Give A Little Love
- Joy Chege
- Nov 13, 2023
- 9 min read
A Few Thoughts Before The Story:
If you're like me, then I'm sure the past few weeks have been hard. Hard to think, to write, to work, to go about life as usual. Hard is a gross understatement for what's going on in the world right now. It's been impossible. Seeing new violence, continuations of colonial violence, 75-year-old violence. Impossible.
As a student and lover of history, I can recall learning about multiple atrocities and thinking one thing - How? How did the world stand by, and watch? From nazis; to slavery; to world wars; to coloniser regimes. How? Things that we are so quick to condemn now, things that everyone is somehow on the right side of history about now, things that we vowed to never let happen again. How? I see now. I see how. And it's as infuriating as it is horrifying to see and live through the horrors people are capable of, and feel like I can't do much about it. In Palestine, in Congo, in Sudan, and in many other places that experience these horrors in silence, backed by global superpowers and their people's taxes.
Even as I've been oscillating between anger and helplessness, I made one promise to myself - I refuse to become apathetic. I refuse to turn a blind eye. I refuse to be willfully ignorant. I refuse to stay silent. I will make use of whatever platform, however small, to at the very least remind you that you too cannot choose apathy. Horror shouldn't become commonplace, bloodshed shouldn't be ignored, genocide shouldn't be glossed over, or swiped past. Seeing a father holding his children's body parts in shopping bags is not, and should never be, normal. If you cannot speak up or think you cannot help, then learn. Amplify. Boycott. Empathise. Pray. Remember. But do not turn away. Not from the atrocities you think are happening too far away, nor from the brave voices of those who share them. The victims and the survivors do not have the privilege of looking away. If it's been hard for you to watch, to think about, to talk about, to learn about, then, like me you should be able to imagine how much worse it is to actually experience. Don't allow yourself to forget their humanity, or yours.
Every human life is too rare, too beautiful, to be treated as dispensable. Man, woman, or child. It should not be an issue of political ideologies, money, natural resources, religious dispensation, or social media discussions. Anywhere in the world.
If "we" are not free, then "we" are not "we".
Thank you for making it this far. Perhaps I have not been the most articulate or nuanced, but after a lot of internal debate, I couldn't share this story without sharing a few thoughts first.
I hope you enjoy my newest creation. I think it's apt that this is my first foray into love, something we all need a lot more of. Hopefully, this can be a worthy recharge for a few minutes before you and I get back to the good fight.
Lots of Love,
Joy
Wairimu, or Nimu, as most people referred to her, got her first job fresh out of university. Her parents had refused to give her an English name, reasoning that if they were raising her so far from home, the least they could do was anchor her to her culture with her name. And it worked, everyone would always be quick to ask where she was from and what her name meant when she had to walk them through the pronunciation or offer up her nickname. It was a vital reminder of her heritage.
At first glance, you'd have been quick to call her lucky, or blessed, depending on your beliefs. However, those closest to her could attest to her work rate and determination. They'd tell you she'd done two internships - not school-mandated; they'd tell you she worked for the school publication and at a campus coffee shop; they'd tell you she didn't get straight As but she earned every mark; they'd tell you she barely had time for them in between all of this, but they loved her anyway because she made every minute together count. They'd also tell you she had one of the best eyes for photographing people. She beautifully highlighted love, anger, sadness, passion, and every feeling under the sun with the previously-loved camera her parents had gifted her on her 21st. And with her phone before that. They'd say it didn't come as a surprise that a major media outlet had offered her a job a few weeks after graduation day.
Nimu wasn't of the same persuasion. She'd never feel like she'd done enough. The grades were never good enough. The portfolio was not good enough. Her work was never good enough. Even though she was one of the youngest interns they'd ever retained. Even when she'd spend hours pouring over photos she was tasked to edit, or when she'd prepare rigorously for any field assignments she got. Call it perfectionism, call it imposter syndrome, call it what you will, Nimu rarely felt like she ever belonged or had earned her professional standing. Her personal life suffered due to her perceived inadequacy and constant need to do more. It explained why she had few friends and not much of a love life.
When she met Ben, it had been one of those weeks where she'd been feeling especially downtrodden. It had been almost four weeks since her supervisor assigned her an actual photography job. Days of staring at screens and being cooped up in a dark, cold cubicle in a high-rise in the middle of a new city where she'd made no friends had been driving her nuts. That, coupled with celebrating her birthday alone had dampened her mood considerably. So, when she'd been asked to accompany one of the senior photographers to a launch, she hadn't jumped at the chance. More like slowly, and unsurely, crawled to it. She'd reasoned that her lack of assignments, despite being a full employee, was because the higher-ups were not liking what they were seeing. This particular task had felt like a high-stakes poker game in Vegas. A little too "do or die" for a career that had just gotten into gear. And Nimu had never been a gambler.
He'd been engrossed in conversation in a large group when she'd spotted him, everyone's eyes plastered on him, every ear hanging on to his every word. It was half past two, some forks were still clumsily clanging on plates but the large ballroom was now mostly filled with chatter. To this day, Nimu couldn't tell you what was even being launched. Some tech solution, to address some problem that likely hadn't existed, in a room full of high-brow, stiff-bodied "intellectuals" with even stiffer suits and dull personalities. Safe to say, it had been hard to try and capture any real emotion in the room.
