Moscow

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Guys, for newcomers, here’s how this works: you send an email with your story’s synopsis, and I’ll reach out. Then, we’ll have a virtual call or sit down in person, and you can tell me about the hardest thing you did last year, or the year before. Afterward, I’ll retreat to the mountain with a piece of bread and a packet of Mala to write the story. I rarely run stories exactly as they’re sent because I want to maintain a certain “voice” here. You know what I mean? Unless you’re a writer, in which case my work becomes easier, as your story will run as a guest post. That makes my work a lot easier, and I get to take a break that week. And I’m always looking for a break.

Now, I could write the story as a feature third-person narrative—like last week’s—or in the first person, as with this week’s. Often, I dramatize it a little for the sake of storytelling, but I never change the facts.

This week’s subject was unlike anyone I’ve encountered before. We had our interview virtually at her request, and she kept her video off. She said, “I don’t want you running into me and looking at me weird, Biko.” Sawa, I understand that. Twenty minutes in, I was dying to see her face. There was something very mystic about her. I hesitate to use this word, as these are words I usually save for the last quarter of the year, but she sounded orphic. I asked her, “Are you sure you don’t want to turn your video on? I’d like to see these emotions on your face.” She replied, “Emotions belong in words, not faces.”

It was the intellect of her narrative that intrigued me.

I remember interrupting to ask, “I’m sorry, what was that word again?” Words like “Panpsychism.” Concepts I had never heard of. She used words like “reconnaissance.” When was the last time you used that word in speech? I know that word, but I wouldn’t dare pronounce it, even after the audacity of three whiskies. It rolled off her tongue, just another word.

So, here we are.

**

When I was 7, our neighbour – Mr. Ogot – took his own life. I remember the police van parked in their compound, their gate yawning wide open. The van looked bigger then than it does now in my young mind, something intimidating but also weirdly intimate in the way it dominated Mr. Ogot’s compound. It was a Monday. I wanted to stand and look, but my mom quickly pulled me away from their gate. That day, we waited for the school van five houses down from ours, away from death.

He lived alone, Mr. Ogot. Occasionally, his wife would come from somewhere to visit, or a woman we thought was his wife. Otherwise, he was alone. I remember that cats liked his compound. He put food and water for them on saucers on his doorstep. A clowder of them, bent over saucers, Mr. Ogot leaning at the doorway looking at them. He hardly talked to anyone, Mr. Ogot. His hair was always uncombed. He never smiled. We feared him. When we saw him, we ran away, screeching with terror masked as delight. My dad often called him a genius. I didn’t know what that meant until I had grown up and someone called me the same word, and it made me feel dirty.

After his furniture was taken away and the house remained vacant, the cats would still wait for food at the door. So, my siblings and I would leave food – milk, the crusty part of bread, pieces of meat, ugali, soup – on Mr. Ogot’s doorstep. My mum would scold us: “Don’t go to that house again, it’s cursed.” My mom believed in spirits, and she said if you killed yourself, your spirit would linger where you died forever, angry and never moving on. That scared my siblings and kept them away. Not me. I wasn’t a girl who was easily scared. I have never been scared. After school, before my mom got back home, I’d sneak into the compound that was quickly growing long strands of grass and press my nose against the windows and stare inside the empty house. I wanted to see where Mr. Ogot had hung himself. But there was nothing to see. I didn’t see his spirit, either. The house was empt, and still.

Of course, new people moved into the house, a big family of very loud Kisiis, I remember. Everybody was always talking at the same time in that house in their mother tongue. A very friendly family, too, and always cooking with ghee.

I forgot about Mr. Ogot.

I won a scholarship and went off to study Electrical Engineering at a University in Idaho, in a cold and bleak rural US town called Moscow. Not only was I one of the two girls in my class, but I was also the only other black girl in my university for a whole year; and one of the 2% in the whole university who identified as “black.” Suffice to say, I was miserable, and isolated. It’s in Moscow, in hindsight, that I started spending a lot of time in my head. I think my sadness and great melancholy started in the US, because I don’t recall being overly melancholic before. Our house was full of expressive people; my siblings were animated. My mom is spirited and bubbly, always talking. My dad, however, doesn’t have a chance to talk with a wife like my mom. Ha-ha. I suspect that inside the chill and mild man is a man who has been dying to say something since he married my mother.

