I went to Barding Secondary School. I am certain you are wondering where this school is (that is if you are new here). Well, Barding (pronounced BaRRding) is in the soul of Siaya District. About 10 kilometres off the main road. That might be a SLIGHT exaggeration but it sure felt like 10 kilometres!
If you are at the soul of a rural setting, there are a few things that are just impossible to get. One of those things is electricity! Another one is yelo yelo women, but that will not be our focus today! It would take several hundred electric poles to take electricity to these places, so the villagers who can afford it get generators and solar panels, some get pressure lamps, the rest just go accapella*, when darkness sets in, it’s a wrap!
You have probably deduced that we did not have electricity in Barding! We used pressure lamps! We had prefects called ‘lamp lighters’ in every class. These niggas were gods! They ate before everyone else and didn’t carry seats to church every Sunday morning (Form 1s & 2s had to carry seats from school to church every Sunday morning. The church was a stone’s throw short of a kilometre) A lamp lighter made sure his class was lit every dawn and night preps. He was familiar with all the pressure lamps in the school and had to be quick in choosing the best lamp for his class. A lazy one always got a dim beat up lamp and everyone would end up falling asleep, because no one could study in that light!
BUT this story is not about electricity! It is about clean water! We did not have enough of this as well! With only one borehole to serve a population of 500, it was near impossible to get clean water. NEAR F*CKIN IMPOSSIBLE! People fought at the borehole. People made friends at the borehole (it is easier to fight for water when you are two guys). Some people made money at the borehole (I paid people to fight for my water. You would get a cup of water for 5 bob or 10 bob). My nails are not built for fighting at the borehole!
To make life easier, students would wake up at wicked hours of the night to get water from the borehole when the rest of the village was asleep. 3am… 2am! If you were lucky, you would get 20 litres of water (in a jerry can) or a basin full of water! Whatever you collected was extremely valuable (liquid gold) and I will explain why in a bit!
This is a map showing Barding and its environs. See how far we had to go to take a bath? Click on this picture to see how far the main road was from the school. (It is the dirt road up till Karemo Stage)
98% of the school could not wake up in the dead of the night to get water. So, to bath, they (we), had to RUN for 5 kilometres to an abandoned gold mine (which was used by every living organism in that village. Bathing in the same water catchment as a shitting cow was extremely normal) that had collected water over the years. AND I AM NOT EVEN LYING! We had to RUN because we had like 45 minutes to go to this gold mine, bath and make it back to school before 6pm (if you were late you would be locked out of the school until after dinner)! So we had to RUN to the gold mine… bath… then RUN back! You would sometimes get to school filthier than you left! The gold mine was called Ongoro* by the way! So you see why people woke up at 3am to get water?
The famous abandoned gold mine! ‘Ongoro’ – See students all over the place!
People who were able to get water in the night had to keep it safe. DO YOU KNOW HOW IMPOSSIBLE IT IS TO KEEP A BASIN OF CLEAN WATER SAFE FROM 500 PEOPLE WHO DO NOT HAVE IT BUT REALLY WANT IT?!
The best people could do was keep this basin of water under their beds and keep checking on it every once in a while. It was stolen 3 out of 5 times. Another way to secure your water was to store it in a jerrycan under your bed then lock the handle of the jerrycan to the mesh under your bed. This ensured no one would tilt the jerrycan and pour the water out. But a thirsty man is a very dangerous man. You would get people who would undo your bed to pour the water out!
The 3rd way to secure your water (which didn’t secure it at all by the way) was to piss in it! It did not safeguard your water at all, but it consoled your heart that whoever stole your water showered in your piss! (Prefects had a room where they locked their water)
I want to concentrate on the above paragraph. Let me explain to you how I found out that people pissed in their water.
Very many times, when we didn’t have drinking water, one would just run into the dorms and check under the beds for a basin of clean water and like a cow, drink from it. You had to be quick and we almost never used hands. Wet hands is just undeniable evidence! WHERE WOULD ONE GET WET HANDS FROM? IN A PLACE WITH NO WATER!?
I know you must be wondering whether this same basin we were drinking water from is the same one we used for bathing and washing our underwear and school uniform … Yes it was! Yes it was! I am living proof that dirty underwear-soaked soapy water can’t kill you! Do not try it though, you will die!
Where was I?
Yeah, so there is this one time I sneaked into the dorm at class time to look for drinking water. It was completely illegal to be in the dorms at class time, so I was sure I was the only one there. I got an orange basin with the cleanest… purest water from under a bed that was next to mine! The water either belonged to Rodgers or the form one who slept on the top bank of his bed! I looked around to see if anyone was watching then when the coast was clear (see what I did there? Coast? Water? Aghh forget it) I pulled the basin of liquid gold from under the bed. It was as clear as Evian mineral water from the French Alps!
There was a strange smell that came from it but the water was too clear for the smell to be anything serious!
I went down on that water and in sure, confident gulps… Drunk away! And drunk… And drunk… Stolen water is so sweeehhhhhhhhh!
I had not noticed that Rodgers was asleep on the top bank. He had stuck his head out to look at me! I only saw him when I let out that ‘AHHHH’ you let out after a nice cold drink of water. I almost pissed in my pants! I was flabbergasted! Hehehe! I just wanted to use flabbergasted! I was shocked, not because the nigga had been there all that time, but because he was not doing anything about the situation! I was supposed to be dead! A normal ‘Ja Bare’ would have killed me for messing with his water!
Even stranger, he pulled back his head and said, “Kunywa tu. Sina noma. Ungeuliza lakini.” This was very weird…. Stolen water might be sweet… Lakini with permission, IT IS SOOOO MUCH SWEETEERRRR! And like that, I went down again and drunk some more! And some more… Then let out a sanguine burp!
It is only with the second, ‘AHHHH’ that he informed me, “Baithewei* nilinyora kwa hio woiyes*. Ni miujiza haujanotice!” (By the way, I pissed in that water. It is a miracle you haven’t noticed) It was at that specific moment that I tasted the salt! It was so obvious that I could not understand how I would have missed it! Then the smell… The thing, UNDOUBTABLY, had piss.
I had no clue how to react. It is not like someone tells you that you have drunk their piss everyday! So I just stayed there. On my knees. Facing the water. I didn’t move a muscle.
I was rooted on that spot trying to figure out wether to vomit and face dehydration or put my chin up and walk away with a quenched thirst! I could feel the vomit build up from deep within my insides! If I did vomit, it would have been like taking diamond back to the belly of the earth! So I got up on my feet, said thank you, then walked out of the dorm fighting the urge to vomit what had built up to the extent that I had to persuade ‘it’ to stay inside!
As this was going on, the thought of drinking another man’s urine crossed my mind and I swear to whomever you swear to that I have NEVEEEER vomited as hard as I did! Vomiting out water is not a walk in the park! I almost vomited my rectum out!
You would expect me never to drink water from a basin again, right? Well, from then on, I smelt the water first before I drank it!
New words:
Ja Bare – noun Pronounced ‘ja Barre’, is what we called each other in Barding.
Swwwweeeeehhh – adjective Modern lingo. Means sweet. (In a sentence: Acapella is so sweeeeeehhhhhh)
Accapella – adjective Sex without a condom. (In a sentence: Acapella is so sweeeeeehhhhhh)
Ongoro – noun An abandoned gold mine in the heart of Alego that has since collected water to form a large pond like feature. (In a sentence: Swimming in Ongoro is so sweeeehhhhhh)
Nyora – verb To excrete urine. (in a sentence: Maze joh najiskia kunyora design ingine noma!)
Baithewei – idiom (see also: by the way) incidentally (used to introduce a minor topic not connected with what was being spoken about previously). (In a sentence: Baithewei napenda chapo sana)
Woiyes – noun Water (In a sentence: Boss si unisave wiyes, nadedi thirst!)
I really have bad manners. I apologise. It has been over a month since I last wrote… And I do not have an excuse! Does love have an excuse? Dos it ever? Please don’t stop talking to me because I am not sure if I will survive it. I am certain I have enough FluGone to silence my heart… It is dangerous having a 12 capsule drug that treats you on its 3rd capsule… So many pills lying around… This is no threat my love… If anything, it is my unDYING love!
Enough!
So I haven’t written all this while because I have been thoroughly involved in the planning of the Storymoja Festival that ran 5 days, from 17th to the 21st of September. I swear to whomever you are most comfortable swearing to that I have never seen anything like that. It was amazing I tell you. It was a lot of work though. We barely slept at Storymoja during that period and before. Hundreds of local and international guests… 80 interns and a team of barely 20 men and women with 5 walkie talkies and thousands of literature lovers to satisfy. The only time I had to rest, Saturday night, was spent jumping and dancing at the Sauti Sol, Berry Heart, Dizraeli & Airosh (did I spell that right?) concert! I have ripped 12 trousers dancing to Sauti Sol… 12 my guy! So be advised that Sauti Sol time… Is gym time! I realised that was a terrible idea when I couldn’t move my waist Sunday morning!
This was me at the Sauti Sol concert at the Storymoja Festival
If I continue telling you about the Storymoja Festival now, I will not have enough time to tell you what I had planned to tell you. I will leave a link at the bottom though!
This same night, driving home extremely tired, after dancing non stop for about 2 hours to Sauti Sol then later clearing up the Festival site for the next/last day, a man tries my patience!
A blue Subaru Impreza swerves then overtakes me just before I get onto Uhuru Highway at Museum Hill. I forgive the poor soul and try to convince myself that maybe I was on the wrong… Then the idiot screeches to a halt right in front of me. I swear if I was not such a deadly driver I would have torn off the Impreza’s ass! I got so close to him that I could see my plate reflect off his car!
My Esmeralda (my car) is kind and loving and for this reason she refuses to hoot! She decides to let out a faint snore instead. I almost broke the hoot button! The idiot ignores and speeds off!
At this point I was determined to wave my middle fingers at this idiot. So I spend most of my 700 bob worth of fuel trying to catch up to this guy! Subarus do not ati move slowly!
I meet him at the University Way Roundabout at a red light… I roll down my window and I wave both my middle fingers at him! I discovered this was a big mistake when the idiot rolled down his window… Slowlllyyyy. He was a big man! His head was massive. I quickly rolled up my window and waited for the traffic light counter to turn green!
Jeff Koinange and I after he autographed my copy of Through my African Eyes.
The counter turned green… I didn’t move an inch… The Subaru didn’t either! (My plan was to let him go! Bad plan… And no plan B)
I shifted to gear one then shot! I was over 100km/h in no time… The Subaru was right behind me not even trying ati to speed! He kept on making his car make those loud Subaru noises behind me! The palm of my hands were drenched in sweat before we got to Haile Selassie roundabout! The man maintained the short distance between him and Esmeralda. His headlights were full… It was like he was trying to kill vampires with them.
I skip the red light on Haile Selassie roundabout and almost hit another car. The guy still behind me.
Now you see I have heard about this road rage story… People shooting each other and other scary things like that. I was not about that. I had just bought an autographed copy of Jeff Koinange’s book, Through my African Eyes, that cost me about 4,000/- and there was no way in hell I was going to die before I at least went through the pictures… At least! I hit Bunyala/Uhuru Highway roundabout at breakneck speed. But I do not go past it. I go all the way round to see if the guy would follow me… He does! I almost piss my pants!
My unplanned, plan B, had hit the wall.
I decide to drive to my house and tell the watchmen to close the gates, which I now see was a terrible plan as well… But adrenaline makes you do stupid things!
I am blind… I can barely see at night. That information is very important for you to fathom what goes on the next paragraph!
Just hanging out with Bob Collymore and Rashida Namulondo from Uganda at the Storymoja Festival.
I go round the roundabout and shoot through Uhuru Highway towards Nyayo Stadium Roundabout… Or so I thought. I had taken a wrong exit. I was on Aerodrome Road at 100km/h. Driving towards traffic on a one way road. Thank Jesus Christ it was at 2am and only two cars were on the road… 3 cars, if you count the Subaru Impreza behind me! The huge male adult must have thought I was absolutely mad! That’s why I was convinced at that point that I was a dead man… Not everyone tolerates middle fingers waving at them!
The man slows down a bit… I don’t! I get to the Madaraka Roundabout and turn into Madaraka without slowing down. I look at my rear view mirror and couldn’t see the guy! I make a dangerous turn into Madaraka Shopping Centre almost killing a couple that I suspect were making out in the dark in the middle of the road! Children!
I park at a corner and turn off my engine and lights! I look around… Nothing! The couple I almost hit are now walking towards me, furious! MORE FUCKIN’ PROBLEMS!
I apologise to the guy who at that point, needed his woman to see that he was BAD. They leave me alone!
On my rear view mirror I spot Hassan, the sausage choma guy packing up. I leave the car and run to him. If there was anyone who was going to save me that night… It was him. I have eaten enough of his sausage chomas to deserve it! (that sentence sounds nasty). He has a sausage choma left with a few kuku chomas. I ask him to make me one. He gets a bun and slowly slices it… The picks up a frankfurter and slices it in half then puts it neatly into the bun.
“Bila kachumbari kama kawaida?” he asks. (I am allergic to onions)
“Ndio!” I answer. I grab it before he could suggest ketchup and chilli sauce to be added onto it! I take a bit… It was at that second that I spotted the Subaru with the side of my eye. It would have been appropriate for the sausage choma to fall at this point but the thing is 100 bob, and I do not shit money!
The guy parked right next to my car. He then came out of his car and tucked in his shirt that was being pushed out by his stomach.
I started thinking fast. I had not been in a one on one fight for years. And I had never been on a one on one fight with a man that big!!! I was surely going to die!
Hanging out with cool people still at the Storymoja Festival. I am the guy with a cool head and butt out!
The man slowly walked to where I stood. The bite I had taken of the sausage choma became hotter and hotter with every step he made. His legs were bowed and back arched. I spat out the sausage choma. No one wants to get punched on the face with sausage choma in their mouth!
“Hassan unajua huyu kurutu!?” The man asks and picks up a piece of chicken! He then salts the chicken… Then bites it! His eyes are stuck on mine.
You know when your life flashes before your eyes just before death? I was so scared I couldn’t even get my life to flash before my eyes.
“Customer wangu sana!” Hassan responds not knowing I was planning to jump on him incase shit went down!
The man was done with a quarter piece of chicken in three bites. He spat out clean chicken bones, his eyes still on mine.
“Kula sausage!” he ordered me. I took a bite of my sausage choma but didn’t chew. I swallowed it exactly the way it was. I almost died!
I have no clue where I got balls from but I did somehow. I started walking to my car. With my sausage choma tightly held in my left hand, I got into Esmeralda threw the sausage choma on the co-drivers seat and SHOT! I drove past my house like devils lived in that compound. I drove past Strathmore University which is like 40 blocks after mine. I drove up until I got to Mbagathi way. I then went into T-Mall and waited in the basement parking for half an hour, then slowly drove home! I parked right at the back of the apartment buildings and almost removed my plates.
I whistled as I walked up to my house praying all the prayers in the world. I wasn’t even worried about the sausage choma I had just left on my seat… Life is bigger than sausage choma!
I will post this version now but will make a few grammatical and spelling changes once @Owaahh edits it whenever!
Dear Subaru guy, if you are reading this, I am really sorry… Let’s not fight anymore! I am a really cool guy. I was just stressed with work that night. I swear!
I love big women. Big light skinned women. Big light skinned with long lustrous hair… And small feet. Not just any small feet, I love number 5 feet with short fat toes. I love big light skinned small ‘feeted’ intelligent women… Funny women. That is why I love you… And that is why I will never stop loving you! Because you are big and light skinned, and intelligent, and you have long hair and you have tiny feet with short fat toes!
The following takes place between 9am and 10am today! August 1st! Events occur in real time!
Read the paragraph above in Kiefer Sutherland’s voice! Then imagine a clock ticking…
I am not a morning person! Only millionaires and billionaires are morning people. Mornings are not for the suffering like me! If I am up early it is because I absolutely have to or I have been threatened that I will be fired if I didn’t show up at 8am… Outside of those two scenarios, I prefer to wake up at 8am and be at the office by 9:30am. That way I get to listen to Quarter After Laughter on Xfm at 9:15am (Do not look at me like that! I make up by working late… I am a night person! I get super creative and intelligent after 8pm!)
I had just driven out of the gate at about 9am and was thinking about a text the house help had just sent me reminding me to buy Harpic when a cousin, @ongalok calls!
“Where are you?” he asked with maximum urgency in his voice.
I found Doris on the Google…
People who call in the morning with maximum urgency in their voices at that time of the morning are either delivering catastrophic news or extremely good news. No one ever calls at 9am just to be nice. Nothing like, “Ian go out and have fun and stay young!” or “I feel like sending you money on Mpesa today, can I?” It is always,”The cheque has bounced!” or “You are late for the meeting!” or “Tuma peas ya Harpic!” or “Come pick the cheque!”
Where was I with this?
Yes, @ongalok calls and says Shell Mbarathi is giving out free fuel!
“They Almost filled my tank!” he emphasises! (filling the tank was an exaggeration as you will later learn) This was one of the extremely good news ones!
I work in Spring Valley and my route is Uhuru Highway through Waiyaki Way to Westlands Roundabout then through Lower Kabete Road… Exactly 8.7 Kilometres! That is 250 bob worth of fuel or 300 with slight traffic! You need to be very good in math to survive in this Nairobi!
So back to the call!
I totally lose interest in getting to the office in time and join Mbagathi Way. My fuel light was bright and confident, so I fuelled at the Madaraka Shell for 500/-. A yellow Shell sticker is smacked on the ass of my car and I am told I will need it to get free fuel.
Shem Shem, calls me just before I leave Shell Madaraka and asks me to bring her a sticker. She was almost at Shell Mbagathi but she didn’t have a ‘free fuel’ sticker!
With free fuel on my mind and extra ‘free fuel’ sticker I set off.
Shem Shem is getting really worried because she is getting really close to Shell but she still doesn’t have her ‘free fuel’ sticker. There is absolutely nothing I can do about it because I think @ongalok had told everyone in Nairobi! The traffic on Mbarathi way was grim! And almost all the cars in front of me had a yellow ‘free fuel’ sticker! It was safe to say Shem Shem was screwed!
My fuel light starts blinking at Umash Funeral Home! Hehehe. Do they take dead cars? Thats not even a funny joke and I am sorry!
Just at Umash I switch to Capital FM for updates on this free fuel maneno! I learn that they ar only giving 1000 free fuel! ALL THE HUSTLE FOR 1000 FREE FUEL! And only for the first 300 cars! Motorbikes included… I could see like 5,000 cars in front of meall bearing yellow stickers!
I gave up! But I had to deliver Shem Shem’s sticker!
I find her at the Shell entrance but I can’t give it to her. I have to go Ngumo to get parking then come back on foot… This was impossible because the whole place had stopped because of the free fuel!
Shem Shem is blowing my phone!
I park at a random bus stage and run to Shem Shem holding the yellow ‘free fuel’ sticker!
I get into a bit of trouble because a security guard thought I was being cheeky trying to re-redeem my sticker. He held me by the shoulder so hard I almost shit my pants. I am so fragile and cute if you hold me hard at my shoulders I can shit my pants!
I explain myself and he lets go of my scapula! The fuel station was like blankets and wine… Soon many cars and so many familiar faces.
As Shem Shem gets her free fuel, I run back to Esmeralda and drive to the office! Esmeralda is my car! I drive up Mbagathi Way, through Woodlands Road, through Kileleshwa, through Westlands Roundabout, through Lower Kabete Road… That is 10 kilometres… 350 bob worth of fuel!
I get to the office late, tired and without free fuel with a huge hello sticker smack at the centre of Esmeralda’s ass!
I have to write this really quickly! I do not have much time.
You were in my dreams last night. It was so vivid I could smell you. In the dream you did not say a single word! You did not smile or laugh. You stood right at the centre of my living room in a pink dress and no shoes. The wind would blow into the house, vigorously sending the curtains off the railings. Your hair danced to the wind. You were looking straight into my eyes. You just stood there. But you were not there when I woke up in the morning. A coffee table stood erect where you stood in my dream. The windows were closed and the curtains intact.
If you seriously think this has anything to do with Masaku 7’s then I strongly advise you stop reading here and go back to work or back to whatever you were doing before! But you can read on, I promise is is a good story!
My story is set at Oil Libya Westlands. The date is July 1st 2014 and the time is 9:55pm.
I was at Oil Libya buying pizza. If you buy a pizza from Pizza Inn on Tuesdays, you get another one for free. And this is what I was gunning for. I was also there to buy muffins!
A picture I got online when I Googled Masaku 7s
I walk up to the counter that was not as crowded as I had expected. Two Arabs were ahead of me. Lovers! I knew because of how the Arab man was holding the Arab woman’s waist. The Arab woman was tiny. She was pretty. She would tilt her head backwards every now and then so it would lie on the Arab man’s chest. They would look each other in the eye and burst out into indecent giggles. If the lights would go off at that moment and everyone absent, they would have probably had sex right there on the floor! I was sick from the sight of them. This is because Nairobi temperatures as low as 12* and I was standing right there, freezing my tiny ass off knowing very well I was going home to a pair of cold sheets and two pairs of cold pillows and a duvet that was purposeless and no Arab woman to share body heat with and yet these two were here having sex in their minds! I was utterly jealous! Yes I said it! I wanted an Arab woman who could put her head on my chest also!
But that is not my story! After the short dark lady behind the counter told me to wait 8 minutes, I walked to the mini shop to get my muffins then I sat at a table where I could not see two Arabs. We were separated by two magazine racks. But I could still hear them laugh! It ripped me apart!
In the midst of all this pandemonium of emotions, a guard walks in holding a white board with a number plate written on it! Normally this happens when a car that needs to leave has been blocked by another car! I couldn’t remember blocking anyone so I was least bothered by the limping guard! The whole place had less than 10 people so when no one got up to go ‘unblock’ whoever, I suspected I was the one blocking! I am blind so I could not see the writings on the board. I walked up to the guard and saw my plate number. I got out and moved my car to a different spot then went back in to wait for my pizzas. Please stay with me because this story is about to hit the roof!
I walked to my car with my pizzas and muffins. Thing is I was at the spot I had packed before I moved the car. And the craziest coincidence is, the car that was parked there was exactly like my own. The make. The colour. The everything!
Without being bothered, I got me keys out and opened the door (PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT I STILL HAVEN’T REALIZED THAT THIS IS NOT MY CAR) I put the pizzas and muffins on the co drivers seat that looked darker than usual. I stuck my keys into the ignition and the car burst out into a soft roar!
Shit hit me when I tried changing gears. The car was an automatic! Mine is a manual! At that point, I think, I vomited a little in my mouth! Everything was spinning so fast like I was drunk!
Hanging on my rear view mirror are two orange tiny sandals. This particular car had a tiny perfumed bottle. I looked at the back seat just to confirm my horrors. My back seat has a brown trench coat, my laptop bag, a leather folder and a burgundy woolen scarf! The car I was in had nothing at all on the back seat!
I turned the car off and looked out my window, the Arab couple were standing there, looking at me, the woman holding two pizza boxes!
My car has really dark tinted windows and for a man with my eyesight, it is almost impossible to see outside… But I could see these two so clearly! Tint free windows!
I slowly got out of the car and shut the door behind me! My plan was to start by apologizing and point at my car! But I just stood there. I could not move a single muscle. Do you remember when you were in primary school and you were called into the head teacher’s office because you were hitting mangoes with stones? You know that temporary paralysis that is ignited by absolute fear? I was there rooted on the spot! Trying to figure out how my car keys opened another car (second time this has happened)!
“Are you a car thief?” The Arab man asked! The ringing in my head was so loud I did not hear what he said… I read his lips.
The guy was bigger than me. Way bigger than I was. With one shove, he sent me on the ground! I sat on the ground leaning on my car’s doppelgänger! The woman looked at me and sneered! The man got his phone out and said he was calling the cops to teach me a lesson! A small crowd had formed around me at this time. This was because the Arab man had called a taxi guy loudly saying he had caught a car thief.
