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YOU ARE WORTHY

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You are worthy because Allah created you. Because you are one of His creatures.
Because He knows your name.

As human beings we sometimes struggle with our feelings of worthiness and perceptions of our own value.

We see someone who has ‘more’ than us and we feel less. We look at his big house, his four wheel drive and his gadgets and we feel less.
We see someone who has ‘accomplished’ more than us and we feel less.
We are awed by his multiple university degrees, or his lofty job title or the powerful people he knows and we feel less.

A lucrative career does not make someone worthier and neither do excellent grades or being multilingual or being “gorgeous.”

Just know that you are worthy just by being you.

Ladies, take note- you do not have to look a certain way or look like someone else or take off your hijab to be worthy.

You do not have to torture yourself with toxic chemicals because you desire to keep up with the Khateebs or the Alwis. You do not have to be a certain weight or a certain skin tone. You do not have to impress anyone to feel valuable.

You are priceless just the way you are.

Parents, take note….your child does not have to bring home straight A’s or win academic awards for you to be proud of him. He is deserving of it just the way he is. Your child does not have to bend over backwards or reinvent the wheel or come out at the top of his respective class for him to be worthy of your love. Put no conditions on your love.
Love him for who he is.

Young people take note. You do not have to smoke, do drugs, skip school to be worthy of your ‘friends’ or to fit in.

You deserve friends who will hang out with you for who you really are.
Gentlemen, take note. You do not have to compete with others to be worthy. You do not have to waste the precious hours of your life trying to prove that you can be more than , have more than or be just like that man you envy and admire.

You are worthy whatever salary you make, whatever you use for transportation, however old your electronics are and even if she is the only wife you have.
You are worthy.

For those of us who are so very abundantly blessed, you can have all that you are blessed to have without believing somebody else deserves it more.
You can learn to be grateful for Allah’s gifts and blessings on you without feeling guilty for having them.

Can you not see that in itself is disbelief and a lack of faith?
It might be a challenging feat learning and accepting that we are worthy. Allah loves us and blesses us in so many ways and that in itself should teach us that we are worthy.

Our worthiness is not defined by age or beauty or net worth or achievements. The more we place emphasis on these things the more people will fall into self loathing and a sense of not fitting in.

You are worthy, dear reader. You are worthy. You have been worthy since the day you were born and your father gave you your name. You are worthy.
You are worthy of all that is good and safe and blessed. You are worthy of great health and prosperity. You have no need to apologise for yourself or your uniqueness which the Almighty bestowed on you. You are worthy. You are worthy.

Say it with me. I AM WORTHY.

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Creative Non-Fiction

THE ERA TO NOT RUSH INTO MARRIAGE

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Photo: Unknown

I actually love seeing young happy couples together. By couples I mean married of course. I don’t really mind seeing a 20 year old already in her home and happy with her life. What? Are you surprised? You expect me to condemn such ‘kids’ to have their own families? I won’t. If the two can sustain each other’s needs and are responsible enough then why not?

There is also another scenario of young girls who do not want to study. Who are not interested in studying. Who do not want to even get a job and do something with their life. If this was your daughter what do you do with her? Ground her for a month? Take her phone? Forbid her friends from visiting her? Drag her to school and waste your school fees? Force her to go do a job? You do this to an 18 year old then you are just making her become rebellious. Do that to a boy he becomes twice as rebellious. And you know what young people do when they become rebellious? They do all that would hurt you, annoy you, piss you off completely. They will join bad gangs, have bad friends, get into drugs, partying and illicit intercourse.

Of course as a parent you are to do your very best in convincing and persuading and advising and threatening if necessary to make them realize that they are wasting their life away but if worse gets to worst and you see the young man or girl has made up her mind to be and do nothing then give her something worthwhile to be. Let her be someone’s wife. Let her be a mother. Not as a punishment though cause that way it also won’t work. Don’t push her to get married to escape your own responsibility. Don’t let her frustrate someone’s son because you couldn’t handle her (same applies to a stubborn young man). Let her get into marriage if that is what she is interested in or perhaps she can do well in.

How many times have we seen very poor performing girls becoming best of house wives and best of cooks and best of mothers? Not all children are blessed in academics but they could be blessed in their ability to take up such home responsibilities; the home science. If she is capable enough then why not? If the man marrying her is good enough then why not? If they are both happy with the decision then why not? Isn’t it better than letting her waste away with men? Isn’t being a mother the most noble career of all?? Well of course we can’t compare the older generations (where our mothers could get married at 16 and still be exemplary women in the society) to the spoilt dot com kids who can barely do anything by themselves. But there are some few young girls who still carry that old gene of being responsible when it comes to home affairs. Plus, apart from that, we have those who got married at such early ages and still went on pursuing their dreams, studies and careers!

