Fifty days of lessons, hard seasons, and things I got wrong. Today, a lighter one. Just the things that make an ordinary day feel a little richer.
Favourite meal: Mukimo with beef.
There is something deeply comforting about mukimo. Maize, potatoes, greens, all mashed together into something humble and complete, and then beef alongside it to round the whole thing off. It is not a fussy meal. It does not need an occasion. It is simply, reliably, good, the way certain foods manage to taste like home no matter where you eat them.
Favourite book: The Poisonwood Bible.
If you have read it, you already understand why. If you have not, I will not spoil it for you, except to say it is the kind of book that stays with you long after you have finished it, told through voices that are each so distinct you could pick any one of them out of a lineup. I am drawn to stories that hold multiple perspectives on the same events without flattening any of them into a single truth. That should not surprise regular readers of this series. You know by now how I feel about the gray.
Daily pleasure: walking.
Most of my walks happen in Nairobi’s CBD, and I have come to genuinely love them. There is something about moving through a crowd of strangers that quiets my mind in exactly the way I need. I watch people. I find myself wondering what they might be thinking, what their lives might actually be like behind whatever face they are wearing that day. Sometimes, without announcing it to anyone, I will silently say a prayer for a stranger who has caught my attention for no particular reason. A small, private blessing tossed into a busy street, for someone who will never know it happened.
You already know I am not a small talk person. But watching, quietly, from inside a moving crowd? That is my kind of connection.
The best walks, though, happen away from the CBD. Karura Forest, when I can get there, or the open space of a rural area when we travel. Trees instead of traffic. Birdsong instead of hooting. Nature has a way of resetting something in me that the city, however much I enjoy people-watching there, simply cannot reach.
Favourite scent: Oud Rosewood by Christian Dior Paris.
I have mentioned this one a few times in this series without quite naming it properly, so let me be honest here: it is expensive, and I have run out of it, and I am hoping to get my hands on more soon. There is something about a truly good fragrance that feels less like vanity and more like a small, private luxury you carry with you all day. I do not need a lot of things to feel indulgent. I need this one thing, worn well.
Consider this post my gentle hint to the universe.
None of these things are complicated. A meal, a book, a walk, a scent. But I have learned, especially in the writing of this series, that a life well lived is not only made of milestones and lessons. It is also made of small, faithful pleasures, returned to again and again, simply because they are good.
Fifty years in, I am learning to let the small things be enough.
Come back tomorrow for Day 20: what I actually mean by ambitious.
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