Muthoni Thangwa

Tag: love

  • The Day the Road Forgot My Name

    The Day My Father Forgot—Caregiving and Memory Loss in an African Family

    Prof. Bwisa was afraid. Not in the immediate, frantic way one fears fire or falling, but in the quiet, creeping manner of something unnamed—something the mind touches, then recoils from. He could not quite say what unsettled him. Perhaps it was the sudden stillness that accompanied retirement. Or the unnerving way days now folded into each other without the familiar structure of lectures, student consultations, and senate meetings.

    Back in 1982, when he first joined Kenyatta University as a young lecturer, the notion of retirement at seventy had sounded almost comedic. A distant line on the horizon. He had watched colleagues peel away—some to chase business ventures, others to write books they never finished, or tend to farms they had long neglected. To Prof. Bwisa, their departure had seemed premature, even indulgent. “I have found my calling,” he would say, with the characteristic certainty of a man for whom work was identity. “What could be nobler than moulding young minds at the summit of intellectual pursuit?”

    But now, seated in a small, unfamiliar restaurant with sunlight streaming in through grimy windows, that certainty felt as brittle as the rim of his teacup.

    Five months earlier, he had paid a courtesy visit to Dr. Wanguyu, his old colleague and long-time friend, on the eve of his retirement. “I’m leaving the university next week,” he had said with a casual smile. “Thought I’d get a full medical check-up before they cut off the staff insurance.” He had chuckled at his own foresight.

    Dr. Wanguyu had obliged. The tests had been routine—until they weren’t. At the tail end of the consultation, the good doctor had taken off his spectacles and looked at him with that unsettling mixture of compassion and caution reserved for delivering news that changes the axis of a life.

    “Prof,” he’d said gently, “I believe you may be experiencing the onset of dementia.”

    “Me?” Bwisa had laughed, incredulous.

    “Yes, you,” Wanguyu had replied, not unkindly.

    What the professor hadn’t realised was that during their conversation, he had repeated the same questions—word for word—several times. He would ask about his blood pressure, be answered, and then a few minutes later ask again. And again.

    Wanguyu had remained jovial, careful not to injure his pride. “I’m not putting you on anything heavy just yet,” he’d said. “But here’s a dietary recommendation that may help slow the process. Omega-3s, memory-friendly greens, hydration. Keep the mind stimulated, you know the drill.”

    The professor had folded the list without a glance and never spoke of it again—not to his wife, not to his children, not even to the trusted house help who had known him since the children were in primary school.

    Now here he was, five months on, staring into a half-empty cup of tea in a town he did not recognise.

    He had no idea how he had arrived here. The name of the place escaped him. He remembered leaving the house early that morning, briefcase in hand, intending to visit the post office. But somewhere along the way, his sense of direction, usually reliable to the point of arrogance, had betrayed him.

    Still, not wanting to look confused, he had walked confidently into the small café, taken a seat by the window, and ordered chapati and tea. The waitress had asked him something he hadn’t quite caught, and rather than admit it, he had simply smiled and nodded. It was only when she left that the cold panic set in.

    He did not know the name of this restaurant.
    He did not know the street outside.

    He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, placed it on the table like an offering. Maybe it would ring. Maybe a familiar voice would reset his mind, remind him who he was, why he was here.

    But the phone stayed silent.

    What arrived instead was tea and two chapatis.

    “I didn’t ask for two,” he muttered.

    He forgot he was lost and bit into one chapati. It was excellent. Flaky, warm. He finished it and ordered another helping. But when it came, a strange heaviness anchored itself in his stomach. He couldn’t eat. He stared at the food, unsettled.

    The waitress eventually came over with the bill. He looked at her sharply.

    “I didn’t eat your chapati. My wife, Eva, feeds me well. I don’t need chapati from strangers.”

    Two young men, seated nearby, had been watching. One of them, curious and a little concerned, came over. After listening quietly, he took out his wallet and paid the bill without fuss.

    Then he turned to the older man, gently:
    “Is there someone I can call for you, sir?”

    Professor Bwisa’s face twitched.

