the writing nib

Category: nib’s things

  • Chasing Happiness

    A true Jonas Brothers fan must’ve felt something from reading that title.

    But, sorry, this isn’t about the Jonas Brothers.

    I’ve been trying to read two books for months now; Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah and Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah. The former is an autobiographical book on Trevor Noah’s childhood. Now if you don’t know who Trevor Noah is please look him up, he’s very very smart! The latter is a fictional book by Ishmael Beah about a community recovering from war. He also wrote (and lived) A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, which was a book about his time as a child soldier during the Sierra Leone Civil War.

    Both of these books make me sad whenever I think of them, although they have happy endings (I haven’t really finished them, but in my head these are the “endings”): Trevor goes on to become one of the greatest comedians of the 21st century (he hosts The Daily Show) and of course, a community recovering from war is a good thing.

    But being someone who has been chasing happiness for a long time, I don’t know if these are the kind of books I should be reading because the process of getting to that happy ending involves a lot of emotional moments. The same applies for the Netflix series, The Spy, which seems very interesting, but it gives me this feeling of melancholy that I can’t seem to shake off even after deciding to quit the show nearly three weeks ago. And for some reason, just yesterday I found myself trying to watch another episode.

    That’s the thing about sadness, once you feel it too often it becomes your “comfort” feeling and you keep wanting to stay in that state because the feeling of being happy becomes too foreign. Happiness shouldn’t be something that we have to chase. We shouldn’t have to tire our minds and emotions in the pursuit of something that should be a constant in our lives because life is meant to be beautiful.

    I don’t think I know where I’m going with this post.

    Maybe just to say this, if you know you’re depressed or could be triggered into depression then please stay away from sad books, TV shows, songs and films. You might say “it’s just art”, but sometimes consuming art comes with a price that no one should have to pay.

    Life should be about enjoying things you love – even when people make fun of you for loving One Direction music. You shouldn’t have to chase happiness because happiness should begin every time you do something, including the most normal things like grocery shopping or looking at memes.

    OK maybe it is about the Jonas Brothers just a bit. Happiness Begins is their latest album’s name and it is amazing!

  • “You’re not the river, you’re the city” – John Green

    “You’re not the river, you’re the city” – John Green

    So it was a Friday morning. The weather was good and I left on time for work with my bicycle that I had bought just two days before. I cycled in heels, a mini skirt and my bag that says ‘boy bye’ was hanging from the left handle. To quote Thanos, ‘Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.‘

    I ended up cycling thrice around a park.

    For the first few days in Bonn, I had to live at a hostel because finding a place to I can sleep and eat comfortably at for a few months needed to be the most difficult thing. I stayed at a place called Max Hostel and the receptionists there are the nicest I’ve ever met. I was welcomed with a smile each morning. That was one of the two things that made the painful first week in Bonn bearable, the other being that I’m at the UN!!!

    The people in Bonn are very nice, foreigners and locals alike. The streets are beautiful, the trains and buses are packed in the mornings and evenings and I like it because it gives me that big city feeling. And maybe it’s just because it’s summer, but I love how a lot of people here choose to cycle instead of using cars and contributing to the horrific tale of global warming. (Me here wishing Dar es Salaam found a way to deal with the overflow of cars in the city). I still haven’t seen Bonn properly, but I have 6 months to do that and more and I’m really looking forward to all it.

    66456847_2363636970585418_975214410941333504_nHere’s the view from my room, you know, what I stare at when listening to the Jonas Brothers’ album Happiness Begins and thinking of ways to make friends in the city and not embarrass myself by getting lost every morning.

    Oh and the river in the featured photo is the Rhine 😉

  • Hi again.

    Hi again.

    It’s been a while! All those memes about university life destroying your mental and physical well-being are true!

    I’ve been writing all kinds of things in the last two months: academic papers, social media posts and angry texts trying to educate people on why the n-word still has power today because of the continued oppression of black people (big sigh).

    Still, I have a couple (thousands, if not millions) of sentences that my keyboard is begging me to type (was this even funny? Haha). Recently, I’ve come across all kinds of journalism on the internet and on paper. I’ve been doing some research on magazines and article writing because I had to write and edit a couple in the last two months. A group of other Tanzanian youth and I having been working on a digital magazine that’s scheduled to come out this June! Head over to our website, Instagram , Facebook and Twitter pages for updates and whatnot. I’m really excited about this because it has been my long-time dream to see authentic written journalism from Tanzania (apart from traditional news journalism on newspapers); something educational and inspiring, yet entertaining. Although I am on the writing end in this case, I have had the most amazing experience and I hope whoever reads it enjoys every word and image.

