Bothersome Girl

There was something weird,

The curves on voluptuous behind,

A behind trapped in a tight red dress,

There was something hideous,

Devilish in some attractive way,

About the way she smiled

She appeared a story,

With a thousand plot lines

None ever advancing the story

She had a thousand plans,

Yet sat her bum lazily,

Her mind rapidly churning plans

She is attractively unattractive,

There is something about her person,

That spells ‘she is a devil incarnate’

She Shot Herself

She stood there pointing a gun at her assailant with such menace that could have boiled githeri for an entire four-stream high school full of hungry and adolescent boys. She had killed her husband, and as she put, took her life in the way only women who’ve lost their husbands can tell.

‘You don’t know how long I have spent dreaming of this day,’ she tells her assailant, who had burgled her way into her house. ‘I have dreamt that you’d show up so that I can have the pleasure of killing you one more time.’

The killer lady looks at her with those looks that tell you that she’s not going get even a single inch size bruise on her body. She’s also pointing a gun at the good lady, a teacher of languages. It could have been better, you think, if it had been those asshole mathematics and science teachers who made those subjects harder than they should have been. But no, on top of killing her husband, she is pointing a gun at her, a blameless soul, a soul that just wants to teach students about rhymes, and onomatopoeia. And  oral literature.

The conversation goes back and forth between the two ladies for a tad longer than you expect. She is here. She killed your husband. What more reason can you have to pull that trigger? Then she suddenly puts the gun at the base of her chin and pulls the trigger. She sprawls carelessly on the floor. She is dead.

It’s a movie anyway. That’s how you convince yourself. She couldn’t have done so in real life. It simply is impossible to wait for such long for someone who killed your husband, only to give her the luxury of triumph by committing suicide. The writer of the scene was a sick bastard who does not understand how the real works. You kind of liked the lady, her Russian accent was out of this world. You have a thing with accent, learn. It is not a bad way to conclude a year, you think.

But then the killer lady is the lead villain in the movie series. She dies and the story comes to an end. But at least the writer should have found a way of keeping her alive. She should have been captured and even tortured. You could tolerate her screams, knowing that she alive. Only her face, and butt should be interfered with. And her hands, and legs, and boobs…gosh…she should just have been left alone. Intact is how you wanted her to be. WHOLE. You are a whole kind of person. You have a fetish for anatomically complete people. Wasn’t killing her husband more than enough.  

Sometimes

Sometimes, at times…just one time

Step out of your skin and watch yourself

Listen to yourself really hard

Study yourself as if preparing for an exam

You may figure out why people treat

They way they do.

Not because they are bad or good people

But because you are who are

Happy Bob

Bob is happy

Bob does not give a damn

Bob does not care what you think

All Bob does is sleep all day

There’s nothing you can do to Bob

Because Bob is dead

Echo of Your Laughter

It rung in my head, competing with the ocean waves

It felt like a boat, sashaying in the waves

Beckoning me to the shores

The shores where your laughter reigns

Deny me anything, but not the luxury of your laughter

Don't You Enjoy How I Breathe?

Look at the eloquence of my breath

Don’t you simply marvel at how good I am at it?

I acquired this skill through endless practices

In fact, I was good at it immediately I was born

Many are not born with this skill

And there’s no other way of being good at it

Respirators won’t help. Never

They will endlessly bleep as if singing a dirge

Except the dirge tells you how whacky you are at breathing

The Wind

The wind snows

The rain raises whirlwinds

The dust floods

And the world is at peace

A Dog's Day

Every dog has its day

What day, if I may ask

Is it a birthday, ‘cause we have them too

Dogs walk around feeling special

Because they have their days 

And I will rob them. All of them

I want all the dog days

I’ll keep them in the closet

Together with my skeletons

Ask My Shoes

Ask my shoes, they’ll tell you the secret

Of why I am not talking to you anymore

Like why my feet are reluctant to walk

And find paths the lead to you

Ask my shoes, and you’ll hear them protest

They sit by the corner, feeling lonely, and black

Desolate and unwanted, because you saw me with them

Because they were not like other men's shoes  

Because shoes maketh a man, they didn’t mold me

They came short of creating an ideal man

A man deserving your undying affection

I might as well been barefoot

Ask my shoes where I have been

All the ladies I have been to

And they will tell you without saying a word

That I am lonely and desolate as they are

Mkubwa's Consignment

The consignment belonged to a ‘big man’

