DIARY OF A MIDDLE-AGED BRIDE - MS. FROGGIE

Dear Diary, 

It is me again. I promise to write at least once a week but since you and I are still getting to know each other...this week, I will write twice. 

Like I shared previously, I have kissed many frogs to get to my Prince Charming in my journey to marriage in my early 40s.. No...scratch that! I was the Frogress or Ms. Froggie (What is a girl frog called?) other Prince Charmings kissed to get to their Princesses. I mean this kindly to myself as I know the root cause of my issues over the years as I tried to find my way through the dating maze. Sometimes...it was just Frogs kissing (Mr. Frog and myself) and I thank God none of those relationships ever made a match cos that's the recipe divorces are made from. 

My 20s were eventful and made up of the kind of stories you would like to share with your grandchild but really couldn't because you would be setting a very bad example and sometimes causing them to blush in embarrassment!   This era was made up of stories that you can only begin with the title "HOW NOT TO....". I will be the first to admit that I was a very lost young woman. Whilst my best friend was getting married, having a baby and building a family, I was busy building up the damage that I would spend my early 30s undoing. 

I was lost and I didn't even know it (Ok..I had an inkling but could still not fully comprehend the lostness till later in life). For starters, my entry into my early 20s was rather tough. I had gotten raped just as I was finishing high school.  This person was a stranger and it happened on my way home from school shopping as it was almost the beginning of the 2nd term in 4th form. This was my first time to even see a man naked as I had not even had a boyfriend till then. Well...apart from those guys who would insist on "pushing" a girl to or from the bus stop and as a result label themselves your boyfriend! Any self esteem I had built until then (it wasn't much) was eroded by that incident and am not quite sure how I got through my 4th form exams and managed to pass. Enough about that...and whilst I cannot go into details, all I can say is that I was one scared teenage girl BEFORE that, and I was a horribly, terrified young woman AFTER that. I am not ashamed or fazed about sharing this fact. You see..it is not me who should be ashamed. It is the damn rapist! It took me a couple of years to realize this and I walked into my 20s carrying this huge, heavy, ugly sack of rape baggage that I had no clue how to deal with. Counselling wasn't a popular intervention back then though my parents did take me for a few sessions before I bailed out. I could not deal with talking about it and I blamed myself (not that I had done anything wrong but many rape victims do go through misdirected blame) so severely that it was crippling.  I also refused to go back after 3 months for a HIV Test. The initial tests were negative. It was too much for me to deal with the possibility of being positive. I will share a different story on the drama around this issue and the outcome of the test when I finally did it.  Our family was also dealing with a lot of change at this point in time and everyone did their best to keep their head high. For a while there, studying law kept me busy and occupied but I later on had to drop out of school as well due to the fees. Tough times all round. This was around the end of 1998. I spent the next 2 years wallowing in depression and trying to figure out a way out of feeling that life was passing me by. 

My younger sister and I had to do a lot of farm work during this period of time (allow me to call it the SHAMBA BOY ERA). We had moved from Buruburu to our current home in Karura. Though we grew up in the City, my mum had always been an avid farmer. Every Saturday morning was reserved for a visit to our 7 acre farm in Limuru. On our way back, we would always drop by to see my grandparents in Karura. My mum also kept about 300-600 chicken in our backyard in Buru, rabbits, 2 turkeys, 2 ducks and a dog. It was a  true Shamba la Wanyama in the City and our neighbours couldn't wait for the day we moved out and stopped stinking up the city air with manure!!! So farming has always been a part of our life but this intensified when we moved to Karura. For a while there, my parents could not afford a Shamba Boy so we had to step up and do the necessary. It was hard on us semi-city girls. I remember always telling myself "I am not what I do". Most times it worked...but there were days when it didn't. One of those days when I had to really convince myself about this fact was when I had to go get a sack of dairy meal from the shopping centre using a wheelbarrow. Now this would have been ok if we didn't live about 2kms away from the said shopping centre. Now....pushing a wheelbarrow with a 70kg sack in it might not be too difficult for a man but for a young lady...it was quite something. Mind you...people were not used to seeing girls pushing wheelbarrows in the area but we had no choice since we had no big brother to help. So on this particular day, I had done my shamba boy duties, picked up the dairy meal and was just a few metres from our home when I saw a car approaching. It's a bit of a narrow stretch so I started to panic a little as I needed to move faster to get to the nearest gate where I could make room for the car. Sadly, the car moved faster than I could and we got into a situation where I had to squeeze into the fence to let the car pass. By this time...I was sweating profusely and just hoping that the guy can pass quickly. As the car edged closer....I realised it was a guy in the neighbourhood that I had a big crush on! This just heightened my anxiety and lo and behold...the wheelbarrow keeled over and the dairy meal fell into the middle of the road. Now there was NO WAY that I would manage to pick it up on my own. So my crush had to get out of the car and help me put it back onto the wheelbarrow...THEN help me navigate tightly into the fence, past his car so that I didn't block his way again. At least he was a gentleman. There was lots of heaving, pushing and sweating (on my part mostly), not to mention that I wasn't exactly dressed to impress (not unless the intention was to impress the local shopkeeper or the Shamba boys also picking dairy meal). This particular day always stands out for me when I recall those days as it was the epitome my mantra.."I am not what I do" basically meaning, our worth is not defined by what we do. Our humanity..our being is centred on much more! I had to truly believe that there were better days and an opportunity to get a boyfriend somewhere out there who wouldn't mind my Shamba boy status. There had to more of me and for me ahead!

Soon thereafter, my dad suggested that I become his "Secretary cum bookkeeper" as the current one was leaving and he did not see the need to employ someone else if I could do the job. I jumped at this suggestion cos it meant that the Shamba boy Era could come to an end (Yipeeee). I was happy to leave the house on a day to day basis plus I did enjoy the job. My dad owned a garage in Industrial Area which was quite busy so I got to interact with a lot of different people and learn a thing or two about cars. This is where I met my first boyfriend. Aside from having crushes, I had not had any relationship by this point as I was still very naive and I had my rape baggage to boot. I did not trust men at all but somehow, this particular guy dazzled me. You see..he had just come back from the US and had one of those twengs mixed with a bit of a Kikuyu accent. He was almost 10 years older than I was, really charming, had established a good business and basically had it all together. He was one of my dad's clients (may dad never read this!) and ended up becoming an MP and Cabinet Minister later in life. He would come in to see my dad and we would exchange winks and smiles behind my dad's back. If only he knew!!  I must say, he is still very charming to date. Our relationship didn't last too long (3 months or so) as I was soon whisked away to Kericho for a while to help out my sister who had just had a baby. With no mobile phones those days, we lost touch and that was that. Waaaaaiiiiit.....Does this mean that my sister robbed me of the opportunity to become a Cabinet Minister's wife? hahaha...who knows! Years later when I bumped into him, he light-heartedly accused me of running away from him in the guise of helping my sister out. After this brief relationship, it took a while for me to get into a relationship again and when I did...it was a whirlwind romance! That's a story for next week.

I forged forward into the rest of my 20s optimist about the future but with no thought of marriage in mind. It was as if it was not even a possibility at this point and a very far-fetched thought. My biggest struggle with regards to the rape was preserving my virginity, only for it to be stolen from me in such a brutal way. It made me rather cynical  about life. These were hard times but through God's grace...I did overcome this at some point but not without some bit of damage along the way but I clearly survived to tell the story!

Sincerely, 

The middle-aged Bride aka no longer Ms. Froggie 


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Just catching up on the series now? See previous posts below

Just catching up with the Series now? See previous posts below.

The Beginning