Goodbyes...

Keita:Do you like Marx?

Sayid: I haven’t met him.

Keita: No, no, he’s dead.

Sayid: Why, what happened?

Keita: No, no, he died long ago.

[Sayid thought the guy Marx had just died]

Sayid: So then, why are you asking me if he died long ago?

Keita: No, he wrote a lot. He wrote that poor people should not be poor.

Sayid: Mmmh. Sounds amazing. [He searches his pockets and pulls out car keys and a packet of cigarettes. He just holds them in his hands] Hey Keita man, how long you think it takes to get famous?

Keita: For a musician or a painter? Or a taxi driver? [Sayid is a taxi driver. He is Pakistani. Keita is from Mali.]

Sayid: Whatever…Famous.

Keita: Four years!!??? Six to get rich!!? [Keita has a puzzling tone of speech. His sentences are something between a question and an exclamation, always, as though he is not sure of what he is saying. He will surprise you, though. He has seen a lot of different people. He has seen a lot of life…and he draws from it. His father was a cattle trader in the Sahel. As a boy he tagged along sometimes and saw how deals were struck and how fortune was made, or lost. A tall, easy chap with a benign smile, he now sells coffee and donuts at the airport. He holds out a cigarette lighter and Sayid lights his cigarette and takes a deep puff, and then slowly lets the smoke seep from his nose and the corners of his mouth, like steam seeping from a pan of boiling fish, with the lid sitting at an angle. They are looking at the mass of humanity pulling briefcases, connecting flights, catching up with time. People rushing to or from places. A people that doesn’t belong] But first, you see, you are going to have to dress right, you know? Then you’re going to have to hang out with famous people. Make friends with the right kind of people. Go to the right parties, yeah? Socialite.

      Sayid and Keita met by chance twelve years ago at this airport. The winds of fate blew them slowly from their places of birth towards each other, getting them ready for that final collision of destinies – that crossing of paths that would also be the start of a great friendship. Fate indeed was the quiet hand that toiled to bridge the 10,000 mile chasm between their lives -  lives that started out avoiding each other. Lives on parallel paths, like ships in the dark, destined for separate harbors.

      Now they sit, these two friends, chatting about Marx and fame, and some other dull stuff, killing boredom, watching lives transition – people rushing to meetings, interviews, to see loved ones. Others running away to plant their lives elsewhere. To new beginnings. Greener pastures.

      Transient life; that is what airports are. A temporary habitation for people who are on their way to someplace. As they wait they stare into their phones, typing. A people wired, tweeting, updating statuses, in touch with the rest of the world. Some slump on the cold steel chairs, nursing warm cups of latte, heads resting on their luggage. They stand up. They stroll. They read novels. They reach out to others like them and strike conversations. Mundane stuff usually. They are lonely people waiting to go.

      Sayid and Keita sit there in quiet, watching, each man soaking in the moment. It is a scene they have witnessed play one too many times but each with a slight variation. Sayid looks at it through the puff of smoke, a filter of sorts that puts things in perspective. There is a couple at the terminal. She is about 25, terribly beautiful. She is the sort of woman who walks on glass heels even when she’s in flat shoes. The sort who insults you and leaves you feeling that perhaps she is right. He looks older. Early 30’s maybe. They are bidding farewell and so they hug and cling so hard on each other, like identical fetuses, shut out from the humdrum of the airport lounge and the people all around them. He is in a brown leather jacket, corduroy pants and worn running shoes. A man with a good taste. He is pulling a small red and posh suitcase, her suitcase. She is in a light grey high-collar sweater and blue skinny jeans that hugs her frame. A black leather purse hangs on her left shoulder. She is a delight. She is a real beauty, like the sunset.

      They kiss with an unnerving urgency. They kiss with a craving deep and knowing; a searching kiss that without a doubt stirs something tender inside those that are watching – or pretending not to watch. Her eyes are shut tight, as if she is in pain or in a deep agony. But his eyes are not closed; they remain half open, as if to watch out for something, as if he is afraid of losing her. This action – him kissing with eyes wide open like a Nile Perch - would have looked uncanny or even morbid by many standards of intimacy, but it doesn’t; instead it looks raw and somewhat unworldly.

      They occasionally let go of this tight embrace and look fixedly into each other’s eyes, a long drilling gaze that seems more spiritual than romantic. He is saying something to her; his lips are moving, and she is nodding her head, bobbing, agreeing. Desperately agreeing to everything he is saying. Her eyes never leave his. Not once. Her lips quiver faintly. From his seat, Keita can see her heart throbbing against the base of her neck, a rapid thudding drumming away against her ebony flesh.

      All around them life in the airport continues unconcerned, insensitive even. It never stops to tip a hat, to notice. People walk hurriedly past them pulling their luggage, dragging their grumpy kids by the hand. The disembodied voice announces the flights about to board and the flights that have been delayed. And while the starry-eyed couple try to immortalize this final moment together, the flight schedules up on the board change and blink constantly, the huge clock above them also keeping pace, urging time to catch up with them, to cut them short…to yank them apart.

