Thirty and Nonchalant

To be thirty is to be unforgivingly honest. One morning you wake up and everyone is inviting you to some proverbial 3rd floor with the reflective look of a sage inducting a new wise one into the fold. If you are lucky, some of the people you have known to this point will put together a contribution and get you cake and probably sing you a birthday song with the final milking of what they will say is your youth. That evening, you will lay down on your bed and ask yourself where your life is going.  It will dawn on you how finite this life is. All of a sudden you will notice all the young’uns mushrooming around you and their freshness will intimidate you. You will not understand how quickly their ideas seem to be picked up and resonated with by a great and growing majority.

The next few months will be filled with people crawling out of the wood work asking you when on earth you will consider getting hitched to a significant other. It will not matter that a good number of these lords of relationship and matrimonial advise are in dysfunctional unions. It will not even count that you have been the ex-official shrink where they all come to vent about their frustrations. It will be an awakening realization that may be everyone just wants company to languish with in the puddle they find themselves in. Harsh? Well, may be.

One fine day, in your thirties, you will wake up and the truth will be seated right next to you. Everything will come to your conscience in its nakedness. You will come to the realization that if you live well, eat healthy and have an abundance of luck, you might get to 80 years. That, by the way, is a very strong might. The finite nature of your life will sink into your psyche and the math will begin to count itself away in your head. The balance is a simple 50 years. Out of these, you will be lucky to be completely active in only about 30. Everything else is misty, foggy and neither here or there.

A happy moment in my thirties

I turned 30 on May 13th. I am afraid, excited and unphased all at the same time. In this time, I have worked for a tyrant boss, quit and pursued my passion for art. I have performed on stages that were only possible in my dreams. I have set my passions on fire and reveled in the scotch of their burn. Here I am a lifetime of achievements after and I cannot help but feel the itch of a new clean slate waiting for me to arise to the call. What’s your 30 some story like? I want to know. Spill the beans. I dare you.

A customers wisdom to her Shoe shiner…

There are very few places where one can get an honest look into the vulnerability of men. Even then, when you are in those spaces, the vulnerability is never pronounced. It is always subtle, sometimes to a fault, but it is certain that you will get a glimpse of it.

Something about having a cold beer ,or its slightly stronger equivalent, can bring men to the recesses of their vulnerability. There they will be, taking sips from their glasses, talking about nothing in particular. Slowly they will find themselves giving tit bits of information on how mama watoto is doing. They will slow fade into a discussion on how they feel like they are sometimes overbearing over mama watoto and that they need to check that before “…ikue issue you guy!”  It never gets to a point that a fellow man now requires a tissue for his tears. I believe this is the fundamental difference with how men and women give of their vulnerabilities. We just will not sob about it. We will most likely share it with strangers who do not have the inclination to go all woishe  on us.  That is a story for another day though.

 

This is a picture of my shoes being polished by my local fix. He says that I should get him a pair of shoes like these ones. That they are ‘ngozi nzuri’. On this day i got the chance to see men being vulnerable. The rawest kind of vulnerability was spilled eve as my fix made my shoe shine. I am talking top grade. Imagine a cart puller (msee wa mkokoteni), three shoe shiners, two male customers, one female customer and two male matatu conductors going at a topic.

The shoe shiner tells the lady customer, “Nyinyi madem hukuwa na pesa!” (You ladies have a lot of money!)

She looks at him with what i imagine is a mixture of scorn and understanding with a tad of shyness.

“Kwa nini? Juu nimelipa msee wa boda soo moja?” (Why? Because i paid the motorbike guy a hundred shillings?)

“Sindio! Hiyo doo ni mob. Ungenipea hata mbaula ya chai.” (That money is too much for him. You could have given me even twenty shillings for tea.)

She pauses for a few moments as she looks at him go about cleaning her shoes. Then she engages him in what becomes an interesting discussion.

She went on to say that it is women who are carrying the economies of small towns. That everyone she knows who is making a decent living from motorbike riding services has a family they are supporting and that they are able to do it all because it is the women who procure their services.