I cannot remember what was going through my mind at that time! I am not even sure if anything went through my mind!
The Arab guy was on the phone speaking at the top of his voice, like his phone was a mile away! He spoke in ‘Arab’! But after every minute or so, he would say, ‘tumemshika!’ If I had anything at all in my bladder, I would have let it out at this point!
When my paralysis finally wore off, I tried to explain that my car was at the far end of the parking lot and looked exactly like this one!
“Si mara ya kwanza wameiba gari hapa!” The guard who had the board earlier said! The crowd was getting bigger and fast! I plan to die of old age in a ranch somewhere in Wales, owning 1000 sheep and 400 horses and a few luxury cars… Not at a petrol station by mob justice in Nairobi! But at that moment, dying at a petrol station in Nairobi was more realistic!
I give the Arab man my keys and point at my car and tell him to go try opening it!
My car does not have that, ‘chwi chwi’ alarm thing for opening cars. It is manual. You have to stick your key in and twist! And sometimes, i jams! And this time, the only time I needed it not to jam, it jammed! The Arab man comes back really mad!
“Haifungui! Wanichezea?!” He asks. I ask him to give it to me so I do it by myself! He throws the keys at me and I walk to the car. The whole crowd follows me!
The guy had tried to open the door so hard that he had bent my keys!
I put the key in… Then twisted.. Nothing!
My car is called Esmeralda, and sometimes when I talk to her, she listens. I took the keys out… Took a deep breath… Then in my head, “Behave Esmeralda!”
Like an obidient child… It listened…
“Ni master-key!” Someone from the crowd shouted!
“Tutajuaje ni gari yako?” Another person said! Niggaz were hungry for my blood!
I explained that my backseat had a trench coat, a burgundy scarf, a leather folder and a laptop bag. I told the Arab guy to take out my laptop and he would see my name when he opened it! I showed him my ID beforehand as proof that I am Ian Arunga!
The Arab guy got into my bag and threw things all over the place. My Apple magic mouse dropped on the cemented lot. MY APPLE MAGIC MOUSE!!!
The guy yanks out my laptop and opens it! ‘Ian Sketch’!
He throws the computer on my back seat like it was a free product.
“Ako sawa!” He says and walks to his car. I follow him!
“Pizza zangu!?” I order! He hands me my things and I walk back to my car! Everyone is looking at me funny! The whole place had come to a standstill.
On my way home, while listening to the ‘Ligi Soo Remix’ by Rabbit I had downloaded earlier in the day (which is extremely cool with multiple crazy punchlines) my grandfather calls and tells me my uncle Dr. Okoth from Karabondi is dead! I have no clue who Dr. Okoth is!
“The early bird catches the worm, I am way ahead, ukianza kuamka mi nimeanza ku-deworm!” Wangechi (Ligi Sooo Remix)
You have seen me reduced to a vessel that’s nothing more than think of, love and miss you! I have written you a few hundred letters that have gone un-replied… God knows if you even read them. Confessing my utmost attraction to you. You must truly be a terrible human being… It is either that or you changed your address. You cannot be a terrible human being, so I will force myself to believe, mtg letters have never reached you. And if that is the case, I pray they someday do! It is unbelievable how essential to me you have always been.
Back to business…
Saturday had itself a long night that started with a goodbye party for @Kipepeomjini who is leaving for the USA to go become more expensive to hire.
The party had food. Now let me explain. I am allergic to onions and fish and my system cannot digest lactose AT ALL! I hate avocado and I have never eaten it and I do not eat matoke. I am adventist so swine and anything eithout split hooves are never to be ingested. All I could eat in complete comfort is bread and chapati and water. This information is quite essential for the full understanding of what I am about to tell you.
The lady who was serving chapati did not like me very much because she gave the guy before me 3 pieces and the guy after me four pieces. I was give two pieces, which if put together makes half a chapati. HALF A CHAPATI! How was half a chapati going to change my life? 7 chapatis hardly makes any difference and here I was with half a chapati! I let it slide and served myself some mushroom, which is the core of this tale and not the chapatis.
At my table I rant a bit about the whole chapati business and everyone suggests I go back for seconds… I do! The chapati woman sees me and angles her eyebrows inwards, which was alright seeing that not everyone had eaten. I felt nothing and gave her my plate to add more chapati… She added 2 more pieces, which I thought was utterly inconsiderate and a test of my patience! I did not move a single step! I had skipped a few people who were already not too happy with me and now I was here creating a jam in the system.
“Ongeza!” I say with the authority of a pregnant woman to the father of her unborn child. Whilst looking straight at the buttocks of my retina, she slaps around 9 pieces on my plate… I was happy!
Before the party was over I feel the contents of my stomach somersault uncontrollably. I knew that instant that I had ingested something laden with lactose! It had to be the mushroom or the beans, but whatever it was, it wasn’t important because it was already inside me!
At that moment I slowed down my drinking. I was on Heineken and beer does not help a bad stomach at all! And then @MagungaWilliams tweeted me that alcoblow was near my gate, so I stopped drinking completely!
After the party, a good chunk of the party headed to Mercury ABC. Now walk with me very carefully!
AT ABC my tummy got worse. I love dancing and throwing my leg in the air uncontrollably but only the gods knew what would have happened if I would have kicked in the air! Only the gods know! I think Zeus knows best seeing he is deals with lightning bolts!
This is me kicking to Valu Valu…
At about 4am, I had to go really badly! So because I know the downfalls of ‘going’ in the club, I dash to my car and attempt to drive home. I think in my head,”If I drive really fast, I can get to Madaraka in 10 or 12 minutes!” I wasn’t going to make it even if that time was halved! So I am seated in the driver’s seat my whole body is on fire! My thighs are slapped so tight I can feel blood clot at my knees! I was holding on to the steering so hard I noticed my ass was not even on the seat. I was suspended mid-air! I needed to find a solution!
I get out of my car and walk to the gents to gather intel and possibilities! First the place doesn’t even have a door so everyone who came into the gents would see my long legs. My dressing is flashy and even if I hid my face, someone would notice my shoes! That wasn’t going to work… I walk back to my car and clench my thighs together again!
I was stepping light on the tarmac. At this point even sneezing the wrong way wouldn’t be advised. I was in a particular state whereby even if someone hooted I would be finished….
Then a watchman asked me,”Budaboss uko pow!” (Are you ok?)
“Kuna choo safi around?” I ask, breathing slowly! “Yenye si ya ndani!” I add.
He stops to think for a second! A second I DID NOT HAVE!
“Kuna yetu pale juu!” He says pointing at the furthest end of the compound! IT WAS FAR! Right next to the exit! I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it alive!
We walk towards the ‘choo’! I meet friends on the way! People at the club always want to talk!! I summarise all of them! One really drunk one stopped me and asked me for 1000 bob because his card had been declined. I didn’t have a single cent on me because Alexander Muge had my wallet. The guy wouldn’t listen and he almost talked me into going back into the club to get it for him. Until the watchman muttered, “sina time mob Budaboss!” I had to go!
So I leave the guy stranded!
I ask the watchman if the toilet had tissue paper! It didn’t! “Lakini ntakutafutia!” He says!
We get to the watchman at the exit who is the one who normally has the keys to the toilet!
“Sijui ni nani amezichukuwa!” He says! My heart sinks horribly and my sphincter muscles almost let go! The compound has like 10 guards! It takes forever to find the keys! I am standing at the exit. Being as famous as I am, someone in almost all the cars recognised me. My story was, I lost my parking ticket and I was figuring out how to get out!
I was given 2 keys and instructions on what key opens what. But who could probably understand all that in my state!?
I dash to the door and I am fumbling terribly! Nothing was opening anything!
At this moment @Popzke spots me and calls out! I had no clue what I was going to tell him if he asked me what I was doing there! I walked to his car, watching my step and we talked for a bit! At this time I had given up all hope! Whatever was going to happen would be invited! Jehovah had the wheel. This guy had all the stories… Or rather, I didn’t have the timeeeee!
He finally leaves and I dash back to the door! It opens. Then there is a door on the left and another on the right!
Wait a second… Do you know when you are really pressed and you can hold it until you get to a bathroom and the pressure triples? Yes… Mine had tripled thrice!
I try the right one first! No key can open it! I try the left… No key can open it either! I try the right again…. Slower! Nothing! I say a two word prayer then I try the door on the left! “Please God!”
It opens! I collapse on the toilet seat… I saw the sun… The moon… The mountains and the rivers… I saw heaven!
The watchman was still out looking for tissue paper! I called Alexander Muge to hook me up! He doesn’t pick up his phone!
I wait for a short while then the watchman comes and waves a roll of tissue through the window!
“Budaboss uko fiti?” He asks (Are you ok?) I say yes… He asks 3 more times. It was time for me to leave.
I lock every door behind me on my way out!
Then I walk back… I flap my Armani jacket to get rid of the fresh smell as I walk… I am busted by @dodmichaela who I give the same ‘fixing my parking ticket’ story!
Alexander calls me back, quarrelling at the top of his voice asking me what I was calling him for as if I didn’t know where I had left him… I hang up! I had had enough shit for one night!
The rest of the night is for me to know and for you never to find out!
You might not think it possible my love, but you and I will surely see each other not too far from this moment! Our bodies might be miles apart but your heart cannot run away from my own… and your image cannot escape my mind! You are closer than you would be if you were seated right next to me!
My heart is full of so many things to say to you. Like always. Ok maybe not always. But tales or no tales…. Letters or no letters… Thoughts or dead in the brain, worry not my fat yellow yellow beauty, I am yours and not even another YOU can take my love for you! Not even another you!!! Oh God – so near! so far!
I have not had my car for about a week. This statement in itself is enough drama! Walk with me now. I hit a pothole and broke something Matata, my mechanic, calls the hub!
Last week I got onto a matatu to Madaraka at 10pm just opposite Red Robbin. Here is where they stop after 9pm. Normally one would get one at bus station! I am not certain about the matatu number but I am sure it is a figure less that 20!
Normally when I leave the office that late and I do not have my car, I ensure I am with Denet. Denet is my colleague and friend. I have known him since high school. The first time I was slapped in high school I was with him. He was slapped too. We were making noise. I should write about that sometime! He is the size of a small carand I believe, from office grapevine, can eat multiple loaves of bread in one sitting! He might kill me for saying that! His purpose is to scare away bad people who would feel it is necessary to take away my MacBook Pro or my 5.2″ screen Samsung! My watches are also quite costly…
Denet walks me to the matatu then walks to his, which is never too far from mine! But this is not about Denet!
We had heard gunshots at Koja Bus Park and I was pretty scared that night. But normally when I am that scared, I smell a great tale…
The matatu too eons to fill up! I was the only one for about 15 minutes. Then this tall skinny black kid in amateur dreadlocks came and sat next to me! I was seated at the front! He was eating mabuyu and spitting the seeds on the floor of the matau! I didn’t mind this ape like behavior until o seed hit one of my shoes. They are not expensive shoes, but they are from England… AND YOU DO NOT JUST SPIT MABUYU SEEDS ON SHOES FROM ENGLAND!!!
I decided to get off and sit at the back on the front row. Here I lied to myself I could read a book. So I yanked out ‘The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas’ and struggled to read under a flickering neon light! The book is utterly sad though… I love sad books!
The matatu did not leave that spot for about an hour… And even then, it was still not full. I later learnt why. We did not have a makanga!
The driver got in and spur out,”Funga mango twende!” That was for me because there was no one as close to the sliding door as I was. The thing felt like it hadn’t been greased… Or it had been greased using sand!
The driver, when we got to Haile Selassie roundabout the asks the ‘Mabuyu Seeds Spitter’ to collect the money from people. “Kama haunt exact shuka tafadhali!” The driver said and parked at the petrol station at the roundabout just to show how serious he was. This did not make sense because he would have said this before he left the stage! But apes will always be apes!
2 men got off! Friends. Luos! I mean, who else wouldn’t have ‘EXACT’? Heheh! They were speaking in Luo. One man to the other,”Jogi bo nyalowa Narobi kaendi!” (These people will ‘weza’ us here in Nairobi!)
The driver then drove off…
Let me explain! I had 8 thousand in my wallet… In thousands! When the ‘Mabuyu Seeds Spitter’ gestured to ask for my money, I shamelessly gave him a thousand shillings. He snitched to the driver immediately!
“Huyu hana ganji ndogo!” (This one doesn’t have ‘little’ money! The driver, I believe didn’t think for one second about what he did next! He, just at that spot where bulldozers are sold, got off the road and onto the pretend pavement and told me to get off! I thought it was a joke up until he got off and slid the un-greased sliding door and ordered me out!
“Jaribu hiyo ujinga penguin!” (Try that stupidity elsewhere)
I got off!
Now let me explain just how close to death I was! On the other side of the road is an old graveyard known as Makaburini. This fact alone is completely and entirely scary! But that was not my problem… The biggest issue was how unsafe the area is. The morning before that my colleague was telling me how her brother was cut on his head using a panga by thugs. And there are so many other cases like that.
My only chance of survival was to run to Nakumatt Mega. It is not too far from where I was abandoned. In fact, it is quite close! But distance doesn’t mean shit with a guy with a panga pursuing your ass!
I am a fast runner. But there is something that happens to you where you are totally freaked out! Not adrenaline… Whatever comes after adrenaline. It brings you to your knees!
A matatu slowed down near me and the making shouted,”Mkubwa ni lifo unatamani ama?” He asked. (Is is death you wish for or what!) “Unaenda wapi?” He continues!”
“Madaraka!” I answer. “Panda twende!” He suggests. This of course was too was. Maybe these were the thugs. I looked inside the matatu and counted 4 men and a woman! That woman was mad, getting into a matatu with 6 men at 10:30pm!
I get in!! I sit at the front!
The driver is called Jonathan Olande and speaks really good English. For a few minutes he quarrels me on why I was walking that stretch at that time of night alone. He doesn’t give me room to explain!
He drops me off at the Madaraka roundabout and tells me he is going to Langata and that was the furthest he could take me! When I was walking away he shouts,”Here is also bad! But you are used to danger, insn’t it?”
I run home and eat a chapati as I thank God about my life!
Below are videos to show how cray cray Makaburini is!
It has been a long while while since I wrote last. I miss you dearly. My heart skips several beats at the thought of your beauty… The thought of your lips against mine… The thought of your skin on mine!
I have not had time to write to you lately! I have stories for you though. There is one about a matatu dropping me off near a grave yard it the dead of the night because I didn’t have change for 1000 bob and another one where I was in the same compound with Shebesh and Sonko and there were gunshots and 1000 women screaming and shouting… At that same compound a policeman with a gun asked me to switch off the music we were listening to because it was too loud! But that one is for another day!
This is a letter I received at the beginning of this year. Another woman who is convinced she is Doris. She will state a few things she claims we did together! Do not believe her!
Dear Ian,
You’re weird! I like weird! I love weird! I would choose weird any day.
Life has never let me choose though. If it had I would not be writing to you with tears in my eyes afraid that you are forgetting about me. I would wake up next to your freakishly long legs every morning… and other long things I remember about you. I would still be playing with your bee sting nipples on Saturday mornings while you read me funny comments on askreddit. I would be falling asleep on your chest while we watch a movie every night. We would be sharing a smoke after ruining dinner because we were busy catching a quickie. I would be wearing nothing under your t-shirt while we watch Boondocks on Sunday morning. I would be with you….
Remember our last night together? You tried singing to me. God, you have the worst voice. That didn’t stop you though; I have always loved that about you. That was one of the many nights we chose to stay in together rather than be out getting drunk and dirty with our friends. My friends were starting to complain by the way. I wore that red t-shirt of yours, that one that you always hated me for wearing because you had wanted to wear it too? Yes, that one. Oh and you should stop looking for it, I took it with me. Your laugh was louder that night, your kisses deeper and your touch more gentle. Something was different about us that night. It was like we were not afraid to be vulnerable anymore, like nothing but us mattered. I had never been so certain of my love for you like I was on that day. As days pass, I am more convinced that I will never feel any different for you.
I hate that I had to leave but I kept something that will always remind me of that night. I kept a star from that night that shines brighter every day. Her name is Gian. She is lovely!
Something bothers me, you are not writing to me as much as you used to. You are even letting other men write to me, I don’t hate the attention. Worse, you wrote to Adele! The latter arouses very many different shades of jealous in me. What is happening to your feelings for me? Surely you are not going to forget about me, are you? I would hate to not have your letters to hug tight at night when my husband sleeps over at his third wife’s house. We need to talk; our talk has been long overdue. I am afraid, however, that I might not go back to my husband’s house if I so much as get a two second hug from you…. Aaaah your hugs! Those used to feel so good.
Please find a good woman to take care of you. I hear you are becoming thinner and are beginning to look sickly. I wish I could cook for you again but… well, responsibilities. Every once in a while I will sneak away for a smoke in honor of what we used to be. I hope you found your monglinyo, sorry had to put that somewhere.
I have to go make dinner and practice my happy look for when he comes…if he comes.
Jaherana, if all that I have said and done and yet to say and do, have not convinced you of the immense love I have for you. If all the letters I have written and all that went unread but I still write… If all these things I endure for the sake of you and I to exist… Then my Doris I have nothing more to offer!
My house help comes twice a week to cook and do the cleaning – That is Wednesdays and Saturdays! I picked those two days because city council water is opened for Madaraka residents on those days! If she would show up on a different day we would run out of water! She comes in at around 8am. On some Wednesdays, she gets there after I have already left for work.
This next part is very important and it is the backbone to this letter!
Normally when this happens, I leave for her wages on top of the microwave and some money to buy food for cooking! Now listen very carefully, if she comes and does not find this money at the usual spot, it has all sorts of major implications on my life! This is one of them:
It is Thursday today… This means she was at my house yesterday! I forgot to leave her money on top of the microwave. Actually, I didn’t forget, I didn’t have it!
She sends me a text, “Wewe pesa?!” I do not respond. She sends another, “Please call me thank you. Join, Save and Stand a chance to win on Fanikisha Na M-Shwari!” I ignore again. I did not know if she wanted me to leave my office, seven roundabouts away and bring her the money because by now she should have already deduced that I didn’t have money on Mpesa either – If I did, I would have suggested I send it!
Long story short, I did not send the money! So she didn’t cook… If she doesn’t cook, I have to go buy myself greedy fast food, but because I work till 11pm, the only fast food open at that time being the chicken choma joint at Nairobi West Mall!
I spot a lot of cops in Nairobi West. Way more than usual. I meet like 6 walking together near National Oil… Then another four up the road… My gut advised me to leave the place and just go home… But my gut was the same hungry idiot! So I march on!
I find 3 Black Marias just outside Nairobi West Mall. I stupidly thought to myself that maybe cops came out to have a drink! Oh Black Marias are those huge lorries cops roll with!
When I was turning into the parking lot, which was almost empty, one of the lorry drivers spat with terrible sarcasm taste, “Kijana umeona parking hapo!?” I was confused for a second or two because I was actually looking at a free spot when he asked that!
I parked my car on the opposite side of the road on a pavement and went to my kuku choma guy, Obama!
As I waked in, I saw about 12 armed cops walk into the ‘mall’! Trust me, beyond this point, I was sure I needed to leave that place, but I needed new material for Doris, so I stayed on!
“Choma half!” I tell Obama who is visibly shaken!
About 3 minutes later, like 50 guys were led out of the mall… Then about 20 people… This went on until there was absolutely no one! No one except Obama, his assistant and I!
“Maze wamesafisha hata machoo… Kila msee amebebwa!” Obama’s assistant narrated in a whisper! “Wamekam na Cadillac tatu!” (Cadillac, I later learnt, was what he called the Black Marias)
As he spoke two cops were walking right behind us! I was sure we were going to be taken away by these two! My heart was racing! I tried to look like it is only chicken I came for… There is not specific look for, ‘it is only chicken I came for!’ The two cops stood right behind me! I could feel them look at me… But I couldn’t look at them because that is how people get arrested by Kenyan cops sometimes… Staring at the wrong damn time man!
Obama, his assistant and I were completely quiet for a bit… So were the cops… The ground beneath my feet felt cold… I felt a strong urge to urinate my pants! Everything was quiet except the sizzling chicken on the grill! Obama was busy grilling that chicken even though it was so clear it was ready! The thing was burning!
A man shouting, “You cannot arrest me! I am here waiting for a taxi!” Broke the silence! I turned my head to witness the hottest life threatening slap land on the man’s face. The guy was big, way past healthy size! His shirt was untucked and two buttons undone! He wore a pale pink shirt and shiny fray pants that shone in the night… Shiny fabric is cheap fabric! He held his laptop bag with both hands even though it had a sling! He was clearly not ready to leave wherever he was… After he was slapped, he majestically walked to the Black Maria! Like he wasn’t slapped!
The two cops were still behind us…
“Wewe unakaa malaya!” One cop said. His voice was rough like honey had never passed through his larynx his entire life!
Every raised their heads (every being Obama, his assistant and I)! For a split second I was sure the cop was talking to a skimpily dressed female human! His gun was pointed at me!! Nothing made sense for the next few milliseconds until he repeated himself! “Wewe unakaa malaya!” The man pointing right at me! Obama’s assistant couldn’t take it… He burst out laughing!
“Wewe twende!” The same judging cop told him and led him away! Obama and I were left so confused. The chicken he was making was now black and crisp! He removes another one from a bucket and starts over!
The cops leave with three full Cadillacs!
“Mara ya pili this week wame sweep wasee hivyo! Ebu nikumalizia nikwatowe staff wetu!” Obama says!
Driving home, I kept looking at myself, trying to figure out what made that cop think I look like a prostitute! I was completely and decently clothed, my hair was real (if I had any), my nails were not a shade of deep red and neither were my lips and I didn’t raise one leg in the air to show my private parts! I didn’t have on white patent leather boots that rode up to my thighs… And I wasn’t chewing gum disgustingly! I didn’t even have my legs covered in those fish net things!
Oh well… I guess we will never know!
Whole point of this story, ALWAYS LEAVE THE HOUSEHELP MONEY ON TOP OF THE MICROWAVE!
My beautiful Doris, I love you without knowing how I am doing it! I find myself loving you with every myogenic muscle of my heart… I do not know when I am loving you… I have no clue how not loving you feels… I do not fathom how these floods of emotions get to me! Honestly speaking… From the bottom of my heart… I have no clue how not to love you… Come to me and let me smother you with love!
I write to you because I have missed you… With every word I write I imagine the reaction engulfing your face with every word you read… I want you to get more and more excited with every single paragraph… To get excited to the point where you have to stop and catch your breath at some point… But a part of me tells me you didn’t even tear open the envelope!
I was thinking about what to write about this morning… And like most times, I had nothing! Until I remembered BOOTLEGGERS!
Bootleggers is a club in Kisumu. Can you already feel the adrenaline? Ok, maybe not! After driving around Kisumu one Thursday night we decided to try out Bootleggers before we completely gave up on the dead Thursday night scene Kisumu offers! It is quite evident ‘Bendover Thursdays’ didn’t spill out of Nairobi and to the shores of Nam Lolwe…
On that particular night, Kisumu was completely asleep… Except for the random guy riding his bicycle in the dead of the night carrying a large woman who had her hands round him like he had jut promised her the world… I know the woman was very close to the man. Ignoring completely the way she dangerously embraced the man, her left cheek was errorlessly laid upon the rider’s back! Like she was asleep… She finally gets to lay her head on her lover after a long day at the Oile Market! The mud guard of the bicycle written poetically, ‘Mapenzi bila jaso’ The perfect love story.
We get to Bootleggers and it felt like it was on a different time zone! The place was pregnant with human beings uncontrollably pouring out of the tiny entrance… Young slender girls wearing tiny white shorts and knee-high boots and cowboy hats had tequila bottles in holsters around their waists. I see these ones everywhere! Whose idea was this?