      Sayid and Keita don’t mind staring at the couple. They offer welcome reprieve from their boredom. They intrigue. Sayid wonders how long they have been dating. He wonders if they ever disagree on anything. He wonders what they do for a living. He wonders if distance would grind their relationship into dust, or if he would meet someone else as pretty, or who kissed so purposefully or even has half her grace and easy self assurance.

The man is travelling light. But then again, maybe he is connecting flights and his luggage is already 25,000 feet over Mecca.

       Wait a minute! Something is staring back at you here. Some devil in the detail. A pedestrian look would observe romance and passion in this couple’s kiss, but a closer observation reveals something else; horror and devastation. It occurs to Keita, who is keenly watching, that they kiss passionately not because they are so in love, but because they are confronted by a reality that they are not ready to heed. A horror that they would never rekindle this moment, this feeling, this passion with which they kiss and feel about each other. They are faced with a handicap of not being able to dictate their destiny, time and distance because time – like distance – does heal yes, but it also destroys. Mercilessly. Their future is an endless desert fraught with the unknown, maybe they would last, maybe they would break up, maybe the next time they meet the magic will have vanished. Maybe. Maybe.

       When her flight is finally called out, they disentangle from each other grudgingly, painfully. She is on a flight to Tokyo. Yes Tokyo, Japan. Something like a smirk forms on Sayid’s face. He wants to laugh. Maybe there’s something he knows about Tokyo that the rest of humanity doesn’t. You know Sayid can be such a jerk when he’s sitting at an airport.

       Anyway, you need to have been here to witness the tragedy that ensues when this couple let go of each other. It is not something that can be relayed without losing certain silent but salient and most poignant body language of these two. This is something that has been lost forever. It cannot be reproduced.

The flight announcement comes as a knife that not only sears through them like a bolt of heat, but tears them apart with such shocking violence. He grabs, yes he grabs, and pulls her against him so tightly that not even a spirit could squeeze between them. Her head rests on his chest and she is smelling the leather no doubt, a smell she will not forget in a long time. They stand comatose, two grotesque avatars of desperation. Two failing hearts. Two metaphors of love’s tragic evil.

      She cries so wretchedly against his chest. Against that leather. Keita momentarily looks away. She claws at his back, shrinking his leather jacket into a fistful of torment. Her whole body convulses with every tear. He holds her close, his nose buried into her hair, smelling her, taking her every scent like a tracking dog would. It’s a scent he won’t forget in a hurry. He will be walking down a street – many months or years later – and a slight breeze will momentarily carry that whiff past his face, and he will stop dead in his tracks, in the middle of the busy street, his heart galloping away with memories of her, and despise the ones who try too hard.

       They finally let go, but it’s not out of necessity. Rather, out of a disturbing sense of purpose. If this was a movie, you’d want to stop and rewind the moment when their bodies separate. And then play it again in slow motion, because that’s how it seems like; life in slow motion. She avoids his eyes. She takes a step back, sniffy and teary. She bends and grabs her suitcase. She mumbles something under her breath then takes a deep breath then attempts a smile but all that she manages is a fractured smile, a broken smile.

She then does something strange; she briefly places the palm of her hand against his chest – as if dispatching some sort of power through him – then she walks away. He slowly turns and watches her walk away. She doesn’t look back. Not once. As she walks away she stares at the floor. Her luggage suddenly weigh an elephant and a squirrel. She walks briskly but deliberately through the check-in gate and soon she is swallowed by a throng (the “r” in this last word makes a huge difference hehehe. Linguists’ sense of humor sure runs deep). Soon she is part of a homogenous mass of faceless humanity on the move. Soon she is not the gorgeous girl who mirrors the sunset, but just a moving part of an airport. She is just a statistic.

      Her boyfriend massages his brow lightly with his hand. Sayid and Keita try not to look at his face, more out of courtesy than anything else. Call it a manly respect. He needs the privacy to moan, that is their way of eulogizing what they just witnessed. Or maybe it’s because they don’t want to see the vulnerability of manhood in his face. It is something painful, because at that moment you are reminded of your own vincibility. He walks a few steps to one of the steel chairs at the lounge and sits, an action that seems to take all his energy. Meanwhile, the airport continues to stir and rev. It has no time for his pains. And while it seems that the show has ended for everyone who has been watching, the show is just starting for him. And her.

Life Saver

Sketchy people!!!...What a full phrase! I learned it from a friend that I love to death. It came to take a life of its own. I loved more how she said it, the ease with which she let it out, the effortlessness, the grace, and now in hindsight, the precision of those two words to describe a human condition. She said it in the same way you’d breathe, or scratch the back of your neck when it itches. She didn’t think about it. I got the impression that she didn’t move a single muscle to let it out because it wasn’t work for her. She just said it and moved on…to other things. And so did I, till now.