“Mungekuwa na uwezo nyinyi wanaume, hawa vijana na mababa wa boda wangelala njaa juu hamuwezi bebwa ati ni pesa unatupa!” (If it was within your power, you men would let these young and old men in the motorcycle riding business sleep hungry with their families because you imagine it is too much money you are giving them!)

At some point, we were all forced to just shut up and listen to her break down the tapestry of how women are running the economies of small towns. She pointed out at the green grocers who ferry the produce from the main market to the small stations within estates. By the time her shoes were ready, we had been schooled on the many small but interesting financial contributions that women make by simply being more willing to let go of money in their hold.

She finished by saying to the shoe shiner attending to her,“Ukilipa hawa wasee wa boda, jua tu kuna mtoto amepata school fees ama maziwa mahali. Umejenga nchi.” ( If you pay these people in the motorcycle riding business, just know that there is a baby somwhere who who has gotten their school fees or a packet of milk. You have built the nation.)

After she left, we the men left behind admitted to ourselves that there was a whole lot of truth in what she said even though there were some grey areas.

 

Reflections on a Misplaced Bravado

Do you know what it feels like to drown? Have you, God forbid,  ever found yourself in a mass of water deeper than your height and for some reason you couldn’t swim? Yea? Do you remember how your lungs heaved for air? How your concerns of being an accomplished anything whose name is sung all over the globe is no where in your thoughts at that time? The only thing you want is the next gasp of air.

You haven’t? Well. That is how I have been living for a long time now.

How do you become a man? Is it not enough for you that your gender qualifies you?

There I was, on my laptop, again being completely oblivious of the hours flustering through the afternoon heat of Nairobi Kenya. Picture me, a young man in his mid twenties. Picture me seated in a cafe in one of these Nairobi streets. Do you see me seriously hogging the WI-FI they have offered while I wait for the concoction of lemon, honey and ginger that I have ordered?

There is a man and his significant other a table or two away from where I am seated. They seem to be having a great time. I too want to bring someone to this place and sit across from them. I even drift into an entire thought process of who that person would be. I mentally swipe through all the choices I imagine I have. My order comes.

“Can I get you anything else sir?” Grace asks me as she places my mug on the table. I know her name is Grace from her name tag. It is glazed gold with her name engraved in black.

“No thanks Grace. ” I say, with a smile. The you-tube tab is open on my browser and I hover over a video on ‘how to be a man’. I cannot help but think of the number of times I have had to swallow lumps around men who are my friends and peers. Yet, even after swallowing them i went ahead and picked up the script and reacted accordingly. Talks of youthful conquest over ladies who were eager to show us their all and share with us their becoming. Stories of how we were able to gain trust and ultimately gained the gift that only they could give. Then the comparisons of who had who before or after who always followed. We would laugh and sip beers or something and their would be a slight moment of silence. In this silence the shame would shimmer through us like a silent but very personal whisper.

It always starts casual. It is a systematic slow-fade. I remember how it starts. First it was about getting as many phone numbers during inter-school functions. Then it became about how many of these numbers had you acted on over the holidays. Then it progressed to how many times had you acted on each number. Right now it is all about how quickly can you get and do away with the next new one.  The truth is, no one knows what it is to be a truly rooted man. God knows I don’t. I am sure that we are so many out here just winging it and going through the motions. If hanging out with friends feels like drowning then you need to cut them off and unlearn the standards that have rubbed off on you. Try.

“Sir, here is your change,” Grace tells me as she hands me my change in a leather booklet of sorts. “Thank you Grace,” I said as I emerged from my train of thoughts.

 

Twenty Fine…

Nothing prepares you for the beauty you are about to experience. Until now, you have not known beauty beyond the proverbial setting of arboretum and possibly Karura forest and, if you are a bit more traveled, Saiwa Swamp national park (especially in the morning).

It gets you right in the heart. The winding roads, the clean air. Especially the clean air. Only now do you realize how toxic Nairobi air is. You can feel how the good air is doing your body a great robustness of life. For the life of you. You cannot begin to imagine how any place could be this green and clean and still have people living in it.