That was until her lens happened upon him. Animated, charming, handsome, and with a radiant, pearly-white smile that met the flash of her camera as if on cue.
She was never a big believer in true love being possible for her, certainly not with the schedule and aspirations she had. But something in Ben's smile compelled her to speak to him. As the beacon of a lighthouse guides ships into harbour, his smile had beckoned her to what felt like a little pocket of peace in the madness of her day. They'd talked briefly when she'd introduced herself to the group and asked to get a few shots up close. He'd asked her where she worked, and made a joke about not being photogenic enough for the "professionals".
He'd been friendly, and warm, in a way that many people in this city weren't. Her parents had carefully curated a community for her back home, with people from their homeland, and other corners of the continent they grew up in. She'd not felt that spirit much before, a bit in uni, certainly not in her new city, but she'd sensed it in Ben. He'd given her his email, so she could share the photos she took of him. At least that's what he said to her when he offered it up, that he needed a new photo for his LinkedIn. Though he'd tell you now, he just wanted to know more about her (take nothing away from the photos, those were great too, and did end up on his profile).
A few email exchanges later, he'd asked her for her phone number. She'd nervously shared it, trying to tame any expectation that this would go beyond a few texts. Thankfully for both of them, it did. It blossomed into phone calls, a first date at the cute coffee shop opposite her office she'd had no time to step into, then a few more dates, and eventually them getting together. It wasn't her first relationship, but she was sure she'd never experienced love like this before. The high school and college sweethearts, the broken hearts, and the breakdowns in talking stages could not have prepared her. Nothing could. This was the love they wrote songs about. The love she'd seen in rom-coms and read about in books. The kind of love that crashes into you when you least expect it, and takes your breath away as it fills you with new life. The kind of love that never stops gently taking you apart to build you up again.
Ben was one of those people who lived entirely in the moment. Self-assured where she felt doubt, boisterous in rooms where she shrunk into silence. He had confidence not just in himself, but in everything working out. Ben didn't mind her outlook on life. Didn't try to change her. He just loved her loudly and unapologetically. In his love she saw patience, she saw kindness, she saw openness, she saw safety, and she saw faith. In him, she saw an ability to enjoy and be thankful for every moment. To be content with the here, and the now. Not without care for tomorrow, but without worry for what would come. She saw belief and conviction that she never allowed herself to feel. And in how he lived and loved fully, she started to see her life differently. She found faith that love could exist in it. She started to enjoy taking photos again, and instead of trying to exhibit a mastery of every technique, she put the people and their humanity on display.
She could never comprehend how much she had saved him too. She'd come to find out later that he'd been drowning in debt when they met. Student loans and a dead-end job where he was exploited for all his ideas and earned next to nothing but was expected to never look like it. In her, he saw zeal, and a desire to always do better. What she considered neurotic, he saw as passion and drew inspiration from. Where she saw contentment, he knew it was complacency. So for every hour she spent learning, he spent ideating and creating. He eventually left employment and worked tirelessly to get funding for an actual solution, to an actual problem. Until Nimu, he'd never thought there was much for him beyond a corporate job. But every time she created magic with the click of a shutter, and still felt she could do better, he saw that he too, could do more with his degree and love for people.
That's not to say that their relationship had been perfect. They would argue, they had a few fights, and they would occasionally get distant, or too busy with work. But at no point in their 4-year courtship had either of them felt like they didn't want to continue choosing to love each other.
The proposal had been perfectly private and poignantly personal. A gorgeous boutique hotel by the beach, the whispers of the sea's waves crashing in the distance, stars twinkling intermittently in the night sky, the air thick with the scent of salt, love, and new beginnings. She had worn her favorite red dress, a sweeping fish-tail number that hugged her just right. He'd fidgeted absently, and more than a little nervously, with the drawstring of his linen pants, as his white cotton shirt flapped a little in the light summer breeze. All that had disappeared as soon as he got on one knee and looked her in the eyes. He'd abandoned the speech he'd been writing and practicing for weeks, but every word he'd said had carried the gravity of their love. They'd taken lots of photos afterward and video-called all the parents, siblings, friends, and cousins who'd helped orchestrate the surprise.
Sitting there now, draped in her pristine white, floor-length dressing gown with feathers on the hem that were gently splayed on the dark teak floors, she wiped away at a tear. She couldn't let it streak the flawless base her highly sought-after make-up artist had just created, even though Maria was always prepared for more than her fair share of tears.
Thinking back on every moment that had led to their wedding day filled her with a joy she couldn't vocalize. Thinking about the people they had been on that dreary winter day she'd met Ben, and the people they were now. She felt perfectly content. It was a joy that was only similar to when she'd finally seen her photo on the cover of her favourite publication. After years of painstaking work, and thousands of discarded shots, it was this unplanned shot in rural Nyeri of her grandmother's unbridled joy at the first sight of her son in almost a decade that did the trick.
As Maria did some final touch-ups, Nimu remembered what Ben had said to her as he proposed, "I don't know what tomorrow holds for us Wairimu, but being with you, loving you, and being loved by you, has confirmed my belief that things will work out, in their own time, as they are supposed to."
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