We get in and the place was wild…
Let me explain, Nairobi women dance… But Kisumu women GET DOWN!!! And it is alllll of them! It was like walking into a shoal of dancers! A few steps into the club and there, right there, on the floor, was a woman dancing on her hands, being wheelbarrowed by a dreadlocked man in red Timberland boots… Not too far from her was another woman atop the shoulders of another man… I am just trying to say that the place was a zoo…
The DJ was a wide Luo man definitely of Jamaican decent or wished so hard to be… He uttered meaningless words that got the crowd soooo pumped up! He would go like, “Anadi quagmaya, an di dimpling… And di boombooclat rasta… PWOOO PWOOO!” And the crowd would go like, “PWWWOO PWWOOO!”
All of us get a table right in the middle of all the conundrum. Every now and then an ass would hit my head… I wouldn’t complain though!
Totally out of topic: There is a breed of women in wielding big buttocks called ‘Socialites’. If whoever knighted them would by any chance travel to Nyanza, a huge ass percentage would automatically be knighted as such… See what I did there? huge ass percentage? Oh forget it!
Back to my tale!
I notice two women seated at the bar… One large and the other almost half her size. They were extremely conspicuous! Everyone was vigorously dancing, a calm should would stand out like the devil in a cloud of angels!
Let me explain my dilemma… I like big women but the small woman was wayyyy prettier! I am blind, so before I make a move I decide to take a wing-man with me.
We walk to the women and my wingman quickly picks the big girl, which I had no problem with… Let me explain why!
The big girl was ‘big’ which gave her like 44%. But that was it. She wore an avocado green blouse… I hate everything to do with avocados! She was wearing those denim pants with rips across the thighs. And because she was really big, she poured out of them. It didn’t look nice… I like neat and rips do not excite me! Then she could not shut the hell up… For a human being who speaks from the top of her lungs, it was the last trait I expected. Imagine a woman who talks REALLLY LOUD… NON STOP! Then last but definitely not least, she had a mole under her chin that could set off a metal detector!
The tiny one on the other hand was quiet… She wore a white vest and an Ankara pencil skirt… At least some art in her! She covered her shoulders with her black jacket… She hadn’t worn the jacket… She just placed it on her shoulders… So divine! She had her arms crossed which is a terrible sign…
I get her talking. In half an hour, I learn she is a farmer (WHICH WAS TOTAL BOLLOCKS BECAUSE HER EQUITY BANK NAME TAG WAS STILL ROUND HER EFIN NECK) But then again she might have been… She farms strawberries…. (TOTAL EFIN BOLLOCKS) or maybe she did! She is drinking white wine. Drinking white wine like it is Dextrosalt! She had 3 glasses in half an hour… Good thing is I got here laughing! Marilyn Monroe says, “If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything!”, so I go for the total clown… The harder she laughs the closer I am yes?
Maybe this is how the Strawberry Farmer saw me in there!
Wait! Did I mention I had chicken tikka for dinner on that day? And I am totally lactose intolerant? And chicken tikka has like loads of yoghurt? Well, if not then this here is the twist!
My tummy at this moment is rumbling out of control and it was getting hard to differentiate the need to pee and the dire need to shit! That is when you know shits hitting the fan!
I excuse myself… I am in the toilet… I have my projectile pointed at the urinal but I am scared to piss… Because I feel things move inside me withe the slightest release of my bladdular muscles! Taking a piss was risking way too much… So I decide to do it… Take a shit in the club… NEVER TAKE A SHIT IN THE CLUB!!!
I take like 5 minutes immaculately layering tissue paper on the toilet seat because no one knows what diseases lurk on that clay… You might catch a cold… Or worse, a cough!
I am seated doing my thing… Going through Instagram on my phone… My small bro comes to check on me because I told him I had a bad tummy…
Then guess what…
Wait: Did I mention the toilet doesn’t have a lock!? If not then here is a twist…
The door flung open almost sending it off its hinges and there stood The Strawberry Farmer! Looking straight into my innocent eyes… She stood there for a second, which is a second too long for this particular situation… And she got in right in the middle of a good push… My life, as I knew it then, was finished!
The farmer does not even apologise!
I stay food a bit longer… My almost full Heineken is erect next to her glass of wine… I was torn between getting that one and buying a new one…
Life as we know it, is really short… People have to take risks… So I go and take my beer… The farmer wouldn’t even look at me… Like instead of shitting, she coughs strawberries…
I think I really shocked her… But then again, what was she doing in the men’s? Oh shit… Was she a man?
I am sorry about the title. How else would I have gotten your attention?!
P.S: Have you voted for Dear Doris for Blog Awards Kenya today? Dear Doris was nominated for Best Creative Blog & Best Blog of the Year 2014. Please vote for me us here: http://www.blogawards.co.ke
Woman, so experts say I have to write to you more often to stand a chance winning this thing at all… Tricky bit is, I have to be riddled with misfortunes to make this happen… I never have flowery stories that are full of love, cars and money and chapati to write…
How are you my love? A little birdy told me you are having pains on our thigh… I hope you are alright now. Why are you having pains on your thigh? Is it another man my love… Do your thighs hurt from the… You know what, forget it… I do not have much to say today, but I will say it either way!
As I write this, two of my colleagues are arguing about man visiting Mars… It is funny!
Because nothing dramatic has happened to me since my last letter, I will have to dig something from the past… And what greater period exists than Barding? If you have been reading this blog you definitely know Barding… This is the high school I went to… A forest and a great hill away from Kogelo… That is far… No water or electricity with bedbugs the size of a medium sized Dell mouse! Ok I am lying about the size of the bedbugs, they might have been a bit bigger! This letter is not about the school though, you can read more under the Barding Tales category.
I think I was in form three and we had just gone for an outing… In the middle of Luo land we called them outings… Not funkees… Did I even spell that right?! An outing was exactly what the name depicts, a day out of the penitentiary! We didn’t have a bus, so the school hired a van… This made more that 20 people leave the school at the same time a bit tricky… The school could afford only one van at a time… UNLESS the team being sent out was extremely promising…
Where was I? Yes, outing!
We had gone to Ng’iya girls, which was absolute heaven really… The smartest girls in the district! Smart and pretty… Naive teenage girls running all over the place in blue skirts and white shirts. Giggling like piglets… Some donning magnificent red sweaters… Whats that bird that shows off its red chest when ready for mating? Yes…
We had gone for a basketball tournament! Not with the girls… With boy schools from the region… Our school was not the best basketball team in the area though… I think we lost every game we played that day! In fact I am sute we lost every game we played! This is not the best for one’s PR, considering one had to mingle after the games… Failure is never good for PR! If you add the fact that back at school, water is scarce and might have skived bathing… Well, you can tell where that is going!
RANDOM FACT: BARDING WAS 55th IN THE 2013 KCSE EXAMS! Ululation!
The games are done… I change into uniform (green trousers, blue shirt, green tie, green sweater and black shoes) I think I looked way better in this that lime green basketball jersey with brilliant red stripes on the side!
In my smart casual wear, I scan the grounds for potential candidates… I am looking for light skin (shows dirt easy), big bones (they have big hearts), long hair, short nails, probably holding a book (plus points if it is Abott Physics), donning a wrist watch (a woman who takes her time very seriously), and in sandals (Bata slippers – i like feet. Plus point if they are red to match her sweater! Blue skirt and blue Bata slippers is just too much blue!)
This was taken on the exact day this happened… Can you see Ng’iya girls in blue skirts at the back? Can you see me seated… Stressed? Then can you see the girl on the top right? Soooo funny!
It is near impossible to find all these in a woman… I mean girl… So I end up going for the one with most checked boxes!
She is easily the lightest girl in the school, tall and pretty. She was a Mwarabu… She was intelligent… How did I know you ask… Well, like I have said before, there is something intelligence does to a face… It can’t be explained but THERE IS SOMETHING! Her Mwarabu hair was long and lustrous, dark brown and played on her back in brilliant curls. She was not big boned though… But who cares?! Her arms were tiny and her body matched. She had a wrist watch and held a novel… Can’t remember the title… She was the candidate! Her toes sat prettily in Bata slippers… SHE WAS DEFINITELY THE POTENTIAL CANDIDATE…
The hour was late and we were almost being called to get into the van back to Barding so your game had to be short and calculated… She had a wrist watch so she should was able to understand how critical time was… Here is how to be short and precise… You have to be extremely disciplined. You have to make her have you on her mind as often as possible… ONE: Introduce yourself (My english has always been impeccable so this part was a walk in the park). TWO: Compliment (Tell her how extremely pretty you think she is… Look into her eyes… Women tend to think you are being honest when you look into their eyes (-: ). THREE: Fast Forward conversation (Tell her how you would have loved to stay and chat for longer… Tell her next time you will make more time… Then pray y’all are called back to the van) If not, FOUR: Make her laugh! When you get to school, write!
I walk up to her and introduce myself, “Ian is my name, what’s yours?” My heart is pounding so hard at this point I am almost swallowing my lungs!
“I know! Khadija!” She says. This is a thorough set back because I have to ask her how she knows, which IS NOT IN MY PLAN!!! *Khadija might or might not be her real name by the way*
“You do? How now? I will totally understand if it’s from all the fame we have gained from losing all our games today?” I say… The next sentence already cooking in my head… She giggles… SHE GIGGLES! Khadija is giggling… I do multiple somersaults in my head… complete with a split!
At this moment, I can see Barding boys running towards the van… Which was good for business…
“You are famous…” she started but she never got to finish her statement… Something made her stop talking… Her Mwarabu big eyes reduced to judging slits!
I notice her eyes dart to my collar then back to my eyes… It was so fast I almost missed it… You know when you are talking to someone and there’s something wrong with a part of their face and your eyes keep darting to that part… EXACTLY! Then she did it again… I caught her line of vision this time…
TO MY FUCKIN’ HORROR! I caught sight of a very courageous bedbug stroll out of the fold of my collar… I tried flicking the thing and missed… Now, bedbugs are very fast even faster when their lives are in danger… The thing scampered with unbelievable speed and got into my shirt through a button hole…
If you are waiting to hear what happened with Khadija then you have no idea how big a bedbug is… I lost myself going for that insect that I didn’t notice Khadija walk away! Fast…
Now, that darn bedbug set me back a few quantums back but I got Khadija… Took like a year!
Have you voted for Dear Doris? Well ton on now… Click on the image to take you to the voting site.
I am happy today! Even if you haven’t replied any of my 265 letters that I have sent you since you left… I can’t be bothered by your ill manners… I can’t be bothered at all! But that does not mean I have stopped loving you, even though you have given me every reason to! Mine for you will always be endless love… I will swim the.. I take that back… I will just drive to wherever you are!
Oh, and who hates Lupita… Who could possibly not like her? I might just change my women preference to dark skinned tiny girls with Oscars in Nairobi Blue Dresses. YOU GO Lupita! If by any chance you are reading this, you should audition for Storm in the next Xmen – You would be brilliant flying around emitting lightning from your eyes. Congratulations you beautiful woman!
In less depressing news, I fell from a chair the other day!
I was at my parents house in Kileleshwa for dinner! My parents have a lot of church meetings at the house and I walked right in to one!
Long story short, I end up in the kitchen. If your deduction of situations is of any worth you should have probably guessed there was a lot of food… Visitors and food most of the time go together… Look at funerals and weddings… Both extremes are covered!
I get a plastic chair in the kitchen and after warming 3 chapatis, rice and chicken, I set my buttocks immaculately on the plastic seat! 6 people in the kitchen and not a single one was sitting on it should have been the first sign! I felt one leg struggle to hold my weight… which could pass for no weight at all! I clenched them just a bit… Does that happen to you? When the chair you are sitting on almost gives in to your weight? Like you clench your buttocks just a bit? Does it? It is almost like your brain automatically readies your body for a fall… But that is not my story… I am sure you can find that in a science book… Maybe Abott Physics!
Where was I?
Yes, I set my buttock immaculately on the plastic seat and commenced on through discombobulation of the fowl and grain on my plate!
I had my laptop bag (It is 100 ox leather and it contains a MacBook Pro – Read jaluo!)! I placed this on my lap and my food onto of it… If you are any good in physics, you have probably deduced that my COG (centre of gravity) is on my shoulder! This is terrible for balance!
Whatever happened in the next 3 seconds is a blur! Not a blur really… I remember every micro-second of it… I just felt like the sentence, ‘whatever happened in the next 3 seconds -‘ should end with, ‘was a blur’!
One leg gave in to my weight and broke… I clenched my buttocks… My plate was thrown violently into the air! I held half a half eaten chapati on one hand that my brain couldn’t let me let go of! My computer… Where was my computer!?
I saw pieces of fowl get flung into mid-air… Have you watched Gravity? The way Sandra Bullock is thrown into nothingness? Yes… Now just interchange that with chicken thigh and breast!!
I can’t remember hitting the floor, but I can remember being on the floor with rice all over my face!
I couldn’t find my glasses and 3 women and 3 men stood around me! Looking! No one trying to help me up…
The floor was warm… I spotted the fowl’s thigh under the fridge. Rice was all over the floor. My computer was outside its ox bag… I mean my MacBook Pro was outside the bag. But the chapati was still held tight in my grip…
Amos, our Master Chef, wanted to laugh so badly! A few seconds ago he was showering me with praises, saying how great I was and the next I was on the floor with a chapati in my hand and rice on my face!
I got up slowly and walked out of the house using the back door… My brain wasn’t working very well so I answered a fake call… I do not understand why… I think it’s because I hit my head on the freezer!
Amos is telling people I cried… This is also to let the world know that I didn’t cry! Big boys don’t cry!
I finished my chapati by the way!
GOOD NEWS:
Dear Doris has been nominated for the BAKE awards for Best Kenyan Blog & Best Creative Blog.
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It is because of you we got here… and it is because of you we will win this! You have all been amazing!
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It is Tuesday… The following takes place between Friday 2am and Monday 4pm…
I was driving home a tad tipsy Friday morning at about 2am following every detail I taught you on my letter, HOW TO DRIVE HOME DRUNK. I was driving in the middle of the road and all…
When I got to Madaraka roundabout, I was stopped by cops…
Now you see we had talked about this earlier in the club… If you see cops… Reverse… ESCAPE! This is a tad difficult with 10 cars or so behind you! So I stop..
“Kijana toka toka toka… Leo ni leo… Toka…” A cop sermons me out of the car… You see, I was not drunk… But I was far from sober! I am guided to the bonnet of a cop land rover where a second cop handed me something I was supposed to make sure hadn’t been tampered with… Then he asks me to unwrap it.. It was a nozzle for the alcoblow… He fixes it to the machine and asks me to blow… I hadn’t had much to drink so I was sure I was safe… So I blow…
Let me explain… A reading of 0.35 and below is the legal limit… Before I was even done blowing into the thing, mine was at 0.52… By the time I was done, it was 0.57… I was an aspiring criminal!
Now you see, these people can always be bribed… I think I had 800 bob that I was extremely willing to give these guys… Plus my house was just around the corner… I do not encourage corruption, but if the time is 2am in the morning and there is a possibility you will spend the night in a police cell, the law can be revised a little.
I was held by the back of my pants and thrown into the land rover…
“Boss…. Cheki… nina soo nane!?” I whisper just before he lets go…The man CLEARLY didn’t know the code of secrets… WHISPER!
“Hio weka uongeze 19,200 ufike bail… Unalala ndani…” He shouts back! The arrogance in his voice was above optimum average… This one couldn’t be bought… Which by the way is a good thing… If it is like daytime… IT WAS 2am…
My phone battery at the time was at 12%… That on an android OS means 7 minutes or less…
I call my brother… He doesn’t pick up….
I call a cousin… Doesn’t pick up…
“Boss, usimalize moto… Niko na plan… Pigia hii number… Ni bro wangu… Ni military police…” The guy next to me says… He was completely drunk and couldn’t shut up… He was very stubborn and kept throwing insults at the cops…
“Salary ya 15,000 ndio maana mumejam hivi. Si mungehanda wa Westgate hivi viserious pia!” He muttered!
“Kwani nilinunua pombe na pesa ya nyanyako…” He told one cop who got so pissed that he handcuffed him… TO ME! I was quite silent… Shaking my ass off from cold and extreme fear! Then by some miracle I get to my brother and cousin who both come to where I was…
After about an hour or so, the land rover was bursting with sponges.Every one of them trying to convince the police that they had not taken much! The place reeked of booze… The man next to me kept on tagging on the handcuffs that got tighter by his every stupid move… If he was any smaller, I would have strangled him with the cuffs!
“Tukikojolea hii pingu itatokana…” he suggested!
The last guy to be thrown into the land rover was apparently KDF… He had the temper of a praying mantis! He was fighting everyone… He hit the cops and hit the drunkards… Then a female cop said to him, “Tulia we mlevi…”
He punched her so hard on the face… “Ananiua… Ananiua….” The cop yelped… The KDF guy too was then handcuffed to the bars in the land rover!
I kept on calling my brother and cousin to make sure they were onto of things and I was not going to sleep in a police cell… Their tones were quite convincing so I calmed down and so did my phone… As in it died…
We were driven to Muthaiga Police Station… This fat guy kept on telling people the way his dad could fix the situation and all of us would be set free before we even got to where we were going… I think his dad played quidich!
We were matched into the police station and our names recorded!
Do you know how difficult it is to deal with drunkards??? People kept on giving wrong names… Others got violent… Others broke down!
I needed to take a piss… So I asked the nearest cop… This was not a good idea… I was handcuffed from the back and shown to the latrines…
Now let me explain… Men need both hands to undertake this natural act… If not both, then AT LEAST, one hand… Now, with both my hands cuffed at the back, I couldn’t even get my zipper… So I just stood there for a while then went back inside… My bladder was going to explode…
Everyone was then thrown in a dark room… I could feel the dumpiness of the concrete beneath my feet… Do you know how you can tell piss when you step on it? The viscosity of urine cannot be compared to any liquid… Then the smell… Unless someone poured a considerable amount of ammonia on the floor, I couldn’t be convinced otherwise!
Funny thing is, we were thrown in with all our possessions. Nothing was taken from us… You know how belts and shoe laces should always be taken away?! NOTHING! I mean, someone could have easily carried a knife or a gun… or a dildo! How can you lock 100 men in a dark room and don’t check their pockets… This fact will be useful in a bit!
I walked till the end of the room until I could feel the wall… Then I turned my back agains the wall…
Let me describe the room… The place was so dark I could barely see the human standing next to me. It wasn’t a big room… Bit it was divided into three cubicles… One had criminals… The next DUIs and the third was the shitter… It was from the third room that urine made its way neatly into the other two rooms… Mosquitoes fat with malaria buzzed all over the place… I completely ignored the possibility of bedbugs and lice!
On my way to the end of the room, I felt someone reaching into my pocket… I HOPE IT WAS FOR MY POCKET! So when I got to the wall, I took out my phone and wallet and shoved them into my boxers then crossed my legs!!! This, I now see, was not a great idea.. But it worked…
This was me (guy in burgandy) on TV in court… See the fear in my face?!
Again, anyone could have carried anything… So two men lit up a blunt and smoked away… Another man lit a cigarette and in no time the whole place was a cloud of cancer! The ventilation was pathetic… Tiny openings near the roof fed the tiny cell with oxygen!
I got really tired of standing with my legs crossed so I decided to sit… This was not a good idea either… Sitting on concrete laminated in urine is not a party… But I needed to sit!
I couldn’t sleep though… The men standing next to me were talking in a language I couldn’t understand… In my head they were saying,”Let me hold him from the front as you take him from the back… The we switch!” I was WIDE AWAKE!
At about 5, four guys were taken out… Maybe for the guillotines, I do not know!
I make friends… Drunkards make cool friends…
I heard my name being called out at about 6:30am… The sun was out and men lay asleep… On fuckin piss!
I was free… With a cash bail of 20,000/- and a court date…
THE COURT: MONDAY
I was ordered to appear before the Chief Magistrate Millimani Court on Monday at 8am!
I called a c few people to check how much the fine was and the process… For everyone I called I got a different answer…
The first person I called was Alexander Muge’s cousin who is some big cop… “The fine will not be anything above 30,000/-. Make sure you go with someone who will pay it for you…”
Second person: “100,000! But I can help you… I could make your case file disappear!”
Third person: “Last week guys paid 60,000/=”
Fourth: “Your cash bail will be used… So 20,000/=”
Fifth: “6 months in prison! I heard they want to teach DUIs a lesson!”
Sixth: “It can be 500 or 100,000… I suggest you get 100,000 to be safe…”
As you can see, this was thoroughly confusing!
So I did my averages and got myself 80,000 and prayed… I was in court by 7am… Like the good citizen I am! We were not let in until 7:30am…
DUIs were to appear in courtroom 9… When I got there, we were told that we were too many and our files were not ready… The man advised us to go for breakfast and come back at 11am… I didn’t leave… I sat there and waited till 11am…
WE WERE MANY! Easily 300 people… The courtroom was full… The smell of sweat was the anthem… The media was present… Cameras flashed light every second… I felt like Lady Gaga for a while…
So because of our numbers, a register was called out… The judge called out every single one on that list… All you had to do was respond, “Present you Honour!” If the judge called out your name twice with no answer, a warranty of arrest was immediately issued…
After everyone was called, the judge asked if we were all guilty to which everyone shouted, “YESSSS YOUR HONOUR!”
Then everyone was given a chance for mitigation… The stories were hilarious…
Story one: “Afande mimi sikukunywa hata mingi… Lakini nakubali mashtaka…Niko na mtoto… Tafadhali nionee huruma!”
Story two: ” I only took two WHite Caps… I have since switched to juice. Si hats lie ya delmonte in aka bombe bombe!!”
Story three: “Your honour, me just tell me today how many bottles of beer I should drink so that next time I am here, I say you gave me permission!”
And many more….
The judge was so amused and decided to fine most of us 20,000/= So our cash bail money was used as fine money… This was a long process…
I left the court of law at 4pm a free man! I went home and bought myself nice things… Like chips and sausages…
Now that I have been in JAIL; I am working on my first rap album!
I am extremely exhausted… It has been a really long week… Wait, why the hell do people say, ‘it has been a long week?’ when we all know every week has 7 days? I mean, if you had two Mondays in yours then you would have ground to say how LOOONG your week was!
I have a really hot story but I am too tired to type it out right now… Maybe in two days! But not now… But fear not… This man, @magungawilliams, asked me if he could write to you… And I said yes… I am here letting another man entertain my woman… That is extremely sad… But I am too tired to care! Plus his handwriting is wayyyyy worse than mine… And I believe I am taller… My spelling is worse though… I have gone through his letter and deliberately messed with the spellings of ten words… I like being at the top…
He says:
Dear Doris,
We have not made each other’s acquaintance, so it would be polite to manage the pleasantries between strangers. My name is Magunga, at least that is how creative my mother can get. I am one foot shy of a standard Mandingo, my mass clocks at 80 kgs when am hungry and people say God spilled milkless coffee on me on creation. But the truth is, Doris, that I was born on a stretcher (a testament to my impatience) and in 1991 Aga Khan Hospital ambulances engines must have been overreved and underserviced. I had a run in with its smoke in 1991, and I have been black ever since. I am a sucker for Coke, Ginger Ale and pretty smiles.
Now that we have that out of the way, I have only two questions. One; why don’t you ever write back? For a year (or something in that neighbourhood) I have read Ian empty his heart to you, so desperately sometimes that it seems as if he is chasing a figment of his hallucinations. Either you exist, or Mathare inmates must be on long holiday.
Second question; can you shoot pool? Doris? No? Well, it’s a game of balls. Seventeen coloured balls, a long rod that thins its way to the tip, a special white ball and a (mostly green/blue) table. The essence of the game is simple. Each player competes at who would stick his balls first into any of the six available holes on the green table. I really do not know much pool history, but my guess is it a man’s invention. A man who was inspired by a blonde or a cocotte. Google says it was a Frenchman, and I wouldn’t agree more. Here is why; the only way to ‘open the game’ is by inserting money (usually 20 bob) into a slot and the balls come rolling out. Basically the same concept around paying for love; you part with some money and the trollop racks your balls. However he lost me with the notion of balls being stuck in, and the stick remaining out, but then again, my dear Doris, you can never understand these French people and their eccentricities.
