It’s March already! You blink and your children are turning 3 & 11! How? Time is certainly moving so fast for me. A busy working single mother raising two boys in Japan!
My goals this year are more or less the same as those last year. They include:
Write essays, get published
Blog more
Career growth/change
Run at least 25 km a month
Read a book a month
Happy, creative kids: less TV, more outings
Travel: Okinawa in May, Hokkaido in summer, Kenya in December.
Missing from this list are the goals from last year:
Start on my book project: a chapter a month? – I am simply unable to find the time
Japanese – study for the JLPT? – same time predicament.
How am I doing so far?
I have a couple of short essays in the works, hoping they will get published this year.
This is my first blog of the year, so I am doing badly in that regard
I’m trying my best to grow my career – it’s not easy
I’ve been running 2-3 times a week and achieved my running goal in Jan & Feb
I read “Breaking Down Silos: The Transformation of Hitachi” by Toshiaki Higashihara (he is the ex-CEO and current chairman of the board of Hitachi, the company I work for) in January and “Finding Me” by Viola Davis in February. I’m currently reading Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Breaking Down Silos by Toshiaki HigashiharaFinding Me by Viola Davis
I try to take the kids to the park, children’s hall (jidokan in Japanese, etc), the pool on weekends. We’ll go out more when it gets warmer.
Kai playing at the jidokan – a much more spacious place to play indoors
I’ve made Okinawa travel plans, but I need more money from I don’t know where for the rest of my travel plans, especially to Kenya. Imagine buying 3 tickets for international flights right now!
Highlights from Jan and Feb
In January, I went on a business trip to the US. It was a 5-day-4-night trip and required quite complicated logistics to pull it off but I did it! I’m so glad. It was very eye-opening.
In February, President William Ruto was in Japan and he held a meeting with the diaspora. He spoke a lot and a lot of Kenyans asked him questions that he was able to answer quite smoothly. Meeting him in person made me realize just how smooth-talking politicians can be. Anyway, below is a picture from that meeting on Feb 7th. Kai clung to my arms and refused to say hello to the president!
Kenyan President William Ruto and his wife Rachel receive a present from officials of the Kenyans in Japan Association (KIJA). Yes, I volunteer as an executive member of KIJA.
I’m looking forward to what the rest of the year has in store for me. I sense big changes around the corner. Just a feeling.
I am so proud of my running habit this year. I thought I would share some highlights from my running journey. Hopefully, it will also encourage you in your own fitness journey: be it yoga, walking, swimming, pilates, weights or whatever you are into.
I’m updating this post to compare with the other year (2020) when I ran consistently. Before that, the only I’ve ever jogged consistently was for a couple of semesters back in campus (as we say in Kenya to mean back in college). Growing up, I was never athletic or active and it took significant effort to pick up jogging which does not come naturally to me, at all.
Stats from a typical run
At the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to go on a lockdown. I too, baked banana bread and took up jogging consistently. I got my first real running shoes, Nikes in pink. I jogged nearly every day. I lost weight. My skin was glowing. I felt good. Later that year, I got pregnant with my second child and wasn’t able to continue jogging, it just felt too hard. I instead walked a lot. After my baby was born in 2021, I didn’t really have consistent help to look after the baby while I jogged. I only started jogging on and off in 2022 when Kai started daycare, and then more consistently this year.
Summary
Total distance covered in 2023: 326.6km Total distance covered in 2022: 48.7km Total distance covered in 2021: 0 Total distance covered in 2020: 438.2km
Average per month: 36.5km vs 27.05km
Average per month excluding months I didn’t run: 62.5km vs 29.5km
Longest distance: May, 105Km vs December, 42.8km
Shorted distance: Sept, 19.7km vs July, 17.2km
DetailedRunning Statisticsin 2023
Total runs: 65 (98 in 2020)
Average (mode) distance: 5km
Shortest run: 3.79km
Longest run: 10Km on Tue, Mar 28th (19.71km in 2020)
Fastest run: 5km at a pace of 7:15min/km (4.70km in 2020 at 7:04min/km)
Slowest run: all of them not mentioned above lol
Longest run of 2023 was 10KmMy fastest run. Hopefully, I can run faster in 2024 but I really don’t care if I improve or not. No advice please.
