birthday check in: so how was being 26?

i feel like i normally start these by saying, “wow, time flies!” but let me tell you something, this year did *not* fly by! thankfully, i mean this (partly) in the best of ways possible. i have loved being 26! i have done so much, achieved so much personally, and seen more of the people i love in a period of 12 months than i have in a very long time – i am incredibly grateful for this last part!

Alright… let’s start with what i did to celebrate my 26th birthday last April. Firstly, as i mentioned in my previous birthday check-in, i went to watch a stand-up comedy show by Michael Rap (the guy who plays Phoebe’s cop boyfriend in Friends). I have since been told by a friend that Michael Rap is actually a pretty controversial figure and my response to that is pretty much “miss me with that politics” lol. i went to a show, i enjoyed it. i do not know any of this guy’s politics and honestly, i am not interested to know. life is too short for me to not interact with people whose political views i might not agree with – i refuse to add to the political polarisation.

The following morning I biked myself down to JG SkyHigh, the restaurant atop the Four Seasons, and had what I am hoping to turn into my traditional solo birthday brunch.

After that I got myself some Too Good To Go cupcakes, picked up my Broad St Run regalia, then headed back to the office to practice with for Itay Goldstein’s exam with Jeffrey, Cindy, Sese and Chisom!

At some point before my actual birthday, we also celebrated my birthday in the office!

My biggest achievement over the last 365 days has been my running journey! I’ll dedicate a whole section to that and then give a rundown of how the rest of the year went in other aspects of my life!

Running Journey

The first big thing I did in year 27 was to participate (without training) in the Broad St Run – the largest 10 mile (16km) race in the US by participation. A lot of us in the accounting department signed up for the race but only a few us chose to brave it out as race day turned out to be cold and very rainy. I walked and ran the race, and I was so tired by the end, I could barely feel my legs on the train ride home.

One of the things on my bucket list has always been to non-stop run a 5K, so following the Broad St Run (lol) I decided that I actually wanted to try this running thing out, and early in May I started going out for runs. My first run I believe was 1.96 miles, and I would walk one block, run the next and keep alternating like that. I eventually decided to see how far I could run without stopping and realised I could actually run the entire 1.96 miles. The key? Run super slowly! And that has been my method since. I have allowed my body to tell me how fast or slow to run. My only rule has been to never walk, and I have since fallen in love with my runs!

I split my summer time between England and Canada, and as soon as I arrived in England at the end of May that’s when I really started to build a running habit. Up to that point I had just been going on runs “when I felt like it,” but once I got to England I started going for (almost) daily evening runs, each about 1.5 miles. I gradually increased the distance as I explored the unfamiliar neighbourhoods until one day I found myself 2.5 miles into a run and decided to push an extra 0.6 miles, and I did it! On the evening of June 18 I ran my first ever 5K (3.11 miles)!! [insert applause audio lol!]. I carried on running while in the England as well as in Canada, and by the end of the summer I had run a 5K distance a total of four times, with my longest run being 4.10 miles.

I continued running once I was back at school but I definitely broke the habit and fell back into the “running when I feel like it” routine in the Fall of 2023. In January of this year I decided that I wanted to give the Broad St Run another try, and actually run the entire distance (10 miles) this time around – very ambitious for someone who had only run a max distance of 4 miles up to this point. I started following a training plan in February and I am happy to say that I am on track to run the 10 miles of the Broad St Run next weekend on Sunday, May 05.

I am incredibly incredibly proud to say that as of today, I have not only been able to check off my bucket list goal of running a 5K distance, but I have run a distance of at least 5K 35 times in the last year, with 6 of those 35 run being 10K+ distances! My longest run so far has been 9 miles – an achievement from last Saturday evening! Today was my final Saturday long-run before the race, and I managed to run my fastest 5K and 10K paces.

The running journey has not been without hiccups, though. Once I started doing longer runs I started experiencing pain in my knees. At first I ignored it as my knees have always given me trouble, but I eventually decided to get help from a physical therapist. I have been in PT for about a month now and it’s amazing how helpful the small things I do there have been. My knee pain is gone and the PT has also addressed some other issues i’d been having through my running that I had been ignoring. It also helps that my physical therapist is incredibly cute!

