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| Scenes from my study desk |
Sunset.
The end.
Glorious.
Tomorrow.
Hopefully.
The end.
Glorious.
Tomorrow.
Hopefully.
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| Arsenal 5 - 1 Man City , January 2025 |
What what what…did you just watch that Arsenal Man U game?
More reason why I need to be in Europe because I would have loved to watch that game in real life…and shout ‘who needs to stay humble’ at the end.
If you do not watch Premier League, let me catch you up - at the end of last season I blogged about us losing the Premier League by a 2 point difference against Man City. This loss meant that all eyes would be on that first meeting of the season. The game happened in September and ended in a draw. At the end of the game, Haaland, Man City's 'star guy', told Arteta, Arsenal's manager to be humble.
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| Man City 2 - 2 Arsenal (Haaland at the bottom), September 2024 |
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| First Goal in less than 2 minutes - January 2025 |
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| Man City thought they were on the come back after their score just after half time - January 2025 |
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| Timber did his thing - January 2025 |
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| Then Lewis Kelly got his first Premier League goal (and imitated Halaad with this buddha moment) - January 2025 |
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| Havertz who had missed a perfect shot in the first half , got an opportunity to reclaim himself - January 2025 |
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| Theeeen 17 year old Nwaneri sealed the deal with his first Premier League goal, January 2025 |
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| I can only imagine all the things going through Man City's Manager mind - January 2025 |
If it is any consolation to Man City, at least it was not as bad as the Nottingham Forest 7-0 Brighton defeat, or the bar in the UK that decided to give a free beer for each goal Nottingham scored, and ended up giving out 300 free beers...who is in charge of their risk management?
May February be kind to you.
Sending love and light,
Sitawa
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| Monday Morning Walk - January 2025 |
Good morning Sunshine,
I am not sure why my Premier League calendar showed that the Arsenal v Man City game was today instead of tomorrow...anyway, I have 'gained' two hours which I decided to use to work on a post I started on Monday but did not finish because of client meetings and related activities.
As you all know, I spent last weekend watching two back to back Premier League games (Man City won their game against Chelsea, and if they beat us, things will get really hairy, especially since we do not have a good striker and the season is at a critical time), besides football, I spent my weekend dreaming about Europe (shared those dreams on this post) - and by Monday morning, I had a list of potential schools that I could apply to for my PhD.
Because God and I are in a partnership, I decided to start the week with a morning prayer walk, just to 'get a pulse' on this 'Europe thing'. Sorta-kinda poke Him…do you remember when Facebook was new and you actually poked people? Like we did not say hi or anything, we just poked...like instead of talking in terms of views and shares and impressions, we talked about how many pokes we got and how many people we poked...and yes sometimes we poked the same person over and over...I think that would be classified as something bordering criminal activity today.
On second thoughts, I withdraw that poking statement...I was not trying to poke Him. I just wanted to 'float the idea and get some feedback'. Before I could start the small talk, the buttering part before the ask, the Adoration part for those who use the ACTS prayer formula, I started singing.
For those hearing about ACTS for the first time, it is a 'how to pray' guide which stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. According to this formula, you start by adoring God (that is what I am loosely referring to as small talk and buttering), then move to confession of sins, followed by gratitude for what He has done, and finally making your requests known.
There are many other 'prayer formulas' out there, and various ways to do prayer besides one on one convo - I also do prayer journaling, prayer walks and have a prayer wall...but this post is not about 'how to pray' (since I just outlined points for such a post, I will put one together).
Kama mvua ishukavyo, toka mbinguni kwenye ardhi
(As the rain pours, from heaven on earth)
Na neno lake kwa kinywa chake, halitarudi bure
(So his words from his mouth, will not return in vain)
Litatimiza mapenzi yake, litatenda alivyo sema
(It will accomplish his will,it will do as he says)
Aliahidi atatenda, mtumainie Bwana
(If he promises he will do it, trust in the Lord)
Lyrics from African Gospel Lyrics
This lyrics are from Ahadi Zake by Marion Shako (watch on Youtube), which is an old school Swahili gospel song, 2009 old, based on Isaiah 55:10-11 and God's promises.