As you can see, there is a huge difference between my 2020 and 2023 activities and it all comes down to being a parent of a toddler! It will be interesting to see if I get more time to jog as he grows older.
Another year goes by. My 9th in Japan. I never thought I would still be here 9 years later and will I complete a decade? We shall see next year.
2023 was the year we decided to ignore COVID-19. Treat it just like a cold, never mind the flu. No masking. Barely any vaccinations. Flights are as full as before COVID-19, yet 3x as expensive. Airlines have to recoup their losses. No one cares about the sick or vulnerable anymore; even if we are all vulnerable.
As for me, I set out to live out the year 2023 a day at a time. I found peace in the mundane tasks of daily life. As I wrote earlier this year when setting my goals for the year, “2023 may or may not be a defining year for me and my little family, but I look forward to squeezing joy out of every big or small moment this year has to offer.” And I think that is what I did.
Here are some of the things I was able to achieve this year:
Translating Kusadikika into English
One of my proudest achievements was translating Kusadikika, a Swahili classic literature book, into English. I didn’t have a writer or copy editor so I am sure there are a few typos here and there. Bear with me. I self-published on Amazon Kindle in April but to this day, I am yet to receive even a single cent of the 40 dollars or so from the 10 copies sold so far (so many issues receiving money from abroad in Japan, I’ve been trying to sort it out). But I didn’t do it for the money, did I? Anyway, I have set up a kofi account so you can send me tips, and in turn, I can email you an e-pub copy of the book.
Kusadikika English Translation by Harriet Nyanchama Ocharo
Jogging at least 25Km a month
With the exception of August, when I was in Kenya for a holiday, I have jogged 25 Kilometers, more or less, every month. I will do a separate post about this, that’s how proud I am. Where do I even find the time to jog, you ask? It’s all because I work from home. I jog at lunch time or in the evening after work, the time I would have spent on the evening commute. I typically do 5K runs and up to 8-10km when I have time, which is rare.
And I know I get a tone of advice on how to run faster or better or longer, but I don’t want to hear it. What I am doing is enough for me right now.
Jogging stats from a typical jogging session
Going to Kenya in August for a one-month holiday
It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t cheap flying with a toddler and a 10-year-old across multiple continents. So I’m proud I was able to take this holiday to spend time with my family.
The kids rolling around on the floor at Addis Ababa Airport
I also reconnected with a few friends from campus (college) and we had a short holiday in Diani.
Floating in the Indian Ocean
The Ones Left Behind Documentary: I was on the Red Carpet at Yokohama Film Festival
I never thought in my life that I would walk the red carpet. It was such an exciting evening mingling with actual celebrities at the Yokohama Film Festival, where the documentary highlighting the plight of single mothers in Japan had been selected for screening. I was one of the single mothers interviewed.
Getting photographed on the red carpet at the 2023 Yokohama Film Festival. From left, single mother Mayumi, one of the film producers, director Rionne McAvoy, single mother Miharu, and producer Ivan,
I have been in the same company and role since 2019. It has been a great learning experience but I have reached the point where I ask myself, what next? I am still searching for the answer to this question.
I managed to publish one paper this year. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to travel to the conference in Paris and had to present online. That sucked.
Reading in 2023
I had an initial goal of reading a book a month. I revised that goal down to 6 books a year. Between a full-time job as a research scientist and a never-ending-job as a single mother, and the jogging and Netflix, I could hardly squeeze in time for a book! I have read 9 books so far and I’m on my 10th.
