About

If you have read through my other posts, you may have read one that lamented the loss of an article that I wrote to place on this page. WordPress, in all its reknown goodness, swallowed it up. Until I master another sufficient doze of inspiration, this page will remain a fragmented collection of disjointed little pieces. All meant to represent me.  In many ways, that is how my life is. Very fragmented. Perhaps my quest in life is to find a ‘whole me’.

31st March 2008

But I will keep adding little bits as they come, though I am sure this page will never read like I had wanted it to. The sad bit is that I don’t recall all that I had written.

There is a reason why I find it difficult ‘to just write’ something coherent here. It is an important page as far as I am concerned. Like a signature. I got trapped in a signature and now I am stuck with one that I deem ‘not cool enough’. I was in Form three when I applied for my first passport. I was going to participate in an educational exchange program to a foreign country. My dad came with the forms and we were sitted at Green Corner restaurant in Nairobi. That restaurant holds many fond memories for me. We filled in the forms and then he told me, ” Sign here” I looked at him blankly. I had never designed my signature. I thought it was the kind of thing one really thought through, practised and then fine-tuned before using. But my dad signalled a sense of urgency. So I scribbled what I thought was a signature, three letters from my names all piled up on top of each other. Then a dot. That dot is very important to me. It is the only creative element in my signature. And that is how I sign off my documents, to date.

 

30th April 2008

Perhaps I should make a point of updating this page every end of month. I just realized that the last time I was here was end of March. But days are really flying fast!

I don’t like psychometric tests! I just did one today. They are meant to be an indirect way to determine a person’s personality. Pretty much the reason I am writing about it here, on my ‘About me’ page. In short, what I am trying to say is that I still haven’t figured out who I am. As days go by, it is becoming increasingly difficult to define who I am.

In this test, I can tell what they are looking for, precisely, they want to know the following 4 points about me:

1. Am I outgoing?
2. Am I creative or not?
3. Do I like/hate repetitive jobs?
4. Do I like to lead, or I do I prefer to be led

The test rules are that you choose your answer quickly, i.e. without spending too much time/thought on it.

My problem is that I can be/cannot be those things, depending on different situations. I can be outgoing, yet not so. I am largely a creative person, yet there are times I am passive. I do repetitive jobs with a fair degree of responsibility and excellence, but after a while, I do not enjoy them. I definitely like to lead, but there are situations I like another person to lead, or atleast to ‘lead with me’. So then, what does that make me? And who really, is this ‘Mwari wa David’?

31st May 2008

Alright, another month just went by! I tell you, days are really flying.

I find it extremely boring to be straight forward. i.e. I rarely say “Yes” or “No”. I always find it insufficient to not explain or expound or substantiate my yes or my no. When I get into a conversation, first, I can hold a conversation with just about anyone. I only ever need to find a crack somewhere, into which I will hop, and from that one crack, I will end up making the person talk more than they thought they would. I don’t know whether this is a good or bad thing. As a result, I am a beholder of many a person’s secret, or other ‘rarely- talked-about-matter’.

And it’s not that I pry. Sometimes I get surprised by the things that people tell me.

Several times, when I am travelling by air, I carry a book and make a promise to myself that I will not talk to people. For whatever reason, that usually backfires, big time! Some one will start by asking, “What are you reading? ” Aha, then I end up talking. Once, on a flight from Nairobi to J’berg, I happened to sit next to this very well bodied Irish man, a farmer in SA. And because he was with a whole bunch of people, I thought I wasn’t going to talk. Wrong. He ended up telling me so much about his cattle rearing, and farming including how well he speaks Zulu!

I get very curious about people. I wonder alot about their lives, what makes them happy, what makes sad etc. And according to my mother, I have a certain way that I look at people. When I was a kid, I noticed the strangest of details about people. I would wait till we got home, then I would unleash all manner of questions to my mum. ” did you see that man who’s ear was slightly curled?” With time, my mother began reprimanding me about straring at strangers. And so, I think, I began to very tactfully, ( I hope) observe people.