    “I don’t know, James. I have to get home before your mother starts worrying.”

    The young man paused, a lump forming in his throat. He looked down at the phone left on the table and pressed redial.

    “Dad, where are you?” a voice answered, on the first ring, urgent. I have been trying to reach you.

    “Dad, where are you?”
    A voice picked up on the first ring—urgent, breathless.
    “I’ve been trying to reach you.”
    “I’m not your father,” the young man said gently. “There’s an elderly gentleman here. He says his name is Professor Bwisa. He seems… confused.”
    “And where is here?”
    “A restaurant in Nanyuki.”
    There was a pause, then:
    “Do me a favour, please. My name is James Bwisa—his son. My father left home this morning to visit the post office in Lower Kabete. I have no idea how he ended up in Nanyuki. Would you stay with him? I’m driving up from Nairobi now to fetch him.”
    “Of course. My grandfather had the same problem before he passed last year,” said the young man. “I’m happy to help.”

    He turned back to the professor, pulled out a chair, and smiled.
    “My name is Oluoch—but everyone calls me Simba.”
    Something about that amused the professor.
    “Simba, as in lion?” he chuckled, suddenly at ease, as if Simba were an old friend.

    Simba called over his companion, and the three sat together.
    “So, Professor—what do you do?”
    That lit the match. The professor launched into stories—hilarious, winding tales about students who butchered grammar in exams, half-baked PhD theses, missing punctuation that had caused academic catastrophes. The boys roared with laughter.

    One and a half hours later, James arrived—having driven at record speed from Nairobi.
    His father looked up, eyes bright, face alive with animation.
    “James! Meet my students—the clever ones.”

    James watched them laughing — his father, animated, his arms slicing through the air as he recounted the tale of a student who once defined “epistemology” as a stomach condition. The two strangers were in stitches, encouraging him, prompting more. There was something heartbreakingly dignified about it all — a once-brilliant man slipping into confusion, yet still masterful in the realm he knew best. The world had shifted beneath his father’s feet, but his voice still carried authority, still lit up a room.

    He thanked Oluoch—Simba—and his friend. The handshake was firm, their eyes warm. “It’s nothing,” Simba said. “It’s what we do.”

    What we do.

    As he helped his father into the car, James felt the weight of inheritance—not land or wealth, but responsibility. And tenderness. On the drive back to Nairobi, the old man dozed off mid-sentence, his head tilting towards the window. James gripped the steering wheel tighter, unsure whether to cry or laugh.

    How strange, he thought, that forgetting could reveal a man so clearly. That in the unraveling, you see the threads that held him together all along.

    He reached for the volume knob, turned the music low, and whispered, “ I’ll remember for the both of us, baba.

  • The Truth About Caregiving: Love, Loss, and the Strength to Stay

    The strange kind of love – Reflections on caregiving

    Last week I posted something on social media about caregiving.

    They don’t tell you that caregiving is a strange kind of love. You watch your loved one fade like the setting sun — while you are supposed to shine like sunrise. It is also love in the purest form.  

    I didn’t expect the wave that followed. Now I feel that the moment is ripe to deepen the conversation with clarity and hopefully some grace, for I clearly touched a nerve in many different ways.

    Many replied with quiet tears: “Me too.”
    Others, with concern: “But what about your own life, are you ok?’’
    And a few, with sharp practicality: “It’s a waste of time, energy, money.”

    Those who are living it

    For those who are living it. You don’t need me to explain this kind of love. You’re living it. You’ve learned that time bends — that a single hour can feel like a year when the person you care for no longer knows your name, or repeats the same question twelve times before breakfast.

    You’ve felt that pang — the one where love is still strong, but recognition is gone. And yet, you carry on. You show up. You hold the line between memory and forgetting.

    I see you. And more importantly — you are not invisible to your loved one and others who give care.

    My mum no longer remembers my name — she calls me Mummy, the same way I’ve always called her. It’s her strange, beautiful gift to me.
    If she ever calls me by name, especially at night, we know something’s wrong. My name has become a signal — not of recognition, but of pain. A quiet plea for help.

