Dating A Retard

Coyotito Ruto wakes up startled as if suddenly roused from the grips of a death-like slumber. He opens his eyes slowly as if he is out of coma and unsure whether he was back to the real world or he is in the other world where dead loved ones are presumed to go. Or be. He sees familiar things. He can even touch them. And he reaches for the very first thing everyone these days reaches when they wake up – his phone. There are seventeen missed calls. All from one person. Coyotito knows that once a caller reaches the two-digit zone, it becomes an emergency – an emergency where the caller’s head needs to be examined.

It becomes clear to Coyotito that one does not need an empirical research to figure out that love is the principal cause of retardation in people. They can do crazy things. They can do unexplainably ridiculous things such as getting married Backman (n.d.) or leaving seventeen missed calls. Coyotito has always had an inkling that Glenda’s brain is ‘not full.’ He does not remember saying anything remarkably special to her for her to fall head over heels for him in such a devastating way that she completely lost her faculties.

Coyotito traces his steps before he fell asleep. It has been barely two hours. And how he slept like he felt asleep. And in that period of being blissfully unaware of his existence, someone managed to call him seventeen times. That number exceeds by a scale of 4.7 the limit where extreme or irrevocable retardation begins.

According to a research done by the University of Buruwein (motto: ndo manake), each number of missed calls denotes the mental state of an individual. The maximum allowable limit of missed calls left by a single individual should be one or less. The research took into consideration the simple truth that there is a 90% probability that someone is purposefully ignoring your phone call. Pretty much everyone is  a retard, or has been a retard at some point in their lives, presumably before they lost their phones. Coyotito knows without a shred of doubt that some people are quite challenged at being retards for the sole reason that there is no manual just like everything else.

Speaking of manuals, Coyotito (or Coyo as his girlfriend loves to call him when she is angry) would have loved Glenda to have a manual. She can be mad at Coyotito for paying the bills or not depending the mood. She can be mad at him for not having money and not want him to leave for work at the same time. He has the manual for this – leave her. But he dares not. He just wants a manual to cope with her retardation. And that’s not too much to ask. 

Most resolute and unshakeable vows are rarely made at the altar. The sacred ones are the ones said in secret or never uttered at all. Coyo knows that. Glenda knows that. For that matter, they know that they will get stuck in their chaos, revel in the labyrinthine maze of their lives, laugh and love hard and probably threaten each other’s lives when it is absolutely necessary. And one ceases to exist, the remaining one will figure out how to get on with life probably in a maximum-security prison.

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.

Metric Disconnect

 It was an incident that, thinking more about it now, would be the hallmark of tremendous disconnect between the education system and reality. I had been sent to buy nails, and as you know, nails – just like certain influential male organs – come in inches. Not millimeters. And certainly not centimeters. That would be grossly demeaning to nails and the organ, who may write nasty comments if you do so.

I was in high school at the time (and on holiday) and seeing that I didn’t have much to do except loaf time, it was deemed that I was fit to run the small errand to Flax Centre to purchase nails. There was a little construction project going on, and as constructions are wont, certain materials suddenly become sparse or are suddenly needed.

“Three inches,” they said even though I had heard the fundi say it. I hauled my juvenile self, neither with ambitions nor hurry. It seemed a minor inconvenience, but the prospect of keeping change acted as the only motivator. Also, the project had stalled because of the slight. The nails were needed in a hurry.

After three kilometres (where did those who use miles learn it from? Movies?) of walking, I was at the hardware. I asked for a kilo of three inch nails. The attendant weighed them, handed them to me, I paid and began the long walk back home. Even if they were not needed that day, I still would have gone back regardless, because there were no suave ways of idling back them. There were, but I was not good at them.

I got home and delivered them to the fundis. One quickly rummaged through and announced grimly, ‘it’s a girl.’ Just kidding. He said that I got the wrong nails…not the wrong nails actually – it’s not that there are yellow nails or nails za kienyeji – but the wrong inches. The inches were nearly double than they ones they wanted.

