Truthful Voices We Ignore

Sometimes there are truthful voices we ignore. 

17^th October, 2013. It’s was Sunday. It’s a wonder that you remember things that don’t really have much value depending on how you view it. Things that are tested in exams take so long to remember when you need to, but some events last forever. May be its time we give value to things that we don’t easily forget, more than them being mere memories.

On this day I was heading home from Nairobi. I had never been to Nairobi before and as fate would have I got selected to join this school inches from land marks that really identify Nairobi. My raw vie of Nairobi was one large concrete jungle, street after street. I was amazed to see trees and more so a park just beside the city. Marvels from a village boy that was me then.

I had been to every single place Nairobi, had to offer. The night life was something I had yearned. Blame it on these cool kids from considerably rich families. Looking back they weren’t really rich but confident. They grew up watching movies and TV, whichever come first. They told stories of clubbing and shit. And when we stepped into the city, having a taste of became an obsession, the first thing to check off our bucket list. First to Simmers Club, then a myriad of others before we got whisked out of one, at 3 a.m. Then the reality of being murdered by mongrel humans hit us as we strolled atop Thika Super Highway to Ngara. To top it we had to climb a wall back to the hostel considering the watchman had already slept. Then imagine doing that while high.

It dawn on me that night life wasn’t for those whose wallets were faint at heart. I had to redo my bucket list, strip off night life and replace it with something more interesting, something I didn’t manage to up to now. Still redoing my bucket list.

To truly bid bye to city, anybody from the rift will tell you North Rift Shuttle is the choice. Early that morning, I was at their offices ready to carry my city lessons back to my village. I booked the back right seat. I don’t remember if it was the only one remaining or I chose it out of my own volition. I realized it had been a mistake, later on when we had successfully navigated our way out of the congested city. Up to date I still wonder why there are so many people, moving unceasingly all the damn time.

You see I sat beside a couple. Judging from their dressing they weren’t that well off but weren’t struggling. The lady was in a long sleeved rd top and cheap jeans trouser, those that they sell by the roadside. She was happy, that I could tell. The man on the other hand was stone faced as if he had been forced into making the journey.

The lady kept receiving and making calls until her battery ran off. She asked for her man’s which he did without a second thought. The lady seemed to have a business that necessitated her instructions from time to time. Once a caller inquired where she was and triumphantly said she was being ‘taken out’.  There was a pride in the way she said it, like she had won a wager. It seemed the man was keen on taking the relationship to the next level.

Later the calls became scanty as the journey wore on. She’d lean on her man’s chest and ask those questions ladies ask, in a childlike awe. If there’s anything amazing is the way ladies ask questions. Like why is a zebra stripped? Beb si tutaenda Mombasa? The dude never smiled. He answered her questions nonchalantly, like he was absent and his body was inadvertently in a Matatu, travelling to god-knows-where with a lady it loved.

In truth I envied him. The lady was too much in love. In this day and age it’s rare to find ladies who truly love you. Like Chris Brown said, they ain’t loyal anymore. She would laugh in a sonorous way, teasing me at my corner. I couldn’t help but compare mine to theirs. There was this voice that seemed to tell me I wasn’t significant any more. I would ignore it, but it was incessant. Trouble with our hearts is they listen more to what it wants to hear. Right there it wanted to hear that it was deeply in love with her and she was too.

She’d meet me at Eldoret. For the first time in the relationship she never bothered to ask where I had reached. I didn’t too. I only called her when I alighted. The first call went answered. Second the same. The third time she answered in a very sleepy voice, that didn’t feign annoyance. I had ruined a Sunday afternoon siesta. I told her I was in town, just a few metres from where she resided. She had never allowed me into her house and I figured out may be she didn’t want me to the subject of gossip from her neighbours or she had another guy who had unrestricted access to her house. I had gotten over that and wasn’t hoping that she’d change her mind soon.

She promised she’d be out in a few minutes. The minutes turned into many. I contemplated leaving without seeing her but something told me to wait a few more minutes. Thirty minutes later she called. She emerged from the buildings lethargically, bound by something invisible. She walked like someone being led to the gallows. We greeted each other like strangers, without even a faked smile. No hugs.