In SA, I did alot training for corporates. In order for me to  transfer a skill or a concept, I need a certain level of engagement with whomever I am training. Which surpringly worked very well for me. Still, I got surprised when I once did a  one-day- training for a certain company. Weeks, or even months after, I bumped into one of the people that I was training, and after greetings, he went on to explain how he’d lost his grandmother. I get moved by such. I didn’t need to know that piece of information. I don’t even recall what this guy’s name is!

Or, on a flight from Zurich to Johannesburg, I sat next to a swiss man, who gave alot of tips on how to learn German. He demystefied much of the German language, especially when he told me that reading German is very easy, one just needs to ensure you pronounce each and every letter. That has been a great help to me.

So there, another piece of me!

 

30th June 2008

This is so much fun! …nsuring that I jot a few lines on this page every end of the month. I should not say it again, but boy, aren’t days flying!? But I am loving it especially now that I have a salary to look forward to at the end of the month.

So, I like to be somewhat mysterious. I probably said it already, before, or perhaps not. And this is related to the May piece where I said that I don’t usually give a “Yes/No answer. It is always a story of sorts. A Yes can never be just that, there is always that other angle, and similarly a No.

But what i meant by mysterious is that I don’t like to give away everything at a go. Which is why for instance this blog page is hidden away, and I can bet many that frequent this blog have never noticed it. This characteristic is very much a part and parcel of my personality. I don’t yell for attention, instead, I do the exact opposite. And sometimes, this aspect of me becomes concorted, and almost manifests as pride, I think… Like, in school/college, I rarely raised up my hand to answer questions, yet much of the time, I knew the answer very well. I would be happy to let others give the answers. And would only volunteer when there were no more hands up.

I don’t know why I do that. I did it again this very month. At a workshop in the office, the presenter was asked a question regarding one of our products, and he couldn’t answer. Many others tried to answer, but they were all bluffing. And because I have been reading the product manuals, I offered my answer. To everybodies’ astonishment: I am the newest employee, barely a month at work then, how could she possibly know that? Well, I read it in the product manual!

Likewise, I do not like to be told everything, I like to put together bits of information to find the whole. I almost take offence when somebody goes to pains to explain ‘trivial’ details. This is one of my character flaws that those close to me continually complain about.

 Sept 14th 2008

I like to believe that I am a God fearing woman. Unlike many people, my parents did not take us to church when we were young. Most of my siblings and I were babtised much later in life, usually in clusters of 2 or 3 of us at go. (yes, we’re that many!)

It’s not like we lived a heathen life. Far from it. Infact, I remember my mother could pray very long prayers. On one such occasion, hungered beyond measure, my mother decided that we pray for the food, and promptly went ahead to say an extra long prayer. Perhaps due to the hunger, or the fact we actually had the food already served onto our plates, most of us got impatient with the long prayer and opened our eyes, careful at first, lest God saw. Only to find other open eyes. That day, something unusual happened, we burst into laughter, which prompted my mother to stop her prayer and she too began laughing. I don’t recall whether we finished the unfinished prayer.

For my father though, it was a different story. Unless for a wedding or a funeral, I never saw him in Church until much later after his retirement. I suppose he got so bored with nothing to do and decided to try church. I remember him asking me for a bible, which i was more than happy to donate. In church that day, I heard nothing of what the preacher said. My eyes were fixated on my dad. He seemed very out of place and I was sure he would never return. But I was wrong.

My first recollection of being in church  was probably when I was around 6 years of age. It was an old fashioned church, earthen floors, and people sat on benches that seemed like they could break under the weight of men and women sitting on them. Nethertheless, I was enthralled and forever transformed. There was nothing magical, no loud shouting preacher, no miracles were performed, but I knew then, that God exists, and that I am a spritual person. 

Nothing will ever convince me otherwise. I believe God exists, and continually, I have made room for him in my life.

But even then, I go through phases when I put Him at arms length, sort of telling Him to wait while I ran all wild and unruly. Usually that doesn’t last long, because I soon find my self seeking Him again and wanting that special relationship that I know we shared at the very beginning.

When things are thick, I turn to God for guidance and blessings. And there are times I am all skeptical. Hence, my common prayer is usually just a sentence, “God, please let me know that you are there” or “God, please let me know that you are with me in this situation” or “God, please show me the way”