Knowing Despair



Tina looks at the ceiling as she contemplates her next move, she has her cheeks soiled with tears and her eyes sore from so much crying. She stands and staggers, she has not had a meal for a day now. She falls back into the tiny bed and slowly relaxes her back on the small mattress.
She slowly falls asleep, she is at it for half an hour, she wakes up with a start, sweating profusely and confused. Looking at her surroundings she realizes that she was dreaming. She sighs and stands, this time careful to hold into the rim of the bed and move round to the door.
The light from outside hits her hard on the face and she holds her hand up to her eyes to shield them. She must have lost count of the hours she must have been indoors. She looks anxiously to see if Jane her neighbor is around and sees the tiny padlock hanging loosely at the door. It must be midday she tells herself as Jane always closes the door to take food to her three children in a public school a few miles from there.
She walks back to the house, despair displayed all over her eyes. What would she do now? She is so hungry, she has no money and no job. Her last job was a disaster and had almost ruined her life. Partly it was the reason she was in a dilemma. She had been a secretary in a tourism firm. She was very good at her work and wondered how someone could say that she had been stealing from the firm landing her jobless. It must have been Rhoda that mean cleaner who had ruined her reputation. She had been her friend for three months, they spent hours talking about their jobs and other stuff and it was so bad that she had backstabbed her to unemployment as she took her seat at the firm.
She picks up her handbag and rummages through it, there is no coin, she decides it’s best if she spills all the items on the bed and then as if by a miracle she sees a glitter among the rubble of items. She picks it up and with a sigh finds that it can afford her two ‘mandazis’,better than nothing she comforts herself as she walks to the door with renewed hope.
At the local kiosk she finds John who looks as if he has just woken up, he is always like that so that does not surprise her. He has been trying to woo for a while .He starts again this time round saying niceties and smiling anxiously at her. She is at loss whether to go along with the fake smile or rudely snatch the mandazis. She decides to smile along, hurting her jaw instead, she can’t imagine the last time she smiled for anyone.
John is in a good mood today and he disappears for a few minutes behind the counter and comes back with a soda. It’s coca cola brand, he hands it to her smiling and says that she should consider it her treat and should not refuse. On a normal day she would not take it but today but was beyond normal so she takes it with so much gratitude that she forgets and smiles.
She retreats to her tiny room, glad that God had been at her door today and seen her woes. She stumbles upon something at the corner to her house, it’s a sack, she bends and opens it slightly She stumbles and falls to the ground in terror. It’s a body and the eyes staring at her are familiar eyes. She is in anguish as she starts to scream holding her dear bottle to her chest. A crowd slowly forms and starts to mummer in disbelief. Who would kill Rita? She was merely a child. The mother is a nurse and is always away on long shifts and Rita was always with a nanny.
Tina is affected because that dead body is her God daughter. She had stood on the altar holding her when she was just three months old, adorned in a smashing white dress she looked so magnificient.Has someone called the police, she asks in a murmur just then someone takes out a phone and is heard muttering something into it.
A hand holds her up and she looks blindly at the face, she sees its Jane and she goes for her, embracing her tightly. How Rita’s mother would react is totally a different idea and she blocks that from her head as she remains in the embrace a little longer. Jane holds her hand and together they walk towards her house.
She opens the door and enters followed by Jane who looks at her and shakes her head. Not at the fact that Tina looks horrible but at the situation of her house. She takes the soda from her hand, opens it and hands it back to her.”My friend you must eat”, she says as she moves to draw the curtains. She does this slowly as the wall has creaked and a force into the window would bring it down.
This is the simple life that they lead, poverty has become a thing so close to the skin that a sting is deemed normal. The sole purpose of the iron sheet being to prevent the daylight sun from scorching through  and to keep the house warm at night but at the prospect of rain all hell breaks loose because every drop would be felt by the cold floor.
The two friends look at each other and the warmth in their eyes is enough to make them smile amidst the bad times. They have always found comfort in each other and they both believe that the future is bound to be bright. A hope that a few in their exact situation would find difficult to have.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SPECIAL DEDICATION TO DAD

               I must confess growing up was tough under the umbrella of my dad. We called him Dad, but he was referred to as Mzee Nyakenyanya, the tough man. He is a disciplinarian by nature so you can imagine what paraphernalia he had for discipline. A bamboo stick hidden behind his bedroom door. My elder sister was brave and could try to wrestle when the lashes came down, but not me. I hated being caned and preferred to be the humble obedient girl. Sometimes I look back to how he shaped us and smile because without his strong principals we will not have made it to who we are.           He has four girls ...that meant molding each one of us to become unique and responsible at the same time. He had no worries about my big brother and the last born for after all they were men and were required to be strong and protective of their sisters. We loved to play, but we had to do it focused on the time. You see, time was what...
Read more

THE BED

Image
The bed was tiny at the end of the ward. A little blue slab firmly printed above the bed. It read No 4 and she wondered if it should have meant something. She was warm in that tiny bed. Two white sheets, a brown duvet and Maasai bed sheets with the hospital name printed on top. She loved  windows, but could not open this particular one. She could not withstand the cold air. She particularly missed the sun, it was three days indoors. Once in a while the curtain opened slightly and a familiar face peeped in. She smiled slightly amidst the pain and engaged in pep talk to while away the minutes. The nurses were a nosy bunch, always talking about something. They gossiped on everything. They talked of a man whose wife had AIDS, of the Somali woman whose labor was prolonged. They noisily cluttered to their stations once in a while, to fill syringes and write in charts. They would appear at her bedside with blood pressure kit and thermometer in hand. They would disappear several hours ...
Read more

Lifestyle Diseases in Teenagers

Image
   By Rosyline Gechemba N. It is ridiculous how teenagers are succumbing to lifestyle diseases in their hay years. Teenagers are supposed to be energetic, passionate, rowdy, intelligent and all those good qualities. However, some are just bored, sullen, tired and fed up with life that all they can do is watch TV all day. It is pretty sad to look at the statistics, to know that a teenager is going to die because he was too exhausted to exercise or live a healthy life. Causes of Lifestyle Diseases Type 2 diabetes,  cancer, heart diseases and obesity are some of the common lifestyle diseases that have emerged in recent years. These diseases are brought about by the lack of exercise, poor diet, lack of sleep and behavioral factors such as unsafe environment and stress and poor living conditions at home. Lifestyle diseases are preventable diseases and should not be the cause of worry in many countries. One would think that with the advancement in technology ...
Read more