She’d normally insist I stay for a while but on that particular day she let me go. She seemed to have dished her last shred of care. I had failed her numerously. She had earmarked her exit route and she’d do so at the earliest opportunity. Communication became scanty and when it did happen it seemed forced, her hurling insults then half hearted apologies, which she’d withdraw soon after or ask herself why she was apologizing.

In all honesty, there is always a voice that tells you a relationship isn’t right. I don’t know if its science but there exists an element called ether that links minds. Often times we are thinking of so many things at the same time to focus on what another person is thinking. Ever tried calling your significant other and she tells you she was about to or was texting you? That’s the power of minds. It communicates with another mind, and in the case of discomfort, the other mind will tell that your minds are no longer incompatible.

Don’t ignore that voice. Listen to it. Make your way out of relationships that don’t work.

SOLITARY NIGHTS

As a solitary life beckons its blissful sorrows

The unwinding charts between hatred and love

And looking forward to such empty tomorrows

The dread of reckoning the contents of fate above

With pungent and repulsive thoughts I have

Yet with hope of finding and falling for someone

To whom fate has designed for me to crave

In every of the seconds of day and of night, every turn

To long that she longs as I that I am her man

DON’T LEAVE WITH SILENCE

When Hussein’s advances usurps my throne

And one chilly dawn

When married men haven’t the morning glory

And you find thus that we be just a story

Don’t leave in silence my love.

Shout at the top of your voice

So that the neighbor know you had no choice

But to leave me and my crooked penis

Shout that everything in my house is amiss

Shout but don’t kill me with your silence

Don’t leave without telling me why

For I will be tempted to look around and beseech the sky

Don’t make me search that which exists no more

Don’t leave without letting me know

Just don’t leave with silence

Tell me everything that bothers you

Before you finally start anew

I might have a chance to defend my love

Or find it fit to leave for the one above

Leave, but not in silence 

Yet She'll She Is Okay

He could trace despair in the gleam of her face

Her voice gave much away

How she reaped pain where she sowed to gain

Yet, she’ll say she is okay

She sits silently alone, trying to undo the known

Her sweet smile a rainbow

Amid tears she thought wouldn’t fall in years

It should have snapped-cupid’s arrow

It takes vigor and courage to walk off the stage

A story scripted to match seven heavens

The inadequacy of verses; garden filled with roses

How so! When earth is filled with heathens

The Future Of The Past

And it’s not now,

Neither could it be yesterday

Its somewhere

Between tomorrow and infinity

Ravaged Village

One day you’ll get to walk through the paths, dusty and beaten, of this village in a remote part of Uasin Gishu County. On that day, there’ll not be anything except orphaned children, neglected mud-walled houses, lands that have been permanently left to fallow and young men wallowing in the fate that has befallen them.  They’ll be chewing miraa, while fondling plastic Coca-Cola bottles with clear liquids inside if you peer closely. They (these young men) will be fathers to their own siblings and would be mulling about the day their parents went wrong. Today I’ll do you a favour.  I’ll walk you through half the journey. I’ll walk you well in advance before that day comes. Be warned though that this is subject to exaggeration on my part and it would have been really great if you walked it by yourself. Let’s begin the journey.

Here, you will catch a glimpse of lands with cypress trees grown on the edges, pruned to the tip. You will wonder how this is possible and give up when you realize that it is a vanity. ‘There have pruning drones, ‘I‘ll lie to you. ‘Haven’t you seen them?’ I’ll ask to rouse your amusement.  Mud-walled houses with rusty tin roofs and many of them grass thatched line haphazardly along the dusty road. Maize plants on these lands speak of neglect. Weeds have choked their growth and most are have very thin stalks with barely anything to harvest. You’ll notice the road painted white from chewed maize stalks. It’s a delicacy during this time of the year.

On the east of this village lies a more affluent village. Large trucks of land where wheat and maize plantations stop your eyes. If it’s your first time, you will find it delightful and you will give in the temptation to take selfies to brag to so many people who don’t know you on social media. Lonesome bricked houses stand solitarily either in the middle or at the edge. There are those who let reason prevail and found it worthwhile to construct their houses close together, but still on their farms. It’s called Chebaon. It would qualify to be a leafy suburb. Let’s call it a leafy village. Yes, Lavingtone.