As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
~ Isaiah 55:10-11BibleGateWay (NIV)
After singing the chorus over and over again, and reaching the end of the trail, I used the walk back asking God what it all means. I just wanted to float an idea and before I made my introduction, I was thrown to the deep end with this song. The last time I had sang this song over and over was when I was working as a volunteer Mathematics teacher for Mama Zipporah's Huruma Children's Home in Mataasai (clearly my Professor dreams started back in the day). This was a few years after dropping out of the University of Nairobi (was an Actuarial Science Major), and was looking for ways to keep myself busy in between my health ups and downs.
I was trusting God for a lot, and I mean a lot... not just for myself , but also for the kids I taught, most of whom had been left without parents due to HIV/AIDs. As the story goes, my health did not improve, I was more indoors than outdoors, and ended up starting a blog, that went to win a Google award (currently archived), leading me to start my country's first support line and seeing me travel the world, do a TED talk, speak at the UN...and after a little over a decade, take a Sabbatical and move to the US, restart my academic journey, part of which I have been documenting on this blog.
All of these things are x10, x100 of what I was trusting Him for as I prepared lesson plans for my Mathematics classes. I have a scrap book back home with all the notes that 'my kids' (my students) would leave for me, including the days i could not make it to class because I had had a seizure or some health related issue that made it hard for me to be with them. My prayers were for health and strength to be there for them, and He decided that instead of just being there for my class of handful of students, why not be there for the thousands of people across Kenya who are struggling with their mental health - through your writing, and innovation, and advocacy?
And now, here I am, on this morning prayer walk, having lived in the US for 6 years, looking to spread my wings to Europe and being reminded that He is a Man of His Word that Aliahidi atatenda, mtumainie Bwana (If he promises he will do it, trust in the Lord)...as an aside Man of His Word by Maverick City Choir is another song I sang over and over...it was one of my pandemic songs as I debated whether to go back home or continue staying in the US.
When I got back to my apartment, I played Marion Shako's song, followed by Man of Your Word by Maverick City, before reading about Balaam and Balak in Numbers 22-24. In a nutshell, Balak is the King of Moab, which is the last stop before Canaan (the promised land - where the Israelites were heading to). Balak feels some type of way about the Israelites and decides to curse them before they get to their final destination. To do this, he employees Balaam who is a local diviner, they build altars and make sacrifices, trying to get God to curse the Israelites but God tells Balaam that that wont be happening (there is a whole talking donkey scene that I will skip for now).
Way back in Genesis, God had said He will bless Abraham and his descendants, and though there were some ups and downs along the way between then and at this point, He never went back on His word, and He was not going to do it, just because King Balak was having one of those days.
Beside the need to jump on a client meeting and work on some things, I think I did not get round to posting because I did not have an answer for this question - should I try Europe for my PhD, should reapply here in the US, or try an African country (maybe South Africa?)…ok I didn’t hear anything until this morning when I woke up to the phrase 'when the time is right, I the Lord will make it happen' which is also an Isaiah verse.
That still does not answer the question, but it reminded me to go through the promises that God had made in the past, the visions, instructions and confirmations, and hold them against my current poking (because I am officially poking). I know that this is such an anticlimax (compared to a solid Yes or No), but such is the faith journey...and sometimes the journey is on and on and on and on, before we get to the destination...mine has been ongoing for 6 years...but I know for sure, when the time is right, He will make it come to pass...He will make that which He promised me to come to pass.
