I was seized by a sudden urge to be somewhere, anywhere else.
The universe must have been eavesdropping when I said I had nowhere to go this December, because I have received so many “We oga ukuje” invites. Or don’t even oga. Just come. I get along pretty well with the landlord’s daughter, let’s say, why not?
You are not going to research it. And I have been talking to the landlord’s daughter to get the landlord to get my rent for December reduced for I have not been sleeping in that house anyway. That much is true.
What’s also true is that I am not programmed for parties. I am socially awkward, my attempts at standup comedy very crude (someone’s daughter would say rude and I’d let her), and I almost always tend to go to parties where the host is cavorting with a drug dealer, a money launderer, a slave trader, pardon me, the correct term is ‘an agent for government jobs abroad.’ You may be thinking I am complaining. You think right. But someone’s daughter, after she left for the holidays, without me I might add, said, Go have fun, but be a good boy. And I thought, why not? So, I put on my best Shonda Rhimes tutu and declared this my month of saying yes.
I probably shouldn’t say this in a national newspaper but I got offered cocaine. Or snow, as I later learned. This is what they said: Do you do lines? I said yes. In my defense, I figured she meant story lines. Whether I tried it is a good question. But if you haven’t seen it on Nairobi Gossip Club, it probably didn’t happen, right? Right. You will want to know the details but what can I say? Details are nothing but a grain of sand on the beach of life.
I once read something, that you can live a second life under your first one, something functioning covertly like a subway beneath a city, a disease inside the flesh. I was thinking of this recently when I was waking up from God-knows-where, with God-knows-who having done God-knows-what.
But I am getting in my own way. It is easy to understand why the President thinks he can make us a new Singapore. He won’t do it, but I understand the delusion, why he thinks he can. This city is flush with cash. On Monday, we had dinner at some resort on the outskirts of town. I didn’t even know such a place exists. I have been in Nairobi since 2002, when the late President Moi’s number was up, the year we were voted the most optimistic people in the world, we were unbwogable. The two events were unrelated, and some people will say that is a coincidence, but people say a lot of things they don’t know.
Why I am telling you this, I do not know. This week has been Mathare-crazy. Perhaps this was when my second life started to take shape, as I was playing house with children who had too much money for their own good, more money than sense, and anything (or anyone) they could buy, they bought. Kwani shi’ ngapi? I am known to one of them, which is why I was there, which is how I saw them burning through my rent money on a bottle of champagne. The champagne wasn’t even that good, or perhaps I am projecting. They were seeing a bottle of champagne, I was seeing rent money.
Ngai! The things I could do with that rent money! In the Big Five personality traits, I rank lowest on Openness to Experience, or as my girlfriend calls it, “You never take me anywhere!” Whatever. We need to have somewhere before we can afford anywhere. And that starts by not spending rent money on a bottle of champagne! I was getting that feeling you get when you are arrested in Mathare by a plain-clothes policeman, that feeling you get when you eat raw plants disguised as salad, the June 25, 2024 feeling: Storming State House, catching a teargas cannister midair, mentioning Kileleshwa and Kibera in the same sentence.
I told my friend, E—, I said, E—, it is impossible to live like this.
He said, Like how?
I said, like this. Mnatoa wapi pesa?
He said some hooey about investments and savings and all that money market poppycock, and I told him I came to Nairobi in 2002. I wasn’t born yesterday. He said, “Hii ni town.
Akili,” pointing to his temple. “Consider what you see on the streets as fact and what you read in the news as fiction.” Maybe I am stupid, but I don’t think he said anything prizeworthy there, if that is what he was going for. That feeling in the pit of my stomach sank hollow. I was seized by a sudden urge to be somewhere, anywhere else. In case you can’t tell, I am a coward, and this is still a conservative society, but Kenyans love their pornography just as much as they like their piety. Still, nobody would believe that the dark, Mungiki-looking gringo with dreadlocks and bulging forehead is actually the novice here, stereotypes to put it in another way. Some will see the mastermind of a, what did the President call it, “criminal elements,” so what if the police aimed a shot at his legs but missed and caught him in the chest instead? Tragic, yes, but it was a life devoid of promise anyway, or which promised disaster at least.
These are the thoughts that are raising a whirlpool in my brain waves, and E—, maybe after eavesdropping on my thoughts, says, “Usioverthink, ni December. Enjoy life!” I have got through life by believing inherently, people are less altruistic than they pretend to be, that someone is almost always angling for a favour, or leverage. This is perhaps why I have survived in Nairobi since 2002. E— meanwhile, is a happy lad, always seeing the greater good in people, one of those men martyred to the “milk of human kindness,” and I did not want to be on the pyre when it went up in flames. This may explain why he has thrived in Nairobi. He trusts people explicitly so people feel compelled to reciprocate. Me? I have little room for sentimentality. I never allow the fantasy to outweigh the facts. Hii ni town.
You would think these thoughts are enough to anchor me down, slow my boat. You would think wrong. Logic can take you from A to B, but imagination can take you anywhere. And what was I imagining? That this is not my money, so why do I care? I am here anyway. Ni December.
Sherehe haitaki hasira. And Shonda would want me to say Yes. She has a whole TED Talk about it. Say yes! So I said Yes. The bottles kept coming. And the food. All manner of depraved society escapes. Not once did I say No. As to whether that included lines or snow or cocaine, well, what can I say? Consider what you see on the streets as fact and what you read in the news as fiction.