Truth is: if you still breathe, if there’s still some energy left in you, if you haven’t exhausted your mileage (which reminds me of my sister. Let me digress one minute. My sister doesn't like to run. She says it's because she believes God assigned each of us a certain amount of mileage (fixed mileage) which we have to cover in our lifetime. Once we cover it we die. The quicker you cover yours the sooner you die. Basic math. So? She doesn’t run; she walks!…She runs only when she has to. Like when she’s fleeing something that might bite her), you will run into sketchy people quite a bit. They are everywhere: at the mall, at the gas station, at the beach. You will know them when you run into them because they are people we know, they do things that we recognize. They are our friends. Here’s a little definition to work with. A sketchie (aka sketchy person) is someone who wears shades in the club. A sketchie is someone who will update their Facebook status saying something like “Eating ice cream. So yummy. We are having fun lol”. The “lol” part is a dead giveaway. A sketchie is someone in skinny pants (hehehe…no I lie).Some of them are people we look up to, people we see on television and admire. We flip pages of magazines to read about their latest tattoo. People on whose every word we cling.

The point I mean to make is that Sketchy is not just a person; it is a phenomenon, it is a human condition. Sketchy is a movement – The Sketchy People Movement, just like the LGBT Movement. Its members span the entire human spectrum, a riot of humanity. It knows no race, nor religion, nor sexual orientation. None of that. What’s common to all sketchies is their strong yearning for urban correctness, for sophistication. They scream for validation. They are vain a huge part of the time (for that's the hallmark of sketchiness). A lot of times they will dive into cliques, like Savannah moles dive into their holes in flight to save their skins (or rather their fur) from a predator. They find safety in cliques. They will avoid having to construct real identities, for the cliques become THE identity.

Here is what happened. My friend Kwame graduated from college a week ago. That was before I knew about Sketchies and their stunts. A graduation party was organized that night and friends got together to celebrate a brother on his big day, you know the works. I was invited, and you never turn down invitations of this nature; you show your love, so I said game.

Around 10:30 that night I pitch up. The party is at a ballroom within the apartment complex where my friend lives. I can tell as I park my car that a fair number of people have attended. The parking lot is fairly full. Music is booming from the ballroom, people speaking over the din, an occasional laugh, signs of merry making. A promise of a good night. I make my way.

                There are a few dozen people here already, most of whom I cannot recognize. You see, we have very few common friends with Kwame. Most people here are his friends from school or some other place that only God (and him) would know. The music is loud. Most people are holding red plastic cups with drinks, or cans of booze, milling around, talking – a cacophonous stew of unintelligible sounds. It’s like an open air fruit market (or a livestock market). People are having fun. I look around. There’s a lot of food, and faces. I spot Kwame chatting up a group of friends at the other end of the room (it’s a big room). He’s saying something to his friends, that small band he is talking to. He has their attention. They are listening; he’s a bubbly guy. His friends seem to be tipsy, from what I can tell. Not him. Kwame doesn’t drink. He is a born-again Christian and as he says, he doesn’t mix his faith with his drink.

That’s fine with me, but just so long as he doesn’t starve his friends with water and juice (if they'd rather do with some gin). Now he turns and sees me. Hell breaks loose. “Heyyyyyy!!! Guys look who’s here…!!!” he shouts in glee and walks towards me, arms stretched open. Everyone looks. “My homeboy Danieli is here! Guys you’ve got to meet my boy Danieli before the night is done”. He gets to me and embraces me in open arms, a firm embrace, and welcomes me to his party. He is so proud I came. He shows off (he is a little corny Christian). As the night progresses I get to meet a couple of his friends. I make friends. The circle gets bigger, right?

This post is not about the circle, though. Rather, the sketchiness of the assemblage that night, and my ultimate salvation. There was a certain phoniness about the place. Knowing very few people there, it was a somewhat awkward for me given how everyone was relating with everyone. People sat in snotty little clusters, people who were supposed to be friends already. From these clusters they eyed other groups across the room. It was as though willing them not to dare mix with their group because they might just end up diluting their assemblage with their less pedigree…that sort of vibe. Doesn’t that sink the spirit? Look, I might not know shit (yes I said that…bite me) but this I can bet my bottom shilling for: friends’ parties, by definition, should be events where people get along. They should be forums where that friendship is celebrated and toasted to and renewed, otherwise the essence of having them is lost and people would rather sit at home and watch tv.  

At some point I step outside for a breather and there I meet this old chum – a coffee-colored guy with a puff of hair on his chin. He looks like Ginjah. He is tall and lank, a man in his early forties I think. He has a roll of weed held between his fingers. On the other hand a cigarette lighter (in this case a weed lighter). He is leaning against the wall, looking at something distant, something far out in the night sky. Am carrying a bottle of mineral water that I’ve been nursing since I got here. I hadn’t seen him at all inside, this guy…but then again I didn’t see everybody who came. He regards me momentarily and asks if I would like a smoke.

“No, thanks. I do not smoke,” I tell him. There’s something like a faint smile on his face when I say that. He doesn’t say anything. Some silence, then he brings the roll to his lips, in slow motion. The lighter clicks and he lights it. He closes his eyes and takes a deep drag at it. Smoke fills his soul. He doesn’t open his eyes but lets smoke crawl out of his nose into the cold chilly night in a lazy trail. He stays in that position for a while; immobile. Still. The roll smolders in a dull ember between his fingers. He smokes some more. Same fashion. There’s just silence between us save for the sound of his puffing and the screaming insects of the night (and perhaps the sound of life from the ballroom behind us). A soft breeze blows through. He slowly, even achingly opens his eyes and looks at me. His eyes are red, like sorghum juice. Now he smiles a bit, at me.