At this point I would like to remind you that it is not my intention to talk to you about balls, but about the game.
I love playing pool, Doris. It’s a slow game, but its sluggishness is somewhat exhilarating. Especially when you’re shooting pool for money. I am a campus student, and when the brunt of economic drought coughs its breathe of destitution upon us, we have to do whatever it takes to keep us going until HELB rears its sexy head.
Historically pool was a noble man’s game. They even called it “The Noble Game of Billiards”- can you smell the pomp in that name? When you call it like that, it sounds like a game played by wealthy smug friends on a warm Sunday afternoon over Havana cigars and whiskey; with their wives in the living room shepherding the midday sun into the evening, occasionally sipping on tea and giggling at the hilarity of their own gossip.
Well, where I come from, UoN Parklands Campus, it’s a game of hustlers. This is where broke peeps earn their daily bread. Personally, I do not play pool for money. True, I have been known to place a bet on the pool table, just the same way I have been known to lose and win some. I play pool for pride. Basically the same reason kamwana plays politics. I play for pride because I am a greenhorn in this game, and I refuse to play in my own league. I play so that when I beat you, I rub it on your face until your face turns green. And when I lose (which is most of the time) I coil my humble tail.
There is this guy called Ayub who coils my tail all the time. He is a sharp shooter, and when he strikes a shot, he does it so hard that I find myself holding my crotch in fear for my own balls. It is an intimidating tactic that is meant to scare you away. It works, because when he hands me the cue stick, I sweat like a virgin on a third date. That is how he wins, through intimidation, and then there is this name he calls me; Kurutu. It means you suck at pool. But you know our God is good and gracious, for in the same measure he blessed him with a talent of sinking balls into a hole, he also took away his eloquence in speech. He is a kuyu you see, so occasionally when playing he goes something like:
There is this one time we skipped class to shoot pool (this game is like a drug), and on this day, he had vowed that he was going kunitoa frat arafu twende crass. The only mistake he did was that he made that promise in the presence of a lady. Ladies love watching ball games. And like I said, I only play this game for pride.
When he said that, I took it as an affront to my manhood. You see Doris, women inspire vanity in men, at least in luo men like me. So I took him up on his challenge. In fact, I placed money (Ksh. 500) in just to show the fair lady that I meant business, that I had balls too.
I did not know which picture to use for this post… So I went to @magungawilliam’s timeline and got this… I am so tickled! Please be advised though, this is not him :’D
So we began. Focus. He strikes the spotted balls, I sink the ringed ones (ask Ian how to play pool). We went head to head until we were left with the final ball. The black ball. It is also the number 8 ball. It is my turn. As a principle, this is the ball that is not to be sunk until all others are sunk. If I put it in, I win, if I miss hitting it, I lose. If it sinks into a hole separate from the one I indicate, I lose. I have a lot to lose, because I am also the one with something to prove. The black ball stands stoically against the side of the table.
Ayub taunts me as I take aim. He talks shrubs a lot of trash, but I believe it is because he is squeezing his ass cheeks so hard that shit comes out of his mouth. I look up at the lady. Her T-shirt asks me; “Who needs Brains when you have these?”
“Professor Situma,” I reply in my head.
Since this is a defining moment of this game, I do not have second chances.
“Middle hole” I say.
I have calculated the possible vectors, and the chances of my gamble, and my six months experiences tells me that if I hit the ball against the wall, it would roll back into the middle hole on the left. I stand in aim patiently, like a sniper scouting a kill. I measure the wind direction, the wind velocity, the room temperature, the amount of energy required to hit it. Heck I measure my own heart rate!
I strike.
Just as predicted, the ball comes rolling towards the middle hole. “Kurutu ni wewe!” I jeer at Ayub as the ball comes home to validate my pride.
But then half way through its course, as if it changed its mind, the ball drifts to the left, hits the corner of the middle hole. The impact deflects it towards the corner hole, and it dips in with such enthusiasm.
I sigh. I blame the gods for the humiliation. Ayub jumps around hysterically “Kulutu! Kulutu! Reta pesa!” I hear the lady giggle at my dejection as I reach for my wallet to pay up. I have the option of refusing to pay up, but then I have already showed her that I’m all show and no substance. At least let me show her that I can at least pay my debts.
I reach for my wallet, only to realize that I don’t have it. “Kujia doh kwa room” I beg.
“Hakuna! Hauna pesa na unaringa hapa” he cajoles. Ayub is having a field day. “Huyu, he says to the girl, huyu hana kitu. Ni kulutu!”
She walks away, convinced that my arrogance is worth a song. I wish she noticed the watch. I watch her go, and her ass follows.
My ego shrinks.
THE END…
This guy clearly writes longer letters… Woi! I really hope you do not like long letters… Please do not like long letters Doris… For me…
Read more of his work here: http://therealginc.wordpress.com/about-magunga/
I am seated in front of this computer thinking about how to start this letter… I am completely blank… I will be ok from the second paragraph onwards… Normally on this paragraph, the first, I confess my love for you… And explain in what quantities I have missed you, which, since I started writing to you, have always been immense… I cannot recall when I was not missing you… Or thinking about you… I can not remember not ever-loving you… I am sitting here torturing my insides, holding on to us… Is there even an us anymore? All I am holding on to, I guess, is what I have for you… The love… The memories… A thin strand of string… But it will have to do…
A while back someone reminded me that I had promised to write about how women should dress on a first date… Well here goes nothing! This manual is for yelo yelo plus sized women! *dinner edition*
A study by Ian Arunga
NOTE: If you show up yelo, pretty, intelligent and ‘big’ donning tiny feet, you, my dear, are dressed to kill… But there are some details we have to go through… Let us talk about how that beauty should be wrapped… Best gifts are always wrapped, yes?And isn’t it just wayyyyy better to unwrap a well wrapped gift than otherwise? Ok I am losing focus!
This letter will revolve around this one sentence – Wear a black dress with contrasting shoes!
Need I say anything really?! Look how attractive her knees are! #fatknees
The Black Dress – (or any dark colour. Not red) I think all women should have a black dress! (my yelo yelo women) You know that black dress that ends right above your knee? By right above the knee I mean nothing more that a 5 bob coin above the knee… The knee is very important… I like a fat yelo knee… 🙂 There is some sexiness in knees… Let this black dress fit well… Just enough to whisper to the world, “Yes… Those are my FUNDAMENTOZ!” Not loose and not TOO tight…
I feel black is the best colour for a dress because it does not threaten eye contact during a conversation. Eye contact is very important. You want to keep this man’s eyes on yours. Nothing busy. Nothing that will get his eyes off your lips moving… Your jet black hair swaying left and right with every slight swing of the head. Your teeth (I like teeth). Your smile… Give the man a chance to notice every single detail your head holds… NOW YOU IF YOU GO ON WEARING AN ODM ORANGE DRESS WITH BEES ON IT HOW DO YOU WANT THE MAN TO NOTICE YOUR SMILE?!
Cover enough to let lust fight for its rights! Cleavage is good… Not CLEAVAGE! Show off the tip of the parting of your breasts… Anything more would be suggesting things even you did not know were suggesting! When the man loses eye contact to look at your dress, let it be because he really likes it and not want to tear it off just yet… (wear red for that… or white)!
Do not try out a new dress on a first date… unless you are a stunt man…
I really like these shoes… Exactly what you should wear with that black dress…. Then are you seeing the way it goes with the yelo yelo skin?? Yes!
The shoes – Men lie to themselves that they can tell how good a woman is by their shoes…. use this utter stupidity against them. Wear shoes that are easy to spot… By easy to spot I do not mean the Gaga ones without heels and multiple spikes… We want to impress the guy… Not kill him and use his flesh to make a dress!
I suggest something bright coloured… Let them be elegant… Them being bright gets the man’s attention. Them being classy elegant totally uses them judging you by your shoes against them! Avoid black shoes…. Black, like I said, is very easily ignored. Confuse the man a bit.Stay away from white shoes… and thigh high boots… Or anything with fur!
The shoes should be comfortable… You look terrible trying to balance on 6 inch stilts that you are not used to… In fact, wear flats if you have to… Do a test before your date — if you can’t walk normally in them, leave them at home.
The jewellery – Nothing that jingles loud enough to the human hearing level. Leave that to inmates donning handcuffs! And Pharaoh. Choose a metal or stone ad stick to it… If you are a gold person… Do gold all through… If you are going to do pearls… STICK TO PEARLS… Do not go out looking like something that was dug from the earth’s very core!
Avoid earrings that tag on your ears… Elongated ears are not the prettiest of sights!
The handbag – No back packs! Then those handbags the size of body bags – Yu are not going to spend the rest of you life at his house starting ‘tonight’ you realise! I thoroughly advise a clutch purse that matches your shoes… There are shops in England that sell the two together 😀 And a purse is mandatory… At least look like you can pay for something…
The Lipstick – ok… If you know how to put it on… Do it! Avoid the ones with adjectives such as hot, wet, sexy, lusty… The bright colours that is… And if you look in the mirror and all you see is, “WHY SO SERIOUS!” then take it off…
Men hate make up… Yes? Ok I hate make-up! Let me reprise that… I hate overdone make-up… Leave that to Kiini Macho! Put just enough… I do not want your face print on my shirt when I hug you… My shirts are quite costly…
The Phone – This, believe it or not, is part of your outfit and how you behave with it is extremely important! Listen, men are the most jealous animals on earth after parrots and the second you text or answer a call… their turf is immediately threatened. Put the thing on aeroplane mode. Let it be on and thats it! Then put it back online after the date, most advisable when he is dropping you home… Then pray a text comes in… Do not read it… THIS WILL F*CK HIM UP A GOOD ONE!
Good evening my one and only… My one and only means the only woman I am sleeping with… So I am guessing I am not your one and only… But I am not worried… It is my feelings that matter… And I say, you are my one and only… How many men have you slept with since we last saw each other? Six? Sixty? Do not answer that question… Your utter attractiveness should reflect on that number… And we all know how extremely attractive you are… So…
Let me stop stressing myself…
My phone has just alerted me that the battery is low… This is the first time it has done that since I bought it… The charge takes a week… It is a Nokia Asha 205 or something like that… You remember I lost my phone right? I am using this one up until the CID guys get mine… Which does not look like it is going to be anytime soon… They keep asking me to Mpesa monies for random things… And I Mpesa… Because I am stupid…. Stupidly in love with my phone… This one has a Facebook button… It is funny… It costed me 9000 bongo points… Anyhu…
The other day I went shopping for stuff for the house with Alexander Muge… This was at Uchumi Sarit…
Got this randomly online: This was the best lunch I had at Barding… Pork…
My old phone had this application called ‘Out Of Milk’ that had a built-in list of everything you might possibly need to buy from the store… Try it out… With a Nokia Asha, I have to go through every aisle looking for things so I don’t forget anything!
Alexander was pushing my trolley as I put things inside…
We came across random car keys on the floor at some point… I am freaked out by such things… Maybe it’s an ambush of some kind… So I told Alexander Muge to pick it up as I looked around for a SWAT team… Nothing happened… I took them from him and decided to take them to the customer care desk… At this point I asks d Alexander Muge to keep shopping and to include everything he might think is important.
I was gone for about 10 minutes…
When I came back, the trolley was full to the top! Be advised that he had not even moved much… These were the things Alexander Muge added into the trolley:
100 metre synthetic rope
A broom (The soft ones made of reeds)
That circular thing that has pegs and people use to hang underwear
Steel wool (the really huge one… Really really huge one)
20 litre cleaning detergent
Body scrub
I can’t remember the rest.
When I asked him how those thing were important he got violent…
“How can you ask me to include important things then come back to ask me how they are important!?”
The kid had a point… So I asked,”Sawa… Why did you include a mtungi of detergent?”
Without even thinking, he responded,”It was cheap…” The walked away!
I told him to put everything that he had brought back…
Alexander is currently on a mission… He is seducing her land lady for the rent to go down… Things are not working as fast as he anticipated though… All he has achieved is, and I quote, ‘I am now allowed to pay my rent as late as the 10th!’
On our way out of Sarit, the lights went out and Alexander Muge shouted,”WESTGATE!”
I love you… And it has hit me that I have a lot that I do not tell you… You know those random short stories that one easily puts aside? Yeah… So I have started a new category called ‘short Comings’ that will have these stories!
I did not use my car the whole weekend (This is a very important bit so keep it in mind). I spent most of my weekend indoors. The only times I left the house was to go get lunch on Saturday and to take out the garbage on Sunday night… I totally ignore my grandma’s advice never to take the garbage out at nigh because apparently you are throwing away blessings… Is that why I do not own a CLS yet?
But this is a short story so I will get right to it…
On my way to work this morning I stopped at a gas station to fuel for the week… Ok I am lying… I had like 260 bob… That was a one way ticket to the office…
The Total guy looked at me funny then ordered, “Fungua tank!” I did… I do not understand why these attendants become less pleasant when you buy 200 bob fuel…
“Receipt?” I asked after he slum shut my fuel tank door… He was not too excited.
“Mbele iko sawa?” He asked as he handed me my receipt!
“Ebu check…” I ask and pop the bonnet.
The guy jumped back with a loud shriek letting go the bonnet.
“Boss kuna paka wawili hapo ndani!” He said keeping his distance… “Sasa tufanye aje?” I ask.
“Wewe enda tu nazo. Hapa hatufugi pussi! Usijali hazitaanguka ukiendesha” He said and jammed the bonnet. He then cleaned my wind shield.
I am now at the office with one cat in my engine. I have no clue where the second one is and I am feeling terrible that it might have fallen on the road even though I was driving very slowly.
The watchman at the office who washes my car has just sent me a text, “Ian, nifanye nini na huyu paka?”
As I write this sadness overflows from my heart… The jugs of my eyes pregnant with tears… It has been a terrible day my love… Terrible… I lost my phone ON A FUCKIN MATATU! This was on my way to work this morning! When I got to the office I tried calling it even though I knew it was off by the time… Not correct… The call went through but no one picked up… I called countless times until Mwangi picked up!
I am really sorry if this sounds tribalistic, but when he said his name was Mwangi… I gave up all hope of ever getting it back. Again I apologise!
Mwangi was cool though, he said he picked my phone on the matatu seat and wants to give it back… But for me to get it, I was to meet him at Umoja Two near the chief’s office…
I called the office courier and told him to rush to Umoja Two… I kept calling my phone and chatting with Mwangi just so he doesn’t change his mind… I was astound that he wanted to give the phone back though… It was a really cool phone and I would have understood completely if he thought otherwise.
People kept calling Mwangi asking for me. He told all of them that he had picked my phone and is waiting for me to pick it. Two hours later the courier guy had not met up with him and I started to panic… Two minutes later the thing was off! And that was that!
I HATE MATATUS!
*I am listening to Butu na moyi by Makoma as I type this*
I can see your faultless face as I write this letter. I do not have countless words to express what I have for you… I am no poet so I can’t even make the few words I have rhyme with each other to inflate the love I have for you… But suppose I say that absolute and unquestioning love is a chord of many notes – then at present I have not all the notes, as I do not know all of you, but I have a few notes for everything I know about you which sound amazing to my big African ears; I have enough notes to make a harmony my Doris, enough to dance each time you cross my mind… I am afraid I now look like a mad man because I can’t stop dancing! It was those few notes that have made me love you this much… Love with no end yani! I want to love you absolutely, to find the other notes – that will come with deeper knowledge of your lovely nature. Your tiny feet play lingala… Your yelo yelo skin soft rhythm and blues, your intelligence afro fusion… Your plus sizeness rock! I am ready to dance forever!
I took a bus to town from work the other day. It was about 8pm.
Alexander Muge like always took me up until where I get my matatus. He then made sure I had my bus fare before he left. I gave the makanga my money before even the matatu started moving.
I sat at my usual spot at the co driver’s seat. I then made sure I still had all my valuables after a walk across the CBD that, by the way, crawls with pick pockets and bad people… My wallet was intact… My phone was intact and my Macbook was in place…
I always sit at the front because:
I can keep an eye on the driver. I really want to be the one to save the day in case he loses control or falls asleep or something close to that… or maybe just be the first to know when the plane is going down so I can dive out of the vehicle! And the leg room is just amazing compared to the rest of the matatu where you have to tuck your feet under the seat for you to fit!
I like sitting at the window but people who are stronger or more persistent always take this away from me. Like last night… this really rough dark man with matofaris for a chest, got in and just pushed me over using his ass… I did not fight back. You would not have either if you saw his face… His mandibles were solid and square! Ignoring his brick wall of a torso, his arms were the size of an axle for a small car, he had no hair at all on his head and you could almost see reflections of the city lights from outside on it! He had a neatly trimmed beard. He was wearing a white fitting t-shirt that complimented the excessively zero fat body. The tight t-shirt was tucked into a pair of dark jeans and held in place with a thick belt probably made from a Zebu cow. He tucked his jeans in army boots… or watchman boots… still they were black and shiny.
He had a tiny phone. One of those Nokias with torches… or is it torches with Nokias?! The phone even looked smaller because the palm of them man’s hand were the size of a small satellite dish… as in, they looked like he could hold a gas meko like a glass! With palms as vast as that, you probably need a tablet and nothing else!
His sun glasses were hung disgustingly on his reggae coloured neck sequence of beads that had a yellow lion holding a flag.
On his other hand was an A5 envelope written Club Seventy Seven, that had been crossed off and just below it in unschooled handwriting written: Sebastian M.
What I got from this intel was that he was definitely a bouncer at a club called Club Seventy Seven… but who am I to judge?!
Just before the matatu left I spotted, AND THIS IS NO LIE, Genevieve getting into the same matatu! She was not in her neon haute couture. She was dressed very well actually! A black dress with multiple polka dots the size of the rim of a glass. On her feet were little flat black shoes that had a white bow at the top! She did not have a hand bag this time… Instead, she had a tiny red wallet.
If she was not holding a packet of ILARA fresh milk with a straw sticking out of it she would have been, well, better than the last time! I don’t know about you but there is a peculiar crudeness in walking around sucking fresh milk off a straw from a polythene bag! Yes?
Anyways, Genevieve got into the matatu and that was that…
I was back to my terrible habits of reading people’s texts in the matatu… The mountain sitting next to me had been texting non-stop all through the ride… So I decided to find out what ‘bouncers’ or whatever he was, say on short message service!
This was a bit tricky because if by any chance he would catch me glimpse at his phone screen he would snap my neck effortlessly! There is this quiz I took on Facebook called, “When Will I Die!” I got between 65 and 70 years!There was no way I was going to compromise that just because I was reading someone’s texts carelessly… I had to do it S.W.A.Tly!
The first text I saw was an incoming text,”Tomorrow maybe.”
I already liked the person who was texting this mountain because whoever they were, they spelt every word entirely and correctly!
Then the beast replied within the next second with visible anger…,”Why not today…” But he did not send it… He thought for a minute… Then added,”Why not today Baibe!”
It was evident at this point that we were dealing with a nit! WHAT THE HELL IS BAIBE!!!?
I had already created a story of what the two might be talking about… They were definitely discussing a meeting! But the person on the other side was not feeling this plan… The one sitting next to me was terrible at asking for a meet up if he thought miss spelt pet names would work… The person on the other side had the upper hand because his/her every text worried this man!
“I can’t and you know why!” A reply came in…
This caught the mountain off-guard because he thought for a long while before replying! Like he was trying to remember why they could not meet up that day…
I was so engrossed in this conversation that I forgot I was supposed to be doing this in secret! One can always feel when their texts are being read… More often when they are talking about things they should be talking about behind closed doors and dimmed lights!
The man caught me red handed… I am blind, so I tend to concentrate hard on things… He caught me at this point. I had gotten so close my head was almost under his chin!
Luckily he did not snap my neck like I had envisioned… He instead bumped me with his elbow. My heart sunk! I looked at his face blankly as I waited for him to flatten my face! I shot back to my initial upright position and ignored his very existence… I tend to believe surprise neck breaks are less painful!
“Umekosa form!” He said and looked at me straight in the eye… His brows slightly dipped! By this moment I had not breathed in or out for almost a minute!
I understood what he said…
I did not apologise though… Apologising confirms that you actually committed the crime… I was not going to warrant my own death! I ignored him… And set my eyes forward… Like I was the one operating the auto mobile…
I could see him texting from the side of my eye but the rims to my glasses were blocking my view…And I couldn’t move my head…
I got a glimpse of ‘Sweethart’ and ‘way’. I almost told him to go through the text one more time to catch stupid errors but something told me this was a bad idea.
He was getting visibly annoyed with every text that came in… He was replying faster this time… The texts were getting shorter and shorter… I think he had enough when he decided to call the person on the other side.
I could hear the phone ring multiple times before the person on the other side received the call… Then did not say a word… For like two seconds then the mountain went like, “Hello!”
“Yeah!” A woman’s voice from the other side…
“Sielewi…” He continues!
“I have explained everything Sebah…” an innocent voice from the other side, loud like gun shots in the silent matatu… I was holding my breath so I could get every word. The man noticed this and lowered the phone volume until I could not hear anything at all.
A lot of un-interesting things were exchanged over the phone… I couldn’t hear but I have to tell myself this in order not to feel like shit for missing a thoroughly enthralling conversation.
The man got off at a random stop completely un-amused!
And that was that…
I was the last one to leave the matatu…
Just as I was getting off, the makanga tapped my back violently and said… “Ebu chukua hii namba! Nimeambiwa nikupe! Zero seven seven… Haraka… Saa mbaya…”
It was Genevieve’s… I took it and saved it as ‘Local Talent’.
It has been a long time since I had an opportunity of writing to you my Doris, and I gladly avail myself of the present opportunity. I am not certain that I will have a chance of sending this but I will write a few lines any how and try to get it off to let you know that I am among the living.
Did you hear about the Wastgate Mall terrorist attack? It was horrible my love… Not knowing where you were at the time made it worse… I have no idea if you are alive… But my heart is at rest… That can only mean that you are some place safe and alive… I could always tell when you were poorly…
My love, I was sure I was over you up until I stumbled upon a few of your pictures on my phone! I deleted all of them by the way… But we both know the pictures of you embedded deep in my mind can only be deleted by the silencing of my heart… The quietness of the chambers programmed to propel blood through my body… The stillness of my pulse… Only that can muzzle my love for you!
But this is not my story…
I took my car in for a paint job yesterday and I will not be getting it back up until Friday… This could only mean one thing… Matatu to and from work up until Friday!
I got onto a matatu to town with Alexander Muge at about 7pm. I had really thought about leaving my computer at the office because of the fear of it getting stolen! Alexander Muge, “The way you are tall you are scared!” Needless to say I carried it! The matatu to town was alright! Nothing too alarming. The driver kept on saying things about Westgate in Kikuyu which was a bit annoying because I was really interested in the topic!
I had 26 shillings between me and the nearest ATM so Alexander paid my bus fair…
“How can an adult walk around with 26 shillings in CBD here!?” he kept on asking!
Alexander took me to where Madaraka matatus are and left for the South B stage!
I sat on my best matatu seat… Co driver’s seat – at the window!
It didn’t take long before some lady came and gestured that she wanted to sit between the driver and I… She was on the phone, speaking in fathomless sheng! She was talking at the capital of her voice and laughing after everything she said… It was not too annoying!
Her handbag was the size of a body bag! With zebra print… But not black and white… It was red and white! It had massive gold coated chains for handles that jingled uncontrollably! The bag did not have much in it… I could tell because whatever was inside kept on moving back and forth every time she laughed! Her nails were neon pink… I could not stop staring! Her pants neon green… She had a white vest on that did not look clean… I did not see the dirt but I could feel it… You know how you can feel dirt? Not by touching it… It is like a thick cloud around you… You can’t smell it… BUT YOU KNOW ITS THERE!