They said ‘mkubwa’ as though he is omnipresent

They called him with reverence only reserved for gods

And when the consignment was found to be contaminated –

Not just contaminated but was full of carcinogens

We protested vehemently, braced teargas and water canons

Because ‘mkubwa’ is our man – and saying anything bad about him

Makes us sufficiently threatened

When the big man was arrested the other day

We felt our idling days lacking flavour, and we hit the streets

How can they not see that is perfectly normal to steal money –

Neither your mothers – but belonging to sick mothers and children

How obtuse can the law be? Or the law enforcers

Who cares when mothers die delivering babies

Who gives a damn even when it takes several days to

The nearest hospital

They arrested us too, them morons

We went to keep ‘mkubwa’ company

They kept him in a self-contained cell

While we communed with our shit, and the stench from

'unbathed' bodies,

We ululated when we saw guards taking chicken to his cell

We ululated even more when we saw ladies –

Our wives, sisters and friends – line up to ‘know’ mkubwa

He is ours, we muttered while eating half-cooked meals

While he ate the best, including our hopes – yet we didn’t care

From Lie To Lie

The horse that you ride is called lie

Galloping from lie to lie

Trampling the tenets of trust

And, over time, you appear

Same as the aesthetic appeal of rust

lie to lie your mouth spews

even the sacred vows would be a lie

only backed by the congregation

who think nothing more than the food

they are going to eat or just ate

and the man of god is up to no good.

What remains of you is a skeleton

No one can put life into you

Because all you do is lie

Your all life is a valley of dry bones

Prophet Ezekiel cannot speak life to it

God won’t even speak redemption on you

The Dancer

O, look at that agile dancer

Her graceful moves strips,

Even the hallowed of men,

The ever pricey decorum

Look at that purple dress,

How it fits her so snugly,

As though it was part of her skin,

Holy men’s stray at her sight

Look at how she holds her glass,

As though it were filled with holy water,

Yes, it sure is, for Jesus made it,

Instead of milk

Hear the music booming,

As though revelers are partially deaf,

Some attempt dance moves,

Yet manage to look like frail leaves

Stuttering in a fierce wind

It’s time to head home,

Many to angry wives left in the cold,

Some to cold homes that embrace

The voids they’ve been seeking to bury

The Lifetime Partner

I watched the essence of life,

The very ingredients that make life worthy,

Emerge from the shine in your sleeves

The rich laugh that you wear on your sleeves

Made me fall in love with the idea of a life,

A life marked by your graceful presence

I fell in love the with the idea of listening,

The echo of your heartbeat in mine,

As well as your nourishing breathe

I fell in love with the idea of seeing you grow old

And yet still find you as beautiful as the first day

I laid my eyes on you

Forgive the indelible transgression on my person

For some of them make me who I am

Don’t fall for the idea of an ideal me

I am a thoroughly imperfect man

The Drunk Lady

She hadn’t realized how drunk she was until she stepped out of the door. For a woman of her class, she appeared, jutting out distinctively in a dull masculine den, dressed in relatively expensive boots – or they weren’t, who cares about the price of women’s boots – a tight fitting blue trouser and a cheap sliver-colored jacket. She also had a baseball cap, perhaps signaling her lack of patience in a salon, listening to women drone on and on about their marriage woes. She is too free and free spirited at that for idle talk spun by women under the cage of a masculine authority disguised as love.

You watch her walk out and stop by the door, her weak legs slowly giving in like faulty springs unable to sustain the weight above it. You watch her summon the last of her energy towards the wall and leans against it with all her might. With soaring empathy, you want to help her get home safely. She is mumbling under her breath and your vain attempts at lip reading – that’s why footballers cover their mouths when talking to one another – tells you that she saying; ‘shit. I am too drunk. Shit. Shit. I didn’t think I’d get to this level.’

Before you make your mind to help her, her guardian angel appears by the door and walks her out of the dinghy bar.  You can tell how much relieved she is for bringing a long a companion who’d become her feet when the toll of inebriation would disable her locomotive ability.

It is as if you know her. But your knowledge of her does not extend beyond hearsay. But then again, just like a church, nobody really knows anybody. He or she goes attends to church regularly, but you don’t know the demons they hide in their closets. You probably know who they are married to, and their children, and nothing beyond that. And for her, they said she is a soldier’s wife. And that she’s a Cleopatra in that den condemned by Christians for eternal condemnation. They said the soldier is in Somalia, probably a service man deep inside the heart of the devil.

