The hand of the clock is about to hit 10.4opm when my phone vibrates. I am on TikTok getting rage baited by Gaucho or all the president’s men talking about how they will close Ngong Road for the President to launch an 820m flyover next to Junction Mall, the mall that’s always been there, reminding me year after hard year how far I had to go and how far I had come.
I watched it vibrate and began to spend all the hope I had accumulated in my lifetime: a butt dial from K—, or K—’s sons playing Minecraft or Candy Crush or whatever children play on their parents’ phones these days and them getting bored and calling Uncle Madough (that’s me), to ask for some dough. I move away from the crowd I was with, throwing them a few words of “Nakam ,” and “Usiguze chapo zangu. ” If it was true what my mother had once told me, then nothing rang the telephone like death in the middle of the night.
“Bro, bad news,” K— says. He’s never been one for foreplay, considering it a lazy man’s ruse. “N— has lost his dad. Saa hii tu.” It is K—'s job to inform the syndicate, which is what we call our boys' group, why, who knows why? N— is devastated, naturally, but he is also on his way out of town to his dad’s place.
We love N— and we would drop everything to attend to him. Which we do. As you are reading this, we are burying N—'s dad, and everyone is praising his good name, here where N— too will be laid to rest when his time comes, where they would have had the funeral of one or more of their own children, dead because of this or dead because of that or dead of just not having been born with enough life. “God must be so happy that he has Baba N— home asubuhi hii,” the preacher would begin at the funeral, “but we are jealous of God because He has Baba N— and we won’t see him again until we get to heaven and Baba N— is waiting for us with milk in one hand and honey in the other.” “Na Githeri pia!” someone would shout, because Baba N— would trade heaven for a plate of githeri. We would trade heaven to see N— back with his father. “We are jealous of God, but we are thankful that He gave us time with Baba N—,” the preacher would insist. “We’re thankful for every single minute, but still, we can’t help but be jealous asubuhi hii….” So Baba N—'s life would have come to an end. And God would lick the tip of His forefinger and turn the page. Ashes to ashes. Dust to Nakuru dust.
We will be lost for words, and something silent will pass between us. There are only so many ways you can say, “Pole bro.” But we will have to leave because one of us is also getting married, the same day, at this very moment, and the irony tastes like what I presume adulthood would taste like if it had a taste.
For a man, every loss is a reminder of his unfulfilled potential.
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N— gives us his blessings, and we drive off to Naivasha, where we will be catching the second half of the ruracio, the dowry having been paid and the girl now officially ours. The code-switching is immaculate, and I understand why the president would bring the Grammys to Kenya. This is the Best Group Performance since Eve acted out her desires in the Garden of Eden.
I am marvelling at how life is careening us off our guardrails. In the car, we are talking about how we are next. I mean, we are losing parents at an awful rate now, and it’s only a matter of time before the Grim Reaper turns to close friends.
It’s been like this for the last few years, but it has only gotten more pronounced as the deaths have hit closer home: mother, father, brother, sister. This was what life was. Giving with one hand, and taking with the other, never sated with everything it wanted, nor did it want everything it actually had. Death, as life, is always eating yet always famished. What was not understood when I was younger is understood now.
I was telling this to someone’s daughter, and she said, “He, N— will be fine.” She just doesn’t understand. For a man, every loss is a reminder of his unfulfilled potential: My pastor’s disapproval, my primary school teacher’s admonition that I’ll never amount to anything, my ex’s auntie asking me if I have a ‘real job’.
We began to pity our parents. The older we got, the more we saw what desolate lives they’d led. Death by concessions. The autopsy report? Broken dreams. So much so that most of our parents’ lives are a reminder of how hard they had to work to bring us up, that no matter how much we choose our paths, it’s only because they forsook theirs. At the wedding, we think about death. We think what kind of fathers we will be, we think about N— alone with his grief, and with the guilt of grief.
But we are still at the wedding. We still have to dance and cheer and hip-hip-hurraaah our friend, B—, because the Good Book says he has found a good thing, and if we are not happy for him, the village people will say we are giving him evil eyes and that’s a bad thing. We look at B—'s parents, receiving their freshly minted daughter-in-law, how happy they seemed, already nearer to death than they are to life. I am craving the pumpkin chapos at the reception almost as much as I know Baba N— is craving githeri. Maybe that was one of the punishments of hell—an eternal yearning for the unfinished meal.
