18/10/2024
Girl, put your bra back on, we need to talk about how your grandma, your mama and aunties were women before we made them martyrs. Mkaaay(in Kamala Harris voice).
First of all,
Your grandma was a beautiful woman and not this beauty of the inside. Not this 'she has a beautiful heart', 'her soul is beautiful' s**t. I mean to say, your grandma's skin was black and glowing. Her hair was thick and healthy. She had baby hair/ edges that can silence a whole generation of women who can't survive without gel and wigs, I included.
Her lips were full, her breasts brought all the boys to her village, her legs were long, her toes straight because she wore no shoes. Yes girl, I know your grandma is an angel who can do no harm, but I also need you to know that your grandma's hips and round, soft, bubbly ass started clan wars that have never been resolved to date. Know this and know peace.
Mahiki who were robbed.
Kenya's history is full of theft. Infact, robbery with violence. Women were robbed violently and condemned to silence, for eternity. The white man came and robbed these women. The black man too robbed these women. They were not safe, everywhere they turned.
If you come from Morima especially, ask your grandma what happened to the bodies of women when the state of emergency was declared. Ask her what happened to the bodies of women on the night Kenya celebrated her independence. Ask her what happened to the bodies of young girls when they were transported in lorries from schools to eat an oath in 1969. If they keep quiet for long or start singing Christian songs, turn your head away, change topic and ask her about Gachagua's impeachment instead.
Mahiki who could love and be loved.
Yes, we grew up in the hands of sad, bitter, cold women, who stayed in relationships and with people who took more than they gave. Perhaps that is the reason we, the women of today, have turned into stone cold bandits, not wanting to love fully, always ready to run, scared of being broken, like our grandma's , Mama's and aunties were.
But their brokeness is only half the story.
These women raised and healed themselves somehow. They were fierce lovers. They drew maps on soil with their toes because of love. They were not afraid of giving their hearts out in the name of love. Some raised generational families whose foundation stand to date.
We think we are the ones who discovered or***ms just because we own battery powered rose flowers and sneaky links who impeach our cl****is from Sunday to Sunday. Huh! the entitlement! The women who went ahead of us fought for their or***ms too child. They married to have their wombs shifted, travelled past 33 villages to have their centre bolts inspected, they met at rivers, coffee plantations, abandoned colonial buildings... Cheated immensely...to have their hips realigned.Know you know why that one uncle does not look like everybody else in the family.
You may want to believe that your grandma has been a church girl, devoted to your grandpa all her life, but I also need you to know, that there is a man, in your village, who can end your grandpa's reign in a second. That man is the reason your grandma looks her best every Sunday or wherever their is an event in the village. That man, is the one who keeps on pestering you to buy him new suits and shoes. He wants to look good, not for your mama, but for his mamaaa. Know this and know peace.
Mahiki who settled.
These women had life in them. They had dreams. Visions. Audacity to take on the world. Some did. Some did not, each with their own reasons. When they slowed down, when they gave up, when they agreed to pick up whatever was remaining...it silenced them for decades. But life is changing, and with it, new opportunities to awaken our mother's fires. Nothing stops our mother's from entertaining the littles in them, even in their 60's and 70's...
We have the opportunity to heal ourselves by healing the women who went ahead us. I recently recorded my mum twirling around her house in her new dress. When she begun twirling and showing off her dress, I saw my children's grandmother, as she smiled, I saw my mother, as she laughed with her head back, I saw a little black girl who has always wanted to dance without a care in the world and then I saw me, a little black girl, a woman thou art loosed.
From one woman to another, the healing we look for will not be found in a podcast, in religious walls, in self help books and support groups. The healing we yearn for, is in the hands of women, who we refuse to see as women. Women whose humanity we have denied for so long. Women, who were once us, minus technology and zero f***s to give.The question is, can we see them?