Okay, now that I have made that point clear, let’s come back to the main topic. That this is not the era to rush into marriage! Ironic right? Yes, let me explain why.

Nowadays, we no longer have love triangles. We have Bermuda love triangles. Correction again; the Bermuda lust triangles. I say Bermuda because it’s other name is called the ‘devil’s triangle’. Perhaps that is what defines what exactly is happening among’st us currently.

You know like A and B are a married couple. They seem to be quite happy. But A is also secretly dating C who is a co-worker to B. And B also ‘has a thing’ for D. And D is the ex of C. C on the other hand is also seeing F who is the cousin to B. Oh and before I forget, A also had a one night stand with G. F also had a thing with both H and I who apparently all are friends. You get the scenario? What’s all this mess of ‘we had a thing??’ Do people throw themselves over everyone just because they ‘had a thing’? What’s a thing anyway?! This is not love. It is lust and most of the times it is lust plus love of money. By the time these ladies finally get married their hearts are in such a pathetic state. They are wasted. Their hearts are as cold as ever. She will always be comparing everything to what all her ‘men’ offered her. Their touch, their outings, their money, their intimacy. She will compare, even if not loudly. As for the man, he is no longer fresh and green. He is rotten and a rainbow of all the dark colours that you know of. He will mistreat you because he doesn’t exactly need you. He is overwhelmed by all the women who have walked in and out his life. He doesn’t need you as a wife and partner, perhaps just as the woman in consummation.

There was a time back when being a mistress was such a disgraceful thing.  When being a side-chic was such an awful thing. Everyone was condemning it. Only cheap ladies standing at the street willingly accepted the position yet right now very young girls, teenagers, are vying up for seat. Pardon is it vying up or down? I mean, where are we really headed to? What makes us any different from prostitutes? That we wear fancier clothes and do all these stuff for fun and not for money? Or is this sponsor affair stuff okay now? Where is our modesty people? Our chastity?

I mean, look at us. Look at how disgusting our situation is. Young men getting married early…and we say ‘well done. He has done good to mature up, to abstain, to take what is rightfully his’ only to come and realize he was looking for someone to fill his emotional loophole (which is fine). He was looking for a punching bag (sooo not fine). Someone to comfort him (which is fine too) but at the same time, he is back dating his ex. He realized he rushed into marriage. That he was not over her. And what does this poor neglected girl do when his husband no longer gives her the attention? Seeks her husband’s friend. That same one who’s been eating on the same table with her husband. But do you get my point? Do you see how rotten we are? Now why are you rushing into marrying anyone?

I’ll tell you this. When someone proposes or when proposing to someone, do your research well. Even if you know them for eternity, still do your research. Do a thesis about them if possible. Employ a private detective if possible. Seek help from FBI, CSI, CIA, all these security forces. Ask about the guy or the lady like she is in the most wanted list. Don’t let that infatuation or love blind you. No one is what they seem. I mean NO ONE! Take your time with this. There is no deadline in this. It is about your life. It is a lifetime commitment so no one should hold a gun on your head. If someone is not up to your standards don’t just accept because everyone else your age is getting married. Have your focus. Marriage is not your final destination. Marriage is not everything in life. Marriage is not about the white veil or the full suit. It is you handing over your heart with both hands to another person. You wouldn’t want to do that just to later on realize that you married a womanizer, a batterer, a homosexual, a psycho, a cheap lady, a terrorist, a drugist, someone with all kinds of diseases and most of all, a betrayer …right??

Sweetheart, there is no rush. Be patient. Analyze what people have to offer in your life. Sieve them away. Be critical in your thinking. Again, don’t allow love to blind you. Yes, everyone has some flaws but some flaws are just unacceptable. Keep praying again and again. Ask God to grant you what is best for you then wait. Remember your fate is already written. Don’t panic. Wait. Don’t let the societal excitement of marriage overwhelm you. Wait again. Remember this, good things take time! ?

 

To end this I will leave you some lyrics by someone (i don’t even know the name) but someone showed these lyrics some time back and I think the message is good:

 

Anayetoa ni mola wa pekee yeye

Kwa kila goti na dua anajibu yeye

Usije itaka harusi kwa pupa

Usije itaka harusi ukarudi na talaka

Usikimbilie mume ukaukondesha moyo

 

Mola amekuumba na sifa kedekede

Ukimuomba yeye atakusikia

Jiamini mama usiwe na mapepe

Ya nini tumbure angali mume majaliwa?

Kwanini ujichoreshe na mali yako yaliwa?

