the one in silole.

coming back to myself + some thank you notes.

silole.

every night, at about 7:30 pm, sido and ngartia used to let me know when the moon had dropped past all the trees enough for us to all ogle at it. and every night that gorgeous celestial body almost rose tides in my skin. all three of us would sit there noiselessly acknowledging that we are all lone fragments of the universe, just like the moon, and the only force that lodges us into each other is love. it will always be and has always been love.

on the way to silole for a writing residency, i opened my emails and i found my CT scans results. i couldn’t bring myself to open it. the day before, i had gone to the hospital for a chest and abdomen CT scan. they thought i had, well, the big c. and this was my like 50th test. i walked in to the radiology unit with mbari, thinking i’ll be done almost instantly and catch my writers’ lunch in the mid-afternoon. ended up leaving at 7 pm and going straight home to pack for silole. so now i hadn’t even processed the procedure and i already had my results.

we got to silole and eventually by midnight, i was drunk off a couple of gin and tonics, and the feeling of a childhood hero telling me my work is phenomenal (using a lot of curse words i had to swipe out while telling Mama Kags this story). i finally get the courage to click the email. but not before i remember talking to a friend a few days before, my eyes leaking like a faucet, telling him that i think i can feel the masses in my chest. saying that i feel so far from Allah and like i’m failing all His tests. wondering why He wants to take me now. just when i have broken through the surface of the water, swallowed that greedy gulp of air, decided i - in fact - want to live.

thank you, goo. for your gentleness. for listening to my rambles that made less sense than any of trump’s ideologies. for making me laugh. for praying for me while breaking your fast. for letting me break open in front of you and not flinching at the debris i became.

and then i remembered sitting across shu, fighting tears, and him reminding me of Allah’s mercy and that you’re never too far from a Being that is closer to you than your jugular vein. you draw close to Him by the length of a hand, He will draw close to you by the length of an arm. you draw close to Him by the length of an arm, He will draw close to you by the length of a fathom. you walk to Him, He runs to you.

thank you, shu. thank you for singing arabic songs in the car home. thank you for the chicken salad and lemonade and lemon tea, time and time again. thank you for stopping time so i could grieve. thank you for finding my soul in every lifetime. min’ayooni, habibi, min’ayooni.

man, being unwell is so fucking stagnating. it’s being stuck in your humongous dreams, your overwhelming desires, the secrets you haven’t told anyone cause you have been waiting for someone to tell, the thoughts you have waited to tell an audience, an audience that never came, the mistakes you have been hiding, the words that scratch your throat every time you have tried to speak them. it’s just you, this messy puddle and the unforgiving passage of time.

but the CT scans say you have more life to live. that death was at the door. but death forgot how to knock. it peeked through the window and saw you making tea, smiled, tucked its scythe in its hood and left. later: you, ngartia, sido and richie go down to the river. and the river reminds you that you flow just as fiercely. without permission. and sometimes there will be rapids and overflowing banks. but you will always swim home. you are reminded that you will always feed and be fed by those you come from and those that will come from you. somehow, this makes you think of field marshall and all the women who waded through the water so we could dive into it.

thank you, field marshall muthoni. thank you for paving ways for us to be the women we are now. thank you for holding my feeble hands and feeding them with power that was unfathomable to a 24 year old Kagichu, thank you for blessing my hands. and by extrapolation, my work, my creativity, my patients, my lovers, my friends, my sisters, my everything. in another life, we are having muratina and there’s a front page obituary. “ndukanahotwo” - rest in peace.

this world is terrible but sometimes there’s a trampoline in silole. and it’s a little less terrifying. and you jump on it and feel the weight of the world, taxes, slow careers and a broken and bruised heart fall from off your shoulders. and yes, you’re jumping on the trampoline at 27. man, twenty-seven : an age that young Kags didn’t think you’d reach but she’s there jumping with you and you hold both her hands, tell her that she can breathe now. and she does a backflip. now you have to tell her you’re not that flexible anymore, physically. but you tell her that mentally, you can turn and twist and bend at whatever Universe throws at you. the world is terrible but 7-year-old you is at your window glimpsing in. go play with her, tell her that she is not unloved. the excel sheets and teams notifications can wait. and when she’s tuckered out, put her gently in your lap, pick a book from the library and read to her.