I think that must have been the only time I felt good when one of them acknowledged our ignorance in a way that detached responsibility from my actions. “These young people do not know anything,” they said as though distinguishing three and five inches required the same intellectual depth as neurosurgery. As far as they fundis were concerned my knowledge of important things such as inches competed favourably with mucus.

Even then, I was perfectly willing to correct the anomaly by trekking back three kilometres. However, the fundis showed tremendous fortitude by improvising. They were in a hurry to get the project done, hit a drinking den, and probably brag about how people like me were clueless about inches.

“I thought he was intelligent, but he brought six inches instead of three,” one will say amid an uproar of laughter.

“How can one not distinguish between an inch and two inches?” a fellow drunkard, well versed with matters inches, will as ask.

I am not ashamed to say that they answer to that question is me, and I have plenty of reasons to back it up. We never learnt about inches in primary school. I have no memory attached to inches back in primary. This is special because I spent most of my last years in primary school pensive and a nervous wreck converting milimetres to centimetres and to metres. And vice versa. At no point in my life did inches feature. I do not remember being whacked because I could not correctly convert from inches to any of those aforementioned metric terms.

Even then, if the guy who had sold me the nails knew what inches were, he could have given me the correct ones. I guess he was as clueless as me. Either that or he was desperate to make a sale. It is not really a one man’s blame. It is two.

If you think like I do, then you must be wondering why what is taught in school cannot be applied in real life. Even metric system yawa. You can excuse learning about the hypotenuse or trapezium, but not something as vital and life-giving – if you get my drift - as inches. Another stupid one is foot. I haven’t got the hang of it.  and miles too.

Every time someone uses metric terms I did not learn in school I feel like smacking them in the face to atone for the beatings I endured back in school. Trust me, there is nothing as torturous as the thought that all your years of schooling were up to nothing. It is even much worse if you spent a few years getting so scared of being wrong – a small wrong would earn you an unforgettable beating. It does not do justice to the moments spent tucking your hands between your legs, trembling and your teeth clattering every time you were in class. All that and you were not taught about inches?!!? Gerrarahia!!

Tomato Scam

It is that time of the year when we – when I say we I mean Socrates, Plato, Confucius, and I – invoke one of the age-old wise sayings we came up with; thou shall never purchase a mere tomato for a price exceeding kdf. Our efforts were not only arduous but unmatched to date, considering the obvious fact that kdf had not yet been invented. Man, I remember people didn’t even vote then.

I have faltered twice on the saying. No, three times to be exact, although I can perfectly explain to the panel of eminent persons, should I be called upon. I made up for the flaw by –wait for it – shoplifting. At the time, I lived in a neighborhood where people strictly went grocery shopping. Our mama mboga, or grocery lady, had her kibanda tucked around one corner. It seemed as though rich people went there for discounts, but it was not anything like a discount to me.

I have veered off the topic. I was talking about tomatoes. So this day, after a hard day, I dashed to a mini-supermarket tucked on one of the buildings that had this giant black intricately designed gate. I only saw Somali ladies with those weird paintings of theirs entering and leaving that gate. The supermarket was more like an after-thought, for it was located on the first floor of the building, and was accessed on the outside via a steel staircase that made a lot of noise. I had mastered the steps and avoided the one that made the most noise as I ascended to make my paltry purchases – a sachet of coffee or half a kilo of sugar.

Once inside the supermarket, I selected two eggs from the shelf and a tomato. The tomato cost a whopping twenty shillings. The tomato itself was huge. If it talked, it would definitely have had linguistic prowess exceeding Waititu’s by kilometers. What did I do? Of course, nothing. I just sulked at the open robbery and quickly forgot about it. My motto quickly transformed to 'I can do without tomatoes.' Little pretentious ingredients whose only purpose was to make me feel miserable and deprived. And make me feel like I couldn’t enjoy a meal because, without it, food tasted like a concoction of sawdust and cow dung.

