the writing nib

Tag: life

  • 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 Salaam. I have gotten tired of existing in the hamster wheel, an accurate description of my life as of that point in time. In Berlin, I have to worry about getting the same illness multiple times every winter, affording rent, getting a job to sustain an existence, numerous bureaucratic subplots that never seem to go away and much more. I started to romanticise Dar once again.

    Wavuvi Kempu, by me. Taken in August 2023

    In Dar, I wouldn’t have to worry about rent even without a job and I could realistically own my own house with sizeable flower and vegetable gardens in a couple of years on a decent-ish income. I would have to learn how to drive and get a car, but that’s fine: I could get a remote job, so I don’t have to deal with traffic regularly. I would have easier access to Swahili literature again and get to see the ocean every day. And if I were to have a kid, I would have enough support without having to send them to a Kita.

    “What am I even doing here?” is what I’ve been asking myself for the last two years. I can’t find the jobs I want (or get interviews). I walk into certain cafes in the city and get stared down like I don’t belong there and have people clutch their ugly bags the moment I pass by (these two things happened to me in March at a cafe on Chausseestraße). I hate the months-long winter and negative temperatures.

    I came to Germany 9 years ago at twenty years old. I was a skinny girl from Dar with dark pink kids’ glasses because they’re what fit my tiny head. I was on the fence about staying here long, but over the years, I’ve come to identify with certain things, especially the degree of freedom that I have here as opposed to what I had or could have had in Tanzania. That’s one thing that makes all this difficult. Do I really want to lose my independence? Do I want to be questioned about not going to church every Sunday? Do I want to receive messages every few weeks from people I barely know asking for wedding and send-off contributions?

    Do I really really want to live in Dar?

    I guess I don’t, actually, and right now it feels like no amount of money or job would change that. I like the idea of being there but not actually living there. I like the thought of staying there just long enough to be able to capture the essence of the society that has changed so much since I left and the cultures within it, for my writing, because I long to write more about home. Long enough could mean a lifetime, but when I think of spending that lifetime experiencing the mundane, the physical, mental and political exhaustion, the extremely normalised misogyny, I reconsider.

    A confession

    To me, Dar was never more than the ocean, critical observations of hustle culture and a constant longing for freedom. I grew up in the suburbs of Dar es Salaam in gated homes, as many others in Tanzania do, but we left the house only for school, family functions, and to play with our cousins or the one or two friends who all lived within walking distance from our home. I wasn’t allowed to go out. I had to teach myself restaurant etiquette when I was 18 while hanging out with friends in places I wasn’t allowed to be. I had to lie to my mom about where I was to calm her down, even when it was bright outside. With the exception of my high school prom night which was at a fancy restaurant in the city centre, I have never experienced night life in Dar. I have never been to brunch in Dar, which I think would be really cool, actually, because Tanzanian food is top-tier. I have been to one wedding in my conscious life when I was 12 years old. I spent most of my free time at home, where there was no shortage of things to get lost in and worlds to imagine.

    For someone who barely lived in the city, I romanticise Dar quite a lot: brunch at overpriced cafes, trips to Zanzibar, the occasional soiree. In reality, I would have to rebuild my social life because most of my friends have left the country. How do I explain to people that I’m not religious anymore? One would be surprised how much of an issue this is in a “secular” country. Being the ever-opinionated person that I am, I would surely regularly find myself in arguments with people about everything: politics, gender roles, entertainment, etc. Now, the discussion would be cut short by saying that I’m too Europeanised, which is stupid because I was always like this, and believing in gender equality and other progressive ideas is not European ffs. My extended family would tell you how I used to argue with them in our WhatsApp chat like I was paid to do it.

    The thing is, there are many reasonably-priced cafes in Berlin that I can walk into without feeling uncomfortable. And that’s the major difference I’m observing: many of the issues I’ve faced here can just be ignored or worked around, but in Dar, I would be demonised if I ever spoke against religion or if I chose to dress or act a certain way that doesn’t align with so-called “African values”, and the list goes on. Society is more involved in the individual’s life in Tanzania, and that bothers me to my core.