The country is Rwanda and the city is Kigali. The entire time you spent coming to this place was filled with imaginations of how you will walk the streets of Kigali trying to determine if it is truly as clean as they claim it is. Yes. It is.

You stay in a neighborhood called Kicukiro- enunciated as chichuchiro – just a 15-minute ride from the city. The houses are built in the American fashion. They all have these low-lying fences with well-manicured lawns and small driveways where the cars are parked just outside the house. Immediately you wonder how the security is like considering this obvious carelessness of property I mean, who in their right minds would park their car outside their house protected only by a low -lying fence? Then you see the army men lining the streets of Kigali from 3.pm in full combat regalia. They look like animated mannequins with no interest whatsoever on whatever it is you are doing. They just stand there with their military grade rifles as the evening sun sets on the land of a thousand hills. There is your answer. Who in their right senses would try and steal in a country where the police are the least of your problems?

Just imagine a rendezvous where you are the thief and for some twisted lack of good luck you are caught by the army? Yes. I know. It is possible in Rwanda.

You also do not know how long you are going to be in Kigali for since you came to have a performance with Spoken word Rwanda and network for different projects your organization has. But, that’s not the only reason you are here. There is this girl (Isn’t there always?) you keep thinking about. She is all the sass of cookie Lyon, the old school funk of Bruno Mars and with the old soul buzz of Erykah Badu all wrapped up into one phenomenal woman.

Her heritage is a cocktail of so many places. Sometimes she speaks Luo, fluent Luo. Sometimes you are having one of those magical evening Kigali walks and her phone rings and you get to hear what you come to know is also an impeccable Kinyarwanda. Let’s not even get started on how she enunciates her English when she speaks. She has these dreadlocks on. She says they are called faux locks. That’s French for false locks. Sometimes she does a head scarf around a lump of them and you could swear she could pass for Nubian royalty.

“Did you know that I have another name that most people don’t know about because for the life of me, I would cringe every time they pronounced it wrong?”

“Oh yea? Which is that?” I churn back with the curiosity of the cat that didn’t die (because this story has to end sometime and me thinks it cannot be here, right?)

“Daker. But for purposes of pronunciation, I would write it as Darkey.” I know there is a back story here. “What does it mean?” She glows up. “It means Queen. So, bow down to me!” No, she didn’t say that last part.

She has these rings on her fingers. They are probably the first thing you see when you meet her. She has very well-groomed hands. Her fingers are like something you just want to touch and feel and her mind is a mine of personality. She invites you into her world more intimately through her music. It is such a distilled selection of music that speaks to your soul long before your body can get around to dance to it. You will also probably never meet a person with a greater ability to keep their cool even if everything is going sideways. She is the type of person who would listen to you go on and on about something that is troubling you and just talk you through what you could or should do. By the time she is done, you will wonder how common sense did not bring you to that same conclusion.

The truth is, everyone should have a version of her in their lives. She is your version of her. Yes. You get to have the limited edition for your wing-man. Umutoni sauce. Darkey royalty.

She was born on the 13^th day of February; that makes yesterday her birthday.

Dear Darkey, as and when you get to read this, I just want you to know that you are a phenomenal woman. You are energetic, fun, ambitious, homely, your music is the bomb and let’s not start on your pasta. You are  true and you exude a lot of candor. Happy birthday, twenty fine has never looked this good on anyone.

 

Salt…Too little too late…Too much too soon

She remembers that  brown patch of earth just behind their home in rural Eldoret. There is this banana tree that grows next to it. She ate a ripe banana from a bunch of bananas she was told came from that banana tree. They were interestingly sweet, they have always been sweeter than any bananas she has ever eaten so much so that she could tell just by the scent of them whether they were from that signature banana tree.

Her grandfather was a sweet soul.God rest his soul in eternal peace. His grave is shielded from the scorching sun by the shade of this defiant banana tree. She flirts with the idea that just may be the sweet bananas are her grand fathers way of still sharing his sweet soul with the world. The brown patch of earth she remembers is next to where her grandpa is buried. She recalls her granny telling her and her cousins in their native tongue, “I want to be buried here, next to my sweetheart.” It looked like just one of her stories. They would all shrug and say “Gogo wewe bado uko na miaka mia moja!” (Granny you still have a hundred years left in you!”) Granny would smile at their ignorance of life and how meaninglessly short she knew it to be. She would, of course, never let them in on her thoughts. Even in her old age, she knew that childhood is a blissful fantasy that she should never take away from her grandchildren.