My favorite read was Wonder by RJ Palacio. It’s a YA book but it is deep and involving enough for adults too. My other favorite was Pop Flies, Robo Pets and Other Disasters by Suzzane Kamata, also a YA book but a bit lighter than Wonder. I would also totally recommend H.G.Wells’ Time Machine and communion by bell hooks.
Books I read in 2023
Writing in 2023
Aside from the Kusadikika translation and a few blog posts here and there, I did not find time to write any fiction (short stories) or essays or to start on my memoir about my life in Japan. I really hope to do that in 2024. I have so many ideas but I am limited by time.
Traveling in 2023
Going to Kenya in August was the major travelling that we did for the year. But we also traveled quite a bit locally, going to Ishikawa twice to visit my Japanese parents and going to Hakone and to Tateyama in Chiba for a weekend each time. On our most recent trip to Ishikawa, Jeremy was able to meet some of his nursery classmates from 5 years ago! They’ve grown so much, from gap-toothed little boys to 10-year-old 5th graders.
J & K
The boys grew a lot this year (They turned 2 &10). Jeremy in particular is so tall now and his shoe size is larger than mine. The boys are happy and healthy and smart too. If there is one thing I would change in 2024, it would be to reduce the amount of screen time for all of us!
“May I speak with you?” she asked, in English, bending close to my face.
Not another one of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I thought. They are the only ‘friendly’ Japanese people who approach you in English. It was too early and I don’t like talking so early in the morning. Besides, I had a work meeting starting soon after.
“Sorry, I have a meeting now”, I told her. I watched the eager expression on her face fall flat. She was crushed. She must have thought that it was an excuse to get away. In fact, it was both. I really had a meeting but I didn’t want to be used for English practice or to be preached to so early in the morning. But I felt guilty later and promised myself that I’d talk to her the next time I saw her.
A few days later, I saw her at the local playground that’s next to some public housing apartments. I went over to her and said hello. Lucky for me, she wasn’t a Jehovah’s Witness. But she didn’t waste any time telling me the details of her life. She had spent some time in New York as her child, so that was why her English was near perfect. She was schizophrenic and taking medicine for her condition. She was a pescatarian and she offered to come over to my house to cook fish for me and my kids. When she learned I was a single mother (I had to tell her when she asked about my non-existent husband), she offered to babysit for me. She told me she envied my happy life. Her sister also had a happy life, married and living with her husband and kids further west of here. She lived with her mother in one of the public housing units, just the two of them since her father had passed away. She wishes she could have a family of her own too, but she can’t on account of her illness.
Photo by Elina Volkova on Pexels.com. Image of a random woman in a random park.
It was certainly an unforgettable first conversation. A few minutes later, a woman in her mid-60s walking with a shuffling gait walked past us and into the apartment she had pointed to. The woman didn’t acknowledge us in any way. “That’s my mother,” confirmed my new acquaintance.
Since that day, I see the mother nearly every single day I take Kai to daycare. She is always coming back from somewhere around 8:30-9:00, carrying a bag. I have always wondered if she is coming back from a nightshift job but the mystery was solved the day I met her shopping at the supermarket. The early bird catches the freshest groceries I guess. She has never once looked me in the eye or acknowledged me. Yes, she has seen me on several occasions times talking to her daughter in the park so she is definitely aware of my existence.
The daughter is as friendly as ever each time we meet. She has invited me to her church, but I always tell her that I am too busy. It is hard to explain that I lost my faith in deities decades ago when I was 11 years old. That’s a story for another day. She told me she has been looking for a job at English conversation schools (Eikaiwa) with no luck despite her excellent English. It’s so unfortunate that some (not all) of Eikaiwa schools in Japan prefer to hire blonde and blue-eyed teachers, even if their English language skills are not up to par. At the very least, being visibly foreign is an advantage. They don’t like to hire visibly Asian-looking teachers because their students apparently want to be taught by an “authentic foreigner”. Yes, racism exists in Japan.
