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PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.

I am convinced that most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and
honor our credit cards. We marry and dare to have children and call that growing
up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in
our bodies and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are
still innocent and shy as magnolias.
We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go
inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only
place we really do.   

Maya Angelou: A Letter to my Daughter.


On a cold sunny day, I sat in a shade watching three nine year olds move boisterously up and down, apparently in a celebratory mood. A mat lay on the grass, shabbily arranged flowers sat in a cut zesta tin, in the center of it all sat 2 miniature cakes and a few sweets, a matchstick stuck at the top of the bland cake. After the ‘serious’ preparations, I was invited to the birthday party for one of them, reluctantly I got up to please my little sister and looked on with amusement at the arrangement, the total expense as I calculated was only 2000 shillings. Of course to me these were peril shenanigans of which only pre-teens are capable because what kind of celebration was this, but as I sat there the excitement was contagious and I sang the birthday song, these kids were  genuinely happy and celebrating life although as I later found out, it was not actually anyone’s birthday. To them cake called for a need to celebrate and birthdays were happy memories, something they wished they could do each day of their lives. So they did not necessarily need a reason to summon their happiness.

As I sat there, my mind went back to when I was 8, a friend’s birthday at school where I was one of the people at “the high table”…oh the good old days! I remember looking so happy in that photo. The sheer simplicity of their joy was perhaps something we grow to forget, buried under expectations, disappointment, heartbreak, school assignments, pandemics and a struggle to be somewhere before the age of 25. As we grow older, it feels like we are constantly in a chase, running after one or too many things that we never seem to grasp. We tend to forget to seek the joy we once found in the easiest things like breakfast or running because we thought the moon was chasing us, way before we knew the mechanics of the earth. Our search for joy is attuned towards larger, more expensive or more tangible things. We love to hate young kids, with their sunny outlook on life, finding explosive joy in the smallest things, so yielding and open. We have forgotten what made us madly happy in nursery school, a favourite rhyme, a sweet, watching a favorite cartoon etc

The constant search for happiness, joy or fulfillment as we grow older gets more complicated, there are just so many damn rules! We can’t even afford to be happy with just being there. Often times there’s too much pressure, from everyone and ourselves but I don’t want to exist, I want to live, I want to grow and live for every experience: the good, the bad and the ugly. So I say to the universe: “Bring it on!”.

And trust me, I am not some delusional optimist, perhaps a tired pessimist…


In your search for happiness I pray that you may not disregard the smallest things, may you remember to be firstly happy with the sun through the curtains when you wake up, the air, the blue or gray sky and I hope everything else will be easier. Just Be Happy.💕

CAN WE TALK ABOUT VAGINAS?

I’ve always thought we don’t talk about vaginas enough, sure we talk a whole lot about the punani, pussy, or whatever your term of ‘endearment’ is, but never the good old vagina or vulva. I asked some of my friends and most said pussy comes easier than vagina because its what is used in pornography on the mainstream, and that vagina was too plain, boring and biological. I don’t particularly hate the synonyms to vagina but I don’t love them either. For most of them, I find that they reduce this glorious flower to only a sexual object, and are often intended to be profane, like when DT, said he “grabs women by the pussy” or when after rejecting a man he calls you a “stupid cunt”. It is so much more but by choosing only this sexual or indecent context, we focus on the wrong things and ignore the more important ones. Recently while reading an article on the internet, I was baffled at the number of slangs to mean vagina that exist, many were quite bizarre e.g. cha-cha, beaver, banana basket, pink panther, panty hamster and penis snuggie; and I couldn’t help but think why we must go through all this trouble instead of just saying va-gi-na although Lisa Brown was banned for saying it. But surely, we don’t call penises ‘dangly thingies’ or ‘sex stick’. It is important that we set a certain standard so that when we talk about ‘lady parts’ it carries the intended punch. Herbalists often allude the vagina to a saucepan “okusiliza entamu’, I just recently learnt from a friend that they are talking about some vaginal medicine but we haven’t really understood what for?.


