Let me confess: I love people-watching. I love how they change faces depending on who is at the table.
Love the perfunctory illusions between who they are and who they want to be. But I hate being watched. I know how that sounds—doublespeak, defensive, despicable—but it’s true. Which is why I am avoiding cameras at some beachfront property in Nyali owned by a politician or a drug lord, likely both.
The waitress, Jesse [pronounced Jay-C], with skin flawless as plastic, passes with a smile that I hold in my heart. Later she serves some slapdash wali wa kupakapaka or something, na pweza that makes love to my tastebuds in a way that rivals all my lovers, past and future.
I have the attention span of a Kenyan politician, definitely the shamelessness of one, and I get bored with manicured fun, so someone suggests we go downtown, to Mtwapa, where the debauchery is less manufactured.
At Yacht Grill, the DJ plays songs to completion. Every song. Nairobi imeniharibu. Because DJs here have erm, itchy fingers. Which is why they don’t last long. But what I actually want to talk about is how everyone is so polite. Why is everyone so polite here?!
Exhibit A: We handed some boda guy our phones to take pictures of us and he didn’t run away with them (if an event happened and there is no photo, did it really happen?) Kwani, what are they hiding huku Pwani? Ama Pwani si Kenya? People think Adani wants to invest in Kenya but really he is looking for a way to become a citizen of Mombasa.
We have the impatience of Nairobi urchins and so we abandon the yacht [Titanic joke, hehe] and drive around sampling the nightlife, where we meet several ladies of the night. Bwana they are beautiful. Were it not for my Christian upbringing and fear of being burnt with war criminals and those people who play loud TikTok videos with no earphones, I would offer myself to be abducted.
We get to a different club, courageously named, “Screenshot”, where we had been told, ‘if you come to Mtwapa and you haven’t visited this club, then you were not in Mtwapa.’ They said, “This is it.” This was not it.
Those ladies who move around the club holding LED signs are passing and I have to duck my head because my beloved mother knows I am visiting my sister today.
For the record, I was but si ni life? Anyway, the sign read: “Beholder akishakuona beauty inaisha” and I am ashamed to say I laughed a little too hard and slapped my left knee while at it. I could have slapped my right knee too but my hand was covering my snot.
Meanwhile the “dude on the decks” is proving why Kenya has 39 neurosurgeons and 39,000 DJs with his selection of music.
I add his name to my firing squad...and I mean that metaphorically...and literally. The crowd seems to like him though but they don’t know better. Just because Kinangop is cold does not mean it is winter.
This is what decline in full looks like. Years after the Brits left, Kenyans are still drunk, petty, inept, people pleasers…national characteristics always outlive regime changes.
The night is still young and we hit club number three or is it four? Who cares? It’s some back-of-beyond place, it’s loud in there, and pretty full, certainly pretty, and that’s more like it. The DJ is okay. There’s something about a murder of adults in an unsynchronised choir singing “Sisi ni walevi...tunapenda kamnyweso.”
It’s a beautiful symphony, like how the band members on the Titanic orchestra continued playing as the ship sunk...like how the president’s men continue clothing him in invisible clothes as his ship sinks...and the sheep scatter…
Oh yes. We decide to end our night here for we have an early morning, or so we tell ourselves. That’s when I spot them.
Pwani’s dirty little secret. Beautiful, well-dressed women drinking and dancing provocatively and I thank God for eyes, for sight. One was in a bodice-ripping, figure-hugging black jumpsuit…I thank all the slaves who picked cotton for this cloth to be made. Nashukuru.
I know my limits and KRA knows my limits too so mine is to observe and appreciate. As a man, you have to know where you can go and how far you can go and I cannot go there.
See, these ladies were “scanning”, to borrow a football phrase. The ladies, with compound eyes, were looking for someone to devour, or to be devoured by someone.
I first saw them at the Nyali Centre. More curves than a KeNHA-designed superhighway. I look to my left, my type. I look to my right, my type. Everyone here was my type. Or is it the beer? Just 9s and 10s. Brutal to have adults rate one another, you might say. Delicious, I say.
They picked the table behind us, which had a white guy, some guy in a floral shirt that he definitely pulled off—kudos, and two Indians who should probably put their affairs in order seeing by how many Dunhill cigarettes they cleared that night.
And a bazu. Some, how to put this nicely, fat guy. He was fat but he looked like he had money. Nairobi has taught me people are anything but their appearance but this one did look rich rich.
The ladies know this too and they mill around him like ants to a dropped lollipop. The ugliness of a man, truly, is in the pocket. Me? Me I am just happy to be here.
Hold on. The table beside us just removed their Kardashian-level phone cameras and I have to duck again. Can we ban phones from clubs? Can we teargas baddies in clubs? You know what?
Add club photographers to the firing squad too. Anywho, I have always wondered how ladies can tell a broke man in a club. They are like a sniper with one bullet. Me I have never been targeted. Is it the dreadlocks? Are all rastamen considered broke? Misers? Hungry? All?
My friend meanwhile opens a bottle of beer with just a bottle cap. Usually the first sign of early onset alcoholism. You didn’t hear that from me. In my mind I am keen on the table behind us, will the rich man go home with all the ladies?
This question burrows through my skin like a butcher cleaving meat off a bone. I throw my eyes across the dimly lit bar.
Pesa ni mzuri because I can spot wababa with fading ring fingers dancing with the girls we were promised we would marry if we work hard, pass our exams, and take our misheveve. The Kenyan dream. Wababa aki. May you not see the pearly gates!
I swear this really happened. I stand to leave to go powder my nose when I am accosted by some lightskin lady who should probably pay more attention to how-to-wear mascara YouTube videos. She touches my chest and I sit back down. I am suggestible like that, easy to please. She says, hi. I say, hi.
She says, can I ask you a question? I say, you already have. She smiles. I have her where she wants me. My friends D— and K— must be seething with jealousy. Rastaman 1, Baldheads 0. Mamacita leans to my left ear, the one closest to my heart—such a smart woman—and whispers something. My eyes bulge. I am deflated. I tell her No. I don’t buy women I don’t know alcohol.
The truth is I am operating on a fixed budget but that is proprietary knowledge, classified information, insider trading. In fact, can she buy me a drink? Yes, I am progressive like that. Still, it feels good to be chosen.
Black boy joy. Call it arrested maturity but I shake my head and while pouting, point to D— and tell her, him, he has more money than us. Adani huyo. Try him. She gives D— one cavalier look and walks away. My friends are reprobates, hardened sinners who have fallen from God’s grace. And she picked me?
Besides, this is Mombasa. Me I cannot go home with anyone from a club in Mombasa because what if they are a mpenzi jinni? Now I have to explain what I am doing in the middle of the Indian Ocean with a mermaid.
Wait! You know what I just realised. As I scan and observe everyone in this club, I look exactly like the girls I just described. It looks as if I am the one looking for vulnerable women (or men) to buy me drinks...mother (expletives removed).
