Introducing Horn of Africa's answer to Carrie Bradshaw …. but in this case, she's on a cultural leash!!!

I am drenched in red bull and frighteningly close to trying to invent a way to intravenously inject caffeine directly into my veins. It’s 3.a.m. One of my friends is snoring and spluttering on the settee a few feet away. Another is asleep on my bed in the next door, dreamingly muttering about a boy she went out with three years ago. It feels strangely wonderful, this huddling-together-for-warmth. We are at my Aunt’s place a few hours after my cousin’s engagement party. Aunty is from the generation that went straight from living in their parent’s family unit to creating a family unit of her own and for the extended family. She has extra of everything for the guests. Towels and toothbrushes, her pride and joy, are kept in separate drawers for them.

She has a sharp eye, when we wanted to sneak off she called out “Going home at this time unattended? We will be going to my house.” The huddling together isn’t so cosy at this hour of the night though. Dammit. I am interrupted three times by hay fever snorting, demands for aspirin, sleep shouting and by my friend crashing into the bathroom and accidentally pulling the medicine cabinet door into her head. My Aunty wouldn’t have it any other way. She is at hand with a plaster. Does she ever sleep?

I look like I have been through hell and back. My Aunt on the other hand looks immaculate. When I say comes out, she sort of dances out. She moves like a predatory tiger, arms high, hands like claws, legs lifted high with each step she takes towards me. I watch in amazement as she approaches. What will she do next, jump on me? She is wearing the uniform of the classic grand dame: black Chanel head-scarf and diamond earrings. Her face is attractive, her eyes large and slightly mischievous. The music stops and she takes my hand. “It’s all about duty to the family,” She tells me. “Duty to your parents, to your children, to God. They all come before the self. I remember the first time I kissed a boy aged seventeen at a dance. I only kissed him because of the disappointment I felt that the boy I really liked had gone home. And it was an innocent little kiss. But the next morning I woke up and the first thing I thought of was ‘What have I done to my parents and God?’

To be continued in the next issue of Sheeko