You remember thinking that if it was true, that indeed her husband was indeed a soldier posted in Somalia, the he got a raw bargain. He’s dodging bullets to earn a living and support a wife who checks into a bar as early as eight in the morning. Every damn day, you will find her, ‘removing’ lock. On the rare days you checked in during such earl hours, you found her. As a man unable to project the same kind of moral standards on yourself, such a woman does not the definition of a true woman.

The Sacred Toad

I had – I still do – certain reverence for toads that bordered on superstition or plain fear for certain actions that appeared like rituals. You see, every time a toad wandered into the kitchen, mother would sprinkle a little flour on it and leave it where it was, not even trying as much as ‘chase’ it away. It had a name – Tala Kogo. This act that appeared quite random scared the shit out of me, so much that as a kid who loved killing small animals for fun, Tala Kogo was completely left to live.

It wasn’t until a few days ago that I accidentally killed one of these ‘sacred’ amphibians. It was not my fault for I was out and about cutting napier grass for the cows when I slashed the creature with a razor sharp panga. All its intestines spilled out which led me, from years of experience, that it was beyond being rescued. I left it there, wondering whether it had relatives that loved it who would then say nice words such as ‘she was hardworking and loving…it is a pity that we lost her to the cruelty of humans…’ and then inter her.

As I continued cutting the grass, which I think is an equivalent of chapatti to cows, I encountered small accidents. A bruise here and there, which bled as though I had ruptured a vein. I thought the creature must have actually been a little sacred, what with the sprinkling of flour.

Speaking of sacred, I nearly chopped off my left hand’s middle finger. Not the entire finger but the nail itself. It was a Sunday. We were cutting boma rods – I with a borrowed sickle. A cousin of mine was playing gospel music on his techno phone to make up for the fact that he was supposed to be in church being concerned with his spiritual needs and not cutting grass. A while back – it’s decades actually – we decided that it was totally uncool for us to go to church. 

Although we do not go to church, Sundays are exclusively set aside for relaxation. It is a day where each one of retreats to their sanctuaries, ask this or that from their personal gods. As we cut the grass, the music emanating from the cousin’s phone kind of became a detractor to the stream of thoughts my mind churned. As I wondered why the guy played the music, I lost concentration and the sickle cleanly chopped off my entire nail, leaving a tiny bit near the base. There’s nothing as painful as chopping off your nail with anything serrated. Of course it is second to knock on the testicles, but I reserve pain rating to another time. I rushed home holding my finger to prevent leaving a trail of blood on the way.

I washed it with salt solution but it still bled. I tried everything, including brake fluid to no avail. I tore a piece of cloth from a worn out t-shirt and wrapped it. It stopped bleeding, leading me to think that I had at last arrested the bleeding. That night, a slept while flipping a middle finger at mosquitoes and other nocturnal creatures that bayed for my blood.

The following day, I woke up as usual, except with the knowledge that I was excluded from any activity that involved the use of both hands. If eating was such an activity, I definitely would have starved for I can’t fathom being fed like a baby. As I took tea, accompanied by a distinct whistling sound, my body grew warmer and the bloody finger began bleeding again. I had lost a lot of blood the previous day to a point that I actually got scared. I remember feeling a little dizzy following the loss.

It was then that I was forced to make a drastic decision – go to the hospital. I couldn’t stand losing any more blood. And I left immediately after breakfast, glad that the finger absolved me the strenuous exercise of deciding whether to take a shower or not. In less than an hour, I was the Flax Dispensary, waiting for my turn to be treated. There were many sick people, including children who were being taken for immunization against the various diseases I care not remember. Some wailed ceaselessly, while mothers wore worried looks on their faces. Some adults were sprawled on the grass, as though their only available option was death.

I neglected the part where I bought a card. It costs twenty shillings and I wonder if that is legal. I have been to one dispensary in Nairobi where the card is given to you free of charge. Patients buy it unquestioningly. It is part of the treatment process, and they have accepted it that way.

When my name was called, a nurse attended to me. She asked me what caused the wound and I told her it was a ‘ringa.’ I don’t know if she understood it or she just felt that it was wise to ignore it. She took out the container containing iodine whereupon she realized that it was empty. She then shouted to another doctor, talking about whether the supplies have been ordered. The doctor – I don’t know why a male attendant is referred to as a doctor – assured her that they were on their way. She leaves the room in search for a medicine which would enable her to administer a tetanus jab on my person. I use her absence to scan the room for any evidence of serial killers. Haha. Actually, I just looked around the room to see the medical marvels that either occur in the room or information that might be of particular interest to me. What captures my attention is a hand drawn bar graph showing the number of people under anti-retroviral drugs. Finally glad to put into good use the numerous bar graphs I drew back in school, I read the number of people under the drug. The highest bar read thirty on a certain month. I remember thinking that the number was too high then the nurse came in.