She recalls, growing up in the village, how her granny would insist on having all her grandchildren around for two weeks. She argued that they needed to know their roots. Granny would gather them all round and tell them tales of how their grand father was a fearless mau mau warrior. They never got to see him, but the stories made them feel like they knew him all their lives. Granny would tell them stories about her childhood and how things were simple. How they all lived at the pleasure of the work of their hands and how school was an option back then. Sometimes she would gather all the girls together and talk to them about boys and men and keeping the home. She would call the boys together and tell them about how a man should carry his weight in society. She shared pictures of her husband, their grandpa, and answered all the questions that they asked. Times with granny were golden and grand. It was like living a life of endless joy without a care for tomorrow. She always made sure they were not troubled because she believed that childhood is best when cushioned from the raging pressure and tides of this demanding world. The fondest memory she has of granny is when during holidays her cousins and herself would team up and teach granny Swahili and some English. They would have such joyous laughter at granny’s attempts to speak whole sentences in English.

They are all grown up now. They all know that the world is not such a good place but appreciate granny’s effort to shield them from the realities of it all.

She is at the morgue in the waiting bay. Granny died two days ago. Her diabetes got complicated and her organs failed. Two days before her demise she made her son take a picture of that brown perch of earth next to her sweetheart and the renegade banana tree. She told him that she want to be buried there and that they should do a quick job about it too. She stares at the picture in the family whatsapp group from her phone screen and tears sting her eyes. Her cousins, uncles and aunts were all seated in that lobby waiting to view what was left of granny. Silence. Salty silence.

Loss is a salty mess on an open wound. Painful but necessary. You never know how to process it all. You tell yourself that you will learn how to do it all soon, that it will be okay, that you will make it through it all. The truth is, you never really do get over it all. You just learn how to take it all in an ounce of salt at a time until it is mostly gone.

To all those who have lost their loved ones, may time and grace accord you some semblance of healing and closure.

 

Habibi

“Back in Sudan, if you are my friend or boyfriend or husband or even a dear one of mine, I would call you Habibi.”

“Can I call you that?” I asked rather playfully. “wouldn’t it be Haram to have a Habibi who is Christian?”

She shifted her gaze to the dark star cased sky with a disposition that seemed to say ‘ why did you have to bring me back to reality?’

It was a smooth evening somewhere along Thika road in the inroads of the Kenyatta University Conference center. She was 5 feet,  and give or take an inch, tall and she was beautiful.

She had this smile about her. It was laced with stern seriousness and wit. It was like it came with a disclaimer; “I may be overly in love with you but i will knock myself out of it because it just cannot be”

We didn’t talk much after that. She pulled her hijab into place so that it covered her hair. The seconds of silence were filled with the noise of her head scarf rubbing against the smoothest and longest hair I have ever seen. With each pull and nudge, I felt the differences between us being more and more pronounced. For a moment, it was like the conversations we had were unmeasured. Soulful. Free spirited even. But, each time something said or done would remind her that I am christian and she is Muslim and it would all just fizzle out. The magic would all go away. I became a cautious mess around her. You know when you have to take a photo and you dont know what to do with your hands? That was us now, only for us it wasn’t about hands, it was that I did not know what to say.

photo courtesy of  BBC.

This one time we sat next to each other over a training session at Brackenhurst in Tigoni and I swear it was the fuzziest feeling ever. We didn’t even talk, we just sat their looking ahead at the instructor. Do you know how when you sit next to someone you have the feels for you are so conscious of their presence that you can feel the warmth their bodies radiate? Or how you really want to steal a glance at them but you just cannot bring your neck to make that tiny inclination their way? Aah!

I remember one time we teamed up for a climbing challenge. ” Please dont touch me unless I am falling and cannot help myself.”

