I am not perfect.
I have flaws, both deeply seated and superficial.
I also have nothing. Absolutely nothing to my name.
All I have , for now, is my PEN.
I am NOT a woman hating on other women as some wrongly allude, a sojourn on my wall will show you that I am someone against chauvinism just as strongly as I have a very low opinion on feminism if the two ideologies sets the two genders in a tag of constant war and bickering.
I have made posts referring to modern man as a weakling who cannot handle polygamy, I have written about what true manhood entails, my wall has a post questioning why men celebrated Chacha Wazir but would label a girl a whore if she was the one in his place.
My series on women was stirred by that viral post “advising” YOUNG women against dating broke men. The euphoria, the razzmatazz, the high fives that post got from young women flabbergasted me.
I am only out to use my pen to tell women of my generation that we are better than this. I am yet to see posts from feminists and their sympathizers telling our young women how to save, invest, start small businesses, how to cope with joblessness, how to be financially independent… All I see toxic shit.
Many would assume that I find it easy to opine thus because I’m in comfort and has never known struggle. And that these women as one old one wrote, are forced by circumstances… Here’s a little testimony.
I graduated in July 2014 , in December that year, I packed my bags and moved to Migori County. The whole of 2015, I had no job but I worked at a community radio where I got paid Sh5k a month, sometimes I’d get 3k when business was down.
All this while, I had been volunteering for the Nairobian, writing and sending articles that got published every other week and I never got a coin. It was passion and I knew it’d pay sooner or later. In 2016 March, after a rigorous interview led by now Kitui Senator Enoch Wambua who was then a managing Editor, I got hifood as Standard newspaper County correspondent in Migori.
Fast forward, in August last year, three weeks after the General elections, I again packed my bags and left Migori and the Standard.
I returned to Nairobi with no job, no money. Yes- no money. As a correspondent, I had no salary, I got paid according to how many stories I wrote in a month. Yes, that’s how correspondents survive, if you are lucky, you get a retainer. In a bad month, I’d get only 15k in my account, in a fair month, if I had features, I’d get 30k. But still , I had managed to save and just before I left SG, I withdrew my savings and bought my mama a piece of land.
So I returned, armed with nothing but a determination to start afresh and make it. My father lives here in Nairobi, but I purposed not to go home. Instead, I put up with a friend in Embakasi kwa Ndege, we have been friends from college and she’s never gotten a job. She sells Chips in the Estate and lives in a small mabati single room.
We often went to bed on empty stomachs, the repeat elections were near and because of tension, business was bad. My father is not rich, but we are not poor but not once did I call and ask for a dime.
Months later, I am making double what I earned as a correspondent in a good month. I identified my strength which is writing and yes, it is paying my bills.
That is my gospel to young women in their 20s like me, I know what it feels to have no job, no money, no food but dating or fucking men for money is not the panacea.
Build yourself, start from scratch, sell fruits, sell mtumba, work in a coffee shop, we are more than what is between our legs! Give good men a fair chance even if they are still striving to find a bearing. Our generation can be better!
My series WILL…MUST continue!
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