Gentlemen, here is a fun fact you can use to impress your Madam: do you know you are three times as likely to get robbed in Rongai as in any other town in Kenya? That’s because you don’t live in Rongai. It seems all I ever do is hate on Kenyan towns but trust me on this.
In the absolutely unlikely event that I get arrested in Rongai…let me take that again…the next time I shall be in Rongai will be in the back of a mariamu when I inadvertently write some clandestine treasonous material that will rub the who’s who in gava wrong.
I have been told to get myself a mean Maasai girl, to “set me straight” but it’s too early in the day for our sisters of negotiable affections to be giving me unwanted attention. But don’t mind my carnal desires. Let me tell you kidogo about Rongai.
I don’t understand the concept of Rongai as a town. First, we don’t drive on the left, we drive on what’s left. Animals have right of way here, be it goats, lions or hyenas—both the ones on four hinds and their two-legged counterparts, if you know what I mean. I haven’t seen a single Chinese person or banner or something and that’s how I know this place is damned. I don’t know what Rongai is known for. I don’t know if anyone knows.
I don’t know if anyone cares. Rongai is a wild country. It is what backpacking tourists and Lonely Planet and Western media mean when they say they have been to Africa. Well, western media also add the naked kid with a loin cloth, and protruding stomach, and a fly for dramatic effect. But for marketing purposes, Rongai is good old Africa. I am surprised the petrol station attendant isn’t called Livingstone.
Where was I? Oh yes. So we are in Rongai, eight and a half men, the half being just a few days over 18. There is a man peeing at an electric fence, but I am the one who is shocked. I look away and nod to Kenya Power being Kenya’s power or lack thereof. There are rumours that lions are on the prowl but everyone knows lions don’t eat black men.
Our skin is too taut, too tough, and besides the electric fences are supposed to work. Supposed. Besides, why would lions hunt in Rongai when they can just skip to the other side of Langata? Much more cholesterol. Also, we would have seen it on NatGeo Wild or Sir David Attenborough would have told us on BBC Planet Earth or something. Right? We haven’t. So, they don’t.
Anyway, it's raining in Kenya. It’s not raining in Rongai. It’s so hot the sun has fashioned its own cloud of umbrellas. Rongai is a science fiction dystopia. So we curse it and head to Olooltepes, to have “real meat” or so we are told. I for one made peace with the fact that every chicken I have eaten after 2am in Nairobi is marabou storks.
Thankfully my mother prays for me. As for the marabou storks, maybe they should ask their mothers to pray for them too. Shauri yao. I know this because I don’t ask questions and I don’t want answers too.
We get to Olooltepes and the meat, pardon me, the “real meat” is worth it. We get half a goat because we are carnivores. The meat falls from the bones—cliché’ yes, but it’s true. Some men have parked their 4X4s, talking loudly and brashly, beers flowing like tap water, and I can see in them the sons we are and the fathers we might turn out to be. We ask for a tent with electricity but no TV, today it’s about man talk, men talking.
Today we want to roll back the years. Man, where did the years go? In two shakes of a duck’s tail—see Tr Elizabeth, all that composition was not for nought—we shall be outside the UN classified youth label. A few years ago, we could drink the night away and wake up and go to work. Now, a Tusker Cider ni shida.
Youth and beauty are not accomplishments, Carrie Fisher said. “They are the temporary happy by products of time and/or DNA. Don’t hold your breath for either.” We mull. We are talking about everything and nothing in particular. Beer and nyama choma. Marriage. Ageing parents. The role of the man in this age. HELB loans. Sacco loans. Loans in general.
Hii serikali. Vuta Pumz by the Longombas is playing on the portable Bluetooth speaker we carried so we talk about that era when music was music—and HIV.
The statistics are damning: 15- to 34-year-olds account for 75 percent of new HIV infections. It's not looking good at all. Mbele haiko sawa. We decide to give celibacy a shot. Baddies, prepare for a dry season! We resolve to tame our demons, and no devil beguiles a man than the one lurking in his pants. Alcohol, gambling, and hubris—the other three horsemen of the apocalypse, vices that launch boys into manhood.
We ask each other how we shall retire peacefully. We consider trying Forex. We decide we are too old. Or too late. We agree that one of us should vie for a political seat, an MP or something. Our own man on the inside, providing native intelligence and influencing tenders.
Someone to get around the Ministry of Lands, the DCI, and Kanjo. Someone to tell us where the Chinese are building next so we can buy all the plots. Someone with contacts. You know how it is. Mheshimiwa. We are drinking Tusker Cider because we are progressive like that.
I am thinking of what Pastor Ted said in church last Sunday, of the end of times, of the sinners and the seals that will mark Christ’s coming. If the Math is right, and only 144k people will make it to heaven, it’s becoming increasingly clear that none of these men here will represent us there. Apocalyptic? Perhaps. Mbele itakuwa sawa? Who knows. I let my intrusive thoughts wash over me, and I think, heresy permitting, why did Jesus choose men as his disciples when women are the true fishers of men?
At some point in the night we shall leave this place, having spent the day doing nothing but just existing, just because. Maybe it’s an aspect of coming to terms with yourself. Age comes with confidence in one’s skin. Last dance sort of thing.
We are the liminal space between the caterpillar and the moth, when the being is exactly and perfectly neither. We are neither unique nor special. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, or a good thing. It’s just a thing. But sometimes to understand that, to keep you honest, it takes you doing nothing and doing it well.
Sometimes that means everything. It won’t move the needle or tame the lions in Rongai or affect cocoa growing in Ghana. But the conversations are flowing, the friendship is strengthening, the night is nighting. There’s so much pain in this world, but not in this room. Mbele iko sawa.
