3CB

A few weeks ago, I had no idea who Jimnah Mbaru was. But then I got to know about his plans, his ideals, his vision for Nairobi, and I was impressed. I had my doubts about how popular he was, but I was sure if anybody could make me even prouder of Nairobi, he could. But I didn’t vote.

At first, I assumed I’d need to join TNA in order to nominate anyone, and I had no interest in doing that. I don’t support what TNA stands for. I’m not sure I support what any party stands for. I know that I vote for the candidates that will do the most good, and for me, that’s Martha, Jimnah, and anybody but Sonko!! My voting slip is likely to be a rainbow of parties, because all I will be looking at is the right candidate.

So I asked a silly question on twitter, as proof that I didn’t have to vote. Turns out I was wrong. Turns out that just by being a registered voter, I could walk into any nomination centre and stand by the candidate. I had more excuses. I’m at work! I can’t just walk out and go vote!

Wrong. My boss sent an email to entire office urging us to go out and pick our chosen nominees. I ignored the email. I stayed at my desk, frantically following the tweets and pundits and MKZ opinion makers (yes, I giggled a little when I wrote that, but they do exist. I found a few of them yesterday.)

This morning, it was confirmed that my chosen candidate lost by 3000 votes. 3000! That’s the just following on my Twitter account times three. And I was one of the votes he lost. A lot of people online are bashing the ‘arm-chair activists’ for not putting our thumbs in the right place. A part of me feels attacked and righteously indignant, but a larger part of me is afraid that they’re right.

I didn’t vote yesterday because nominations are frightening and murky. They belong to the psychophants, the die-hards, the … politicians. Yes, that spells four letters in my vocabulary. My face screws up just thinking about the word. In my mind, the politicians would choose their candidates, then I would have my say come March 4th. It never once occurred to me that the candidate I want would not be on the ballot next year. Besides, what bloody difference would my one vote make?

But now I’m thinking. What if me, and all my online buddies, and all their buddies’ buddies actually went out and nominated him yesterday? What if everyone who said ‘My one vote doesn’t count’ actually went and made it count? I didn’t though. I sat at my computer, analysed, postulated, vented … and let other people do the dirty work. No wonder the result is so murky.

I’ve always maintained that few people vote with their intellect. They use their hearts, their pride, their heritage, their sense of belonging. That’s what dictates their vote. I’ve always said those who know better are too few to make any kind of dent in the electorate. But yesterday, all my candidate needed was 3,000 people, including me, to get up and make their voices heard. And I, for one, didn’t lift a finger.

I am, apparently, the most political person in the office, so I thought I was better than those other arm-chair activists. After all, I support my candidates openly, I give coherent reasons for my choices, I have a voter’s card for fuck’s sake. But no. Yesterday, I may as well have had no vote at all, because that’s exactly what I did. I refused to vote.

The two candidates on offer do nothing for me. Kidero seems pretty sensible, but I Googled him, and I really didn’t like what I found. Waititu … well … wow. Just wow. As for Sonko, I’m voting for whoever is running against him. Please God, let someone, anyone run against him!

I’m still hoping for a miracle, some last-minute nomination as an independent candidate or a mini-party or whatever loopholes and statutes allow for that kind of thing. Because with no gubernatorial candidate (yes, I used the word) that impresses me, a part of me is tempted not to vote at all, which would be the worst possible outcome right now.

But then again, Jimnah is a businessman, and pouring more money into a campaign that seems to lack adequate electoral backing would make bad business sense. Maybe if I had gone out and voted, and made the margin just a little closer, he might have listened to my current silent plea.

For now, all I can say is the sad, painful lesson has been learnt, and I hope I’m not the only one that has learnt it. Good intentions will not get the best candidate into office. Only going out and voting can do that. It’s too late for those who didn’t get their voter’s cards last year, but I hope those of us who did, those of us who care enough and are smart enough to know better, I hope that crowd will use our votes very, very wisely.

