Lifa springs out of her thoughts panic-stricken, like someone waking up from a bad dream. She glances around the room to check if someone has caught sight of her in this embarrassing condition and much to her delight, everyone in the café is going about their business. She takes a sip out of her cappuccino and pulls out her phone from her bag as she tries to recover the sufficient breadth of mind to process what had just happened, wading off her embarrassment with a small chilly smile of friendliness. She suddenly gets horrified at the paleness in her face as she looks at her reflection through the screen of her iPhone XS Max and she realizes that she needs to do a little more, that a smile is not adequate to restore the right state of composure as is consistent with due social decorum. Of all people who were in the café, all her acquaintances who she was very fond of, she wouldn’t forgive herself if, the waiter - Jamal, with dark eyebrows, shining eyes and all possible perfection one could wish for – with whom she was secretly carrying on an intrigue for a few weeks now despite having a loving and caring boyfriend; she would never forgive herself if Jamal saw her in any compromising situation. Lifa, a fine woman of delicate beauty as herself, as she had always held, needed to act in the presence of others in strict diligence as to the responsibilities that accompany that esteemed status and therefore a natural necessity such as the urge to sneeze was to be treated as a matter of catastrophic consequences. This meticulous attention to detail is what, in her firm believe, separated her from her peers. For her, as proven by her Fenty makeup and Marc Jacob’s spring collection 2018 inspired outfit, image was everything! And more specifically, the kind of image that you project to others and what you want to be remembered by; and Lifa wanted to be known as the queen she is, infallible. This character did not come to her of her choosing but it indiscernibly cultivated itself in her as a counteractive responsive to the anger and resentment she carried in her heart for so long during and after her seven humiliating years she worked as a house help; indeed, she very well took care of herself during that time in her own small ways, and it only so happened that now she had a good paying job and with the money that came along with that, she had more options. In all likelihood, one would at once, at first glance, look at Lifa as a dissipated thirty something woman refusing to age; as this is what, according to the ideas of the Kenyan urban world, the description fit for a beautiful woman of her class with no family or kids. But Lifa knew very well how she must appear to herself and others: as the queen she is, and in the fullness thereof, and that anyone’s opinion of her is as indispensable as gossip, that however unpleasant it may be, it certainly does a remarkable job at marketing the subject matter and that ultimately the truth lies with one person and their close acquaintance. It was well known to Lifa’s close friends of her good heart, her charity works and her financial support to her relatives, but Lifa preferred to keep this part of her life a secret and never spoke about it. So Lifa, at this critical moment, knew that she had to balance off the rapture that had seized her heart coming out of that memory, and the necessary calmness she had to keep in order not to draw any unwanted attention to her current deplorable state.

On arriving at the café with her friends, exactly three and a half minutes ago, Lifa sat on the center most stool as she had sat every day after work for past few weeks and ordered a coffee and her favorite snack. The waiter, Jamal, in his tall handsome self, had walked to them, greeted them, and asked for their order, starting with Lifa’s friends as he always did. He then moved to Lifa, and with his mellow tone with which it was impossible not to blush over, asked for her order. Lifa gave him her order, blushing only with her eyes as not to give herself away to her friends, and smiled at him, and at her fears. For the past five weeks since Lifa and her friends discovered this place, after their favorite restaurant got temporarily closed down for renovation, Lifa had not taken her eyes off Jamal. She saw in him, a mysterious, sophisticated, elegant man wrapped about in a simple waiter job at a café. She had clearly made her intentions and feelings known to him from the beginning and he had effectively responded back, not by words, but through the unseen language of looks and tones. Besides the good coffee and their Monday and Friday girl’s get together, where they talked about work, love affairs and all the urban gossip – notorious in the fashionable world of city dwellers, Jamal was the reason Lifa particularly enjoyed coming over to this café, just to hear that mellow voice and see those shining eyes. The most unpleasant of the three and a half minutes she had been at the café had been the second minute after they arrived. “I am in a relationship. And Derick is a good man” she recalls quarrelling with her soul soon after she had asked for her coffee and shared a brief moment with Jamal. It’s not that Lifa had fallen out of love with Derick or that Derick was not a good man. Actually it was truer to say that Derick’s being a good man was the chief problem. That Derick, who sat as chairman on the board of one of the parastatals of the Kenyan government, and the man to whom she owed all her success, had fallen into the trap which most successful men with beautiful wives fall into: and that is to take care of all her desires but to deny her the attention she needs. Derick