i don’t think i ever got lonely in silole. always find someone on the porch to talk to, even in the coldest of nights. they’d offer me a pall mall cigarette. and tell me how their football team is losing horrendously. and as a new scuderia ferrari fan i am all too familiar with the feeling. someone at the table would be eating. i’d trade stories with neo while on midnight snack breaks (snack for them, jaba juice for me) and marvel at the never changing nonsense of boys. despite the age. and the heartbroken girls. of all ages. ngatunyi would be playing the most beautiful playlist you’ve ever heard. (and he’d sneak in tell you mother by eric wainaina, cause it’s my favourite). one of my favourite moments, on the porch, was when i played stromae’s multitude film setlist and eric wainaina and mbogua got so into mon amour that they started drumming on the table and dissecting the beats. throwing around terminologies i’d never encountered before. completely engrossed in the essence of the art.

ah but that silent - almost unseen - devotion to each other. from each of us to each of us. hugging a homie here because grief has overwhelmed them. wrapped in heavy blankets, talking to each other about quiet struggles before the sun brings back with it our inhibitions. breaking. mending. the dogs and cats terrorizing each other. begging for rubs and food like we didn’t see them just get food a minute ago. proceeding to chase baboons. shout out to binti, njahe (jaja), lily, kali-deucalion (kd). and akira, yumeko, echo and pakastan. oh man, that one time when binti (the matriarch, actual owner of the house and affectionate to almost no one) put her head on my lap, i knew i was pure of heart and all my past lives were accounted for.

there were so many wonderful glimmers, i almost forgot that the residency was a writing residency. it was such a beautiful writing room. i am completely, deliriously honored to have worked with sido, richie, ngartia and keith. beautiful minds with equally beautiful auras. please buy your tickets when we finish cooking up what took us to silole. also, i have to put this disclaimer that on the writers’ intro video, i move like a stiff blob. can’t be talented at everything, no? but i recover in the voice-over. hire me for your podcasts or whatever. na mnunue tickets, jamani.

thank you, ngartia for pushing me to do things i never think i could do. for soft poems and soft hugs. for rapping to k’naan in our in-betweens. thank you, sido, for taking me for runs and being my favourite part of the smoke breaks. thank you, richie for the jokes, tidbits and inspiring me to do even half of what you have done with your art. allahumma barik.

thank you, eric and sheba for opening your house to us. for unknowingly giving a space that you thought was for writing but metamorphosized into an expanse for healing. also, thank you for making selina, baby dont go, fly away together, impossible and of course, tell your mother. and, thank you seben and neo for late night talks about unrequited love and teenage angst.

thank you vio. for feeding me at a point where i had forgotten to take care of myself for a month or so. thank you for the egg sandwiches. thank you for switching the bacon out of mine. thank you for the laughs we squeezed in the kitchen. thank you for your tenderness.

also, a silly little thing that having to deal with your fleeting existence teaches you is learning that you really don’t have time. you need to stand still and listen to the wind, you need to create playfully without waiting for an audience, you need to explore without seeking magnificence. and, by God, you need to love people before you have to mourn them. eat with your loved one, dust off that book and read it, turn your face to the sun, chase the rhythm, dance. we dream of a longer life, but this is it. this is all we have. devour it. greedily. ravenously.

listen, death will come. but we will run, we will crawl, we will refuse to drown, we will breathe. we will walk across the national park. we will lock each other in embrace. we will sit at a bonfire made by Festus at the cabin above the hyena caves. and make a history play there. we will (finally) get stung by a bee. we will learn poker and donkey. we will play volleyball at 5pm each day. with Paul, the other Paul, Kevo and Dan. even Alex and his homie will walk over from Rolf’s Place. Cherogoi will cycle in midgame, daily, from somewhere and join the losing team. and no one cares if you play or just watch. because the point is community. you can let go here. and trust that Gatwiri and Liz will have watermelon and cake waiting right after.

and then we will go and look at some art at the back and then watch mbogua thread music from nothingness. we will sing, we will dance, we will live, we will live. we will. and that can be the whole poem. that can be the whole point. remember when orpheus played a song on his lyre so heartbreakingly beautiful that even hades was lead to compassion. darling, let your life be a song that moves even the god of death.

i will leave you within the words of mary oliver : “sometimes i really believe it, that i am going to save my life a little”.

drink some water, change your sheets, eat a fruit and read a poem.

here’s one :

with all my love,

ami.

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sorry for the hold up. i was going through a cancer scare for some months. but alhamdulillah, i’m good now. well, ish. still not completely out of the woods. but that’s a story for another substack. hopefully, it won’t take me 6 months to write it and please make dua if you can.

also, feel the need to mention that they are people i haven’t thanked in this piece that were/are fundamental to me and have been there for me soooo much, the thank you notes are coming, my habibis and habibtis.

if you wanna buy Kags a cup of coffee, here’s her MPESA number - 0723244645 and her Paypal - vickikagichu@gmail.com