However, by mere chance, I checked at the counter with a packet of unga and two eggs, but parting with the said items with the price of unga. How did I do it? The cashier did not see the eggs. And that effectively turned me into a shoplifter. One day, when I get to public office, this statement might haunt me, but I don’t care. Given a chance, I’ll steal, and I don’t think I’ll ever wean myself off the habit. I don’t do it now because I haven’t had any chances. Besides, there’s so much anger out there, and being caught will surely mark the end of you.

On second thought, maybe I was not a shoplifter. I only pilfered. The excuse I can give is that they sold me, against my express will, a tomato costing twenty shillings. I’d pilfer little things like coffee sachets and eggs. And the very tomatoes. There was simply no way I could purchase them at such a price. Until the other day.

I was out and about trying to assemble things to make a meal of – veggies here, onions there, and tomatoes. Usually, I make it a point of buying things from the same place. Upon checking the price of tomatoes, it simply didn’t inspire me, but I bought it anyway. It was tiny, the same size as plums, but went for fifteen shillings. I silently wished I poured libations to my ancestors, maybe they would have intervened.

Beaten, I made my meal, glad that I was veering off my culinary delights that mainly involved boiling, ate, and proceeded to ruminate at the unfairness and injustice brought about by tomatoes’ decision to make themselves scarce. Foods without them, except at home tastes as though someone is punishing you. When did tomatoes actually decide to wedge themselves onto our tables, ruling our foods with a reptilian grip? 

I do not know, but right now, I do not intend to buy them anymore. The sad fact is that the simple exclusion has not made me any rich.  

Right now, I can only reminisce the times I could have bought four of them for ten shillings. And they nearly the size of Akothee’s boobs. Now their presence is as arrogant as Akothee herself.

Vile Banter

Every sports betting enthusiast or gambler – if you choose a higher moral ground – has had this distinct moment in his career: staying late up the night refreshing a live score site or an app. Mind you, this is a feat he (most gamblers are of the male gender) never achieved while in school or if he is still in school has never made head or tail of the advantages unless it involves nudity and free drugs. 

 

The sole purpose of staying late at night is to follow a minute by minute progress of a team he bet on especially with school fees – confirming he is a moron – or the last team on his betting list that will guarantee a windfall. At that moment, there are many glittering things he will buy, and the mere thought of possessing them is enough to give him an erection.

Unless you are a Kenyan politician, karma does not just sit by and watch make lots of money without working hard for it. The reason could that all the luck apportioned to the males in your lineage were all used up by one of your fathers in his attempts to woo a fairy princess. And so, you will lose your school fees, and, more painfully, your sleep.

It was a sure bet, you tell yourself, banging your head on a hard surface. Once in a while, you’ll gather your friends or pretty much anybody who is interested in your ‘team moja iliniangusha’ story, and go over the minute details of your gambling exploits, hoping they’ll bow down their heads and make you a ceremonial gambling god.

That’s never the case because they too have their own stories, some better than yours especially if they did not bet on school fees. You will hear of a story where Chelsea, despite having close to useless odds, therefore poised to win by a landslide margin, gets held to a 2-2 draw by a lowly Norwich.

“Nilikua nishinde 800k,” the man will tell you and you will believe him even when he is lying. “It was the last team, and I thought I had already had the money.” And that was the last time Chelsea was Chelsea to that gambler. It officially morphed to Chelshit, even if you are a diehard supporter and were once willing to bet on your own two balls – biological ones just for the sake of arsenal fans.

The advent of betting added another dimension to football fanaticism: crude and vile banter. It is no longer about how a team plays shitty football, but about how that shitty football prevented me from winning a windfall, thereby changing my fortunes and the fortunes of all the generations after me, even up to the fifth one. And the emotions expended in it is so real that it can cut through steel reinforced concrete.

