The blade my mother used was called Topaz. It came in a white wrapping with its name sprawled inside an ominous-looking, red rhombus. It was the sharpest thing I ever saw. When it grated against my skin, I would clench my teeth. When it cut my scalp I would cry, and my head would shrink into my body, like the retracted head of a tortoise.

Proverbs take on the big questions, how do we live, what are we? They are the strangers that lights the way in the dark, that show the forest from the trees. Because in our age there are too many books to read and too much to think about, the complexity of our world confounds us. Good aphorisms quiet my mind.Further, they offer concision, a quality associated with wisdom. For me, the search for brevity is a search for sanity. The best words are those that are few and to the point, said Rumi.

Grandma brushed her teeth with a twig, gave the latest update on her health, talking in proverb and metaphor as elderly people do. She said, ‘My waist is being squeezed dear, just you keep quiet, you have not seen anything.’ She spat sideways, wrinkles showing on her neck and her chest, the dry skin on her arms hanging loose from the bones.

The boat is choke full of passengers, a young man from my bus offers to guide me to the boat, sensing that I look like a tourist and not a local, with my sunglasses and afro and sneakers. Isn’t it funny, how we always travel to be invisible, even though that does not happen? Story of my life, always looking like the outsider.

When he asks me the same questions as the other man, then I wonder for the first time, and please wonder with me, whether I will see Dar es Salaam, that old city with the name that deserves a prize, “the city of peace,” and will I walk those same streets and bazaars as did the Swahili novelists whose books I loved to read as a child did, and will I get to see the city’s interesting contrasts of the old and the new, old whitewashed buildings peeling with sanctified age in the humid sun next to the blue, glass skyscrapers shooting out of the shore of the azure waters of Indian Ocean…

If at home sit on a mat outside or establish base in the living room. If not, go to your favourite faddi kudirir (outdoor tea cafe) with a friend or two. However, squatting, especially in an outdoors setting, is strongly recommended as the best sitting position for drinking tea.

Mothers can sometimes intuit that a child is unwell even before any symptoms are apparent. She’ll look at you while looking healthy as a horse and remark, “This one is falling ill soon.” The next morning you won’t get out bed. She will not even come to see how you are; she’ll just carry in the honey and black seed oil.

Life has both hardship and ease in proportion. Some days it might feel ephemeral; others, never-ending. To some it might dissipate all too quickly, like dust floating in the air. Yet to others it might drag eternally, like the hands of a clock on a prison wall. It might all depend on how each individual lives and the circumstances of their lives. To me the universe – on the macrocosmic level – might not be cyclical, but it might be in the microcosms of our individual lives.