“My friend, this is some good stuff,” he is saying, his voice deep and scratchy, gnawing at me like a greyhound’s bite. I nod. I don’t want to spoil the mood. “You know in this country you have economic disparity – the very rich and the very poor.” He continues, “And you have a marijuana disparity. You have the crappiest marijuana on earth – herb that comes in from Mexico, that doesn’t get you high. You smoke three or four rolls and you still are not satisfied. And then you have the best bucchi bud on earth! The can dogs, the guava cams…” He lifts the roll held between his fingers and looks at it admiringly, as if seeing it for the first time. He nods in approval, his eyes still fixed on the roll. “This stuff is grown with love out of extraordinary genetics.” I almost laugh but I don’t. “They call you, the high is incredible, the smell is incredible. This sells for a lot of money, my friend. I spend a lot of money on this.”

He holds it out to me to feel. I grab it. I take and look at it. He is pleased. “The best gardens in the world are turning their attention in pulling the potential in this plant.” He says, pointing at the roll in my hands. “And you can coax a lot of different flavors and a lot of different experiences out of it, and that’s what they are doing…”

“Really? So where’s this one from?” I ask, just to keep him talking. He’s on a roll.

“This one? This is from the mountain slopes of Afghanistan. Fine stuff, I tell you. Grown by the Taliban,” he replies. He pauses. Clears his throat and turns to look at something in the dark. A few seconds pass in quiet.

Now, as if talking to himself he says, slowly, in a measured, almost sacred tone. There’s conviction in his voice, “Marijuana enhances my life. Marijuana enhances my sensuality. It brings me closer to God. I think it makes me a better parent, I think it makes me a better man,” At this point I imagine what his family might look like. Is his wife a nurse, a school teacher, a secretary at an office? What does she do? What about him? Does he have a son or daughter? Or both? A whole flood of questions, like a curse, descend on my mind and refuse to leave. “I think it makes me more sensitive to my surroundings and the people around me. It certainly makes me more sensitive to food, and music, and art and, speaking as a fifty six year old man, it beats the hell out of Viagra.” What!!! The guy is fifty bloody six years old! Good gracious…He looks forty, or less! Is it the weed? “That’s why marijuana is different. That’s why you have to put an asterisk when you call the drug.” Hahaha…I laughed at that last line. It was a punch-line. Ginjah here was running with it. A weed ambassador for real. A bullshitter. He saved the night that sketchies would have otherwise ruined with their classist attitudes. He told me afterwards that there was a guy selling oranges and smoking weed in Golgotha when Jesus was being crucified. It’s somewhere in the book of Luke. Thank you Ginjah; show me a sign wherever you are. You are a life saver.

A Call On My Birthday

Where do you find the true soul of a city? Where does it live? Who do you talk to when you seek an honest insight into the life and behavior of a city – what it does when the sun dips in the horizon and its lights come on, what its idea of, say, a good life or success is and all? Where? Do you walk up to a random couple cozying up on a lazy Sunday afternoon in a park, looking for happiness in the eyes of each other and drop the question at their feet? Or do you pick a travel magazine on the lobby of a swanky hotel where guards in silk and dainty laces and ruffles, and white velvet gloves bow and say “hello sah!” to you when you walk in, like you are some knighted medieval landlord, and peruse its pages? Or do you sit on a tall stool by the counter of a seedy bar and chat up a tipsy patron caressing a sweaty bottle of whiskey over a loud tune? It's hard-small but..what do you do?

I recently had my birthday (the yuppie in me would love to say “celebrated my birthday”, to seem important. See, it can be so phony (and vain) sometimes, that part of me...but I will tell the truth). I simply had it. You know I was raised in a tradition that acknowledges birthdays, like most people elsewhere do. You often remembered what date it was or if you forgot, someone else (usually your mama) did it for you. Those who cared too much for it spared a few minutes, at the beginning of the year after a new calendar for that year had been hung on the wall, to turn over a few pages and mark that date on it as a reminder - a seal that that was not a day to be passed over like a faded shirt at the flea market. It was fine, for do we not all pursue happiness in the grand scheme of things?  Yeah we do... but perhaps I should also mention that the acknowledgement was as far as it went. There wasn’t the elaborate fanfare and lights and candles and toing and froing that many here associate with birthdays, okay? People occasionally sung for you alright but if they didn’t you couldn’t hold it against them. They just weren’t programmed to give a monkey’s squirt about birthdays. It was a luxury, an acquired taste (like cheese), that not everyone got around to acquire. I was in the herd of those who never did.