A red shiny belt was tied tightly round her waist… It was not expensive… I have seen those belts being sold on the streets.
I did not see her shoes probably because the colour of her nails caught my eyes fast… And the ways she was waving her hand with every sheng conjunction, I could not concentrate on anything else!
She was now seated between the driver and myself…
“Haiya dakika kama punch hivi nakam!” That was the last thing she said before she hung up and threw her phone in the abyss of a bag…
Let me make this clear, she was not bad-looking. With a little L’Oreal here and a little Shower To Shower there she would be something!
There is this weirdness when you are seated there silent next to an obvious motormouth! It is almost like she is going to ambush you with a conversation!
And she did…
“We unado?” She asked… I was holding my laptop tight at this point. Not because she might steal it but because the matatu had started moving and I have watched the videos on Youtube where people steal things from matatus!
She caught me off guard… I had suspected she was going to start a conversation from the way she looked at me… But all normal conversations start with introductions… Like, I start all of mine by, “Hi, Ian is my name and I write books for children.” That is from the time 3 of my books were approved by KIE for the Kenya school curriculum! Just saying!
“Poa!” I answer without thinking about it one bit!
“Huh! Wacha presha!” she says… “Yani na-mean unado job gani? Ama uko Kole?” She continued!
I have never had this conversation in sheng and did not know how to answer…
I do a lot but was trying to figure out what in particular would stir a good conversation… So I answered, “Naandika vitabu za watoto!”
“Haki Gai! Wacha!” She burst out! I had not idea if this was a, “PLEASE DO GO ON!” prompt!
“Ndio!” I say! Ebu niambie kama gani?” She asks
Please be advised that none of the books I have written are out yet and they are kids books… This was a tricky question! It is not like Id go like Cinderella na Snow White… So I go like, “Can You See me, The Odd ne Out…” She cut me mid-statement!
“Hizo ndio gani! Gai!” She spits!
This is Warsan shire and I at The Storymoja Hay Festival sometime last week… I will write about the Storymoja Hay Festival soon…
“Za watoto!” I answer innocently! At this moment I can’t wait to come out of the matatu!
The makanga saves me at this point by ordering, “Pesa mbele!” And at that split second it hits me that I have only 26 bob on me! The ride was 50 bob! My heart is beating so fast at this point! Thing is, I was more scared of what this lady would say more than what the makanga would do…
I am taking my time going through my multiple pockets hoping to find a coin or two I might have overlooked in the past… The 3 coins in my pocket were sure! A twenty bob, a five bob and a one bob! I was finished. The lady had paid her fair and gotten back her change and was now looking at me almost sure that I had no money!
“Hauna doe!” She asks almost laughing!
“Niko nayo!” I answer… I lie! I remove the 26 bob and continue looking for more coins! The makanga persistent! “PESA MBELE!”
I go through my laptop bag and get another 1 bob!
“Maze kuniaibisha nayo!” The lady says and gives the makanga a 50 bob! “Ntakusmamia hii riba!” She continues!
“Una doe home? Juu unajua lazima unilipe hiyo doe!” She says looking out the driver’s window! Like she was ignoring my presence! There was a peculiar graveness in her voice!
“Unashuka wapi?” I ask her…
“Pahali utashukia!” she retorts! “SI unanipa doe!”
I think fast and suggest we get off in Nairobi West where there’s an ATM so I get her the money!
“Na interest ujue…” She storms.
I met these kids at the Storymoja Hay Festival. They are from a school in Kisumu I think… They made this coffin from bamboo. Apparently bamboo grows a metre a day and is more environment friendly to use it than hard wood.
“Wewe unado?” I ask… It did not come out right because she burst out laughing!
“Unanibamba!” She says but does not answer my question! I did not know how to ask another one so I let it go… She was quiet for a while… Looking outside the driver’s window!
Then, “Niko KIM!” She says… “Niko karibu kumada lakini. Nipate kadiploma yangu!” She continues!
“Kenya Institute of Management?” I ask only realising how stupid that was after it came out!
“Kwani unajua ingine? Unanibamba yani!” she answers again almost laughing!
“Sijui hata jinaako…” She asks…
“Hata mimi sijui yako!” I respond!
“Kwani ni brikicho!” She comes back…
“Naitwa Genevieve!” She continues!
I wanted to lie… But I am a terrible liar… The only name that was in my head that was not mine was Ole Lenku… So I went like “Lenku!” I had not thought about it…
“Gai!” She says and looks out the driver’s window again!
We do not speak up until we get off at Nairobi West!
“Unastay wapi?” She asks as we walk to the ATM machine.
“Mada!” I answer. “Na wewe?” I continue!
“Siwaka!” She responds! “Umeandika vitabu ngapi?” She continues.
“Nne!” I answer.
“Gai! Nne pekee?!” She asks in a mocking tone! “Kwani zina pages thao!?” She continues now laughing!
She was still laughing by the time we got to the ATM 5 minutes later!
I had to look for change for a while. It is not like ATMs dish 50 bobs… Except Equity ones… Or do they? I do not know!
From the ATM we walk to Madaraka talking about how boring her lecturers are and how shy I am…
I walked into the wrong court because I feared she might come looking for me someday!
“HAUCHUKUI NAMBA YANGU!!!?” she asks annoyed. “Ow seven seven…” She starts. I am looking for my phone frantically because I had kept it so far inside my jacket for safety!
She gets impatient… “Ah! Wachana nayao… Ntakupata tu!” She says and walks away…
AND THAT IS DAY ONE…
Oh! And I do not think anyone knows what happened at Westgate just yet… We are all Waiting for Mohammed Ali to do a documentary on it!
I started writing this at about 9pm my love. I am still at the office as usual. I did not have anything to write about today… But I had missed you… So I just started typing and here we are on the fourth sentence… It is weird how love works you know… Completely unfathomable! It is like a hat slap across your face by an invincible being… I really do not understand why I love you so… You treat me like the granules of dirt between the sole of your shoe and gum that is stuck upon it… I am not sure if you understood that last statement! You treat me like dirt (better?) But then I cherish nothing more than the undying love I have for you… You will be my death Doris…
I went for The Amayzing Race last weekend! Yes it is spelt like that… I think it is because the first one was in may… I was at the 2nd one.
It is almost like the famous Amazing Race reality show… Only difference is this one is in Nairobi and not all around the world, no flights, teams are of fours and not twos (Amazing Race has teams of twos right?!), we are not given money unlike the Famous one…. ALL I AM TRYING TO SAY IS THAT IT IS JUST A WAY MORE AFFORDABLE DEAL!
Should I explain how it works? I am really tired… What I will do is google AMAZING RACE and copy the exact format that has been used to explain it… CMD+C …. CMD+V (That is just CONTROL+C and CONTROL+V if you are not using an Apple computer)
Anyhu… I will not explain, you just have to read… I have tried and it is dead boring reading though that… Or maybe I just want to finish this and go home!
As we waited for the race to start, one of the guys stole our car keys… This got us all worried. We all suspected this one person who had earlier suggested that stealing people’s car keys would be a brilliant idea… We later found our keys at the bar (Sheebeen) … A stranger had them… It had been given to him by our main suspect!
Our team was called GWARA GWARA WINCH WINCH… This had been proposed by our ‘Team Race Driver’ and we all thought it was too cool… I made the t-shirts and we were ready!
By the way my team members were these ones:
From Left: ‘Team Captain’, ‘Team Racing Driver’, ‘Team Bubble’, and myself (Team Winch)
Before the race started each team leader was given a straw, a few balloons and a piece of string! We had to scan QR codes for clues at each pit stop!
CLUE 1:
I hope you can read that because there is no way in hell I am typing all that!! After I scanned the code we were off. Our ‘Team Driver’ was good… Even after the same guy who took our keys closed the gate on us, we were first to get to Hongs… Traffic held us back at Yaya Centre so we had to run a bit.. Our ‘Team Bubble’ who was the one we chose to take the challenge refused to run… My heart was racing as opponents swoooshed passed us! She walked to Hongs, at kicked ass. She was even using two straws! All the guys who raced passed us before couldn’t catch their breath to complete the soup… Did I mention the team with the mischievous guy didn’t get to scan the code and were following us blindly?? Yea…
Team Bubble on that chilli soup competition
CLUE 2: This was about going to Westlands and dancing to Azonto in front of Club Changes. This was a tad embarrassing… By this point there was a team ahead of us that seemed completely unbeatable… The mischievous team kept on calling for updates and clues… It was too funny… The ‘Team Racing Driver’ and “Team Bubble’ were the only ones who could Azonto… So I video taped as they Azontod!
My QR reader had chapad by this point and was not reading the codes.
The next clue took us to Runda… ‘Team Bubble’ lives in Runda so she was chief navigator untill she completely potezad us… Cool thing was every other team ahead of us was also lost (1 team)… It was clear not many people lived on that side of town!
We had to drive though Runda and get an Mpesa shop owned by a Mr. Karanja! It was a toughie… We found the Mpesa shop though which had a clue that took us to Village Market.
So this one w`as the trickiest! We were supposed to park at a designated spot! Because no one was watching and we were all hungry to win, no one bothered to find this spot! The clue that came after this was a swimming one… Each team member had to ride on a slide or a team member does it for them. There were 5 slides! Our ‘Team Racing Driver’ was the only one who bothered to carry a swim suit so he did all the rounds… We encountered a slight problem though, the nigga was enjoying this so much that he refused to come out of the pool… Good thing was so did the other teams…
‘The Challenge Master’ (Exactly how the title suggests: Like Big Brother) then came by and dished out 30 minute penalties to the teams in the pool… Apparently no one parked at the right spot… So people had to leave the pool go park at the right spot then re-do the slides… This set us back BIG TIME… It set everyone back!
After the penalty we were back at it again!
As I took photos of ‘Team racing Driver’, our ‘Team captain’ set out to find the next clue… Which could not be found… I called up a team that had found it and asked where it was… when we got there, we found like 16 QR codes and only one was the right one… Here is where my phone charge died! ‘Team captain’ found the right one though…
Ok I am really sorry but I will have to continue this story tomorrow. I have to drop some people in town so that they can catch matatus home before they run out…
How have you been you beautiful woman? I have missed you… That is no lie… I have missed you in unimaginable immensities! That last statement barely makes sense! Are you well… Have you found love… I hope not… Because I still believe God’s main purpose of creating you was to be mine, as true the opposite! My English has become worse! I am guessing grammar!
As I write this I am watching Hope Channel at my parents house. This information is absolutely irrelevant.
It has been almost 3 months since I moved out. In those 3 months I have made random friends and learnt random things. This is my journal:
The toughest hurdle once you move out is FOOD! I can cook pretty well but I am used to opening a cupboard and finding all the spices I need and opening another and getting the cooking pan and maybe reach out behind the gas cylinder for the tomatoes and onions… When you move out, you have to buy all these things… I have set out to go buy a frying pan mare than four times… I always come back home pan-less! The pan I really like is about 5,000 bob! Until I will be comfortable spending 5 grand on a fuckin’ pan, I will come back home pan-less!
This was when I was in Old Trafford, Manchester. I am an Arsenal die-hard… But Do I not I get rid of my enemies if I make them my friends? (Abe)
I have travelled far and wide looking for the best alternative for food… As wide as back to my parents house… I have just had the best chicken in the world for dinner by the way! The closest I have come to a solution is Tuskeys. They sell food… This was the perfect solution until I discovered I really hate their food. No offence yo!
I consulted friends and relatives UNTIL I found ALICE!
Alice is a random Madaraka resident with a vast talent in making chapatis. A woman who can make chapatis is a woman, I believe, who can rule the world… Alice makes chapatis WITH FUCKIN CARROTS! AND CORIANDER! I enjoy these bits of perfection immensely! I bought 40 chapatis on Monday! Less than half of those still stand! Alice takes your number and texts in the morning to ask how dinner was and ways she could improve her services… I believe if Alice was a plus sized yellow woman with a PhD in psychology, I would have probably asked for her hand in marriage… I insist on a PhD in psychology because I would love a woman who can read my mind… One who always knows when I want chapatis… Not too much to ask now is it? An intelligent woman is a sexy woman…
JUDITH is my househelp’s name! Yes I have a househelp, these nails are not for domestic chores… She is extremely funny! No, I take that back… She laughs at everything! Is this the opposite of being funny? She loves pizza… SHE cancels out the LEFTOVER in LEFTOVER PIZZA! This one time she ate half a large perri peri chicken pizza… The next time she came, I locked the fridge and carried the keys to the office… My brother came back in the evening and found the fridge unlocked… I think she has a master key! I dont lock the fridge anymore, I have since discovered my mother did not raise a MCHOYO!
Just to set things straight, the beautiful woman who gave birth to me is also called Judith… It is this particular Judith that I have tattooed on my chest and not my househelp…
She does not make my bed because she says I make my bed better than she ever would… She is a conniving one this one!
AGGREY is my plumber! THE MAN DOES NOT SHUT UP! We had guests over the other day and the toilet ended up clogged! I called Aggrey late in the night to come analyse the situation!
His first comment – “The blockage here is quite flabbergasting!” I had to hire him! He is on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week… He uses complex words like aberration and irascible and vicissitudes all of which he uses to explain why there is a blockage or leakage! He is intelligent but drinks like a deep sea fish! He has come to fix my bathroom staggering before… Yes, so maybe I have more than a few plumbing issues!
One time after he was done fixing the toilet, he asked me for drinking water… I found this request very confusing… I have very few glasses… 12 to be exact… This man had been inserminating the loo for the past hour and I would just comfortably hand him one of my glasses?? I gave him a glass of cold water… If I was a plumber, I would love to be treated in the same manner…
I forget that I do not live here and will have to drive miles to get home… So allow me to stop here my love… I cannot promise to write soon. I get to busy at times… But in my mind… You will always be there!
You are beautiful… I am thinking about you… And I will always love you…
My life has never been the same since the day you walked out of it… How I would love to say I am ok without you and I don’t care what’s going on with you…. I would be lying to myself if I said I will stop loving you! Among the few impossible things… That is one one!
My love, there has been a few changes at work… I am not in the creative department anymore… I have moved to sales and marketing. Please close your mouth, I was dumbfounded as well when I heard the news… That is why I haven’t written in such a long time… I have been busy in the field making deals, selling and seducing retailers to stock our books… Doris, you know I work for a publishing company right?
One thing I have learnt since I changed jobs, SELLING BOOKS TO AFRICANS IS AN IMPOSSIBLE TASK! A very minute percentage of the black human beings surrounding you read for pleasure… A shocking percentage do not read a single storybook/novel after high school… Someone once said, “If you want to hide money from an African, put it between the pages of a book.” I work for a company that fights to see that change… A reading nation is a winning nation…
On to more brighter things…
There is an extremely thin line between selling and flirting… They probably mean the same thing… Flirting is selling yourself right? I might be wrong…
This becomes tricky when it comes to my new JD… Which is selling…
The other day I was at this shop I have been trying to get our books into for ages… I was so close to giving up when things took a wild turn…
I hadn’t noticed I had crossed the line…
The manager at this retail store is an Indian woman… Lets call her Priya… So Priya is the rudest female I have ever met… Her sentences are short and drive daggers to the heart. She has chased me out of her shop twice… As in those ones for, “get out!”
I had to change how to approach this harridan!
“You look amazing in white” I said… I caught her complete attention! The shop went silent… I said it in a rather loud voice… But there are some things, even if whispered, cleaves through whatever noise… Like this one.
I could tell I caught her off guard… I couldn’t just bring up, “please stock our books” right after that… It had to be seamless… “Thenkyu… How can I help you today!” She answered. The staff at the shop were shocked. You could tell this woman had not been kind for a while.
“I can tell you how attractive you are for hours… Because you really are… No doubt!” I said… No matter how thin that line between selling and flirting is, it’s so clear when you have crossed it… And I had… It was now awkward… But I came here to make sure our books are at this shop, and I wasn’t folding! “You never give me time though..” I continue… Priya is slightly beyond her 30s… She is short and modern. Her jet midnight Indian hair natural, sleek, almost like the tail on a unicorns behind! She spends most of her days in anger… You can tell from the prominent folds on her forehead. Her hips are full… The rings at the back of her neck sky rockets her dowry price in Luo land… Her breath smells like nido milk powder…
“You accuse me falsely…” She says… Her cheeks are now crimson…
My brain was on overdrive trying to figure out how to cool this whole inferno down…
She helped out, “so you need your books on our shelves?” She asked…
“Yes… What can I do to have that?” I ask… A bit confused… But I was still on top of my game in case she lost focus…
After a short chat she says she will think about it… We exchange business cards… Mine still said, ‘design manager’
I get a text later that evening….
“I will stock your books but we cannot continue like this. I have a husband!”
I had felled two vampires with the same wooden stake… That’s just means killing two birds with the same stone in a fancier way.
Above is Macklemore, Ryan Lewis AND MY COUSIN OWUOR… Yes my cousin plays with Macklemore! #Braggadocio
Before I go any further, pouring out my heart to you, I would like to warn you… In this letter, I will be saying SHIT a lot… If you are going to be offended; instead of sitting there twitching and aching; then stop now.. Dont go any further than this POINT…
SHIT!
MY Love, It’s just about 7:00 p.m. and I am still at the office, not working late, but thinking about you… The only thing that’s making sense in my life right now… The man sitting next to me is listening to music I don’t like, so I asked him to use earphones… I don’t think he quite understood why I asked him to use earphones because the music is still blasting through his earphones… Do you know how annoying it can be to listen to someone’s music through his earphones even though you are seated like 700 miles away??! AND ITS SHIT YOU DON’T LIKE
Enough bitching…
I want to understand why it is so OK saying feces in a Biology class but everyone around you squeezes their butt cheeks together immediately you say SHIT! I am talking about the people I asked to stop reading at the beginning of this letter and are still reading on, squeezing their butt cheeks together every time I write SHIT!
But this letter is not about SHIT… It is about what SHIT can do? I am not talking about SHIT as a situation i.e. ‘shit happens’.. I am talking about the REAL SHIT, as in dung, ejecta, excreta, feculence, ordure, feces, cow pies, plop, droppings, fertilizer, guano, manure, meadow muffin, ordure, crap… AS IN THE REAL SHIT!
Lets pause there for a second and allow me to build for you a scene…
You probably know by now I went to Barding Secondary School… Don’t bother googling it… You will just end up with ‘Did you mean boarding Secondary School?’ I mean that in a good way… Plus turning up on google search results is too mainstream…
We had no water or electricity for the first 2 or 3 years I was there… We (all the students) bathed in an abandoned gold mine called ONGORO that had accumulated water through the years! Being a small school, in a far far far lands, you have probably deduced that everyone in at least a 10KM radius used the water at Ongoro…
I am approaching the SHIT!
Ongoro – My friends and I. Paradise
By everyone using the water I mean bathing, swimming, cooking washing, SURFING – hahaha. The livestock met at Ongoro everyday for a pint… By the way livestock piss and SHIT where they eat and drink…
Can you smell the SHIT coming…
With the little knowledge I need you to have to understand the weight of this matter, you have probably deduced that niggas caught typhoid… and probably died… But that is not my focus…
Come back to TYPHOID…
Google it… Done?
If you click on the very first result, which is probably Wikipedia, you will see this:
Typhoid fever, also known simply as typhoid,[1] is a common worldwide bacterial disease, transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person, which contain the bacterium Salmonella typhi, serotype Typhi.[2][3]
Let us stop there for a glass of water…
Now I want you to answer this question for me… Have you ever caught Typhoid? If you know you have… It is ok to fall sick… and most of the time, never YOUR fault…
I just want to make it clear how you come to contact with the disease… You get it by INGESTING (not smelling, not through sexual intercourse… NOTHING) food or water contaminated with feces… As in… You catch typhoid from eating SHIT! SHITS thats from a person who has typhoid… Who ate SHIT too… It is a vicious cycle!
Are you embarrassed? Don’t be!
I have caught typhoid numerous times… I think I am even immune to it by now… Blame Ongoro… But I am proud… You should be too…
The first step to recovery is ACCEPTANCE…
You are healed from the second you accept you have been ingesting SHIT!
ACCEPTANCE!
On a much lighter note: I forgot my glasses at home… I scratched 3 cars between my gate and the office… Lesson: Ganda la mua la jana chungu kaona kivuno.
It worries me that I go silent for like a month and you are not phased at all by it… But you know what Doris, I don’t care anymore. If love conquers all, then it shall conquer this. I believe the love you had for me the second we met still lingers in some deep, really deep abyss in your heart… And one day, you will be overcome by it… And you will find your way back in my embrace… Love conquers all Doris…
My jaw hurts like hell! So I googled what might be causing this pain… After extensive research I decided I was coming down with TMD which is just temporomandibular joint disorder. The causes of this disorder are extensive opening of the mouth and vigorous mastication among other manenos… I almost pissed my pants when I saw vigorous mastication… It does not look or sound right! What would I be doing vigorously masticating! Mastication… Apparently its chewing of food and has nothing to do with masturbation! Then right at the bottom of the page was *Might be a sign of heart disease* WHAT THE HELL!! What does your heart have to do with your jaw??! Under the treatment section was *surgery* SURGERY WHERE??? My heart, my jaw? My toe? They don’t tell you. Way to break news to someone who might be having heart problems…
Moving on!
We have new traffic rules in Kenya… I will not tackle all of them… But the most interesting one is the Traffic Department has been abolished… This simply means that any cop Tom, Dick and Kamau can pull you over! As in you might be driving, minding your own business… THEN… A Navy Seal stops you to ask if you have a First Aid box! Do we have Navy Seals in Kenya? Thats not the point… But I hope you can see where I am going with this…
I knew my day was going to be dung immediately I realised I had forgotten my wallet at home! This was yesterday! A bus almost rammed into me at the Chiromo Junction and I had temporomandibular joint disorder… As in all my cards were bad! This was yesterday morning… On my way home at about 8pm, I was stopped by a random cop. He could have been from the National Youth Srvice for all I cared! Before I go on, let me list what I could have been arrested/charged for:
1. I did not have my driving license
That’s it…
The first thing he asks… “Kijana nionyeshe fire extinguisher!”
As in????!!! This man’s priorities were skewed… shouldn’t you be checking if I am licensed to operate a motor vehicle first?! Or maybe just name your price!
I don’t have a fire extinguisher…
“Sina hiyo. Sijanunua!” I answer.
“Hehe! Kijana haujasoma sheria mpya!?” He asks…
Please be advised that in the new laws HAVING A FIRE EXTINGUISHER does not exist!
“Ebu leta liscense” He adds…
I don’t have that either!
“Sikubeba afande…” I answer knowing very well I have 24 hours to present it at my nearest police station.
Did you catch me on the Saturday Nation? Yes…. I shall milk IT!
At this point, I can see another cop walking towards my car from behind. In my head all I can think about is THE BRIBE IS ABOUT TO SHOOT UP!
I hope you can remember I did not carry my wallet and The only money I have is the 10 bob that’s normally under the radio that I use to scratch airtime cards! This law enforcer was not going to get anything more than that coin…
“Nanusa pombe… Kijana ebu toka kwa gari!” He says and yanks out a pair of handcuffs from the back of his pants! Be advised that the fine for DUI is up to 500,000/- Thats my salary like 500,000 times!
I was not drunk… In fact, the last time I took anything with alcohol in it was two weeks before that moment!
This man was out to get me… My heart was somewhere in my shoe… Clearly this man could not see that I was suffering from temporomandibular joint disorder and I needed to get home and rest…
I step out of the car and I am hand cuffed! I had no idea why I was being handcuffed… I really wanted to start a fight but I did not have the strength… Plus I needed a story, so I wanted to see how it would play out!
“Tumekamata mwingine” The cop shouts at the other cop who had stopped to pick up a phone call!