    What I, and you who’ve been romanticising home, need is a break from the hamster wheel. Get a one-way ticket during the harsh winter and spend a few months at home in holiday mode: enjoying great food, proper beaches, the warm weather and visiting family just long enough to stay within the guest label. I’m convinced that a 2-month trip back home would heal me. So here’s to me hoping to post an article or several from Dar es Salaam sometime in the coming year. For now, I’ll stay put in the chaos of Berlin.

    But nothing is ever certain, is it?

  • 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. I was ten. I was just patriotic.

    In my last two years of schooling, I attended one of those fancy international schools because I was a smart kid™. My O Level grades were not perfect, but something to boast about back then: I had four As, including in MATHS! (thirteen years later and I’m still shook. I only got Cs and Ds in my tests). I wrote a great application essay for a scholarship at the school that would later become my school. I passed the written exams which were algebra (ugh) and writing, and the interview in which I had conversations with seven people for ten minutes each. I somehow managed to convince them that I had big dreams worth investing in and that I believed in my ability to achieve those dreams one day.

    At 29, most of those dreams I had have either faded or been crushed by the brutality of capitalism and forces beyond my individual power.

    The first dream to fade was that of becoming a doctor, although I’m not even sure I can call this a “dream”. I didn’t even want to become a doctor, but a miscommunication during a conversation with a family member led to “Nibwene wants to become a doctor” being repeated at family gatherings for several years. I was good at Biology and excellent at O Level Chemistry. So, I thought, why not? Doctors make decent money. In my first year of the IB program, I got a 4 (a solid mid in the IB grading scale) in my Chemistry HL (higher level) final. I wasn’t even bothered. I was just happy I got a great grade in History HL. I enjoyed learning history as much as I did in my O Level education. Adding to my knowledge of African history, I learned about the tensions in Western Asia since 1948, the Cold War, the civil rights movements in the Americas and democracy in India and South Africa. I even wrote a paper on the rights of Indigenous People in Canada. We regularly watched historical dramas and documentaries in the school’s cinema. Our history teacher, the Australian globe-trotting Argentinian-tea-drinking Mr Hunt, shared interesting articles in politics and history on a Facebook page he had created for the class and, I think, he was a communist.

    By grade 12, I wanted nothing to do with STEM. I was set on studying political science, international relations, or even writing (gasp) in university. I decided to give it a shot and try getting into the IR world. I ended up studying IR (and political science, I guess) and history for my bachelor’s and international affairs and EU governance for my master’s.

    With only an IB Diploma to my name, I got an internship at the United Nations Climate Change (UNFCCC) HQ in Bonn, an experience that changed my life (overall positive). I went on to do internships and student jobs at other prestigious dreamy places yearned for by IR students: the International Renewable Energy Agency, Germany’s GIZ, the Research Institute for Sustainability and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. I grew my network and collected experience for work in the climate and energy sector. For five years, I was laser-focused on building myself for a full-time role in the sector, somewhere in Berlin, where I am, Bonn, where I previously was, or Brussels (*laughs in my non-EU passport*), where I now know I’ll never be. I even co-founded a student club for African Policy and led a cool week-long event with great speakers, lots of in-person and online guests, and great food! My graduation was at the Berliner Philharmonie on a beautiful summer day in 2024. I fully believed that the future was mine. In other words, I was delulu.

    graduation at berliner philharmonie (2024)

    And then the mass rejections came.

    I had received rejections before. This time it was too much for my frail little heart. At the same time, I was taking note of the nepotism and blatant discrimination in the hiring process in this particular field. It was sad because these are the same people who claim to be for fairness, human rights, sustainable development bla bla. I got all my previous positions by applying for them, so I thought it would always be that straightforward. I never knew anyone in the teams I worked in prior to joining, but now I heard that it’s all about “who you know”. Someone even told me not to apply for jobs if I don’t know anyone in the team/office hiring. Huh?