Gone are the days when a game of football was just that. Despite the fact that Manchester United is a limping team, no self-respecting fan will bet against it even though they blatantly and boisterously talk about its complete shittiness. It is often a welcome loss in the case that it  has lost and thereby making one lose money, because it only confirms that you have always passionately hated Man U, and there’s no way you could ever ever bet on such a loser team. You call it names referring to a donkeys gonads.

Sometimes, while watching a game of football, and it is open consensus that majority of the patrons have bet on a certain team, be sure that banter is legally prohibited on that team people have bet on. These are people capable of rage that can move mountains. They’ll order your swift removal from the place because you are causing financial disturbance in manner likely to cause economic depression. Worse still, they could have been sent by their wives to bring a packet of milk and decided to bet on a team they were sure to win.

Facing the danger of being called stupid for the hundredth time, the man of the house will do everything to bend the force of nature just to make sure he retains his money, but plus a little more. Often, dharma (the law of cause and effect) sits by and calls the man stupid in advance, making sure Barcelona, with odds of 1.2, losing miserably to Las Palmas. A one-nil loss. No over 2.5, no Messi goal.

And in that state of utter disappointment, the least that man can do, even though he can constitutionally punch you, is call Barcelana  by certain organs found in the nether regions, which, by definition are overused. And this is not reserved only to the moment he lost his money, but eternally. Even if Barcelona wins by ten goals, he will find something he thinks is deragatory and says with Miguna’s conviction. And he will feel good about until you tell him about how shitty Chelsea is, and he happens to be a Chelsea fan.

Confessions of a Homo Technolopithecus

Picture the earth before creation – dark, desolate, and scary. Time stretches endlessly, without the grasp of the ever swooshing deadlines. Now picture yourself in that world, in this present world with numerous technological distractions which have embedded themselves into your everyday life.

You will be lonely in a crowd, wandering in the streets as though you are a lost soul seeking redemption. I guess that’s how it feels without a phone, for that’s the experience I went through back in the village when power went off, and KPLC, ever reliable in disappointing, took its sweet time.

I am homo technolopithecus, a reverse from the sapien sapien thing. I can’t live without my phone. I love to feel it in my pocket, the right pocket of my trouser, and whenever I feel its absence my whole body is sent into unspeakable panic. It has to be there, even when I don’t need it, such as when I am dead and need to check whether I have received a text.

You may have heard of people making jokes that the wifi was down once and they were forced to talk to their families. They confessed that they seem like nice people. I am one of them, though I do not overly peg my existence on the internet. I just need to feel my phone, on for I derive immense pleasure in drawing the security pattern and gawking at it endlessly, for hours. When I get bored with it, I set it aside for ninety seconds and resume fiddling with it.

I can’t, for the fluids in me, imagine how someone can survive without a phone. Of course there are people who can live without it – dead people and hopeless drunkards. Even though no one actively looks for me, I feel I am obliged to be reachable. It is true with relationships.

When you are in love, there’s that constant need to validate your affection. The only thing available, what with the distance is a phone. Texting and calling brings forth two dimensions in a relationship – strengthen it or break it. if you are dating a lady with the intelligence quotient of boiled maize, it can be disastrous because every time your phone is off, she conjures up a thousand scenarios of where you could be – which often is on top of a naked woman. To her, there are never any other viable reasons as to why you could be unreachable. That’s why I am a homo technolopithecus. 

 

The other day, while with a friend, he turned and asked me what postpartum meant. I looked at him with an ‘are you stupid glare’ and answered him. Because I know things, and the way I know things is through googling. That answers you why I thought he was stupid – he was holding his phone, and I wondered why he couldn’t make use of it. Some people! They think we have time to answer questions google can answer within a second, and not just answer – have detailed illustrations that may even include pictures of naked women.

As an avid social media user, I often rise in the morning to see the posts and go like – what a complete moron.  I love this routine so much that I log into social media even before my eyes have fully deciphered the brain stimuli instructing to open the eyelids. Even though social media has a certain dumbing-down effect, I love it. I love gawking at pictures of people living really good lives, read news and check out memes. Mostly I check out memes. And imagine my complete uselessness. 