“Okay. Sure. I will asses and only help when necessary,” I answered. Honestly I was just glad she talked to me. Up until then I couldn’t tell if she was avoiding me. So we climbed to the 4th beam. She was just about to get to the 5th one when she slipped and I had to rush in and help her out. I grabbed her trouser from the back just below her back where the belt fastens at the waist and lifted her up. She flushed pink at the cheeks. She was a bit embarrassed when I apologized much later. She brushed it off.

There was this lobby at the KU conference center that was a buzz of activity after 8 pm each day. This day, she was there, with her Sudanese friends, dancing to their music and eating homemade cheese. It was akin to those times in lower primary; you know, when a group of kids, toddlers really, are having loads of fun and you look at them  and just want to join them but they look so exclusive you would feel like an intruder for just thinking to join. You do not realize it but you are staring and one of them looks at you. You probably looked away or ran off. I didn’t know she had noticed me staring at them from a place I thought was covert. “Habibi!” they all shout as she comes over and pulls me from wherever it is I am perched straight into their  midst. They make her dance. She teaches me a habesha dance. They all get up to dance and some Congolese guy comes in to dance too and that was our cue to leave. We walk out of the building and into the cold of a clear night sky.  There is this weird silence between us.

“Did you know the Habesha dance is for people who want to get married?”, she breaks the silence.

“No I did not know… but I do now Habibi.”

“Don’t call me that!” She protests playfully as she gives my shoulder a nudge. She draws in for a hug. I pull her in and wrap my arms around her shoulder and neck.

“I leave for Sudan in a few hours. My flight is at 6 am.”

“I will miss you habibi.”

She giggles, “I know. I will miss you too. Will you come to Sudan?”

“If you invite me, I will” I said, knowing all too well that it may very well never happen. There was a silence of sorts for what seemed like an eternity of anticipation. We just sat there and listened to the different groups of YALI participants chatter in the background.

She reached into her pocket from under her buibui and brought out a bracelet with the engraving ‘From Sudan with Love’ on it and fastened it around my arm.

“Each time you see this, remember me.”

The cold begun to sting. We went back and ate some more cheese and danced some more before she went to pack.

A Kenatco taxi came by for her at 2:30 am. She never liked it when I touched her anywhere so I had refrained from doing it. But, there we were, unsure of the already deem prospects of ever meeting again and i guess all the restrictions our religions gave us didn’t matter in that moment. We hugged. It was nice. It was needy and long and warm. It felt like it was long overdue.

Hello habibi, if you ever get to read this, I just want you to know that sometimes i reminisce and smile.

A man must nod…

There is this countryside picturesque characteristic that looms around your thoughts each time you imagine the freshness of the countryside. If today you were asked to close your eyes and imagine all the things that make the countryside tick, I am almost certain the picture of an OX driven plough will come to mind…no?

Picture the fatest oxen pulling a plough through muck and dirt making furrows in the soil; where seed will find rest and death and then life. Every once in a while, a man will come up to the ox offer them a platitude of grass or hay and spank them right back into action. Each morning these oxen will be on the fields ploughing and tilling.

In the beginning, the ox imagines its life is worth much more than just a pulling a plough through dirt. Those that own the farm will struggle a lot with a new ox before it gets accustomed to its job. With each dawning day the reality of this plough pushing fate  will gradually sink in until one day all the farmer has to do is just lift the harness to the plough and the ox assumes its position. Clockwork.

I digress.

What do you see when you look at men cheering at this team or that team after a day at work? Have you seen how two complete strangers share a beer and watch a game  and in that moment, they are like two lost brothers reunited back home after a fatal war? Women will never admit it it, but the truth is, they admire the type of chemistry that men have. Most even struggle with how two men can be in a bitter fight over something completely insignificant one minute and then buy each other a round of beer the next.

photo credits : Brandon Gallagher

Men die. It is what we know how to do. let us put the dead beats out for a second and look at the men. Our fathers for instance; they toiled to provide for their dependents. Yet for us the dependents, it was perceived that a fathers duty is to provide and that gratitude is good but not compulsory.  Most of you can relate to this. Why is it that when your mother bought you something or spent her hard earned money on you you felt a huge degree of indebtedness? It almost felt as if you have made her spend unnecessarily. Now, how comes when our fathers spent a substantially greater amount of money on us the degree of indebtedness is not commensurate?