    For those who fear it

    Some asked: “What about your dreams?”
    “Isn’t this a kind of death sentence?”

    I understand where that comes from. It can be hard to watch someone devote their life to a role that demands so much and gives back so little in tangible terms.

    And yes — it’s hard. It can feel like a slow erasure of the self. But that doesn’t mean it’s a dead end.

    Caregiving didn’t kill my dreams.
    If anything, it lit a fire under them. Gave them purpose. Clarity.
    It stripped away the noise — all the distractions, the vanity goals, the borrowed ambitions I once mistook for my own.

    In caring for someone else so completely, I finally saw what I was meant to fight for. This wasn’t an excuse to give up — it was my liberty card. Not the kind we wave when we want out, but the kind we earn when we finally understand what matters.

    For some of us, caregiving isn’t the death of our lives — it’s the rediscovery of what matters. It’s a different kind of becoming. A quieter kind. A harder kind. But not lesser.

    For those who call it a waste of time, I guess money and emotions too!

    I won’t argue. I simply offer this: Not all value is transactional. Not all time has to earn. And not all love must be proven with profit.

    Some things are sacred — not because they are easy, but because they strip us down to our essence and ask us: Who are you, when no one claps?

    That’s what caregiving does.
    It’s not just about caring for someone else — it strips you bare and shows you who you really are. It reveals the self.

    And to put it in terms that might land better: adulthood is a scam.
    Maybe love won’t scam you — not the real kind — but life will.
    You will be scammed. By duty, by capitalism, by expectations dressed up as dreams.

    I’ve simply chosen my scam.
    Caregiving is the one I picked with my eyes open.
    You get to choose yours too.

    For those of us who will stay.

    I don’t romanticise caregiving. I know the toll. The isolation. The fury. The bone-deep fatigue. But I also know the quiet, searing beauty of being someone’s anchor when they are lost to themselves.

    Caregiving isn’t for everyone. It shouldn’t have to be. But for those of us who walk this path — by choice or by circumstance — let it be known:

    This is not a waste.
    This is not weakness.
    This is love — strange, costly, inconvenient, and transformative.

    Last word.

    If you’re caregiving, or considering it, or afraid of what it might make of you — welcome. There’s room here for your story. Your fear. Your grit. Your grief. Your uneven strength.
    We don’t have to agree on everything.
    But we can choose to hold space — for each other, and for the versions of ourselves we’re still becoming.

    Because in the end, that’s what caregiving teaches us:
    How to hold.
    Even when it hurts.
    Even when it fades.
    Even when it’s never returned.

    And maybe, in this fractured world, that’s the most radical thing left to do.

    If you’re walking this caregiving path too — or just want to connect — I’d love to hear from you.
    You can leave a comment below or reach me via the contact page.

  • How a boy almost lost a leg! The price of medical unpreparedness

    Family Abandonment: The Hidden Emergency No One Talks About

    Tirop was 12 years old when he first faced the brutal possibility of losing his right leg. Not because of war, not because of a rare disease, but because of something far more common: neglect.
    The kind of neglect children inherit from the poor decisions of the adults around them.

    He lived with his grandmother, Mama Cherono, in a home that had long stopped being a home and had become a warehouse of broken promises. Five children — his younger brother, two cousins, and himself — all dumped into Mama Cherono’s lap like forgotten baggage. Not out of her free will. No. She was handed this burden by tragedy, cowardice, and the ruthless carelessness of grown-ups.

    Tirop’s two cousins were fatherless — their father had died young. The mother, barely a woman herself, had abandoned her sons in a cloud of shame and whispered curses, muttering something about Arap — sons of the dead. As if grief was something her young boys could carry alone.

    Then came Mama Cherono’s own daughters — both drawn to men who made promises like they were throwing pebbles into a river: easy to make, impossible to retrieve. Each left behind a child, as though their children were loose ends they no longer knew how to tie.

    So Mama Cherono, already old, already tired, already poor, became the reluctant guardian of five children who had done nothing wrong but be born into other people’s failures.