Utabeba vibovu upewe maradhi kukimbilia mapenzi

Uje upate tabu ukwaye mavazi uyachukie mapenzi…

 

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Deen (Religion)

NIKAH VS ZINAA: WHAT HAVE WE DONE TO THE RELIGION?

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Photo Courtesy: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-

In this era, a wedding’s expenses could cost you a life time debt and maybe even after you die, your children coming after you will still have to continue with the payment. Just the preparation of the bride could take around a hundred thousand Kenyan Shillings; her gown, her shoes, the henna, the make-up, the hair stylist, the new clothes, the jewellery and so much more. Then comes the dowry whereby a lady or maybe the family could demand for another three to five hundred thousand and some demand for as much as a million; maybe she sweats udd who knows? lol After that comes the walimah itself and we have the lunch event, the night event with so glorified names that if you have never attended such, you would be curious to attend one. When it comes to the feeding celebrations, now that is where no one wants to be left behind. Everyone wants their wedding to be the one to be talked about forever. They will decorate the hall excessively; forgetting that it is just some countable hours’ event. They will ensure there is a variety of food that may remain till the end of the week and even feed a whole ummah from it. Well I am sure even as reading this, some people would be cursing me inside and saying, ‘it’s the biggest day for a lady and it just happens once. She deserves it.’ But hey! we are forgetting a very important thing here; what is the impact of such big events and demands for high dowry? What does it do to the other youth watching what is happening?
 

 

A young lad could think: I have my beautiful girlfriend; a lady and a half. All it could ever cost me to take her to bed is a candle night dinner and a romantic film or probably just a walk to the movies with our popcorn and after that she is all mine or for some, it just costs him giving her some money to go do her hair, manicure and pedicure…oh! my world is complete! If this lad does this every week or even once in a month or whatever time, he is by no far a husband to the lady. You hear people calling their girlfriends ‘wifey’ or the lady calling him ‘hubby’ and people find it so amusing; ‘aww they are so cute’. And for the parents and elders they will be cursing them; but what do we expect from young people when you have clearly shown them that being in a relationship is the short cut to everything? ‘I get the girl with no much expense, no stress of having to stay with her all the time, no big threat of getting children and to top it up is that I have my freedom!’ Isn’t that what most people want? And we are the ones playing a bigger role in making them play the ‘hubby and wifey game’.

So what have we done to the religion of Allah? Haven’t we made zinaa the easier way out by the day? If a guy loves some girl then he will see, ‘why should i bother marry her; have to get loans for the dowry and wedding expenses, plus there will be much bigger responsibilities to come, when I can have her right now for some pennies?’ Isn’t this probably the reason why the prophet peace be upon him said that the most blessed nikah is the one with the least expenses?

To all the mothers. fathers and guardians out there; save your children from zinaa by making the dowry and nikah expenses low. Don’t scare off young men with large amounts that could give them heart attacks by the end of it. I hear some parents go to the extent of listing down how much they spent on their daughter’s education throughout her life and that ends up being her dowry amount. Parents, what you forget is, this young man can easily convince your daughter to sleep around with her with no much effort if they were in love. So if this young man has respected her to date and he was a gentleman enough to come for her officially don’t turn them away for dowry purposes. For sure, you wouldn’t want your daughter’s dignity to be killed just for some popcorn and a movie.

#Food for thought

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Coast & Culture

IS BEING COOL THE ONLY COOLEST THING TO BE IN MOMBASA? Part 1

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IS BEING COOL THE ONLY COOLEST THING TO BE IN MOMBASA? Part 1

By Lubnah Abdulhalim

Photo Courtesy: Salem_Beliegraphy

Well since Mombasa is an amazing island with blue oceans and beautiful scenaries, the immediate first instinct of any person would be ‘if Mombasa is not the place to be cool then where else?’ but my ‘cool’ that i mean here is the extended kind which to some would be termed as laziness and irresponsibility. I am a resident of Mombasa myself; of course i wouldn’t want to talk ill of our people but truth be said; youth and even some of the elders are misusing the word ‘cool’ and how to be it.

In a research on community resilience against violent extremism that I participated in four different areas in Mombasa, there was this common factor among all the four places, which is the behaviour of the youth of Mombasa. It’s nice to be cool and to feel nice about oneself but that is totally a different case when a person decides they are too cool to do a certain thing.