She asked me to remove my shirt for her to administer the jab. She was cute, alright, but in a motherly way. I obliged. You see, I work out from time to time, and so my biceps are little hard. She asks me to relax my muscles but I couldn’t. I do not fear injections. I only fear certain species of reptiles such as snakes and slayqueens. Otherwise, injections do not faze me.

I forget. She had already dressed the wound. After the tetanus jab, I left for home. I did not even want to linger around the shopping centre for while – or until darkness set in. The throbbing pain would not allow me.

Wounded Ground

Bury my feet on a wounded ground

Water them with your tears

And love that you hoard

In secret places between vanity

And a distinct fear of mortality

A Clog In The Mind

A thin film clings to the mind,

Marking the boundaries

Between the possible and the impossible

Between the sane and the insane

Between hate and love

Between self-love and self-loathe

Between the grand and the stupid

Between life and death

Between courage and cowardice

And, strangely, I find myself standing

On the negative side

Life is Scum

Life is a giant wad of scum ,

Trapped are we, consuming it,

Bit by bit, it gets bitter,

With bills and pills and feels,

That cater to every whimsical need,

Or wants

Or a way of escaping the ugly reality,

The reality that we are trapped,

Under this giant dome,

And to escape, one must stop breathing

Vessels of Debauchery

Life pours out of itself,

A rich and potent state

Availing the alluring things,

The pleasures that ruin

What choice do we have?

For we are only mere mortals,

Vessels of debauchery,

Of flesh and adulterated water

Do not speak of seekers,

The seekers of pleasure,

As ruined  beings,

Who lost control their ships

The sky is a giant blue mesh

With bars that cage dreams

Dreams to burst through

In search for elusive redemption

No Human Is Limited

The clock bowed in awe of your endurance

Cowed by you indefatigable will,

A will that powered you Kalenjin feet,

Feet oiled by well-made mursik

Mursik made in the same exact formula of the yore

A formula that inspired ‘No Human is Limited’

You etched your name in the annals of history

Right next to Neil  Armstrong, the Wright Brothers

You could shame Isaac Newton if you wanted to,

You can fly with your feet to break barriers,

Barriers set in the mind

Kipchoge, you’ve inspired mankind

Kipchoge, you are the god of marathon,

Never let Mo Farah ever get close to your achievements

We will be in awe of your greatness for a long time,

We are glad to have been alive to witness your extraordinary feet

And your feat

I Miss You

The very thought of you, slipping into bed

Beside me, smelling like a bottle of cologne

Ignites feelings of longing, a deep longing

A longing that digs pits of emptiness, voids

Within me, that can only be filled with your love

With a touch of your tickling hands,

A caress from your feathery hands

A kiss from your honey dipped lips

I miss you.

The void grows bigger by the second

Each tick is riddled with an oppressive sound

And, waiting for you, my love, becomes a hard task

As hard as landing a faulty air plane

I am crushing, I am alone bearing my solitude

As if it were a pain, a wound of sorts

Only you can heal me, only you

No one else knows the depths of my love

Only you. I miss you

Body Odour

I firmly believe that Jesus was not crucified for me to be overly concerned about people’s hygiene habits. This belief was severely tested when I boarded a matatu sometimes back and a lady walked by the aisle and I was hit by a nauseating stench of sweat. If it had a man’s I wouldn’t have been bothered. But a lady’s? That’s a complete NO. Man, if you could peer closely and intently you could see individual smell particles rising off her body like smoke.

I didn’t peer at her form, but I thought she had been entrusted by the entire femaledom to carry their sweat stench. Ladies are supposed to adhere to extremely high hygiene standards. Through rigorous training, as Dave Barry puts it, they can see individual dirt particles. But men can’t see dirt until it has piled high enough to support certain edible plant species.

It turns out that she was part of the matatu crew, and that stench – her stench – would been a premonition that I was about to be robbed point blank by the tout. First of all, the matatu set off with a billion guys hanging precariously by the door, with two light skinned guys behaving as though they were lovers. One even reached for the other’s cheeks as if to kiss, and the other guy was quite comfortable with it.

