I turned 25 on 21st of January.
****
I threw a great party. Hit all the right spots for a
millennial’s heated night. Weed. Alcohol. Women. A hired ‘DJ’ who’s actually a
friend that is trying out DJ-ing as a career. He’s a self-appointed music connoisseur but his taste is still very rusty
for a DJ. Everyone knows it but we don’t tell. At his age his ego is higher
than a kite. The party was pretty wild. A tapestry of music, dancing and
emotional outbursts. People wigged and jigged their bodies most of the night.
We tasted the peak of zonked-out the whole of the week to follow.
Party kicked off at about 10.00 pm. Dj Lee on the laptop
playing every popular song he knows from Mugithi to EDM. The first hour was
slow as low-slung chit chat bought time for intoxication to kick in. This only
lasted until a quarter past 11.00 pm when it all span into a full-fledged house
party. (When you hear someone break into a long ‘woo-hoo’ its normally the cue
that its ‘bout’ to go down. A long ‘ye-aaaah’ also does the trick). It was
music and booze all the way.
Then came the frequent breaks where half-drunk
friends signaled the DJ to turn the music because they had something
‘important’ to say. Of course, they had nothing important besides emotional
reminiscence of pasts they barely remembered, saying “aki tumetoka mbali bro” and using the words “birthday boy” and
“Yolo” in every second sentence. They swore a lot too. And there was a bit too
much hugging. (I wonder how I got into bed with a lot of emotional drinkers).
You all know the lads that are teary and all when they get to the third bottle.
The night grew older and we got turnt.
My mans Kevo came in at around 1.00 pm and
boy didn’t he bring life to the house. Kevo is the guy that always saves the
day with a mzinga or its equivalents.
He never fails the “changeni tushike
mzinga” plots. That night he worked a night shift. He works a call centre
in town and they have this crazy supervisor that shoves them into different
shifts at will. I imagine he is the kind of boss that barks and employee fracas
to a corner in terror. I know you’re
wondering how Kevo brought life to our already turnt night. Well, he brought
weed. And not any weed but The Weed.
You’ve got to know that in Nairobi, there different types of
weed. There is normal joint and then there the stone stuff. One has stem and
seeds in it and then one has plain cannabis leaves. Kevo knows the difference
and the dealers like the back of his hand. Maybe even where it is grown. This
makes him instrumental to the how high that we often get at parties. Better
still he knows how to cure hangovers. A plus for every after-party recovery. I
bet he could make a career out of it. So, he showed up with the ‘devils smoke’,
as we since call the weed he brought. It took a few puffs passed around through
kisses (weed people understand what I mean) and rolled up joints to get from
in-door-sweaty-bodies-hands-in-the-air partying to
rooftop-screaming-wailing-wriggling and passing out partying.
Over the calm night with warm winds you could hear us wail
in the darkness. Miley Cyrus’ ‘We Don’t Stop’ blared from the house which now
had all doors and windows open and we chanted along, like an anthem.
“So la da di da di, we like to party, dancing with Maggy
(actually its molly) …”
We all shouted “Hell no!” in unison at the “…if you’re not
ready to go home can I get a hell no..” part.
I felt like a god. We all did. I mean who cares if we were
making noise for the neighbors? That was least of our worries. We just wanted
to go on forever. Lost in a daze of exciting insanity. The last thing I recall
is pointing and counting lights afar off at what I think was about 2.30 pm.
They sang a blurry happy birthday song to me and we wailed along to Nyash’s
Mungu Pekee. The chorus mostly. After that, I’d be lying if I say I had any
recollections. A mystery how I woke up from the bed on Sunday noon. Although
Kevo keeps bragging of how he saved me from a night in the cold by dragging me
all the way to the house as I kept yelling at him about why people need to fear
God. I don’t believe his story.
My house got trashed. Houses get trashed after wild parties,
right? Wrong! They get disorganised. You wake up to find things in shamble.