I really hope she gets the job because wants it and she deserves some joy in her life. She has told me that getting this job would make her life somewhat happy.
And now to the second mother-daughter pair. My immediate neighbour is also a woman in her 40’s (my estimate) living with her mother in her 60’s. As far as I have observed, it is just the two of them. (I’m sure that I am also closely observed by my neighbours. That’s suburbia for you.) Her mother is always up at the crack of dawn, watering the myriad of plants hanging off the tiny wall surrounding their small house. She will say good morning to me (or itterasshai) when I’m dropping Kai off at daycare. Later, when I am hanging the laundry on my balcony, I can see her enjoying a smoke and basking in the morning sun in her 1-square-meter garden, their little dog waiting patiently for her morning walk. Sometimes the daughter will take the dog for a walk and sometimes the mother will do it. They both dot on their dog. The mother goes grocery shopping on her scooter, which she parks on the side of the road decked neatly behind an electric pole since they have no parking space on their property.
Photo by DLKR on Pexels.com. This IS NOT their house, just a random image of a scooter in Japan.
I had a chance to talk to this daughter the other day. She told me she is a piano teacher, and that she has a degree in music. In the evening, many kids park their bikes on the road and ring her bell for lessons. On many afternoons, I can hear the sounds of Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Vivaldi, Chopin and other classics wafting over from their house. She is good. Luckily, they have their own house. My current apartment forbids any musical instruments, and although I have been thinking of enrolling my older son J in her piano classes, he would need to practice on an electric keyboard (that I haven’t bought yet) with headphones on. There is also the question of where to put the keyboard because my apartment is kind of full already.
They look like such a happy mother-and-daughter pair and they make me think of my own mother, tens of thousands of kilometres away. Of course, I don’t know their life story. Did the daughter never want to marry and move out? What happened to the family patriarch? Maybe there never was one. It is none of my business, so I would never ask, but I do think that living with your mother is one of life’s privileges. I miss my mother very much and I do wish I was living near her.
I love this picture of a summer sunset that I took from my car when I was living in Ishikawa Prefecture, about 5 years ago.
I have been waiting for an opportunity to publish it. I wanted to write a good essay or story or blog post to accompany it, but I have not been able to find the words.
“What I’m trying to say, Mama, is that sometimes we go back. Sometimes go back, if only to leave this place of grieving, if only to find joy again. Like memories captured in photographs offering us transmission to those times apart from now – and a part, still, of now.”
Sometimes I think that my life in suburban Tokyo is boring since nothing exciting really happens. One day easily fades into the next. My life consists of daycare pickups and drop offs, grocery runs to Gyomu Supermarket, and detergent shopping at Sugi Drug Store, and the rest of the time working at my desk for the better part of the day. Then I realized that a lot of interesting things happen, it is just that I stopped sharing everything with the world. I’m quiet quitting social media. But allow me to share with you a couple of stories about garbage from my quiet neighbourhood.
Garbage rules regarding sorting are very serious in Japan. Recyclables like plastic and glass bottles, newspapers, cans, etc have to be sorted and disposed on different days of the week. The garbage that is to be burned (kitchen waste, diapers, such) is usually collected twice a week, and on those days we have to put out our garbage into designated bags and put it out on the roadside by 8am for collection. Most apartment buildings, like ours, have a covered garbage station so the crows and other animals don’t get to it. For the stand-alone houses, which make up a majority houses in my neighbourhood, they have their own garbage bins or will throw a net over it, although how effective is a flimsy net in deterring crows, I do not know. Actually I do, see image below.
So there is this rich neighbour around the corner, right next to Kai’s daycare. I know they are rich because they have a large-ish garden, I mean you could fit an entire Tokyo-sized house in their front garden. They also have ample parking with large cars.
