Paper bag test

PC:google photos

Colourism , the act of prejudice and discrimination against individuals of darker skin tones. Not to be confused with its cousin racism. There is a clear line between the two , the former is the cause of the latter. And , yes I have experienced it first hand.

I am of fair complexion which makes me excel in the paperbag test(look it up). More than once I have gotten favours , winks , pats , smiles , go aheads from total strangers. I have been called prettier , sexier compared to my darker skinned companions. I have walked into rooms and caught people’s attention without saying a word. I have been told that my complexion gives me an upperhand in my line of study. I have been told , it is okay to have a flat ass as long as you have the face and the skin tone to compensate with. Incase you are wondering , yes I loved every bit of it. It feels good,but is it right??

I have also had my fair share of  ‘size me up’ looks , and if eyes could speak they could utter my level of stupidity just by studying my skin . I have been labelled a ‘slayqueen’ and this one time in class , I had to go to the lengths of explaining the origin of the portmantaeu and that it has nothing to do with my skin.

Laureen, PC:@danshotphotography

I have seen a ‘light skinned’ girl give her opinion and somehow it finds its way back to her skin colour . I have seen people’s hardwork and achievements narrowed down to their skin colour . I have Probably heard the phrase ‘rangi ya thao’ a thousand times over.

My best friend tells me that men hit on her with the aim of looking trendy and more civilised . ‘It is annoying’ she says. Laureen has been asked, more times than she could recall if she ever wanted to be lighter. She has been told ‘You are pretty for a darkskin’ by darkskinned men birthed by darkskinned women. This one time a woman called her ‘ugly’ to stop her from interacting with her darksinned son. Disgusting!!!

Novet , a close friend and a boss lady sees it every single time she is job hunting. The adverts are customized with lighter skin as a requirement in bold. She has been denied jobs because she is dark , because fair skinned girls make more sales, yet here she is winning. It is clearly just a notion we keep feeding our girls.

Before you think me a biased being , I am including men in the equation. The double standard here is of infinite proportions , it actually is the opposite when it comes to men. I have been frowned upon for dating lighter men. I have seen memes , had talks about how darker skin men are more manly. I am friends with females who fall under this category but will never date a lightskin man. I am sick and tired of lightskin men being considered weak with complete regards to their skin.

So , before you hold that banner saying ‘we are all equal’ or ‘All lives matter’, before you title a song melanin yet all we see is rangi ya thao , make sure you are not enabling white supremacy. Deal with it on the ground before posting about it on twitter. The moment you consider me better than my darker skinned associate , that is where you go wrong. You are chanting to their songs , you are enabling them. You are saying the lighter the shade , the more important the person. By the time we get to the white shade we have already made them gods.

AFFIRMATION: I might be ‘lightskinned’ , I might get sun burns and all , but honey make no mistake. I am not an ounce better or worse than my darker skinned companion. I am black , always have been , always will be.

Brayo

to my

Brayo,which is short for Brian,was one of the guys who made me forget everything I loved to learn.One look at Brayo you would think he snorts coke up his nostrills every evening and takes his capsules with whisky.Brayo,who’s instagram photos got him a chance to live the life he had always wanted behind the screen.Brayo the keyboard warrior.

“Unasotaje na wewe ni dem?” asked Brayo one evening as we walked home from school.As if there is a payroll for being female,I glared at him (keep in mind that I have huge eyes) and I think he got it since he never asked again.Brayo says we are not here for a long time but a good time so yes he mixes drugs with medicine.Brayo who’s mantra is drip is forever but is always getting kicked out of his single room.Brayo who smokes weed but will tell you cigars are bad for your respiratory.Brayo who lives in the moment.

Brayo who would rather stay hungry but talk to his ‘shawty’ all night.Brayo who never calls home since ‘mwanaume ni kujitegemea’ is also his favourite saying.And then you wonder how Brayo survives in this city under the sun.Brayo will sing in church and ‘odi’ pale 1824 ,he will later ‘zima’ and you will still hear the tales of how the party went down and how many mizingas they drunk Monday morning .Well, I think I know Brayo but then I don’t, I hang out with Brayo daily yet I can’t even tell you what his middle name is.Brayo is a familiar stranger.

