Life in a Flash (Part 2)

Now the elephant in the room had to be dealt with, her joblessness. She glanced at the round, white clock that hang on the wall just above the kitchen cabinet and the short arrow was pointing in the middle of four and five while the long one at nine which had to be wrong since it was morning and the sun was clearly up already. She made another mental note to purchase a clock battery at the mall if she ever found herself there with the minute chances as she did not have to remind herself of how broke she was. She turned on the laptop on the wooden table beside the bed and realized how late she had woken up as it was already ten o’clock. If there was a safe haven for her from all the problems life had to offer, it had to be her laptop which always kept her company. Nairobi could be a really fun and boring place at the same time depending on where you stood between loaded and broke; the former which meant good life with many activities and choices to choose from and the later, for really boring life as the option of even window shopping at a mall was not on the table. Inasmuch as most lecturers at school had claimed that falling in either category was more of a choice, Martha still had reservations to the philosophy as the choice itself was a function of the opportunities one could access to earn cash which meant that it could have been choice in the very first generation, which was the generation at the start of the post-colonization period and from the history classes she had taken, there had never existed such equal opportunities thus had to be the generation of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Hence to her the question of choices in life was only gifted to a few in the society especially for developing economies like Kenya where the gap between the rich and poor seemed to be in an ever-widening mission. Maybe that was why her colleagues in school had thought of her as an activist of some sort and pessimistic in view of life. For the past ten months, her daily routine kicked off with waking up late, taking breakfast, checking for new emails, applying for new job vacancies, streaming movies and television shows till evening, cooking supper if need be depending on how starved she would be, then falling asleep. As usual most emails were from the ‘Brighter Monday’, a well-known job-finding site in Kenya. Nonetheless that morning her attention was captured by a mail from the overseas bond which she immediately clicks her heart beating hard threatening to burst out of her chest. That day even the laptop seemed to have noticed the intensity of the mail as it seemed to have slowed considerably. “Congratulations, you are one of the Kenyans that have been awarded Green card this year. This gives you a right to reside in the United States of America” were the opening sentences that almost made her jump up the roof from euphoria. This had to have been the best news she had ever received since she was born, she thought. The mail was quite long with further details on what the offer entailed, visa processing etcetera. She was overly shocked, I mean talking of luck, something she herself never believed in until that moment. That had to have been a miracle; it made her a believer again. She had no idea how many times she went through the mail but the next time she looked at the laptop-clock, it was already noon and she was overwhelmed by the feeling of utter satisfaction and the need to go house to house in the estate and inform the all world of her achievement, this had to count for something big. She had applied for the green card thrice now with no hope of ever being chosen considering the high number of Kenyans applying for the same opportunity but still hoping for the best and praying for the odds. Clearly her God had to be the best of all Gods, she kept thinking, her God had made her rethink her grounds on the philosophy of life and choices especially when it came to wealth versus poverty. She spent the rest of the day calling her parents, siblings and friends and sharing the great news all of who were really proud of her and wished her all the very best. Martha had never felt on the verge of breaking through and being the next big thing that everyone would be talking about in days to come as that day; she felt fulfilled and for the first time in her life on the right track.