Nafsi yangu usichoke, roho yangu msifu Bwana
(My self do not tire, my spirit praise the Lord)
Alihadi atatenda, mtumanie Bwana
(He promised he will do it, trust in the Lord)
Ahadi zake ni za milele, akiahidi atatenda
(His promises are forever, if he promises he will do it)
Roho yangu nafsi yangu, mtumainie Bwana
(My spirit my self, trust in the Lord)
Chorus: Shared above
Verse 2:
Mawazo yake sio yetu, njia zake si kama zetu
(His thoughts are not ours, his ways are not like ours)
Mbingu zilivyo juu ya nchi,mawazo yake ni makuu
(As the heavens are above, his thoughts are great)
Ataagiza fadhili zake, wimbo wake kwangu usiku
(He will instruct his mercies, his song to me at night)
Sifadhaike usiiname, mtumainie bwana
(Do not despair do not falter, trust in the Lord)
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| Got a copy of The Execution by Law & Order’s Creator Dick Wolf - January 2025 |
Hi Sunshine,
Before I share things ‘inner circle’, I want to know whose ancestors were in charge of the nickname docket because for the life of me, I don’t get how Richard becomes Dick - I know it is the same formula used to make William - Bill and Robert - Bob. If I look hard enough I can see how Bill and Bob are related to the full name, but that Richard one - I can’t…and yes I should have asked Siri before typing that out loud but I am giving her the cold shoulder. I was putting together a draft for a post, and asked if Desperate Housewives and Sex in the City aired at the same time and she refused to answer - I still cannot see what is wrong with my question - now imagine me asking about Dick…Siri might just start a revolution and I will be forced to go back to Encyclopaedias and Oxford Dictionary (can’t believe we used to read these things).
Now that we have the name thing out of the way, somehow, let me go to the business of the day.
So on Wednesday evening I was doing what I do most Winter evenings…bundle up and watch Law and Order reruns. This year, there is a new twist - me sitting on my leg because I am officially at that age where if I sit ‘anyhowly’ I will either have to do a whole workout before getting to bed or summon a whole care unit to dig me from bed the next day. I thought migraines were my only issue during the cold season but these bone issues are on another level.
There is a day I woke up and my right hip/waist area was in so much pain, the only way to ease it was to stay in bed (like a half embalmed mummy). My search history from that morning is on hip replacement surgeries and walkers - my age mates are out there searching for enhancement surgeries and bandage dresses 🤣 and I am out here jumping the queue to the old people section of the catalog - what is this life. Thankfully, I won’t be replacing anything, at least not now…I just need to fine tune my workouts to make sure that I am 1) getting enough blood flow during the cold months, and 2) not letting my muscles get stiff.
So I was watching Law and Order as I balanced on my leg and making sure nothing is getting stiff (this post is beginning to feel xrated) and thinking to myself ‘you know what is better than spending my evenings balancing on my leg watching people pull flip phones? Spending my evenings reading about people pulling their flip phones’.
I am a books over adapted for TV person.
So I consulted the wide world web to see if there are any Law and Order scripts or books…and that’s when I unlocked it…the inner circle (you cannot tell me otherwise). Mr Wolf, the producer of all Law and Order franchises, the Chicago franchises and I recently added a new series to my Prime Watchlist, has three books, why I am just learning about this? Was this meant to be a secret, an inner circle thing? The books - The Intercept (2012), The Execution (2014) and The Ultimatum (2015) - are about a NYPD detective Jeremy Fisk (reminds me of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser Series…did a review of one of the books in the series Broken Trust by Mike Lupica)
Fuelled by my excitement, I checked the local library to see if they have any of the books…and you can imagine my joy when I saw that they had not 1, not 2…but all 3 books in their network. I almost forgot about my stiffness issues as I added the books to my cart. Children, this is what life begins at 40 is all about - adding stuff to your cart (ok I know my mates are out there adding real shopping items but free library books isn’t far off…right?)
The next morning, I got out of bed with no incidents (what is this life) and like my new lover, the library had left me a message - an email to inform me that one of the books is available for pick up…the only other messages that beat this type is - ‘your invoice has been paid’ and good old ‘I am thinking about you’.
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| Image source |
The weather on the other hand was not feeling my joy, and I was not going to venture outside, even for Dick Wolf, so I worked remotely and watched more reruns in the evening as usual. I had to do some work on site today, so I picked the book on the way. I got the second book in the trilogy - the reviews I read said you don’t have to read them in order, so as I wait for Book 1 and 3 to arrive, I will be spending my weekend catching the Arsenal v Man City game, and hanging out with Jeremy Fisk, as I balance on my leg…now this is life.
Wishing you a lovely weekend.
Sending love and light,
Sitawa
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| Coloring the Dancing House in Czech which I hope to visit one day |
Good afternoon Sunshine,
...and Happy 25.1.25 to you (it is not a thing, just thought that date was pretty cool).
Hope you are enjoying your weekend as much as I am.
