now possess, the understanding of the world I now exist in.
It’s 12:28am right now my creativity has left the chat and I am exhausted…….
to be continued one day if I ever remember or if I’ll ever write a book someday. Maybe.
Cheers
Shadow to my light. 