 

Do not say ati I am addicted to my phone. Everything is in my palms. What more can I ask for? Money in my palm, entertainment, news, and naked pictures of women. I am a homo technopithecus, and one day when my bones will be discovered in the year 4000, they will discover my phone beside me. Archeologists at the time may wonder how primitive I was (or I am right now), but I’ll answer them now – I don’t give a damn.

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.

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 

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. 

Maverick Chang'aa Makers

Photo/Aljazeera

It is a place where men and women rise every morning to solely devote their god-given talents at – take note of this – being unproductive. On the bright side, these are extreme hobbies of ICU patients, lunatics, and certain animal species, whom, for lack of a better word, I’ll call politicians. I was part of this esteemed entourage of people for one impeccable intellectual reason: to dream-up creative ways of wasting a surplus commodity in our hands which was TIME.

And for most days, there was none. We resorted to raising our antennas really high in order to spot a drunken man or woman, upon which we’d go where he or she is coming from. Sometimes, when they have not passed out, we’d ask them where an oasis has sprung so we’d quench our thirsts. One time, through sheer bravery, we braved fierce winds that blew so hard that it appeared to rain horizontally. In the distance, a dark sheet of falling rain covered in a meticulous manner from earth to heaven. And we were heading that direction.

At times we sat perched on raised grounds, like people suddenly struck by a disease that made everyone hold a solitary meeting and wonder how he or she would spend his thirty hours available for the day. During these solemn moments, I actually could feel my intelligence quotient hurtling down like a Boeing that has been shot down by a rocket propelled grenade. It wouldn’t have been a nice experience for people with single digit IQs – the process would feel like a crushing can experiment, leaving the victim permanently retarded. On medical grounds, however, such a person makes an excellent voter.

On this part of the hemisphere, illicit brew is so rampant that it has been determined to be beyond spiritual redemption. A catholic priest has since urged people to use their heads which is a brilliant piece of advice ever given considering that the head is where the mouth is usually located. The priest seemed concerned by the fact that people are spending their extra daily allotment of hours to come up with ways of ingesting chang’aa. The only person who has so far been proven to be innovative is the area chief – he uses the foot. However, his innovation is so detested that people flee when they see, hear, or feel his presence.

The dens are exclusively manned by brash and bulky women who have since discovered the scientific reasons of not giving a s**t. You never want to offend them because they’ll fire a salvo of insult as if your carbon emission is the leading polluter of the ozone layer. They quietly move in and out, dishing the precious liquid, sometimes covered with sooth, with their sniper-like eyes scouting for the next trouble maker. They make a living this way, undeterred by the threat of arrest, or even death.

As a sign of sharing – but I call it lack of business acumen – these dens serve a paltry of their brews. There’s never a surplus in each house. By eight am, you won’t get any busaa in the entire village. The approach used in busaa is – you blink you miss. Even chang’aa is available in little quantities. They’d even pack them in medicine bottles to give someone the illusion that they’ve drunk too much. You move from one den to another the whole day if you are really motivated to destroy your liver. And folks here are quite motivated. Based on available evidence, heaven doesn’t serve these kinds of liquids, and they are determined to make the best of it before the time comes. Hell, they won’t even go to heaven but that’s not a matter of immediate concern. Perhaps, the last prayers will charm God into admitting them to His humble residence.

Perhaps you could be wondering if there’s any honor in living such a pathetic lifestyle. With enough foresight, you can see that a majority of these people have already time travelled to 2022, and they know how they want their lives to be. And this is it: they want to make one hustler even much richer while they pass on the cherished tradition of loafing time to their children.

On a serious note, that is not the way to live. Personally, I learnt that there is no honor in drinking when you can’t even write about.

***

From the experience, I made a note to stop drinking.

