The Bold and the Beautiful

Do you sometimes experience a keen, almost physical, longing for association of the past. When you pass by your old neighborhood in which you were born and where you spend your earlier life, do you have a sharp funny reaction almost a keen to nausea?

Yesterday I woke up early in the morning. The night had been brittle cold. I took a long hot shower in the morning. I let the showerhead gush. I stood under the showerhead for a long time and listened to the sound of the water that was gurgling down the drain. I went to the kitchen and found some cereals and milk. I fixed a quick breakfast. The day stretched before me .The day is like a desert. The desert is treeless. It was another morning. I had nothing to do better. I wondered what to do? The dishes were dirty, the laundry needed to be done, and the floor needed some mopping. I whispered to my self this is the only time I needed a maid (or a wifey! Sorry girls!). I walked in to the living room and turned on the television. I sat there flipping the channels. I was immediately hit by soap operas. I hated soap operas. I never liked it especially the Lifetime television (television for women as the logo goes). Then suddenly before I flipped the channel, I saw the soap opera “ the Bold and the Beautiful ”. This shows reminded back in the days when I was the king of translation in my neighborhood. All the girls used to come to our house and watched the show. The girls did not know how to speak English. They were from Somalia. Every Monday night I used to be called by my aunt to translate for the girls. This was an opportunity for me to escape being pushed to do my homework. School was a drag then.



The neighborhood girls used to let me translate for them. Sometimes they asked me to translate some unsettling questions that were struggle for a seventh grade kid like me to translate. But I pretended I knew everything. I never wanted to miss the chance of being the king of the neighborhood. All the girls in the neighborhood used to respect me. Whenever there is a making out scene, the girls covered their faces and said in Somali “akhaas meyeynan xishoneyn”. This was my favorite part. I enjoyed their reactions even though I was only fourteen. This was close to my puberty age. This show let me participate in girly talks with these girls. The participation was so intense you might think I shared an experience with these girls. I shared grief and shame with these girls. Shame became an experience. We shared the “Bold and the beautiful” experience. Suddenly a siren wailed in distance .The sound rose closer. It distracted my little daydreaming! I turned off the television and continued eating my breakfast while cursing the people who called the firefighters.

The Open Fly!

She is only twenty three years old and already looks like a model.This girl will pass on as a model if she was only famous.She is a picture of a Halle Berry body mixed with Jesica Alba face.Her skin is natural.Her eyes are accented.The accent is of a eye shadow.Her lips glow like a hot charcoal.It is only tinted with a lip gloss.I noticed that she been looking at me all the time i was standing on the wall.I wondered why in the world is she looking at me !.I am not the good looking guy in the crowd.I started blaming the shower i had before i showed up for the party.May be i shouldn't have let the avalenched burble over my head.The buble foamed down my ears.Is it that i didn't cleared my ears well?.I tried to glanced at her but i couldn't handle the presure that was building on my face.I turned immediately and my eyes caught her eyes stealing a glance at me.I started moving towards the table.There were a couple of girls with funny hairdos sitting on the table.My eyes flit from one girl to the next avoiding any contact.I started evesdroping on their silly talk.Whenever i go to parties i like to fill my time with fun things.Throw some words here and there at freinds.But today someone caught my attention like never before.I pretended to enjoy the singer who was singing at the stage.The singer shirts were unbuttoned you might think he was in about to engage in a fight with the fans.Sounded balloned around me of people catching up with their lives.All my attention was on this one girl who was staring at me.I swear to god i never cared if she didn't like me but why was she starring at me?.I tried to nod my head pretending i understood the words of the song.The singer shout was in to the microphone you might think he wanted to burst our ears purposefully.I tried to acted cool and changed my movement to garner some attention from the girls.My movement were strobed with floodlights.All this time i was trying to figure out how to approach this girl.Her hair was long and fashionable you might think she was "mixed".Her hair was pulled back from face.I drool when i see long hair that are well taken care of!.This girl was wearing a red dress that had a short collar.Oh! how i love when girls match their dress with their shoes.Her shoes matched her dress.I keep glancing on the floor acting like i was doing the "ATL stomp" while i was staring at her wide heels.I swear this girl loved fashion.She had a class and taste.I searched for a ring on her hand-i didn't notice any!.She instead had on a watch with a red band.She looked great.I said to myself "either i am going to stand here all night with no number or i will walk up to the girl and ask why she was staring at me?".I may be conceited guy but i like to know why things happen the way they are.I walked up to her and said in unclear voice "i saw you were staring at me,could you be kind to tell me your name?".She looked at me confused and said in a pleasant voice"Abowe am sorry, i wasn't staring at you,i was staring at your open fly". I was blushed at my own audacity..........the rest is history!.