    In my unemployment era, which started exactly a week after the Eras Tour in Hamburg, there were several periods when I felt completely detached from reality. This can’t be real, I thought. I was the girl who had turned down an interview for an internship at the Green Climate Fund just four years prior because I had a better offer. Now, I was in people’s inboxes, both E-Mail and LinkedIn, desperately asking them if they had a job, any job, for someone like me. I got a total of two positive responses. One invited me to a chat that led nowhere, probably my own fault because I glitched when asked a technical question, and the other was encouraging and acknowledged that I’ve got “a really strong CV” in the areas they work in and that I should apply when positions are open. I had, in fact, applied for four positions just a few months prior, and, each time, I was ghosted.

    My ego was bruising faster than my bank account was depleting. I applied for a mentorship program for young women from my region (SADC – Southern Africa) in climate and energy which was supposed to be a year-long thing, but I terminated it after 8 months. I was in a dark place. I had started to fully spiral some time in the summer of 2025 after not getting a job following the only interview I had that entire year. That Monday, several hours after receiving the rejection E-Mail, I went to see Tyla at a club and allowed myself to dissociate as the same Amapiano hits were replayed every hour while the MC strung us along saying, Tyla is on her way, until she actually showed up at almost 1 am. Tuesday morning, basically. The ticket was 16€ so maybe I shouldn’t complain too much.

    Tyla at Maaya (Berlin, July 2025)

    My last proper job application was on 01 January this year. I sent what others and I thought was a very strong application for a position with an old employer. It was the perfect role for a recent graduate who was familiar with the specifics thanks to having worked in an adjacent team not too long ago. I even tried the who you know thing and asked an old colleague to put in a good word for me. After a long search, it finally felt like things might be working for me. An interview? I hope. A job? Let’s not jinx it, but OMG it could finally be time (some thoughts in my head from at that time).

    I got the rejection E-Mail a week later while I was at a Lidl with my partner stocking up for several snowy days ahead. Grocery shopping is one of my top 5 all-time favourite things to do (seriously), but after reading that E-Mail I wanted nothing more than to abandon everything we had in our cart and go home so I could cry until I passed out.

    Then, two months ago, I made this poster on Canva and said fuck it and posted it on LinkedIn.

    hire nibwene.

    You might have noticed the pattern if you made it to this point: rejection, crash out, try again. Believe me, I hate myself for it.

    The response to my poster was very positive. Don’t hold your breath though; I did not get a job offer simply because I couldn’t bring myself to apply for most positions that were shared with me because of the ridiculous requirements for experience and videos (wtf?!). Or maybe that’s just what I’ve been telling myself to avoid applying for anything. Staying away from the application process for nearly five months has helped me heal a tiny bit or, at the very least, kept me calm and untriggered long enough to feel okay and stop regretting my life choices. Who knows what another “we regret to inform you” might do to me. I know I have to get back into it at some point soon.

    To end this very long entry on a positive note, I did get one promising lead for a freelance gig because of my poster. Someone I didn’t know at all actually reached out to me after seeing it. In a different time, I would be scared to even mention it on the internet out of fear of bringing bad luck. But this is 2026 and not many of the established ideas and beliefs make sense anymore. To quote a famous songstress, I ain’t gotta knock on wood. This also made me realise that I want to be a freelancer for now so that I can continue to have the free time to explore my other interests and craft new less delulu dreams for myself. Without a doubt, my new dreams won’t involve politics (seriously, I don’t want to end up dead) and will be fully in line with the saying secure the bag.

    I’m still a believer and I don’t know why (mirrorball, Taylor Swift)

  • 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 where they don’t really have to do all that, i.e., places where women’s rights are a thing in the law, among society and, to a large extent, properly enforced.

    I started thinking about trad wives two years ago when they were popping up on my Instagram reels. I blocked them everytime. I remember when I felt I had had enough after seeing one African American trad wife’s TikTok about picking cotton and her saying that it was part of her DNA. I wish this was fiction.

    In the last few months, i.e. in these tough recession times in Germany (yikes), I’ve been wondering what my life would be like if I hadn’t chosen to pursue an academic-adjacent career path. The rejections, the constant feeling of not being enough and non-stop grind has been exhausting and demoralizing. So, naturally, I have been questioning my career wants and wondering why I didn’t dance on TikTok during lockdown.