My primary goal for the Broad St Run is to finish it without walking – I do not have reason to believe that this will be a problem since I ran 9 miles last weekend. Pace has not really been much of a concern for me. I am a slow runner, and finishing the run within some given time frame would just be the cherry on top of the cake – nice, but not necessary. Here’s what I’m thinking for the race:

Target pace (i.e., the pace of my practice runs):
– 02:00:00- 02:10:00 completion time, or
– 12- to 13-minute-miles.

I’d-feel-like-a-superstar pace:
– 01:55:00 – 01:59:59 completion time, or
– just under 12-minute-miles.

Wow-how-is-that-even-possible pace:
– 01:50:00 – 01:55:59 completion time, or
– 11- to 11.5-minute miles.

Send-help-i-have-probably-collapsed-from-overexertion pace:
– 01:40:00 – 01:49:59 completion time, or
– 10- to 11-minute miles.

Catch-me-in-the-emergency-room pace:
– anything less than 01:40:00 completion time, or
– faster than 10-minute miles

So that’s that for running. I am very excited for the Broad St Run coming up next Sunday and can’t wait to just experience it!

Now on to the rest of my life…

Family

As mentioned already, I was fortunate enough to spend the entire summer with my family in the UK and in Canada. My sister and I’s trips to the UK overlapped for a few days so I got to spend some time with her then and I was so grateful.

My cousin, Shami, and her husband, Auby’s, babies are growing and man do I love those kids. The Manhiri home feels like my own home and I am so grateful to Shami and Auby for always making me feel so welcome. I spent about six weeks living with Shami and Auby, babysitting the kids, and just falling more in love with them. Nolan is turning out to be a football superstar. He spends all his free time watching football, practicing with his friends outside, and while I was visiting he joined a junior training club! I look forward to having front row seats to Manchester City games in a decade or so. The twins… man those boys have my heart! They are so funny, because one moment they are playing and getting along well, and the next you hear a cry because one has literally bitten the other really bad and a fight has broken out, #boys. Little Michelle will steal your heart with her smile! She is ever smiling, the least fussy baby you will ever come across, and just a pleasure to spend time with. I also got to spend a good amount of time with Mhamha Manhiri and man, I just love that woman. She sets the bar so incredibly high for mother-in-laws… Shami is so lucky haha!

My cousin, Sheu and his wife, Tate, are also doing great – Michael is growing and him and I were finally able to establish a bond in my time in the UK. That little baby will not just smile at anyone haha, and I can’t express how happy I was when he finally gave me a smile and indulged me in my nonsensical attempts to make him smile and laugh! Melissa is just a superstar! I have never met a 3 year old with such perfectly developed grammar and whose vocabulary is so vast. Melissa is so emotionally intelligent, and mature beyond her three years. She is the best and most protective big sister to Michael and she is just a pleasure to have around you.

Everyone else is doing great lol – only the babies get dedicated space. Aside from the people I have already mentioned, in the UK I was able to spend time with Mhamha Mash, Daddy Mash, Daddy Manhiri, Tete Sharo, Regi, Pipi, and Tavo. I had such a wonderful time.

In June I took a three day trip to London – yay solo travel! This is something I had been wanting to do again since my first solo travel experience to Barcelona in 2018 had not gone so well. In 2018 I was still too unaware of (or maybe uncomfortable with) who I was, and honestly, way too broke, to enjoy the experience of travelling alone, but seeing as at least 2 of the 3 aforementioned problems had been somewhat resolved, I was excited to be a solo-traveller tourist in London. I stayed at an AirBnB in Canada Water and just lived my best tourist life during those three days.

Funny story: I have never really in my adult life been able to finish a serving of food in one seating, particularly food at a restaurant or other such place. I have generally attributed this to American food portions being too big, and so on my first evening in London I went out to get dinner before going for a show and decided that I would finish all my food at dinner. After all, I wasn’t in the US and the food portions in England are more reasonable, right? I ordered my food, pictures of food and me at dinner attached below, and started working on my meal. About half way through I felt full but encouraged myself to keep going, and surely enough, I finished my food! However, I cannot adequately explain to you how painful and uncomfortable walking to the train station was on such a full stomach! The pain was not worth the victory, I tell you. Since then I have decided to just accept that my eating habits are what they are. I eat incredibly slowly, and that is just how I am, lol.