Coackroach

Man has always been fearful of everything. His fears are of the unknown. We always stereotype things as being dangerous without experiencing the danger. Our ability to focus our attention on specific features of our environment is undoubtly important in allowing us to live peacefully. Man is a giant of the earth. His physical size and his cultural environ renders him the most powerful creature on this planet. He has the largest space on the earth; he can roam freely from India to the West Indies and from Somalia to South Eastern United State without the fear of anyone. Even though man is powerful on earth he lacks the brain to understand the little creature out there. If you might look under the soil or on top of the trees you will see there are creatures out there who survive without our help. Lift up a rock from the ground and you will witness different small creatures with different physiological making. Every major group of insect is represented when you remove the top part of the soil we walk on. A fourth grade teacher once said in the presence of sixty skinny kids ‘all insects have six legs and that they fly”. Stoic was one of those kids. When I was growing up the only insect I knew was a cockroach. A sign of filth and stigma was attached to wherever they were found. Cockroaches fascinated me ever since I was seven years old. I wondered how they managed to survive when my mom sprayed “DOOM” on them –an insecticide that was used in Kenya (Dawa ya Mende). I don’t think if my mom knew that roaches have been here long before we inhabited this planet. Roaches have inhabited this world successfully for almost 250 millions years.Yesterday I decided to research what this roaches are all about. I went downstairs to a friend’s laboratory and borrowed some Madagascar hissing roaches that he was rearing for his research .He gave me a box to put the roach on. I packed my roach in the box .At first he thought I was crazy since I am not a biologist. Biologist are always on the look out for some creature to rear for studies. He brushed me off as a someone who has nothing better to do with his time. I convinced him that I want to know what this roaches feed on. After all roaches have helped many basic studies of animal behavior, nutrition, and metabolism. Many studies have suggested that roaches are among the “brighter” insects. When people spray on a surface roaches quickly learn to avoid the sprayed surface. Isn’t that a sign of having a creative power? I bet you if those American soldiers who die everyday in Iraq would have been as “bright” as this roaches they would have avoided all bomb buried in Baghdad roads. Yesterday evening I decided to take the bus back to my apartment with my new friend whom I named “Farax”. He was large, brownish in color, and had a sickle shaped Jaw. I board the bus and exchanged some words with the bus driver. The bus driver is a good friend of mine. She is a nice sweet African American woman with southern accent .We always talk and joke on my way home. But today she was curious of what I was carrying in the box. She asked me what I was carrying. I answered her that I am carrying an insect. She was curious and wanted to know what kind of an insect it was. She convinced me to open the box even though I was against the idea. The bus was full of people back from work. I didn’t want to be the “roach guy” on the bus. I slowly opened the box and let her look at it. She screamed “oh my god! What kind of a roach is that?” .As I was explaining to her, the roach escaped out of the box. My hands were not quick to grab the roach before it escaped. Everyone started screaming “what the heck is that?”. Everyone is looking at me with a scorn. The scorn is a faint. The scorn is almost a sneer. My hands were nervous as I reached for my roach that was under the passenger’s seats .The roach made circles whenever I tried to reach it. It made a circle on one of the passengers leather shoes. He jumped over and in the process stepped on my roach. Poor Farax , Said I, he was dead now. What am I going to do now. My friend is not going to believe me if I tell him someone stepped on it in the bus. My face turned unsmiling. My face was without an apology to the passengers.

Restaurant

My heart swelled with this aching pity for this woman and her debating partners. Yesterday my friend invited me for a lunch at a local Somalian restaurant. I wasn’t working anyway what do I have to loose? I accepted the invitation. In Somalian culture if someone invites you for a lunch it means that your expenses are covered. I went to his new house to pick him up. I entered His house. It was a one-bedroom house. The room was dark and smelling musty. There was a hole in the ceiling. You could see sunshine shining through the hole. Dust danced through the hole. It reminded me of my physics class. My old physics teacher will always wrap two board cleaner together and then run a laser light through it to show how particles travel. My friend had a one bed in his room. The bed was so small that if two of us sit on it at the same time it will break. We left for the restaurant shortly after he dressed up.We happened to bump in to this professional woman with her friend at this restaurant. I didn’t know them but they were acquaintance of my friend. My friend invited them to join us for the lunch. I was immediately tensed and not happy with my friend choice. I am always not comfortable around people especially on a food table. My friend introduced them to me. They were two women in their early thirties if not late twenties. I greeted them while I chuckled with a smile that stretched from ear to ear. They both hugged me. They had a sweet breath. Their breath was frosted. They seemed to be professional women. Their dress seemed eccentric. Each of them had a face that showed ambition. The ambition was youthful. The restaurant was packed with people of different gender, height and speaking tone. We all made different orders. We were all silent while we waited for the food. Then suddenly one of the ladies broke the silence. I was bombarded by what seemed to be people whipping themselves in to a fury about how they detest young Somalian boys. One of the women was so disgusted with the Somalian community you might think she was an alien in the mist of children. Her tirade was brimming with loathing and disgust of the community. She was able to find a willing audience from my friend and her friend who were both nodding their head whenever she formed a foaming mouth. All this time I was scratching my head and reading this woman’s mind. I shrugged my shoulders. I managed a smile whenever she looked at me for an agreement with her tirade. My smile was weak. You could tell I was not in agreement with her.This woman was re-directing all the conversations to draw some attention to her. Whenever you want to present your argument to people, you need to organize your argument in such a way that it meets the need of the people you are addressing. This lady was creating a barrier between herself and the Somalian community. I wanted to dash out of this restaurant before she could talk about my mama. I decided to participate in the conversation but I could not. Generally the best way to persuade others is to identify with them in some ways whether it is religion or values. I asked her to tell me what common ground she has with the community she is loathing. She said only the culture. I reminded her much of what she is said is without any thinking. I asked her if she ever helped any boy to stay in school. She said that was none of her business. If it was none of her business then why is it now? I asked her. She stared at me. The stare is half-surly. The stare is disgusted with the annoying questions. The stare is meant to be what is wrong with you? I said to her sorry mom, you have to identify with the people you are criticizing first.