Moscow was a very lovely, a quiet university town. The rolling hills looked like something a very competent artist had painted. All seasons were like a set from a fantasy movie, but the Falls were out of this world; the Palouse hills would go from golden harvest hues to soft earth tones, turning the town into a magnificent dream. Despite this, I was still unhappy. I still couldn’t explain the source of this sudden wave of sadness.

I dated. Mateo, the Hispanic boy I dated for half of my time there, would often accuse me of “romancing sadness.” I wasn’t. The romance was the cold. I hated the food. I didn’t have many friends because I didn’t want to have to explain myself, my skin colour, to anyone. Home felt like another planet. My mother’s voice started to fade in my head. The winters were wrecking. When I think of the winters now, in warm Nairobi, I shiver. Literally. My body has carried the memory of winters in my bones. I’d sit in my room, staring at the white frozen beauty outside and feel as lost as a human being can. I drank a lot of coffee the first winter. Then I drank a lot of coffee and vodka the second winter. The third winter, I’d drink vodka without coffee. The fourth, fifth, and sixth winters, I’d be drinking it from the bottle with a white boy I dated named Hank. Hank smoked weed and drank too much. He was troubled too. He was an orphan at 10 and carried this fact to every room he walked into. He was a very talented musician and painter. I liked to lie on his barrel chest and feel his big bush of beard on my forehead. It felt like napping under a big tree. The only time I was nearly happy, and safe, was on his chest.

When I came back home in 2007, a year before Kenyans went mad themselves, I couldn’t fit back in. I had no community to speak of. My high-school friends were either with husbands and babies or were just in a different space in their own lives. I couldn’t connect with them. With anyone. With anything. I didn’t want to go back to the US, and I didn’t feel like I had a life here either. I was a castaway. My sadness grew each day. My melancholy bloomed over me like a black flower. I had managed to secure a great job because I was excellent at electrical engineering; my mind was wired to solve intricate problems, and so I worked and worked to drain the emptiness that I felt inside me.

I met a man, a fellow engineer, an erudite man, and for those years, I felt happier than I ever had. He didn’t have a beard like Hank. He was wiry but strong. He ate one meal a day, never touched alcohol. He believed in Rastafarianism and read constantly, for fun and as a duty. He mostly read all these boring books that men read so that they can be strong and dominate other men. But he was kind and patient, the true great qualities one can ask for in a man. He wasn’t extroverted, and so we would spend a lot of time indoors, reading or watching documentaries on medieval architecture, religious architecture, pre-Romanesque, and the Renaissance. We watched tons of that stuff while drinking our milk-less teas [I had stopped drinking]. We enjoyed watching how structures like cathedrals and castles were built. We were fascinated by the rounded arches, pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and flying buttresses. When we weren’t watching that, we were watching Nat Geo, not the boring ones of lions killing prey, but of archaeology and warfare.

Then he broke up with me after three years.

He wanted babies. A family. I didn’t want babies, a family. I had never seen myself as a mother, someone who rushes back home to wash their baby and offer them her breast to feed from. Motherhood didn’t evoke any imagination in me. It didn’t present a higher curiosity. I couldn’t give him babies. So, he journeyed off to find someone who could give him her womb. It devastated me, of course. I mourned him for two years. I couldn’t find anybody else like him. Most Nairobi men only engaged in any meaningful conversation with you before you slept with them. After that, the pretense fell off, and they preferred to drag you to a bar and watch football as they ignored you.

I recovered from the heartbreak, but it left deep wounds the size of quarries in me. I isolated myself at work, and I slowly slid into the state I was in in Moscow. It felt familiar, almost reassuring. I barely dated again. I slept with a few men out of the primal urge for release. Mostly, I found being touched by a man I was more intelligent than, creepy. I couldn’t bear to kiss a man who reads two books a year. It felt like they were violently robbing my soul.

As my career ascended, my mental health descended. I slowly slipped into a state where I found no more joy in promotions, accolades, and salary increments. I had a fantastic job, everybody was in awe of me at work, and I was making money that most people put up on their vision boards. I travelled extensively for work. But I was unfulfilled and unhappy. I started spending more and more time at home, barely leaving unless I had to go on-site to intervene on a technical problem. I had built a formidable team at work, a well-oiled machine. I didn’t need to be at work; I operated mostly from home, behind my closed door, which I only opened to receive an order. One time, I stayed in the house for a straight three weeks, not ordering food or anything, until the caretaker knocked on my door with a very worried look.

