N— looks excited for this stage of his life. He is talking about fatherhood as a calling, how nothing matters anymore now.
I am committing everything to memory so that when I become a father, I could give the impression that I know what I am doing.
N— is having a baby. Any time now, he says. The boys are all excited for him. It is N—'s first baby, as far as we know. He is the eldest in our boys’ group, a better Christian than we’ll ever be, and a sharp boy, not in the Nairobi sense. It wasn’t always like this. He had to quit smoking, first cigarettes, then the other ones, and stop drinking, a decision which was welcomed by nobody in the group. We were not very impressed, in case you can’t read between the lines.
When he told us he was having a baby, we were like, Wait! Have you been living in sin? That’s because he only married his girl late last year, and if my Mathematics teacher, Mr Ndonga, who hated us almost as much as he hated teaching, if he taught me math well, then by the time N— was making an honest woman out of her, he had already planted his spear, forgive the imagery. But that’s neither here nor there. N— is a hardworking man, nice to his neighbours, good to his wife. So we don’t ask questions we don’t want answers to, because that would force him to lie, and lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.
