Monday, March 6, 2017

The Scent Lingers


Wednesdays are very flat days, tasteless as ice, and no feelings to their name. But this was no ordinary Wednesday.

I carried a book. I would need one. Reading in public is not my forte but then idling is depressing. John Greene’s ‘Fault in our stars’. A masterpiece of its kind. I needed the book to make time move. Sometimes too, a cultured read is the wall standing between me and insanity. 

That and prayers. 

My thumb pressed between pages, keeping the book open. I read in bits. Occasionally, I raised my head to think, to break, to wander, to match a body to movements on the entrance to the right. I was bored. 

Men in suits and ties flocked in, ladies too, in formal wear and heeled shoes. Cat walks. Slow modest steps. Average working-class lads. You could tell. Joyless as hornets. I never bothered to catch any faces, after all I had a whole semester for that. 

Time is a good thing. 

“So this is it?”, I thought to myself, looking around at the indoor picturesque. Not that I had expected anything else in particular.

The room was silent. No words were exchanged. Muffed up sounds came up indeterminately and thumbs fiddled with phones. Heads were bent down like un-watered plants as they typed away things and swiped over and over and over; scrolling through texts and pictures on brightly lit screens. 

Busy. 

I read.

I had sat at the back. Alone. The rows and rows of velvet blue, cushioned seats that slanted upwards were now mostly filled up. I remember the feeling of strangeness at the sight.

Over a reading break, I lurched my weight forward, resting my elbows on my thighs. I was uncomfortable. I had to shift. The worn-out cushion didn’t help much and my butt hurt. I moved one seat to the left, right behind her.

She typed away on her phone. 

Peeping Tom. 

The WhatsApp message was to a number saved as UNK. Whatever that stood for. I entered her private space. It became our chat. I hated that moment. My sudden fixation with her private conversation. 

Deep sigh. 

I closed my eyes and leaned back. Mortified. 

Reading.

Thoughts. Wandering.

My intrusion to her conversation left my mind dangled on a half-plucked narrative. A puzzle that begged to be solved. I constructed what I thought was her chat. And deconstructed it.

Was she texting a boyfriend?

Hi babe. Won’t see you tonight.

Her father?

Hi dad. At the orientation right now. So excited!!

Her workmate?

I think I need a raise. This shit might be too expensive for me.

A man went up the stage. He spoke and spoke. Our journey began. 
Long evenings of learning things would follow.

This is about people I have gotten used to. Strangers that I know. 

Friends.

I belong now. 

Being in the right place is exhilarating. Its artistic how we move from the unfamiliar, unknowingly yet willingly, to the familiar. Seeing the blurred lines of strangeness whizz off.
Outlandish spaces become our new homes. 

Mama said I should go out and explore the world. And win. Her words;

You have to try your best.

Keep the faith.

Pray.

You’ll win.

I remember these words. The light they ignited. The fight the raised. But you know it gets darker and thicker, and harder. The war, like dough, grows with time. Makes you gulp. You slide into places you never thought you’d belong. You seek help. A friend. I wanted a friend.

Then comes a friend. 

A stranger that you get to know. 

I tapped on her shoulder. “One stranger won’t hurt”, I said.

“What?”

“You are here for the programme, right?”

“Yeah, of course, yeah”.

“Well, I was wondering if we could be friends”.

“Sure. Pleasure to meet you…”

“Peter, I’m Peter”.

We walked to the bus stop. Took few words to get the awkward chit chat out of the way.

“I’ll see you on Monday”.

Hug.

I turned and watched her disappear into the maze of people. Gone and present; her scent and warmth dawdled behind. 

Her scent hang; a trail of happiness in the air. Her lingering warmth brimming a certainty of friendship. 

Nothing beats that.   

                                                                                                         .


Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Me as a Lifeist


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. 

Image result for weed cartoon

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.