I had a client event today that got cancelled due to the colds and flus going around, so I used the new found time to watch two Premier League games - the Wolves v Arsenal and the Man City v Chelsea...looks like Man City are on the come back.
As is my new normal when I watch the games from home, I tuned in a couple of minutes before the games. The network that has the rights to show the games here in the US always takes us on a virtual tour of the different stadiums across England as part of the 'countdown' to the game of the day. Every time I see these stadiums, I remind myself that I would like to see them in person, and not just the stadiums, I want to see Europe (yes I know England vs Europe).
As an African, I know that Europe and Africa dynamics can be a water and oil situation depending on the angle one uses to look it. I share this to say, two things can be true at the same time (read between the lines).
Before I state my case, I want to say that I have only been to Europe twice. Both trips were to the University of Galway in Ireland, way back in 2017. I was part of a project hosted by the University (here an itinerary of one of the workshops), so it was one of those tight trips - landed in Dublin, took a three hour bus to Galway, did the workshops (toured the town a little in between), then bus back to Dublin, flight to Nairobi...same thing both times.
I almost went to London in 2020, had been invited to speak at the London School of Economics …had my visa (it’s pretty easy to get a UK visa while in the USA) and everything ready, then the Pandemic cancelled all international trips.
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| Watched the Wolves v Arsenal game followed by Man City v Chelsea one - January 2025 |
So these two experiences are at the top of my list
1. I want to experience a little more of Ireland beyond the touch and go that happened in 2017 and I finally want to go to the London School of Economics because our union in 2020 was cut short
2. While in London, I want to visit Vaudeville Theatre which I mentioned in this post and watch a couple of games at the Emirates Stadium (plus I know a guy who does analysis for them - interviewed him when I ran my mental health podcast...I actually interviewed three guys based in the UK, and have connections with two epilepsy and mental health organizations there... would like to reconnect with them).
3. I have gone for a couple of German Christmas Village/Markets in Philadelphia, and I want to go to a real a German Christmas Village/Market in Germany (plus I have two friends from Kenya who work at DW, and when I read their former chancellor’s autobiography The Chancellor : The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel by Kati Martin - I bookmarked a couple of things I’d love to see/visit…including her apartment).
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| Balcony Diaries: Milk, cookies and Merkel’s autobio - Summer 2022 |
4. I would like to reunite with a lady I worked on a book about suicide in Kenya with…she is currently based in Italy
5. I did French in High School, and went to Alliance Francoise while waiting to join Uni - it was either computer packages or French :) - it would be nice use all that French knowledge in France as I ask for the (tejeve) TGV timings :)
6. As a Psychology student, I want to visit some of the spots that 'honor' the so called Psychology Theorists - Freud's psychotherapy couch (which I mentioned here) to Cajal's Neuroscience Drawings (which I have never gotten round to blogging about).
7. I just learnt about Malta thanks to Samuel Kolawole's The Road to The Salt Sea (read my review), so I want to see what its all about...maybe I will meet Able God (the main character in the book) playing chess at the public square.
8. Ayo, Nneka and Asa are based in Europe - and those are concerts I would pay money to attend...maybe I can even track a Stella Mwangi or Wendy Kimani concert while there.
9. I am part of Africa-Europe Foundation’s health strategic group, which is an initiative by think-tank Friends of Europe, that is based in Brussels. It would be good to go for a live meeting in Belgium, instead of participating on Zoom
10. I know I have really fished for reasons but this last one is a real stretch. I have this Mindfulness Coloring book of buildings from around the world and was very intrigued when I learnt about the Dancing House in Prague...so I want my art work to pose next to the real thing...plus my girl AO is married to a guy from Czech, so they might recommend a couple of things (or people wink wink) as I enjoy the hygge feeling (I mentioned here)
There we have them, 10 (solid) reasons that lay the foundation for my case.