Then the tout began collecting money from the passengers. He was dressed in jeans that hang quite below where the recommended waist line should be. He had on a black and white checked round neck sweater that turned purplish from the matatu’s lighting effects. He got to me and I handed him a hundred shillings note. He tucked it around his middle finger as is the norm with these mobile accountants. Then he went ahead and to collect from the rest of the passengers.

When he was done, I tapped his shoulder and asked him for my change. He asked me how much I had given him. I told him.

“Boss imeisha,” he calmly told me and then acted as though I did not exist. I was wise enough not to protest for what I witnessed from one of the guys hanging on the door. The matatu had stopped to pick passengers when one prospective passenger disagreed with him. He was punched, Tyson style, and the matatu sped away.

I sat there wishing the worst of things for the tout for robbing me my hard earned money. I wished that he would buy airtime and call that crush he had been eyeing for ages, and she will accept upon which she would infect him with an STI. I wished that he would buy mutura and he would diarrhea non-stop. I wished that he would buy water and choke while drinking it. I wished a thousand other worse things to make feel better that I was letting go of my fifty shillings without a fight. 

I wished that the girl with the abominable stench was his girlfriend. And that she rolled that way even when she has had a thirty minute shower.

The Drunkard

The men loved the brew more than life

They congregated everyday to listen to sermons

Sermons inspired by chang’aa induced stupor

Sometimes the spirit instructed them to grab

A collar or another, and dare to eviscerate the aggressor

Talking in eloquently slurred language

A language that will dissipate with the morning dew

If they make it home alive

Barmuriat staggered home one night and fell into the river

There, he slept and never woke up again

Truphena’s husband lay by the roadside one evening

And succumbed to intoxication that very night

Kiptum’s father, while drunk, undressed in the rain

And died peacefully, his soul pounded by the pouring rain

Haggard, shabby and unsightly men hover

In and out of drinking dens, courting death. and oblivion

Wives and children have since ceased praying for them

Their tear glands have run dry, leaving a desert of tenderness

A grave yard of cares, love and compassion

While alive, they are used to their absence

If they do not resort to violence to pass their crude messages

The Lawyerist

As a teenager, it was quite fashionable to perform activities that made an immense contribution to our psyche, if not our gross domestic product, namely: loaf time in the shopping centre. Not seeking to deviate from this behavior, I often left home in the afternoons to idle in the shopping until such a time when I determined that supper was ready at home, and then I’d slip out surreptitiously. Sometimes, when in a good mood, I’d leave early in time to ensure all the domestic animals had made it to their respective enclosures.  Over time, this activity wore me out, save one incident that’s indelibly etched in my mind.

The sun had deemed it fit to go and shine in another world, paving way for people to take stock of their day and make the following deductions: had breakfast, lunch and supper, yet I don’t know where the food came from – so far so good, let’s do it again tomorrow. I was walking gingerly home, trying to get there before darkness had a dictatorial grip on the events that would follow. I took a short cut through an idle farm. On reaching the road, I found an old man, seemingly confused. He asked for a homestead of a retired teacher. I knew one barely three hundred metres from where we were standing. He instructed me to take him there.

With complete disregard to my personal conscience, we did set off to the homestead. The old man had had one too many, and blubbered all the way to the designated destination. I personally don’t have a problem listening a drunkard’s musing. But this one did faze me. Perhaps it was due to my relative inexperience with such people. I was still in high school at the time.

“I am lawyerist,” the old man said boisterously.

He then went on to talk of having been to Dar es Salaam University, upon which he benefitted from the teaching of Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere. Or that he was a classmate of his. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he had a close encounter with Tanzania’s founding father. The old man did not give me a chance to say anything, not that I had anything. Maybe he was pleased to have such an attentive audience. I do not know.

Before we reached our destination, the old man saw it fit to scare the living daylights out of me. I personally believe that no one can utter words they are not able to do. The old man took his walking stick and balanced it horizontally on his open palm. He then glanced at a fear-stricken teenager in me and dared me:

“AWALAGE? AWALEGE? (Can I transform myself?)”

The words escaped his mouth, sounding as though my consent was all it depended to come true or not. My mind raced at the numerous things or creatures that this old man was capable of changing himself into. It could only settle on one thing: snake. I cowed with fright, and told him:

“NO!!” I repeated this response each time he made the threat. I wasn’t about to be the first person to witness a human being change himself into a snake. Lord knows what the snake could do. Perhaps it could swallow me alive. Or bite me and inject venom that would pre-digest my person, turning me into soup upon which it would just sip me. At the time, I hadn’t discovered alcohol, so you can imagine how my body would have been JUICY.