For the first time since I was a child, I started thinking about Mr. Ogot.

I remember thinking I had become the exact version of him; only that I combed my hair, and I didn’t have cats outside my front door. My parents and siblings, at this time, were used to my reclusive lifestyle. “Something she picked up in America,” I heard them say. The more I thought about Mr. Ogot, the more I related to and understood him. He felt like a friend who knew and understood me. It’s almost like our souls communed. I’m a high-achieving individual, like I suspect Mr. Ogot was. I scored a 3.72 GPA, the highest in my class for a black woman, for any type of woman and man, in the whole university in recent years. I later received job offers that were only offered to white men, and I did those jobs better than white men.

My own boss in Kenya would later call me a genius. But I had heard it a few times in reference to me. The first time I heard it again after my mom had used it on Mr. Ogot was from my lecturer in my Masters class who taught me Advanced Circuit Analysis. I heard it again, and again, from different lips, in different rooms—yet each time, it rang more like a condemnation than a compliment. I wanted to ask Mr. Ogot if this was how he had felt—like an outcast. Perhaps his quiet self-isolation wasn’t born of arrogance, but of disappointment. Maybe he found the world too dim, the conversations too dull, and chose, instead, to retreat from the noise of uninspiring minds.

In mid-2023 – a very difficult year – I started seriously entertaining thoughts of killing myself.

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like my only way out. I felt that true freedom lay beyond living. I saw death, not as the end of experience, but merely the end of individual identity. I read philosophers of Panpsychism and Existentialism. That Death gives life meaning because it ends. I read Goff and Chalmers. I wished I was alive to consult Mr. Ogot over his thoughts on Mysticism and Esotericism. I was sure he would know. I had dreams of us sitting at his dining table, talking the whole night, my whole family gathered outside, looking inside, banging the window to get my attention.

Eventually, I started to calculate my final exit.

Unlike him, I couldn’t bear to hang myself. Too messy, too inconsiderate to whoever would discover the aftermath. I couldn’t take a cocktail of drugs; it would most certainly be inconclusive and only promise agony. Carbon Monoxide in my car? Does that work outside the movies? I finally devised a plan to drive off a cliff, which seemed better. It would look like an accident. The viewpoint towards Mahi Mahiu was my choice because the plunge was long, and access to the bottom was difficult. It had to be at night. At 2 am, when there was no one. I’d plunge headfirst into the abyss of darkness and not be discovered or retrieved for hours. I’d be free.

January last year, I performed reconnaissance. I drove to one of the viewpoints. I stood at the edge, on the wooden boardwalk, if you will, and looked down at the bowels of the Great Rift Valley. It was perfect. It was evening, and I had on my woolen hat. The sight was breathtaking at sunset. Several people stopped by to take photos and selfies against the setting sun. They seemed satisfied, happy even. They were collecting memories from their phones, something they planned to look at later and smile. I wondered why. What was the point of keeping sunsets in your phone? I wondered why they were so satisfied and assured of tomorrow. What in their lives spelled hope? It disturbed me. It intrigued me. How could they overcome the pointlessness of life? These thoughts barraged me, and I remember putting off the plans to be executed after Valentine’s Day but not before Easter, to try to get to the bottom of this. The more I thought about it, the more it led me to literature because I believe that every answer known to man is hidden in a book.

Reading led me to Buddhism.

The teachings of Buddhism saved me.

In a nutshell, Buddhists believe that life is precious because it’s a rare opportunity to achieve enlightenment and that suffering, or dukkha, is central to life, but so is the path to overcoming it. I learnt that ending one’s life doesn’t necessarily end suffering; it simply interrupts the karmic path and may lead to rebirth in a more painful state. I didn’t want to come back to earth in a more painful state.

Slowly, after months of reading, I stepped away from the ledge and slowly started rebuilding my mind and body. I discovered long, frequent walks at Karura Forest in the middle of the weekday when there was hardly anybody. I liked the company of birds and small skittish animals in the bush. I enjoyed knowing that there was life in the bushes, up in the trees, and that I had a duty to live through mine with stoicism. I picked up books on psychology and mental health. I have not found complete healing, but I no longer want to drive off a cliff.

I recently, reluctantly, joined a hiking group in spite of my love for solitary trails. In that group, I have taken notice of a silent man with a jaw of rock. He is the broody, observant type with the deep, intelligent but quieting gaze. The type I’m drawn towards. He has noticed me too. For now, we bide time.