granted her all the freedom she wanted and supported her far and beyond. They even went on a two weeks’ vacation every year to a destination of her choosing; nothing better could be wished for. But Derick had forgotten the principle trait women have always wanted from a man since the beginning of time; ATTENTION, and this poisoned all the happiness. He wouldn’t recognize her new hair or her fresh pedicure, all the little things that make a relationship flourish, neither would he get jealous when Lifa talked about another man, and this hurt and angered Lifa the most about Derick, and the entire species of men, and how lightly they regarded such crimes. Yes, she was wrong to admire another man, and Lifa was painfully conscious of this, but it wasn’t her fault; and she wasn’t to blame. Jamal, in the way he looked at her, saw her as an empress decked out in sacred vestments that he couldn’t even find the courage to approach her and in him, she felt what she once felt with Derick during the early days of their relationship; wanted. She wouldn’t book a hotel with Jamal or do anything that would jeopardize her commitment to Derick, Lifa was in complete possession of her emotions; it’s just that her soul was flooded with happiness at the sight of Jamal, and she was thoroughly enjoying this youthful sensation. As if her moment of cross-examining her sins and inner conflicts couldn’t get any worse, in a strange twist of affairs, Lifa saw the first ever vision of her late mother and this was what had been responsible for the paleness on her face.

Lifa had seen her mother in a polka dot dress standing outside their childhood village kitchen, preparing maize; and her two younger brothers playing – racing – Justus, the older one, winning effortlessly as he always did, as her younger self, of about nine years, intensely watched from a distance. This sight wasn’t as nearly beautiful as the terror it struck into Lifa’s heart. Lifa’s mother had died when she was an infant and she only knew her by reputation, through the many stories she had been told about her as a child. And so to see her so vividly in such a fashion as she had never before, was as frightening as it was beautiful. Further than that, her two brothers, who belonged to her father’s second wife, with whom Lifa had been best friends growing up and known nothing but goodness from their mother, hadn’t been born at the time her mother died and this ramped up the mystery of this image further. “Mama! Mamaa! Wait, Justus, what are they doing here? Mamaa! The tortoise…” Lifa recalls the image and tries to make sense of every tiny detail, adjusting herself to a more comfortable position– which she is unable because she is seated on a stool – as she scrolls through her phone, intensely looking at her gallery then contacts, then Instagram, everywhere and nowhere. She takes a look at the time on the top right side of her phone’s screen and she is amazed that it has only gone by three minutes, which seems like an eternity, since they got to the café, and two minutes since she received that vision of her mother. She looks around and everyone in the café is still minding their business, no one having noticed the hopelessness of her condition; and today is a strange day that none of her friends has come over to her to start a talk yet and Jamal is unusually busy attending to his job and Lifa hereby plunges deeper into the activities of her phone to conceal her secret thoughts. A phone is always a good plan when you want to hide in plain sight, especially if you are a beautiful and stylishly dressed girl like Lifa, people will only assume the good out of you: that with the expensive outfit and good makeup, you are actually attending to an urgent matter of time and financial importance, or in the very least, that you are well mannered and blushing through your phone – and blushing is an important aspect of good character – unlike the typical independent, loud city girls. Lifa was however not in the habit of clinging to her phone when in public and they actually had an existing rule of no phones during their hour long girl meetings, with the exception, obviously, of a good selfie or photo-worthy moment; and they were plenty of those. It’s funny how most urban dwellers (it used to be a problem with the younger generation at first and then everyone else caught a fever) sensationally unanimously agree that the use of a phone in a social gathering is impolite and unreasonable and yet they all unconsciously fall into the trap of the phone; the addictiveness that comes with it and the coolness attached to it. Stereotyped as it may, Lifa was delighted that she had her iPhone and therefore the opportunity to hide her secret thoughts and so she immersed herself in her apps, not really looking for anything. Her mind was running all over the place. She was on one hand, most happy at the thought of seeing her mother, or rather her mother revealing herself to her as this was clearly a matter outside any humanly capability, and she so wished to see her mother again one more time; and on the other hand, scared at the necessity of having to process all the emotions that came with that. She quickly realized that, to solve the mystery of all this, she needed to trace back what might have been the trigger of this powerful vision and in so doing possibly get a chance to see her mother again and have the strength to endure it. “Ugh, Ushagoo!” Her eyes sparked at the recollection of her trip to the country side the past weekend and she stops tapping on her phone, but still keeps her eyes glued on the screen – at nothing still, and tries to remember the content of this trip.