So the typical scenario of a Mombasa youth is that of: I wake up at nine or ten in the morning, I go to the table and my lovely mum has already left some good breakfast for me on the table. After eating I will go out and do totally NOTHING sensible but when I come back home at lunch hour, my lovely mum has already covered some food for me. I may be 24 or even above that, I am jobless and probably so is my dad but there is nothing to worry, because this lovely woman in the house will always find a way to provide good food or at least some food on the table even when we don’t know how or where she gets the money from. So where is the coolness I am talking about here? You may find that this young man has been offered several jobs but his ego won’t allow him to go sweep in the streets or carry cement. come on that is totally not cool right? ‘I mean, what if pretty girls come by and see me in shaggy clothes sweating under the hot scorching sun, carrying cement?!’ Isn’t that the mentality that most youth have? So what they would rather do is wear their lowered torn jeans revealing their inner wear, have a funny ‘cool’ haircut sit at a maskan, chew miraa and smoke bhang, walk with some swag and have the ‘you-cant-tell-me-a-thing’ attitude. The best any of these young men can do is wait at the maskan for an attractive classic matatu with banging music so that they can ask for a one round of reckless driving like in ‘fast and furious’, because to them, that is what is ‘cool’.

The reality is that this kind of young men are untouchable in these times because the kind of power and command they put even in their actions has created fear within us. Right now we are having very young boys below 16 walking in gangs, carrying pangas and murdering people and scaring us out like hell because we know they are no joke; that once they raise their pangas up then there is no way that they will let the panga fall down without touching blood. Another not surprising factor that emerges is that most of these young gangs start with a fight over a girl. Then a boy from a certain place is beaten up to death and the others come to revenge and it goes on like that till the gangs become organized groups with full leadership. And this to them is so cool because it is giving them the recognition they want. They want people to talk about them in every corner and be scared when they hear their names and well, they have succeeded in that. Yet when you see them, you would never think that such a young boy can fight you to death.

It is only in Mombasa where you will hear a person saying, ‘come on I am learned, how do you expect me to sell water’ or such kind of a thing. It is also only in Mombasa where you will hear a youth demanding that their parents give them the freedom they want yet they can’t take responsibility of their lives. They want to be left alone so they do evil and harm people yet they still want to come back home and find food ready on the table. And this where we have to admit that the upcountry fellows are doing a pretty good job in raising their children because at a very young age, they teach their children to take responsibility and how to take control of their lives. Whereas for us, that is where we have failed terribly. Our parents have shown us clearly; ‘My son, for better for worse I will provide for you even when you have a wife and children, I will cover up your mistakes for you, even if you are murdering and attacking people aimlessly. I will give you the money you need, even when i know you will use it in buying drugs.’ And that is the attitude most of Mombasa youth grow up with in these times.

Then we complain when our upcountry brothers come to Mombasa and lead us. But we have no right to complain! These fellows come from wherever they are from, they start from the very bottom; sweeping streets, cleaning toilets, making tea but give them just two years and you will see the same guy already a secretary in the organization. Give him five more years and he will be the manager. Then the Mombasa lad will come to the same organization and be given the sweeping task and he will say, ‘I am more educated than the manager. I completed form four while he dropped out of class eight. I can’t accept such a job.’ Ask him why he will tell you because it is unfair. But they never put into consideration where this manager started from. I have a neighbour from upcountry who is a graduate from pharmacy course yet she opened her own saloon when she didn’t get a job. Then try asking a Mombasa educated lady to do the same and you will hear the response, ‘That’s not my kind of job.’ And this where the difference comes from; our fellows have a focus while we don’t! We are always comparing our journey with someone else’s! “He has a Subaru while I have a probox or, I have nothing that can’t be!” We give the lame excuses of ‘upcountry people run the country that’s why they advance in life’ yet we all know that they are not coddled and that’s why they never lose neither their cool nor their focus. As for us, we just want the short cut. We want to get employed in an office that will make me the boss from the first day. A job we can brag about and get recognition. When you ask why the response will be, “because it is cool isn’t it? to be the boss, to own a nice car, to come in the time you want. If not that then i’d rather sit at the maskan and have a good time.” And it is this mentality that has made most of the youth remain jobless, because they want heaven without struggle. They therefore create their own ‘heaven’ by being in gangs smoking bhang and other hard drugs, harm people, maintain some swag and well, life goes on!

Yet another sad truth is that, even when parents know their children are causing harm, they would do all they can to release their children when they are arrested; even if it means selling their houses and property. Well, understandably, parents will still be parents especially the mothers. In the end of the day, they still want them to be fine and be with them. They will always be protective, but the question is, are they doing any good favour to their children by bailing them out always yet they will still continue to murder and beat up people? Till when will the parents keep pampering grown up youths instead of toughening them up to be responsible youth?

It is at this time where no one should even talk about the children of others. It’s scary. Really scary. Today you may be pointing fingers of how lost the neighbour’s children are, yet you don’t know what surprises your own might bring you tomorrow. We just have to ask for God’s mercy and protection; even for ourselves as youth. As the Swahili methali says, ‘Ukiona mwenzako anyolewa, chako kitie maji.’

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