Brayo who misses school and on calling him twice to know his whereabouts will tell you to your face jiheshimu b*tch!! The most peculiar thing is we will both laugh about it and move regardless.Clearly Brayo is bad company ,but his absence doesn’t go unnoticed.Truth is we all need a Brayo.

We need to feel better when we are at our worst.We need a comparison tool to keep us from succumbing.We need an old good laugh at Brayo’s arrest stories and how he threatened to call his inexistent and ostensibly important dad.We need to lend a helping hand when Brayo gets kicked out.We also need to drip once in a while.Brayo will make that happen for you.When your Logic tells you to reject a Brayo at first sight ,do question it,get to the bottom of the matter,get your facts right.

Go get yourself a Brayo…better still, be a Brayo once in a while .Let your guard down and live a little.

The Third voice

By Bosibori weekly

Pc:google photos

La tercera voz should have been the title of this article, it is spanish for ‘the third voice’ ( yes I resorted to learning spanish).Now that my president in his wisdom extended the curfew by 21 days I might as well be bilingual.I also thought of doing the article in spanish,but chose to do it in the queen’s language.Not that I stood a chance.

The third voice is exactly that ‘The third voice'(read with a different and universal tone).I decided to put this down because sometimes I feel like a fraud.Do I belong in the writing world?,Do I have a shot?,Hell do I deserve to have a shot?.I bombard myself with this queries all the time thanks to the many writing related interviews I have watched.

In the course of this interviews one common question arises, “why did you start writing?” and the answer is almost the same 99% of the time. “I wanted to express myself”, “I wanted to have a voice”, “I wanted to be heard”or something along the lines of “it’s an escape for me”.Well…that would not be my response ,actually it’s far from it.Now you see why my inquisitive self is worried.

My answer would go like this,” I write because I want to,because I can.I write because I’m a journalist and that is what we do,write!” (Crude,entitled and dismissive).I believe I don’t have to have a reason.I don’t write because I want to be heard ( If you’ve met me you know I don’t need to be heard ,I am heard regardless). I don’t write to escape, movies and music do that for me and again what am I escaping from?.Problems? definitely not,they are part of life and are here to stay.Others just happen to have better problems than others ,but still problems.I might as well take a seat and watch a great movie like Bohemian rhapsody ( it is as good as the song too).

The voice that I hear when I ask myself this questions is the subconcious ,I prefer to call it the second voice.We all are in posession of it,we use it to read (like right now) and think and ask ourselves questions.The third voice (which is also a phrase I inculcated myself) is what I hear everyday,on television,on radio,my friends,my lecturer,my mum the list is endless.I fall into a dillema everytime I am faced with the task of discerning which one to give a listening ear to.Don’t be like me.

I have gradually come to learn that taking a stand is as easy as ABC since every voice serves a different purpose.All one needs to know when to take heed,timing is key.Sometimes the subconcious wins,other times the third voice wins.The subconcious voice fully depends on your past experiences and also what your third has been feeding it.Just like the whole garbage in garbage out (GIGO) narrative.At this point,with all the encouraging pats I am getting I take it that my second voice is wrong.I refuse to self sabotage.

I do deserve a shot at this and any other thing in life (anyone does).If I eventually run out of things to write ,then and only then might I consider listening to my second voice and I will surely put up a fight (I only do verbal fights by the way). I would also look back and say I have come a long way to stop now ,and that I should keep going.

I suggest you do too,(whatever it is that you believe in).Put up a fight.Do not throw in the towel just yet and refuse to be a self sabotager.

The last pancakes.

The first will be last and the last,first.

I am a diarrhoea survivor.I say this because it’s barely 7:00 A.M and 5 times I have counted the blue tiles in the washroom.My tummy cannot take it anymore.My gut tells me it is over, no more visits to the washroom.In my last article,the word ‘raw’ resurfaced so much in the reviews and my association of diarrhoea to pancakes is an attempt to being raw.

Well ,we all know the whole first pancakes always turn out bad notion,but I am here to oppose it.I prefer to call my friends pancakes,they are tender,they make me happy and I see past all the blemishes, you should too.The first friends we ever encounter are the best ,rather should be the best.Valary is one of those friends.

We met when we were 5,we share a birth year, we got late to school together,our mothers were friends(They don’t keep in touch as much anymore) ,we both cherished the English language and to top it all off we look alike. Familiarity breeds contempt. Sooner than later tables turned.Our coherency became incoherent.What used to bring us together now set us apart.Talk about the nitty gritties.