The morning of my birthday I get a call. I’ll back up a little here and try not to jump ahead of my story. My phone rings just as I am getting ready to go for a bike ride at a public park not far from where I stay. I almost ignore it but today is my birthday so I reach for it and pick it…and guess who’s on the line…I can’t freaking believe it. Alfayo! Alfayo is my cousin and just in case you are wondering why am all over this like white on rice, well, it's because I hadn’t seen it coming. Alfayo is not the guy who will call you on your birthday. Who are you, the Duke of Yorkshire? Keep your cool man, he is not corky (that’s me hehehe). He breathes into the mouthpiece like those male late night presenters on fm stations, those cats that will annoy shit out of you. Anyway, Alfayo breathes into his phone like the villain in that chilly movie When a Stranger Calls when he calls the babysitter. Weird…and am like, “Damn, you hadn’t told me you were gay; look at you son of a gun!” He ignores that, maybe he didn’t hear it.

“How’s Barrack doing man?…Barrack Obama!” an Obama fan. See the first thing he asks? He doesn’t ask how am doing. The place he's at turns suddenly noisy, a crowd I think.

“Obama's still up in the house. What can I say?” I reply to which he cackles like a wild dog amid the din.

“ Wuo Mathe!” he always calls me Wuo Mathe, “Swag man, swag. Now you agree, right? I tol…Hold on one sec. One sec please.” Then he shouts to someone in the distance, “Waiter! Waiter! Goat meat…Yeah, that’s what I ordered.” A little quiet. “Right, right for two…sawa. With bor...eeh” He then gets back to me, “Wuo Mathe am back. Regal me with tales from the West now; am all yours.”

I  ignore that last part on purpose and charge right ahead. It is a path he will be impossible to steer from once taken.

“Where are you balling at now? You seem to be eating life with a big spoon, man!” I ask.

“Oh stop it bro. You are always talking smooth like that but you know how it is. Every day a different fight. We are still slinging stones at Goliath.” Now that’s some deep way to answer a question. We talk about the usual stuff: family, who’s graduating from high school, college blah, blah and I realize how fast time flies. I ask if he still likes Papa Wemba or if he's into Lil Wayne now but he says he likes Atommy Sifa. We talk about the village and all the crazy people in there. We laugh so loud. I ask him who is seeing the chief’s daughter now and he laughs. He knows why. Back in the day, in the circa 1990s BC (before cellphones), he had been one of the village’s top dawgs. He often kept the company of some of the biggest kids in school (whether they were kids is debatable here; this is an open forum. They were more like grown-ass adults in kid’s uniforms, okay? I once walked into one of them shaving his chest…and most had their simba. Tell me if those were kids).  It was a small band of hoodlums, a mafia of sorts and they terrorized the other kids (the real kids). They never came to school on closing days because they feared embarrassment. This is when the smaller kids shone in the light of achievement; when the whole school assembly – students and teachers – gave them (the smaller kids) a standing ovation, a round of applause. On this day, the mafia bosses, also having long solidified their foothold at the bottoms of their classes (otherwise known as BOTTOM or BUOTO), also got mention for their dishonorable showing. Books weren’t their strong suit, these cats. Their strengths lay elsewhere. They at times imposed on the weaker members of the food chain some sort of a tax. They had them bring to school roasted maize, boiled maize, boiled peanuts, nyoyo … a whole lot of varied edibles during the harvest season, which they often feasted on at break time, then spent the rest of the day spewing belch, acting mighty. Indeed they were mighty. They got the prettiest chicas in town – girls in tumbo-cuts, girls in pams, girls that had been places, those that showered and applied tip-top then made trips to the trading center in the evening in the latest denims and hairdos to die for. It was all game, man. It was game and my cousin was in the thick of it. He was the smartest of the lot. It was around then that he was making advances at the daughter of the chief, an ancient-looking man whose word was 'law'. The girl, then a princess of sorts and a beauty to boot, and who had caught a serious case of the hips-ass-chest, was the object of many a suitor’s desire, the who-is-who in the food chain. She was the fire of their loins. That she insisted on speaking Swahili whenever she went to the market raised her standing several notches, to a league of one. She had been to Kisumu…that’s where she learnt Swahili (hehehe). Trouble with macking on the chief’s daughter was that it required cajones. Guts. The chief was Hitler himself. He had his secret police (the village gestapo) that watched the village like a hawk and reported back to him – a band of lousy loyalists, otherwise known as Youth, that ran roughshod with their antique-style policing, knocking everything that dared raise their heads above theirs. There were no cell phones then (remember it was BC). If you desired to mack on Akinyi, you had to step out of the shadows and dance but it helped to cover your nuts while at it because you were dancing in a shark pool. It was quite a risk but, hey, my cousin was ready to jiggle. He is a grounded cat, I have to say. He believes in hauling home the best kill. He is not the cat to live his life in halves. He was smart too. He could talk so effortlessly about ideas and places that the rest of us had only heard mentioned on the radio during Habari. His words were rock solid; he could lean on them. He often paused and allowed them room to breathe. And this is when you heard their pulse flutter inside them if you listened closely, which is to say that they came alive. You went from Dar es Salaam to London to Tokyo to Kuala Lumpur with him when he spoke. You met important people.  And Akinyi was biting his bait till word got round to him that the dreaded Youth squad had got wind of his Rico Suave stunts and was looking for him. Hahaha…you should have seen how he nearly soiled his pants when he heard that (some of my cousins say he did but I doubt it; he’s brutally honest. He would have admitted it). Luckily for him, one of the two buses that passed by our village twice a week from Uyoma to the city was due to pass by the following morning. He took his bag, stuffed a few clothes and took off early morning. He escaped to Seme, to one of my aunties’ and lay low there, kept his head below the surface till the issue died down at home. He was an asylum seeker of sorts, in Seme Kombewa. An exile of love.

