My mum has issues with me and the Internet. She is paranoid about the kind of things I am writing. She is always saying that if I write inflammatory messages together with others and I am caught on my own then I will have no excuse. I think some times because she was a civil servant in the Nyayo era she has post Nyayo hangovers. In those days you couldn’t criticize the government otherwise you would end up in trouble and sometimes you would disappear or end up in Nyayo chambers. It was so bad that when my father was held in Nyayo for a couple of days over my uncle (mwakenya) leaving the country he could not tell my mum what happened until a couple of years later. the walls had ears so you had to be careful least you were charged for something.
So I come across this post by a friend @thekenyanmom about if mum was on twitter I just had to laugh. I had no idea my mum exists somewhere else. And the way I would freak out if my mum joined Facebook (she doesn’t know there’s twitter). So I decided to guest post her article. Read and enjoy. If you like what you read please follow her @thekenyanmom and her website Kenyan mom.
I know what you are thinking…. ‘she’s always looking for ways to invite trouble in’. You are right! What would life be without the excitement of expectation or even acting out scenarios? Two nights ago, as I was taking a break from work, I decided to go through my twitter timeline. Mostly for amusement’s sake but also, because half the time I tend to blurt out things that are not very carefully thought out. Thereafter, I went through my favorites.
Then for one panicky moment, I started imagining what mother would say if she was on twitter and saw my timeline. Better yet, whether she would subliminally tweet (or what we fondly call sub-tweet/submarine-tweet/subaru-tweet) me or send me replies on some of those tweets. I can tell you for sure, for some of them, she would reach out from across the internet cables and wring my neck. Others she’d probably claim I was adopted and she never had time to go through my original family tree to determine the ‘saneness’ of the line.
She’s not one to cringe easily so instead she would probably find the fastest train to my house and cover my ‘nakedness’ so to speak. That would be after giving me several lines of well intended, church appropriate lecture.
But that’s about my timeline. What about HER timeline? Would I even follow her? Assuming that I had a decent timeline so I wasn’t afraid of her following me back? And what would she tweet about? Let’s see… probably about her work. That’s for sure. About that nosy neighbor who is always dropping in for a quick chat when she’s in the middle of preparing for a Women’s Guild meeting that she happens to chair. How kids of these days, including her daughter, have no sense of organization perhaps? Or about her grandson who cannot speak a word of her mother-tongue, or in this case her grandmother-tongue considering her daughter is a pile of hopeless when it comes to imparting language?
The more I think about it, the more I realize she probably would die of shock on day one of joining twitter, then die again upon coming across my timeline, then spend the rest of her days in seclusion, deep in fast and pray, hoping that Jesus would swoop down and erase the internet as a whole. So today I made a point of thanking the Lord that mother is not on twitter.
Oh and Just so you know, the day my kid joins twitter is the day I quit social media in totality.
So I can just imagine if my mum read this post she would have this expression
