the writing nib

  • #3 post-midnight thoughts on professional aspirations and idealism

    It’s 1am. I’m on the couch listening to Eras Tour acoustic sets. This is the hour my mind comes alive. I am, by definition, a night owl. I’ve been thinking lately that I don’t really like what I’ve done with my professional life so far. I’ve spent most of my 20s chasing after a certain…

  • #2 it’s august

    I’ve entered my sloth phase and it might get worse if I don’t intervene. It’s noon and I got out of bed about 40 minutes ago. Every morning I follow the same routine. I wake up and say “fuck”. Think of it as a sigh and groan combined. But sometimes I say it even when…

  • #1 July 2026 (unemployment diary)

    Hello, dear reader. I am officially unemployed, again. My last working day was a week ago on 8th July. It ended quite better than I expected and I’m grateful for that. I’m now a plant mom and she’s settled next to the bath tub where sunlight is brightest. I just had the idea yesterday to…

  • Romanticising and unromanticising life in Dar es Salaam

    Romanticising and unromanticising life in Dar es Salaam

    Earlier this year, I was in bed sick for the second time in a month. Another case of tonsilitis. This one was so severe that I had an emergency doctor visit at midnight on a weekend. I didn’t eat for a week. Several times during that week, I found myself longing for home, Dar es…

  • All I do is try, try, try

    All I do is try, try, try

    When I was in high school, I told my friends I wanted to become president of my country one day (This is extremely hilarious because I‘m from Tanzania). A step above what I had told my dad a bit more than a decade ago that I wanted to become a minister…of what? I don’t know.…

  • Diary of the unemployed

    Diary of the unemployed

    It’s been a while and I’m not even unemployed while writing this, but I finally found the motivation to write something again. I teach English to primary school kids these days. Pretty nice gig, part-time, not far from where I live and the pay is decent. But it’s temporary and since the new year, I…

  • did you girlboss too close to the sun?

    did you girlboss too close to the sun?

    Yes, I copied that title from Taylor Swift. Being somewhat of an academic “overachiever” with multiple prestigious scholarships in my past, I thought I could easily plan out my professional life the way I had previously planned my academic life. Go to this school, do this, study this, get internships and student jobs here in…

  • Trad wife fantasies, Girlboss realities

    A trad wife is a married woman who makes it a point to live according to traditional gender norms. Essentially, a housewife, but with a religious fundamentalist attribute. Trad wives, including trad wives of colour, tend to be politically right wing. Another thing that makes them “trad” is that they are usually based in societies…

  • this is me trying

    this is me trying

    The title and section titles are lyrics of the song this is me trying by Taylor Swift. I’ve been having a hard time adjusting I started my blog in high school because I was very depressed with bad thoughts, no where else to express what I felt and no one to turn to. The blog…

  • Revisiting ‘Wakandafication’

    Revisiting ‘Wakandafication’

    In 2020, Jade Bentil, a Black feminist historian, used the term Wakandafication in a tweet during a wave of online discourse surrounding the trailer of the Disney+ film ‘Black Is King’ (I wrote about this here). She wrote, “The Wakandafication of the continent and Black diasporic identities is entirely uninspired. The repeated tropes/symbolic gestures that…