  

6 Rules to Abide By When You Visit From Shagz

The days of our great grandfathers were the perfect days. The only struggle one had was growing up. Once you grew up, a bride that had been selected for you is brought, and you learned to love each other as you build a family. They gave you cows to start with, and a farm. Not now. In addition to cramming mathematical formulae that you won’t apply anywhere, you have to contend with job seeking. It’s frowned upon to be in the village when you have that degree most covet. For that matter people keep streaming into your hell hole in the city attending interviews and whatnot. Some, for morbid curiosity. In this civilized world, it’s prudent to have a few rules to those who intend to visit. It goes a long way enhancing your visitor’s stay, as well as yours.

Bring your own charger

As a visitor never take this important gadget for granted. You don’t know what phone your host may be using. It could ile ya pin ndogo. Do not be fooled by the fact that your host is ever online on whatsapp every time you check in, that it is a smart phone he or she is using. Better yet, some of these phones have the lifespan of an orgasm. Don’t be an inconvenience. Bring your own charger.

Inform your host of your special dietary/medical needs

There many things that can go wrong when you consume foods that you normally don’t ingest. In case of such a scenario, it is critical that you inform your prospective host so that he or she can send you the budget (it varies from hood to hood) for your stay to make your stay a little livelier. Otherwise, you may find out that your host, although many will go out of their way to prove otherwise, depend on KDF for all their nutritional needs.

Don’t outshine your host

Once you get there, don’t sneer at the sheer lack of organization in your host’s house. Don’t comment on the pungent smell that emanates from secret places. Do not be a hygiene Nazi. If he or she doesn’t spread his bed, please do not make an attempt to. If he or she does not shower, please do what Romans do. If he or she sleeps up to ten in the morning, sleep up to 10.01 am. And most importantly don’t complain, complement your host. It goes a long way.

Note that you alone is welcome

It is extremely rude to bring along a friend, or a romantic partner. You didn’t come all the way from your village to engage in bedroom conquests, did you? Find a lodging or a dark alley if you can’t afford one. As a visitor you have no right to have to invite another visitor, not especially when you expressly stated that you had nowhere to go. Contravening this rule will be tantamount to treason.

Feel at home does not mean feel at home

As a matter of fact, when your host tells you to feel at home, he or she doesn’t actually mean it. People just say it, and it is as important as those mathematical formulae you learned, or more precisely just as important as political pledges that we hear every five years. To interpret in layman’s language, it means get done quickly with whatever brought you to the city and leave.

Don’t overstay

Finish your business, and leave the following day. It does no harm if you follow this principle. Even though your host may act like he wants you around a little longer, he keeps wondering when he can fart carelessly like he used. It is egregious to overstay. You may overstretch your host’s budget, and the sad part is that he may not complain because he is aware that you are messenger to villagers that want to hear so badly how life is torturing you in the city, just to feel better about themselves. 

The Kitchen

The kitchen has never been my fortress, except of course when I am going to fetch food. Being brought up in a girls only environment exempted me from doing any chores pertaining the kitchen. But nature has a way of making you curse a privilege you so immensely enjoyed, thrusting you in a jungle where you are all alone. In your stray wanders, you find yourself relishing the magic that happens in the kitchen, and of course Miss Google comes to your rescue, a subservient kind of girl who obeys all your instructions but doesn’t do anything. She tells you how to cook rice and bolts out like she wasn’t even there.

Back when we were young, I’d watch my mother cook, letting my eyes indulge in every single move her hands made. But then, as a man, it reaches a point where it becomes sort of an abomination to be in the kitchen anymore. The kitchen in the village sense is a smaller structure constructed specifically for cooking, and more often it would be blackened by sooth. The sooth would collect over years until it forms something like a goatee. That sooth goatee served a purpose, a medicinal one. I have never bothered to know the kind of ailment the sooth-goatee heals.