It turns out that the old man’s threats were emptier than Uhunye’s promise of eradicating corruption as part of his legacy. We reached the homestead and the old man shouted so loudly as though he was calling out someone located in Pluto. A bulky man showed up. The old man explained his problem. The bulky man said that were in the wrong homestead, and gave us directions to another. He was generous enough to allow us to take a short through ‘his’ farm. This form of generosity is quite rare, and even rarer, when the homestead has a girl coming of age. Girls here are permanently grounded. However, even under this stringent parental upbringing, plenty of them still, quite mysteriously, manage to get pregnant. You could easily hunt down and slay the Holy Spirit, if you are a father.

I walked the old man, darkness slowly setting in. I hadn’t planned on being that late. I was still a novice on this coveted teenage indulgence. Besides, my pool skills are comparable to a diseased cockroach – or even worse, only that no one can coax a diseased cockroach for a pool game with me.

We walked on the railway track, then turned right after a few metres to join a road that led to the new homestead. Apparently, the old man had been looking for a retired teacher with one ‘bad leg.’ I knew him well, for he taught me to hate school, for two terms, while in class three.

When we reached the gate, I exhorted the old man to enter but he went straight, silent as the wind, ignoring me as though I was absent. I looked on, bewildered, as his form got swallowed by the darkness. I washed my hands, in a bid to absolve myself of any blame should the man attempt his witchcraft on me, and walked home.

Although with a disturbed soul.

Integrity Deficient Nation

A massive heist, a thorough plunder,

of money meant to buy life-saving drugs

for the country’s poor, the downtrodden

without influence, discounting God’s

a man stops a bullet in the forest, tortured first

hit men, having God’s job description,

delight in dinghy bars, celebrating a job ‘well done’

the police, baffled, will hit dead ends on its leads

our beloved country is addicted to integrity

so much that we resent its absence

leaders hold the bible with velvet gloves

thereafter receive money earned through ungodly means

God laughs at our vain attempts at prayer

For we mask our evils in his name

Shout about salvation from the pulpit

Yet, unaware, sacrificing our blessings all the same

Yesterday

you made away with my yesterday,
every single moment seems longest
as I lie on my bed, thinking of you - 

thinking of the dreams, 

thinking of your laughter, 

thinking of you love,

thinking of you arms wrapped around me 

thinking that you may not even be thinking about me

thinking endless thoughts

and wishing that we never should have met 

Always The Best of Time

I got to tell you how it feels beside you

Like waiting for heaven’s gate to fling open

And we stand there waiting to embrace forever

Always the best of time dearie

Something stills time, your smile

I could walk a million a mile

And ten more to spend awhile

With you, happiness pile

Sitting side by side couldn’t tell what you mean

How I don’t know how to act around you

Yet deep down me a feeling ripples through

The kind that tells me you’re my only queen

I will trade my life for your love

A gift of wings to a dove

To hover around heavens above

You aren’t earthly my love

Strutting

You strutted into my mind as would,

a model, auditioning for my attention

from the first sight, I picked you

you are a clear winner,

and you are hereby given the power,

to reign in my heart for a thousand eternities

Mosquito Nuisance

It’s half past one in the night. Satanic hours, as my former higher school principal used to refer them. As with these times of the night, awake, I normally nourish myself with whatever food that remained after supper. I had eaten githeri, and disregarded its soup which I found too salty. Now I am taking spoonfuls at irregular intervals, feeling as though I have discovered a new exotic culinary delight. Why was I awake at these satanic hours? Well the answer is mosquitoes.

It is one big problem which, I strongly believe, should have been factored in the building bridges initiative, and if not, a commission of inquiry formed with immediate effect to look into these mosquitoes that are giving ordinary Kenyans, who diligently file zero returns every financial year, sleepless nights. Despite magnificent, huge, momentous and gigantic inventions man has ever discovered, these extremely tiny creature was purposefully made to teach human beings to be humble. You could huge and intelligent, God must have been saying when making mosquitoes, but tiny brainless creatures will torture your nights, and you may never discover the vaccine of malaria. And God and the angels burst into prolonged guffaws, which made him forget that he was creating a human being. The error saw Him make Hitler.