On the real though, I think the US has served its purpose for me. I came here to 'rest' and finish school (the first phase at least). I have achieved those things...I was hoping to squeeze a PhD program while here but that part of the plan is proving elusive by the day. I have not given up on it, and my goal of becoming a professor, I just think I need to step back and re-evaluate things...aaaaand maybe a trip to Europe could help with processing things🤣🤣🤣
If this is my version of eat, pray, love type thing (not necessarily in that order) - I would say I am done with the first part, and I am open and ready for the second part. And If I was to visit Europe, and love it, and decide to make that my new home for a while, it will make so much sense because the time difference with Nairobi is minimal, as is the flight distance plus I know so many people there unlike the US. I know I am fetching again.
Not to fret, I have not made any plans, I do not even know how much tickets cost (yet)...and even if I did, my student life budget would laugh at the proposal...but just in case there is a windfall, or someone's uncle is sent my way, I am ready.
Until we figure this out,
Sending you love and light,
Sitawa
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| Loving these 'slow days' full of simple meals, loads of reading, writing and morning walks (Jan 2025) |
Good morning beautiful people,
Hope you are enjoying 2025...and keeping warm because these minus weather is on another level.
If you have been here for a minute, you know that I skipped recaps and resolutions last year, to talk about Don. This year, I jumped on the resolution bandwagon, had even done a three-part blog post which I unpublished as I did not feel ready to share my 2024 recap and 2025 plan publicly (at least not yet).
As I continue to re and instead of a vision board of me in dark academia clothing, working in a research lab (y'all know my dream is to become a Professor), I decided to try out a social experiment. My goal for the year, is to work on one thing which I believe is the bridge between me and my Professorship dream.
I started with habit tracking, to see where I am at with that thing, before introducing various conditions that would help improve my relation with it - and if all goes well, this whole experiment will put me on the path to my dreams.
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| Started Habit Tracking the old fashioned way - December 2024 |
Earlier last week, I wondered what would happen if I made this experiment public? I went as far as doing eight 3-5 minute 'day in my life' type mini vlogs before feeling that I need to stick to pen and paper private habit tracking (I could also see my Research Intro Professor shaking his head every time I uploaded a video, and hear him mumble something about confounds and other error inducing factors).
As I was working through the internal conflict of whether to make this whole experiment public or private, I was reminded of an essay by Esi Edugyan that I read towards the end of last year - The Wrong Door: Some Meditations on Solitude and Writing.
The essay is part of Margaret Busby's The New Daughters of Africa, an anthology of short stories, poems and essays by African women across the globe - which I had been reading slowly from November 2019 (when I bought my copy). Over the years, I have discovered amazing writers, and paused my reading to look for other works by them - that is how I discovered Sefi Atta's Bad Immigrant (a MUST READ!!!).
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| Enjoying some avocado toast on the balcony, and reading Sefi Atta's Bad Immigrant (Summer of 2022) |
In the essay that came to mind during my moment of internal conflict, Edugyan proposes that silence, solitude and privacy are important for writing and writers. She goes on to point out that through silence, one is able to go into themselves and meet with the story, then through solitude, one is able to understand and justify why that story, the way it is, and through privacy, create a boundary between themselves, their work, and their audience - this in turn provides the freedom and flexibility to do the loop again - write, justify, let go. She also gives examples for all three points, and highlights how social media has blurred the lines particularly for privacy.
I have no problem with the silence and solitude part, I am very good at withdrawing and separating myself from things and situations, and doing the background work required to stand ten toes down on my work when I decide to share. I, however, struggle with finding balance between how to make myself (and the creation process) public enough to be found by those it is most likely to resonate with, but private enough not to be too caught up to the point that my work is either diluted or expanded to include public relations.
This latter part is part of the reason I started my academic journey...to separate myself and rest after a decade of there not being a clear demarcation of my own mental health and recovery journey, and my advocacy work.
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| Esi Edugyan's Conclusion |
The psychology student side of me is already thinking that I need to start with defining what silence, solitude and privacy mean/look like to me. I also need to figure out, why I want to make this process public? What difference does publicizing (or not publicizing) make? Big picture-wise, how, if at all, does it support my goal of becoming a Professor?
As I write this, I think this is one of the reasons I love blogging here on Blogger (and not substack or medium or any of the other platforms), and cannot stand social media platforms (however hard I try to be on them), is the fact that this blog is public enough for people to read my thoughts with loads of boundaries to allow me to let go, draft more pieces, stand in solitude with them, before sharing.
