Being Broke

With a face of grim concentration, as though you are being watched by an enthralled audience, you deliver a prophecy: ‘ii ni ile wiki gas itaisha.’ You see, the conditions are perfect – you are broke and have no prospects of seeing any money in the foreseeable future. the trouble with the prophecy is that you do not know the exact date or time the gas will sneak a surprise on you. But you have a rough idea: it will happen when you are jovial, when you are halfway cooking ugali, and at approximately seventeen minutes before midnight.

It just happens that when you have no money bad stuff and surprises sneak up on you. It is in the constitution under article (7) (f). There is nothing much you can do about it except chin up and get used to it. There just isn’t any school, or app that shows you the percentage of gas left in your cylinder. And you, right there, have the audacity to think that we are civilized? Well, if you think so, why don’t you cook with it?

At that point you have no energy to resist the thought that some people’s lives are far much better than yours. People who use firewood to cook. First of all, there is a way food cooked with firewood tastes so much better. It is as though there is a hidden cooking intellect hidden in the sooth-producing source of fuel. Second, you’d know in advance when you are about to run out of firewood, and plan your cooking. There is no way, in a hundred years (unless it rains), you would wake up in the middle of the night to make a meal.

The last time you checked out, there was a student who had invented an app that would tell the amount of gas left in your cylinder. It involved a laptop, and some application that eludes even your wildest imaginations. It would save you a lot, that app. But you’d have to make that university student rich first. Which might be something you are reluctant because you cannot figure out how such a man’s brains works while yours only comes up with the most mundane stuff like: ‘let me have a drink. I may have ideas.’ Then you have ideas, and it all revolves around having another drink. That goes on until your wallet begins making hearty jokes when you tell it about other better ideas. Usually it is the following day when you wake up with only 50 shillings and an unopened packet of condom.