But get this, almost every Tuesday or Friday, they left out their ‘burnable’ garbage out in the open, no garbage bin, no net covering. These people are rich, couldn’t they afford a garbage bin? You can guess what happened. The crows come, had a feast and made a mess. Each single time. By the time I got back from dropping Kai off at daycare, I would find the old lady sweeping up the mess, and I would hope that that was the last time. But it would happen again. The thing I couldn’t understand is that their next-door neighbour, who appeared related to them as there was no fence between the two houses which were built in the same style, had a garbage bin. Couldn’t they lend/buy their kin a bin? I made up my mind that the next time I saw the mess, I would ring their bell and suggest a very simple solution: a garbage bin.
It is as if they heard my thoughts, because by the time the next collection day came around, they had a garbage bin. Not a new one, you could tell it had been around the block, but a functional one. The crows’ feast had been halted. I was happy that it was finally over. They still put out some garbage without a bin sometimes, but it appears to be just papers, no food. I’m sorry to take such an interest in my neighbours garbage, but this is normal in Japan and don’t be surprised if someone goes through your garbage to make sure you aren’t properly sorting out your garbage. See @gaijinmommy’s excellent lego stop motion video below.
Pleased to present Episode 8 in my Manners series: In which we meet a new superhero and go on harrowing adventures through dumpsters in search of improperly disposed trash.
The second story is kind of related to the first. The third house from mine appears to be unoccupied. There is a vine that’s almost enveloping the entire house, the tree in front of the house is unpruned, the open garage next to the house is overrun by weeds.
Then one day, as I was taking little kid out to the daycare, I saw several bags of garbage out in the street, already scattered by crows. So someone lives in that house after all. The person had came out, swept up the trash, and was then spraying something around the trash. I wondered what it was. An anti-crow spray perhaps? I was running late for daycare drop off, so we went on our merry way. When I got back about 5 minutes later, the crows were back! No surprise there. The spray obviously didn’t work. Stepping gingerly around the mess, I thought I would ring the doorbell to alert the neighbour that the crows were back. They never answered the bell. I had places to be so I left it at that, but at the end of the day, the street was clear. Since then, I’ve never seen the person and the house looks unoccupied and unkempt, but I assume that someone still lives in it.
I only have two favorites among Swahili novels, and I am ashamed to admit it is because of how little of Swahili literature I read. I hope to make more of an effort in the future, because right now between a full-time job and kids, a jogging habit and a Netflix addiction, I have no free time. The two books are Kusadikika by Shaaban bin Robert and Siku Njema by Ken Walibora. I’m happy to report that Siku Njema has been translated into English as “A Good Day”.
I always considered it a tragedy that such a Swahili classic as Kusadikika has never been translated into English, and took it upon myself to do so. It’s an extremely amateur translation, I have never translated anything before, but I hope I did it justice. So how did I find the time to carry out this arduous task?
I started the translation in 2014 when I first came to Japan, and I had some free time. I was a research student and I hadn’t begun my PhD work yet. So I drafted the first translation then, which lay untouched for 8 years until last year when I picked it up again, polished it chapter by chapter, slowly over a year, whenever I could find any free time. I was finally ready to publish it this year.
In 2014, I had tried to contact the publishers for permission to translate the book, but they never responded to my emails. This year, I realized that it has been 62 years since the author passed away and copyright in Tanzania lasts for 50 years after the death of the author. So Kusadikika is now in the public domain. I was easily able to self-publish the book on Kindle Direct Publishing. I tried to publish it on Kobo too, but they said they are not accepting public domain works, their loss.
This is the first book I have ever published and I am so proud of myself. I am so happy I was able to accomplish this goal after 8 years!
I hope you enjoy the reading it in English, although it will never live up to the original Swahili. Find it in your Amazon website by searching for “Kusadikika” and select the English translation with the cover below. I’m including the link to the book in Amazon.com below.
I finally did it you guys. I published the English translation on Amazon Kindle.
By the way, I hope to publish memoirs of my life in Japan someday soon, and I am looking for a book agent to publish formally, because I want to reach as many people as possible.