Unfortunately my trip to the UK ended on a very bitter note as we experienced a loss in the family: Auby lost his baby brother Nyasha. It was just him and I at home when he received the phone call, and it was just a surreal moment seeing as Nyasha was in perfect health. The following month was incredibly difficult not just for the fact that a young, promising life was lost, but because of some logistical difficulties as Nyasha passed away while at school in the US. I personally never got the opportunity to meet Nyasha, but my heart still grieves for the pain that I witnessed and second-hand experienced in those final two weeks of my trip in the UK. Nothing prepares a family for such pain.

In July I travelled to Canada to spend five weeks with my brother, Peace, and unfortunately that trip also started off on a tough note as Tendai, my sister-in-law, lost a baby cousin, Tatenda. I met Tatenda at Peace and Tendi’s wedding in 2018 – she was a bridesmaid – and it was just unimaginable to think that she was gone. Even younger than Nyasha, Tatenda was in perfect health, her passing also a tragedy to the family.

The loss of Nyasha and Tatenda taught me to not take a single day of life for granted. I think it made me even more conscious of my eventual death one day, and while I want to be able to say that added some level of more appreciation for each day (it did), I cannot as it also added a sense of great sadness, especially in the weeks following these two tragedies. I think it is so easy to talk about death and accept it when we think of it as something happening to our abstract future selves, or to people who have been blessed enough to live full lives and die in/of old age, but when death strikes a young loved one who was yet to reach the prime of their life, it just is not so easy to accept.

The rest of the Canada trip was good! I got to spend a lot of time with my brother and some of his and Tendai’s best friends, Isaac and Ruva, and also spend a significant amount of time with more of their friends, Flo, Tsitsi, and Panashe, among others. Peace and I went whale-watching! That was so much fun!! I also got to spend time with and have some wonderful conversations with my oldest friend, Columbus (Coco). Coco and I were neighbours for about ten years since I was six years old, and being the only two kids our age in our neighbourhood, we spend a lot of time together growing up. Now he lives just a few minutes away from Peace and Tendi in Canada! Here are a bunch of pictures from my time in Canada:

Peace and Tendai came to visit us in New York over Thanksgiving and we had a blast! Here are some pictures from our adventures!

My paternal grandmother turned 91 at the start of December, and while I was not able to attend the celebration, I felt the joy all the way from here. My grandmother is actually just remarkable. She is 91 and lives alone – she takes care of her house and has a mini farm in her yard that keeps her busy. She does not like hiring helping hands to help her plant, take care of, or harvest her crops – she wants to do it herself. Honestly my dad is the exact same way – the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. While she lives in her house alone, one of her grandkids and that grandkid’s son (so my grandma’s great grandson) live close by and regularly check in on her and keep her company. My grandmother has three living children (two are late), ten grandchildren (ages ranging from 9 to 43), and thirteen great-grandchildren (ages ranging from 2 to 17)! Yes, those age ranges mean that we have a 17-year-old in our family who needs to call people younger than him “uncle”!

Mid-December I went home for the first time in two years and had a blast! The trip kicked off with Prim and Suka tying the knot at the wedding of the year – I don’t know that I have ever had as much fun at a wedding before. Everything was so beautiful and elegant, my little girls Mutsa, Rudo, and Maita were the best little flower girls you could imagine (and of course, they ran out of flowers before they had walked the entire aisle!). I danced and danced and met new people, talked to a lot of my sister’s in-law’s and just had a great time overall. Regi was also home for the wedding and I was happy to spend time with him. He was also glad to be home for the first time in 1.5 years! He, unfortunately, had to leave soon after the wedding (before Christmas) to go back to work.