She had travelled to Kisumu to attend her Auntie’s medical fundraiser but her true objective was to expressly settle a difference between herself and her older brother. On the bus there, she had sat next to a woman who was on her way to her mother’s burial. The woman, who had introduced herself as Atach, had been one of those delightful women in whose company its sweet to be silent, such a rare occurrence in a Kisumu-bound bus, with whom she had shared one of her best moments in their eight hour drive. It was out of that deep conversation about death and losing a loved one which she had had with the lady, and which had been simmering inside her during her entire trip and back, that Lifa had received the vision of her mother. “You know, us women, since the begin of time, have been accused of being too emotional. As I have always strongly defended women in other aspects of life as it regards emotions, on the matter of mourning a loved one, I have a different stand. You see when certain cultures prohibit women and children from attending funerals, I completely understand the reason why. Most people, and women occupy the biggest space in this chart, fail to see the wisdom in death. First of all, when it comes to burial I think it should be kept short and quick; but that’s not our subject matter and so I won’t get into details. Too many people preoccupy themselves with the dead; but you see, they have lived and died in exactly the same way they were destined and nothing can be added or taken away from that so it’s meaningless to be weighed down by the past. Please don’t get me wrong, I mean grieving a loved one and keeping their memories is absolutely important and a significant part of the healing process; as to how and when it should be done, that’s a different topic we’ll get into later. My point is, that there is a bigger purpose to death which in my view, very few people attach to it the special significance it so very much deserves; and that is, a reminder to the living. This is the most important lesson of death, the singular purpose of death – a reminder. A reminder to the living that one day, you will also be lying lifeless on a piece of wood…” the woman had said at one point. Lifa is weighed down by emotions at the recollection of this conversation and her soul is filled with sorrow. At this point she is incapable of hiding in her phone or a smile. She looks down and desperately tries so hard not to blink her eyes that tears might not fall. She remembers the image of her smiling mom in that blue dress in her vision and she loses all her control.

Lifa weeps to the floor. Her seat is unable to support all the pain and emotion that has flooded her soul. She cries so much that she struggles, in great difficulty, to gasp for air in between her sobs. She, after a short while, through the same great incomprehensible power far beyond her human capabilities, gets her strength back and gets on her feet. As she is gathering herself and as she is about to turn around to the side of the café in which she was formally facing, she notices the girl from her vision, her nine-year old self, standing right in the middle of the road across the street. Lifa has by now come into terms that everything that is happening at this moment, or seems to be happening, is through a higher power and it’s pointless to try and fight it and should instead embrace it in humility. She looks closely at the girl through the glass window and sees her tiny face, radiant with help and happiness. It was as though her existence were so teeming over with something that against her will, showed itself with the flash of her eyes, and now her smile. The girl’s eyes appeared to cut through to her soul as if screaming “Run, save your soul!” and then softening the words with that friendly smile. Lifa turns around to find the café in total turmoil, everyone rushing towards the exit in a stampede. There wasn’t any bang or anything of the sort to indicate an emergency and no one was screaming; everyone simply desperately ran to the exit, with fear drawn all over their faces. Lifa jumps to the exit, runs across the street onto the main road, runs through the park off the highway, across the suburban homes and continues running; getting her strength from that invisible power. She isn’t sure for how long she has been running, or over what distance, but where she stops, it feels like her once solo holiday trip to Kilifi, which had been the best vacation she had ever gone for, and where she had written and entire ten pages on her mac book about her explorations, love life, work, and finally now that she remembers, her mother. Everything now finally makes sense. She sits back and enjoys the sunset in Takaungu.