A man’s guide to great make up for the ladies who need it most

Back in high school, there was a guy who had huge pimples dotting prominently on his face. This was one of his qualifications though. Another one was his characteristic bad handwriting. Matter of fact, that guy wouldn’t even draw a straight line with a ruler. He was himself with it. We never saw him trying to be anything else, because we never allowed ourselves to think of him as ugly. One day when we opened school, he came back with a pimped face which was basically elastoplasts that held cotton wools at all strategic points where pimples had pitched camp. After a few weeks of this complex medical procedure, the pimples successfully managed to be resistant, and grew even bigger.

A few years later, which is today, we are looking for ladies to make wives. But left, right and centre we are accosted by ladies who have exaggerated their looks, modified some of their features and hid some with moulds of makeup. We, right thinking men, have a few words for these efforts: it’s disgusting (sometimes), needless, and boring. It is not that we do not want our ladies to look beautiful, aiming for perfection is boring. As you walk around town, you encounter some badly drawn eyebrows, some which seem like a toddler was doodling with crayons then something better beckoned its attention. Often you want to laugh really hard, without being seen as a lunatic. The best option of course is to make a note to laugh when you get home later in the evening.

Why would our ladies be so focused on make-up anyway? Ninety percent (the rest are retarded) of guys do not care whether your face looking at par with those imaginary standards that you’ve set, do not care whether you eyebrows are shapely or not. Most of the times men ninety percent of the men are interested in the fact that you have a vagina, anything else is an add on, which doesn’t in any way disqualify the first fact.This brings me to the first make up guide; don’t give darn, because nobody does, unless they belong to the ten percent I mentioned above. Spend the time you would have used to make that face doing something useful with your life like reading a book to improve your intellect.

The second guide is referenced in the bible. I do not the extent to which a woman looks like god, but I think they fairly resemble. I should imagine how pissed off god is when he looks down at his creation and sees people modifying themselves. Personally I would be mortally enraged. I guess that’s why he sends morons to date these people if not psychos. And then these women will bombard us with insightful information such as men are dogs, or more scientifically, all men are the same.

If you posses a substantial amount of grey matter in your head, then you should have known from the beginning that the message I am trying to pass is; stay make-up free unless you are dating a moron, which by far that’s allowed. Also, if you are in the showbiz business it’s perfectly allowed to smear your face with those carcinogenic substances because the truth is you are trying to impress the other ten percent of the population. And for that matter, many of us have stopped watching news because all there is, is an aesthetically modified human being, which can be achieved if you do the same to a monkey, reading news. 

Things to do before 8 o’clock in the morning

It is saddening, that nowadays these socialites are not releasing nudes, or some wannabe socialites have theirs leaked. We the people, who do not have blue blood coursing through our veins have to contend with the frustrations, sometimes drinking cheap liquor when those bets go through, just to have better conversations with our demons.

Because we have surrendered to our fates, being just statistics every five years and sometimes ten years, we hold on to the hope that it may be so for the next fifty years, although it largely depends on people’s plans. Personally I plan to live right to the edge of life, all factors kept constant, and dying peacefully at state lodge in Mombasa, preferably at the gate.

For people like us, now that politics has cooled down, weekdays tend to be long drawn and extremely boring. So boring that we begin reading terms and conditions on websites and even manuals to things just in case our fates are hidden there. but the words written there are a bunch of unintelligible phrases which state things such as: the terms and conditions are subject to change, without any notice, as we deem fit. Of course they have to explain how ‘we’ is used and ‘user’ which in this case is the person who may not have time to read the instructions. That’s how we fill our weekdays.

You should be wondering how we use our mornings. As people rise and go to the various places of work, which we know beyond any reasonable doubt, that they hate with passion, we too have things we do before 8 o’clock every single day. We hate the boredom too, so we have to practice hating it even better than those who hold on to jobs they completely do not like. Just in case they wake up one day and decide to steal the printer, and in the process get summarily dismissed, we have to practice how to fill these positions through the following ways:

Hitting the snooze button

We have discovered, through relentless scientific research that the origin of the snooze button is in nature. It began with the cockerels. Depending on the cockerel’s health, and sometimes the availability of hens (the research established this) it crows endlessly after five am, at completely irregular intervals until the cockerel can spot at a hen to mount. What do we do now that we are in the city? We have phones that can act as cockerels. So we do set our alarms at 6 am in the morning and snooze until we doze off and wake up at midday. Thereby we proceed to get something to eat and continue with our research to establish how long someone can live if they sleep for approximately 19 hours.