    The daughters claimed they needed to move to Nakuru town — to find work, to make money, to “build a better life for the children.” That’s what they said.
    But promises are cheap. They asked Mama Cherono to care for the children for “just a short time,” while they found suitable accommodation. A few weeks. Maybe a month. Two at most. That was four years ago for one daughter, six years ago for the other.

    They came back from time to time — polished nails, new hairstyles, cheap synthetic perfumes clinging to their skin — and always with fresh stories. Elaborate, theatrical stories.

    “Mama, the landlord says no children until we finish paying the deposit.”

    “Mama, my job keeps me working night shifts — it wouldn’t be safe for a child right now.”

    “Mama, the schools here are terrible. Let them stay a little longer while I sort things out.”

    The stories mutated, grew legs, changed shapes each visit.
    The truth was simpler: They had slipped into new lives where the burdens of motherhood had no space.

    And Mama Cherono, too decent to throw her grandchildren to the wolves, too proud to beg, and too old to fight, bore it all in silence — her back bending a little more with each broken promise.
    She fed them, clothed them when she could, watched them grow with tight jaws and a bleeding heart.
    The kind of injustice no one writes about.
    The quiet kind.
    The slow kind.
    The invisible kind.

    Tirop lived in the same compound with his father and mother. Technically, he had parents — both alive, both fully capable of raising him. He was not like his cousins, abandoned by mothers who vanished into town life. No, his case was worse in its own quiet way.

    Because Tirop, even at twelve, carried a kind of burdened awareness most adults around him lacked.
    He was a sensitive child. Observant. Thoughtful.
    And what he saw carved wounds into his young heart:
    The way his grandmother, Mama Cherono, had grown smaller over the years — not in body, but in spirit. How the spark in her eyes dulled as one grandchild after another was left behind.
    How her laughter, once strong and full, now dissolved into polite chuckles — like someone trying to make peace with grief.

    And Tirop saw something else too.
    He saw his parents — living yards away, yet turning their backs to the quiet suffering in the house , with which they shared a compound.

    His mother, always full of excuses —
    “Mama Cherono understands that I have so much on my plate.”
    His father, always busy with things that conveniently kept him at arm’s length —
    “The boys are better off there. After all, Mama raised us too. She can manage.”

    The hypocrisy stank.
    Every day, Tirop watched adults move like ghosts of responsibility — present in body, absent in duty. And so he began to help. Quietly.
    Carrying water, chopping firewood, fetching groceries from the market, soothing crying babies. He did the work of adults — not because anyone asked him to, but because he couldn’t watch the weight crush Mama Cherono while others stood by with clean hands.

    He shouldn’t have had to.
    But dignity is rarely distributed fairly amongst kin.

    Until the accident.

    It happened on a Wednesday afternoon. School had closed early, and Tirop, as always, hurried home to help.

    The rains had been cruel that season, pounding the tin roofs at night, turning the compound into a slippery mess of mud and loose stones. The family’s small pile of firewood had grown dangerously low, and Mama Cherono had murmured about it in the morning: “If this rain continues, we won’t even have dry sticks to boil porridge.”

    Tirop had heard her.
    He always heard her.

    So while the younger ones napped under the thin patched blanket, and Mama Cherono sat sewing an old dress by the fading light, Tirop grabbed the old panga and headed toward the edge of the compound. There, behind the granary, lay a fallen tree branch that had been too heavy for Mama Cherono to drag. Wet, but still usable. Firewood was firewood.

    The panga was dull. Its handle loose.
    He had told his father weeks ago that it needed fixing — but his father had dismissed him with a wave:
    “Don’t touch that panga again, Tirop. Let the adults handle it.”
    But there were no adults here when it mattered, and gogo would not be left to handle this matters alone.

    He swung the blade with awkward strength, trying to hack smaller pieces from the log.
    The branch twisted. His foot slipped on the wet ground.
    The panga veered off course.
    In a flash of pain and bright red, the blade sliced into his right shin — deep, ugly, raw.

    Tirop screamed.
    The world narrowed into pain and terror.

