Wednesday 10 February 2016

Never Google Your Symptoms

Its Sunday morning and you wake up to a stiff headache. Then the events of last night light up your morning in the same way the sun does, only that it derives its tenacity from the yester. The bladder is abnormally full and you involuntarily step with a cat’s stealth, out of your bed to the washrooms (a leafy term I bet). There you whip out your willy (the one you’ve pointlessly doubted its size) and alas there isn’t that pleasant feeling as the liquid excrements gravitate to a God knows where. Instead there’s a painful sensation and the colour of the liquid isn’t normal either. You hold back some of it and make a painstaking retreat to your cozy bed. Your mind has run multiple sprints when you reach your bed.

The templates of the previous outings begin to unfold haphazardly in your mind, with an uneasy sense of humour. It jeers silently. It castigates. It rebukes. The blinding light your cheap phone produces gives a strange sensation as the eyes adjust to a sudden exposure to a copious amount of light. A missed call and a message confront you. She just said goodnight after you failed to pick her call. It doesn’t matter to you because it doesn’t seem to matter to her. You recall the previous encounters with her, and you are convinced she’s the cause of all your impending tribulations. Too much sugar cause diabetes, you think, the comfort offered lasts barely a second before it throws you back to your hell.

For the first in your life you are thankful that opera mini is located ‘so far away’ on your Nokia phone. It’s worth the myriad procedures you navigate before you finally lay your eyes on the best invention on earth probably since gravity, had it been responsible for people falling in love-Google. How it has churned out lazy literates you included and how many brag of that degree that bears the hallmarks of Google. Your certificate could have a Google logo watermarked (KEBS should check on that). Now you are here, conjuring up terms that would give a definite answer. Pain when you (you check yourself) and type urinating. A million plus one results pop up and you quickly click the first one. The ailments you could be suffering from ranges from gonorrhea, syphilis and all those STIS one could think and associated with pain when urinating. Reality hits you where it hurts the most and you suddenly prefer a wound because it would heal in some way sometimes to come. This doesn’t heal, doesn’t abate. Nags so unpleasantly in your head. Then they say you must seek medical attention as quickly as possible and your partner too.

Hospital. The last place you want to be. The distinct smell takes over the room, the kind that draws lines of death all over, only they aren’t straight. Woe unto you if the first story you heard involving the hospital was when somebody died. Then you turn in your bed and begin visualizing you and the doctor, preferably female. Your name is called out loudly by the doc and the temptation to look around, hoping desperately that there’s somebody you share a name in the room. A louder call tells you otherwise and you drag you thought-filled self to the doc for diagnosis. She greets you and make a feeble attempt to respond.

“What’s wrong with you today?” she asks like you’ve always made a visit to the place. A tone of familiarity creeps out of her puffy lips, stern eyes deflating your inexistent ego. You summon courage from your inner self even with the knowledge that it isn’t there, only the fear of dying forcing your lips to part inaudibly.

“I experience pain when I urinate,” was it easy as that? You wonder with triumph, the kind synonymous with Arsene Wenger when his team scores an equalizing goal in the dying minutes of the game.

She asks the day it the problem began and also wants to know if there’s any discharge. You answer all quickly and she scribbles as you stare at the stethoscope dancing rhythmically to her heaving bosom. She doesn’t look at you. She doesn’t ask any more questions, those that you actually expected. Did you have unprotected sex?

You scan around the room and your eyes are obstructed buy hazy figures, dancing like shadows on an uneven ground. The water bottle at the corner, the curtains, and the stack of files on the doctors table….everything dances to one tuneless song, except the doc. All her features stand still against the odds steeped against it. She seems half human, not scared by ailments that ordinary mortals bring to her table every single day. You think experience has taught her how not to give a damn. Your mind takes you back to Google, how to not give a f@#k about ailments……

“Take this to the counter,” she looks at you sternly like she is about to say go home and get well nigga.

A few minutes later you prance out of the clinic. The only disadvantage is that you have been prescribed drugs that demand you to abstain from alcohol. And you are pretty sure from that very moment that impromptu alcohol bingeing sprees will thrown around by your friends as if to celebrate the incapacitation of your liquor appetite. Two steps from the clinic the phone rings and its one of those drinking mates…God let me get well now, you mutter words of prayer and its seems the only time you’ve genuinely prayed.

“Ng’ombe ii!!” A voice reverberates through the earpiece as you turn the corner. It’s a happy one, a sign of good tidings. It’s a voice that creates suspense and you’ve almost always had good moments.

“Sema gunia ii,” you respond gingerly.

“Sportpesa nayo. Lets meet in the evening we do justice to this windfall.”

Windfall?! Jonte is fond of exaggerating things. In a world where he greatest stories are those that a team(enter Arsenal) messed up a bet where one staked as low as 10 shillings and expected to reap 66799 shillings, Jonte is legally allowed to lie though it’s a trait of his. You will not be surprised if you find his phone number saved as Jonte Mwongo in the phones of people close to him.  It doesn’t matter to you. You have been given a temporary restraining order from entering liquor zones. You are like a twelve year old once again, trying to enter a bar.

You trace your steps back to the lecture room. Everything appears distant within your sight. All those sumptuous behinds do not hold the promise it often has, albeit awhile. You take the stairs and for the first time you wish the building had a lift. You recall having seen one and you rubbish it because had it been functional it would have been reserved for the vice-chancellor, even when his office isn’t in that building. The class is half empty, considering you left it full. A group of your friends are huddled in one corner arguing wildly about football. The pretty girls are taking selfies and others are about their own business, perhaps wondering why they came all the way from Githurai to idle.


No alcohol. The brown sachet says proudly. You toss it into your bag and wander off the places you’ve had the most beautiful drinking expeditions. You remember that day when you failed to climb the last stare to your room. You remember that day you woke up in the most unfamiliar place. And you resign with a sigh, telling yourself that today would have been another one of those beautiful moments…

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