“Andikisha!” The other cop shouts back. His voice was hoarse. Deep and threatening. His voice alone sent shivers down the back of my legs… The movie Nairobi Half Life was in my head… I was going to be shot and a plastic gun put in my car…
This was not the way I had planned to die… Crushing in my private jet on my way back from Venezuela maybe… But NOT NAIROBI HALF LIFE STYLE!
“Sasa tutafanyaje?” The cop asks me… I MEAN YOU HAVE MY HANDS CUFFED>>> WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN TUTAFANYAJE!
But I was humble and powerless… I just looked at him blankly…
“Jina yako nani?” He asks as he signals his friend on the phone to hurry up!
“Ian” I answer…
“Mama yako alikupea jina moja?” He arrogantly asks… A voice told me to bite off his ear and spit it out on the cold tarmac…
“Ian Arunga!” I correct myself!
“Omera Ijaluo (You are a Luo?)??” He asks with a stupid grin across his face…
“Ee…” I answer… This was my way out of this mess…
“Ijaluo makanye? (You are a Luo from where?)” At this point, he is so excited he can’t stand still!
“Alego!” I lie!!! Thats where I went to school…. In Alego!
“Anbe Bwana! Dak niwacho (Me too Man! Why didnt you say so?)?” He continues… “Dewasetiko chooooooon! (We would have finished a long time ago)” He is spitting on my face with every syllable!
“Kare gol gini wa! (Then get this thing off)” I say with a fake smile!
“Rit matin jal cha ema ni gi ofungu! (Chill, that’s the guy with the keys!)”
He says and points at the other cop who is still on the phone!
We talk for a while. Guys driving by looking at us funny. A cop and a hand cuffed man chatting up laughing loudly. The scene was just wrong!
The other cop finally finishes. He gives me a cold look and un-cuffs me…
“Jadha kare gol ane chai wa!” He asks for money for tea without a shame in the world!
“Sani an marach bwana! (I am broke)” I say and get into the car…
“Haya, onge rach! (Ok. No worries!)” He says as I drive off…
I get home and we are having prayers on thanks giving.
I should not be writing to you at this time because I am stealing into my office hours. I am risking losing my job with every key I punch… My love for you is vast… Colossal… astronomical… boundless and capacious! Comprehensive, detailed and endless… Measureless… Not a single word that I have just googled can express these feelings Doris… Can’t you see?
I know what went through your mind immediately you read that title… Sex! Right? Which is not a sin… If you look at it critically, we owe this tiny segment of the house a lot. Considering you were probably made in one and you probably made your children in one or trying to ~ the cycle is vicious!!
Ok. I do not know what I wanted to achieve when I started this post like that!
The bedroom can be used for a number of things… A quiet and private place to rest… A place to sleep… A place to work and or work out… And most importantly… A place to coit! I am thinking if coitus is a noun, then coit must be its verb!
Moving on!
I have a theory on making babies who you want them to be before even you decide to start making them! I am straying from what I wanted to write about but this is important!
I highly believe in orientation: Setting the chill’s mind to a particular career… I am not making sense… Even I don’t understand what I am going on about!
For example… I believe that if you want your child to be a teacher… Try coiting on a teacher’s table!!! (I will be using coit & coiting a lot so it is better you get used to is now).
If you want your child to grow up to be a chef… TRY THE KITCHEN COUNTER. Are you seeing where I am going with this? Probably not!! If you want a wrestler or weight lifter or just a pumped up kid… Try coiting in the gym… As in, give this baby a future right from the beginning!
If you want an astronaut, I suggest you try IT in a space ship, which explains extensively why there are such few astronauts in the world… Not all of us have access to NASA right?
If you want a surgeon, try an operating bed… I could go on and on!
So if your child is doing terribly at school or is just plain annoying as shit… Go back into time…. waaaayyyyy back…. was it in a toilet booth? That man you met at the club who sent your juices rushing so fast you could not wait to get home and decided to coit in the toilet?? I want you to think hard!
I don’t even want to start thinking how pathologists are made… And do you know why we have so many Business students graduating from our universities? Office romance! Coit in a prison cell and chances are you will be working your ass off to bail your child of prison for the rest of your life…
But that’s just my theory… It holds no water… But still, think about it!
Normally when I walk into my bedroom, the first thing I see is the full length mirror… The first thing I see is literally myself walking into the room… This normally triggers a tiny jester in my mind… I burst into dance…. Normally no the dance you are comfortable doing anywhere else… This is supposed to be a private room… So you do a dance that is never supposed to be seen.. EVER!
Most of the time I make my own beat… I then start shaking my body to my own beat…. If it gets deep into my head… I remove my shirt and throw it on the floor.. You know… like a stripper… I HAVE NO CLUE WHY I AM TELLING YOU ALL THIS BY THE WAY!
Then I remove my belt… and swing it violently round my head… Then I stop and change into my pjs… I don’t go too far because someone might be watching… I am extremely sure God is watching so I never want to embarrass myself! This was up until the other day… My normal routine… Take off the jacket… Then the shirt dancing vigorously forcing my eyes to see a six-pack that’s barely a pack!
Then I see something move outside the window…
My curtains were wide open… My house is directly opposite a few houses… You could read the book I am reading from across the court and here I was dirty dancing in front of a mirror being watched by hell knows who!!
So I quickly turn off my lights and draw the curtains, leaving a little space to spy on the spy!
I notice the shadow of a woman… I can tell its a woman because of the hair… It was either a woman or a man in a wig!
This person must have been watching me for years!
My heart was on my lips! I start going through the media files in my brain… How intense have I ever gotten… Did this person have recordings of me doing all this and would one day reveal them to the press one day when I become president??? SO MUCH TO PROCESS!!!
That was all the evidence I had. A female shadow or a man in a wig….. So basically I had nothing! It could have been anyone!
From that day on, I look at my neighbors straight in the eyes! Without blinking or looking away!! The first one who will burst out into laughter is the pervert who has been watching me dance…
Just before I leave… I had a whole post on how Kikuyus nickname themselves. I have sat and thought in length about whether to post it… I would look and sound extremely tribalistic which is not the case! So I have decided to shorten that post and add it on to this post. Having a whole post on Kikuyus will not look good… I am no tribalist and I keep on saying it… I apologize if anyone thinks so after this:
THE POST:
Before I go any further, I would like to make it clear that I am not a tribalist and whatever I am about to write should not be termed as tribalistic. I am a Luo man and I am about to write about a few things Kikuyus do… You know too well that these two communities are in constant quarrels… Worse yet, now that elections are coming up and Luos are calling Kikuyus names and Kikuyus calling Luos names ceteris paribus (spelt it right this time). I am not going to call Kikuyus names… I am going to call Kikuyu them names that they call themselves…
I am going to get into so much shit seeing how many Kikuyu women I know *cough* *hiccup*
I like padded yelo yelo women! In my part of the world, Kikuyu women have that covered! Please refer to this as many times as you can as you read this.
I have never understood the science behind how Kikuyus shorten their names!! You all get a new name all together! Like for example, Muthoni…. The normal way to shorten that would be Mutho, or Thoni or just Ni! Yes? How in the blazes does Muthoni become Soni??? I totally get the ‘ONI part of it but where did the ‘S’ come from??? This would totally put the dichotomous key in problems!
One of my biggest fans is called Soni and she will kill me!
I also have another friend called Wangari… In fact, she helped me with this post! So you Kikuyu who wants to yank my tongue out… Yank Wangari’s out first… She is the disloyal one!
Wangari becomes Kare… Surely!!! Again another letter from absolutely nowhere near the name itself… Totally ignoring that maybe it could be ‘Ngare’ or ‘Wanga’… Wait, I have a feeling ‘Wanga’ means something in Sheng’. No?
Wanjiku. I do not know any Wanjikus. If you are a Wanjiku and we know each other you should not worry, I will probably remember in the morning! So Wanjiku becomes Shiko! One of your ancestors adored the letter ‘S’! It is everywhere!!! If I was the one shortening this name, I would have put it as, ‘Njiko’ or ‘Wanji’ but the latter sounds like ‘Manji’ Which is not so bad considering your name will sound like a famous biscuit brand!
You are the only people in the world who will see Wanjiru as Shiro. Again with the ‘S’!
Wamboi becomes Foi and Gathoni Noni…
I don’t know any more names… I smell a witch hunt after this… So if you want to kill me, my weak spot is my left pinky toe. Shoot it with an arrow and I will die instantly!
I have improved my flower… Not a week has passed since my last letter. Thoughts of you would not let another second pass. I have just read the last letter I wrote to you. I want to apologise for my stupidity. I was not serious about the threats. I made fool out of myself and proved unworthy of your love… I hope this apology finds your heart like you found mine!
I have a head ache. It is not like any headache I have had before. It has been going on for 3 days straight now. It is not strong, so it is very easy to ignore it. My love, I might be dying.
My fuel light has been on since Thursday last week. I am yearning for drama. The thing just won’t stall!
I left the house early today for work… My alarm went off after when I was having breakfast…
On my way to work i meet about 6 traffic cops. It’s a very short distance to work, so 6 is on the higher ide. A random cop is always walking around the Kileleshwa Police station. Most of the time he is buying maize or just dizzily walking around thinking of all his problems… 2 are always at the Chiromo bus stop! These are the trickiest ones. I am coming back to these ones, my story lies there.
Another two random cops are always at the Westlands roundabout, one of them, more often than not, a woman… Spending your day in jail, as you can see, can be arranged with no effort… Lets go back to the two niggas at Chiromo cops stop.
These cops have piki pikis so there is no escaping these ones!
Scene 1 Act 1
I am listening to a gospel CD I just got. Something has always told me nothing goes wrong when you are driving and jamming to some praise and worship jams. That something has been right… Until today!
I get to Chiromo and I am pulled over! Normally when this happens, you quickly go through a list of what might get you into shit* before the cop gets to your window!
I go through my list… I was on the phone, I have no ‘life savers’, I have no idea where my spare wheel is, I have no clue where my driving licence is… I have never had an ID, I am not wearing my seat belt, I can’t remember when my insurance is supposed to be expiring so it might have even expired! And my fuel light is on… I am not sure if that is a crime or not!
As is, I deserve a life sentence…
The man walks straight to my insurance sticker… He looks at it for a little while then walks to my window! My heart is now on the back seat… I am so lifeless!
“Fungua boot kijana,” he spits… I oblige!
I was in the shitter for sure!
The boot slams shut!
Then he comes to my window! I was waiting for him to read me my rights!
“Unafika Westlands hapo roundabout?” the uniform asks with no shame! I am currently in a state that does not allow me to be a bitch… “Ndio boss!” I answer… Praising him!
He walks to the co driver’s side and gets in!!!!
WHAT THE FUCH WAS GOING ON!!! HOW THE HELL DID I FORGET TO LOCK MY DOORS!!!
“Twende!” He orders… The balls in this man were just amazing!
I had graduated from fear to anger! I was about to hit a cop (exaggeration kidogo)
“Ebu rudisha volume chini kidogo!” He orders… I oblige!
My leather bag was placed at his feet… He takes it and places it on the back seat… I was going to ram into the truck in front of us and kill us both! He had reached the nerve that comes after the last one!
I can’t speed because some stupid truck in front of me and I can’t overtake because of… because… Wait, why didn’t I think of this?!
We get to Westlands roundabout and I am pulling over…
“Unafika Sarit?” he asks just before I stopped…
“Yezz!” I respond… “Haiya, tuendelee…” He mutters!
Just before we get to Sarit he spits, “HAPO!” I styop right in the middle of the road as the man ordered…
“Kijana, nani alikufundisha kuendesha???” He asks, disgusted…
I almost answered, “Your mother!”
I could not wait for this man to get out of my car… He smelt of bananas and spat like a platypus with every word he said!
I was right in the middle of the road and I was not going to move until this man came out! I had had enough!
The Platz behind me is hooting senseless! Which was more annoying!
The cop is rooted on his seat waiting for me to drive to the side of the road!!!
“Shuka!” I say! I have no idea how it came out… I thought I had said it in my head! The Platz behind me was stroking my last nerve!
The cop is now looking at me bewildered!
“Ebu nipe lizens!” he says sticking out his hand!!!
He had played a winning card!! I was screwed!
“Toka nikupe!” I was now seducing trouble! I was fuched either way!
The fool comes out! I don’t understand human beings!
Something told me to speed off… I did not!
“Sina hapa!” I answer!
“Nimechelewa. Niende?” I continue!
There was a tiny demon that was just going on and on!!!! I was being an idiot but I could not stop myself! It scared me! I was still in the middle of the road! The Platz behind me had managed to go round me… It stopped next to me and its windows rolled down to reveal an extremely unattractive woman. I couldn’t see her face but her silhouette was just irregular! She drove off…
“Bahati yako… ENda!” the cop spits!! I did not understand this one bit. I was being an idiot and he let me get away with it! Something was not right… There was a warp on the law…
I am growing old… I hope it has hit you that you will lose me one day! The letters will stop coming in and the phone will never burst out in song and dance to my calls again. Ever heard of the saying, “You never know how much you have until it is all gone”? or something close to that… My Doris, you will miss me when I am gone… You will weep on my grave and wish me back… But with all that earth smack on my chest, there is no turning back… This is not a threat… Pick up that pen and reply all these letters… For if I pass on without your letters, I will come back to haunt you, and my dear, you shall write 10 letters on the daily until I am convinced I have read enough…I love you!
The other day at the dinner table I caught my mother looking at me eat with her mouth open, dumbfounded! You know that face your parents wear when you tell them you are pregnant? And you just cleared kindergarten? Yeah, me neither… But this was pretty close!
“What Mama?” I ask…
“You are going to put all that ugali in your mouth?” She answered in a concerned voice, pointing at the ugali I was holding with her eyes!
I looked at the ugali I was holding…
When the food is cooked there is no need to wait before eating it. ~Kikuyu Proverb
It wasnt that big… Ok maybe it was… I have to admit, I was perplexed by the size of that ugali too… It has never hit me before! It was a quantum from a basketball… Ok maybe I am exaggerating a little bit… It was just under the size of a base-ball (this just means it filled my clasped palm).
“If you continue like that your girlfriend will leave you!” My dad says… He too had been watching!
“Look, compare it to this!” He added and pinched a bit of his ugali! His could fit into mine 8 times very comfortably!
I was embarrassed!
“But I don’t put the whole ugali in my mouth! I bite it like 3 times!” I stand up for myself! Which is true! I HONESTLY bite it like 3 times!
“That’s a sign!” My mother says and gets up. She was done eating! She is walking slowly to the kitchen!
“A sign?!” I ask.. “Yes… That something is wrong with the size of the ugali you are holding!” She says. She is in the kitchen I can only hear her voice.
“We have to talk about it!” She adds…
Felt like I was in trouble!!
But you see, I can explain where this BEHAVIOR arose from! Let me explain!
Apart from being a man, I have more detailed reasons!
I went to Barding Secondary School… The only thing in this school were students… You had to imagine everything else…
Let me not hate, I love that school… I mean loved! I hear nowadays it has showers and a new laboratory!
Anyhow…
At Barding we did not have a dinning hall or anything of the sort! We ate under trees sitting on logs… If you all the logs were taken, there were stones… If you did not like sitting on stones, you would eat standing…
Being a school in the middle of nowhere, the food ratio depicted the same… A huge chunk of ugali with a slight idea of skuma wiki with loads of skuma wiki soup! thats on days we had ugali, which will be my point of reference. We also had 2 pieces of meat twice a week… But that is not for today!
Our lunch break or dinner break was just below 15 minutes… Which is just bullshit compared to the amount of ugali you had to deal with (STANDING).
Are you seeing where I am going with this?
In Form one you eat last. Meaning you have even less time to finish your ugali! I know you must be asking yourself why I am stressing on finishing the ugali… Well, in the middle of nowhere, if you get food, you finish it… Anything can happen! So you better have a full stomach so if anything does happen, you have enough strength to walk 15 kms to the main road! Was it 15 or 30… no clue!
So, my point is, under these situations, the ugali you pinch out of the mother ugali should be at least an eighth of it. You save time. Do this for four years and it sticks… continue doing it after the four years and, well, there is no hope!
There is a day my parents came home from shagz – arriving in the dead of the night. Normally, there is food on the table for them – that day, I had finished all the ugali!
As I type this my mother is shouting my name to go down stairs for devotion… This is not normal because it is 9:30pm… You know too well this is a dawn affair! I am going to go down stairs and find out what is going on… Do not go anywhere…
…
…
Just came back up after like an hour.. Nothing serious! Asante Mungu!
Moving right along!
I am running out of things to write to you about! I have been staring at the blinking cursor for almost 10 minutes now! My days were full of drama… Intense drama… At some point in my life I was almost killed by a mob in the middle of town… At another point my brother and I towed a scooter half-way across town… At another point I was running away from the City Council askaris… I have since figured why this is so… I bought a car! All the drama was in the matatus cetaris pharibas. I am sure I spelt that wrong! Its not even supposed to be there!
Please be advised that I am going to milk that point until there is absolutely nothing left… That is me buying a car! I love the way that statement plays on my tongue… That one and, ‘when I was working in the UK’
I still pull that one one and a half years later! EVERYONE who asks me where I have been gets the line smack on their faces! I make it sound like I have just come from the airport… The other day I met one of my childhood friends at the Westlands Oil Libya mini mart! She was buying cigarettes! I was buying gum… The traffic was insane and I was tired of balancing pedals…
“Hi Patricia*” I said with absolute uncertainty because the ass she wielded was not the ass she had 15 years ago… And her mammary glands were, well, mammary glands! These were completely new!
“Ian?” she responded and quickly put her cigarettes in her hand bag like she was hiding them… Clearly forgetting we were not 10 anymore! I smiled!
“Yup!” I answer!
I was wearing my best shirt and shoes so I was sure I was on top of my game!
“Happy new year!” I continue! My father says that a lot so it comes to my head naturally!
She laughs
“You are still funny!” She makes a pass at me…
15 years ago she would’nt have looked at me once let alone make a pass at me… I was the tall skinny kid with shorts that barely covered my thighs while she was that rich spoilt child whose dad and mum lived in Nairobi… We were in Kisumu, so Nairobi was a big deal! Yeah… I said it!
“haha!” I laugh with absolutely nothing to tell this woman!
“So where have you been all this while?” She asks… She woke up the monster! I have this conversation all planned out!!! AL PLANNED FUCKIN’ OUT!
“Nowhere interesting! Been working in the UK. Just came back! Where have you been?” I answer like I was there from 1997! Be advised that I was there for less than 2 months!
Did you notice what I did with my answer? I answered and bounced the question back to her like ‘been working in the UK’ was not that big! HAHAHAHA!
“Wow! What do you do?” She asks… Here is where I was sure I had her by the balls… I am this middle aged, attractive young man who is doing well… Trust me… That is evident from my shirt!
To her question, ‘what do you do?’ I normally answer, “I am a graphic designer!” But when I notice the awe in your eyes by how well you think I am doing… I go like, “I am an artist!” hahahahah! Which I am! I just looking like I earn loads of money from not doing much… I do not by the way… So wipe that look off your face!
‘Ongoro’ – Here I showered for four years straight… I am not in the picture so stop trying to find me!
We are now walking out of the mini mart… Talking about the past! She is walking towards the bus stop and I have to stop her…
“I am parked the other side!” BAZINGA! The little things that excite me…
“Oh, ok!” She answers…
“Where are you headed? Maybe I can…” I start… She doesnt let me finish…
“Town!” She says… “You?” She asks…
“Kileleshwa!” I answer like I own a house in that area…
“You live in Kile?” She asks.
“Yup”, I answer! Intentionally forgetting to mention that I live in my parents house…
We part ways… I leave this woman with such skewed information… I feel bad inside for a little bit… Then it hits me I did not tell a single lie… I put on my aviators and speed off… IN MY CAR!
I apologize for I have been quiet for so long… I know I have failed as a man. But do not be too quick to judge me…I was caught up in so much organizing for the Storymoja Hay Festival… It came out great. It burns me inside that you did not attend… But it is fine my love… It is well! You have never liked books…
I dont know if I have told you this before, but my sister Aba and I sold our first coloured tv for 10 shillings! Ok the idea was mine. I was five and had just discovered that paper money is stronger than metal money! Paper money got you a bag of crisps and chilli with lemon squeezed in it… Ladies and gentlemen, it tasted like heaven! I know you have saliva jetting out of your glands right now!!
I was a hustla, and could not throw away a magnificent chance of getting some paper!
My father had promised us he would get us a VCR the same week he got us the tv… We were going to be the first family with a VCR in my estate… That was excellent for PR and to get girls come over… Do not look at me like that, I was five, not two!!
My father then went to work in Nairobi… The VCR story that week was slowly turning to fiction… I could not take it…
That is when the same man who delivered the tv showed up at our door round about 10 am with a huge traveling bag written, Worldcup USA 1994! He had on a brown leather jacket with the American eagle embroidered on the back with stone washed jeans… I can’t remember his shoes!! But HE had white socks… I should have suspected something… His fashion sense was shit!
He said, and I quote, “Baba ntie?” (Is your father home?)
“A..A” (No) I answer as the older candidate!
“To mama?” (And your mother?) He inquires!
“Odhi tich Mosqo” (She has gone to work in Mosqo) I answer!
Mosqo (Read mosque) was a hood nearby…. Like a 20 minute walk!
“Be unyalo dhi luonge ni akelo video!?” (Can you go tell her I have brought the vcr?)
“E” (Yes) I answer in utmost excitement! Be advised, I was 5 and my sister 4… We had to cross a few major highways to get to my mum’s office… But anything for the VCR!
“Ende e siling apar unyeu go gimoro!” (Here is ten shillings! Buy something) he says in a smile! His plan had just gone straight through…
I took the ten shillings and grabbed my sister’s hand and set out… Destination Mosqo!
Image from google images.
All that was going through my head at this time was the crisps with lemon and chilli… At that time in history, crisps was prepared by the road side in humongous karayas! Then they would be dried and packed in open plastic bags… You would then squeeze your lemon and sprinkle your chilli! It, like I said earlier on this letter, was heaven!
The crisps were sold in 5 bobs… So there was the smallest pack that was 5 shillings… then 10 shillings… the 15 and so on!!
Funny coincidence was, the best crisps vendor in town was set on the way to my mums office… This, I believe, is what helped the tv thief make his escape!!
We got to the crisps place and bought two bags of crisps! The vendor didn’t understand where two kids had gotten all that money from… We sat next to the crisps vendor and ate our crisps… This, was more important than the vcr…
I finished my bag of crisps and asked my sister to share hers… She refused obviously… I would have done the same! She carried hers and said she would keep it until we got home!!
PLEASE NOTE: My sister did not trust the VCR man and suggested she should stay behind just in case… This was pure bullshit! That is what I thought! There was no way in hell I was going to walk al that distance alone!
“Utimo an’go ka? Uwe ng’a ot??” (What are you doing here. Who have you left in the house?” My mother asked in utter shock when she saw us!!
“Ng’amanokelo tv cha! Okello video!” (The man who brought the tv! He has brought the vcr) I answer with pride!
I have no clue what happened the next five or ten minutes but we were home… The tv gone… My mother was furious!!!
We were all over the estae looking for the strange man… All we had for clues was the brown leather jacket and the Worldcup USA bag! People had seen him… We did not find him!!! That was the last coloured tv we ever owned! I mean my last sentence…
I had to tell my sister never to mention at any point of our lives about the 10 shillings… She has been true to date!
A Greatwall black and white tv did not bring a lot of girls home… All of them congregated at my neighbour Alex’s house… They didnt have a coloured tv; they had this huge wooden black and white tv called Thorn! Girls like big machines!
Reminds me of a Greatwall tv joke: Whats black and white a red all over? hahaha!
ps – I bought a car! The matatu category will be a ghost town for a while… But I will take a matatu every once in a while just for you all.