    Mama Cherono came running, barefoot, her eyes wide with a mix of panic and exhaustion that only the truly helpless know.

    The wound was deep, and blood pulsed through Tirops fingers as he tried to clutch it. The old woman pressed rags against it — an old shirt, anything she could grab. There was no clean gauze, no antiseptic, no sterile bandage. Only desperate, trembling hands.

    The nearest clinic was miles away. The main road had been blocked all week — trucks stuck in the mud, they said.
    The nearest matatus were more than two kilometers away.  Mama Cherono had no phone to call either his mother or father for help.

    And so they waited.
    They waited as the wound bled.
    They waited as the infection from the rusted panga crept in.
    They waited while the swelling rose like a poisonous balloon.

    By the time help arrived — a neighbor with an old bicycle who finally risked the ride into town — Tirop’s leg was hot to the touch, his fever climbing, his body shivering.

    At the hospital, the nurse shook her head.
    “You people… you always wait too long.”

    As they waited for the doctor, Tirop and Mama Cherono sat side by side on the hard wooden bench. His leg was propped up, wrapped hastily in soiled cloth. The pain throbbed, but for a moment, the room felt strangely quiet.

    Their eyes met.
    No words. Just a long, heavy glance.

    Both carried something unspoken in that moment — a shared knowledge of struggle. Each had tried, in their own way, to hold up the other.
    Mama Cherono, stretching thin the small coin she had. Tirop, too young to carry burdens, yet quietly shouldering the gaps adults left behind.

    They were allies in a silent war that others couldn’t see.
    A war not of violence, but of abandonment. A war of being made invisible by those who should have stood in front of them.

    They both knew: the others wouldn’t understand.
    Not the nurses. Not the relatives who appeared during holidays with gifts and loud voices. Not even Tirop’s own parents, who lived just yards away but had long outsourced their responsibility.

    In that glance, they held each other up.
    Because no one else would.

    This is how emergencies happen.
    Not suddenly.
    Not unexpectedly.
    But step by painful step — through carelessness, avoidance, and the indifference of adults who should have known better.

    You can’t control emergencies. Be prepared. Get your FREE Emergency Medical Checklist now Free PDF: https://muthonithangwa.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/my-10-point-emergency-medical-check-list-2.pdf

    Useful book: : https://homedoctorbook.com/book/#aff=MuthoniThangwa

    .

  • “Soulmates, Sketches, and Other Expensive Distractions: “I Bought a Soulmate sketch and Found Idris Elba… and a Tyre Guy in Kiambu!

    The face of my soulmate sketch—or was it Idris?

    I tried a soulmate sketch – this is what happened! It floored me!

    I was supposed to be doing something important on the computer. You know—something grown-up. Like paying bills, writing a proposal, or finding original spare parts for my Kwid. Does anyone ever try to find fake spare parts? Anyway!

    That little red slay queen is giving me more problems than dating—imagine. She looks cute in the driveway, sure, but maintaining her is like trying to love someone who keeps ghosting you, then showing up when your phone battery is at 1%.

    So, there I was, meant to be searching for a reputable auto-parts dealer, and instead I found myself thinking about soulmates. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the silence. Maybe it was the 17 open tabs. Maybe it was the fact that even my car is more demanding than my love life.

    But something in me whispered: “What if your soulmate is out there… but can’t find you because he’s using Waze in Nairobi?”

    And just like that, I fell down a rabbit hole. Not the kind Alice stumbled into—mine was paved with affiliate ads, slightly questionable testimonials, and an offer to receive a psychic drawing of my soulmate for a mere $29. A man I’ve never met, drawn by someone who has never met me. All via the internet. What could go wrong? Lol!

    The Woman Who Knew Too Much

    This thing of falling into rabbit holes goes way back—way back to the days when I used to mark student scripts in two weeks flat.

    Now, don’t get me wrong—it’s not like they were PhDs. Naaah. These were first-years. Introduction to Anthropology. Fresh out of high school, armed with confidence and vibes. But don’t be fooled. Even undergraduate scripts can wear you down. By day three your eyes glaze over, your red pen starts leaking into your coffee, and every sentence reads like a philosophical riddle wrapped in grammatical chaos.

