Sunday night, I was lying in bed, doomscrolling on TikTok and typing in the search bar: “Do fish get thirsty?” when someone flashed, then texted me. It was a new number, and it was pretty late, say 11pm, so I thought a former flame wanted to come back to daddy, to pay for her sins and renounce the devil on the altar of my bed. I texted: “Hey!”—and threw in a smile emoji, not too needy, not too aggressive. They replied almost immediately. She’s desperate, this one, I thought. “Hey...” they said. No emoji. I said, “Missed me?” I was just about to press send when the text came back, “Ni Solo.” I cursed. So, this is how it feels to lose a presidential election?
I said, “What’s up?” He said, “Nothing much. I am just from jail.”
Hold on. You just don’t drop that kind of detail in passing like you are complimenting my forehead—majestic, if you must know. And what am I to do with this information? Ati, you are just from where? And you thought I was the right person to text? Afande please.
I blue-ticked him and went back to TikTok, determined to get my answer if fish do indeed get thirsty.
But then the notifications kept coming. We started chatting. One text led to another, and somehow the night got away from me, and it was now 12-something-AM, and I had an early morning, and what would people say when they hear I chatted a man to bed? See how that sounds?
But I hadn’t talked to Solo in a while—one of those things of the business of adulting—and I figured he must have had a pretty interesting story to land his ass in jail. He’d been transferred across prisons—names have been changed to protect the guilty—but released early on account of “good behaviour.” I asked him if he was the one who had sent me that text of “Usitume kwa ile number, tuma kwa hii” before instructing me to dial #766666 to prevent “conmen from conning me.” Because if he wasn’t, then he wasted his time there. So why was he in there anyway? I’ll be short. He had been arrested for pilferage, caught in the bud before it morphed into pillage. Yaani, he was a thief. Meh.
If I were ever to be in jail for something, I thought, it would be an elaborately planned crime, something of which I would appear in the 4pm, 7pm and 9pm news because I am greedy like that. Thought it. But I’m not stupid. I wouldn’t say that out loud. Police and informants lurk in these streets like critters in cracks. They’re everywhere.
See, I have always maintained the belief that writers are people who want to write about other people because they want to say something about themselves. The first time I was in a prison cell, it wasn’t very nice. I had been arrested for “public disturbance,” which is to say I had no money to bribe the law or not enough legal knowledge to skirt around it either. We were young, and in those days, if a police officer said stop, you stopped. We were four of us, huddled into a mariamu —the Black Maria—and paraded across town like 18th-century royals headed to the guillotine, before being taken to a prison cell which I cannot tell you for secret reasons. I was asked for my right shoe—or was it left? —any electronics and kijana toa hio belt. What would I use a belt for in a cell, afande? Hang myself? Officer please, you are better than that.
The next morning, we were served something that looked like uji , tasted like uji , but was definitely not uji. I was bailed out at around noon and if freedom has a taste, it was ugali and nyama choma because that is what I wanted. Since then, I have endeavoured to avoid police officers or jail, maintaining a healthy contempt for karaus . We slept on the cold floor, like a pack of ants huddling together to generate heat, for blankets in jails are akin to getting an American visa. I, however, could not sleep; this is what a diet of Prison Break TV can do to you—of men getting hard behind you. I was attentive to anything that poked me. I came in a virgin, and I intended to leave as such.
There was a particular muscular fellow who was in for robbery, caught after snatching someone’s phone in a moving bus. Just my luck. I always wanted to know how they timed their run, Escape from Sobibor-esque. Anyway, he was overtly friendly, had bad breath, and whose hand you probably didn’t want to shake. His name wasn’t Onyi, but he looked like he was Onyi, so I decided his name was Onyi. I said if Onyi made a move on me, I would gouge out his eyes. Gnaw off his ear. I wasn’t unlike everyone else who is on the other side who swears that if they ever get to prison, they would never allow themselves to get raped. That they would die fighting. They even had strategies, shivs and blueprints for defeating prison rapists. I guess every man believes that he will become a prison gladiator. But almost every man is completely wrong about himself.
I used to be those guys. I even had a joke I would tell the boys in prison, if I ever landed in one: Do you know why gangsters don’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses? No, why? Gangsters don’t like any witnesses. Compared to Solo’s prison experience, I seem like a rookie. The consolation prize for not having what it takes to be a star. That’s the other thing about prison. Nothing gets the boys mopping up like a well-told tale (or lie) of your time in jail. Nothing gets the women hot either. It is romantic, until it is not.
And that’s how I resolved that if I were asked to confess, I would sing like a beautiful, foreheaded canary. For a long time, I believed in the bro code, but there is no bro code in jail. In the hood, you hear sentiments like, “A real one would never tell.” Yeah, but a real one would never put you in a position where you have to tell either. Life is not a script of Vioja Mahakamani where Alphonce Makacha Dot Makokha talks back at the judge, even threatens to bewitch her. You do the crime, you serve the time. That’s what I believe. We can argue the details. But who would want to hear the hammer always complaining about its meeting with the nail?
Solo was only in jail because someone ratted him out. Solo had the false bravado of going down, of being a man. I understood, but no. It’s the same reasoning when men get blessed, they refuse to leave the streets, they still want to identify with the ghetto, because they don’t want to “sell out.” Which I think is stupid, if not selfish. I wouldn’t recommend snitching, but sure as hell I wouldn’t recommend going to jail either. Life is a series of decisions that clear you or convict you. We can be captains of our fate, but not masters of it. God gives you the weather. What you do with it or what it does to you depends on how good a sailor you are. Which reminds me, do fish get thirsty?