Anyway, back to my story. He laughs when I ask about Akinyi Nyar Chief but I press on. Seeing that I ain’t letting him go he says, “My girl is here with me. We are waiting to dig into a goat’s ribs. Want to say hello? Scale on a ritcher maybe?” Damn, that was a fast one he pulled. When you are with Alfayo you’ve got to watch your back because you don’t know when the sucker will trip you. I could hear him giggle slyly. We both know the code – when a brother is with a girl, a new girl, you don’t start conversations that could potentially put him in an awkward position, one that he would have to offer explanations to get out of. I offer a lame excuse for why I cannot speak with the new catch today. It’s noisy out there; I won’t be able to scale properly. I want to be able feel the cadence in her voice, how she pushes the air on her p’s. Isn’t sound the only thing I got? I want to do it right since I can’t see her legs. I win there (we are even).

“Tell her this is your barber calling to demand payment for the other head. Remember you’ve always paid double the price” I joke. We burst out laughing like lunatics. My stomach aches when we finish. We always made fun of his head. He had the biggest head I ever saw growing up.

“She noticed my head first bro. I was in a crowd but I had an edge. I stood out.” I believed him. He is hard to miss.

At some point I tell him that my friend is coming to Nairobi, first time visit. What would he recommend?...I want something authentic, something unequivocally Nairobi. I want my friend to feel the soul of the city, the real fabric of life of the city. Alfayo knows this country, this city, like a spider knows her web. I sometimes use him as my yellow pages. He knows the right people, people that know the right people. He is easy to like because he is believable and good-humored. He knows what’s happening where and when. If you want 50 bags of cement, or a car, or a driver’s license, or an autographed picture of Otieno Kajwang’ talk to him. He looks you straight in the eye and listens when you speak. He sweats for his bread. He doesn’t pack a revolver in his jacket like many young people do. He says that’s vanity; a wrong place to seek value. People do not respect a man with a gun; they fear him and fear is nasty. He is not a pimp.

In his apartment house is an album of photos, some from way back and some (the more recent ones) showing him posing with various influential people. There’s one particular one that he framed, which featured him shaking hands with Barrack Obama. It was taken in 2005, when Obama (then a senator) paid a visit to the University of Nairobi and Alfayo met him, am told, as one of the leaders of the Muslim Students’ Society.

Alfayo is a Christian.

When I posed that question, he paused a little as if in thought, then asked somberly, “Is your friend a man or a woman?”

“My friend is a dog sir.” I shot back. He chuckles.

“Silly! You know what? People that speak like that on their birthdays should be turned into potatoes. Wuod Mathe, I have a girlfriend; I won’t hit on your friend. I promise.” I told you this guy can spot humor dressed in a pajama in the dark.

He tells me to hold on. I think the goat meat has arrived. I can hear him talking with the waiter in the background. He comes back suddenly, “Hey Wuod Mathe! I was saying that I doubt if this city has any soul left. Bro it’s long dead and gone. Perhaps little fragments of it could still be found lying in the hearts of the people that live in it if you look hard enough.” I listen. He clears his voice, “Bad politics and classism is choking this city.”

“So you say authenticity is lacking. Is that it?”

“To a large extent yes. You know Nairobi is edgy. She’s a bit brash, like a teenager. She experiments, with drugs, sex, ideas. She’s fascinated by fads – clothes, gadgets blah, blah. The cats that drive her are the supposed middle class – those fellahs that live on Twitterville and complain about bad roads and corrupt cops and tribalism and the weather. And how the system is irreparably broken.” I was secretly smiling, listening to how this guy dissects his city, “You will find them walking designer dogs on leashes in the evenings in gated neighborhoods where everybody seems to live these days, or watching rugby at Impala Grounds during weekends, spotting red-and-green colored jerseys, sunglasses and holding cans of soda. Super pretentious people, I tell you.”

It’s pretty obvious he harbors a seething contempt for the Nairobi middle class.

“Any way you do it, avoid people that wear their image on their sleeves. Tell your friend to take a matatu. Nothing tells you what Nairobi is than a matatu. Leave the rest to me bro; we’ve come a long way.” We cackle again.