I recently came back from the village to Nairobi to run important errands which are keep hustlers company and continue my hatred for mosquitoes. I learned that, despite evidence showing that they do not have brains, these creatures are actually intelligent. Within minutes, they had also landed in droves with their persistent annoying whine close to your ear especially when you are concentrating a particularly serious thought – where do I steal huge amounts of money and never get caught? Without a doubt, mosquitoes are already in the moon waiting for you.

It leaves you to wonder why Jesus died and never took away the annoying mosquito whine. You could have just closed your eyes, and really loud whine, overtaking the supersonic jet, flies close to your ear and off it goes. It was on a reconnaissance mission. The second time it circles your ear looking for a landing spot where it goes silent and deploys its suction tools. So your role is to subvert them by swatting and making serious and laudable efforts namely: missing it. It flies away laughing in mischievous mosquito laughter.

The aforementioned scenario is only idealic – there a billion mosquitoes my friend ready to take a sip of your blood. Thinking of it, why is human blood a mosquito’s only meal? Why couldn’t God make a Christmas thing, leaving them to survive on ugly and useless creatures such as rats and politicians? Just animals that do not have the ability to reason: I don’t want to name names.

If the ecological role of mosquitoes is quite indispensable like, for example, defecating why couldn’t possess at least three functioning brain cells? I base this on the fact that you could wake up in the middle of the night and manually kill them and arrange the dead bodies on the nightstand but they still come in droves. If they had brains they would know that this place is dangerous, and warn others never to step there. At that is the way it is in my ancestral home, Kerio Valley.

You see, in Kerio, you cannot plant maize, sorghum or millet without the intervention of monkeys. And they are very lazy, they don’t help when planting, only showing up when it is ripe. Anyway it is not their problem – they have adopted noble characteristics of certain species of animals known as slayqueens. They wait until its ripe then they wreck havoc. You have to rise as early as six in order to beat traffic…haha…sorry, there is no traffic in the village. You rise up early because monkeys don’t take chances with their laziness. And so you wad them off until you harvest.

However, the monkey problem can be easily be solved by simply killing one and placing the dead corpse on your farm as a warning. Being avid readers, they take seriously such warnings and they never step there generations after generations. Unlike mosquitoes. But they are just like us every election year.

PHOTO/PEXELS 

Review: Black Hawk Down - Mark Bowden

It is a book written by Mark Bowden –he also wrote another about the American-sponsored hunt for Medellin drug boss Pablo Escobar – and it details the events leading to a botched capture of some Somali clan elders in Mogadishu.

The capture of the elders did not go as planned, perhaps signaling a blood bath that would fill every crevice, nook and cranny in Mogadishu. A teenage ranger (who, by God, would be holed up in room exercising his free will to think of sexual fantasies and escapades) missed the rope while they were descending down a helicopter – which was way off-target – injuring himself. The Somalis seemed to have had prior intel about the impending American assault and were quite ready. Every single one of them was ready – men, women, lactating mothers, and children. All of them were ready to die. And die they did.

The unexpected ambush on the American soldiers precipitated a long fight in which they fought through a barrage of rocket propelled grenades, and bullets from the preferred Kalashnikov. Two American helicopters were downed. Efforts to reach the crash site were derailed by strict military protocol which effectively ensured that communication from surveillance helicopter reached the ground troops a little too late. The ground troops ended up getting lost, leading to the second down copter being overran by Somalis. They captured a pilot and killed the soldiers.  

In the end, a lot of Somalis were killed and eighteen American soldiers killed. More than seventy soldiers were wounded while thousand Somalis faced the same fate.

The capture of the pilot and the dragging of dead American soldiers across the streets were aired CNN. It sparked outrage, leading to questions from both the congress and the president himself; the main one being: what were American soldiers doing in Somalia? Somalia has no valuable natural resource if you don’t count piracy, and charcoal.

The president’s intervention led to the unconditional release of the captured piloted – of course accelerated by a threat to obliterate Mogadishu – and he withdrawal of US soldiers from Somalia.

Other than the fact that the targeted clan leaders having issued a threat to the US, there’s no other valid reason given in the book as to why the US soldiers were in Mogadishu. The only verdict was that the solders weren’t ever going to set foot in Somalia, at least without the approval of the president. That was 1993

Letting Go

The dawn, the unwanted dawn is heralded,

By birds chirping as though singing dirges

For these are beginnings of empty days

Of days thinking about the memories, love

Of abandoned plans, plans to love forever

It feels like you’ve just boarded a bus. A train

A ship and sailed away, far away from me

The yearning of my beating heart couldn’t stop you

The cry of my love sounded like a some nasty noise

Who needs noise when it all involves is sorries?