I mean what I am about to say. I know distance weakens faith and trust… And love… Distance makes you do things… Lie, cheat, and lie some more… That, might have been how man was built! The moment we lose something, we quickly find a way of replacing it with something else – all because of the fear of emptiness loss comes with… Distance! I have not seen your beautiful face for almost 8 years now. Vast waters separate us… It kills me… The thought that you might be enjoying the distance crushes me… I forgive you for what you have done and are yet to do… Distance! A man resides in your house… Your neighbor updates me. I am not afraid. The thought of seeing you again sometime strengthens my faithfulness to you. There will be no other. No woman comes close to you in my heart.
What I am about to tell you is extremely important… Man lies! There are careers even fueled by how well one can lie… Look at lawyers, politicians, cobblers!
Don’t try making sense out of cobblers, I couldn’t come up with a third one so I wrote the first thing that came to my mind!
I lie a lot… and I suck at it… I am always busted.
To cheat, you need to be excellent at lying… I am going to teach you how to cheat… Exciting huh?? I love it!
Please be advised that I can’t stand this behavior and anyone caught doing it should be… well… Yeah!
I am going to teach you from true stories of my life… (I can hear teeth chatter)
I was no more than 10 years old! And I was going out with 3 of the sexiest women in my class. This is how to do it…
Let me create a scene…
I sat right at the front of my class… So close to my teacher I could smell the insides of her hand bag every time she unzipped it… It smelt like IT! You all remember IT??? This is not a joke… There was an insecticide called IT! But this story is not about my teachers hand bag… She once called my mother and told her I have refused to learn how to spell because she couldn’t convince me sugar was spelt as is and not SHUGA!!! I still strongly feel that it should be spelt my way… No man can convince me otherwise… But I am an educated man… Education is doing shit in a way someone else thinks it should be done! I gave up in trying to figure out silent letters and how lasanya becomes lasagne! I am losing plot!!! Back to cheating!
One of the women I was dating, Loise*, (not her real name, she might have grown up and become a lawyer!) sat right at the back right corner. She was not attractive… In fact, I didn’t find her beautiful at all. But she was brainy! I love intelligent women! Intelligence is like ‘no underwear’, its like half way there! She taught me how to divide numbers. You need women like that in your life… its not like homework will do itself… That was her duty… Homework. She finished hers and did mine in a different handwriting. I am not a bad person… So in return, I held her hand everyday as we walked home… This, ladies and gentlemen, is the hardest shit to do at the age of 9! But I was willing to do anything to clear school… I held her hand with pride! I finished school by the way!
Victoria* was pretty! As in extremely pretty! But no whiff of wit whatsoever! In fact, Victoria was her real name! Her job was PR. To make me look good. In class 3 looks get you further than grades…. Trust me, IT WILL NOT MATTER IF YOUR GIRLS CAN RECITE THE MULTIPLICATION TABLE BACKWARDS!!! If she is not fly…. It doesn’t fly! This pretty girl coming from a rich family would be a plus… I like rich beautiful girls… Keeping Victoria was a task though. Every Tom, Dick and Harry bought her stuff at break time. My income was limited. I had two companies that did not bring in enough money! MAMA LTD and BABA INC. I had to do better than Tom, Dick and the other one. This called for more money than I had. So I got a stupid friend. A boy I would lie to to give me all his break money! It is not easy tolerating a fool, but my Victoria had to be pampered!
Last but not least, Shyrose Shah. That is her real name. I dont give two squirts of piss using her real name on here! Her family hates black people anyways… AND SHE EATS MEAT!!! Yes Shyrose… I said it! You already know how hard it was for me to put up with this one! Her name went against my Luo normal ways of pronunciation! Sairose Sa! Thats how it would sometimes come out! Her duty was very important… She supplied humongous bags of flavored crisps and chevda! I sometimes used her to supply Victoria’s needs. And just to prove that ‘the way to a man’s heart is through his tummy’ I ended up with this one! Victoria repeated class 3 (was not good for PR) and Loise* wanted more than holding hands… By more I mean doing my own homework… I wasn’t taking that crap!
You must be asking yourself how I kept them from knowing about each other… Simple… Being caught never crossed my mind… My brain was too small to satisfy three women at the same time, figure out how to spell and multiply shit AND START GETTING WORRIED ABOUT GETTING CAUGHT!
So if you are cheating, and you are there thinking about getting caught… You will be caught! Oh yes you will!
That right there reminds me about a story, ‘The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives’ by Lola Shoneyin. Baba Segi has 4 wives! Iya Segi is his first wife who is loud and huge… She is the boss lady and runs Baba Segi’s house. You already know a fat loud woman as a first wife cannot be told! Iya Tope is the second wife. She was forced into the marriage by Baba Segi. She she has nothing much to say! Iya femis is the third wife. This ones heart burns with vengence… That statement will be clear in my next sentence! Bolanle is Baba Segis fourth and final wife. Iya Femi does not appreciate this and works her ass off to see it that Bolanle is out! She works hand in hand with Iya Segi to see this plot through! Bolanle is a threat because she is young and educated thus posing as a great threat to the other wives! Like I said, an educated woman HAS POWER!
Funniest bit of the story is all the wives have multiple kids except Bolanle, who has non at all… EVen funnier, Baba Segi is sterile… Very cool book… was nominated for the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and will appeal to readers who enjoy African literature.
You can come meet the author of ‘The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives’ Lola Shoneyin, MYSELF and other amazing local and international authors at The Storymoja Hay Festival which will be going down from 13th to 16th September 2012 at The Nairobi National Museum.
By now you already know how terrible my spelling and grammar is… I like doing things my way…
When I posted the letter from Dorcas* yesterday morning I had no idea what I was starting. I have been receiving letters from people claiming to be Doris the whole day. Here is another one…
———–
Dear Ian,
I am a very angry woman. Rights now my weave is on the floor because of you. Before we go any further, who is this woman? Please explain it to me who she is. I am mad I tell you. I know I have cheated on you twice before, but you forgave me and we moved on. You said you loved me and you looked to the future with our two kids. The 26 years of marriage is a lie now. They were all lies. Smh.
I knew something was up the moment you moved to WordPress. Long gone are the TypePad days when you could exhaust the entire letter exalting my flawless glamor. These days you just mention it in the first sentence then you go ahead to describe the floozies you had good times with. You are not the man I married any more. When you are not stealing novels, you are fighting in bars. When you are not fighting in bars, you are having paying for sex in Sabina Joy. Instead of minding your business in a matatu, you are busy reading other people’s texts and staring at lady parts. What is with all these matatu business, I thought you told me you were about to buy a car? What kind of husband are you?
I really miss the simple diary you used to write every day. It kept me warm, knowing that I am in your mind wherever you are. Where are you today? Italy? France? Venezuela? Or you are still in your all white party in Hawaii? Never mind. You used to start all of them with ‘dear doris’. These days you are using the sophisticated words to replace mine (WTH is enchantment?). Are they really addressed to me or it is those padded yellow yellows she was referring to?
So how long have you been with that woman (who calls a child dorcas anyway)? Charity begins with the neighbours across the road I guess. I must admit that is very smart. I know you were brusquely in her doorstep telling her that it has been a typo all along. She was too blond to realize that she is not the one. This makes me suspect that there are many more. Hell, you even go for blind dates these days. Shame on you. You are sharing lady parts with 15 year olds. Shame.
I shall move on. Though my love for you is unfathomable, I shall move on. I will discard all those sundresses that you like. I shall resort to flat shoes and throw away those black heels with red soles. I was doing it for you yet you are busy looking elsewhere. Go ahead and chase them. When you fall, you shall find a hard cold floor. We shall not be around. I’d rather marry the maid, she has refused to leave me and the kids alone after all.
The kids say hi. Let’s keep them out of this.
Doris.
Doris are you out there? Email me on arungaian@yahoo.com
I am listening to Dolla Kabbary as I type this. I am a bit excited! The song is ‘Alemo Alema’! It is a big tune!
Now that I have set the mood…
This letter will be more educative than anything else! You know, “Education is key!” My Grandfather said that a lot… Thats why Arungas are dominating the whole place… I am afraid I could have started a small war with my last statement! I know the next thing you are going to ask me is, “do you know Esther Arunga?” Well, not to brag, but yes, I know her, we have met a few times!
Forgive me but my last paragraph; if I continued; would get me into deeper shit, which I am already in…
What I am about to teach you might come out as completely irrelevant to those of you who own cars and scooters like myself… NEWS FLASH: IT IS! So if you have a car please stop reading at this point… This letter is for THE MASOFARAS who ride matatus errrrryday!
Like the title depicts already, I am going to teach you where to sit in a matatu! You might think it easy math… You are thinking wrong, there’s so much science to it. There is so much quantum mechanics to it!.. I hope you are not an idiot who barely passed their sciences in high school… If you are, this is where you stop reading… I would hate to make a fool out of you! It is very understandable and normal to be an idiot… If God could have created all of us intelligent, we would all have jets in our parking lots… Earth as it is, with the few jets made by the few geniuses, we barely fit… Get my flow? Yeah, me neither!
Please keep this equation in mind, we will need it later on:
ÐV(p+1) = Vp + m (u- Vp) /[M – (p+1) m] = (p+1) m u / (M – m)
Where to sit in a matatu:
Before I begin I want you to close your eyes and picture the design of the interior of a matatu… This is very important. Done? Ok let’s go on… and for those of you who didn’t stop to close their eyes… I like you, you are a true sofara… You know the design like the back of your hands!
Aluta continua:
A matatu is completely uncomfortable. The measure of your uncomfort is achieved by the equation below
∑(w-F / cc) x (d/R-J) + H
which is simply summation (window – Fat woman / crying child) x (distance / rough road – jam) + Heat
Let me explain: If you are not seated next to a window and you are sharing a seat with some fat woman who has a crying child and you are traveling a long distance on a rough road with traffic and the hot sun… THEN FRIEND, YOU ARE SCREWED!
I will do this in two parts 1. Seats to avoid completely and 2. The spot
1. Seats to avoid
– There are 14 seats in a matatu (driver and conductor seats included). But cunning individuals in the matatu industry have added a seat between the driver and the co-driver’s seat! AVOID THIS SEAT COMPLETELY! This seat sits right at the flaming stomach of the engine! It is normally hard as fuck too… And most f the time slanting on one side and does not have a seat belt! If you don’t die from the heat from the engine burning your ass, you will fly of the wind shield from the slightest impact AND DIE! It is by far the most uncomfortable and most dangerous seat in the house! Your chances of dying are depicted by the equation below
Σ1-0
Which in simple English means you are dead basically!
– The other seat to avoid are ALL THE SEATS AT THE BACK! This is why: They are very uncomfy because they have the least leg room with massive speakers and spare tires and those protrusions on either side of the matatu where the wheels go! There is barely space for you to sit at all! But this is not the scary part! If a car, lorry, bus, trailer was to hit the matatu from the back… you will never be able to have sex again because of two reasons one: YOU WILL NOT HAVE A BACKBONE two: YOU WILL BE DEAD! Also if you are as tall as me, 6 feet 4 inches (which by the way is 2 inches shorter than Michael Jordan) you keep on hitting your head on the roof… This might cause internal bleeding in the brain and concussions etc
The equation to explain my theory is ΣDAF which is Summation DEAD AS FUCK! Quantum mechanics!
– Some other dangerous seats are the 3 seats behind the driver! The engine again, in this case, comes out as a problem! It is right at your foot. Leg room = zero! In most matatus I have been on, there is a metal railing separating the driver from this row of seats. It the driver was to hit his emergency brake, you will surely lose all your teeth in the blink of an eye! If you are seated in the middle in this case, you will smash into the LCD screen right in front of you!
If you have been following this post, you already know that we have crossed out 7 out of 15 seats… Stay with me!
– The seat closest to the door is also a threat to human kind in multiple ways. The most common one is the makanga (who sometimes stinks like boiled sewer) will forcefully share the seat with you! He has every right, its his seat anyway! You sitting on his seat is referred to in ‘Business Law’ as invitation to treat! The other thing is you are closest to the main door… In case of any insecurity issue (hijack, robbery, rape, murder) that may arise from outside, you will face it head on! Oh, you can also fall off seeing that these matatu doors fall out all the time!
My equation to explain this: (M+1)²-(D+Sb) (which is Makanga +you on one seat) – (door and seatbelt)
– Another obvious seat to avoid is the driver’s seat but i am assuming you already knew that! This one has no equation, it is assumed by the scientists I consulted as a Constant (k).
We are remaining with 4 seats that might be safe! Lets dig deeper and find out if they are.
– The second last row in the matatu is very promising! The 3 seats on this row all have their advantages! The middle seat on this row is the safest in the matatu! Believe it! Its only disadvantage is that it’s on the way! All the three Africans from the back will rub themselves on you on their way out and in! I find random people rubbing against me so FUCKIN’ uncomfortable!
(note: i am already beyond 100 words! I should be stopping)
I find it uncomfortable because there is this one time some guy brushed passed me and left blood and fragments of burnt skin on my shirt! I brushed against the wrong man with a burn on the wrong place!
Back to business… So this is the safest seat. Just pray a fat woman with massive hips is not sitting on your right… She will push you clean off your seat!
– The seat on you left has the same advantages as the one I have just mentioned. It comes to an almost draw between the two. It’s just that the one on the left has a window! Very important factor when someone decides to fart or remove their shoes!
– The seat on the far right on the same row shares all the advantages too except leg room. It has that bump for the wheel. I am sure you know what I am talking about!
– we have only one seat left in this research document! Allow me to state it on my next segment ‘The Spot’!
2. The Spot
The co-driver’s seat! Please be advised that this is MY SPOT! It is not the safest though but definitely the most comfortable for a man my height! Its only disadvantage is that incase on a head on accident, the passengers on this seat rarely survive… You also get to see your death coming first hand, which might be an advantage and not the inverse! Breakdown:
Leg room = 100%
Comfortable seat = 100%
Newspaper* = 100%
View = 100%
And my last equation to explain why this is my best seat, please go back to the first equation I gave at the beginning. It is self-explanatory!
My one and only… My world stops spinning before your beauty!
How was your weekend Sugar? Mine was.. well.. That will be on my next letter. Today its all about Turquoise 2.
If your memory is worth writing home about, you probably remember Women in Turquoise 1! If you don’t remember this letter or you don’t know about it at all, I suggest you go read it here
Lets start from known to unknown…
We already know this woman is my type… Padded and yellow and dresses in fine fabric perfumed with basil and myrrh and lavender and sage and camomile… and and and…
We also know that she has my number! Please note that my business card, at the time, had two of my numbers, one of the two was wrong! The probabilities of her EVER getting back to me had just been halved!!!
We probably know that I AM PRAYING MY ASS OFF FOR HER TO CALL or text… or send a smoke signal!
Our woman waits 8 days to communicate… I was her bitch!!
She calls me on a Monday morning. 10am to be exact! I am in a meeting so I hung up and text back.
“in a meeting. Will call you immediately I am done!”
Please be advised that the 50% chance I had has just been halved… I am doing badly!
I forget about this call completely until a text comes in at about 4pm, “is that meeting long or what :)”
It was clearly a woman… No man sends me smileys…
“I am extremely sorry. Sema?” I reply with skewed interests!
“I am sure you wouldn’t guess who this is :)” she replied>
I was getting bored with this… I was getting irritated. I had deduced its had to be a woman I ‘used’ to know a WHILE back or a woman I met at some club and exchanged numbers… all in all it had to be a random!
Please be advised that if a woman asks you to guess who she is… DONT DO IT! You will be in so much trouble you have no idea… NEVER GUESS! NEVER!
“I honestly can’t guess! Give me a clue!” I text.
“you saved my life :D” she texted back…
She had me with this woman… I had no idea whose life i saved in the past century… And what does she mean by ‘saved life’? was she falling from a cliff and I jumped and held her hand to pull her back up? or I dove in the line of fire…
I had nothing to lose!! I press my ‘FLIRT’ button!
“I saved your life? well, is beautiful another clue ;)” I text
“haha. Maybe!” she replies!! Please not that a woman who is genuinely beautiful will never say it!! She has nothing to prove and she knows it.
I had a situation on my hands… I rush through my history… NOTHING!
“tell me what you are wearing and I will give you three people you might be” I text back.
Please not that I am slowly entangling myself in my own web!! I had just made a mistake I couldn’t correct! Now I had to guess who she was after her next text!
“sky blue skirt suit and red patent heels” she replies… I HAD NO CLUE WHO THE FUCK THIS WAS!! AT ALL!
I buy time as I google ‘patent’
“I need more ;)” I reply
google: Patent leather is leather that has been finished with chemicals that give it a shiny, reflective surface. It is usually black, and has long been popular for dress and …
TO CUT THIS WHOLE STORY SHORT, I couldn’t guess, even after the bra colour!!
“Its Rita. We met at the Spring Valley shopping centre…. Remember?”
She had made the situation a bit tricky… I had to review all the women I met at this place… it was taking a while…
“you almost got beat by that cop :D” she adds!
“hey gorgeous :)” i reply… My heart racing!
YOU ARE GOING TO HATE ME FOR THIS BUT THIS POST IS WAY PAST 600 WORDS AND WILL HAVE TO HAVE A PART 3, which will come out this evening, I promise!!
TRAILER: WOMEN IN TURQUOISE 3 >>> ART CAFé >>> Loresho >>> THE SITUATION JUST GOT HOTTER 😉
I am not well today. I was diagnosed with acute laziness this morning. I am sorry I will not be alive long enough to see your beautiful face again. Doctors here in India say i have 5 months but my Belgium doctors say its nothing more than a month! I am confused my love… confused by the fact that I will miss you until I am no more…
Aunt Sue is here with me and will not stop telling me that I will make it… She prays everyday. I pray with her but I do not shut my eyes… If there is truly a demon in me and prayers will actually send it away, I want to watch it leave…
My Doris, the hours I spend with you in thought is somewhere close to 25 hours a day… I see you when I get up and feel you when I go to sleep… Sometimes I am afraid to fall asleep because I am afraid I might die before I get to start dreaming about you… I am scared of that little gap between reality and dream which I have no control over…
Love, I went to watch a movie today… The Tourist. Heard about it? Its Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. I can see the spark in your eyes already. I am not sure if its gotten to Africa yet though. I went with Ru. I know you are wondering who Ru is. She is this beautiful woman I met sometime in October. I know we haven't been apart long enough to start seeing other people, but sweetheart she is perfect. You told me if I was ever to see someone else, she wouldn't be anything less than perfect… I obeyed that. we have been together 11 weeks now. All I can say is that I didn't know I could love this much. I have told her a lot about you. How we met and moments we shared. She loves you and I hope you two get to meet someday.
I am not ending what we have my Love, for what we have is eternal! I am not trying to say you are not perfect, it is from you that I learnt human perfection. you have taught me how to choose right.
From the movies I walked to work. I saw the house I told you I would buy for us on our wedding day. IfI die before that day my love, I have 100,000,000 ksh buried under our kitchen floor (the cabin in Italy) with it are 5 names of people I trust with my life. Names of 5 friends. One, the first one is an architect, he will help with the blueprints. the second, a pastor, he will pray everything goes well. The third a gardener , who will make sure the compound will always be beautiful when you wake up in the morning. The fourth, a doctor, who will make sure you live to be four times as old as I was and the last one, a personal assistant, to make sure you spend that money right.
I know what you are thinking… This post is not about your gay brother…. the one I don't like… This is bigger than one gay man…. Just so you know I don't like him because he is annoying and not because he sleeps with other men… we are above that, aren't we Chuck?
Moving on to global warming…
1. DEFINE GLOBAL WARMING (2 mks)
I don't know about you but i think the phrase is pretty straight forward… I simply put it as warming of the globe!! Some non scholars might try to confuse you by saying it is defined as increase of the average temperature on Earth. when the earth heats up,hurricanes, draught & floods are getting more frequent… PURE BULLSHIT!! stick to my simple definition!
2. HOMOSEXUALITY. DISCUSS! (20 mks)
Homosexuality ladies and gentlemen, is when a man finds interest in another man(be advised I am talking about men of the same sex) to make it simpler for the kids… it is mmmm…. how do I put this without using the words heterosexual-homosexual continuum??
I don't know what the question wants me to discuss….
Ill say everything I know on this topic….
Majority of homosexuals believe they were born that way… this comforts them!! However, there is no scientific proof of this!! by THIS i mean, born gay!
I also know that a Luo homosexual is called Homondi!!! Get it?? hahaha!!
Please be advised that I am not an anti gay blah blah. This post has nothing to do with what I feel about the gay community!! I am just saying!!
3. HOMOSEXUALITY AND HOW IT AFFECTS GLOBAL WARMING (20 mks)
I will need your full attention here because this is a very sensitive topic that can be misinterpreted!! We earlier saw that global warming is warming of the globe and homosexuality is erotic attraction to members of the same sex and who usually, but not necessarily, engages in overt sexual relations with them… I got you with that one didn't i? =)
If you look closely, you will find that it is a phenomenon that is very tricky and hard to understand…. Come with me through this mystic journey… There is only one explanation… and you must be ver stupid waiting to hear it from me…I cant believe you are waiting for me to tell you how global warming is related to homosexuality!! You disgust me!!
That is all….
4. ARE YOU A HOMOSEXUAL? (58 mks)
Go fu*k a horse you piece of sh*t….
APOLOGIES:
I want to apologise for the use of foul lunguage in this educational piece. I say fu*K in anger just like most of us humans do… If you are 18 years and below, you should be outside making friends and not sit there reading this because iI use words like Fuck and Motherfucker* and Ass hole and bullshit which are not very good for you… Find it in your tiny heart to forgive me!!!
Oh my God, I have missed you so much!! My heart is pounding so hard as i type this… you know when you want to go to the next sentence without finishing the one you are currently in? Yeah… that feeling!!
its drizzling outside, i am at the office now, sitting inside my little office listening to the gentle patter of the raindrops on the roof. The meeting ended early today so I will have time to write a letter or two, yours being one of them.
I love you Doris!!
on to less important things!! MY FUCKIN HOLIDAY!!!
Where do I start…
There's nothing much to talk about really! Spent most of my holiday on the road!! Went to shagz for christmas… my shagz is not anywhere close-as in you can seeUranus very clearly from my back yard!! Its that far!! Its somewhere close to a bordering country… moving on!! So we drove to shagz for christmas… then my grandma passed away… then drove back to Nairobi to prepare for the funeral, then drove back like in 2 days… then we were sleeping in a different town from shagz… and we had to drive to shagz every morning and back !! if you have been following, you have probably realized that we were on the road 30% of the whole time!!
So our holiday plans were cancelled because of the funeral… oh my days!!!
i am getting depressed as i write this, so i will stop here and strat a new letter without funerals and cancelled road trips!!
p.s- i have noticed that you dont know me well enough!! The next letter will help you out!!
I am laughing my ass off and after I tell you why…you will be laughing your ass off too!! HAHAHAHA!! It is a beautiful day…. Truly is!! Not many days start with me ROLLING ON THE FLOOR LAUGHING MY ASS OFF also known as ROTFLMAO in this time!!!
So I was looking for my education papers today morning. You know how annoying it is to look for old transcripts and certificates!! I find it very annoying because I suck at filling my documents!!! They are everywhere!! So some were in this file called LOVE LETTERS!!! hahaha!! Its an old file from high school..and in this file were all my letters from high school….From that file you could follow up on any of my high school relationships from scratch… YET I DONT DO THAT FOR MY EDUCATION DOCUMENTS!!! As we speak, there is absolutely no evidence that i was in nursery school…. No papers, no pictures, no nothing!! But this isnt about my education…this is about my letters!!!
So I will tell you about a few of the women I went out with!!! HAHAAH!!
1. Sheila!!
I met Sheila randomly at a set book play!! I was asleep and she asked me to wake up.. She wrote me a note…see below!!
"Sema ian,
Pliz dont it negatively but pliz wacha kusleep. From Sheila, Reply.
