Coming Back Is Not The Same As Never Leaving!

It’s been a while since I wrote in this blog. Honestly, I have no idea why I stopped, but one thing I know is that I started sleeping better, and longer. Much has changed since that September evening of 2012 when I last wrote.

For starters I completed graduate school with modest grades to secure me a promotion at my University. I fell in love again, and again, and again and at the same time I fell out of love again, and again and again. I changed houses, changed offices, changed friends, added haters.

I bought a car, I traveled – a lot!

I grew up, stopped shaving, and started shaving again. I stopped dressing up, started dressing up again.

I grew older, took an insurance policy, took a bank loan, and blew it all in a holiday at the seducing coasts of Zanzibar. I became more attached to my family, took to calling my Dad and Mum at least twice a week. I became protective to my siblings!

I drank, slept, woke up, and drank again!

I read- a lot! I started a library, bought tonnes of books. I took membership in several libraries, took out books. I borrowed books, gave out books (never got them back!).

I started going to the gym. Then stopped! I realized, as many of you have already, the only reason I can be motivated to go to the gym is if I am in prison.

I laughed, loved, cried, and lived – to the best of my ability.

In the book The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the protagonist Changez Khan talks about loss in a deeply profound and romantic way. He says, ‘to me loss isn’t what I had and lost, but what I had the potential of having and never did’. In the two years since I last wrote here, this notion has been most enduring. Of course I have lost a lot – money, friends, and love – but what is significant is what I lost without really having it.

Oh, I enrolled for a PhD! in South Africa – at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg!

I have changed the name of the blog to ‘Rogue Academic’. I wanted to name it ‘Militant Academic’ just like the protagonist in the book Reluctant Fundamentalist, but I thought otherwise. I realized that in as much as I might have crazy ideas, defiant desires and perhaps a militant mind, I cannot possibly die for my beliefs! (My beliefs could be wrong). So I went with ‘rogue’, to imply wayward, odd, eccentric – perhaps queer!

This will be a blog about my personal journey, personal reflections and personal experiences. It will be an acknowledgment of how much I have grown and also an understanding of how much I need to grow. It will be a reflection of how much I have undergone and also a belief in how much I can undergo.

It will be about love – and sometimes hate. It will about friendship – and sometimes enmity. It will be about laughter – and sometimes tears. But most of all it will be about why I came here – to Jo’burg and how I experience it.

I like to think of my 2-year absence from writing as an eye opener. My friends (Shady and Dan) and I travelled to Rwanda for the 2014 New Year holidays. At the eve of New Year, we went to this party hosted by Serena Hotel at the beach of Lake Kivu. It was a chilly night and I was having a bottle of Primus beer, a popular local brand. It was a smooth beer. I decided to check out the reviews online of how others found the beer (I do that in foreign countries). While online I stumbled upon this blog by an American aid worker who worked in the Congo whose hobby was collecting beer stickers from all over the world. I would do that if I was in a first world country!

On her blog were these words from Terry Pratchett:

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. Coming back is not the same as never leaving. ”

And this is where this blog is headed! Or has come back to. It will be a manifestation of my own self. Sometimes the blog will be long, sometimes it will be short. Sometimes it will have stories, sometimes pure facts. Sometimes pictures will be added, Johannesburg is a beautiful city you know!

This blog is recognition of my own self – as a son, a brother, a friend, a lover and a dad! And sometimes a complete jerk!

Two months before I left Kenya for South Africa, I broke up with this girl I deeply cared for. Well, actually she broke up with me, over text. I want out, the text read. Do people still break up over text? Anyway, this girl once proposed that I go see a therapist to get in touch with my emotional side. She said I am emotionally unresponsive, whatever that means! I remembered this yesterday over dinner when a friend told me her doctor had suggested she gets a pet to help her connect with her emotional self. Of course that’s bullshit! (Sorry Naledi, if you ever get to read this. Good luck with your dog).

So this blog is an appreciation of who I am and what I am capable of being! It’s a journey, not a destination. It’s a traveler’s diary, not a tourist’s journal!

Dear reader, you have managed to, once again, stumble upon my blog, journey with me to wherever it is I am going!