the writing nib

Category: nib’s things

  • Looking for Home

    Looking for Home

    “So the days, the last days, blow about in memory, hazy, autumnal, all alike as leaves.” (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote)

    I finally watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s!

    (It is important to point out that I did not enjoy the depiction of Mr. Yunioshi. That was weirdly racist and quite painful to watch. But it’s good that significant improvements have been made in film industries worldwide and nothing of that kind would pass today.)

    I am very happy that the film’s ending was very different from the book, yet it still managed to capture the essence of Holly’s character. I found myself relating to Holly a lot more when she talked about not belonging anywhere. I am a young woman trying to figure out life and every day the world lets me know that I’m not where I’m supposed to be. It’s a strange thing to think about or even tell people especially if it’s friends you’ve had in the place you’ve been in for a while. Two years is a long time to be somewhere, but I am very detached from Bremen. Even stranger, twenty years is a very long time, but I am also detached from Dar es Salaam.

    From July to December I found comfort in Bonn while I was doing my internship. It was a feeling that I had never experienced before and it made me scared and sleepless on some nights. I couldn’t bear knowing that I got attached to a place and I felt safe and too comfortable in it, because I knew that I had to leave after a while. Luckily, my feelings have gotten bruised and crushed a lot over the last two years so it wasn’t very difficult to detach myself from Bonn. When the time to leave came, I didn’t feel sad at all. I knew I was sad, but I just didn’t feel it.

    The best thing about Bonn was that no one really knew me there, just like how no one in New York knew who Holly Golightly really was. I had many friends, mostly fellow interns, from work who, like me, were just passing by for a few months, but other than that I was completely alone. I could go home after work and detach myself from everything and everyone, something I could never do in Bremen while living on campus.

    What I’m trying to explain is, I don’t feel like I belong anywhere (and at times I try to avoid that feeling) for a reason. I found the reason in the film, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, when Holly sang Moon River by her window (beautiful scene!).

    ♪“Two drifters, off to see the world
    There’s such a lot of world to see
    We’re after the same rainbow’s end, waitin’ ’round the bend
    My huckleberry friend, moon river, and me”    ♪

    There’s such a lot of world to see. This is keeps me awake at night. To be frank, I’m not much of a traveler, but I absolutely hate the thought of being somewhere for a long time. We live in a time when we can go anywhere, at least on paper, so why not take advantage of that and live an extraordinary life? I want to move and move and move until I find my own Tiffany’s.

    “I don’t want to own anything until I know I’ve found the place where me and things belong together.”

    Holly Golightly, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Truman Capote)

    On the last day of my internship I walked out of the UN premises some time in the afternoon. It was a sad day, because most people were away for the holidays. I walked slowly to where my bike was parked, which happened to not be at my usual spot. I stood there thinking of going for one last cycle by the Rhine behind the UN and Deutsche Welle buildings, but I shrugged it off because I decided that cycles by the Rhine belonged to a beautiful memory of Fall when I went to see Joker with my friends and we enjoyed one of the last sunny days of 2019 by the river.

    By the Rhine, early October 2019

    I would like to keep thinking that in Bonn the sun always shines on golden leaves and bright green grass, even when it’s dark and cold in the Winter, and that all my Bonn friends are seated somewhere by the Rhine, drinking wine and talking while I’m still trying to find my way there through Google Maps, because I’m always late to these things.

    With friends by the Rhine near UN Campus, Bonn, early October 2019

    “Anyway, home is where you feel at home. I’m still looking.”

    Holly Golightly, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Truman Capote)

  • 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.