I am glad I am not alone lost in this jungle that is the kitchen. When the pangs of hunger bite, a man’s got to roll up the sleeves, hit the kitchen with the hope that he will concoct something palatable. Plenty of times the food comes out exceptional (in its whackiness) and he finds himself really grateful for whoever has ever cooked a meal for him in the last quarter a century. Mothers become heroes all of a sudden, and if she was already one, the spectrum only widens, so does respect. Imagine cooking meals day in day out, whether she feels like it or not? I think that’s the definition of valor.

The first day is often the harshest. You burn yourself, the food comes out tasteless, too much salt…..plenty. The only consolation is that no one has to remind you of its tastelessness. But then when you are done, another bigger challenge confronts you; doing the utensils. Most of a man’s utensils have been discarded having stayed long enough for mould to grow; making a permanent abode on what was once a bed for ‘mouthwatering’ delicacies. The reason is a man will find it too hectic to wash and will resort to buying, especially sufurias, instead of washing.

As a bachelor, there’s always that one lady that makes a visit every weekend. She believes that there are no lies in your truths, sometimes she questions but ‘love’ makes her constitutionally ignorant. She’s upbeat every weekend doing chores around (cooking, washing) as you head out to catch football in the hood. In the evening when you head home you find everything clean, and food on the table or at your beck and call. Before long, you are asking her to move in with you in order to counter the effects of your whacky cooking. In between, when she’s gone, the man in you only cooks meals that involve boiling and doesn’t make the sufuria dirty.  

There will be always another woman who knows a man’s favorite menu, the kibandaski woman. She knows the number of chapattis you’ll eat when in a certain mood, she smells your broke ass many miles away and she knows why you don’t show up on weekends, yet she is not jealous at all.

People Against Exams and Assignments

There’s a fancy water bottle she carries along. It has the color of wood. It has water in it, but it’s just an assumption-it could be liquid oxygen. It seems like it is standard survival procedure for women nowadays, to carry water bottles all everywhere. It is as if they have special information that water will run out any day they don’t do it. Joke on them!! We men just need oxygen, and sometimes beer (insert your favourite poison). She’s a lecturer, who in my estimation is in her early thirties. At irregular intervals, she sips from her fancy water bottle, sometimes just opening it to see if the water has turned into wine.

It’s always a long drawn class, with her monotonous voice ruling the room. It hovers above heads, from which it leaves vital information such as ‘let me doze off.’ To keep myself listening, or seeming to be, I have to stimulate my mind by mentally stripping her, one clothe at a time, just for the fun of it. Of course I never get there, because she throws a glare at all the darn time, especially when I am about to flay her. One time she asked a question in which the class spokespersons had no interest in speaking for us. She left the room and emerged a few minutes later with foolscaps. And we had to write an exam. I personally cursed the talkative people who failed us at our hour of need.

But not this time, I am very alert though. I sit next to a talkative foreigner, whom I am more than glad he has never discovered the miracles google can do. He asks questions, answers questions like he is just about to take over the class. Even then, you would think that such kind of a person would be nice to be around with, more so when you have no desire of answering any questions. You are wrong. It is not possible to live without have a kind of hatred for such a person. Not the hatred that makes you want to shoot them in the head though, but just a form that you can’t pinpoint. You just know you hate him, or put more precisely your person desperately want to have a concrete reason to hate him.

Then bingo!

The lecturer with a fancy water bottle spills the beans.  This whacko has been going around our backs, asking for assignments. Not once but twice. This is what you’ve been looking for to hate this person. What kind of person actively seeks to be given assignments?

In the spirit of people against exams and assignments [PAEA] he needs to have his head examined for contravening one of the most important rules; ‘you shall not, in any form whatsoever, display an abnormal love for exams or assignments, through gallivanting with the lecturer/teacher, for this is traumatic to some (all of us), unless under extremely unavoidable circumstances.’   

However, the group is very lenient on those who contravene this rule and a light punishment has been proscribed for offenders. It states that,’ anyone who contravenes this rule is liable to a mandatory brain examination, which shall be conducted by highly trained surgeons renowned for vigorously and relentlessly hitting the offenders’ head until he asks for forgiveness by collapsing and going limb.’ This punishment has been argued to so lenient, although the use of guns was banned on the grounds that offenders had a relatively easy way confessing.