We celebrated Christmas as the Kwinjo+ family at our house and it was a full house! In attendance was my mom, dad, Mbuya Kwinjo, Tete Glo, Mike, Adrian, Brian, Nikao, Meir, Corrina, Suka, Prim, Chido, Maita, Mutsa, Rudo, and Naju. We ate and ate and danced until we couldn’t go anymore. And then of course, Sharon Claus did her thing to close off the night. The kids were so happy!

Chido turned 30 and we, of course, celebrated!

Baby Sarah visited us in Harare for a night so I took her out for drinks to just chat and catch up!

In January, Chido, Suka, Prim, Theresa and I made our way to Victoria Falls to visit the newest addition to our family: baby AJ! Major congratulations to Matida and Praise! AJ is just perfection! He looks like a blend of his dad and his mom’s baby sister, Sarah (sorry, Twinny haha!)! We also touristed away while in Vic Falls and did it all – from Boma to elephant encounter to sunrise cruise etc.

Soon after the trip to Vic Falls, my mom, Chido, myself, and the twins took an overnight trip to Chinhoyi to visit my aunt, Matida’s mom. Thanks to my dad for driving us there – the road trip was fun!

I got to spend time with all my girls – Maita, Mutsa, Rudo, Matipa, Ropa, Mumu, Prim, and Chido, and I just would not trade that month for anything!

I travelled back to the US in January and there haven’t been many family updates since. I missed my connection from Nairobi to JFK, so I spent 24 hours in Kenya and explored a bit.

I am hoping to spend about two weeks in Canada over the summer – unfortunately that’s about all that my schedule will allow me this time around.

Friends

Ahh, friendship! What a blessing!

Ropa graduated and she is now officially Dr Runesu, Pharm.D., Ph.D.! Oh my dear friend, I am so so incredibly proud of you – you are such a trooper and an inspiration!

I visited New Haven in May to attend the graduation of some of my FroCo kids – congratulations to my Joads Scholars who graduated! Covid made it so that not all could graduate yet, and while I am not sure if I will be able to attend the graduation of the rest of my Joads Scholars this coming May, I am still incredibly proud of every single one of them!

Nardos, Phyllis, Joe, and I travelled to Providence in May to celebrate Theresa’s graduation! I just have to flex this, y’all, but now we are all Ivy League grads!! my friend group >>, lol. Congratulations, There! I am always proud of you, my best friend!

In September we took another trip to Boston to visit Phyllis and Sam on their home turfs! Phyllis is now a Ph.D. student at Harvard (let’s go Phillo) and she was kind enough to host Theresa, Joe, and I in her 1B1B – a superstar!

Just two weeks ago Eric came to visit me and his college friend Neil in Philly and it was so sweet of him! We went to watch an interactive stage performance of Nicholas Cage’s National Treasure, got ice cream, had dim sum in Chinatown, and played a card game called 99!

On my trip to London, I also made a new friend – Andie! We met at a SoFar Sounds concert and just hit it off!

Theresa and I spent a lot of time together in Zimbabwe – even travelled together to Vic Falls to meet Baby AJ! We spent New Years eve together at an AirBnB with some other friends and also went out for a bit.

While in Vic Falls I got to see Tari! It had been so long! She has been in Australia while I have been in the US, so seeing each other has been tough! She also happened to be visiting Vic Falls with her siblings at the same time!! What a blessing!

A lot of the friends stuff I also covered in the family section, so yeah… lol.

School and school-birthed friends

Woof, it’s been a heck of a time with school. I cannot believe that I am nearing the end of my second year in the PhD program, but I have to believe it: my preliminary exam is in two weeks time! That exam is also referred to as the comprehensive exam, depending on your school, and it’s basically the last exam you ever take. It’s the ultimate exam that decides whether you are ready or not to be considered a PhD candidate – do you know enough about the field and the way it operates to move into the dissertation phase of your program? For my department the prelim is made up of two sections (theory and empirical), and there are three possible outcomes for each section: full pass (yay), conditional pass (you did well but not well enough, so keep taking the accounting seminar for another year), or fail (keep taking the accounting seminar for a year and also retake the exam). I am obviously hoping and praying for a full pass, but I will gladly accept a conditional pass. Historically at least one person in each cohort (and our cohorts are 2-3 people each) has failed at least one part of the prelim and had to retake the exam.

