A close friend in Kenya emailed me back saying ‘I’m sorry’ to inform you that 7 months ago I was diagnosed with depression and I’m currently on the highest dose of fluoxetine (so-called fluoxetine). You haven’t answered the phone since I told you. known as Prozac).
Bro, the son of Mau Mau and scholar Luanda Mahele, is in Nairobi for a short period of time. Pick up the phone! I found a place in Kawanwea that serves matumbo in my preferred way of boiled beef tripe. Do not wash too thoroughly before cooking.
Most editors understood my nervousness and allowed me to leave the project. That’s why I haven’t heard from my dog Sigmund for a while. I took a break from writing to focus on self-care and recovery. We took long nature walks with Sigmund, had occasional massages, exercised, swam and had plenty of rest.
Treatment has not started yet. I had already booked my ticket to Nairobi when I found a black therapist in America (one who understands the black soul). Maybe there is a rule that she can’t see me when I’m not in Chicago, even via Zoom.
We decided to wait until we were back “home” in America. I want her to teach me how to forgive her and how to ask for forgiveness because petty memories of my past are tearing me apart. I wish I could stop blaming others for my problems!
Why is Metumi’s seemingly happy son so depressed? I have a good job that I enjoy very much and would like to do it for free. I have tenure and enjoy some pretty generous perks. My students are not only very smart, they always keep me on guard, but they also respect my imperfections. My colleagues are always very nice to me and my boss gives me whatever I want. For example, generous salary increases and full payment for travel from the United States to Kawanwea.
My depression is nothing new. I wonder if I was born with depression or because of a traumatic childhood experience. Kenya just happens to fail to diagnose mental illness early. If I had, I would have been put on Prozac or something at a young age.
Recent events (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic, marital hiccups, the death of a loved one, a sibling rivalry over an economically useless inheritance in the poor neighborhood of Metumi, etc.) It was the beginning of the illness. The midlife crisis has had a profound effect on me as I approach my final decades of life.
In fact, if you agree with Frantz Fanon about the psychological damage colonialism has done to us, many of the residents of Metumi, the hotbed of the 1950s Mau Mau War, were depressed, undiagnosed and untreated. It is highly likely that you are living a life of We unknowingly pass on the trauma we inherited from our parents to our children.
So be careful, brother. You may have depression and not know it, so see your doctor as soon as possible. Your narcissism, the influence of Britishness in your dress and accent, and your lack of empathy are clear symptoms of mental illness.
Luckily, not only do I have many resources at my disposal to combat depression (therapists, psychiatrists, nutritionists, doctors, insurance, etc.), but I also use my illness as a superpower to help Metumi. I consider myself one of the most decorated intellectuals in the world. from.
“You were always depressed, Mr. Biswas,” a former college classmate told me via WhatsApp from Harare when he called to inform him of his diagnosis. We call each other “Mr. Biswas” in honor of a character in Naipaul’s early novels. When this person has no place in society, it gradually drives him insane. Mr. Biswas, a real-life social worker, gave me a list of signs of depression he had seen decades ago. These include extreme self-hiding, academic perfectionism, and remarkable professional achievement with little success in emotional intimacy. .
I’ve been given a lot of advice on how to deal with depression, including smoking cannabis, but I won’t do it unless King Wajakoya VI makes it mandatory at the ministerial candidate’s breakfast in 2027. . Immediately President Wajakoya put down the Bible. , then let his friend Russ light up the mutongyi (joint).
Some have advised me to gather family and friends around me. But my relationship with my siblings has been irrevocably damaged, and many of my relatives in the countryside won’t even talk to me. Plus, I’m not going to start hugging people. Can you imagine me at the Faculty of Letters, University of Nairobi, generously hugging my colleagues?
I never hugged my father. My father passed away in 2017, so I still can’t hug him. I don’t think my mother is going to hug either. She has dementia and she can’t recognize me anymore. If I have to hug Larry Ndivo to cure my depression, let me die of depression. let me die Brother, even you have to wait until I’m in Umash to freeze and slap you if you’re going to hug me.
With the exception of the late Chris Wanjara, I have never been hugged by a Kenyan, and even on stage I have played only the brusque and least romantic characters (e.g. Grace Ogot’s thunderbolt). Cannibal Tekayo of no land). It was Professor Wanjara who kindly offered a hug as a gesture of forgiveness from a wise elder to a truant child.
I have always admired Wanjara’s Hegelian interpretation of alienation and mental suffering in Kenyan literature, but at a certain stage in my life, I used Wanjara as a punching bag whenever I wanted attention in the press. . Today, I regret it and encourage my students to take Wanjara seriously as a leading figure in the study of African literature.
Another day, I think I was hugged by Professor Austin Bukenia. The professor was very happy to finally meet me in person. He was invited by my drama teacher to high school in the late 1980s to teach a crazed African binge how to empty his bladder on stage for an audience without being exposed to the real world. I forgot that I was the one who taught me. (Different from Freud’s “das Ding/the Thing”, but related). Audiences are trees that drunkards mistake for those who try to peek at Das Ding, who gives him pleasure.