If there is any publisher who wants to buy the publishing rights for this Kusadikika translation, please contact me 🙂
I would like to thank the 11 readers who have already bought the copy. Thank you for the support!
When Kai was two months old, we flew across continents and oceans to be with family in Nairobi, Kenya. Kai was not a passive baby. I could not put him down for a second. I couldn’t cook, I couldn’t clean. I literally had to take him with me when I went to the toilet. I look at wonder at those babies who are content just lie there, staring at the ceiling or sucking on their toes. Never Kai. Even when you carried him, he wanted you to talk to him, play with him, take him for a walk… He never napped for longer than 20 minutes at a time! It wasn’t enough time to even take a shower so I would only take a shower when my mother came home from school. She’s a teacher. The good thing was, he never cried much, and only when you put him down.
Kai at 4 months, before the incident
When he was around 4 months old, he cried for 2 days straight. At night he hardly slept. My father remarked on how intensely he was crying. I wondered if this was ‘the colic’, which we had not experienced before. On the third day, while I was giving him a bath, I noticed a huge bulge on his neck that had not been there the previous day. I give him a bath daily (of course!) and would have noticed had anything been there. The appearance was shocking. It looked like a boil. It was red and hard, and painful to touch. It was clearly the source of his pain and subsequent tears.
Neck abscess on my poor baby
It must have been a Monday afternoon. I googled and the results said he probably had a neck abscess. I called my younger brother, who is a doctor. He told me it is caused by bacteria getting under the skin, and as white blood cells gather to kill that bacteria, pus is formed which would normally drain internally but remains at the site, causing the swelling. It would need incision and drainage (I&D), a procedure carried out in a surgical theater. He advised me to go the pediatrician immediately. To get his shots, I had been taking him to Gertrude’s Children Hospital in Donholm. When I called them, they were closed for the day and told me to go the following day, which was a Tuesday.
My mother came home from school and suggested we go to a herbalist. I was extremely against it. My mother is conservative in many ways. It is not that she doesn’t trust modern medicine, but she sees no need if herbal medicines work just fine. Before you go dismissing them, some herbal medicines have been proven to be effective for certain conditions. There was a time J (my older son) had a bad case of oral thrush and he was having difficulty chewing and swallowing. My mum got him some black powder from that herbalist and that very morning he was able to eat and he was completely healed a couple of days later. I just didn’t think this was one of those situations. But my mum had Kai’s best interests at heart, and my appointment at the clinic was for the following day. So she got us all into her small car and drove us to the herbalist. The herbalist said it needed cutting and draining (I&D), but she wasn’t going to do it. I wouldn’t have allowed it anyway. A procedure like that requires a sterilized theater. Instead, she gave us an ointment to cover and soothe the abscess.
The following day, I took him to Gertrude’s Children Hospital in Donholm. The pediatrician said he needed I&D and referred me to a pediatric surgeon who was going to be at their other clinic in BuruBuru. She gave me a painkiller and that helped Kai a bit. I went there in the afternoon and after a long wait, he finally showed up. He had been held up at his other gig, he came in still wearing his badge from The Agha Khan Hospital. He advised immediate admission for the I&D at the main hospital, Gertrude’s in Muthaiga. He asked me about insurance, I did not have insurance in Kenya. Just the regular NHIF. He gave me an approximate quote for the surgery at Getrude’s. I consulted my brother and my mother and they all agreed that since I was to be paying out of pocket, it would be cheaper to go to Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH). The best doctors in the country work and teach there anyway. The surgeon wrote me a referral. I asked him why we couldn’t just prick the abscess with a pin and drain it. Listen, there are no stupid questions.
What Not to Do When Your Child Has an Abscess
Do not, under any circumstances, cut and squeeze it yourself. The surgeon told me an abscess is not a boil. A boil is small and on the surface. It has a head as well so you can easily squeeze it.
