top of page
Search
  • Writer's pictureCynthia Asumpta Ouma

First Time


I enter the huge vast manicured compound with a black gate and i breath in deeply one more time. I still can't believe that i am doing this. Finding this place first of all, wasn't that easy and my bodaboda guy and I had spent the last one hour in this posh estate searching for the place. I hold my cheap brown bag tightly but it slides again to the ground, I am nervous. Should I go back home? Should I just do this? My inner conscience must be really disturbed because it is not used to being this scared and brave at the same time.


I exchange pleasantries with the gateman at the entrance. ‘Nimekuja interview’. I let him know just in case he is prompted to throw me out. I am not wearing the best of my clothes but am sure am descent enough, except for my hair that was blown away by the midday wind while I was on the motorbike. In the unrelenting glare of midday, the only shadow is that which pools at my feet. I try to fix my hair smiling at the watchman. ‘Karibu, enda tu uingie kwa ile mlango’ he says pointing at a glass grilled door on his left. I detect a subtle accent. Probably from the luhya community. I increase my strides towards the door.


I hear the soft clicks of my heels hitting the marble floor as I walk through the stairs the receptionist had directed me to. The walls are covered with grey, blue and ivory wallpapers and project photography with silver frames. I find a group of smartly dressed ladies with envelopes in hand seated in the office. A wave of anxiety hits me. They must be here for the interview too. They look much accomplished and ready for the interview and one by one, a secretary comes to call each one of them. I am the last in line. It makes me more nervous. Last interviewee before me… it feels like hours.


After an endless session of pacing the navy-blue carpeted floor in the room, I manage to sit myself down. The chairs are comfortable as a train station bench. I place my hands on my knees with the intention to stop them from bouncing every second. ‘Asumpta Cynthia’ the secretary calls out and for a moment I feel like I would have a panic attack, my heart beats at the fastest rate and my stomach churns just a little, no, not a little but like an erupted volcano. Is this what adults do in real life? Expose themselves to series of torture so that they can put food on the table?


This thought makes me a little confident. I mean I will be turning 23 soon. Isn’t that adult enough? My English teacher always said that tortoises only make progress when they stick their necks out. In this case, I was the tortoise and it was time to stick my head out. I stand and make my way inside the boardroom and I wait for the steel handle of the interview room’s door to open.


He extends his hand towards me and quickly introduces himself as the Human Resource. He is short, light complexioned and he talks in an elegant manner. Feels like he went to one of those overseas universities. Definitely in the queen's land. He ushers me in the room currently gleamed with spotless silence, where two other interviewers are seated. These jobs are always interviewed by a panel, questions fired too quickly to answer with too much thought. The interviewers sit in clean cut suits. After a few years working here, I’d be just like them. No, I doubt. I would probably be one of those employees with vintage-antique fashion. The ones who show up with sneakers and colored hair. The young generation, ummmmm... they call them the millennials. I smile just a little at them. This is it!


For the next forty minutes, I answer the questions like a gunman ready with his shot gun, hitting every target thrown at him. My dad had prepared me well. ‘A series of questions would come up,’ he had told me ‘but don’t let them throw you off the boat, as much as you will be thinking of the replies, pay much attention to what they say. Let your body language speak.’


The night before, we were having those father-daughter late night talks where he would be at his office, sipping my dark brewed coffee while i quietly perrused on instagram waiting for him to finish. ‘And babaa what about my hair? Do you want those guys to think that a crazy woman from the streets had come for the interview?’ I had jokingly asked him holding my steel wool textured hair in a grip. He had laughed out loud. Babaa was always such a serious person. That is why his colleagues at the university stayed clear of him. He never made small talk but when something tickled him as funny, he positively howled, slapping his hand up and down almost involuntary and could barely breath. He had promised to give me some 200 bob to go blow dry my hair before the interview. He cared, that I knew.


‘Thank you Asumpta. We will reach out to you after this panel makes the decision,’ they say as each one shakes my sweaty hand. I walk out of the door, breath in deeply, go down the marble stairs to the reception, out of the glass grill door and towards the gate. I switch on my phone and text him, ‘I am done with my interview.’ He replies almost immediately, ‘Great…pass by my office for lunch. I am a proud father today.’ I smile and look back at the window on the first floor, where the interview had taken place. I will sure be back…

128 views4 comments

Recent Posts

See All
bottom of page