Shisha and Seatbelt Selfies
Lately I have been
preoccupied with thinking about what to blog next. Certainly, this is a
not so fluid process because, being the somewhat perfectionist I am, I tend to
over-think sometimes. My over thinking virtue in this case was not good because
just like any civilized man can tell you, if you start over thinking about
bagging that five star mami then you’ll probably have a better
chance at winning the Sportpesa Jackpot. It’s an oxymoron; the focus de-focuses
you. In such cases you're better off not show too much interest or you’ll look like an Arab
girl showing too much ankle to Ahmed or Abdi; trying too hard and totally not acceptable.
Courtesy of Mpasho.co.ke |
So I decided to
just give up already and that a story would eventually have to find me, come to
me the same way lions have become fond of coming to chill with people along
Mombasa road and that the story would even beg me to write it and that I would
even play hard to get if I get the chance. Probably tell it I have another
story. A better one.
A few nights later
a story came along. I was lying there, one leg out of the blanket - because if
I had both in it’d be too hot and if I had both out it’d be too cold. One leg
out is the perfect balance - my perfect temperature for grade 1 sleep. I
imagine it feels the same way as floating on your back in the deep end of a
pool – which I have not yet been able to do. I seemingly can’t trust water
enough to let it carry me. I remember this one time I was at duff mpararo and this kid is there
floating on his back like a duck and I was there struggling to float on my belly.
Do you know how that feels? I had a lot of questions! Like does water have no
respect for grownups? It needs to let grownups float first and if it has any strength
left it can then float the kids and their little swim glasses.
Anyway back to my
sleeplessness.
I am not insomniac
but I couldn’t sleep. Just one of those nights where your body is all confused
about sleeping and simply decides to play the
how-long-can-I-stay-awake-and-still-be-at-work-by-7.30am game. Sleep was
teasing me and I didn’t like it. She’s not like this on normal nights. Our
relationship is a really perfect one and I don’t know why she was acting up
that night. Maybe it was something I did. So while I was lying there staring in
the dark in the company of mosquitoes almost dozing off I was snapped awake by
screaming girls. It had to be girls, boys actually don’t scream at night unless
they are scared by Chuck Norris physically. I got out of bed and my first
thought was “damn it! I will have to start this all over again”. I had been
like really close to sleeping. On a scale of one to ten I was at the nine. Really
close.
Now it is not
uncommon for drunken girls to stagger past our flat at 3 am but I am usually
dead asleep at such a time and don’t have to get all aggravated by their
ungodly banter. But this time I was in the middle of it. A group of around ten
intoxicated teenagers or maybe they were a little older were hanging onto each
other trying to get home or maybe to the next pub which is on this other end of
the stretch or headed to god-knows-where those young men live. They were really
loud and very explicit while at it. Even Erroh,
our Maasai watchman whose real name I don’t know could not get them to keep
it down. Erroh tried shushing them
but they called him bad things and Erroh
called them other bad things in return. Bad people!
And how people
walk with their mukonyos out at 3 am
beats me. It is ice land cold at such times but again I guess drunken people
don’t feel cold. Do they? And do their moms know they’re out in the cold
without jackets? Will this affect their children? Maybe their kids won’t feel
cold like the rest of the kids. Or maybe they’ll be born a little drunk. You never know these things. Or as we are fond of saying, "hii maneno mtu hawezijua".
Now eventually the drunken confusion that was those teens got on its way and I did sleep after some time but it is from that situation that I got my story. A story about the precedence we are setting for generations to come. I assure you as I write this I feel like the professor with big glasses, hanging a baggy checked coat behind an old wooden university chair, using a flickering table lamp and sitting beside a pile of books in the calm of the night penning down life-changing manuscripts. Well maybe that’s an exaggeration, let’s say more like the guy sitting alone with a drink at the poorly-lit corner in a bar thinking about changing the world.
Now eventually the drunken confusion that was those teens got on its way and I did sleep after some time but it is from that situation that I got my story. A story about the precedence we are setting for generations to come. I assure you as I write this I feel like the professor with big glasses, hanging a baggy checked coat behind an old wooden university chair, using a flickering table lamp and sitting beside a pile of books in the calm of the night penning down life-changing manuscripts. Well maybe that’s an exaggeration, let’s say more like the guy sitting alone with a drink at the poorly-lit corner in a bar thinking about changing the world.
Well I’ll start
saying that it appalling how hunnies
(if you’re not from twitter A then you’ll probably not get that) live their
lives. Ask Njoki Chege; it’s all about drunken stupors, smoking Shisha, riding
in Subarus owned by guys who mostly live in South C and Roysambu, taking
selfies and trending on twitter A and well the other part is just applying
makeup and learning how to draw their eyebrows. Clearly a very busy lifestyle! Plus
they have to get their *appendices pierced (again from twitter A) and learn how
to twerk. I kinda have a feeling in future twerking will be a P.E. lesson in
some schools. Anyway, you should appreciate that hunnies even get time to do lame things like going to church and
dancing like normal people, getting education or looking for a job. Of which
the latter they excel in a measure equal to the Jubilee government’s success at
fighting corruption.
