It only hurts when you cry

By Kariuki Muthui

It is hard to be idealistic in today’s Kenya. All around us, depressing facts abound — from corruption to crushing poverty. Imagine how much worse it must feel to be surrounded by so much external negativity while suffering from a chronic disease. Would you have the will to go on? Would you fight?

Juliet Maruru, who turns 28 next month, has never contemplated quitting. A busy young woman, she wears at least three hats: She manages the web activities of Storymoja Africa, a local publisher; she’s an advocate for women’s rights; and she is a writer. She does all this while battling the debilitating and chronic Lupus disease.

Her theme in life is finding humour in every sorrow. For instance, though her parents split up, she remembers a particularly interesting exchange between her and them, which may or may not have led to her name Juliet.

"I walked into the kitchen and announced to my parents I would no longer be called Serah", she writes.

"So what is your new name?" her father asked indulgently.

"Juliet. I read it in a book", she responded. And so it has always been. She was only three years old.

Unfortunately, the Lupus has come to dominate her life. Because of it, she works from home. But she’s not afraid of her disease and frequently blogs about her numerous hospital visits. And she does it with a great deal of irreverent humour towards her condition. She says the only way to survive pain is to find the humour in it.

"Picture waking up every month with a new symptom depending on what your immune system decides to give in to. Everything from migraines to clinical depression and symptomatic diabetes," she says, adding: "If your kidneys are not failing, and your heart is working on its own, you count yourself lucky because the symptoms are mild."

Hate hospitals

Lupus is notoriously difficult to diagnose. For four years Juliet struggled with chronic fatigue and pain, going to doctors who were just as clueless as she was about her condition.

"I had decided to live with my agony. Then I met a visiting doctor who immediately suggested a test for anti-nuclear anti-bodies and a host of other scary tests," she says. That is how Lupus was finally diagnosed last year.

"Understanding what’s wrong with you is a big part of coping with the pain," she explains.

Here is a posting about her most recent hospital visit: "As usual another short stay in hospital draws out strange thought patterns in my head. I was going crazy, really. I honestly think there was no particular concern to keep me in hospital. I hate hospitals even when the doctors are cute (best case scenario). Anyway, in between waiting for the results of another batch of tests to come back, I managed to slink past the fierce nurse who guards me like I am a felon with a flight risk."

Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, and for Juliet, writing both seriously and humorously is not only the means by which she makes a living, but it is also the way she examines herself and the world around her and tries to change or understand it.

Though she kept a journal from the age of 12, she took up writing regularly in her early teens on the advice of a psychotherapist.

"When I was about 13 years old, I was going through a difficult emotional period after being sexually assaulted by a family friend. I went into psychological therapy, and my therapist encouraged me to write, more for myself than for anyone else," she says in a blog interview.

Her high school principal, who was aware of her emotional problems after the sexual assault encouraged her to enter writing contests. When she won a Commonwealth Write Around the World award in 1999, the same principal urged her on, and she went on to find her voice as an online advocate for young women.

Later, as a young woman growing up in Mombasa she rebelled against the expected norm of cooking and cleaning.

Career dreams

"I didn’t even know how to tie a leso," she chuckles, adding: "I preferred to write essays in school about the need for more girls to take up sciences and sports."

Life has undoubtedly handed this young fighter a little more than her fair share of challenges. Although she completed high school, she was unable to take up university education due to lack of school fees. She however drilled through this obstacle by pursuing online education and attending short courses whenever she could afford it.

In December 2007, she took up an internship at Storymoja, a move that was to change her life. They invited her back in June 2008, and she joined the editorial team. She immediately got involved in the respected Storymoja Literary Festival. Later, she was assigned to the children’s publishing and the online sections.

Unfortunately, just when her career was starting to take off, the Lupus with Fibromyalgia flared up, forcing her to stop working for a while.

Thankfully, her employer supported her and in May 2009, offered her the opportunity to handle all online media for them while working from home because her illness had rendered her homebound.

Though she never leaves the house except to see the doctor, you would never know it.

A Google search for Juliet Maruru brings up over 5,000 results. That’s how busy she has been. In addition to managing all online content for Storymoja, she runs a blog called she blossoms’, where she shares her life experiences and through which she mentors quite a few young ladies who seek encouragement from her.

"I love to write," she says, "and I love to encourage other writers to keep working at their talent and gaining skills in writing. For this reason, my work at Storymoja is something I absolutely love because it offers me both opportunities."

For such a young lady, Juliet has certainly gone through a lot. And yet, here she is, housebound, yet unbowed and outrageously funny.

She writes mostly at night, when others are asleep, because the quiet of the night stirs her soul. With every stroke of her keyboard, she aims to encourage young women that there is no option but to fight when life gets rough. And to laugh. Always.