No. This is not another plight for the man as a juxtaposition to that of the woman. Its just that i was analyzing the just concluded fathers day celebrations and asked myself if we truly do appreciate the men in our lives. Social media was awash with images of Young-uns  sharing one liners of gratitude to their fathers who were standing right next to them. I could see the grey in most of these men’s hair. a clear sign of the degree and depth of sacrifice they have had to bear in order to secure many a future.

As a man, it is a silent truth to us all that provision is our cross. It is one we cannot put down or pass on to any other man. It is this cross that is the source of the chemistry we share. It is this burden we recognize in each other when we meet after a long days work and share a beer or watch a game or crack odd jokes. Just like the ox, it may take sometime for this reality of sacrifice to sink in but once it does, clockwork. It is this burden that makes men overlook whatever thing they argued and fought over two nanoseconds ago and just bury the hatchet and move on like they never had an argument a day in their lives.

We recognize the struggles we have and the expectations that are laden on us by society. It is for this reason that when a man sees another do their grind, he nods knowingly.

A.MAN.MUST.NOD

(Dis)honorable scars…Dos

“Hi…Is it okay if I said thanks for the add? Or do you consider it a cliche? :-)”

Is a weird way of hitting on a lady. Atleast i thought it was. I found myself smiling as the subtle soft edges and cautious tennets of this message sunk in. “This is an interesting one,” i thought to myself as i reread that message. I couldnt call him out on how weird it is when someone says ‘thanks for the add!’ Because the way he puts it,he has made known the waywardness of this lazy way of chatting anyone up by asking if it is okay to say thanks. 

Photo obtained from pinterest

“Since you have already said it,i guess i will have to be curteous enough to oblige, no?” I chimed away on the keyboard and hit send as i opened his profile on another tab to see who he is.

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When you are a mother of one child, a son, who your baby daddy had left you to freeze in the cold with, you see men in a whole different way. Mostly you are bitter about the whole lot. You even secretly want to tell them as they try to hit on you (yes. They don’t stop even when your are full and expectant and don’t care one bit for a single thing they might have to say) “hey papi,I know you! Your ilk and all your intentions. I saw you from a mile away.this warehouse is closed for renovation. Go bark down  another rabbit hole.” But you can’t.I can’t. There was something gentle and subtle about this guy in my inbox. He asked these questions about me with the genuine curiosity of a child. And no, its not that that was what I wanted to hear. Trust me,the person who came up with ‘once bitten twice shy,’was a woman done wrong and left in the cold most likely by a guy she would have died for.

Okay. I promised.No sob stories.

When I was approached to write this blog post, I was confused. Robbin had told me that he could write the story but it wouldn’t be credible.that to another single mother out there,this story would just be another mans attempt at telling a woman how to live her life. Its true. As a single mother,you experience a lot of setbacks. In between raising an infant on close to nothing but peanuts received from shitty jobs,you have to contend with the shade that’s thrown at you. The mama mboga who used to be pals with you now only sells stuff to you with a plastic smile and keeps asking you questions in a bid to find facts to make her gossip of you juicier. Sadly, it is only the very few genuine men you meet who will offer to help you without insisting to know who the father is. God bless your souls. All the women you encounter will almost demand to know who the father is before they can give you a helping hand. And its not like they will do anything about him even after knowing who he is. Its almost like they want to know or determine the reason why you would go so far as to have a kid with a man who cares less. I mean, was he a rich guy whose money you were after? Was he a famous guy whose personality clouded your judgement? Were you just plain naive and stupid? Were you raped? 

Different single mothers have different stories. My name is not important, but I will try and tell my story and possibly that of other young single mothers. Keep it here.

(Dis)honorable scars…uno

There is this beautiful Lady who keeps popping up on your feed on face book. “Add friend”, facebook insists, each time you log in.She is all the beauty of four clear night sky constellations, but, without the mediocre pretentious aura a woman with remotely the same beauty and age has. 

