We had a deal. We even shook on it. 


I’m currently 2 days behind.

I don’t like these things. I have no particular reason why that’s the case. I simply, plainly, do not like these things.

A close-up image of a snail on the edge of a wet surface with a blurred, green and yellow background. Nairobi, Kenya.

I don’t know if it’s just what they look like, with their perpetual water-coated look. 


I don’t know if it’s the fact that wherever they traverse leaves a touch goo that dries out into a tell-tale technicolor trail that betrays their presence.


I don’t know if it’s eons of evolution passed down in my genes that knows that these slimy little things are often harbingers of some illness or other lurking around the corner. 

A close-up image of a snail on the edge of a wet surface with a blurred, green and yellow background. Nairobi, Kenya.

I do know that I like sprinkling salt on them and watching what follows. Just a tiny bit of salt at a time. Sometimes sprinkling a circle of salt around them and just waiting. Just a small circle. Funny how simple ordinary table salt that we sprinkle on our food with such delight bodes entirely differently for such a species. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why intelligent life from beyond our solar system has yet to make contact - maybe one such extraterrestrial species is one such as this slug, watching in pure terror as this earth-bound species calling themselves “humans” so readily and joyfully consumes the very mineral that is their doom.


“They even mine it,” I imagine their little ones saying to each other in the playground, trading their scariest stories. “They mine it and sell it to each other, and they sprinkle it on their food and eat it! They eat it! And they’re unhappy when their food doesn’t have it! Imagine!”


I imagine many things.


This one was lucky. I had my camera in my hand, instead of a container of salt. So I took its portrait. 

A close-up image of a snail on the edge of a wet surface with a blurred, green and yellow background. Nairobi, Kenya.
A close-up image of a snail on the edge of a wet surface with a blurred, green and yellow background. Nairobi, Kenya.
A close-up image of a snail on the edge of a wet surface with a blurred, green and yellow background. Nairobi, Kenya.
A close-up image of a snail on the edge of a wet surface with a blurred, green and yellow background. Nairobi, Kenya.

Maybe it’ll send these pictures to its extraterrestrial relatives. 

A picture a day. Rules are simple: We can pick photos from any previous occasions, but it can only be thrice in a week - the remaining 4 days have to be images taken within that very day.


We shook hands on it. 


“Alaaa! Excuse me!” I hear people’s voices when I read their texts. “Wapi picha?”


We were to start on Sunday. 


Obviously, today isn’t Sunday. 


So I have 2 days to catch up. 


Game on, Victoria Komu.