Before the age of three my parents already knew I had a heart problem because I would almost faint if I encountered any shock. When I was sixteen, I had to see a cardiologist because I would have endless fatigue, palpitation, and yawning. At this time, I was old enough to understand that I was born with one heart valve that was shorter than the rest. Any cause for stress could trigger the symptoms above.

My interpretation of stress at that time was physical stress. So, I took caution. I could walk fast, but I would not run or do physical exercises. I knew my condition was mild and seasonal. A cardiologist suggested a heart surgery if the symptoms worsened. But that didn’t prevent me from playing volleyball in high school and taking dance classes at the university.

I have lived with levels of stress as expected of a graduate student. It didn’t take long after I joined the PhD program at Makerere University in 2016 that I became a regular patient at one private hospital in Kampala. The hospital visits were regular to the extent that I became besties with the receptionists and the nurses at the emergence room (I had a few asthma attacks).

Sometimes it would just be fatigue, other times it would be severe Menstrual Periods’ (MPs) symptoms and, of course, every now and then heart palpitations. So, there were many visits to the cardiologist, gynecologist, and physicians. They all kept advising that I needed to change my lifestyle:

Become physically active and rest well.

Touché!

In November 2020 I was living in Bukoba. I knew there was a dimension and level of stress I had reached that required more than just physical exercise and rest. This time I needed a different specialist: a psychiatrist. I had no trouble falling asleep, but all my dreams would feel vivid and make me cringe such as if I was walking in floods. I would wake up feeling so exhausted.

My working capacity diminished day after day. I could neither work long nor concentrate enough to feel I have done justice to my daily tasks. But the incidences of getting out of the house, wearing a mask, and not feeling embarrassed to tell the guards at the regional hospital that I was there to see a psychiatrist, demonstrated how paranoid I was becoming.

I would wash hands and knives with soap between peeling and chopping vegetables.  I could not refrigerate food because it would not be as fresh as it is supposed to be the next day. I couldn’t buy bread because God knows how clean the bakery kitchen is, and how long the bread had been on shelf. I had to make food everyday and bake bread many evenings.

The psychiatrist wrote my diagnosis as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and gave me a prescription. In two weeks, I could sleep better, but continued with the medication. I asked to see a psychologist, but the hospital had none.

So, I turned to the Internet. Like the Pandora box it is, the Internet had a whole range of OCD stories, explanations, and interventions. Some stories were scary, some tips were confusing, and some explanations were plausible. Yet I knew my compulsions needed a psychological intervention because even when I tried to follow tips from the web, I could not calm them for long before they resurface.

Luckily, I moved back to Dar es Salaam in 2021 and continued treatment with a new psychiatrist. Now I could also see a clinical psychologist. With medication, I am sleeping better. Through counseling sessions, I am working on my tricky compulsions.

I wanted to share why I call OCD a trickster through one compulsion – wearing makeup. Since I have a background in visual arts, learning makeup routines from the internet is like putting drawing and painting into practice. Being a visual artist, I know how to take advantage of light and space to get the best selfies.

Ironically, 2018 was a good makeup year because I moved into a well-lit apartment, I got my first smartphone, and yet my mind was becoming more and more restless. So, after turning for sometimes in bed I would get up in the middle of the night and do makeups and take selfies until I felt exhausted. Then I would wash the makeup and go back to bed.

Most of the times I was able to fall asleep. Yet insomnia was a menace. Before I knew it, I had a wide range of makeup applicators and cosmetics to play with in case of no sleep.

What started as a distraction quickly became an obsession. I started having ‘intrusive thoughts’ about makeup. I would imagine how much dirt and germs salon makeup applicators would have since they attend to a lot of customers. Even when these applicators were clean, how much care, cleaning products, and water would go into it?

I felt I had a good reason for practicing to perfection the art of makeup because I clean my applicators regularly and thoroughly. Besides, in case I had to attend a party, I wouldn’t have to go through the anguish of whether the beautician would get the makeup right. Or, worse, make me look ‘ashy ghost-like’.

OCD tricked me into obsessively learning to perfect my makeup skills, so I don’t ever take the risk of being touched by a beautician. A funny fact is that I don’t even like parties. In 2020, I attended only one wedding.

Yet I found a sound reason to continue perfecting my makeup skills: taking selfies in kanga. I have been taking kanga selfies as artworks that celebrate my Indian Ocean heritage as a Swahili woman. I guess I now can’t live without wearing makeup given my own kanga collection and my mother’s. Even when I am visiting relatives, I feel I have to take a kanga selfie.

In one of the sessions, the psychologist suggested that I let different beauticians do my makeup. After procrastinating for days, I walked myself to the first beautician. Of course, her applicators were not pristine, so my armpits were sweating.

My anxiety started melting as I walked home and started receiving a lot of compliments from my neighborhood brothers. When I got and took a closer look, I learned a new makeup trick. Nonetheless, I sat there all evening waiting for my skin to itch and swell. Nothing happened.

I woke up the next morning expecting rashes on my face, but it looked clear.  I have been to another beautician, yet my skin hasn’t reacted. Well, now that I have tricked my mind into trusting beauticians, I can visit them in case of that one wedding I might attend this year. My brain now knows even if I get skin rashes, they won’t disfigure my face.

Wearing makeup is one among my many compulsions. I don’t feel like disclosing the entire list. Why? Because, as in the case of obsessing with wearing makeup, I often feel that the compulsions don’t make any sense. Yet I just can’t rationally stop the obsessions because my brain is coded differently, that is, it has a ‘disorder’.

From experience, my OCD brain selects a few aspects of daily life and relationships and interprets them as dangers to my life. So, in order to be safe from contamination and disappointment, I have to attend to the rituals of each and every one of the compulsions. When the sun sets there is a huge sigh of relief that I survived death, injury or infection.

At the same time, I am also aware that I didn’t get much work done because I was busy surviving all the dangers.  It is kind of depressing. But I must survive – and keep living.

Now with access to medical intervention, I have learnt that OCD is inherited. So, it is a condition that I have to live with. I have also been told that I cannot always be on medication. I have to identify what heightens levels of my stress and keep on working on coping mechanisms.

When I look back in the last five years, my priority has been rereading the history of global capitalism and colonialism. I do so that we can creatively devise and imagine different futures for the Global South in particular and humankind in general. My other priority has been, of course, to meet deadlines for the seminars and papers in my PhD program.

From the beginning, I knew graduate school was going to be hard. I tried to work on the physical symptoms of stress to cope with it. But I never thought there would be a day my own brain would seek my attention in the most mischievous ways.

I wish mental health evaluation and assistance would be encouraged for graduate students because, sooner or later, as I have learnt from my friends who don’t live with OCD, some form of mental issues arises as we go further into a PhD program. These days when people ask how far I am with my dissertation, I reply:

I live with OCD, I am on treatment, so my dissertation hasn’t even taken shape.

Period, I don’t explain further.

What’s on my timetable today? Mama got a new kanga; I will take selfies without makeup. Then I will continue reading Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present. I will also make dinner. Karibu!