(the girl from Aluor wearing spec*)"
Now listen very carefully…i dont know where she got my name from…wait a minute… i was famous…so yeah i know where she got my name from, maybe the girl seated next to her!! hahaah! So She spelt specs wrong is there even a right spelling… i dont think that word even exists…look it up!! its short for specifications!!! I looked round and not only was she the only girl from Aluor with glasses but the only student in the whole fu*n room!! She wasnt looking bad..just saying!! I reply…
"I wouldnt be asleep if you were sitting right next to me…" hahaha!!! You have to admit i am smooth!haha! My other woman from a different school sees me passing the note and is FURIOUS!!! She doesnt say a word!!!I carry ny seat and sit next to Sheila and we talk through the whole play… I knew I was going to ace english anyway…. My relationship with Sheila didnt last long… Apparently she was threatened by my other girlriend who was bigger than her…. HAHAHA!!She wrote me a letter… I hope you can read…
I Feel like this is already too much for one post!! So ill continue the saga in my next post just now!!!
It gets juicier…..
p.s – you can tell how old i am from the colour of the paper…. i am old Doris…..
So i follow my routine – get to the office, switch on my already on computer because i sneaked out the day before and left my music playing so people would think i am still around!! I then plug my ipod and shuffle my music!!! Be advised that i have 4856 songs in my ipod, so its hard to ever listen to the same song!! So here i am, i press play and the 1st song that comes up is Sing Out by Ron Kenoly!! I have very few gospel songs so never before have they always come up in my play list!! I get excited and sing along happily!!! I sit back and think about the past… how we were forced to sing this song in primary school!!! i laugh lightly!!!
The second song is Celebrate Jesus by Don Moen!! Now something is definitely up! Doris, I have 36 gospel songs out of all my 4856!!! Two songs following each other was some murd coincidence!! I let it slide and Celebrate Jesus!! Its not like its a bad thing right??
Now this next one is scary… the third song that plays is Jesus is the Answer by Yolanda Adams. I am totally freaked out. This has to be a sign!! So I am asking myself all these questions…
Is it something i did?
is it a sign?
i start reviewing my prayers. When was the last time I prayed, and when was the last time I thanked God and when…and when…..and when……
You know how all these gospel songs end in random applause?? yeah, so Jesus is the answer ends in the same…. There is an abnormal pause between this and the next song! I wait!! Just before i hit the next button… Above all by Lenny Leblanc!! I laugh loudly in disbelief and leave my office to fix myself a cup of tea!! I do not stop my music though. I go outside with my tea and randomly pace round the compound….
i lose track of time and get lost in thought… my tea now cold… then someone shouts from the office, "Ian you have very nice gospel music!"
I come back to my office and Lilly of the valley by Forester Sisters is playing!! Just out of curiosity i click Previous just to check what song played before this…..
The Potter's Hand by Darlene Zschech!!
Doris I am scared!!! just so you know Napesi by Makoma is playing as we speak..i mean write!!
It is indeed sad! This what i am aboutto explain…..
First i would like to apologise for having gone so long…I have been on leave and i dont have internet at home!!! But i am here now, so wipe those tears, Ian is here!!!
Where do i start my love?
So we are in the club after a coctail thing at Blanco's last Saturday!! It was my cousins birthday…and it wasnt a coctail thing for me coz i was broke…I sipped on one bottle of soda for almost 4 hours!!!We hit the club at about midnight… 12 friends, two of which were female!!
HERE COMES THE SILLY WOMEN…..
so we are standing in a group…9 men in a group can be pretty intimidaing…and i understand that!! So this BITCH come over and hugs 8 of the nine men….and ignores my presence!!! UWIIII! I was burning!!! She was beautiful, sijakataa!! But lengaing me like that was not acceptable…. she is a friend of the group(not mine) but Lord knows i would give no squirts of piss if i found her dying on the road side!!!! SILLY WOMAN NUMBER ONE!!!
SILLY WOMAN NUMBER TWO i really dont care about coz she had a really big head and was wearing green!! A woman with a big head wearing my worst color is just a waste of energy!!! She spilt beer on my jacket…MY GAP JACKET, the fuckin' smilled at me! That big head clearly had nothing isnside!!! I am so annoyed!!!
Enough about the that night, eventhough there is a 3rd silly woman!she is the silliest of them all! i will not say more about her because he reads my diary!!
In more complicated issues, i am in love with my friend's, friend's girlfriend!!! hahaah!! She is always in a sun dress!! Innocent and beyond! These dresses are always sightly transparent, just enough to let you see blur shapes!! MY HEAVENS!!! i have thus far seen her twice in a row(without my friends friend) and I have promised myself that if there is a third time….my friends friend will not be so lucky!! SO HELP ME GOD!!!
P.S- I DO NOT DO SPELL CHECKS ON MY DIARY…. SO SUCK ON YOUR GRIEF COZ MORE SPELLING MISTAKES ARE COMING YOUR WAY!!!im just saying!
when you walk the same street everyday, same time..you are likely to meet the same people everyday!! Like most people, i use the same street at 8:30am every morning on my way to work. there are a few people i always meet every single day!! most of these people are watchmen, newspaper guys, beggars, hawkers… just random people going by their own businesses!!
there is this old Indian woman i see every morning!by her side was a small black dog!!! She is way past her middle age!! she is always at her gate , seated on a wheel chair at 9am every morning!! Shes ill from old age, but she always smiles back when i smile at her!! For two years, i have seen her every morning…. Shes never said a word except this one time when i was sagging my pants..
"pull up your slacks!!", she shot at me!!! She scared me a lil' bit!!! i pulled up my pants with no hesitation whatsoever!! that was the last time i ever sagged my pants!!!
"thats a good man!!"' she said and smiled!!
our relationship was full of smiles from then on…she never said a word…not never!! She became a part of my life. her smile made my mornings…
its been a month since i saw her last!! her gate was closed and a watchman now stood where she used to sit!! my stomach lurched every time i didnt find her at her usual place. but i told myself every time that i will see her tomorrow!! the hope of seeing her the next morning!Today i saw her black dog where she sat. it lay its head on its front paws and put on a sad face!! i fed it some kebabs in my bag i had carried for lunch…
i have watched enough movies about dogs and their masters and how they end!!i almost asked the watchman where its master was, but a chill ran all over my body before i could say a word
I just hope this dogs master is asleep and will be seated on that wheel chair tomorrow so i can ask her her name…thats all i want to know…her name!!
I have no idea where to start!!! As in im practically squeezing my seat with my ass!!! I dont even know ho w thats possible but i am sure you know what ia m talking about!!!!
the heading means nothing!!! but i promise my next title will do better!!
My birthday was ALMOST the best birthday ever for reason i will state in a short while!!! but be advised, my ALMOST is way above the charts!!!!
i will explain why it was almsot!! i will try to be as brief as possible!!!!
THE BEST BIRTHDAY IN THE EVER IS:
me in a sailor's suit inside a 16 door red hammer with italian red and black leather interior, a FANTA dispenser with 110 litres offanta orange!! that with the following 25 women naked chasing each other:-
Kim kardashian, Jessica aka ms RAbbit, Queen Latifah, Monique, Gabrielle Union
, Taraji P Anderson, Halle Berry, Carmen Elektra….mmmm Miranda Kerr, Salma Hayek, Christina
Aguilera,Megan Fox, Buffie the Body,Pamela Anderson,Vida Guerra ,Heidi Montag, lil Kim, Christina Millian, Eva Longoria, Victoria
Beckham,Petra
Nemcova, Tara
Reid , Megan Good, Carmen Garcia, Lindsay Lohan….
i dont know if those are 25, im too lazy to count but im sure you get my drift!!!
now let me tell you what went down….ok this is hard, im trying to filter shit to say and im ending up filtering everything!!! THERE WAS NO CAKE!!! thats for sure, then again it depends on what you consider cake!!!!
i didnt take any form of alcohol!! But today at the office during a meeting, a double tot glass fell out of my poket and violently rolled roud the room!!! LIGHTING!!! you know those Bailey's double tot glasses that light up??!! YEAH, now no 1 believes i dont drink…. SHOWING UP LATE OR NOT AT ALL would be fine..but tot glasses falling out of your pockets is just too much!!!or so i think!!
i drunk a total of 16 FANTAS, friends didnt mind buying em!!!i was on the floor crawling!!!i was drunk silly on sugar!! i had silver stars all over my body when i gat home!! the stars were on the floor and table tops at the club i was in!!! i swear i cant remember how i had em on my back and thighs!!!
and I STOLE THAT TOT GLASS!! I REMEMBER CLEARLY NOW!! i think!!!
i remember when we were getting back home, i couldnt hide the tot glass coz it had gone wild on me!! it was blinkin blue lights violently!!i wrapped it like i needed it kept warm!!
before we went out, my friends n i went to eat at MOBIL westlands…the place was crawling with teenagers in falling pants an small shots and bras for tops n YOU KNOW WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT!!! at that momennt it hit me HOW OLD I WAS GETTING!!!
im shopping for a gift for my big bros birthday on the 17th of this month!! i have tried asking him what he wants in secret ways…all i have go is a pair of shoes that cost 16,000 KES ….. IM FUCKED!
i met and fell in love with a random lady in the matatu i took to work today!!! She wasnt BIG like i like them!! I just felt like falling in love and i did!! i didnt get her name or number so this feeling is considered NULL!
I feel like pissin so bad!!!
MOVING ON…..
we havent talked today coz ive been like super busy!!! AND YOU KNOW IT! you would believe me when i say "I WAS WORKING LATE" coz literally im working on you!!! Why dos that sound ike having sex!!! I dont have internet at home so this office is the only place i can be with you!!! So when i say i will be working late, you should be clapping with excitement!!
Doris, there is something i have always wanted to ask you. Us dudes dont understand a lot of things about women!! I mean, when yes mean No and vise versa….. and when they are mad at absolutely nothing!! And when they pull back when kissing you just so you can want more…YEAH WHATS WITH THAT !!?
but thats not what i wanted to ask….DORIS, i have never lied to you now have i?! I know you love me very much and wouldnt lie to me either
ARE DOLPHINS GAY SHARKS??? ok ok im sorry- its not the time for joking!!
Ok dont laugh ok? PROMISE!!!
IM I FAT??
THIS WILL BE THE LAST TIME I TALK TOO YOU THIS YEAR MY LOVE…. i will be very busy and will not be able to talk..not until sometime next year…
ahh, come on Doris dont cry… its only till next year…..
OH n by the way- ITS MY BIRTHDAY TOMORROW!!! im turning 72!! and i still live with my parents!!! i lied to some lady at my office that i have a son!!!! SHE BELIEVED ME!! THATS WHEN IT HIT ME THAT I AM GROWING OLD- you know somethings up when guys start believing shit like that!!!
i am not turning 72, i lied.. OF COURSE I LIED! and if you believed that then you are just sad!!
Doris!!?WHERE ARE YOU GOING!!!? YOU KNOW I DIDNT MEAN THAT!!! COME BACK>>> PLEASE!!!
i am turning
OK I GOT TO GO PISS LIKE RIGHT NOW!!!! gimme a sec!
AGH! someones in the bathroom!!
I am turning 23!! This will be the only time i tell the truth about my age!! If you lose count, you will NEVER hear the truth!!!
I have lied to enough women about my age…AND I AM A DUDE!!! A chic in my body would probably say she is 12!!!!
i was born SEPTEMBER 4 1987 to my loving parents baba n mama!
i remember my very first call….. now when i think about
it, its HILARIOUS!! but back then, it was one big disaster…
The year was 1999!! the month September… I ALREADY
LAUGHING!!! I had just watched a movie called THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS and
in that movie i watched my 1st phone sex!!! in the movie the whole process
worked so well…the nigga didnt even try!! immediately he hangs up there is a
knock at the door of his office.. AND WALAAA!!! the woman was at the door
holding a cell phone!!!
i ran to my parents room and forced open my dads old
briefcase and took a few coins that no one seemed to care about…
i ran to the phone booth reciting what the guy sed in the
movie!!! MISTAKE 1
i filled the coin slot with a lot of coins… this was going
to be recorded in HISTORY!
i called Cynthia!! she was the only chic i knew who had her
own phone in her room!! SHE HAD A WHOLE LANDLINE FOR HERSELF and us we dont
even have a house phone!!! MISTAKE 2
the guy in the movie didnt say hello, he started by asking
" WHAT ARE YOU WEARING"
so i asked Cynthia WHAT SHE WAS WEARING!!!MISTAKE 3
"what are you talking about?" she asked!!! i totally forgot the rest of the conversation i heard in the movie….
"your dress, i said!!" i was on auto pilot!!!! but then again it was me…
"is it red?!!" i asked!!!
Meanwhile some woman is waiting for me outside the phone booth!! looking at me funny!!!!
"no!! its blue!!!" she said still confused!!!
THE SKETCH WAS BACK IN BUSINESS!! plus the conversation had started coming back to me!! in bits though….jumbled up bit!!
"whats inside the blue…is it you!!" MISTAKE 4
DORIS PLEASE NOTE THAT I WAS 12!!!!
i wasnt in my office so i really wasnt sure how this was going to end up!!!
she didnt answer!! the phone had alerted me that my balance was 4 shillings!! i had to move fast!!
"bath tub or counter!" i said….
please note that i had no idea what i was talking about… but whatever i sed, i had to finish by saying, "i will see your sexy self later!"
"young man i will hang up this phone now- never call this number again! whoever you are i will find you and i will kill…." i hang up the phone so hard!
i knew that voice!!! HER MUM!!! i still dont know how much she heard!!
i was in terror for the next few days!!! i was going to be killed!! i faked a headache and didnt go to school for two days!!!!
let me explain the weight of the matter:
Cynthia's mother was my mother best friend!!! She was always at my place eating biscuits and sipping tea!! her husband was huge!!! She pinched me one time when i broke her car side mirror!! Cynthia was in my class, so this issue ha d very high probabilities of getting to my class teacher!!! then my big bro would be called…. MY BIG BRO IS A SHARK IN THE WATER AND IM LONG JOHN SILVER!!!! as in i was in so much trouble………..
when i went back to school everyone was talking about a call Cynthia had gotten….
MY HEART WAS BEATING LIKE THE TOM TOM DRUMS OF WEST AFRICA (a litlle primary feel to it all)
later that day Cynthia came and told me all about the PHONE CALL!!! She had no idea who it ws!! the story going round was so exaggerated!! ATI I WANTED TABIA MBAYA!!!! WHARRRTTTTT!!!!
anyhu i acted like i 'couldnt believe'….. i was so shocked!!! hahaha!!
i didnt use real names!! and Cynthia, if you are reading this, it was me…AND YESI WANTED TABIA MBAYA!!! =) i miss you!!
Yesterday night,i listened to he funniest conversation ever, between my small bro and his girlfriend!! Dont get me wrong, brotha had his game on!! He had his voice tuned too!! He sings bass….
( JUST SO YOU KNOW HE WAS 1st AT THE MUSIC FEST SOLO THIS YEAR)
so you can imagine his voice in the middle of the night!!! its sounds like that guy for boyz ll men who keeps on talking…. he waited until i fell asleep- OR SO HE THOUGHT!!!
oh did i tell you he is 15??
He didnt have much credit thus the timing (12:18am)!!! The plan was to get the chic when she was tired thus very little talking!!! it works, even for me….
"HelloWWWWW" he said…. i almost shot out of bed!!!! ive never heard that voice IN THIS HOUSE!!!!!
his words were calculated!!! it was supposed to be hello, how was your day and just wanted to say goodnight!!!!
SHORT AND PERFECT!!! but this was only going to work if the chic was asleep and woke up or was almost sleeping!!!!
HIS GIRLFRIEND WAS NOT ASLEEP OR GETTING READY TO DO SO!! MAJOR FAILURE!!
i could sense tension in the room when the voice on the other side hallad back "heyyyyyy sema. imagine we had to go shopping at 11!! my mom forced me…."
PLAN B!!!!!
The chic couldnt stop talking….
because he didnt want to look bad, he acted tired and repeated "just wanted to say good night!!" over and over again!!!!!
i was laughing in my duvet so hard i almost tore my diaphragm!!!!
i cant remember if he hang up by himself or the service provider help him do it….. all i know is that he didnt have a plan B, and plan A was a rumor!!!!
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA!!!!!
talking about phone calls, let me spice up things a little bit… lets talk about PHONE SEX!!
now calm down Doris…. i can already see your pages sweating!!
be easy!!
my next story is very LOOOONNGGG!! so i will not say it here.. instead i will post it in my next post!!
my day is not goin on well….. woke up feeling like shit!!! Thing is i dont know wats wrong! i have this dangerous mind!! i can see things before they happen!! i take that back…i can feel thing before they happen, and this ladies and gentlemen. is that such feeling!! i woke up as usual, went into the shower, turned it on and just stood there soaking!!! it wasnt long before my mind drifted!! for more than an hour i just stood there!! trying to figure out what it could be!!! Trying to figure out something bad thats to happen is not very easy!!
by the time i realized what was going on round me, the small room was already covered in steam!! i didnt come up with anything!!!
on a normal morning i match my clothes on my bed before i get into the shower!! I get a shirt, then a trouser…i then lay different ties against the two….. i get a pair of boxers and socks!!! then have my shoes cleaned!!! from the shower i oil up, deo up and get into my clothes!
it wasnt like this today!! i woke up and went straight into the shower!! i came back and picked a random pair of boxers, comfortable pair of pants and a polo shirt! i wasnt going to work!!! THIS FEELING IS THAT SERIOUS!!!
i got back into bed to try and figure shit out!!!
IT WAS MIDDAY!
i took some money and walked out of the house in sandals like i was going to buy credit or bread (on a normal day, my mother prays before i leave and says "may the Lord go with you!")
i walked slowly to the bus stop!! the urge to turn back was ravishing!! but i didnt look back… not once!!!
i met a random lady on the mat i took!! she couldnt stop asking questions!!!
"where did you get your chain?'
"where is multi choice?"
"are you going to work?"
"do you like my suit?"
"i am going for an interview!!"
i just looked at her- blankly!!! she was lucky she found me on a bad day!!
i get to the office and everyone is looking at me funny!! i sit at my desk and check my mail….my personal mail has 2 new emails!!! which is fine!! my work email has 3 emails!!! All are briefs for new design material!!! Thats a lot of work!!
i am working on the designs as we speak …. waiting to see what will happen!!!
p.s- the only thing thats still putting a smile across my a face is my new gold chain that my brother gave me this morning coz i was feeling this way!!! it was 10,000 bob!!! sigh!!!
one of my friends has just called me!!! I last heard from him in form 3-many years ago!! He had a problem!! His girlfriend is cheating on him!!! Its weird how this issue is what breaks the silence between us!! I dodnt know what to tell him.
"leave her!!!" i said!!!
ladies and gentlemen,theres nothing i hate more than a cheating girlfriend!!! it grates my balls!!! And if theres anyone out there who is reading this and you being cheated on and you know it- FUCKIN END IT!! im sorry for cussing!!!
i suck at advising people on relationships, i dont know why they keep coming back for more bad advice!!! i put together 4 stories! among these 4 women, who would you go out with? all 4 have their own disadvantages and and advantages. for each one, is a different man who wants to go out with her but are not sure- they asked Dr. Sketch!!!!
1.THE BEAUTY
shes very beautiful. naughty and knows how to dress. knows her conversation. high maintainance. shes tall and almost done her 1st degree. shes definitely what you want your friends to see you with. she knows her designers. she drinks white wine only. Shes going out with another man though!! rich and white!! financially has the situation but is never home. she sleeps in posh hotels!
she dances like a queen. no major moves but her HIPS DONT LIE!!!!
my advice: SHE WILL BREAK YOUR HEART
2.THE YOUNG
shes 18! Honest, short nd in charge!! Shes beautiful too but not anywhere close to THE BEAUTY. she just started university! She talks about family a lot. not just family, HER OWN FAMILY!!! shes a wife. she goes out, but not often. she likes to talk! shes new at this relationship thing!!! she cant dance! doesnt cheat.
shes the young one!!
my advice: TRAIN HER HER TO BE YOUR WOMAN. SHE WANTS TO BE WITH YOU!
3. THE EX
still in love wit her! beautiful, brains and a smile to match!!! she broke up with him but he wasnt done loving her! Still friends, they text every so often, he calls when he thinks of her, thats almost all the time. he still says goodnight like he used to. he needs another chance coz without her, his world is ash and sand! She reads her Bible!
shes the angel he is waiting for…
my advice: DONT STOP LOVING HER. KEEP A LIL LOVE FOR HER SOMEWHERE IN YOUR HEART. NOW SHOW HER YOU LOVE HER! BRACE YOUR HEART FOR ANYTHING!
4.THE BEAUTIFUL STRANGER
hahahahaha!!! This is my problem!! me am always loving strangers!!
Beautiful. Brains. Shy. sexy laugh!! We have never met! Shes never around!! she goes to school in a different country. i ahve taken "Absence makes the heart grow fonder' to a whole new level!!! my heart is VERY FONDER right now!! haah! i dont kno much about her, but i know what i need to know already… SHES a beautiful, intelligent woman who listens to Atemi!!
My advice: ASK FOR ADVICE!hahaha!
BONUS: THE SECRET
she shows no emotions. its hard to know what she thinks or wants…shes been a friend very long!! she knows his family. shes loved by his family. He loves her but has never said it!! He knows who shes sleeping with!! He is confused! Shes single! He wonders how many things he doesnt know about her!! He is scared!
my advice: WE ALL HAVE SECRETS!! BUT BE WARNED, ONE OF HER SECRETS WILL KILL YOU!!!
have you ever thought of how different life would be if Adam didnt taste that apple!??
If he could have just said, "get away from me bitch!!' or "imma tell on your ass!!" and run and tell God!! if Adam wouldnt have taken that bite, the following things would be different!!!!
1. WE WOULD STILL BE NAKED!!!!
imagine 4 million naked human beings!!! AND THATS IN NAIROBI ONLYYY!!!! im seeing myself walking into Black Diamond, the club is packed!!! all these naked frames dancing!!! THEY DONT EVEN KNOW THEY ARE NAKED!!!! you should see my face!! im so very excited!!
I woulda prayed to God to give me just a little knowledge above the rest!!! Id be the only person aware of all the nudity going round!!!!
Im seeing myself at work!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! OHH MY HEAVENSSS!!!!!!
im seeing myself in a matatu…. "moja kileleshwa!!!" HAHAHAH!!!
im seeing myself in class!!!
ADAM YOU MESSED THIS UP!!! SHAME ON YOURSELF!
2. BESTIALITY WOULD BE RAMPANT
i thank you adam for taking that bite!!!! Im trying to imagine man and all the animals in the world living in HARMONY!!!! I vcant even think it!!!! dinosaurs, lions, aligators….. ARGHHHH!!!!!
this is the point i wish he swallowed thi thing whole!!!!!
3.NO 10 COMMANDMENTS
now this i like….. coveting your neighbors wife would be okay!!! i would walk round the neighborhood just busy COVETING!!!! HAHAHAHAHAH! i am good with all the 9 others though!!!!
4. JESUS WOULD BE OK
if you have watched PASSION OF CHRIST, you and i both know how badly OUR FRIEND was whooped!!!! even Kenyas GSU dont go that hard on a brother. we wouldnt have sins to be forgiven. Jesus would still have been born from a virgin mother….He would have still been a carpenter…..but not beaten up for our sins!!!!
I HOPE YOU ARE FEELING GUILTY ADAM!!!
5. I HAVE JUST WATCHED THE TRAILER OF PASSION OF C. AND IM SHAKING MY ASS OFF!!!! ADAM THIS ONE IS ON YOU!!!!
6. BEING LAZY WOULD BE FINE
one bite and we have to plough the land for food!!!!!! if i was adam i would have fenced that tree with 15000volts of elctric fencing!!! an put 15000 lions to guard it!!! EVE ALSO IS ANOTHER JINGA!!!! NKT!!! who sent her there!!
7. WE WOULD ALL BE LIVING IN ONE ESTATE- EDENSVILLE!!! ALL 3 billion of us……… and on the gate, a huge sign,
Dear Doris 