Checking on what’s going on social media

On occasions that we feel sufficiently philanthropic, we log into social media platform where we contribute to likes and double taps on slay queens photos, as well as they clichéd philosophical musings when some sponsor somewhere drops dead due to heart failure. We condole them with messages such as ‘you deserve every bit of misfortune,’ although we are smart enough not to post them. We also know that people who have jobs, as part of their job descriptions, log into social media sites to check how the lives of those high school or campus classmates are faring. Often, it’s a girl, they’ll be posting pictures about their times in Diani, or some other exotic places especially where politicians are discussing matters of national concerns such as vetting nudes.

Don't go far off

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because -- 

because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station 
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?
Pablo Neruda

Why starve when you could eat pizza?

One a dusty road one fine evening

The wind blew dust into our eyes

But our ears were pricked by the sound

Of Justin Beiber belting about love

About starving, about being homeless

And being broke

I must have thought I was your platinum

Your gold-your everything

But at that time the world looked beautiful

From below and you preferred it

Because there was no viable option

Because you hadn’t began asking yourself

Why starve when you could eat pizza?

Why watch the stars from below when you

Can almost reach it and touch it?

And the answers you conjured up

Revealed that we didn’t make sense anymore

BACK TO BEDLAM

The cream painted wall looked alluring

For into it I stared into my future, or rather hacked

Into what would have been then, just as is

Then, a projection of nothingness, sobriety

About she, nothing but a vulture, waiting for me to F up

THE FLOWER IS TOO LAZY TO BLOOM

Peer into my soul with those lifeless eyes

Look at how I am floating in the abyss

Do you see the valor in my eyes-do you?

I will guide my form in this abyss of your oblivion

For you are a flower that’s become too lazy to bloom

Why feminism is a big farce

If you take a brisk walk into the distant past, you will meet your great grandfather obliviously enjoying the setting sun outside a newly built hut. It is crisp. In mint condition. It belongs to his third wife, or fourth, or fifth. Does it matter? Absolutely not. He has on a leopard skin, covering just his loins. Children play around naked, as the older boys drive the animals in their respective shades. The day is breaking.

During those days, there was order and everybody had their distinct roles. The women bore children and reared them; the men protected and provided food for the family. The children on the other hand concentrated on being children, until they came out of age, where the boys got circumcised and became men, and the girls got married off. Occasionally, sacrifices would be offered to appease the gods when a villager commits a serious offence. Other than that, nobody lacked anything.

Then the white man comes, inspired by the conquests of Alexander the Great back in time. He declares that Africa and Africans are indeed backward. The industrial revolution had depleted their resources and they were out and about shopping for them. They took lands which were available in abundance, owned them and later sold them to Africans. Isn’t that one big cruel joke?

As they grabbed lands, they preached of a new god, who was more powerful than the rest; a god that towered above the African gods who had guided and protected Africans through bouts of diseases. Generations and generations came through various calamities, scathed but undeterred because the gods wouldn’t let them. But this was the hallmark of primitivity, as if Africa and Africans just came into being. Schools came up to teach Africans new ways of life, and make them like the whites, so that they could homogenize the world and create a market for their goods in the long run. Like darkness gradually disappears with dawn, and eventual rising of the sun, Africans abandoned their gods, their ways of life and adopted the new one, that would see them fight and gain independence.

The white man realizes that he made a mistake in bringing education to Africa. It would be nice if they just remained primitive. Then they brought AIDS to make Africa close to permanently subservient to the west. When we fight, they turn a blind eye, take out oil if there’s any or just leave us fighting to our ends as with Somalia. They don’t need charcoal, which apparently is the leading export of Somalia.

Because of the dwindling resources, and white man’s knowledge, things got tilted. Women began demanding more and more things. They were no longer content staying in the kitchen, and ruling it. Just like Alexander the Great, they were also keen on expanding their territories. And so they began using fancy terms such as ‘equality’ and ‘empowerment,’ aided by another term ‘marginalized groups.’ Men deliberated and came up with insightful conclusion which was ‘why not?’ FGM came tumbling down, although not completely. Women now wear suits and high heels, to attend meetings in Geneva and new York,  where they discuss at length the effects of FGM, whereby they are given some funds by donors. As a matter of principle these women come to purchase houses in high end neighborhoods and roll out in luxury SUVs, while some girls still get mutilated in Marsabit and Pokot.

More and more women are breaking the proverbial glass ceiling. Even with this kind of empowerment, women are still stuck with the traditional role of the man, that he is the sole provider. He pays the rent, educates the kids, and pays the house help even if he earns less than the wife (in case she chooses to remain a wife). When calamity strikes, as it sometimes does, and the man loses his job or is struck by a disease, the next thing you hear is the woman complaining about how he has suddenly become a burden just a month into the situation. The man, mind you, has been footing bills unflinchingly for the last decade, but then one month it becomes burdensome. She wants out. She reaches the media, just in case a couple of anonymous people will support her decision. A month later she is out leaving us with the question: what’s the need of women empowerment if they can’t raise a man to his feet when defeat is on repeat?

