Here’s what you are going to ask: Eddy, shouldn’t this article be about Easter? About the good Lord up there dying for our sins down here? Here’s what I’ll say: Look, the good man up above has had people write of him (and for him) for about 2,000 years.
He’s like the American in every superhero movie. Starring. Otero. First body.
He’s the most talked about man in history, and that’s saying something considering his number one follower in Kenya donates millions to be popular but just remains famous—trust me, those are two different things, you can ask Judas.
It has always seemed to me that a president’s primary responsibility is to be a storyteller. Every manifesto is a story. That’s how you reel them in. Get them to bite. The story is that a chicken seller can become the greatest cock thief, from a mongrel feeding on crumbs to the top dog. From the streets to State House.
It was a great story, and not just because I love chicken. A good boyfriend is a great storyteller. Yet a president is like a boyfriend in that the next one is always worse than the current one. Jesus was a good storyteller. You know why they say Jesus fed 5,000 men? Because you couldn’t count the women. They were that many.
Women love stories. For the sake of brevity and clarity, I’ll say I’ve dated a lot of them. It’s not that I’ve promised marriage or been physical with most of them. But I have gone out with many girls—for the company, for boredom reasons, to try out my comedy routine on them, for stories. I’ve met women at Uhuru Park, Roysambu, at the delis, in car parks, escape rooms, maandamano, matangas, ruracios, and on the internet. The Internet idea was inspired by the notion that if I could use my stalker skills, I could eliminate the obvious lunatics.
It didn’t work. This is a true story: I once asked someone out on Tinder. Dropped in with the line, “I don’t know what’s going on, but if the heavens released an angel like you, then truly the gods must be crazy.” She laughed all the way to my WhatsApp, and we agreed on a meetup, me to take a 33 bus hapo Ambassador, to Utawala, a whole different galaxy, only to find that my date was actually a she-male. Like, the ass was female but everything else was male. Wallahi. Can cheat can die. No wonder she…he… they…never wanted us to do voice call.
Which is what leads us to today. I am at Connect Coffee. On a date. Sort of. I am yarning stories, parables, sermons on the mount. I tell her about my Tinder horror story, and how that gave me an idea for a Kenyan Tinder, and what I would call it: M-Penzi. Local meat speciality, that’s the tagline. We are talking about everything: Is it hebu or tebu? First body or first boarder?
The politics of croissant vs mandazi. I argue that mandazi just needs better brand storytellers, a dedicated marketing team (and budget), and an effective cover story. Pricing, detail, and public relations will provide the yeast that separates mandazi from croissants.
She’s nodding—could this be love? She is from Murang’a, a blended family—a strict mother, and an okay stepdad. She just found out her father has another family. Or perhaps, they were the other family. She grew up shuttling between Murang’a and Nairobi. Was smart, too; a mechatronics engineering degree, had a day job geeking out robots and a part-time gig managing social media for “some Kenyan celebs”, and, best of all, she could tell a story like you and I can tell a lie. She was smart, and she was sexy, and her laughter sounded like what God uses as his ringtone. I swear.
She said I was funny and smart and asked if I was seeing someone because surely, I must be. I mumbled something about you are either in a relationship or in Nairobi. She must have found that hilarious because she laughed, and it felt like the angels were singing Hallelujah straight into my ears. Dios mio! So I did what any normal man would do when he finds a new toy. I wanted to keep her all to myself. Got rid of the boy stories, started talking investments. Should we do MMFs or T-bills? What does she think of land as dead capital? Could we do dates once a month, save up the rest of the money because, in the words of my dear mother, Saumu R.W, “We have food at home.” I even brought up my M-Penzi idea. Could we bootcamp it, look for seed money, raise funding? Or make it a “nonprofit,” ahem, a very profitable nonprofit.
Vampire kind of love
And then she said, “Zii. Kwani you are looking for something serious?” What do you mean, I said. I’m 24, she said, I just got here. Unataka nitoke bash 11PM? She said she was single—“Me bado niko soko”—and in a nod to feminism, she was seeing a lot of other people, but she liked me, she thought. “I was not like the other guys who just want to hit it.” Arrow across my heart. Did I want to hit it? I’m not going to say no. There has been pain in this world, but not pain like I felt that day.
She said being in a relationship in your 20s was like flirting with the Pope.
All my stories about how we could build together and write our version of the “Chicken seller and his chic” were like playing psalms to the condemned. Some relationships snap like bones; others fizzle out like a badly written speech. Mine was the latter, my inability to tell a story for our future as disgraceful as impotence in men. People talk about rejection, but people don’t talk about rejection based on age—that your experience is too much for my exploration. There was nothing I could do, you see—what was I doing at 24? I was noncommittal, playing the field, kurandaranda, and having sex without consequences—living the life, or so I said. So how could I hold that against her?
Each generation has a derogatory term for young people who are strong-willed and “sexually liberated
Our outlook on life was dissimilar: I have done my time at the school of casual relationships. She had just gotten admitted. I was looking for the one the Lord had kept for me (while I misbehaved out there with the ones the Lord had kept for others, forgive them, Father), whereas she was applying nude Maybelline lipstick to kiss Frog number four. Or 40? You might say that’s a lot of frogs. And the frogs would disagree. Or is that just the nostalgia talking?
Anyway, we haven’t talked since. I live in the ghost town of her WhatsApp status, and she is living the life. She’s in Diani for Easter, paid for by her friend’s boyfriend. I didn’t ask if she went with another guy. With the kind of heart I have, I wouldn’t make it past the messiah rising on Monday. All this to say, I respect, admire even, the men who date women decades their junior. It’s a vampire sort of love: she needs his authority; he needs her youth. He is staring at his grave; she is barely out of the cradle. I guess it balances out.
I honestly believe we would have made a great story. The kind of stuff you pay for to watch on Netflix. Or download illegally on Goojara. You know yourselves.
I have a feeling God gave her to me only to take her away so I can learn a thing or two about writing dramatic twists. But that’s all the speaking I shall do for God—he doesn’t go around talking about me. Maybe I am just living from Bien’s pen. What’s that he said? “Inauma inauma lakini nitazoea, hali ya mwanaume duniani ni kuzoea.”
Of course he’d say that.
eddieashioya@gmail.com
