Hmm. Where does Ashe start? I am Ashe’s mind orator and let me tell you a story. Let us rewind to a few years ago.
The scene starts on a Saturday evening with Ashe finishing a Christian article for her blog and had a habit of summing it up with a poem. This was her signature. She was of course a practising Christian with a way with words and this, was the source of her guilty pleasure. She was a Reddit Troll. Just like gym-goers or girls on diet have cheat meals, this was her cheat meal (probably now gourmet). [For context basis, Reddit gives their users random anonymous usernames and make it difficult to get someone’s identity]. Ashe’s moniker was so famous in Reddit that some of her coursemates used to talk about it; since I am and was in her mind, I used to see her smile inside but the instructions sent to her facial muscles would be poker.
Apologies for digressing. The scene continues, with Ashe, as her norm, logs into Reddit and scouts for the next victims. She is seated cross-legged in her room, white visible plume rising from her hot coffee and the heat fills the room, almost matching her fiery will to destroy. She had a habit of following up on football and would therefore start trolling teams such as Man United (haha) because it would be an easy target. She would then follow up with tweets ridden with dark humor so that she wouldn’t be predictable. On this day, she encountered a post that was devilishly (I literally mean that, I was there) funny. It, however, mocked the death and resurrection of Christ.
Ashe, fighting with her conscience, felt as though she was on a roll because this time a gazillion jokes were flowing in her mind. She had always skipped blasphemous jokes but this time she was at crossroads. I, her minds orator, rationalized posting one joke because she had already sinned by thinking about it, she might as well do the Reaaaal thing (In Julius Malema’s voice). As she was about to send it, she got an email notification about her research project, dealt with it quickly and sent it to her research partners. She felt as this was a sign from the Most High not send but she told Him, “God forgive me, but this once.”
She sighed, closed her laptop and her face; full of guilty pleasure and half repentance slept in the hellishly warm room. Deep inside, she knew that banger of a joke would get so many Reddit upvotes. The curtains close because I was silenced on that day because she slept so soundly, she did not even dream.
Curtains open as she wakes up chirpy on the following Sunday Morning. Fast-forward to church service. The preacher was speaking directly to her the whole time. “Proverbs 9:17, Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” She however shrugged off the lingering thought. After service, her phone was off Do Not Disturb and many notifications almost buzzed off her femur through her side-pocket (Alijua amenasa).
She was so pleased she didn’t listen to her friend trying to tell her that there was something different about the mail she sent the previous day (not to spoil for you but she did not send the joke there). As she stood there trying to swipe away millions of notifications, she mistakenly opened a text from one of her classmates. Du du! Du du! Her heart beat harder than the West African Tom Tom drums (forgive me for using primary school vocabulary but why did Ashe go to class 8 if I can’t still use them?). (I know by now you have realized that I, the orator, is a victim of Ashe’s ADHD)
Du du is where we were. She left her friend standing as she ran whilst begging God. She said through me, “Let it not be so Oh Lord!” but she knew it was too late. She got to her place of stay, opened her laptop looked under her reddit post. It was her email signature:
Ashe Mukami,
Bsc Physiology, University of Nairobi.
The joke had gotten lots of reactions and upvotes but there it was, her signature staring at her. In one sweeping move, she deleted everything including her account, shut off the laptop and stared at her classmate’s text that had a screenshot of the Reddit post. “Dang Mukami, I thought you were a Christian,” it said.
She lay in her floor prostate and cried her tears out to the Lord in a sackcloth rolled in ashes, the latter being figurative of course. After hours, she was more calm, sat again in ‘Reddit Position’ this time with a pen and a notebook filling the page with an almost equivalent ratio of tear drops and ink.
My Lord, I have sinned
Seems your Word, I have binned
My own devices, I had leaned
And in the waters of sin I had finned
And at unholy thoughts I had grinned
I now quit behavior of being a troll
For I know that it is not my call
I have realized that between You and me there was a wall
To reach to you, on the other side, I had to fall
And now I crawl
Even though I weep of my injuries so gritty
I have learned that I had no integrity
And in secret my sin festered through my humor so witty
And almost lost my Heavenly kitty
She opened her Bible and read Hebrews 12:6 and got encouraged by, “The Lord disciplines those whom He loves.” She however knew that most of her repentance was because she got caught and not because she wanted to stop at any point. At that point she wished she could tell this story to someone struggling with a secret sin/guilty pleasure to let it not fester before the Lord disciplines them. And this is where I came in. End scene.
~Chief Kut.