The Archetype of Misfits

When I am not writing, I am reading. I look for personal blogs and take peeks into the souls of the writers. Believe you me (my high school math teacher was addicted to this phrase) words reflect souls. You’ll read about Magunga’s visit to the massage parlour and in the end you’ll be like, “Filthy, filthy man! God help him!” On another occasion, say waiting in the Cooperative Bank queue at TRM which is painfully slow, you’ll read about Biko’s view on the askari at the airport queue calling out numbers;

“Sigisti one, sigisti two, sigisti three…” - a true Kisii.

And you forget about the stalling queue. You find the world to be a humorous place. Each read is like stepping out on a different body. And I can tell you some are dark, some desolate, some plain, some scary but the best are the weird. Why? Because normal is boring.

I also hate writing when I am tired because then I write like Njoki Chege – hardly-a-point-in-sight kinda posts. 

You see how after a few Jameson’s a guy will pee in the fridge and wonder why the toilet has so much light coming from it? Well, that echoes my push-back with penning down thoughts with a shifty mind. And memory. It is hard to settle on a single line of thought. Every thought becomes a blurred story line. Like the blurred line between a fridge and a toilet to a drunk mind. That’s when I’d rather read what akina Luseka are writing about fancy hotels and resorts. 

Perhaps I am in love with reading. I’ve been flirting with her far too long that I forget to write regularly. That’s why my ardent reader Siloma will once-over into this blog and find cobwebs dangling over pieces that were authored months ago. I bet he sneers with disbelief before resorting to come poke me from wherever it is I got take my mucene after reading (Normally at Biko’s blog). Sorry Siloma, I have been such a disappointment. 

But I always write. In my dreams, in class, at work, over those nightly rides from town going home, over coffee dates and pizza dates and pretty much anything else I do. Oh and those lazy morning showers. Shower writing sessions are actually the best, second from pooping sessions of course. Under the steamy water, it’s always calm; just the right amount of calm to get ideas flowing with every string of water bouncing off my head. I get to write stories of life. Of how I want to be about something – like author more ‘bangi sio mboga memes’ and maybe plant a tree somewhere in Nkubu in the spirit of keeping global warming down. I also write about how I am going to make this Kuyu neighbor who plays loud Taarab music disappear. Like they do in the movies.

“Mwambiee, awache kujizuzuaaa….para parara rampa” (You have to play this in your head with a Taarab swing)

I think if I hear this line one more time I’ll pass out. 

If you’re my Kuyu neighbor – the one who pretends to be from sijui Migadini by playing loud Taarab please stop. You suck and I PS I have hears your accent and it definitely whispers I-grew-up-in-Gatundu. Anyone can hear that ka- whisper in between you Swahili weng.

Point is, I write much. Only that those pieces remain tucked away in my head. In there, are great grandfathers of stories, stories that are still children and their grand-kids all crammed into one corner. Let me loop you in on how it goes down.

I’ll wake up at 5 am on Saturday morning. Sleep deficient but too hungry to keep going. I’ll take ten minutes to debate whether fixing breakfast at this time is even humanly possible. Then under the influence of persistent hunger I’ll fix a bachelor’s deluxe morning meal – eggs and tea. It will take around 15 minutes to eat – from my bedroom. Then I’ll try to sleep again but because of the sugar rush I’ll simply be staring into a dark space. Inevitably I will create a story, a kick-ass introduction, a moral somewhere in there and plenty of humor and I will promise myself to write it down on a word document. “Wapi!” It all ends at the bed. The bed of untold stories.

That aside, I want to ask, how are you fitting in the rhymes of life? And I am asking because lately I have been feeling like we are in a big dancefloor with DJ Life bringing the house down and that everyone one else practiced the dance moves but me. Why you ask? Well because all I want is to make ‘bangi sio mboga memes’ when everyone outchea is trying too hard to own a Ferrari and make me own one. Okay, perhaps I could use a Ferrari 458 Italia, 597 horsepower, 4.5L V8 engine with a dual-clutch transmission, 14:1 compression ratio, interiors that have an ego and a Formula 1 inspired suspension system, but I also want to make memes because my happiness comes from weird places. Places like seeing a goat given birth in a farm rather than riding a roller-coaster. 

Not that I hate roller-coasters but the on the happiness list there is memes, then running away from wild animals (I know the thrill), then that ka-feeling I get when using a cotton earbud (when the earbud hits your soul its orgasmic), then there’s food (I’m thinking this should go up the list), then the goat birthing on the rough slopes of Kerio Valley and now maybe roller-coasters. 

Reading Donna Tart’s Goldfinch is more exciting for me than spending a night in crowded places with younglings smoking their lungs out and wiggling their behinds into the darkness of night. That’s too tiring for me. I am also a believer in sobriety because I know only broken people need intoxication to have fun. And these things are the opium of the masses. 