    At the time, I had a neighbour—Betty. She was one of those highly competent, quinoa-soaking, herbal tea-brewing women who was trained in something expensive and mysterious called the Waldorf Method. She teaches children through storytelling, seasonal baking, and probably the gentle use of moss.

    She was also the unfortunate recipient of my emotional soundtrack: a constant switch between soul music and loud Kikuyu classics—whatever it took to stay sane while marking papers in which students responded as if armchair anthropologist was a type of furniture.

    I liked Betty. A lot. But at some point in our friendship, she sat me down and said: “Muthoni, I think you might be…easily distracted.”

    She said it kindly. Like a teacher breaking the news that your child eats crayons.

    Naturally, I denied it. I even built an internal fortress to resist the idea. Brick by defensive brick. But sitting here today, browsing a psychic art website instead of doing my actual work, I felt a small crack form in the wall. Betty, it turns out, was just seeing the kindergartener in me.

    The Checkout Moment (A Crisis of Faith)

    I won’t lie. The site was convincing. It promised not just a drawing, but a description of your soulmate’s personality, their energy, their life purpose. At one point, it claimed the sketch could bring clarity to my love life.

    I had questions.

    What if the sketch looked like my ex? Would I be expected to forgive and forget just because this time, he was delivered as a digital PDF?

    What if it looked like that one toxic boss I used to work with? The one who sat upstairs with a big stomach, for six whole years, and did nothing but ruin the energy of the entire organization just by existing? Because weeh!  Some people!

    It wasn’t just a purchase. It was a surrender. A small, whimsical surrender to the part of me that still believes in signs, serendipity, and psychic sketch artists working overtime on the internet.

    I was amused and mildly afraid. This was either an act of self-love—or a red flag on steroids. At one point, I even paused and asked myself, “How much does therapy cost again?”

    It might’ve been cheaper.

    That’s when I remembered Betty. And the rabbit holes.

    “Muthoni, stay focused,” I whispered.

    The Reveal

    The email arrived the next day. No ceremony. No cosmic lightning. Just a subject line: “Your Soulmate Sketch Is Ready!”

    I clicked. And there he was.

    A man. With eyes that had seen things. Eyebrows that meant business. A mouth that looked like it only spoke in riddles. He looked like the kind of man who fixes tractors in silence, writes poetry in secret, and cries during Finding Nemo.

    I stared at the sketch for a long time.

    Was he handsome? In a rugged, silent-type way, yes.
    Was he familiar? That was the strange part—maybe.

    I felt something. Not certainty, but curiosity. A flicker. A spark. The tiny, ridiculous possibility that maybe, just maybe, this internet art experiment wasn’t completely unhinged.

    So, naturally, I did what any self-respecting woman would do:
    I ran him through Google Lens.

    And lo and behold—the sketch matched fifteen different men.

    A tech CEO in Finland. A gospel singer from Uganda. A man who sells tyres in Kiambu. But the only one I was remotely interested in was—of course—Idris Elba.

    Weeh, sasa itakuwa aje? I asked myself, suddenly deeply invested in the metaphysical logistics of relating with a British actor who doesn’t know I exist. Although… a journey in search of the tyre seller in Kiambu is probably more viable.

    I considered printing it out and framing it. Just to confuse future visitors. “Oh, that? That’s my soulmate. We haven’t met yet, but I like to keep him close.”

    What Did I Learn?

    That we have the permission to be curious – like children with a crayon and no regard for lines. That not every decision I make will be strategic – I just have to find balance between strategy and the why not?

    And yes, Betty was right—I am easily distracted. But sometimes distractions are the only way the soul gets a break from the grind. Sometimes they lead to laughter, to strange portraits, to blog posts.

    If nothing else, I now have a picture of a man I can show my mother when she asks why I’m still single.

    “Here he is, Mum. He’s psychic-approved.”

    If you would like to try your own stretch, here is your chance: https://www.soulmatesketch.com/2-01721767000544#aff=MuthoniThangwa