When we don’t come out and expressly name our anatomy, then we have literally ignored it’s existence and can’t understand it. There is power in a name. Ignoring the factual name, we allow for certain myths and a lot of misconceptions to thrive instead of facts. Keeping the vagina out of the conversation, we ignore every other vital thing that comes with it: menstrual hygiene and poverty, fertility, healthy sexual habits, child birth and control, appearances, virginity policing and so many other things. We settle for the anonymous shy status but it is not serving us. We need people to be talking about vaginas more often and most importantly in the right way. People should be talking about the vagina in parliament, the workplace, the hospital, the school, the bosses, the person on the street.


Thousands of girls miss school for up to 7 days a week which equates to 84 days a year when menstruating because the people in power are not talking about the vagina. As of 2019, it was reported that nearly one in every four girls between 12 and 18 years, drop out of school once they begin menstruating. For those that attend school, girls’ absence rates triple from 7% to 28% and during these COVID times, the numbers only go up. Now in an education system like ours, that much time off school definitely affects your grade and we have lesser young girls being empowered through western education. By not talking about Vaginas at home and school, a young girl and boy in the depth of this country still believe menstruation is dirty, a curse and different rituals or sex can stop it, and we end up with a higher statistic on underage pregnancies. Menstrual hygiene and poverty are two huge reasons why we should be talking about the vagina. Our members in parliament are not on the floor discussing how to help those young girls, a few NGOs have tried to help but it isn’t enough. The government should be having vigorous solutions to this problem, I don’t see our budget catering for how to provide pads to the underprivileged and leaders only use the promise to fish votes.


Its not only about availability of safe sanitary towels and facilities. Period Poverty is defined as inadequate access to menstrual hygiene tools and education. The basic knowledge of how and why menstruation occurs is equally important for both males and females. I speak from a somewhat privileged position but the most menstrual education I got in school was how to wear a pad, how to dispose of the used pad and how to effectively make sure the males in my class didn’t know it existed and they were never part of the “talks” while the most my mom did was awkwardly ask whether they’d discussed it with us in boarding school. No one told me why this shit hurt so bad every month and what remedies to try or why everything irritated me and I wanted to snap people’s heads off during my period oh! and don’t get me started on the bloody ass cramps. This is only my experience and imagine what a girl in the deep villages goes through, how they have no answers and no one to comfortably ask about the monthly disturbance. When I asked some of my guy friends about the menstrual cycle, I wasn’t shocked to find that they knew near to nothing on the complexity of the issue, only knew that it happened every month and was “disgusting” to most but they try for their partners. Some even felt that girls exaggerate the whole PMS experience. The plight of males elsewhere is definitely worse. The guys I know, were merely denied the information but could easily access it, children elsewhere don’t even have the chance. This lack of information and excess of misinformation, creates a stigma that makes an already hard situation even harder. In places with the worst period poverty, girls using alternatives to sanitary pads cannot comfortably stay in school during their period, and that’s a problem because God forbid they spot their clothes around their classmates.