**

What’s the hardest thing you have gone through recently? Ping me on [email protected] Or grab a copy of one of my books HERE


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48 Comments
  1. Hi Panpsychist. We have a hike on 26th of this month, with my friends, at the Aberdares, through the table mountain route. Want to join us? All of us had GPAs above 3.0, hahaa.

    But honestly, my heart always dances to stories where people are gradually getting better than they were before, be it out of drug abuse, addictions, bad mental states, naskia tu raha. I am happy for you Genuis.

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  2. Life without Jesus, without purpose will always be empty.
    It’s after seeking and finding the greatest things the world can offer that we realize this. Yet we still get caught up in the searching. It’s sad
    The earlier we learn and walk with our Lord Jesus, the earlier we find peace..

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  3. I’d read anything she’d write, that’s how intriguing and interesting i find her to be. I’m so happy she is healing, the world needs her here. I took to heart the line about men who read two books in a year

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  4. Oh my goodness very sad despite all achievement, peace n joy, contentment and purpose remains elusive. All is vanity.
    I pray for her to find love and purpose.
    May something beautiful come forth in her interactions with this silent intelligent broody man.
    May God’s blessings be upon her.

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  5. Deep!…….As I read through her options, I almost suggested roads perfect for executing her plans. Now that she has wisened up, I recommend that she approaches the Rock-Jaw guy, make babies with him and have a life!

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  6. Ms. ‘Never Forgot Ogot,’ I believe what you’ve experienced from Moscow till now is deep existential loneliness.
    I hope ‘Jaws’ proves to be as smart and as deep;and interested in archeology and architecture for those Nat Geo-nights).
    (There’s a fury for sapiosexuals in the sleeping with the Silly of the Species).

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  7. Beautiful!
    This line “imagine sisyphus happy” has been a lifesaver for me!
    There are why’s that can’t be answered & that’s okay!

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  8. This is quite an interesting read…, I would have wanted to see her too Biko; I’ve had to google Esotericism & Panpsychism

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  9. LESSON 1 : Always listen to your mother. should not have gone to that house. damn! mums intuition
    LESSON 2 : I love Buddhism, i don’t practice it per se but the teachings make much more sense than Christianity.
    LESSON 3…We need to save green spaces as much as possible, Nature is a healer…F those trying to grab Karura and Uhuru park.

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  10. Could it be that geniuses have no appetite for family? But they do need Jesus and family to stay balanced.

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  11. I dunno what to say; such a well put out piece! More often than not, people are oscillating on autopilot and their minds, oh my! I pray high-performing individuals find solace and peace like she did.

  12. The trouble with being overly intelligent is that our society or community happens to be systemic in nature. A majority of people move through different phases of life seamlessly. However, for the intelligent fellow one happens to question everything without arriving at a definitive answer or establishing meaning to what appears normal to most. May you find joy and purpose for life that each morning may become a blessing upon you.

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  13. Biko you removed the reply function in here? #BringBackOurReplyButton!

    Anyway, @Lynn, not Elephant. I was there last month. We are doing Satima peak through dragon’s teeth, I hear it has views to live for.

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  14. I believe the lady is genuine,unlike many people who wear masks.Often,I would ask myself if the people who are having the time of their lives,be it sky diving or taking photos are happy and satisfied with their lives,and I realized many are not,many are wearing a mask.

    I believe the lady is like many other human beings who are seeking purpose and meaning I life,she is not the only one,she is among the few who are honest enough to speak it.

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  15. Wow, such a raw and beautiful read.
    I have taken notice of a silent man with a jaw of rock. He is the broody, observant type with a deep, intelligent but quieting gaze. The type I’m drawn towards. He has noticed me too. For now, we bide time…..
    Perhaps you should ask if he wants a family beforehand.

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  16. I often ask myself what is the meaning of life,but have never found an answer .

    I hope that she finds a man , with whom she can have intelligent conversations with .I love and appreciate her honesty,about herself.She is genuine unlike many who wear masks.

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  17. No one speaks of how hard it is to live in between places or in between states.
    Today we call home home but then we fly out to grow and find other not so homely homes in people and in places ,by the time we are realising and getting back home…Its a strange room filled with familia faces that you cant conect to.Being in between productivity and depresion is real.As 23 as I can be I know that to be true.

    But am glad she is healing.