No. She doesn’t post photos of her dressed to impress ,striking a pose that accentuates her gluteus maxima with a caption like, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all righteousness’ . You know that type? The One that somehow, in the confines of this life and universe, finds a correlation between a quote in the holy book and the magnanimity of her derriere.

There is a silent promise in her eyes.She wears glasses and that makes you wonder if, for some reason the universe aligns and, you ever get to meet her whether you would be able to hold eye contact with that silent burning fire in her eyes.Like there is wood being choked by fire silently…patiently waiting to be the finest specimen of charcoal in the market.

Have you seen how charcoal is prepared? Did you know that the finest charcoal is the one choked for longer with little or no air under heaps of soil?

In bouts of curiosity, you prowl through her timeline. Casually, you try to construct her life from her Facebook feed but you cannot do much without sending her a friend request.

You send it. Flash forward. Three days later you receive the notification that she has accepted your friend request. For some reason you are filled with joy.You realize that you have been anticipating this silently and subconsciously, but it doesn’t disturb you a lot. A few minutes later you are knee deep into her profile.

About. You scroll. Check her age. Nothing. Just a day and month of birth.No year. Places she has lived. “Hmmm…she is well travelled’, you think to yourself.

Photos. Now you have access to most of her photos.You scroll through her albums.You pick a few info bytes here and there, and with those you are able to deduce that she is at the edge of her mid twenties if not on the onset of the second half of her twenties.

Moments later,you see a photo of her and a sweet kid.Immediately, you head to the comments and you determine, she is ,indeed, a mother.

Just like that, your ability to seek out for her truth sips out through societal crevices constructed in your perception process called prejudice.

You figure, “no wonder she is humble! I knew it…no Kenyan woman this beautiful would have this calm disposition without having been knocked up with a kid or two” , your thought process has already bagged and tagged her.”damaged goods”, the tag says.

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Photo credits : suzanne McCorkell

But, you take a step back from the auto pilot setting societal constructs have built into these eyes you used to see her. You figure,”but I know that she has a story behind those firey  eyes.” 

You set out to know the truth. Her truth. Her story as told by her. You refuse to be the same as that mama mboga who ,probably, sees her at the market with a child and no husband and immediately says,”ona mwingine! Afathali Malaya analipwa….” Which translates to, “look at another one! At least prostitutes get paid…”

And so you set out on the journey to establish her story.

You begin the conversation on her inbox with an open mind…

“Hi…Is it okay if I said thanks for the add? Or do you consider it a cliche? *insert smiley face*”

a story of (lost) love…3

”Have you ever been in love?” …silence. It was raining in the streets of Kampala. There was this golden evening haze the sun let out that enveloped the city, it was magical, as though the clouds were amicably telling the sun that they can share the space…that it doesn’t have to be ‘either’ ‘or’. Men on bodabodas were hurdled up together in sheds weathering the storm all the while making fun at damsels in distress as it drizzled away. “They are all the same anywhere you go,” I thought to myself. Just close by was a guy going about making Rolex, completely oblivious of the drizzle. He was a jolly chap this one. He would make six chapos at ago on one pan and omlette on another.” Ogamba chi sebo?…dis one is very sweet bambi! should I give you and the madam one each? Straight from the fire, good for this cold sebo!” I looked at Z seated right next to me snuggled up in a black jacket, one that was not so long ago covering me from the cold. She looked indifferent; like it was an unwelcome interruption. “thank you sebo…may be next time,” I said to the guy.

“robbin…I asked you a question…have you ever been in love?”

Fam…I didn’t know what to tell her. There we were, in the rain, in the laid back city of kampala.i was waiting to head back to Kenya and she was waiting for her aunt to pick her up. I sighed. I wanted to tell her everything. I wanted her to know that I have been in love from the first day I set eyes on her. I wanted her to know that the world could be ending right there and then but right there with her was where I would want to be.

”yes…I have known the fuzzyness of love.once. a beautiful torturous feeling that one”

“how did you tell her?”

“I didn’t…”

“Do you regret it?”