To the west of Chebaon is Kaoni, where my story is set. A river separates these two villages. Here you will access Kaoni through a dilapidated bridge, constructed when there was still very little difference between the two villages, when Chebaon had very few residents and those who had settled found it worthwhile to have neighbours who they would occasionally borrow each other salt when it became extremely impossible to get to the nearest Kiosk. And they needed a proper bridge. Who would walk through a wooden plank in the dark?  The present doesn’t allow that. Chebaon is almost not a village. A village is rather a backward word that denotes a people who are clueless about civilization. People here upgraded their television sets to pay TVs while the other village still is clueless about television. The other village supplies labour to Chebaon. And that’s the biggest difference.

The kids of Chebaon parents attend the best schools that could be found in the region. Kaoni kids attend local primary schools and in Chebaon, the only school which hosts kids from other villages but its own. Chebaon in very simple terms is a home of people who don’t live there.

Across the river, you’ll find grass thatched houses standing like they’ll collapse any minute. Some even have poles placed to support the leaning houses. The mud-walled houses reveal a sorry state. You’ll see kids dressed in rags, which mostly entail an adult’s shirt or sweater, playing innocently outside these houses. They care less, just relishing in their innocence. One will lend a wail to the rather quiet village, having exhausted means of winning a contest against another who apparently is stronger than him or her.  An older kid will prevail on the young ones and soon the games go on. They will be engrossed till pangs of hunger cannot be contained anymore. Luckily you won’t be here to see that. I’m just being too generous by telling you this.

One of those mud-walled houses belongs to a village elder. He has many children some his own, some not. The extraordinary thing is he doesn’t care about them. Everybody knows he flogs his wife thoroughly yet they will rush to him with domestic cases.  Everybody knows he doesn’t contribute a penny to his children’s upkeep. Their mother can send them away for ages and he won’t badge an eyelid. He could be tempted to ask where they are and the wife’s stern reply would be, “is there anything you want to give them?” He spends all his time away from his home except in the mornings when he milks his cows, (he trusts no one when it comes to his cows.) and when he’s surveying his inherited piece of land, scavenging for something to sell. He is a father, but this title is largely ceremonial. Once he beat his wife senseless, leaving her unconscious and went to tell his kids to go and pick their dead mother.

This elder runs the village. He solves the issues that are way below the scope of the sub-chief. He solves small squabbles that family heads find too tasking to tackle like when the wife wants a more sober approach to their persistent squabbles, sometimes over the excess amount of tea leaves in his tea.     

As you walk through the dusty paths, you won’t fail to feel something ominous in the air. People here seem lethargic. They portray a picture of a people who’ve lost hope such that they view strangers with contempt, like they’ve been sent to take away what’s left of them and for them. They seem like orphans. They seem they are scared more by what they know than what they don’t. Their greetings are hurried, like one is a bearer of bad news, of death perhaps.

The animals too, tethered by the road side, have that look of their owners. Cows are herded along the roads. Trees sway sensually to the wind, almost often against its will. Young men will be sitting aimlessly along the road, waiting vainly to ogle at a girl’s posterior. Here girls are mothers, their innocence taken away at the earliest opportunity.  Their eyes stare at something invisible, the hands clutching impalpable pain. You will be tempted to look at what they are looking at, may be stretch your hand to feel what they feel when their hands are tightly folded. Nothing will yield more disappointment when all you feel is a rough hand born of many hours foraging for food, for their kids.

The disease is in the air. No one wants to talk about it. I feel it every time I inadvertently stroll through this village. There are people am afraid for, the guys we played football together before I left for where it would be easier to cross to greener pastures. The journey is almost complete. A few days and I’ll be done. I’ll show the homes of my childhood enemies. One time they beat me and ran away. I spent almost all my lower primary break time trying to revenge. It’s been ages since I last saw them. I want to meet them and ask them if they still remember the source of our squabble.

That little squabble is among the minor things I remember. Even the day I was flogged thoroughly for a mistake I’m still trying to fathom to date doesn’t rank highly-part of the minor memories. There was this day when the fight against AIDS was in full swing. It was in the curriculum. It was around 2003 and 2003. The head teacher would gather us at random times and tell us about this disease that doesn’t have cure. There was a song she’d sing.

Tell them about AIDS slowly

So that they don’t say they didn’t understand.