♫ Curtains down ♫ Eminem ♫

I was looking at your timeline yesterday. It said you were at a party. You do that a lot – tweeting at parties. I used to think it meant you weren’t really having that much fun. If you were, you’d be talking and drinking and dancing – not tweeting. I know the people that were at the party with you – because you all said so on Foursquare. So I sat in my living room, watching you, feeling like I was there with you.

Then you went quiet. I looked at the other people at the party, and they were quiet too. For three or four hours, there wasn’t a single tweet from any of you. That’s when I knew you were really having fun, and I was glad. But a part of me was sad, because I wished that I was having fun with you.

I’m not the kind of girl you usually notice. I see them on your timeline every day, giggling, flirting, posting cheeky twitpics and clever quotes. The kind of girl you like is at the party with you. She knows she drives #TeamMafisi wild, and she isn’t shy about it. And that just isn’t me. I’m not bad-looking, but I lack self-possession, poise, grace, style, photogeny. No, it’s not a real word. Also, I have a cartoon as my avatar, and a twitter bigwig wouldn’t be caught with a girl like that.

Last night, while you were at your party, I was at home with my baby. We were watching Nickelodeon. There was a marathon of Victorious. We really like that show. When it was finished, we watched Pitch Perfect, and Glee, and Big Bang Theory. Then we went online and sang along to songs from Lemonade Mouth and Tori Vega.

Our favourite is Song 2 You. It’s a sweetly, silly, romantic kind of song, full of unicorns and butterflies and teenage love. I’m sure it was composed in comic sans. My heart flutters every time I hear it. because that’s the kind of girl that I am. I don’t like parties, or smoking, or drinking, or dancing. Well, I do like dancing, but mostly at home, and mostly for aerobics. Sometimes I dance with my baby in the kitchen, and we jump around and giggle at how silly we look. Well, at how silly I look, because my baby is a really good dancer.

I don’t like shisha, or vodka, or weed cake, or coffee, or chilli. I don’t do blankets, or wine, or trance, or John Legend. I don’t read Terry Pratchet or the Economist. I don’t get Warsan Shire or spoken word. I feel nothing for Erykah Badu. I don’t even understand Afro-fusion. I do like books though, and series, and loud rock music, and happy quiet spaces, and twitter. I like the beach and the pool and the ocean. And I love crime shows and documentaries. But that’s not the kind of girl you like. The girl you like is effortlessly beautiful, limitlessly flirty, and always entertaining.

She’s a bikini kind of a girl while I wear a modest skirted one-piece. She’s alluring and mysterious, and she likes to keep you dangling. She reads Harlequinn or Ben Okri, she likes Twilight and sports. Her avi is always tastefully alluring, and her blog has at least one bi-curious story. She plays you like a flute, and you love every moment. I feel a little awkward when I look at you together. I see the way you look at her, the way everyone looks at her, and I feel a little sad, because you’re never going to look at me that way.

Of course I would never say any of this out loud. If I had you in the same room with me, I’d probably talk about the weather, and music, and TV. I never have conversations like this is person. It makes me wonder if I’ll have a virtual marriage, if my husband will be my penpal, if I’ll kiss him goodbye every morning then send him soul-filled emails at work. But things like that only happen in Fifty Shades of Grey.

Still, that’s the kind of girl I am, the kind that expresses herself better on a notepad or a keyboard. I can’t say witty things like those other girls you like, but I can write them, and I know that sometimes, a man can fall in love with what I write. So I hide behind this screen, safe in the blanket of my words.

Sometimes that hurts a little, but most times it’s okay. Most times, I sit back, watch you, and smile, because I know that someday, sometime, someone will have a twitter crush on me. They’ll think I’m wonderful and awesome, just the way I am. And maybe one day, they’ll call me up and tell me.