 I’d want us to continue but his goat ribs must be getting cold now, and his girlfriend must be wondering what sort of a barber talks that long on the phone so I tell him he’s got to get to his food (and his girl). He tells me that he had told her about me – stories from way back (when we slept naked in granny’s house) and all; that we hadn’t talked in a long time and that it had been her idea to make a surprise call on my birthday. It was totally fine with her, he said. I liked her instantly but I still insisted he goes back to his food. Well, before he hang up, he wished me a happy birthday and told me something to the effect that I should look at my life five years ago and my life now, and evaluate them – see how much I have grown in that space of time and say a prayer, giving thanks for my gifts, and unsaddle the things that rob me of happiness…and walk into my new age a happy, smiling, lighter person. There was something about how he said it that gave it so much power.

Priceless! Do they come any better than that?

That morning when I rode my bike through the windy paths of the park, I thought about that statement. It kept looping in my head. It was obvious a lot has changed over the last five years. I expect less from people now than I did five years ago. Now I question less why people act a certain way, I simply stop acknowledging them when they do. I don’t try too hard to win arguments. I believe love is nature's gift to humanity. And how do I love?...you might ask. Like Eliza Acton wrote. I love like I love the tone of some soft-breathing flute whose soul is wak'd for me alone when all beside is mute. I long stopped believing in the kind of love that has to be wrestled to the ground, though. I think the greatest virtue is compassion; that one might observe all the rules in the book but without compassion all that trouble is as good as deodorized shit. I don’t care much for pleasing people today. I let go easily now, of people, of emotions, things that drag me, which means am much harder to hurt now than I was five years ago. I might anger faster now but I cool off faster too. I read more, voraciously, hungrily. I take my time, because words mean more to me now than they did before. I cling on them, like a jealous lover. I stop and think about them.

Here’s the kicker: I believe that friendships go a long way. I do value and appreciate the people that are close to me. I want to be able to know that someone will help me up when I fall or hold my hands and urge me on in moments when am down and weak. 

                                                      ***************

Of Trains And Hipsters

If you ride the city metros you must no doubt have noticed the many morsels of…wait (wait still)!!! of spit that sometimes dot the waiting bays where passengers herd to await trains. They are quite a site, right? Many who board these trains seem not bothered by the morsels, though. They stand right next to them, in the midst of them, on top of them. They are just cool like that. Like they are wildebeests and zebras of the Mara (if you’ve seen how those animals roll; similar to the way Kacie and Jojo did back in the day – laid back, relaxed, each not minding the other). It’s an art that must take a lot of metro riding to perfect, if you ask me. It separates the seasoned riders from the rest of the herd who still cringe when dope changes hands two seats away, or feel uneasy when a rider at the back of the coach gets carried away by a phone conversation, like when say he's telling about a nudist club he visited over the weekend and starts to paint (in words of course) his adventure just loud enough for the passengers on the other end of the coach to hear without them purposely trying to eavesdrop. These fellows occupy the top tier of the food chain. They are the ones who are never moved by drama - that common feature of commuter train riding.

There’s also another category of riders. These guys are not so chill with the whole idea of standing between morsels of spit in the name of waiting for damn trains (am mad). They will avoid them like the plague, choosing where they step in much the same way that a female guinea fowl chooses where she lays her eggs – very carefully; almost like a ritual. They will annoy you sometimes, these people, because they are the sort of chaps who will be squeezing themselves through an already crowded space, making eye contact with you while at it to offer apologies for doing that, just to avoid stepping on one of them morsels. I know you must now be wondering who, in their right mind, talks about nasty stuff like this. Hang on man…be easy. Am headed somewhere with this.

A few days ago I rode the metro late at night. It was the last train headed for the part of town I wanted to go and, because I was running late and the train was almost there, I decided to run, literally, to the station to catch it. You gotta do what you gotta do sometimes. So there I was, rushing madly to get to the train, panting so hard, skipping and jumping over morsels like someone avoiding landmines, my eyes on the prize all the while. And just when I was about to get through the door, in my mad rush, I bumped into someone and then I heard a shrill voice say something about my mother – a woman’s voice I swear it was. These fellahs are crude I tell you. I turn to look and, guess what I find…holy cow! A super skinny folk, man. Super skinny folk in tight pants and a Mohawk. He’s holding a girl’s hand, also skinny like him (his girlfriend I think). Her hair is shaven clean. She reminds you of a Gestapo cook. On his other hand the guy is holding something wrapped inside a brown paper bag. The voice didn’t match his frame, though, and so for a moment I wasn’t too sure I had my guy. There’s a way your mind is trained to place women’s voices within certain octaves and men’s also in their own proper ones. Call it natural ordering. It’s how things operate in the animal kingdom, you dig? You don’t go to school to learn that; nature teaches you it for free. I can swear that fellah’s voice was his mum’s (now we are even, I guess).

He seems embarrassed by the comment, I can tell, and he makes a labored attempt at an apology and am like, “Ohh…don’t mind it bro. I got your back”. I lie. I didn’t say that but I would take a bullet for that guy any day. He was a likeable chap (save for the Mohawk on his head hehehe). You should have seen how he treated me like royalty after that. Some self-righteous readers in here will probably say he was overcompensating for his earlier ill manners but I disagree. He was just a man (a good man) caught flat-footed in a fleeting moment of chaos. He had to do something godamn it! I would do the same if it were me. I would say something undignified about your mama and then apologize. There’s a degree of satisfaction that comes with that too. Try it out, just for kicks.