Plates on couches, disposable cups all over the place, one broken glass beneath
the bathroom sink, a wig on the carpet and maybe a soda stains of the carpet.
That’s shambles. But trashed is different. I know this because that is what I
woke up to on the noon of Sunday 22nd January.
Let’s start with the painful one, my smart TV was shattered.
Moh, the ex-girlfriend to Dan, Kevo’s cousin, and I think current girlfriend to
Chudex (there’s a guy we call that because it’s all he does), apparently was
fighting another chic that came with Kate, a former gym colleague (I quit
because gyms are lame), because the chic spilled Vodka on her. She threw a
bottle at her and it missed and hit my baby. I have been watching movies on my
laptop since Jan.
The spilled Vodka ended up on my couch too and guess whose house
has been smelling of Vodka ever since. I will avoid mentioning the number of
vomit spots that I counted all over the place. Then there is the shoe in my
fridge. A fucking shoe in the fridge! Nobody knows how it got there but Kate
swears I put it there while trying to hold open the fridge’s door as my
innovative solution to cooling down the house.
“But si I have a
fan for that!”, I told her.
“Ulisema fan iachwe ilale”. I could only respond with a
“hmm”.
Worse still the fan was on and the fridge open, ledged with
a broom, the entire night till I woke up.
Perhaps at this point I should tell you the crew that slept
over. Biggest number I have hosted yet. Lexi and her chics all slept in the
sitting room. She tagged along three of her friends and since nobody was there
to drive them home and they were too drunk to be passengers for an Uber leave
alone to find their way home, Kevo insisted they stay till morning and by
morning I mean noon because we somehow partied till 3.30 pm and woke up at
noonish. There is Kate, Mike, Mose, Kach, Miguel (real name being Mbogo), Nyash
(not the musician but short for Onyango), Stano, Caro (I have a thing for her),
Moreen and Lydia (despite the fact that she lives one floor below me). A big
crew you can tell. They made a mess trying to fix breakfast and made sure
everything in the kitchen was dirty. Everything.
Only the door was locked when I woke up and I could feel my
throat being tormented by the cold air. Actually, I never knew if it was the
cold or the alcohol or both. The toilet’s flush system was broken and I was out
of toilet paper. The air inside there was worse than the ten bob public
restrooms in town. I couldn’t find the air freshener although I later saw it on
the rooftop cut in half. I had nothing edible in the house by the time the
sleepover crew were done with breakfast at lunch. An empty food shelf and water
as the only drink is a sign of a crowded party. The trashing bit is completed
by the hole in the long couch which Stano made to hide weed when a neighbour threatened
to call the police over the noise. How ingenious of him!
****
I know my friends reading this story are palming their faces
and wondering where I lost it in life. Well, deep breathes everyone, I have not
turned into a party animal or anything the story above professes. That’s
creative writing. Of course, I turned 25 but that’s it. Okay and maybe I am a
tad irresponsible than most of you but it has always been like that. And those
that disagree to this it’s cool too. I am the good person you know.
I creatively wrote this inspired by my neighbors that throw
such parties, I turn in bed at 3 am and I can hear young women wail and shout
over loud music from afar. Does that bother me? Only if it disturbs my sleep.
Typical millennial birthdays go down like this. I have seen someone who got too
drunk that they had to lay in the sun shirtless to detox their body. Or just
for the fear of dying, I am not sure. Do I differ from my generation? No. Would
I do the same stuff for a party? Nyet. (I have standards, a faith and morals
and don’t do drugs).
Actually, I wouldn’t want a party. I never had a party
because 25 came as a reminder that I have very few years left to be
irresponsible. I can chase girls around, decide to do nothing all day and
complain that I am tired at the end of it, eat one type of meal until I feel my
body begging for something else, waste my money better than the government
wastes our taxes, refuse to listen to people, stay out late and suffer the
consequences in delight but only for so long.
In the meantime, I have decided to be a lifeist. How? I am
making a to do list of scary things. Imma
do those things and well see where I land next.
This journey has to be worthwhile.