When, we don’t talk about the vagina, we ignore the pertinent issue of vaginal health which includes UTIs and STDs, fertility and female pleasure. We fail to avail young girls and women with information on how to keep their vaginas healthy and instead push them to use unhealthy vaginal soaps, creams that have bad side effects to make their vaginas smell like flowers. The Vagina was never meant to smell like cotton candy or deodorant. Deal with it! In extreme cases, girls even opt for surgeries like labiaplasty and many other outrageous solutions. I grew up thinking candida was the only and the worst UTI in existence but otherwise I didn’t think the vagina could “fall sick’’ and so, getting my first yeast infection was truly hilarious. Not even my friends had told me they got these things, because we talk about the vagina but never really about the parts that matter most. I felt like the world was ending, I was the only woman in the world to ever ruin her vagina. After scrolling on the internet for about an hour, I was sure I was gone. I “confirmed” that I had over 20 infections and so many hormonal issues even menopause. I was ready to try some very ridiculous remedies like rubbing yoghurt on my vagina, after all Gabrielle Union had done it. (thank God I did not though)
So there I was staring at my vagjay jay and asking it what had happened, wondering how I would tell my father I needed to see a doctor. The look on his face when I finally asked was priceless, he looked utterly defeated then he awkwardly asked me why but I suspect his first thought was pregnancy. After a doctor’s reassurance and a friend, I healed a lot faster, I wasn’t the only woman to ruin her lady parts, it was a common situation. Every female is entitled to at least two yeast infections in their life time. Now I know better and I hope young girls after me won’t be as oblivious and confused as I was…


When we talk about things vividly and in the right sense, we can understand them better and find solutions. Just like the rest of the human body has been studied and understood, down to the smallest atom, the vagina demands the same attention. The government needs to be held accountable for completely ignoring the issue of period poverty. When Stella Nyanzi, tried to do this back in 2016, she was brutally arrested for standing up for the thousands of unfortunate girls, showing that the government has no regard for menstrual issues.

People have constantly said “sex is a choice, menstruation is not”, and yes, I agree that sexual safety is very important but menstruation is an even more pressing issue. Our legislators and ministers need to be talking about the vagina then perhaps they’ll even understand the simple concept of consent.
Let’s please endeavor and try to donate to pad drives, as women let’s try to buy products from companies that give back to under privileged girls, volunteer with these NGOs and also learn to share information with our male colleagues unabashedly as well as appreciating just how privileged we are to be able to afford sanitary products every month.
For the ladies reading do share your menstruation and yeast infection stories so that we can laugh at the absurdities together. The Gentlemen, if you have any question, they will be gladly answered.
Sending you love.

VAGINA WHISPERER.