I have said a thousand sorries, many times not even,

At the back of my mind, knew why was doing so,

And these sorries depleted my sorries account

Now sorry – sorry sorry – is a sorry word

There’s nothing more I can do except let you go

The Ultimate Kenyan Dream

A palatial home. For a mere driver of a university vice-chancellor.  It left many Kenyans in awe of the exceptional business acumen of a man holding one of the least desirable careers. It turns out the only qualification is a complete lack of integrity.

I hereby corrupt – which is now a cherished talent of ours – a line from a movie I once watched: do not be addicted to integrity; you will resent its absence.   

The audacity of the Mara University heist does not surprise anymore. Hairdressers and receptionists have made away with millions of shillings before; paling the driver’s if attempts at comparing it are made.  

Kenyans, in their characteristic manner, decried the blatant theft by – and this is a country that prides itself in a constitution that dedicated a whole chapter on integrity – inquiring where they can get such a lucrative driver’s position.  Overnight, being driver was the most coveted job.

It turns out that, despite constantly decrying the vice, the ultimate Kenyan dream is make way too much money with the least effort. Being in charge of public funds gives one the same status as that of a Fortune 500 Company Chief Executive Officer.

There have been numerous news of heists that have served one core function: to be awed by the mindboggling figures being quoted by the media. Then we move on until such a time we shall be required, as a civic obligation, to be awed by another mindboggling plunder of public funds.

Goldenberg, Angloleasing, Eurobond, SGR, Arror group of dams and the latest, Mara Heist have come and gone. If not, Kenyans shall apply the time tested mantra – forget and move on even if a container of carcinogens is imported, and, which is often the case, cleared by Kenya Bureau of Standards.

The question that courses through the minds of many right thinking Kenyans (and I here I mean any person who could use an extra one billion shillings) is: are we angry enough at rampant theft and abuse of public office?

The answer is: yes. Many are angry at the fact that it is someone else stealing and not them. Many are angry that they have to persevere through a 5-8 job (wake up at five in order to get to work at eight, and leave at five in order to get home at eight) and millions others who are enduring joblessness.

Many Kenyans cannot simply turn down an opportunity to make money through dishonest means. Straight from matatu touts to doctors the potential to be corrupt is limitless. I can’t even talk about the police. In fact, as recognition of their distinguished service, they have been rewarded with new uniforms for one critical law enforcement purpose – to make them visible.

It is not a wonder why Kenyans keep electing leaders with questionable backgrounds. Even if they possess the integrity of pubic lice, they will be vetted, and voted in quite overwhelmingly. It helps if that man is monied, as it helps the electorate to exercise their inalienable right of asking for handouts.

Once a leader has been accused of making away with public money, the electorate will come out in large numbers and – get this clearly – elect them to public office if they don’t occupy one already. This is often done as a sign of protest. (I know one such leader who is already preparing his victory speech for 2022).

But there’s hope. There is always the light at the end of the tunnel especially if you get the tender to supply electric poles. If you are informed you already know that this has been taken.

It all boils down to what an individual feels about corruption. Most people start as honest citizens until they are confronted with a moral dilemma of whether to use money meant to purchase life-saving drugs for millions of people or purchase a private plane.

As Kenyans whose blood can be identified with Wanjiku’s, there’s nothing we can do except accept and move on until such a time we shall be called upon to make poor electoral decisions. These are the only times we truly care about the fate of our country. 

Breaking Down

The sight of your name in my inbox,

Reminds me of you, of the wrongs

Some that I did, most that you imagined

And you blew them up to the right

The songs that we loved to listen

Break me apart with the memories

Unable to think about anything else

Except your love, your touch, you kiss

Without a doubt, you are gone forever

There’s no energy left in me to fight

Every single day there’s this and that

Unable to love each for a week

 There were no lies on my part

And if there were, kindly forgive

If you can, because I never found a wrong

I couldn’t forgive in you

The sight of your name in my inbox,

Reminds me of you, of the wrongs

Some that I did, most that you imagined

And you blew them up to the right

The songs that we loved to listen

Break me apart with the memories

Unable to think about anything else

Except your love, your touch, you kiss

Without a doubt, you are gone forever

There’s no energy left in me to fight

Every single day there’s this and that

Unable to love each for a week

 There were no lies on my part

And if there were, kindly forgive

If you can, because I never found a wrong

I couldn’t forgive in you