I do not want to learn how to get more likes, I just want to document...and I wish there was a way I could share this experiment public with that level of 'detachment'...I want people, the right people, to see it, to follow it...but I do not want to know how many saw it, how many liked what they saw...because the goal of it all, if not those numbers...the goal is to figure out how I do this one thing, and how to improve it, so that I can be on my way to being a professor.
Until the next update on this experiment, and my stand on publicizing it, I wish you a lovely week ahead.
Sending love and light,
Sitawa
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| Reading Uche Okonkwo's A Kind of Madness during my lunch break - November 2024 |
Happy New Year Sunshine,
Welcome to 2025...lovely to see you here.
Since we are still ripe in our resolution making by ways, I am starting the year with a book review resolution - to do more book reviews, and to do them immediately after reading the book. I read A Kind of Madness by Nigerian author Uche Okonkwo sometime in November.
I drafted the review here but did not touch it until today.
As the title suggests, this book explores different kinds of "madness" through ten essays.
Before we dive into it, I want to put my mental health advocacy hat on and say that in our field, language matters and words like “madness” specially if used to describe someone or symptoms of mental illness (can) perpetuate stigma. From a literature angle, the title and use of “madness” throughout the book is spot on. Another thing that is spot on, is how relatable all, I mean all, the stories are. This is a diary of what growing up and experiencing life in Africa is all about. I use the word Africa because though these narratives are based (fictional or not) in Nigeria, they resound to what happens in Kenya - at least from my growing up experiences.
The narratives in the book touch on issues like jealousy, superstition, family dynamics, and survival, sometimes intersecting these topics with aspects of mental health conditions (I will try not to make this a clinical psychology class and stick to reviewing).
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| At one of my happy place in Lancaster - the Public Library, November 2024 |
I will try my best to lump the stories into common themes - because I have failed miserably at ranking them in order of how much I enjoyed them (they all touched me in unique ways - some made me laugh out loud, others made me nostalgic and others were to close for comfort, I had to Google the other because she was in my business, for real).
Here is my thematic list
1. Escapism and Survival: Several stories feature characters seeking a better life, and hoping someone will offer that to them - like the young woman hoping marriage abroad will save her or the boy who hopes his childless auntie will adopt him and invite him to live in the US with her and her husband.
2. Family Dynamics: Mostly parent-child relationships as seen in the boy who has to go live with a father he did not grow up knowing and does not want him, and the other one of the mother who believes her daughter is the cause of her depression(ok the book does not say it is depression - but those signs and my clinical psych knowledge did a differential diagnosis). The story of the young woman hoping to go abroad after marriage, goes on to show that the marriage did not work because there were rumors that there was a family’s history of epilepsy and mental illness.
3. Faith and Healing: We all know that an African narrative is not complete without explicitly or implicitly mentioning religion and superstition. The intersection of religion, superstition, and the pursuit of healing is explored in various stories - seen when faith intersects with living with sickle cell anemia, the quest of the lady I mentioned above looking for a cure for her illness, the reason why girl I speak about in the next point gets her hair cut. The funniest for me is the guy who owns a church that never grows and his wife...this story is a summary of 'insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results'
4. Jealousy: This stuck out for me as a recurring thread, portrayed as both a root cause and symptom of deeper insecurities. Two stories this sticks out are a friend to the pre-teen girl with anemia, who did not get why she got all the 'special treatment', there is also a girl who had amazing hair that got chopped off by another girl because someone said something out of jealousy (this was proper boarding school drama). I know I have blogged about my own jealousy moments, might do a psychological deep dive on this.
5. Coming to age: If we think of coming to age beyond getting to a certain numerical age, then each of these stories has their own coming to age (or as some would say 'coming to Jesus') moments. The one that stands out, and i must say, boldly stands out, is two pre-teen siblings discovering their father's porn stash.
My Take:
The book is a captivating collection of African narratives, exploring the complexities of human experiences. It’s steeped in cultural references that many readers from or familiar with African societies will find deeply relatable.
Would I recommend it?
Absolutely.
Will I reread it?
Definitely
Until the next review...wishing us all a 2025, filled with books, reflections, and growth.
Sending love and light,
Sitawa
