The words were there,
Beautiful phrases that even Shakespeare,
Despite having been dead for so long,
Would have marveled at my ingenuity,
Shake his head, and declare forlornly
"I wouldnt have thought of these lines,
even if I had lived this long."
But then the words are not there anymore
They will come in drips some other time
Like a faulty tap,
And me, desiring a quick full tank,
Will go elsewhere to look for other less beautiful words
But beautiful nonetheless, because they'll gush
The wandering man wonders -
Wonders the thoughts of a money-mad man
Thinking, always thinking - and never doing
What will your thoughts amount to?
Except the frustration
of having done very little for the thoughts
And desolation,
Because your wanders in distant lands
bore nothing
But if you count other things
it could include diseases such as cirrhosis
At exactly two in the night, Onjivo swaggered into Club Datura. For those who have been to Datura, one thing is certain – it exclusively for people who do not give a damn about aesthetics. For one, there are concrete pillars that someone stopped halfway, as an afterthought, while in the process of destroying it. It leaks when it rains. It is not a place where you would gladly have fun destroying your liver or lungs or even libido. Onjivo did not care about having fun, neither the aesthetics. He was in for business.
Even with the absence of aesthetics, Onjivo still manages to
be meticulous. Despite the cold that seeped straight to the bones, Onjivo wore
only a basketball vest, and a Chicago Bulls cap. He sat on a Guinness branded
plastic chair, and near a socket. Nobody knows that a socket is there, for it
looks as though you could be risking electric shock what with the wires all
naked and hanging. Once seated, he dives his hands into an orange reusable bag
and retrieves a tissue paper. It is weird for a man but Onjivo is a man who is
meticulous about everything. With a gloomy yet serious face, he gingerly wipes
the table, but only the area he projects to use.
Once done with the cleaning, Onjivo dives again into his
orange bag and retrieves three smart phones from the entrails. He also removes a
charge, plugs it into the dangerously dangling socket and turns it on. A blue
light emitted by the socket bathes a few centimetres of his table. Then he
plugs USB cables into the various orifices that came with the charger. Meticulously,
he charges each of his three phones. All this while, cigarette is dangling on
the corner of his mouth. He stops, takes a deep puff, and places it on the
table.
A recently hired waiter walks to him and greets him
jovially. She knows him which means that Onjivo is regular at the club, which
is not typically a club. The first moving drinks here are the cheap third
generation liquor and keg popular with boda boda guys and casual laborers. For
the latter, however, you would be hard pressed to understand what casual thing
they do at night. Onjivo is not a casual laborer, neither is he a boda boda
guy. He orders two Guinness bottles and settles on his chair like a boss.
With the cigarette dangling at the corner of his mouth, he
again dives into the orange bag and takes out a jelly. He scoops a huge chunk
of it and proceeds to oil himself. It is for mosquitoes; he says to an
inquisitive patron who has just come to sit next him.
The plump waiter brings him his beers. At this point, he is
checking his merchandise, jaba. The
waiter marvels at how much they are. She is intrigued by him, or by his money. Before
long, customers go to him, one by one. Onjivo measures them and puts them in a
tiny plastic bag. They part with their money and take their leaves, perhaps to
chew cud.
There are a thousand heaps of me
Neatly stacked, one on top of the other
And the weight? - o, its hard not to bother
Each day the world is too much of me
There are a thousand layers making me
To know me, you need to unfold all
But what you will achieve will be dismal
Each layer is so thick, you will see
There are a thousand dreams within me
Each yearning to be lived at the same time
They all ring like a thousand bells that chyme
Each waking second feels like a stormy sea
What's there to live when I am mere heap?
Of bones and flesh stacked together
Of grating dreams that are a great bother
Making it so hard to have a moment of sleep
When the rains stops raining
And you finally feel the sun shining
Enjoy the the scene
Toss everything into the bin
All the extra baggage
And let you skin bask in the sun's glory
Whatever the case,
Dawn all announce its arrival,
Never too late, and never early
Yet its punctuality shall not be welcome,
At least not today,
For there are many things that need hidden
Under the blanket of darkness
But, dawn - the ever insolent dawn,
Shall walk in without an iota of shame
Stacking itself among many unwanted dawns
As if it shall stand out - it thinks it is the only dawn
That was thought of yesterday as tomorrow
It is in for a rude shock
It will cry in the toilet of history,
Broken hearted, because it was rejected before it arrived
Like an aborted fetus
Dumped, and never to fulfill its dreams
It had no dreams
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!!
