Sophie Ngugi - A Child of the universe

“A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so.” ― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart In the village everyone knew everyone within several kilometers radius. Everyone  was into everyone's business.  Read the full post on  my new blog

  “Motherhood is the greatest thing and the hardest thing”. Ricki Lake It was a beautiful Sunday morning. Sundays mornings are usually beautiful. Serene. It is like the weather knows it is a Sunday and even if it rains, the day has a sunny demeanor. May be because there is less traffic in Nairobi. Less pollution unless you neighbor some Church with blaring noise.   I have never understood why they do this. The megaphones outside the Church preaching to everyone who is not interested in the preaching. Anyway, as usual, I had plans to start the day with Sunday Mass, but his plans…well he had different plans. I ended up spending part of the Sunday Mass time outside the Church when my terrific two son decided there was more interesting stuff outside.   Despite the accommodating section for lactating mothers and young babies in the Church, he was uncooperative. “Enough is enough.”   He said …through tantrums. He wanted to play, not pray. Sometimes, most ...

Dear son, You are now a Terrific Two! A whole two years of existence. You came into my life and changed my world. The first fruit of my womb. Turned it in more ways than I can imagine. It is said life begins at 40, so what a joy to start a new life at 40! From the first minute you came into the world, you silently whispered “we are in this together”. While I could not hold you for some time, I said a prayer “Lord I need to bring up this boy”. I don’t know if I fell in love or grew in love, long before I saw you. Knowing you were forming in a world I could not see, yet the growing bump was evidence that there is a life coming up shortly! The bump did not grow fast enough for me to get…you know those social privileges of not queuing … I am not complaining. We walked, we shopped, we planned, we prayed, we played. Then you came, and life has never been the same again. You were an energetic boy from the word go. You fought the nurses who tried to put some sharp needle in ...

“Each one of us can make a difference. Together we make change”. Barbara Mikulski There are times you just bump into something (or someone) and know it was meant to be. I bumped into social work and in particular into gender and development work. There, I found my passion and my mission and my professional career path. Sometimes career path chooses you, but that is a story for another day. Photo by Victoriano Izquierdo on Unsplash One day I will document my experiences in social work, the good, the exciting, the scary, the bad, the ugly, but more so what keeps me at it. I have not imagined my life away from social work. There is something about social work that runs deep and builds me as a human being. Whether engaged in development or humanitarian kind of work, social work can never leave one the same. It challenges one to a higher level of appreciating humanity and retrospection on what life is about. When doing social work you interact with different kinds of people and l...

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy”. Nhat Hanh  She smiled. I looked up and smiled. We both smiled. We both knew that this was not just a coincidence but a meaningful smile.  “You could smile more often” I had told her several months ago. I met this young woman in a guest house while travelling in a field site in Uganda. She works in the guest house and I had noted how she was acting and wondered if she knew life is too short to live with a sad face. She was far from polite but something about her pulled me towards her. I thought of her as young woman struggling with life’s challenges and wondering when the day would end, starting another day and the drudgery continued. One day after telling me in a “do-not-disturb-me” tone that what I needed was not available, I called her aside and started chit chatting with her. I reminded her that she was in the hospitality industry that required that one be hospit...

“She must be the one to blame!” That is a common judgment that is used on women and girls, over and over again. the narrative seeks to establish how the victim contributed to what happened to her. In the recent past there has been several incidents of reported rape cases in Kenya involving high profile individuals or highly publicized incidents. Some are in the process of legal proceedings so I will not get into details. With social media such incidents are highly publicized and the ‘online experts’ immediately start giving ‘analytical input’ into the incidents. In one case, there was an immediate reaction on doubting if this was true and even how this was a “date gone wrong”. That caught my interest, a date is equal to saying yes to sex? In Kenya it is very hard to hear about date rapes. This is not because that does not happen but because there is an assumption that when you say yes to one thing, then it is a yes to everything else. If you did not intent to have sex, do not go o...

Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws. Barbara Kingsolver It has been a while since I blogged. A lot has changed over the last two or so years. As I type this, I am feeling like I am just taking a breath and exhaling, as I am middle-way in my few days of annual leave. The past year, has been an interesting period. Pregnancy and childbirth impact on one’s life. I recall that day, over a year ago when my older sister Susan told said “you are mother!” I looked at her and the little human being who was already throwing hands around, looked around at the different sisters (sisters by blood and others acquired), the medical staff around and …I had no reaction. There was no reaction. I did not know how to react, it was overwhelming, so I whispered “this is the day the Lord has made, thank you.” The days sort of rolled by and there were interesting and challenging moments. I have learnt several lessons: There is a space for patience in each one of us : the vi...