    One night a few months ago, I wrote a text in my notes app with the title of this post. The title was inspired by another article whose title used similar words and style. I thought it was a smart way to summarize opposing perspectives of the same situation. This text was my way of writing out my feelings at a time when I had doubts about my chosen path in life. I also thought of the “girlboss to trad wife pipeline” and whether my mind was going that route. (It is not lol).

    Screenshot of me texting my friend in January

    The note went like this: In another universe, I had trad wife fantasies early in my adulthood. I pursued them and now live in a nice house, paid for by my husband, with my 3 kids. I am happy because my husband is loving and I have everything I need. In that world, I don’t dream of being a girlboss. I don’t have to network over hot beverages, or embarrass myself in people‘s inboxes. I‘m just me and that‘s enough to be a wife and a mother. I love to cook and play with my kids. In that world, I don’t spend 9 months of my life scrolling through LinkedIn and obsessively checking my emails everyday, waiting for something that’s not there, chasing after a career not meant for me. In another universe, I just know better. In this world, I am who I am: a girlboss at heart. I feed off the self-pat on my back that I’ve done a good job. When others say they love my work, I love that too, but it doesn’t make or break me. I’m a bad b*tch and I know it.

    A girlboss is “an ambitious and successful woman (especially a businesswoman or entrepreneur)”, according to Merriam-Webster. First, I need to say that, depending on who is using it, I think the term girlboss can be somewhat misogynistic. Calling a grown woman a “girl” can be disrespectful, but I don’t see an issue if we call ourselves that (maybe I’ll change my mind about this one day). I like this Merriam-Webster definition because it’s broad and doesn’t paint all ambitious women as mean girls who “gaslight” and “gatekeep”, unlike other interpretations of the term that I read elsewhere.

    Some might say that a trad wife can be a girlboss, but I don’t think this to be true. Yes, online trad wives are, in fact, working as content creators and chasing after fame and followers; they make money doing what they do. However, I think being a trad wife or labelling oneself as such is a limitation: I have to dress a certain way, have babies, serve my husband, act a certain way, etc. When it comes to a girlboss, these limitations do not exist. She does what she wants to get what she wants. A girlboss, in my view, is not characterized by how she fits into the patriarchy-defined attributes of a good woman.

    I’ve been in the girlboss mindset for my entire conscious life. I never ever seriously believed that I needed to live my life as a woman according to what the culture around me or my religion told me. I had concrete career plans in politics and policy that are not anything new, but ambitious enough to characterize me as a girlboss. And I pursued them as aggressively as I could. In these trying times, however, when I’m not able to picture the path ahead in the way that I envisioned, I feel lost. Who am I outside of my political grind?

    A friend wrote to me recently, “I really feel like the universe is pushing you towards something you can do for yourself…” I feel this too, I guess. I decided to get serious about writing (which is why I finally got a domain for this blog and started a Substack). While I love to write and have never not enjoyed it, even in school or university, I vented to my friend about how I wish a detour felt more like my choice rather than a semi-forced path because I had no other options. Maybe this feeling of lack of choice is why I’m the opposite of a trad wife: I hate doing things because I am made to by tradition, a husband, society, the economy, etc.

    That is why, dear reader, my trad wife fantasies are just that: fantasies. Regardless of the circumstances, I stay locked in on all my pursuits until I get what I want or die trying. This is my reality as a girlboss. Here, I’m reminded of a quote from the movie Dolemite Is My Name, “shoot for the moon and if you miss it cling on to a m*****f*cking star”.

  • 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 became a companion as I navigated my early 20s with even more depressive episodes in a foreign country. I stopped posting a lot because I found joy in the real world and refused to dwell in my writing because it tends to bring out unwanted emotions. I am back now, but calmer.

