Its Sunday morning and you wake
up to a stiff headache. Then the events of last night light up your morning in
the same way the sun does, only that it derives its tenacity from the yester.
The bladder is abnormally full and you involuntarily step with a cat’s stealth,
out of your bed to the washrooms (a leafy term I bet). There you whip out your
willy (the one you’ve pointlessly doubted its size) and alas there isn’t that
pleasant feeling as the liquid excrements gravitate to a God knows where. Instead
there’s a painful sensation and the colour of the liquid isn’t normal either.
You hold back some of it and make a painstaking retreat to your cozy bed. Your
mind has run multiple sprints when you reach your bed.
The templates of the previous
outings begin to unfold haphazardly in your mind, with an uneasy sense of
humour. It jeers silently. It castigates. It rebukes. The blinding light your
cheap phone produces gives a strange sensation as the eyes adjust to a sudden
exposure to a copious amount of light. A missed call and a message confront
you. She just said goodnight after you failed to pick her call. It doesn’t
matter to you because it doesn’t seem to matter to her. You recall the previous
encounters with her, and you are convinced she’s the cause of all your
impending tribulations. Too much sugar cause diabetes, you think, the comfort
offered lasts barely a second before it throws you back to your hell.
For the first in your life you
are thankful that opera mini is located ‘so far away’ on your Nokia phone. It’s
worth the myriad procedures you navigate before you finally lay your eyes on
the best invention on earth probably since gravity, had it been responsible for
people falling in love-Google. How it has churned out lazy literates you
included and how many brag of that degree that bears the hallmarks of Google.
Your certificate could have a Google logo watermarked (KEBS should check on
that). Now you are here, conjuring up terms that would give a definite answer.
Pain when you (you check yourself) and type urinating. A million plus one
results pop up and you quickly click the first one. The ailments you could be
suffering from ranges from gonorrhea, syphilis and all those STIS one could
think and associated with pain when urinating. Reality hits you where it hurts
the most and you suddenly prefer a wound because it would heal in some way
sometimes to come. This doesn’t heal, doesn’t abate. Nags so unpleasantly in
your head. Then they say you must seek medical attention as quickly as possible
and your partner too.
Hospital. The last place you want
to be. The distinct smell takes over the room, the kind that draws lines of
death all over, only they aren’t straight. Woe unto you if the first story you
heard involving the hospital was when somebody died. Then you turn in your bed
and begin visualizing you and the doctor, preferably female. Your name is
called out loudly by the doc and the temptation to look around, hoping
desperately that there’s somebody you share a name in the room. A louder call
tells you otherwise and you drag you thought-filled self to the doc for
diagnosis. She greets you and make a feeble attempt to respond.
“What’s wrong with you today?”
she asks like you’ve always made a visit to the place. A tone of familiarity
creeps out of her puffy lips, stern eyes deflating your inexistent ego. You
summon courage from your inner self even with the knowledge that it isn’t
there, only the fear of dying forcing your lips to part inaudibly.
“I experience pain when I
urinate,” was it easy as that? You wonder with triumph, the kind synonymous with
Arsene Wenger when his team scores an equalizing goal in the dying minutes of
the game.
She asks the day it the problem
began and also wants to know if there’s any discharge. You answer all quickly
and she scribbles as you stare at the stethoscope dancing rhythmically to her
heaving bosom. She doesn’t look at you. She doesn’t ask any more questions,
those that you actually expected. Did you have unprotected sex?
You scan around the room and your
eyes are obstructed buy hazy figures, dancing like shadows on an uneven ground.
The water bottle at the corner, the curtains, and the stack of files on the
doctors table….everything dances to one tuneless song, except the doc. All her
features stand still against the odds steeped against it. She seems half human,
not scared by ailments that ordinary mortals bring to her table every single
day. You think experience has taught her how not to give a damn. Your mind
takes you back to Google, how to not give a f@#k about ailments……
“Take this to the counter,” she
looks at you sternly like she is about to say go home and get well nigga.
A few minutes later you prance
out of the clinic. The only disadvantage is that you have been prescribed drugs
that demand you to abstain from alcohol. And you are pretty sure from that very
moment that impromptu alcohol bingeing sprees will thrown around by your
friends as if to celebrate the incapacitation of your liquor appetite. Two
steps from the clinic the phone rings and its one of those drinking mates…God
let me get well now, you mutter words of prayer and its seems the only time
you’ve genuinely prayed.
“Ng’ombe ii!!” A voice
reverberates through the earpiece as you turn the corner. It’s a happy one, a
sign of good tidings. It’s a voice that creates suspense and you’ve almost
always had good moments.
“Sema gunia ii,” you respond
gingerly.
“Sportpesa nayo. Lets meet in the
evening we do justice to this windfall.”
Windfall?! Jonte is fond of
exaggerating things. In a world where he greatest stories are those that a
team(enter Arsenal) messed up a bet where one staked as low as 10 shillings and
expected to reap 66799 shillings, Jonte is legally allowed to lie though it’s a
trait of his. You will not be surprised if you find his phone number saved as
Jonte Mwongo in the phones of people close to him. It doesn’t matter to you. You have been given
a temporary restraining order from entering liquor zones. You are like a twelve
year old once again, trying to enter a bar.
You trace your steps back to the
lecture room. Everything appears distant within your sight. All those sumptuous
behinds do not hold the promise it often has, albeit awhile. You take the
stairs and for the first time you wish the building had a lift. You recall
having seen one and you rubbish it because had it been functional it would have
been reserved for the vice-chancellor, even when his office isn’t in that
building. The class is half empty, considering you left it full. A group of
your friends are huddled in one corner arguing wildly about football. The
pretty girls are taking selfies and others are about their own business,
perhaps wondering why they came all the way from Githurai to idle.
No alcohol. The brown sachet says
proudly. You toss it into your bag and wander off the places you’ve had the
most beautiful drinking expeditions. You remember that day when you failed to
climb the last stare to your room. You remember that day you woke up in the
most unfamiliar place. And you resign with a sigh, telling yourself that today
would have been another one of those beautiful moments…