In the spirit of unity and harmony, we do not like assignments and exams at all. If anything, it should be replaced forthwith with something less serious like drinking water from fancy water bottles. Even though it may be indispensable, we would like to proclaim unequivocally that we do not like it.

A Little god Within Us

If anything, I pride myself in having a brilliant memory. I can remember pretty mundane things, that may have happened years ago. Plenty of them are embarrassing, which gives them the street cred to run riot in my head every once in a while. Even with a brilliant memory, I still manage to forget really important facts such as how to make money by simply not doing anything.

Today however, I do not choose to recall embarrassing things that have happened in my short career of not doing anything meaningful. It was a Sunday. I remember lying on the bed waiting for the clock to hit one so that I could join the queue filled with rich kids clamouring for that one meal they clamoured for- French fries or chips to the common man. The details have escaped by brain, although I could have been counting the number of the squares on the mesh that was part of the upper deck bed. My leg could have been suspended on a red shoe string that acted as a sling. I don’t remember any of those, except I was lying down on the bed when she texted me.

After we exchanged pleasantries, she asked me what I was doing. Previously, I never thought of anything other than blurt what I was doing. It was somehow special when a girl asked one what they were doing. It was as if they were weighing if they could interrupt you without deviating you from saving the world from its evilness. Also it was as if she wanted to show up naked on your door. Now it is not special at all. You could respond with a bland message, texting you.

And so she asked me what I was doing.

‘Fantazing.’ I had replied.

‘About what?’

‘About (insert the name of that person you hate) naked and lifeless body.’

She laughed-in text-and replied that I had just made her day.

I thought myself as a little god who had made someone’s day. Just with a fantasy of someone’s dead and naked body. I wanted to let her know that I was a god, something I had once told people. Just to emphasise the point, I had put it my whatsapp bio: I am a God, it read. We then were in a makeshift relationship, one that never quite took off. And she reminded me, when she got the chance to tell me, that I was blaspheming. To me, it was far from blasphemy because I didn’t use the article the. Better yet, the words were a title to a Kanye West song that I sort of loved. The lyrics to the chorus were:

I am a God

Hurry up with my damn massage

Hurry up with my damn ménage

Get the Porsche out the damn garage

I am a God

Even though I'm a man of God

My whole life in the hands of God

So y'all better quit playing with God

Soon as they like you make 'em unlike you

'Cause kissing people ass is so unlike you

The only rapper who compared to Michael

So here's a few hating-ass niggas who'll fight you

And here's a few snake-ass niggas to bite you

I don't…

Speaking of being a god, I have countless thought that there is a god in each one of us. Just devoting our lives to not, consciously and unconsciously, hurting others, and perhaps helping that person in need may be a godly act. You could be walking on the street and you stumble upon a street kid begging. Something may stir within you, and you hand that child a few coins you had although you had vowed not to sometimes back. You have however acted as an agent of god.

In the course of our lives, we’ve encountered people with seemingly incurable ailments. Pictures of their bodies devoured by invisible creatures are splashed in social media, ruining your browsing experience because all you ever wanted was to see pictures of girls in tight clothes, escorted by captions about an earth quake that devastated a remote village in Indonesia. You are forced to abandon your mission and concentrate on this human being, whom, with all due respect, God has decided he suffers from an ailment that leaves his external body parts either excessively swollen or simply nauseatingly unsightly. Below the description will be an m-pesa till number, urging you to contribute money for treatment in India.

Then the fear that it would you next triggers a hormone that is responsible for philanthropy. You reach for you m-pesa account and send something small. It’s not only you, millions others will contribute. Millions will be raised and the sick person will fly to India for treatment. Most often this person will thank God for having heard his prayers.

A simple act of kindness shows people that there’s God above, watching the downtrodden, and the helpless.

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.