And she did spoke of it at lengths. And more importantly slowly. It got me scared, I don’t know how it struck the rest. I stayed off girls as much as I could. One day the school organized an HIV/AIDs awareness day. We all trooped to a neigbhours house to see for ourselves what AIDS could do to a human body. We saw gory videos, of very thin people whose bones were about to escape from their bodies. Effects of AIDS. We also saw of other sexually transmitted diseases. They were equally gory. Unsightly. Nauseating.

All that and my friends didn’t take it seriously. I wonder what happened to their brains. Now they are chewing miraa, staring at their futures fade away. Like they want to salvage, they clench their fists, gnaw their teeth. But it’s too late.

Tell them about AIDS slowly

So that they don’t say they didn’t understand.

I hope your regrets have this sound track. Wait for your fate. Or guide it to a more favourable ending.

Chrome

Leila had just closed school. After a few exchange of pleasantries through text she asked when I’d be around so that I could buy her a drink. She said her favourite was Chrome. I wondered. Chrome!  Odd name for alcohol. I mean there’s Kenya Cane, Kenya King, Konyagi, Meakins [I can name almost all the brands of cheap liguor-I belong to this class]. Names weren’t yet exhausted to warrant someone naming a vodka Chrome. Like someone woke up one day with a stiff hung over from the other liquors and said, ‘I’m gonna make me a liquor and name it Chrome. I’m gonna make Chrome more than just a browser.’ Five years from now a deep voice will emanate from our speakers….when chrome was just a browser….

My interest was irked. Trouble is I hadn’t enough problems in my Problem Bank to make me visit the liquor store. Every time I felt the urge of communing with eagles I was always repulsed by the Problem Bank customer care. Sweetly she’d say, ‘You have insufficient problems, please find a woman and call back.’ That’s when I realized how it sucked to live without problems. The world would suck even more without problems. There’d be no politics and worst of all journalists would be jobless. Imagine a world like that! A world where people wake up, make love with only their wives, eat, pray and make love again [with their wives only-this is important]. The world would be so freaking boring.

Back to chrome.

So am heading home with my paps. The sound track to our silent conversations has always been Franco’s music. He has an album that he plays every single time I’ve been on that car with him. We drive reveling in our awkward silence. Franco belts his tunes. I used to hate such kind of music. Now I don’t, how else would I survive a six hour journey? We stop at Nakuru. He had some business to attend. He disappears and I spot a huge Chrome advert on a billboard. There was a dude dressed stylishly, with shoes that glowed around the edge of the sole. There were curvy colorful lines imposed on him but not enough to make him indistinguishable. The photo was taken while he was dancing to some hip hop music, I guess, because his hands were in the air and he stood on his toes. Below him was a fancy slogan I forgot to remember. The clear target of this drink was the young broke ass people. Just like me. RRP 180.

‘I’ll buy it one day’ I promised my liver.

We get home in the wee hours, the kind my high school principal used to call satanic hours. That was just one of the few punchlines he managed to pull. One day he claimed our parents were the poorest South of Sahara and north of Limpopo. If weren’t peaceful enough we’d have lynched his car [one of his]. Looking back our parents sure had to be. I mean if you can build a multi-million house immediately after purchasing a Toyota Rav 4, everybody had to be poor surely. I retrieve my bag from the car boot and prance about indulgently. There is something about the village; fresh air, no noise except dogs barking occasionally and cocks crowing-the air is generally serene.

Something about home. No matter how long you’ve been away everything will always seem normal. No matter how changes have taken place it will still be the same place you left a few years or months back. It will still be home.

I should meet Leila, I thought basking on a rock by the stream. I always check on this rock occasionally, but almost always, when I want to clear my mind. The gurgling stream offers the best beats as the birds sing recklessly up the trees. A few texts later we strike a deal. We’d meet the next day, a Sunday. As usual she says she doesn’t have fare. You get a cookie for guessing what I did. Bingo! You got it right.