With Bukenya’s tips, I became a good actor and won awards here and there. The trouble is, despite the huge appreciation from the audience, I always left the stage feeling so miserable that I couldn’t even pick an award. Perhaps because my brain wasn’t producing enough serotonin, a chemical that plays an important role in mental functions such as mood regulation, I never experienced acting catharsis.
Professor Bukeniya is known among my generation for the evocative poem “I Met a Thief”. I had also met a thief in Chicago at the time he hugged me. Mine stole my time not my heart, hugged and kissed me all the time, asked for Dasdin far too often.
The thief’s obsession with “Das Din” made me read Julia Kristeva’s books on depression and Audre Lorde even though I had bought and flipped through the book just before I met the thief. I didn’t read so intently the diary of his illness. I intend to read these books more deeply, not only as an academic exercise in the new field of medical humanities, but primarily to understand my chronic illness and how to deal with it.
I’ve even been advised to sing and dance to vent my frustration. I used to love wheat. Its leading expert, Professor Maina Mutonya, a student of mine, describes Mugishi as a “primary framework for the negotiation of identities, incorporating interfaces and interactions between the traditional and the contemporary.” It is expressed as “place”. I am having issues with Mugisi now due to the circumstances of the alleged death of one of my friends in February. Before I talk about Jeff Mwati (1999-2023), let me digress a little.
Growing up in rural Metumi, I wore my first pair of shoes when I went to high school. There was a condition for future leaders not to walk around barefoot like chickens in such learning spaces. It’s not mainly because of poverty that I don’t have shoes, my brothers have shoes, trousers, and even his 007 cute underwear from James Bond (then called his Y ) even had I interpreted this lack of shoes and his Y as discrimination from my parents.
I never complained about it, but sometimes I would roll in the dust under the stilts of my grandmother’s granary and cry for hours. If I had a good voice, I would have adapted Bob Vinton’s Mr. Lonely to Africa before Akon did. That’s the song I used to sing quietly all the time. “Lonely…I’m Mr. Lonely…I don’t have my own Y” (sic mom).
My mother didn’t buy me a Y, I thought, because I wasn’t named after an important person in my extended family. The closest relative whose name I have shared is a ragged-clad madman named Maina whom I saw in the marketplace of Kahatia, laughing loudly while talking to himself to various audiences, saying, It was rumored that he knew abstract algebra. ”And sanity did not help anymore.
I used to think that “Maina” was associated with mania and madness, and I hated my own name. Even as an adult, at one point I only allowed the late President Moi and later writer Nuggi Wa Tiongo to call me “Mina.” Author Grace Ogot (1930-2015) seems to have realized that I don’t like the name. She doesn’t know where she gave me her new name, but she always introduced me to her friends as “my son Chege”. Her son Chege never corrected her.
For the rest of you, I’m Evan, Evan, Evan…or my nephews Nigel and Wayne, and the troupe they assembled to teach me the Mineko dance moves and lift my spirits. should be “mujin/mujinbiting” (whatever that means).
This is where my friend Jeff Mwati comes in. My affection for designer shoes and high-end underwear in my childhood may have come from my mother’s sense of discrimination before my teens. I just love kicks, it was the late Jeff Mwati who bought most of the sneakers I wear from Kamkunji, and now that I’m a grandpa, I’m a teenager who wants to be a pimp when I grow up. It looks like
The last time I was in Nairobi, Jeff and his bogi (gang/crew) asked me to go out wearing decidedly different sneakers in the name of Kupiga Luk (dressed to kill). forced to
If I ask Jeff – innocently of course – “please, boss,” if you’re wearing the right clothes, Tessa (gets the attention/stops the show/captures the world with her good looks and fashion sense) I replied that I would not do anything to torture her. His shoe on his left foot, or vice versa, as if to warn me that Jeff is working hard to make me look human and there’s no time for jokes. turned to me.
Jeff was the main character. Then you killed him, claiming he killed himself because he was depressed.
My father died of colon cancer, so doctors recommended an early colonoscopy. I did it again this week. I won’t write the procedure in the family newspaper, but considering what I’ve heard they did before murdering Jeff, I’d rather volunteer for another colonoscopy today than approach a celebrity who wants to be a bartender. think.
Anyway, sorry for saying all this. I didn’t want to hear about it for the first time from my best friend who eats matumbo. You see, my therapist does a great job for me. Good people, please pray for me.
– Professor Maina Wa Wanbui Mwangi (they/them/them) teaches extensively in English, African Studies, and sexuality at top US universities. They split their time between Evanston, New York, Muranga, Paris, Geneva, Cape Town and Kawanwea. Also known as Evan Mwangi, they want to be Onidoko dancers when they grow up. [email protected]