♫ Song 2 You ♫ Leon Thomas III ♫

I’m INFJ, which means I like to read people. I’m also opinionated, stubborn, judgemental,  and I think I’m always right. I have all these intuitive ideas and gut feelings that make me like or hate people on sight, and once I’ve made my mind up, it’s really hard to change.

I spend a lot of time online. I’m one of the ‘ancients’ of Twitter, having joined in 2007 (even though I’ve had five different accounts and periodically delete them over beef). I also know a lot of bloggers from 2005 BT – Before Twitter. The thing with online interactions is you (and by you, I mean me) form virtual images of people. You look at their avatars, read their blogs, review their tweets, and decide the kind of person you think they are.

If you’re like me, you build up mental composites based on those ideas. And if you’re like me, the composites lead to imaginary friendships, crushes, and ostracism. There are people I’ve talked to and even dated based on who I thought they were. There are others I have refused to meet on the same criteria.

The thing about instinct is it’s awesome when it’s right. It’s a vindicating feeling when your secret hunch pays off. But it’s painfully disorienting when you’re wrong. In the course of my online life, I’ve met people who sounded awesome in the virtual world, but ended up being something else completely. It screwed me up so badly that I gave up on tweet-ups entirely. (Also, I’m not much good with crowds. Utterly asocial.)

But what really messes my head is when I accidentally meet someone that I had sworn to hate. I’ve bumped into people at work, in the hospital, and even at family gatherings. We got along great and totally hit it off until they said, ‘Oh, you’re on Twitter? I’m @xyz. What’s your handle?’ My general response is ‘Aw fuck’.

I’ve been immensely disappointed to find that the deep, beautiful poet is an ordinary, rather boring guy; the charmingly hot adonis is all looks and no conversational skills; the bubbly socialite is cold, distant and aloof; the resident ice maiden is the sweetest girl in the world; the online bad-mouth is an absolute gentleman; the big-wig is the most down-to-earth person I’ve ever met; the irreverent trouble-maker has zero charisma; the #KOT heart-throb is too shy to look me in the eye; the online intellectual is dumb as a brick; and worst of all, the king of stupid, tasteless jokes has a genius-level IQ.

Of course you could claim they were acting when they met you, and that their online persona is the true self they hide from the world. Anything’s possible. But it still leaves me confused and distressed. For me, everything is connected, so if I’m wrong about one thing, what else could I be wrong about? It feels like the entire fabric of my existence has been shaken.

When I end up liking someone I had virtually sworn to hate, it makes me wonder how many more awesome people I’ve missed out on. I end up wondering whether I’m vain and shallow, like some people say I am. But worst of all, I end up doubting every subsequent instinct, including the ones that could save my life.

The other extreme is distaste by association. For example, if I’ve been friends with Jackie all my life, and Jackie tells me she hates George, then I automatically take her side. So when I finally meet George in person and adore him, then I question a whole lot of things.

Am I betraying Jackie by liking someone she hates? Am I too blind or stupid to see George’s nasty habits? And what if Jackie is wrong about George? What else is she wrong about? Maybe she misinformed me on purpose. What else has she lied to me about?

For me, when I decide someone is unlike-able then end up liking them, it disturbs me on lots of different levels. I question the very foundation of my thought process and have headaches for days. Conversely, when someone I thought was a friend ends up being an asshole, I wonder how I could have been so wrong.

When the latter happens, I crawl into a cocoon and just avoid people for months. I’m shit scared of being hurt like that again. But in the end, the fear passes. If I cared about the person enough, I unconsciously pretend it never happened. But every word they speak is laced with unseen grams of doubt, and I never quite treat them – or myself – in the same way.

Maybe growing up is about being open minded and slow to judge. Maybe I should accept that some of the coolest people have flaws, and some of the meanest people like puppies. I know I take myself too seriously, and maybe what I really need to do is let go of that part of me that is so terrified of not being right.

♫ Incomplete ♫ Alanis Morissette ♫