But the good thing is that I am not the only one, there are others. Other who do wacky and wild-like things that make them inimitable and different. There’s the hopeless romantics that still believe in love and the fairy tales starring cupid. I have a friend that thinks love is a myth just because one guy shredded her delicate heart into pieces (poor soul!). But then I know more that find their strength in rhyming heartbeats. Men that listen to rhythms and blues all day and cry (that I’ve exaggerated) when she won’t text back, and women that will go down on their knee if that brings him home. I know such people. A tribe that sees your person first before they get enticed by your dollar.

There’s also the terminally weird fellas that have no pleasure in well-cut suits and polished shoes. Men that spend half their lives in the salon plaiting women’s hair – akina Tony Airo. They know all the shampoos – like by name not the “it was written shampoo on it” vibe that guys use when shopping for hair shampoo. And they can name hairstyles other than the infamous matuta. Men that are different. Then the weird women that wear aprons and climb on poles. Electricity poles. Fixing your lights as you rest your feet on that Italian coffee table that Naomi Mutua, a carpenter and plumber, made. And those in chic concodis in mathrees. A while back I came across one manning those rugged Githurai buses. She had a spooky hairstyle, a fanny pack, a faded Calvin Klein jean trousers and an attitude from here to Meru. When she was hanging off the door – both feet in the air – I could see the disapproving looks from men.  Looks screaming, 

“Wewe. Shindwe. Hio ni kazi ya wanaume!”   "Na sasa akianguka?" One guy quipped.

She stood ahead of the pack – a different one.

The outcast school kids that are constantly reminded they you have to be cool (perhaps buy the led-lit shoes) to be let in on the circle. Who wears those anyway? It’s like being a baby all over again on that you’re a baby that has a beard. Only Octoppizo pulls those off without a fuss. Ok, can we can also include all people who one led-lit shoes in the weird list? I feel they are different. Their happiness sure comes from a weirdly baby-ish place. Then there are also those with manic fixations over little pleasures in life. Like my church gang that find happiness in lollipops and jawbreakers. There’s those IT guys that make awkward conversations because their language is better with computers. And those peeps that believe they are star-crossed because they are jobless and money seems too elusive to them. Holding on to ideas and refusing to give in even as vultures circle around awaiting their last shred of hope to fade. 

These are the misfits. The weird ones. But weird changes things. Those crazy fellas that think they can change the world are the ones that do change the world. So here is to all the round pegs in square holes, the outrageously ambitious and those attracted to broken things. To those who curve their own archetypes. 

These are the true archetypes of misfits.

In Nairobi: Unfrozen by Love

Unfrozen by love

When I reminisce on high school days the bloodbath that used to precede examination periods comes top of the list. 

 

It used to be admirably crazy! 

People buried their foreheads in books. Some fell asleep next to books and some used them as pillows – well, I think, hoping osmosis would magically happen and they’d then wake up smarter than Einstein. Few renegades like me are the ones that found time to talk about girls and Chelsea – because both are great anyway. And don’t get me wrong here I lived for those days. The bloodbath days. This is when I because useful to everyone from cool kids to wanna-be cool kids and the comfortably and proudly dumberi kids. I would become like a ka-consultant explaining about moles and molar concepts, sines and cosines, why cold-hearted Odie never mourned his grandmother and why Wak was a prick for fleeing during war and how both lacked any Shreds of Tenderness, and things about ventricles and how Jesus heals the broken hearts. 

This was like meth to me or rather I got the vibe that Sherlock Holmes has when they tell him new dead bodies have been found. Invigorating!

But I never read much. I just knew those things because they were taught to me. Ok that’s a lie, I read my butt off just not as hard as most kids!

He’d ask, “Na wewe husoma lini?”

And I never had a definitive answer, “Mchana na sa zingine usiku”. Most of them were callous. Or sarcastic. 

“But si we hulala sana”. Erastus once told me.

Of course I used to sleep a little longer after the morning bell but hey a man needeth rest after those brain wrecking lessons about things I never asked to know about. Like who wants to know which ventricle pumps blood sijui to where? What if all I want in life is to be a fancy duck? Does a duck care about ventricles? Certainly not!

Those questions were from my form one mentee Erastus who I hope made it in life despite following my bad example. But I must reiterate that I wasn’t that bad. Ama what do you think? I mean I made it to the cream of the crop in my school, top in my village – standards were low there – and certainly almost top in the entire chain of villages two or three ridges away of where we lived –standards here were a little better than my village but again still low. And I sorta made it in life given I own some stuff here in Nairobi, about three sheep and a couple of cockerels in the village and the cashier at Equity Bank knows my name (I’ll edit this part when I make it for real).

Regardless, I was good in those things because I read them to pass and impress my old man and then go to college because they said there are pretty girls there and then to get money and wear #TMT hoods and wave to people from inside a V8 (then it was a Pajero but they aren’t fancy anymore) under my name. That’s pretty much it. 

PS: I have the TMT hood but not yet the V8. I’m taking donations. Ata I’ll take a used one if any of you want to upgrade to a Mercedez Maybach.