An abscess goes deeper into the tissue. If it a neck abscess, there are veins involved. The abscess is not one big sac. It is several tiny sacs, like an orange. You cannot squeeze it out. Instead, you risk worsening the infection. The only way to get rid of an abscess is through I&D.
Go see your doctor if you suspect your child has an abscess.
Early Wednesday morning, my mum took the day off and drove Kai and I to KNH. We went through triage and what not, and were told to go to section number 54 (I don’t remember the exact number). When went to 54, the pediatric surgeon’s domain, we were told that he only does consultations on Thursdays. That is the sad state of public healthcare in Kenya. The sadder part is, if we were willing and able to, we could go to the private wing of the hospital, where we would be seen immediately.
So the pediatric surgeon was on site, but he was only seeing private patients, and only dealing with the public cases once a week!
I will admit I am privileged. I could afford to go to the private wing. After about an hour’s wait, we met with the surgeon who admitted us immediately. After paying the deposit, I think it was Kshs 30,000, we were led to the ward to wait for the surgery that was to take place at 5pm in the evening when he had a free slot. It was going to be a 15 minute procedure. The surgeon said we were not to feed the baby at least 4 (or was it 6) hours before the surgery.
Now, Kai loves eating. He breastfed constantly. To this day, his appetite can only be described as voracious. It took a lot of will to bear through his cries for milk. He had stopped crying from the abscess pain because of the painkillers, but he cried continuously for like 5 hours until it got to 5pm. At 5pm, we were told the surgeon was held up at another surgery and would be out by 6pm. Another hour of hunger and painful cries. My sis-in-law came by and helped to walk him around. It was finally approaching 6pm and it was clear we were likely to spend the night at the hospital (if everything had gone well, we would have been discharged on the same day). 6pm came and went and when we went to inquire what the hold up was, we were told a covid patient had been operated on in the theater we were to use so they were disinfecting it. By this time, it had been over 6 hours of fasting for Kai. I couldn’t bear it anymore and breastfed him.
Finally, the surgeon showed his face at 8pm and said he was ready, but by this time, Kai was full of milk and sleeping deeply. He told us he would schedule his surgery first thing in the morning at 9AM and advised us to stop feeding him at 5am. Luckily, he woke up after 7 so it was just a two hour ‘fast’ to get through.
On Thursday morning, the nurse came for him and together, we walked to the theater. He cried briefly as they disappeared behind the theater door. My mum and I waited outside. While the procedure lasted less than 15 minutes, they kept observing him until he woke up from the general anesthesia. He was brought out half an hour later, smiling! He was smiling! He hadn’t smiled for like a week.
He hasn’t stopped smiling since!
They didn’t stitch him up, they said the cut would close on its own in a week or two and it did.
Neck abscess I&D cut healing
The total bill came to just over Kshs. 100,000. As Kai is insured in Japan, when I cam back I was able to claim that amount from my insurance company.
What a thing to go through. It has taken me almost two years to write about it.
Enjoy these happy pictures of J and Kai a couple of months after the surgery.
When Rionne asked me to be interviewed for his documentary about single mothers in Japan, I wasn’t sure whether to accept or not. I did not want to become the “face of single mothers”. What a silly thing to worry about. I am a single mother, that is a fact. There is nothing to be embarrassed about and everything to be proud of. To be the parent that is turning up and taking all of the responsibility that is involved in raising children is no mean feat. We single parents should be celebrated. If you want to vilify someone, make it your business to find the missing parents, and shake some responsibility into them.
My happy little family
This documentary was bigger than me, so I agreed to be interviewed. It is going to highlight the problems that single parents living in Japan face. Japan is one of the richest countries in the world, but you will be surprised at the poverty rate of single mothers and their (our) children in Japan.
