Safara’s midnight dance with fate

I looked at the swarthy European boy with the curly hair, wild eyes and a fat wallet with Sh100 K in it, who desperately needed some ‘powdered Cola’ from me, having mistaken my pimped-up look for my being some dealer in white ‘flour.’

“Do I look like …” I started.

Then I remembered that to be a Hustler in Kenya requires that a wo/man be a Jack of All Trades, and looking at this Petros boy with his desperate look, I said: “Of course, Petros, I can get some unga for you …”

“Good, good, good,” he said, rubbing his oily hands in glee, his expensive cologne assaulting my tickled nostrils. “How much is three grams of white flour here, sir?”

I had no idea.

“30 grand,” I said.

Without hesitation, Petros said: “Only 30k? In my country, it would be 600 to 700 dollars, depending on the flour vendor. Let’s go to toilet …”

So Petros and I furtively made our way to the hotel bathroom, one of those swanky restrooms that smell of lavender in the air and seats that warm your bums at their business end.

“Here,” Petros said, counting out the money as we squeezed into one lavatory.

Coming out of the loo, we came face to face with Andrew Kithika, the man who had invited me for the business summit at this six-star hotel.

“I wait for you in lobby,” Petros said, slinking away like a guilty man once he saw that Drew knew me.

“It is not wha-what you think, man,” I stammered.

“What you do in the bedroom, or the men’s lavatory, is none of my business, Mike,” Drew said with a smirk. “But I will always make sure there’s at least two urinals between us when we pee. Never thought you swung that way tho, bro.”

Embarrassed, I fled the scene.

And taking advantage of the diversion Drew had provided, left the grand hotel altogether, avoiding the lobby by slipping into the ‘Fire Escape’ to flee the scene.

“Maybe Petros was going to O.D. in his hotel room tonight,” I justified my larceny.

No sooner had I gotten to the house, seeing the 30 K windfall as an Xmas miracle to pay my long overdue December rent, when I got a call from my cousin Uhuru.

“Come quickly to the hospital, Mike,” he said. “Our brother Safari has taken a turn for the worse.”

Calling an Uber/Bolt, although it was now 23 past 11 PM at night, I dashed to the hospital, and made my way to the third floor ICU wards where I found Uhuru with my other first cousins Margie, Anne and Josh, all three siblings who had come from the USA for December ‘Winter Bunny’ holidays; but were now on a death watch for their brother, and my fave childhood cousin and friend, Safari Safara – a bachelor who’d liked the ladies, but never found the time or serious woman to sire a child with.

There is a weird ethereal feel that hospitals have at night with their ghostly, fluorescent lights, and at exactly midnight, an exhausted looking doctor in white scrubs and an electronic tablet came out into the corridor, his voice as strained as his face as he said the usual words they say:

“I am very sorry to have to tell you that George Safari Safara is no longer with us!”

As the two sisters burst into tears, Josh comforted Anne as I held Margie and said:

‘There, there, it will all be okay.’ Then added in a total daze: “Happy Jamhuri Day!”

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