But there is one thing we had in common besides the pre-test bloodbaths – we rarely showered! (I can feel you’re already judging me but I’d wait if I were you). Why? You ask. Well because it was always freaking cold man. And I am determined to make a point and so I’ll say this, the only good thing about that place was the clean shots of happy trees under the morning fog that Mutua Matheka would consider orgasmic while pitching his photographic eye behind his heavyweight Canon camera. He’d have endless ‘In-the-wild’ shots that’d easily win you over as desktop wallpapers. (Ivy you need to check out this guy).

You know I have seen cold days in Nairobi. Today is particularly cold. And you should know this because you’ll hardly see those common belly buttons trotting down Moi Avenue or idling at Kenya Archives. They are hidden beneath impressive trench coats and meticulously knitted sweaters bought from ‘the guy’ at Ngara or Gikomba. Or Woolworths because not everyone cares about rational pricing nowadays. Talk of Kenya’s Yeezy collection! Actually at my financial state I can only buy a sweater at thao nne if it will also act as my PA on busy days and cuddle me on cold mornings.

I went to a high school in Kinangop. It gets as cold as twelve degrees there. That and the frozen water was more than enough reason to let the body clean itself naturally. See how you were wrong judging me? No? Okay try jump in the shower at 5 a.m. with water that spent the night outside and we’ll see if you’ll still remember your name after that. 

I was used to clenching teach beneath my boshori (Haha we used to wear those in form four – big baby style).

“What do you think of our school?” The principal asked me this one time I bumped into him behind the kitchen boiler. I was kinda new then.

“It sucks bigtime sir”. That’s what I thought of saying but instead I told him nice stuff he wanted to hear like how I loved (hated) waking up at 4.50 am to go read stuff I liked (hated) in the foggy weather.

Now Mr. Igogo if you’re reading this I have confessions to make. Firstly, that place direly needs heaters in classes, that’s why I lied when I said I enjoyed waking up early to go read. I mean nobody reads in such cold weather. Second those lunches are too heavy man! I haven’t forgotten those meditation sessions after lunch that almost made me a Buddha. Third, if you could be like Oprah Winfrey and get everyone a boshori that’d be awesome because someone stole mine this one time and I had to tie a kilemba for a whole week and you know I am not a mkorino. Never have been.

Now this article is beginning to suck because I loathe those imperfect memories.

Let’s talk something else. How are you guys fighting off the cold? Someone said such weather is survived in pairs. Like when one is making tea the other runs to get bread (this is a joke that has passed through all Kenyan WhatsApp groups including the one group I am in whose job is to notify us of developments in other groups that probably you’re in; yeah we are watching you guys). Or you’re using the usual method;

“Sasa”. The dude goes.

“Poa asana…niambie *smiley*”. The chic responds.

“Niko fiti. Ni baridi tu ndio mob *wink*”. The dude texts back.

I’m not sure how the script goes past that but you get it. 

CO - Words of Whimsy

And then there is the single’s battalion which I chair that has do to with lots of coffee and tea and trousers made from duvet materials. The number of clothes I wear to work nowadays can be used to start a ka-clothing stall downtown. If say I get kidnapped and end up in Zaire I will have enough stock on me to still make it big in life. Then you’ll see me in the papers or on the ‘daring abroad’ show having become a mtumba mogul by starting with a clothing stall and I will be married to a Zaire chic and you’ll say I am speaking with a funny accent because ata you don’t know the accent that Zaire people have. In short I carry a big part of my wardrobe with me nowadays. 

This is a good thing – the coffee part not the wardrobe – because I have ended up on a lot of ‘dates’ given there is no way I am drinking coffee alone there at Moca Loca with everyone staring pitifully. Now, I will marry you if you give me a call for a coffee date before July ends! There is this one I received on Wednesday;

Her: “Are you free we go for coffee in the afternoon?”

Me: (Wipes tear from check and stares in the sky and respond in a crackly voice) “I am always free”

Her: Are you crying?

Me: (Firmly) No. Ushai ona nikilia kweli? Niko na homa.

The date was heavenly.

(If you’re my friend and a random chic asks you if nilipona homa just say yes for me please).

Oh and if you’re a guy just hit me up we will go take calabash Uji at Highlands hotel and chat over football.

And before I go on, you people who go to places with sitting booths (which are a lot) and then sit alone in a booth and deny us who come in pairs space to chat peacefully your whip is being smeared with pepper by the devil. The whiplash will be heard by small boys all the way in Timbuktu and those grazing cattle in Morogoro.

Back to our story.

And I am not alone in the quandary of cold weather, I can count on all my fingers the people that I know are surviving on coffee and more coffee. Good thing is that over that Java double shot mug a flickering friendship is rekindled, over the Café Deli Dawa mug ending love is extended and over Uji in calabashes at Highlands business ideas are inspired. As we all chew on shiny sausages and crunchy samosas we extend more of ourselves to those around us. To the world. We are sharing the love and beating the cold.

We are being unfrozen by the love.