Enter the constitution. A two third gender majority. It is not achievable in polls, so they create an extra seat for the women, just for women to compete against each other just in case we end up with a man. The crafters of the constitution did not think this through. They were obsessed with gender rule, not knowing that the common voter doesn’t have a clue what that means. For that, we may have to pay by nominating a whopping close to fifty women to the house, just to attain the constitutional threshold. As far as I am concerned, the women want to remain marginalized forever, where they will speak forever about empowerment and equality, and in the process earn a few free seats to parliament, and of course not take any share of responsibility whatsoever in an union.

THE BALCONY

 The good old balcony at F Block, with its peeled grey painted walls, where we our skins enjoyed sumptuous sunshine in amounts that made its stomach grumble with satisfaction. It’s where loafed time once a lecturer has been caught up by more important things than teaching, which we liked anyway. Some would grumble at how they wasted their money, you know how matatus charge an arm and a leg during rush hour. It’s at this balcony, on the fourth floor, that we sympathized with them, cracked jokes, dirty jokes. More importantly it’s this balcony where we met before exams to plot our sitting arrangements and hold prayers that the lecturer woke up with beautiful lass by his side, thereby less troubles as he invigilates.

The Balcon, as our Luo friends called it, served as a de facto picture snapping place for the ladies.  They loved that damn place, like it enhanced features most important in their bodies. Often they borrowed those 13MP phones, ask a dude to take them as many pictures as possible, in different poses then ask the owner of the phone to send via WhatsApp pictures that she’d select from the many that were snapped. I wondered silently what happened to Bluetooth. There’s a queer fascination that WhatsApp inspires. I think I have found a subject for my PhD thesis.

For some of us who didn’t have lives, or stayed at home with their parents or siblings, those who found it boring to be wherever their heads rested every night, this was our place, our refuge. We’d crack jokes until a lecturer chased us for disturbance, some would even threaten to call the security guys for civil disobedience. Its here we’d admire how ladies had their asses packaged, rating and cheapening some. You can bet this was a favourite, for the boys. 

I seemingly didn’t have a life, probably because I came to Nairobi for the sole purpose of acquiring an education. And you’d find me there miserable, deep in thoughts about how to save a world that was rapidly sinking into oblivion, my world. I felt crushed and defeated every time a lecturer said he wasn’t going to make it to class. I would sit there with my black brief-case like bag, with it straps still running over my shoulder. I held that bag in high esteem. It had seen me through a high school, through a diploma course bag in college and now a degree course. It had faded slightly, and the right seam had got worn out through incessant rubbing with my ass. I think they made terrible friends. Years and years of seeing each other must have driven them nuts. Then this dude retired it unceremoniously. Oh my black bag, I can write an ode for you. I will write an ode for you, dear black bag.

 A moment worth mentioning here, is when I spent with a Kao chic. She had on a red dress that clung to her snugly like paint. On her feet were black slightly high heeled shoes. She was, and I still think she is, a lady of zero respect at least to me, based on my own parameters which might well be off track, though they head somewhere. And that place demands respect which wasn’t forthcoming from her. I am not going to divulge details of the nature of our relationship; because it is tinged with failures I have never wanted to learn from. 

She had asked me to take pictures of her which I promptly did. She has never bothered about them once I snapped. It’s like she wanted something fun to do. The balcony, being near the lecturers office, meant that male lectures would peep and call her in, which she obeyed pliantly. Some passed by and talked to her with those overtones that did not attempt to conceal intimacy, rushed as it may have seemed.

Now that she is back in the picture, I remember some of her not-so-good moments. She often asked very stupid questions like why is that chic wearing those tights? Hell, she could even ask why cars have wheels. She never knew where the @ sign on the computer was up the last semester of our university time yet she graduated.

Back to the balcony. Having decided that I actually had a life (you had to have one in her presence), I told her I wanted to leave for my hostel. She asked me to stay a little longer, as she made calls. Her phone never stopped ringing. Then a Luo dude pops up from the stairs, short and dressed in official attire. At that time a dude who had been hawking candies and sweets since we the university walked by. Luo dude asks her to take some. She says she didn’t want.

“Why?” Luo dude asks probably wondering her mental make-up.

“I don’t want to destroy my teeth,” she answers.

“Chuku ntalipa mpaka bill ya kung’oa meno,” the Luo dude says with the kind of false bravado associated with the lake side brothers.

I laugh a little and she does hysterically. She ended up taking a lollipop, having been assured that should she have a toothache, funds will be promptly disbursed to the dentist of her choosing. A little banter here and there told me that I was being intrusive to a couple. I strapped by bag on my shoulder and hit the road to my hostel.