“no…”

“why not? Are you sure it was love?”

“is love…its still there…and I still have the chance”

“well! Unangoja? Firimbi? Mimi sitapanguza mtu machozi hehe!”

I pondered for a while.

“its you…I have fallen in love with you.”

“ sebo forgive me  eh? nothing expresses love like a hot rolex straight off the fire!” this guy! As if on cue. I nodded and he handed us two  neatly rolled rolex with serviettes to hold. Our eyes met as I handed her piece to her and she flushed. We ate. Silently.

”nipatie phone yako,”she said, looking up to me. I handed it to her and she started to punch the keys.

“unado?”

“nakupatia  number ya MTN, sitakuwa natumia ya saf for a while. I will be in kampala for a week or three.” And then she gave me this warm smile as if to say, ”its about time you confessed! I could see it in your eyes…I feel the same way about you.” or…atleast i hoped thats how she felt.

A toyota harrier came into the bus station and parked a few yards from where we were. that was her ride. She stood up, as if to leave but I held her hand and she sat again.

“sa umesemaje? I just confessed my innards to you and all you gave me was a warm very reassuring smile, but, I am not one to draw conclusions. What is your truth?”

“well robbin, I cant say I didn’t know about how you feel. but, my aunt is already here and she doesn’t like to wait. You have both my numbers now. We will talk about it, I promise. I like you too…a lot. “

Honk! Honk!

We stood up.

“baby steps?” I said, as I drew her in for a hug.

“baby steps!” she said as she gave me a fleeting kiss on my nose. She went into the car and waved as her haunt drove off.

Fam! Have you ever been kissed by someone you love? A crush even? on the nose? sigh! If two wires were tied to my ears, I would have effortlessly given the Ugandan national power grid a run for its money. I was charged. It felt like I was living. Like I now had found purpose.i could write a whole book on “how to find true love”.

“sebo…nice pick dat one. Very beautiful girl!which region does she come from? She looks like a Muchiga. very good women dos ones!”
“kare sebo…she is my muchiga,” i said, as i paid him for the rolex we had eaten.

the  journey home was going to be a happy one.

“Zuena nopima nola la kwagala yani….” radio and weasels song churned in my ears from the stereo in the bus.

i checked my phone. there was a message from z.

” 10:32 pm : goodnight you shy sweet thing you…xoxo”

i was headed home for the 2nd term holidays of form 5. our holidays were , on average, 2months long. this meant that i would be around long before Kenyan schools had closed, and long into their new term.

this holiday was different.i was in a relationship!

we soon found out that making calls was expensive. so we would constantly talk on Facebook. our inboxes were filled with sweet nothings and discussions on assignments we had been given for holiday. yes. we were nerds like that.

but the moment of reckoning came when everything just fell apart. it all started with my dad.

my phone rings.

“hello? how are you gentleman?…”

“Dad…i am fine”

“i just got informed by a friend at JAB that you have been selected for a course at Moi University. please check that out, halafu we will talk nikikuja jioni. sawa?”

“sawa…”

that evening, things happened that changed everything. i was, quite literally, put between a rock and a hard place. i had to chose between heading back to Uganda and proceeding with college in Kenya.

of course, i chose continuing with form 5. but, in a family where you are given all your options, their merits and demerits and a day or two to make a choice and “die with it”; i was in for a struggle.

naturally, i shared it with Z.

in the end, i enrolled for campus in Kenya. what i didn’t know was that, it was the end of my relationship with Z.

why? well…she went back to school for another three months, and i wasn’t there. everyone else was.including the Rwandan guys who were baying for her attention.

sadly…with time, any communications i tried to make begun to appear desperate (even for me…hehe).

right now?

well…like i said. she is in India finalizing on Med school.

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that’s it folks….sorry to have burst your bubbles. i have left out a lot that i didn’t feel was necessary. for instance we had had a few arguments here and there over some things. but feel free to comment and share widely, i would be eternally indebted. if you would love to know who Z is, interact with me via whats app on +254789521512….don’t worry…its a business line, so i will reply in due time. thanks and cheers to a good year ahead!