I am holding no
blood feud with anyone here but I am afraid of the kind of mothers we will have
in ten years. Shouldn’t we have a serekali
saidia initiative? We seriously need one to rescue us from the hunnie menace. In ten years what kind of
kids will there be? I suppose they’ll be born normal and all but how will
someone raised between Shisha smoking breaks and catching air from all the
twerking turn out? A little part of me wants to know but I am also afraid;
afraid that we might just be testing the waters like the guy with diarrhea
trying to fart; afraid that it’ll get too messy to behold.
Or maybe they’ll
all be in India with lung complications from all the Shisha smoke. Or they may
not be married after all. Such girls only tickle the fancy of few men. They
tickle the fancy of men who are deprived of morals; the kind of men that own an
apartment in Kilimani while their mother lives in a ramshackle place at the
edge of a village in Kirinyaga. The kind of men that are known by name at Sabina
Joy and even get a quick fix on credit. These are the kind of men that don’t
marry anyone for more than two years in a row. They are the men whose realest
shot at a brain is a tattoo of human brain on their head. Such are the men that
hunnies tickle. I wasn’t too hard on
them there, was I?
I also wonder how I
would take such a girl home to meet my mother? She’d curse the sun should her son
shows up with some city girl who smokes plants and rivals Thiga the village’s three-time Annual Drinking Fest winner at
downing the bitter stuff. It would amount to thahu and she would agree with Mzee
on calling village elders to slaughter a sheep for a horohio ceremony. I’d be made to sit at a corner and reflect on my
life’s decisions. They’d make me feel bad even with a plate of boiled meat and
roast meat and rice in front of me.
But I wouldn’t
take such a girl home. Not with regards to what defines their life today - the hunnies not the village people.
You’ve heard of seat-belt selfies? No? Well they are a thing now. In pursuit of social approval
chics take selfies in a car with a seat-belt on. It is supposed to be cool. Which
it can be if you genuinely own a car and you like taking selfies but in this
case it’s the people whose chance of driving their own motis are close to the camel-rich-man-needle-hole-heaven situation.
But don’t give up aye you’ll drive some day. And speaking of which I adore some twitter comebacks.
Look at these tweets by #KOT
Is it the society
that expects a guy drive and own a house at 26 or is it just a thing for hunnies? If you’re raised from a
relatively poor background like me then you’d probably understand how damn hard
it is to make it to the top. Before you say ‘mama I made it’ there are periods
of overwhelming disappointments, of blood, of hard work and unending sweat.
Things refuse to work out. You get small problems sometimes and get big
problems other times and think you’re done. It’s not easy. You have to put your
butt on the line too many times before you can cruise in a moti under your name. Lest you think I am pity partying I should
assure you that I know this is expected of any guy.
But let’s turn to
the comeback; a waist trainer and 78 Instagram likes!!! That does not give you
the right to point a finger at me. Not me and not any of my brothers tweeting
from the discomfort of their bedsitters. Not even those tweeting from Melbourne,
Australia while their device location shows they are somewhere in Dunyu Njeru, North
of Kinangop. You can’t fault these brethren. They are doing the little they can
to get up there; compared to your evil efforts of posting ‘kim kadarshian’ (this word is an adjective) pictures of you on Instagram
for likes. You can’t expect the boy child (I’m finally sounding like an
activist) to meet all these expectations whilst all a girl needs to do is learn
how to twerk, be blonde and be on social media and probably learn how to draw
eyebrows without getting us thinking she works as a brand ambassador for Nike.
So point is she
won’t even cut it as a wifey material if all she worries about in the morning
are what filters she’s going to use for Instagram. Neither am I willing to be
subjected to the agony of 99 selfies in a day just to feed her social media
glamour. Worse still I am not going to put up with buying fancy food just for
the pictures. If you’re among the girls I have described above and you’re
reading this please reform and find you way – the way. For the sake of future
generations and their sobriety please learn how to cook round chapatis so that
you can pass something good over to your kids. in the end sober guys will marry the good girls.
Before I put an
ending to this I’ll just say it is not lame to be a good girl. It is something
we shall have an Oscar for in coming years. Something we will wear tuxedos and
Sir Henry’s bow ties to go witness its recognition and appreciation at a
glamorous night party at some expensive hotel in Nairobi which we shall pretend
we can afford on a regular day.
Happy Easter
Someone!
I read somewhere 'good girls are made of but fun girls are made of whiskey' note>no shisha, selfies, mukonyo, etc.
ReplyDeleteI read somewhere 'good girls are made of but fun girls are made of whiskey' note>no shisha, selfies, mukonyo, etc.
ReplyDelete