The end of year is just around the corner. In Kenya, it is a time when city dwellers catch up with family from the rural areas or 'shags'. While a number of years back it was 'given' that the city dwellers would go back 'home' to the rural areas, today one of the debates you are likely to have about the impending holidays is whether the rural folk will come over, or you will go there. Indeed, things have changed so much that more and more families are having holidays away from the extended family, choosing road trips, camping safaris, beach, and even international holidays.

Whichever way you want to spend your holidays it is likely that you will be engaged in some kind of debate - external or internal - and negotiations about how you would like to spend this time. After weeks of traffic snarl ups, office politics and the school run, many people will be looking to rest, but family holidays do not necessarily provide that. Instead you exchange office politics for the family variety, and the traffic becomes the foot fall of people moving in and out of the homestead as they visit you. Depending on what role you play in the family, this is an opportunity to sit back and enjoy the interactions, or it is hours over the cooking stove - woe unto you if you haven't upgraded from 3 stones. While your usual life is characterised by relatively stable financial exigencies you may be faced by unusual demands from the extended family whose 'Christmas' depends on your generosity. This can make for uncommon tensions, bringing out a side of you that you are not often in touch with.

A generous you will want to share what you have, and if you have prepared yourself for that, it will be a period of satisfaction knowing that you have reached out to others. If you haven't you will experience discomfort as you feel that you have let yourself, and others, down.

Perhaps it is the 'show - off' you that will reign supreme these holidays. You will shop on your credit card and withdraw all your cash. You will whip out your wallet whenever someone shows up, giving even before you are asked. When the time comes to travel, back to your usual abode you will have to call up a generous buddy, because you won't  have  money to fuel your borrowed car. Then you will begin the new year with a financial  deficit and possibly high tension in your city family because they will have unmet needs.

These holidays may bring out the 'individualistic' you. You will think only of your spouse and children, and, perhaps, your mum and dad. You will organise to spend more time with them than you usually do, and that means the guys in shagz are not in the picture. You know you can always link up with them during other times in the year, when their expectations are lower. But there may be a little voice somewhere saying that you are selfish, because you were brought up to believe that a 'good' man or woman takes Christmas home to the family - and family here is more than the people mentioned at the start of this paragraph.

Maybe it will be a  single you  reflecting on who your friends are, because you  do not wish to hang out with family and their drama. This may be a period of sadness as you realise that you are lonely, or  happiness as you realise you can choose adventure, with no strings attached, because you are 'free', and who know what that could lead to?

These debates may all rage in you at the same time, and so the holidays could become a time of discomfort because you have lots of options, which means you have to make choices, and making choices can be uncomfortable.

What can you do?

Begin by asking yourself who you would like to be at the other end of the holidays, when life returns to 'normal'. Which of the people described above represents your 'best' self? Which of the voices, representing the various options, will you listen to, and which ones will you repress or ignore? What will the consequences of repressing some voices be? How do you label the different voices?

The holidays present an opportunity for you to examine the choices you make, and I will reflect more on that topic next week.

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