I first fell in love with the word vagina at an early stage in life, at a time where saying it out loud would have been a grave abomination; so, I whispered it, to myself and to the air every chance I got. My earliest memory of hearing the word was in my primary six, during a reproductive health science class. It was this sort of shy word, or shameful if you will. Being kids, we were a little uncomfortable about the teacher naming our private parts; parts we owned, out loudly. Every time he said Penis, the girls would give the boys scornful looks and a few giggles would be heard while the boys sat rigidly embarrassed as silent as stones. The same would happen when he said vagina; only the laughs were louder and the embarrassment was hotter. It was clear there was more shame and “vulgarity” attached to the word vagina than Penis, it was the unspoken place. Our Science teacher, I remember him only as Mr.Otim, sensing the tensions chose to tell us to stand up and repeat the two words over and over again until none of us was snickering, giggling or uncomfortable. So, there we were, a class of 11-year olds obediently, screaming; “vagina, penis, vagina, penis, vagina” hilarious, right? After a few dozen times, we finally had it, probably merely exhausted by the repetition, no one was laughing any more, we were saying the words like programmed robots. Eureka! down we sat and the class continued.
In the sea of students was me, on the second row from the front, I was always a lover of new words, English was my favorite subject, I kept hearing the word, feeling it roll off my tongue like a rice ball at lunch, “vagina”, I kept whispering, the word sounded so foreign yet so familiar. Because till that day, I don’t think I’d ever been conscious about my vagina or its existence, it was there I knew but never really noticed, it had no real identity, a name, it was only Susu or some other weird term. I was enchanted by the word, I wished I’d discovered the word. In simple terms I was possessed by the word vagina. After that science lesson though, I never got a chance to confidently use the word till later on in life. In primary of course, saying the right name for your private parts or basically just talking about them was vulgar and would attract some sort of punishment because how dare you correctly name your body organs? So basically, I think I got out of primary without ever saying the word again. Starting secondary school at a strict catholic mixed school did not offer much opportunity either, it was still a vulgar term, vagina. Although by starting my period, my vagina had now taken on a firmer presence, it was THERE, kicking my ass every month. So I reserved my love for vagina a little longer, though I’d often say it in small gatherings with fellow girls yet what I really wanted to do was scream the word, put everyone in a line, arms akimbo and make them say the word, feel the word, until they all fell in love just like I had. I didn’t understand what it was that kept compelling me to just defy the silence and say the word but it was pressing really hard.
Then the universe decided to set me on what I think was the right course in life at the moment, going to an only girls’ school, I don’t think I’d ever been around that many vagina owners all my life, there was one at every turn, and I was ecstatic to be in a place so full of girls of all kinds, a place with rules for us. It felt like I’d gone to Venus (you know they keep saying it is the planet for women, probably because it starts with V like vagina) this was my Venus, my own little bubble, I could finally be, breathe and live like a girl, with no edit. For the first time, I was extremely comfortable in my femininity, we talked about periods, it was sort of sacred when our periods synced with a friend’s. I was free. I didn’t have to hide my cramps, I didn’t have to sit in a class surrounded by boys unaware and other girls hiding too. To bite my lip, dig my nails into my wrists and sometimes break pencils to stop myself from crying. In mixed school I found, though unspoken, a certain stigma for menstruation, we didn’t talk about it much, its like it happened but it didn’t; almost like a conspiracy theory. But in an all girls school, talk about our bodies thrived, we shared our horrible period stories and remedies we’d tried and somehow, that made them better. It made the pain a little bearable, because we weren’t hiding it, it was ours and we unanimously agreed periods were horrible and loudly wished them on the opposite sex.
Funnily, although, I was the greatest vagina advocate, I’d never seen a live one except in the black and white biological drawings. I’d never looked at mine or someone else’s, in fact I only remembered I had one every month, when I was cramping and it felt like it was tearing. It was to me like, Peter Pan’s wonderland, wonderfully described but I’d never been. I was a hypocrite. Back then no one had told me to look down there and I had not read any books to that effect either. So, even if I talked about it, I was kind of scared to look, it didn’t seem right, I didn’t know what to expect and it felt obscene to even think of spreading my legs and looking.
Now that am a little older, I’ve read some great books by great women and gotten at least one infection, I can say I understand my love for my anatomy a little better and the great importance of looking every once in a while. Would you know your face was peeling or that you had a rush if you didn’t look in the mirror? We notice the difference on our faces almost as immediately as they start because our faces are literally always in the mirror or any reflective surface or our friends would tell us. But our most intimate parts go through changes too and we never even notice, a change in discharge or a little reddening on the labia to signal a growing infection, but we won’t know till its too late because we don’t look often enough or at all. Every girl must at least every week or in extreme a month, take a mirror, spread your legs and take a long hard look at your vulva, look at it seriously, at first of course with confusion, then concern on whether its normal and then understanding and compassion. Look at it for medical reasons, to understand it but most importantly because its yours and it is a very vital part, that needs a lot of love and care.
Side note; I didn’t know, what I confidently referred to as a vagina most of my time growing up was actually called a vulva till I read Vagina Re-education by Lynn Enright. So, on top of seeing what’s down there, take time and read a little on the subject of female bodies. Read other women’s stories, some you’ll find enraging, hilarious, freeing but mostly you’ll find them relatable because the ignorance of women about their own bodies is universal and quite frankly sad. Like faces, all vulvas look different, in color, size and all so while you look or reeducate yourself, don’t compare or fret about your labia being longer, shorter or your vulva looking slightly different from the mainstream portrayal. It is your own vulva, sculpted specifically for you so love it. Let’s carry on the knowledge so that our daughters will enter a more informed and lead better vagina lives.


Spread and Look Ladies!

If you know me, now you understand why I use the word alot😂 if you don’t know me, well now you know I love to say Vagina and why!