    What I’ve learnt is that there are so many stories to tell and many different ways to tell them: writing, videography, photography and illustration, to name a few. I’ve been inspired by different photographers and travel bloggers, the likes of Natalie Basha (@thetravelmuse) who does journalism “with a beat in travel and human interest”. Head over to her YouTube channel to see her amazing work. Whenever I think of my dream of becoming a journalist, I think of it in the same way; traveling in order to learn and share what I come across with in other cultures. The world is full of very many untold stories. Platforms like WordPress and YouTube allow us to experience these stories either visually or using our imagination. I hope my words spark your imagination from time to time.

    It has been eye-opening to see how people from all around the world tell stories through photography, videography, writing 😉 and what kinds of stories they choose to tell. It feels great to be a part of the amazing fabric of journalism. The future is exciting (and uncertain, but I kinda like it that way haha). It’s like opening the big pink furry box from RuPaul’s Drag Race =D.

  • Pineapples Remind Me of the Place I Call My Home

    It might be both a good and a bad thing to attach meaning to things. I was just eating pineapples for dinner and was reminded of the place I call my home. How in the evenings my father would bring a pineapple or two and I would groan (when he’s not around, of course) after being told I had to cut it into pieces so everyone could enjoy it.

    Most pineapples in Germany don’t taste as good as pineapples taste back home. Also, some pineapples back home don’t taste as good either. So, when a pineapple I’m having is a bit less sweet than it is supposed to be, I feel cheated. I feel like the meaning I’ve attached to it, home, is a lie and not as sweet as I think it is. Sadly, this is the reality.

    Most of the time I enjoy while in Tanzania involves things that don’t require me to interact with anyone. I enjoy walking along Kivukoni Drive in the evening and just looking at the Dar es Salaam harbor or riding a Mwendokasi bus back to the city after a long day and seeing myself being swallowed by tall buildings. To me, that feeling is almost the same as when I eat some very tasty chicken Biryani.

    But there is a sourness to home. Something that can be seen by everyone and almost similar to a pineapple that is a little bit too sour to be enjoyable, as my father would put it when he realizes that he bought ‘the wrong one’. While being mindful of the community you live in is a good thing, shaming and beating up a woman just because she wore a skirt 2 or 3 inches above her knees is not. The worst thing is that this doesn’t happen to tourists or people who just seem wealthy, because “they were probably brought up THAT way”. These are people who have seen the pineapple-maybe when it was being bought, but aren’t part of the “family” so they weren’t there at the house to eat it.

    And yes, you’re not forced to eat a pineapple just because you’re part of the family, but you don’t really have a choice on what fruit to eat if that’s the fruit your father chose to bring home that day.

    Tanzania is my home, but (many people who live there and I) are not comfortable with the unwritten “customs and traditions” and “morals” that some people throw at others each time something that isn’t the norm is done. It’s an unpleasant situation, much like eating a bowl of sour pineapples.

  • A Very Short Time in Kampala

    A Very Short Time in Kampala

    TheWritingNib (1)

    It must be amazing to go to bed after seeing a view like this (sorry it’s a bit blurry, I’m not a professional photographer). From the fourth floor of a building in Bukoto area in Kampala, I almost dropped my jaw. I had never seen anything like it, honestly. The part of Dar es Salaam where I’m from is just next to the ocean so it’s pretty plain. So when this photo was taken I realized how “plain” my life had been (I’m so sorry for the pun).

    The city looked back at me on my first night in Kampala, Uganda. I’d spent the day walking around Bukoto area with my friend, who’s also Tanzanian, looking for places to eat. We came across a certain restaurant called ‘Cheese Shop…’ on the way to Acacia Mall for pizza (I’m not a super fan of pizza by the way. Fight me in the comments, or not. Please don’t). Anyway, it was at that restaurant where I had Chips and Chap for the very first time. Chap is Ugandan; very tasty! Unfortunately, I never asked what exactly was in it (I can still google) or took a picture, but egg is the one thing that was noticeable at first sight.

    Aside from a nice experience at the restaurant, having a nice man who help me get my sandal fixed after it broke in the middle of the road and the sight of very many Bodabodas in the streets of Kampala, I enjoyed feeling very welcomed. I believe it is common in East Africa to welcome people from other countries in a friendly manner. People are always curious to know why you’re there. The guy who took us to Bukoto from the airport and back was very happy to help with little things, like directions to places to eat, when he found out that my friend and I are from Tanzania.

    This is the kind of treatment everyone should be getting all around the world. It shouldn’t be that people look at you with scowls on their faces or call police on you when you’re busy doing normal human being things, or you know, hold parades aimed at promoting racist ideologies (“races” don’t exist by the way). If people in Kampala were like this then my friend and I would’ve gone hungry that day, because it was kind of obvious that we weren’t Ugandan, and neither would I have been able to walk back because no one would’ve wanted to fix my sandal.

    Overall, it was a nice experience and I wish everyone had nice experiences in the places they travel to. Also, I hope to go back again someday so I can eat chap and take a photo of it.

    Lake Victoria can be seen in the featured image. Taken on the way to Entebbe International Airport, along the Entebbe-Kampala Expressway.