Rionne’s documentary explores the link between single mothers and poverty. Japan has this “traditional” system where many fathers work and many mothers stay home to raise children. Some mothers will work part-time. When parents get divorced, in almost all the cases, the children will end up with the mother. These mothers have sacrificed their careers to support their husbands and their families, but now they have to find ways to work full-time to make money for their now single-parent household. However, it is hard to get permanent and well-paying full-time jobs, so many single mothers are stuck in part-time and casual jobs with little income, little job security, no paid time off, etc. In addition, child support payments from the fathers are not easily enforced here or many women don’t know how to go about it. It may require hiring a lawyer to go to court, but many don’t have the money for lawyer fees. It is truly a dire situation.
Watching the documentary, I could see fellow single mothers doing their best for their children. Many are divorced, and only a tiny fraction are never-married single parents. They gave up their careers and jobs for the families, and when they got divorced, they are the ones picking up the pieces and keeping their kids together. Some are survivors of domestic violence and it was very hard watching them talking about it. I couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down my face. The women interviewed had come out the other side, and it was so inspiring watching how much they are thriving now. I know there are many women even now in similar domestic violence situations who do not go know how they can get safely divorced, and if they do, they worry about how they can support themselves and their children after divorce.
If you want to read more about the problems facing single mothers in Japan, check out this link and this link too.
What needs to change? What are the solutions? Some mothers in the documentary offer insights.
More government support is needed for single parent households. For example, there is a welfare benefit for single parents but there are so many limitations to use it, and the moment your income passes the ridiculously low threshold (like ¥1.6M annual income), then you are no longer eligible to get it. Income limits should be eliminated and any single parent households that needs it should be eligible.
However, ultimately, a culture change is necessary. Women need economic independence. It turns out that depending on your husband and quitting the workplace will put you at a high risk of poverty should you ever get divorced or widowed, and there is a 30-50% chance of that happening.
There is a high penalty attached to single mothers all over the world but more so in Japan. Despite what you may have read or heard, children thrive when they have safe, stable and nurturing environments and relationships, and these conditions and connections can exist in any type of family, including single-parent households.
There is mounting evidence indicates that underlying factors — strong and stable relationships, parental mental health, socioeconomic status and access to resources — have a greater impact on child success than does family structure alone. We should stop obsessing over how many single mothers there are and stop shaming them. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/opinion/sunday/single-mothers-poverty.html
Why would you shame the person taking the sole responsibility for raising their children? Where is the logic in that?
When you get to chance watch this documentary, you will understand just what a great job Rionne did sharing the stories of single mothers in Japan. It runs for 78 minutes, but you will wish it was longer. It is no wonder this documentary has already won several awards. It has been accepted for screening at the Cannes Film Festival, Paradise Film Festival, London Film Festival, among others. The documentary is not available to the public yet because it’s being screened at film festivals at this time, but when it becomes public, I will be very happy to share the link.
I couldn’t tell you the difference between goals and resolutions. I just know that as far back as I can remember, I have always made a list of the things I wanted or needed to do.
Here are my 2023 goals, but I don’t want o put pressure on myself to achieve them. They are just a roadmap to guide my daily activities. I want to enjoy the journey towards achieving them without necessarily worrying about if/when I will get there. Of course, I would like to live free and just go with the flow of life, but I would feel lost just drifting aimlessly through life. I need to feel like I have a modicum of control over how I live in my life. 2023 may or may not be a defining year for me and my little family, but I look forward to squeezing joy out of every big or small moment this year has to offer.
Jogging: Do at least 25K monthly
Bi-weekly blogposts (2 in a month)
Publish my translation project that’s been in progress for 8 years!
Read a book a month (sacrifice Netflix)
Start on my book project: a chapter a month?
Write two short stories or essays
Career growth / change
Happy, creative kids (less TV)
Plan for financial independence
Go to Kenya for a holiday
Others: Japanese – study for the JLPT?
What are your goals for this year? Are you just content to live in the moment and go with the flow or do you have a destination in mind?
Savvy Kenya in Japan 