Girlfriends' Day '26
usikuwe mamba mslow
It is sometimes claimed that days such as these were made up by the shopkeepers so that they had good opportunity to sell their wares. I hope several of those reading this either receive or give bouquets today.
The first time I thought of getting someone flowers, I asked Hesbon, a colleague in medical school, whether or not it was a good idea for a birthday gift. He had just posted on his WhatsApp how he hadn’t expected that receiving flowers himself would make him feel so great. “If flowers mean so much to me like this, I guess I will be giving them more often,” I remember him saying something along those lines. “Just make sure the lady knows what the flowers mean,” was the counsel he gave me.
Just at the start of our Paediatrics rotation, during ETAT week, Malusi and I met in the washroom. “I don’t read your articles anymore since you no longer write about Brenda,” he said. “Well, I have no reason to go on writing about her, or do I?” was my response. I guess some of you must know what I mean. Nikiwa nina Baraka tiyari mbona niendelee kumzungumzia Brenda?1 When I had just started writing publicly, I wrote so much about love. This, and this, and this, and this, and this... and this article, for instance, which seems to currently be making it rounds on Substack two years later. Now, I just don’t know. It isn’t that I am ashamed(though I might be, if only a little) of all that I used to claim , only that I feel I have grown up so much since that time. Standing on that other side of the fence, it felt like I had so many things to say on the matter. I no longer feel like I do, nor do I want to. With Hadassah in my life, to now talk about love, or to attempt to talk about our relationship, feels like I am betraying something. It feels like desecrating something by merely pointing a finger at it, or attempting to give it a name. We are told and expected, though many times tacitly, to name, and be able to list the reasons why we like someone. When we stutter while we do so, or when we run out of qualities after the number 2 thing on our list, then we begin to doubt what we feel. Maybe it isn’t such a good idea after all. Maybe I deserve better.
But now, I feel like once the principal things are settled (we both are devoted Christians, and I truly love your company and person), the rest of the things on the list don’t really matter much anymore. Speaking as a man, we might not always admit it, but beauty is a little of a deal to us. We ourselves might not always feel like she is, but there’s a delight that one gets when he hears the rest of the ‘gang’ speak of how pretty your lady is. It must be sorry business when you hear them whisper: “he is happy after all, that’s what matters.” However, if the beauty of a woman makes it easy to fall in love with her, I don’t think it ever sustains anything afterwards. I don’t expect to be mistaken in thinking that there are many miserable men in the world who have the prettiest women in their lives. Occasionally, you hear that a man cheated, and you wonder how any man would look elsewhere when he already had a lady as beautiful as she. Here, those who have read Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina only have to remember how unhappy Vronsky ended up being soon afterwards with Anna in his life. There is furniture that is very pretty in the store, but that you might regret getting for your living rooms, and perhaps there are things to be admired but left alone.
On a day like this, there are so many memes to laugh at. So many funny clips going round of ladies disappointed, or of those realizing that while they thought they were dating someone, they, in fact, weren’t being ‘dated’. It will be a day of tears of joy(hopefully), but of heartbreak too, it seems. But it doesn’t have to be. Surely my opinion won’t count much, nor can it suddenly change the way ladies think about how love is meant to be expressed. With what social media has become, the normal is assumed to be that ‘real’ love is loud and flamboyant. If he loves you he will get you the whole world. Dear one, we beg clemency. If you’ll allow the cliche exaggeration, as it stands, there’s only one known planet that supports life. Where would you have us go just so in order to have the world? Except for the few interesting people who vent and complain and get at others on social media, most people often select and share only the best moments and their most beautiful pictures. There’s certainly nothing wrong about taking so many pictures for our own private albums, but to do so in order to show other people the amazing life or experience we are having (and they are not) reveals just how messed up we are.
Again, I don’t think every lady should get herself a Luo man. I know, I know, they are romantic and all that horseshit. Now, for instance, where would I be if Hadassah insisted that she had to get herself a Luo man? There isn’t any relationship that is happy and fulfilling and that lasts simply because the man is a great and so romantic a lover. Nor the woman. It usually is because the two of them are good people; sensible, patient, kind.2 If a man truly loves a woman, one day isn’t suddenly going to change things because he didn’t give her flowers. Just so, if he doesn’t, even if got you the most expensive bouquet, would it even matter? Okay, perhaps for you it will. All I am saying is that before girlfriends day, you must have known already if you were loved and treasured. The day would end up just being ceremonial as such days are.
For my fellow Christian brothers who will give flowers today, I hope it is already clear to the lady what the flowers mean. All this leaving it to her to figure it out is improper and ungentlemanly, the way I see it. Give bouquets as a friend, or, as a lover, not as someone who isn’t yet sure who or what he is, or where he stands. If you haven’t yet properly asked her out and you don’t intend to do so tomorrow while presenting the flowers, or if she hasn’t yet given an answer worthy of being thought as a ‘yes’, I would recommend you instead use the funds to order a few chapatis from me for your lunch or supper. Or, just buy her Chapo za MDG instead. I bet she’ll love you more for it than if you got her flowers. There’s one thing you can do with chapatis that you cannot do with flowers. Usikuwe mamba mslow.3 And please, don’t make me write about love ever again!
If you still have not gotten your copy of my book Letters to Brenda, you can make your order through this link.
and with what the economy is like for each one of us, with all the financial stresses most of us have to bear, here’s someone asking you to buy him coffee, begging you to say thank you with a little of your very little funds, because I find myself in need of whatever you’ll offer me, because it would mean so much to me. will you, please?
Apologies to my non-Kenyan readers. It felt natural to put in sentences in our local dialect, and offering their translations won’t just do it. I suggest only that you don’t fret over what they mean.
This is stolen from C. S. Lewis essay God in the Dock, We don’t have a right to happiness
Apologies, again
I have read this one, definitely. Sitakua mamba mslow😂