You are probably tired of hearing it, as I am of saying it, but Happy New Year 2026. My brother, born in 2001, will be turning 25 this year, and already he has started displaying our family tradition — early onset quarter-life crisis. Ha! Can you believe that? A quarter of a century gone by. Poof.
That brother, in a bid to prove himself, cycled from Nairobi to Bondo. About 400 kilometres and then some. To prove that I still got it, I cycled to Nanyuki, 200km, just about. I am not sure what is going on, but if he wants my birthright, he will have to go through me first. He is younger. Definitely faster. So I get it. I understand. What can I say? Pride and stubbornness share a fence. Still, I admire my younger brother’s resolve. You know, an older brother can’t really be jealous of a younger brother. That’s the one thing The Godfather got wrong.
As a cyclist, you get a perspective that drivers might never have. From the air, the road to Nanyuki must look like a long black snake slithering haphazardly, a thing of inscrutable hoops and glistening in the unforgiving African sun. Motorists are generally kind out of Nairobi, daring you to a race they know they wouldn’t win (I am fast!), young drivers zooming past and offering you a piece of chicken, chips, beer. “I love this,” you often say, “this” being the feeling, not the chips, chicken, beer, because I do, because there is no feeling like this, no triumph, no high—it is like being immortal and unconquerable, like challenging the gods to a fight.
The farther you get from the city, the better you feel. You start frolicking with thoughts of how much happier and calmer you’d be if you lived upcountry, away from Nairobi. And every time you come back to Nairobi, you feel the rush of relief to be back among the sirens and floridly insane.
Every day, somebody’s mother died.
And while we are at it, I also lost two phones. Maybe three. If it seems that I am a very clumsy person, well, I am. The first phone, and perhaps the most painful to lose, was because I wasn’t even headed that way. It was what? 10, maybe 11 PM? I was driving home, Lavingware, when I detoured to Ruaka, to see this baddie that had vowed to have her way with me. “Nimekumark” I still remember her text, no full stop, comma, or exclamation mark.
This is important. Don’t look this up but a 2015 academic study from Binghamton University argued that unpunctuated texts indicate sincerity, as sincere people don’t text with punctuation.
“Nimekumark” followed by a view once message, which I handled with professional efficiency. Let’s cut to the credit: I typed “Nakam” (no punctuation), sent an eggplant emoji, and was about to add the devil-with-horns emoji when the devil appeared on a nduthi, snatched the phone just as I was overlapping at that QuickMart Ruaka, and whoosh! Gone. Mara that. It felt like I had learnt an important lesson about life: don’t overlap at QuickMart Ruaka.
They say there will come a time, it might be years, it might be sooner. When you surrender your hurt and grief. An imam told me it took him 30 years, and the birth of his daughter to finally let go of his pain of losing his mother. Biko told me it will never get easy, but it will get easier. Writers, right?
Always finding an occasion to be clever. We all agreed that the sadness will probably always be with us, like people who chew with their mouth open.
Before the year closed, I visited a mentor friend of mine, and after all the social graces, he went into his cheque book and cut me a leaf of some reality check: “Eddy, after 30, you can’t be talking about your 'humble background.’ You are now the background.”
For some reason, those words burrowed themselves through my skin, burying themselves in my bones to become a corpse I carry everywhere.
Nairobi provides a lot of opportunities to work, but also a lot of opportunities not to work, or to work on the wrong things. All require wisdom. The path of least resistance is very seductive, and I hope you don’t take it, son. For 2026, I hope you(r) man realises that he is now the background.
I’m almost done. I need to get back on the road. But I want to tell you about this thing I learnt recently. Mpemba Effect. A phenomenon that occasionally (and inexplicably) causes hot water to freeze at a faster rate than cold water. In pedestrian reasoning, justifying that which can’t be justified.
A lot of life I have come to understand is justifying the unjustifiable. It’s the only reason we don’t burn rapists, although I think we should. Life often has a way of getting in the way of, erm, life. Things happen because things happen. When your number is up, your number is up; it just means your number is “up” like in gambling, where you could win a bundle. 2025’s number is up. And though you may tire of hearing it as I of saying it, Happy New Year 2026.