Why affirmative action? (Gosh its 2016 but we still ask). So why gender affirmative action? That has been the debate in Kenya more so in the last three days with all sorts of “social media” experts. I had vowed not to engage on the 2/3 gender rule debate in Kenya because some of ignorant comments are just too much for a sane mind. When you have been working on these issues for many years sometimes it is hard to just get why people don’t get it. And it is tiring. I will not go to parliament let me go to the village. I will just give this example. Some years back together with Hon Adelina Mwau and Nzungi we were working on some water project that would bring the much needed water closer to the people. Note: In our culture who fetches water? Who suffers when there is no water? We were working with the project in that community in consultation with the leaders. (By leaders I mean the current leaders take precedence – chief, village elders, etc etc – read male). We made it clear ...

As we ‘jumped’ the year and bid goodbye to 2015, I kept thinking, so what is new? Yes, we are crossing to 2016, but so what, what is NEW? Or have I become a pessimist? I started seeing ‘new year’ messages as early as 20th day of December 2015. I wondered if people are more optimists or taking much for granted, I mean some people died at 11.59pm on Dec 31.  I then started wondering why Christmas messages have to be tied with New Year; “Merry Christmas and a happy New year”.  May be it is the optimism that one will see a new year, and the anticipation. 12 months is a long period, and hence the much hullabaloo about a new year more than a new day or a new month. I saw comments on people getting quite annoyed at ‘happy new month’ comments…may be we may as well stick with New Year! At least a year is an assurance that you will have (or celebrate) a birthday, even those born on February 29. By the way how do you count your birthday when there is no leap year? A new year is a time ...

        The universe is alert and abundant – Sophie Ngugi The law or reproduction and creation dictates that something produces more of the same, a human being produces another human being while a bird creates another bird, a lit candle lights other candles and multiply the light. We apply this concept everywhere in different ways. Positivity breeds more positivity in life and vice versa. Somehow many of us recognize this as ‘common knowledge’.  We tell each other either to console or encourage about being positive. Some will call it hope, having hope for better or that having faith that all will work for better. However, this is not easy and often than not we allow for the pessimism, nega t ivity to rule over and shadow our desires and dreams. Last week I felt inspired to work on my positivity in a more proactive ways in what I called “40 days of positive affirmations”.  I had experienced some moments of self-doubt over the weekend and while dri...

“If the only prayer you said was thank you that would be enough.” ― Meister Eckhart Today is exactly a year since I became immobilized and started a journey to recovery. The journey started in Yei South Sudan where I was working then as shared in previous post . By the time I arrived in Nairobi I was so exhausted that all I wanted was to go to my house and sleep. However, my friend encouraged me to go to hospital immediately and be sure that the first aid I had received was okay. My brother Jose, my sister in law Patricia and niece Bakhita had come to pick me from the airport. We proceeded to Agha Kan University hospital emergency. On arrival and giving the brief history about what had transpired I could see the skeptical look on the faces of the medics “this was done in South Sudan? Okay let us do another X-ray”. After X-Rays the attending doctor could not hide his surprise. “Well it seems they have done a pretty good job of reduction”. My non-medical definition of reduction was t...

“ God will make a way, where there seems to be no way; He works in ways we cannot see ; He will make a way for me ” Song by Don Moen The probability theory is one that we learnt in school and apply every day. Sometimes the odds are against you. You reason out using logic and it seems there will not be a way out. Other times small actions make a big difference and we only realize so when looking back. When I woke up sluggishly and only warmed the water instead of boiling it was not a thought out action. As I shared in the last post I slid and fell on water. Sometimes wonder, what would have happened if the water was boiling hot.  And I was in that pool of water, scalding? That did not happen, and I believe in Godly interventions, and that was one of them. As I sat in the car outside the hospital in pain and wondering on the next step I was thinking about home and my family. I was not sure how or what to tell them. At that moment I was more worried about how they wo...

“Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly." Neil Gaiman “The day I shall never forget” was a common title for essays in primary school. Usually this would entail some fictional story about some great holiday that one had or some major scary occurrence. I wonder why I never ventured to writing fictional novels! By the time I wrote all those great compositions and scored high marks in English (I am not just doing the “when I was in school” this is real…ask my teachers) I had never experienced really momentous days. Usually it was fictional and a creative mind I did have! Since I enjoyed reading novels at an early age, I could write many fictional stories and enjoy the moment of being in that story. As years go by, real life experiences become more momentum and there are many more days “I shall never forget.” Today I woke up thinking about of a real life occurrence that happened about one year ago. It was a Thursday morning ...