Is it impatience or is it that girls drag themselves deliberately when they agree to meet you? Or it could be my own problem? She had promised to leave her place at 3.30, add another hour and she’d be there. At four I was there, spruced up. I called. She doesn’t pick. I call again. No answer. An hour later she calls. I rushed out from this dinghy movie place, where retards catch Dj Afro movies. I forced myself in, for time to move. I’d missed Dj Afro anyway, and that was enough an excuse. This is also the place we catch football. Here the roof is dust infested. Woe unto you if a belated Arsenal fan jumps in jubilation, worse still for a replay of goal. It’s not rare to find people celebrating a replay, especially when their team’s behind. I think they should ban replaying from different angles because many people here confuse for another goal.

Leila says she’d be leaving her place in an hour. That’s makes it two. Thinking of two grueling hours in a dinghy place, coupled with sweaty human beings, crammed in one place and the hotness of the place prompts me to ask what’s keeping her that long. I call her back immediately she hangs up. She picks up and barks.

‘I just told you I’ll be there in an hour….is it this money that you are desperate about. I can send them back…’ and she hangs up just like that. Without according me an opportunity of reply. Meager money. I couldn’t count the amount of money Sportpesa and African Spirits Limited have gobbled up-probably a thousand over.

Why would she be irked by a hundred shillings? Why would she even think I would be at a loss with a mere hundred shillings? Just because she wouldn’t be around wouldn’t mean I wouldn’t get where I was to go [apply your poetic knowledge or lack of it]

Just stay wherever you are, do whatever you are doing with whomever you are with, however you lie it. Got nothing to lose.  I text her and head to this pub. It doesn’t have a name now but three years ago it use to be called Metro Pub. It’s deserted. I count only two tables, with a huge space between them. Three high stools are around the counter, unoccupied. Kalenjin music pierces the air. I look around and notice a drunk light skinned girl cuddling or seemed an old rugged looking man. I don’t want guess his age, cheap liquor has a way of aging someone embarrassingly. May he’d just cleared his fourth form. The girl rises once the song changes. I didn’t even notice the change, but I know it was Chelele before as it is now. She dances around trying to move her rigid backside to this Chelele song.  Well, all Chelele songs are the same. And she has the guts to call herself Binti Osama! How would you allow to be killed by a non-entity? Oh, I guess your dad wasn’t there to protect you, blame it on Obama.

I

 order Chrome. This is where we make acquaintances with Chrome.  I hope you aren’t slow like the browser, thinks  I.

‘We only have this,’ a motherly waiter says plainly. Trouble with all the pubs around here is there aren’t any beautiful waiters. No even one. And the serve you in those coloured plastic cups. I see a green liquid inside.

‘Aren’t all supposed to be like this?’ I regretted saying this; probably I’d be thought as an amateur drunkard. Knowing I don’t know she’d be at liberty to charge me any amount. And that’s robbery considering the fact that I’ve emerged from Muthurwa’s unnamed pubs on my goddamn feet. Skilled drunkard!

‘Lemon flavoured, ‘ she says, devoid of any emotion. A rock would say the same words without altering anything.

Green, blue, yellow….whatever (Breaking Bad fans). I want to taste Chrome. I grab it and she demands cash. Like I just stumbled into the pub. I reach for my pocket and retrieve a two hundred shilling note. I hand it to her and she hands me a glass. For the first time I see a glass. Maybe first timers are served in glasses, like most homes do to visitors. Those reserved utensils, you know. I pour a little and gulp it down and waited. Nothing happened. I poured some more and gulped. Nothing happened. The music still sucked. The two lovebirds were still miserable. Me too. Leila is distant. Like she’s never existed. May this Chrome is as slow as the one am used to. I pour half the glass and gulped down.

Then, without notice everything turned beautiful. The music became the best sound one could ever hear. The ugly couple looks sexy. The motherly bartender looks sexy too. I want to rise and gyrate whatever I have. That would wait, I think.

Then she calls. Leila calls. I look at the phone and toss it aside. She calls again. Same procedure. She calls once more. Same procedure. She texts. I look at the text.

I’m sorry.

                  Doesn’t sound real.

I mean it.

                  You’d have texted immediately. Not three hours later

Just received the text now

                 I’ve haven’t seen yours too, will check them tomorrow. Good night.

More and more sorries come in. I’m sorry for her because I wasn’t even reading them. Minutes later, after clearing my drink, I summon a boda boda guy. Ten minutes I’m fumbling with the door lock, it isn’t actually a lock but a nail driven into the edge of the door and curled, just to keep the door in place but not for security.

Lights out.