I am going to tell you something, but please don’t tell B—. One time, B—, a longtime friend of mine, was in a situationship with this girl, who was in a relationship with another man. Whence at his place, after a steamy round of illicit sex—or was it during? I can’t quite recall—the girl’s boyfriend called.
You’d expect that the girl wouldn’t pick the call, right? Wrong. She did. And she said, Oh, babe, I am in the middle of something. I’ll call you back.
Details are scanty, but more or less that is what was said. B— tells me from that day on, he learnt to move like a DCI sleuth, watching his six. He was outraged yes; then he remembered he was having an affair and calmed down. The checks and balances of intimacy.
By the way, the girl married the boyfriend. And they still frolic around with B—. Why? Because Kenyans love a good liar.
Someone’s daughter was telling me recently that I have become a cynic. And I told her, since I voted in this government, which should tell you something about the nature of my choices, I’ve been more or less anaesthetised emotionally; nothing in human nature would surprise me.
When I was a child, before life had beaten the dreams out of me, a rich uncle of mine drove into our house in Kakamega in an Isuzu D-Max, KAS something-something-something-X. It was grey in colour and had a snarling spout, and its engine was like your stomach after eating cat samosa in Nakuru; that thing looked like what cars were supposed to look like.
That uncle of mine, let’s call him Uncle D, had a pretty mzungu wife, a Victoria’s Secret kind of girl, the full package, a** not included, who spoke as if a cat was scratching her throat, not like Caroline Mutoko with her floral accent, or Olive Burrows who sounds exactly like how an Olive Burrows should sound, but something between the two.
Uncle D had done well for himself; he had gone to mayolo, majuu, made a lot of money, and to prove something to himself, he brought home a wife, nay, a white wife! Complete with two half-caste children, mapointi. That’s how we knew he was rich. Who doesn’t know that a mzungu girl cannot get pregnant for a poor black man? It’s in the constitution the British handed us down, but you spend your time on Playboy, and that’s why you don’t know this. What I am saying is, Uncle D had done well. A man of substance, a man among men.
We all admired Uncle D. He introduced me to his two sons, his “heirs and scions” as he called them, who only knew two words in Swahili: “Sasa?”, “Poa” and “M-Pesa.” The sons had escaped the black African mamba skin, whitewashed by the mixing of gene pools, but the rumbustious Luhya nose had persisted in all of them, a consolation win for the ancestors.
Uncle D told us about Maisha London, about the winter seasons where he would develop snowburns, and the snow up to here, and how darkness would set in at 4pm, and the rain would fall in sleets, and London’s expense and expanse, and London is the best city to live in if you have money.
He told us how he made his money: working two, three jobs, saving, kujaribu tu! and working on the internet, which he referred to as “dot com” and laughed while slapping his knee and sharing a knowing look with his mzungu wife. “Tulikuwa dot com!”
We listened with our mouths open, just in case, to catch anything that passed our ears. All of this was foreign territory to me. I had grown up in Shirere, Kakamega, and had never heard of such things. I had to give it to him. Uncle D was, in a word, a talker. Man could weave a yarn. He had a sharp tongue and was so supercilious in his remarks that I started seeing myself in London with my own mzungu wife, full premium package, a** included, of course.
The only reason I am telling you this is that I believe, deep down, where only our incognito searches know us, that we genuinely love a good liar. Kenya is, after all, a nation of grifters; people who love shortcuts. Part of the Kenyan Dream is doing what is necessary to make it to the top. I can prove it: how many times have you called someone you were to meet with and they told you a) they have left or b) they are stuck in traffic, ako kwa jam anakam or c) Niko hapa, nakuona! When you know that they have not even left the house? And yet you let it all go, because, well, Kenyans are just like that.
I don’t hold brief for the president, but I think he actually believes that he can take us to New Singapore, or make us New Singapore. It’s a good joke, and we should all be nationalists and all that jazz, but I think we got exactly whom we deserve. We all like a good liar. Or, as my diplomatic friends would put it, someone who can engage in, uh, alternative facts. Women know this to be true, isn’t it why they will believe a man when he says it didn’t mean a thing… what he means is, it doesn’t mean anything if you know you didn’t have a choice.
But the thing with a good lie is that you are an accomplice, you contribute to the lie, wiring it from your personal account into the joint account that you hold with the other party. A forex bro shows you the houses and the cars and the raw cash; you add the two little children and a kept, spoilt wife. Daddy pastor tells you that God has shown him you, his adherents, will buy him a Lexus 570, black, ex-Japan, with a sunroof (for quick prayers) for this is the Lord’s word becoming flesh, and you added your own wine-red Toyota Juke, a blessing from Yahweh, because giving to the poor is lending to God, and God pays back, in full and then some. The President says he will make us the New Singapore; and nobody asks when, or how—or what happened to the Old Singapore.
The truth is, nobody likes the truth. We love our liars, just ask B—. Do you know why they say ignorance, not knowledge, is bliss? Because once you start learning, you can’t stop until you know everything. I never believed Uncle D’s cock-and-bull story about working hard to the top. I had many questions, until I realised there was no answer to them: you had to learn to stop asking. Best to leave that can of worms in London.
