Men will always want to be above the other.
I hate waiting. Worse, I hate being made to wait. It makes me feel small. I blame the 8-4-4 system, where we had to queue for everything. Queue for food, queue to be inspected, and later on, queue to shower, with cold water no less, in the 5AM Kirinyaga morning to teach us ‘discipline’.
There were many things I wanted in life, but chief among them was to grow up and become an adult and do things the way I want, without having to wait. My much older friends would tell me not to worry; my wife will sort that impatience bug out. And if she fails, well, that’s why God made children.
But what do they know? They allow themselves to be controlled by their women, and when a man accepts to be influenced by his wife, he will never get anywhere. Not me though.
But in life, you have to always take account for, erm, life. Take, for instance, this Thursday evening. We are walking in Sakaja’s Kanairo, where he has removed and reinstalled cabros, changing the patterns here and there and calling that “development”. It’s not late, about 10 PM and we are taking the longer route home, jaywalking from University Way to Koinange Street, past Jeevanjee Gardens where some suspicious men look at us suspiciously, and someone says, “Kwani mawakili are still in town?” and we laugh and buy sweets at Moktar Daddah St because why not? It is a free country. If I were alone, I’d have careened off to Imenti House for a tipple, because what would a man go home to do at this time? Cook for his wife?
Wife, I had none, so on we continued. And right there, at Muindi Mbingu St, next to City Market, some two cops stopped us. Actually, they stopped me. I know this because they said, “Ras, niaje.” I was in no mood for a chit-chat, and I thought they understood that because I kept walking. But one of them planted himself in my way, and I knew what he had had for dinner at the police canteen. “Ras tunakusimamisha na husimami?”
My name isn’t Ras; they should know this as the police, but they just stood there, unsmiling, arms folded, stood as if they would never again do anything as important. The air smelled of rotten meat. A few large house flies buzzed above the market doors. By Nairobi standards, a normal night. By my standards, this night wasn’t going to plan.
If he expected a “Pole mkubwa,” none was forthcoming, and not only because there was a beautiful lass in our company whose adoration I was trying to win. My masculinity was on trial, and I was ready to lose my freedom but gain the respect of comrades. I wasn’t no pushover. I had gotten my education in a Kenyan primary school where corporal punishment was administered by fascists, and in high school we’d uproot a tree stump because we had the audacity of defying a teacher.
We all know why I have been stopped. Afande, I am not my hair; I thought Indie Arie had already covered this topic. Afande adjusts his crown, and proceeds to search me, while asking questions: Mmetoka wapi? Mnaenda wapi? Umebeba nini? I have had it up to here with the questioning, but I cannot lose my cool because that would give him probable cause, not that he needed any. So, I lied to him—he didn’t deserve the truth—besides, a little lie never killed anybody.
In any case, he found only books in my bag and proceeded to run through them, and I wanted to ask him if he knew what he was reading. He didn’t like the innuendo behind the question, and I wanted him to know I didn’t care. He was leaning into the stereotypes, so why shouldn’t I? It is why, when he spoke in English, I replied in Swahili. Because I did not deem him worthy to get a reply in English, the white man’s tongue, and because I too had drunk the Bibo juice that all police enforcement are school dropouts and unlearned kurutus, the state’s often violent hand.
Human beings are like that. We divide ourselves into social strata. Men will always want to be above the other. It is why the karao would call me “Kijana” to remind me that he was above me, and to make me feel small, and me, I don’t like feeling small, which is why I would pocket and look away when he was talking, to remind him that by virtue of my university degree, he was below me in matters intellect.
No man is an exception to this rule. Army generals, presidents, pastors, boda boda riders, no one is an exception. If you want to know how much the average man craves power, watch him order about those he deems of lesser stature to him. Freire was only half right. Yes, the oppressed want to liberate themselves from the oppressors. But the true dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor. How can it be otherwise? It is the brown stain that soils a white shirt and not the white shirt that overwhelms a brown stain.
Having found nothing, or rather nothing he could pin against us, the good officers of the law thanked us for our “cooperation” and let us go, offering us words of advice, a vulture saying grace for the chicken.
Scripture says a kind word turns away wrath, but my mama used to say if you don’t have anything nice to say, then you should shut up. I may be a great hypocrite, but I always listen to my mama. After all, talking to them was like going back into Egypt once the pharaoh had let you go.
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