Anyway, the guy lets me go in first (like gentlemen do) and then comes and sits on the vacant seat next to mine, his girlfriend in tow. I retract; there are two vacant seats next to mine. They sit there. I flash out my phone to read a text message and for a short while there’s just silence save for the rattling of the train and some passengers a few seats back who are having a heated debate about Lebron James. Two are fans; the other is not. The non-fan is monopolizing the debate. I like his style. He doesn’t let the two fellahs speak.

The guy next to me turns and says, his voice still high-pitched, “Hey brother, sorry about that incident at the door man, I didn…” I cut him short:

“Don’t be bro. Am the one that should be apologizing here. I ran into you. I nearly knocked you down!”

“But still, that statement about your mother…well am so sorry”. Seeing that this argument was going to proceed in circles, I shrugged my shoulders like it didn’t matter and steered the conversation to other topics. We talked about a lot of things. His girlfriend, Nora (that was her name. And he was Jimmy) chipped in a few times to clarify something here and there that she figured he did not explain well to me or to ask questions.

At some point she asks where I’m from and I say Kasipul Kabondo. Of course I lie. She looks confused.

“Where’s that; is it in the US?” She presses on, determined but jolted a bit.

“Oh no,” I almost laugh. For a moment I wonder what state looks Kabondo-ish. I mean red soil and sacks upon sacks of potatoes by the freeway. “No it’s on the other side of the world,” I reply, “just below the navel of Lake Victoria.” I said it as if random people on a train should already know all these names.

“Oh my Gosh…Lake Victoria. I’ve heard of that. Wow! We learnt about that in school, right Jimmy?”  turning to look at skinny Jimmy (cool name huh?) who was sort of just playing it by the ear now. He nods. “You’re from there for real!!??” (That was both a question and an exclamation). She was now facing me, expecting an answer.

“Yep,” I replied slowly, nodding sagely and looking straight ahead like someone with weighty stuff on his mind, “Even Miguna Miguna is from there…Onyango Oloo also.” What!!! I couldn’t believe I was saying these stuff. Anyway, I gathered they were hipsters and we talked a lot about farming and since I had mentioned the lake, we talked about the lake too. I lied to them that I owned a small canoe, and that in the evenings I push it out into the lake to get my dinner and to catch sight of the sun as it sets. They loved it, these two beautiful people. They also told me about Teulon (google that if you think it’s a name of a drink). They talked about how beautiful it used to be till the new mayor (a particular Mr. Benninger) started issuing licenses to wealthy lumbers and real estate owners from Montreal who are now cutting down anything green and building houses and office complexes all over Teulon without regard to the effects these might have on the ecosystem. You could feel the anger in their voices and the passion when they told the story of Teulon and its woes, and the love that is not lost for this birthplace of theirs. I felt for them man; I really did. You don’t want someone messing your town like that. I’d follow you and bite off a piece of you like a zombie on crack if you tried that on my town. They left Teulon, though, at some point. They packed their bags and left after a couple of unsuccessful street protests. They could not farm anymore and tall buildings just wasn’t their thing. They traveled the Caribbean, stopping to stay at one place a few months at a time before moving to the next. Skinny Jimmy was all lit up with joy as they narrated their Caribbean adventure. Nora wouldn’t allow him to finish his sentences, though. She always felt he was not stroking them with enough paint. Poor Jimmy. He was omitting certain details, she said.

They thoroughly enjoyed the Caribbean. Thoroughly. They stayed longest in Trinidad. I asked why and Nora shot back, “It was paradise”. That’s quite something. It’s not every day that someone describes a place as paradise. I got curious. I made a mental note to check out Trinidad when I got home. I was itching to know what it is about this place that would make a hippie couple fall so deeply in love with it. Is this place all indie-rock and clothes screaming with color or acres upon acres of organic greens…or farmers’ markets? I would find out.

Skinny Jimmy reached for something inside a knight bag that Nora was carrying and came back out with a sheet of paper and a pen. He proceeded to scribble something on the paper before handing it to me. Their email address! They have a joint email address. No phone, no facebook, no twitter, nothing. They are people on the go. These other stuff would tie them down. Would put limits on them which they don’t fancy. They are free spirits, without borders and they live by that creed. I told him to write mine down too, spelling it for him just to be sure he got it right. I have learnt overtime that a lot of people I meet can’t seem to get my name or my email address right the first time. I’ve often wondered why. Maybe I hang out in the wrong places, or with the wrong crowds. Just then, the train ground to a halt and skinny Jimmy and Nora rose to go. I stretched out my hand to shake theirs and said something about wishes (some line I read in a book, that I cannot remember now). They blushed. A weird hippie blush and said thank you. They stepped out to go but a second later Jimmy stepped back in and shouted, “Danieli! Shoot us an email buddy, will you?”

“I sure will, skinny Canadian! Take care”.  I said the “skinny Canadian” part under my breath. Nobody heard it but me. He smiled and stepped back out, as if he had the mischief I was up to there all figured out. The door closed after him and the train left.