Kwani How Hard Can It Be?

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I am my mother’s daughter. She is a strong believer that nothing is really hard: you can do anything you set your mind to. Normally this truism makes me gnash my teeth especially when it’s meant to impart some deeply inspirational motivation (you know like in interviews after someone has just won a grammy/oscar/olympic gold?) However, my mum’s version of believing you can do it is more along the lines of: “Kwani how hard can it be?”…plus it’s usually better/cheaper for you. 

• Chips and chicken from Jeevanjee Gardens? “We are almost home (we are so hungry we might as well be in Mombasa), where we can make our own (tastier) chips, with fresh Elianto, not that recycled stuff that’s like the mythical oil in the bible that never runs out.”
• School dress from School Outfitters (the premier emporium for all your school uniform needs)? “I can quickly run up something custom-made on my trusty Singer machine that will include built in expansion seams to allow for growth spurts. No store can guarantee this.”
• School sweater from School Outfitters? “I will knit something warmer than anything the store can offer.” (for Ksh. 30 she can outfit all her kids in wondrous knits made from the best Merino wool, and save Ksh 300 in the process).
• Speedo swimsuit from School Outfitters? “I can sew you something very similar!” and when you give her your best doubting Thomas look, she adds, “I will even do some cross-back straps,”…and yes, she finds the right cotton-lycra blend on Biashara Street to make said masterpiece. I have the foresight to forego the cross-back straps and take the simple traditional straps.*
• Chicken tikka masala from Minar (they used to have a yummy Sunday buffet in their heyday)? “We can make this at home. I have the cookbook.” 

I’m sure you get the gist of things in our household. It was fun making stuff, yes, but when you are a teenager, you do not really care how much stuff costs, you just care that you are different. Being the lastborn, I was lucky. I was saved by my mother’s procrastination which was directly proportional to our ages (plus she quit her job as a civil servant around Std 7 and being a self-employed entrepreneur, there wasn’t much time to knit). As we got older, I think she had nothing more to prove…she was all stitched, baked and knitted out. Her last knitting project (pearly white cardigan circa 1988) was abandoned. To give her credit, she did try to revisit the project in ’99 or ‘00 or thereabouts but the shop where she had bought the wool went out of business before she could buy more wool to knit the sleeves.   I got my first School Outfitters pullover when I was in my last year of primary school.  Now, (to my teen-self’s horror) I am my mother:

• IKEA Curtains? I have hand sewn curtains (they were made of this rich, satiny, chocolate brown fabric) that Martha Stewart would think beautiful.
•  Baskin-Robbins/Häagen-Dazs super premium ice cream? That’s why the ice-cream maker was on sale. If you are going to end up in a calorific stupor, at least let the calories be real.
• Strawberry shortcake? So what if I don’t really care for cake? Whipping cream by hand is therapeutic, and some could consider it a form of cardio…plus, there’s always someone who’s dying to eat cake. If you bake it they will come.
• Trim split ends? Haircut? Um, all you need is two mirrors and highly developed depth perception and hand-eye coordination.  
• Recently after tallying the cost of a lifetime’s worth of alcohol consumption, I have begun to actively search for beer and gin recipes (yeah, you laugh, but if my beer is like the pistachio ice cream from last month I could be onto a moneymaker!).  

This “Kwani how hard can it be” attitude has plagued me as I have skulked around the world of blogs. I have finally got tired of reading other people’s posts that I should have been writing, and taken the plunge. I wish someone had told me how hard it is to actually get started. But now that I have after numerous failed tries got myself a domain name (I knew I should have started blogging earlier- I had some deadly names thought up but they were already taken!), set up the KBW links, and typed this first entry, I’m slowly starting to see it isn’t easy.  Of course, that quiet voice in my head (that never really shuts up) is already whispering “yeah, it’s not easy, but it’s not th-a-at hard!” I have renewed respect for the blogs I love, which I’ll get round to adding to my blogroll once I nose around WordPress a bit more and figure it out.  For now though I think I will be safest (as will anyone reading this) in the shallow-end of the blog pool getting acclimated. Like a novice swimmer, let me shut my eyes, kick furiously, and swim a few feet at a time clutching for dear life to a floatation device. Kwani how hard can it be? 

* I have only ever met one other person whose mother made their swimsuits. She didn’t blink at the fact that I had hand-made (such a nice term compared to home made) swimsuits. It was the fact that someone else’s mother was actually capable of the same exact exploits…maybe they even tussled over the same bolt of Cotton-Lycra blend at Karamshi Ltd

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