    I had the shiniest wheels, now they’re rusting

    Four years ago, Taylor Swift released the album ‚Folklore‘. It was the only thing I listened to that August. I was sharing an apartment just outside my old university in Bremen with a friend and essentially took over the smart TV so it only played the entire Folklore album‘s lyric videos from start to finish every morning to evening. I was very stressed back then. I had just graduated and was looking for the next opportunity. The previous month (July) had been tough, but August was starting to feel better. I did a written test which was the first part of the hiring process for an internship I wanted so badly. The waits in between the different hiring stages were excruciatingly long and at the time I wasn’t aware that this was normal. By the time September was around the corner, with no indication that I was going to the interview stage, I was in panic mode. So I booked a one-way 16-hour bus trip to from Bremen (Northern Germany) to Austria. My final destination, Leoben, a small city of less than 25,000 people somewhere in the Alps. I spent 5 weeks there.

    Most of the Austria subplot ends well; I got the internship of my dreams and made friends along the way. I had a great time and I felt like I finally had a foot in the energy sector‘s door. I was in. Things went uphill from there. After that, I worked at a research institute, a well-known international development organization, and another world renowned climate research institute. I thought my career in this sector was a sure thing, but it seems that the job market has other plans for me.

    So I got wasted like all my potential

    I look back at all these cool places I worked at and I can’t help but be grateful for the one person who hired me as an intern at the UNFCCC back in the summer of 2019 when all I had to my name was a high school diploma. That was my true „in“ and is what inspired me to want to work in some variation of climate action. I was just a 22-year old learning the ways of the world, drinking a little too much with my fellow interns after work, and having a life-changing experience. This is also the time one of this blog‘s readers, a stranger back then, reached out to me to discuss an article I wrote here. The stranger has become a very important part of my life *wink wink*.

    This past June, I graduated from my master’s program. There are a lot of mixed feelings about my experience, but what I can write here is that I learned something, I did cool things and I met amazing people even though this took some time. Strangely, the first thing I think of about this time is dancing in a club to Amapiano with my uni friends. Now it’s been almost 5 months since my last class. I‘m exhausted because I was delusional and I thought I had it in me to get a job soon after graduation (or maybe even before). It’s October and here we are. Again, I‘m in a small city in the Alps; this time on the French side – making friends and doing who knows what. I‘m trying to figure out why someone hated me so much that they told me to apply for a job and then rejected me without interviewing me and then hired someone way less qualified for the position than me. (OK, so I found this out because I did some digging on LinkedIn, the cursed website). Also, I’m paying for LinkedIn Premium LOL. I got a sweet discount for two months when I signed up via desktop. It lets you “InMail” people you’re not connected to. Probably annoying for those on the receiving end of these mails, but whatever to make you feel like you’re making the effort.

    I just wanted you to know, that this is me trying

    Rejection is redirection, they say. So I hope this phase redirects me to somewhere where I never have to deal with such bullshit things again. And, maybe the real find was the realization that the Alps are a place of refuge for me.

  • “You’re not the river, you’re the city” – John Green

    “You’re not the river, you’re the city” – John Green

    So it was a Friday morning. The weather was good and I left on time for work with my bicycle that I had bought just two days before. I cycled in heels, a mini skirt and my bag that says ‘boy bye’ was hanging from the left handle. To quote Thanos, ‘Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.‘

    I ended up cycling thrice around a park.

    For the first few days in Bonn, I had to live at a hostel because finding a place to I can sleep and eat comfortably at for a few months needed to be the most difficult thing. I stayed at a place called Max Hostel and the receptionists there are the nicest I’ve ever met. I was welcomed with a smile each morning. That was one of the two things that made the painful first week in Bonn bearable, the other being that I’m at the UN!!!

    The people in Bonn are very nice, foreigners and locals alike. The streets are beautiful, the trains and buses are packed in the mornings and evenings and I like it because it gives me that big city feeling. And maybe it’s just because it’s summer, but I love how a lot of people here choose to cycle instead of using cars and contributing to the horrific tale of global warming. (Me here wishing Dar es Salaam found a way to deal with the overflow of cars in the city). I still haven’t seen Bonn properly, but I have 6 months to do that and more and I’m really looking forward to all it.

    66456847_2363636970585418_975214410941333504_nHere’s the view from my room, you know, what I stare at when listening to the Jonas Brothers’ album Happiness Begins and thinking of ways to make friends in the city and not embarrass myself by getting lost every morning.

    Oh and the river in the featured photo is the Rhine 😉