Mantalk: The loneliest season — Making peace with Christmas in Nairobi

Not that you asked, but I am thinking of spending Christmas in Nairobi. Not that I am one to name-drop, but Nizar Juma, you surely must have heard about Nizar Juma. Yes, he, Nizar Juma, sent me a whole grown turkey. Eight kilogrammes. I have never had turkey in my life. That thing was so big that I cleared my freezer just to fit it.

Not that any of these matters because the best I know about turkey is that it comes from Turkey? Someone’s daughter tells me no. She says turkey does not come from Turkey, but Turkey has great curtains which you can buy from Eastleigh. I don’t want to know how she knows that much about Turkey; I don’t want to know things I don’t know. I know zilch about Turkey. Both the country and the animal. Turkey, do better.

I digress. I am spending Christmas in Nairobi because I am having severe road phobia—hodophobia, I gather it is called—but what I am actually scared of is that I have no money to spend in Kakamega. Forget what people say, that family is free. No. I like having money in my pocket, and surely the Nafulas, Nekasas, and Nabakhokhkos must know that kijana wa Nairobi is in town. What I will do in Nairobi is simple; I will finally have the city to myself. I am hoping that Sakaja can fix the drainage before he squanders the rest of the funds. Maybe I’ll cycle. Or hug a tree.
It isn’t much of a choice.

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With the air of Christmas hovering in the air like a drunken moth, I have this nagging feeling that something is missing, but I just can’t point out what. Throughout, there is the pervasive desire to drink to forget, to get intimate with the wrong people, to hit the road and figure out later where to stop for the night. Everyone and their dog will tell you, This is the most wonderful time of the year. I doubt it. I suspect this is because it tends towards the melancholic, or perhaps that's just me.

Christmas was a big deal where I come from. Our mother had faith in Christmas the way others had faith in God; she put herself in its hands the way patients did their physicians; she prescribed it, she preached it. And she would show it. In the things we would buy. Nguo ya Christmas. For me, it was jeans and denim, paired with a shirt so white it probably voted for Trump. What else? And shoes. Sneakers za Bata. Noma si noma. You know what they say. If you cannot afford fashion, you must settle for clothes. And we would cook. Chapati, nyama, mbuzi, bata, soda, cabbage for decoration, mutura. 

There is a reason the Bible classifies gluttony as one of the seven deadly vices, but that’s because in heaven, they only serve milk and honey. Which reminds me, there was tea. Lots of tea! Aunties would serve, children would drink, and uncles would stagger. Christmas back in the aughts. You had to be there. We, the children, would play all day, then play all night. We would beat drums, blow barutis, and be a nuisance. Because Christmas is all about the children, as we established when we were children ourselves.

Time for quiet contemplation

But that was then. This is now. And now Christmas has a certain whimsical sadness about it from the family absences that have crept in, and the vijana wamekatalia town. Everything feels jaded and doomed. An elderly man might wish to escape to the years in which he is neither elderly nor doomed, but these years are gone. You wake up one morning, those years are gone. There’s a comfort in this fact, perhaps. I want to think that there must be comfort in all facts we can’t alter.

There are a lot of spirits flying around, so be careful, my aunties say. The only people who seem to be happy are the Politburo. Unless you are a Kenyan politician or sleeping with one, joy feels as elusive as a competent CS right now. It is a unicorn. A needle in a haystack. I know I’m not at all alone when I say that this year, finding joy feels almost impossible.

Christmas was always lovely when we were children, and especially when babu and nyanya were around. When I think about it, Christmas was always about the children and their joys. Presently, I can’t help but partly feel each Christmas is but another melancholic toll on the clock of rapidly passing life. I see now that it’s easy to forget that time wasn't fixed like concrete but, in fact, was fluid as sand or water. I had forgotten that even good times can end. So you learn to expect chaos from the most innocent of moments, that everyone is always an object of suspicion until they aren’t. Offer a crust of bread to a sick bird, and you often draw back a bloody finger.

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What is it I am missing, I ask. Maybe it’s the people we wish we weren’t going to see and the people we see we wish we wouldn’t see and the people we haven’t seen for a long time who don’t want to see us, and the people who see us and wish they had never seen us. Family, right? My mentor says, micii ni ndogo. What you think of as smoke from meat is actually smoke from the little fires in every homestead.

What is it I want? I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again. In the absence of joy, this Christmas must be one for quiet contemplation. For those who are terminally unhappy, how lonely Christmas is. A day whose only balm is memory, when taking some time to remove the scab and get your mind back to a long-distant family childhood when the magic and togetherness both felt real, once upon a time. 

When the family burden was not nestled on your shoulders, and that tiff between the uncles was nothing but easy banter, and the aunties who didn't speak to each other loved each other so much that no word could encapsulate their emotions, and the cousins who loved us so much they preferred to spend Christmas away so they don’t spoil the love. Or so you thought. You grow, and you learn that life is so little like a science experiment and so much like a cluttered drawer where you toss things just to get them out of sight.

If I am sounding like an old man shouting at the clouds, well, I am. But one thing I have learned about the holidays is this: you have to make them your own. You have to decide what the day means, even if it means nothing to anyone else. Build your own rituals. Lower your expectations. Sit with what remains. Even if all it amounts to is a plate of turkey.

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