I spent the summer of 2023 working on my first year summer paper. It was such a time sink because of the level of manual data collection I had to do, and at one point while in Canada I spent all day collecting data for one part of the study and I accidentally overwrote everything I had spent the day working on. I actually had to stop and cry, it was such a painful and frustrating experience, but then I picked myself up and carried on.

Jeffrey, Cindy, and I presented our papers in September and the presentations went well! None of us particularly bombed the questions and we all handled ourselves well! My advisor, Matt, and the Ph.D. coordinator, Luzi, decided that they wanted to join onto my project and so I have been working on that with them since! I felt so humbled by that because I personally did not really see what a future for the project looked like. A few days before I presented, one of the other Ph.D. students asked me if I thought I would keep working on the project after the presentation and my honest answer was that I didn’t know and I was leaning more towards a no. So Matt and Luzi’s interest was a huge deal for me!

Ph.D. happy hours have continued going strong! We have been to many locations in Philly: Bok Bar, Butcher Bar, New Deck Tavern, Pace & Blossom, and Louie Louie to name a few off the top of my head.

Luzi (unknowingly) did me a huge favour by admitting Adriano as our visiting student this year! Adriano is like my BFF haha! Him and I are so similar in nature and we just jell well! His girlfriend is also just the sweetest person ever and I love hanging out with them both whenever she visits. Here are some pictures of the Ph.D. love!

I am also back in therapy! I love my new therapist – we’ve only met four times so far but she has been a godsend, helping me looking at things from a different perspective. i tend to be very critical of myself when i reflect on my experiences and she has shown me ways in which i can extent grace to myself in some of those experiences.

Romance

This wasn’t really a thing in year 27, haha! I did not go on any dates at all. My closest brush with romance was an airport encounter with a boy that I thought was really cute! The whole thing was just so RomCom-esque and one my friends said “you should have just kept it going for the plot.”

So as I mentioned earlier, I missed my connection from Nairobi to JFK because my flight from Harare to Nairobi was delayed. The airline put us up in a hotel in Nairobi and I spent the time before the next flight (which was a late evening flight) just galavanting in Kenya. After all the galavanting, we headed back to the airport. Once I got to the airport, I got into the check-in line, but as soon as I got in the line I started second-guessing whether I needed to be there: we had already received our boarding passes the night before and my bags were already checked in. As I turned around to get out of the line, someone with a butt-load of luggage joined the line behind me, so I was stuck and couldn’t leave. Our eyes met briefly, that awkward our-eyes-just-met-so-I-just-mouth-hello-to-you kind of thing. But then he proceeded to make conversation with me, throwing lots of compliments my way haha. He was an attractive guy and clearly a good conversationalist, so we exchanged numbers and continued talking for the next couple of days. We had a handful of extremely long phone calls, but I had to call things, whatever they were, off after about two weeks – he had flaked on plans we’d made for the second time and I wasn’t here for it.

Aside from that, there’s been nothing really. I think one of the reasons why I was so happy to let go of Mr. Airport was because I have really been thinking a lot about what being a single woman for the rest of my life might look like and I am happy with that picture, so I am not really willing to put up with stuff that irks me just so I can be in a relationship. Nonetheless, after a lot of thought, I realise that while I would be very happy as a single woman, I would definitely prefer to have someone to share my life with.

That’s pretty much all in the romance department.

Conclusion and Random Pictures

Overall this 27th year of my life has been a wonderful time. There have been a lot of blessings and also a lot of pain, but I am incredibly grateful for all I have had the joy of experiencing. I am also grateful that God placed me in England at the time when tragedy struck so that I could be there as a support for my family.

This last week of being 26 has been one of the busiest and most stressful weeks of my Ph.D. experience, but I am grateful for this commitment I have made to myself to write this blog post each year. It gives me time to look back, reflect, and count my blessings.

I am incredibly excited for the next two years that I am about to begin – I call them the age of 28! They will be my 28th year of life and the year where I am 28 years old. I have always looked forward to these two years since I was a child for no logical reason, and so I am excited and feel grateful to be here!

Other pictures from throughout the year

Just Food and Drinks