Who has the sharper pencil,who’s uniform is better ironed, who impressed the teacher most and as we hit puberty it graduated to boys.I wasn’t surprised ,we had the same taste. Fair skinned, tall and with a hint of talent.

We eventually attended different schools and only connected when home.And then one day we didn’t.It felt harder to keep in touch,I got too self indulged,I called it ‘change’.I was riding on my high horse, turning from a catterpillar to a butterfly and it was all worth it,or so I thought.

Our friendship went into an ego-induced coma.

We were 17,and just acquaintances.We did miss each other (atleast I did) but too egotistical to take a backseat and do the asslicking . After all, I could always make new ones ( speaking for sanguines) so why not?.I did try, and after a while,I ended up making a new friend,her.

What we all (sanguines,melancholics,cholerics and phlegmatics) fail to notice, is the first pancake on the pan, ends up as the last to be eaten, assuming we all wait till the last is done before we eat. No matter how many connections we make ,how many people we meet.We always come back .Back to the nostalgic tenderness and trust that is not actually broken but bent. Back to the first pancake.

Then it hits me that the first pancake isn’t bad after all, it hits me that the diarrhoea I had was just a normalcy ,I mean friendships go through hardships all the time,and that it eventually passes.It hits me that I should cherish the first pancake and try to make it last. I tell you this for sure because 4 years later Valary and I are still going strong.

That’s how it should be, the first pancake (s) should be the last.We should strive to make them last,control our urge to ‘eat them’, hold on to them to the end.

Check on your first,current and last pancakes.And avoid the washroom at all costs.

Are you gray??

YOU CAN FLY OR WALK,DO YOU WANT TO DO BOTH?

You probably read that wrong,you can go back and read it again it is gray not gay.I have been debating whether to use ‘grey’ or ‘gray’ and i finally settled on the latter just because i love American movies and i respect Britain enough to even bring this to your attention.Back to the matter,i am not talking about the colour(which is beautiful btw) but rather the state of things.The state of your mind,your body,your surroundings, i mean i could go on and on.The grayness of a situation is what keeps me going,its more like sitting on the fence ,either way you will still be safe.The fact that come what may it will not affect you in any way atleast not heavily is the adrenaline in it.Let’s take a literal example, covid 19,most of us are really not being clear on what it is we want.Some are even wishing it to stay a little bit longer because they are getting used to not going to work,netflix all day and getting to stay with your spouse,partner,family for a bit longer.Others really want things to go back to normal ,they cannot stand the boredom ,the irritation,the same boring news updates and the financial toll it is having on all of us.But the gray chaps,they are looking for ways to make profits,they are investing in their mental,emotional and physical beings amidst all this,whether it ends or continues this diabolical virus will not affect them.They are developing ‘thick skin’.The lukewarm nature of something can really save you a whole lot of things.I mean in a relationship if you don’t put all your eggs (emotions) in one basket (this relationship) chances are you could still eat dinner despite breaking all your eggs.In an election you could fail to vote (please do vote,its legally required) and if either wins or looses you will be fine,if they fail to be good leaders atleast it wouldn’t be on you. I think you get the point.Grayness shouldn’t be frowned upon ,as it is,most people do.The downside of it though is that you will forever be stagnant,you will not move be it forward or backward since it comes with a consequence.You will never know what happens on the other side.You will never experience the closeness to death or bliss.Really its more like a constant feeling that holds you back.Although they say cowards live longer they fail to remind you that the brave die happy and accomplished. We all agree that media outlets,politicians,succesful people will urge you to despise grayness.They will tell you and always remind you to choose either black or white to proove your loyalty or how badly you want things.To make your decision and stick to it.What they scarcely articulate is the effort,the pain that comes with it,the low chances of survival incase things go south or rather the extraordinary chances of survival if things work out.I am a libra quite famous for my indecisive nature (and yes i just used my horoscope to justify myself) so gray is what i am day in day out. Albeit everyday i try not to,i try to make a decision, i try not to get carried by the wind and make a stand i try to be less of me.What do you do? Are you gray?.

Do you want to be gray? which is really the easy way to go.The cowardly path to choose and the silver lining in it,is that you live for longer. And since we are here for a good time not a long time then i suggest you take a stand.Choose white or black or blue or even fuschia and thank me later.

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton