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.