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  18. One should always find a reason to be alive even in our darkest hour. Death is inevitable but it should always look foward to crossing that bridge when we reach there naturally.
    We should utilise our limited time on earth to make it a better place.

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  19. Deep read.
    I hope that she can offer us a part 2, later, a follow-up.
    I was interested in Buddhism in high school, when we studied religion, the concept of Nirvana was somewhat appealing to me, but I had no clue how to go about it. We would see the monks (very rarely,) walking about, garbed in orange, their head bald except for a lock of hair in the middle, but didn’t know their temple or where they met, so that’s how I didn’t convert.
    Jesus is the Answer for the world today and forever. I pray she gets to receive Him.

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  20. I find the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible to be somewhat a summarized big lesson about life from one of the wisest men to have ever lived. It gives a lot of perspective to life. I am really happy Miss Panpsychist is on the road to recovery and finding purpose.

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  21. This read was nothing short of intense—raw, captivating, and deeply soul-stirring. Every word pulled me in, every emotion was beautifully woven, and I found myself completely immersed in your journey. The happy ending was the perfect light after the storm, leaving me with a warm smile and a full heart. Keep embracing the healing, and may you rise above it all with grace and strength.

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  22. Wow!! It’s been such a long time since I had a read captivate me that I didn’t want to end. Love it.
    Other than that, there’s this kind of peace that Jesus Christ gives that’s unexplainable, I’m confidently vouching for it because I’ve personally experienced it myself and I’d wish the same for you too genius.
    You are a reader and so I’m convinced you’ll get your hands on a bible in the quest for life’s answers ❤️.

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  23. Hmmmm,..

    An engineer’s mind is a labyrinth of solutions to questions we might not ask or that we neglect to ask. However, this is an occupational hazard and the Achilles heel- stumbling on the SIMPLE. Find the simple question that your mind is asking; the question is being asked of you. Your Life is the answer to that question. Every blessing comes with a burden; reality is a package deal. The glass is not half empty or half full it is HALF. The burden of “genius” (please don’t get stuck on labels) is the loneliness, no two geniuses see the world alike, no one quite penetrates the fortress of your mind and it’s akin to living in the wrong body/time/season/country/SPACE… always remember you are not alone in your MIND PALACE. Don’t miss the joy of the blessings God (whatever you conceive Him to be) has given you (NOW) because of the burdens that come with them. Shalom.

  24. This is an excellent read. Of late I have come to learn a lot from reading Biko stories. People all over are going through situations that we cannot see with our bare eyes. I have learnt to practice gratitude for the little or much that I have and to be patient with myself and to know that I am enough.
    This lady’s story resonates a lot with others I have heard and I am glad she has finally found the meaning of life and that she is willing to give it another chance. I wish her all the best and I really do hope that Mr. Jaw man becomes the partner she is hoping to find to give her company as she enjoys being alive all over again.

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  25. an existential trap for exceptionally intelligent people, because it doesn’t register in their great minds that life is mundane, not some puzzle for their big minds to solve

  26. Oh boy, this struck a chord inside me. Too relatable. Bookshelf is full of Nietzche and nothing seems to make sense.
    So glad to know there’s a path out of this place. Thank you Biko for giving this story. ❤️❤️

  27. Flirting with death has never felt so intense. True, death gives meaning to life, if you knew that you were to die in the next few minutes, you wouldn’t hold onto your grudges, you would love more, smile more, try to be free and listen carefully to the conversations around because that may be the last time you are listening to them. Often, those who fear death are not fully experiencing life.

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  28. I dont know why I kept imagining at some point the mum would say ‘Ogot was your father’ well,Buddhism 101 for me was a great book and I believe is a very practical spiritual way of life.All the best in this journey of life

  29. I pray that you never get to that place again. I pray that you find renewed purpose. I pray that God opens your eyes to opportunities out there to be a blessing to someone. A lot of times, when we help others, it removes the focus from ourselves and our problems and focusses on someone else (I am not saying you are not doing this, just in case), like a children’s home, a relative etc etc. I pray that you and your crush get to gel and be in a relationship. I pray that it all works out for you and the peace of God will flood your soul always. Shalom.

  30. This story made me think about how parents warn their children about so and so, either because they are weird or a misfit. Only for the very children to turn out like those people later in life. Its a humbling story that we all can become that which we criticize. Let us pray for each other and those that seem unfit.