A fortnight ago, my friend, K - invited me to take his car for a test drive. He wasn’t too sure if he was getting a good deal and needed my approval, because while I am not known for my impressive car collection, I am definitely known for my lofty standards. I asked him two questions any mechanic not in government should ask: a) Is it a car? And b) Lady owned? The second question is irrelevant if the answer to the first question is anything but German. You know how it is. A car is only a car if it is German. A wife is only a wife if she is from the village. Better yet, the wife can be from the village but the car must be German.
The car was German alright, and it was also not lady-owned because there is no scam bigger in Kenya than buying a lady-owned car. I am not the kind of person who feminists consult on what they should be next enraged on, but to be clear, steer clear (ahem) of them—lady-owned cars, maybe feminists too. “But ladies are gentle with their cars and are safe and cautious.” If you believe that, then I have a dam in Arror and Kimwarer to sell you.
K— trusts me implicitly which is to say I hold veto power, like those political apparatchiks around the president. I have never (willingly) driven any car other than German, although my friends tell me there are much better cars out there, although I wasn’t totally sure about that, since I’d never drive a Nissan Juke (willingly) and use the urinals without shaking the foundations of my manhood. It’s a man thing.
Most men choose their cars for speed, prestige, or fuel economy. Not me. I choose cars out of rebellion. I hate cabbage and being told what to do. I grew up being told that “you should start with a Toyota,” perhaps because the car in front of you was always a Toyota, perhaps because Toyotas were easy to fix, assuming they needed to be fixed at all.
But I didn’t picture picking up someone’s daughter in a pistachio blue Toyota Camry and speeding along Waiyaki Way at 40km/h and calling that an afternoon well spent. This is a car—how do I put this nicely—it isn’t so much designed as put together.
It doesn’t care about first impressions. Not me. My hedonism and love for fleeting vanities of this world made me want to outdo myself. A buddy. A baddie. A car with more curves than Huddah “Njoroge” Monroe, God bless her soul.
I wanted to wince when paying for insurance. I wanted to inspire the question, “Nyinyi vijana mnatoa wapi pesa?”
Other than a drinking problem, a virulent inferiority complex, and an enduring awe of Victorian furniture, faux humility is the only other thing the British left us with when they checked out in ’63. Anyway, I didn’t want to be normal. Nobody does. A movie star is still a normal person. The president is still a normal person. They are allowed the luxury of thoughtlessness.
The only other reason I gravitate toward Germans is because I am a bad driver. I know I am a bad driver because someone’s daughter tells me so. “You are such a bad driver! Slow down! Stop being a bully!” She’s not right about many things, but she is about that. But isn’t the prerequisite of driving on Kenyan roads rooted in being a bully?
I know the late Professor Wangari Maathai would flip her smile upside down about my carbon footprint but this is one of those things Harvard economists call “opportunity costs.” Besides, si the president is into carbon offsetting so we are good. Life has a way of balancing itself.
Let me be clear. A car says nothing about a man other than he is a man. It is the whole USP of manhood. You know what else is manhood? Decisions. Lately, there has been this wave of groupthink, and agreeableness—getting along to get along.
The tribe is always right, and to say otherwise is to betray it. Hence the rise of extreme masculinity podcasts, giving birth to retaliatory feministic TikTokers—we are all looking to be accepted, to belong. Meh. I bring this to your attention because we never stop to ask ourselves what we want.
After all, it is much easier to want what others have, even if you didn’t want it. But I will always stand for the kind of masculinity that takes making a decision and facing your consequences—good or bad and anything in between.
The whole ethos of manhood is steeped in making choices, that’s why your woman will ask you, “What do you want to eat?” The right answer is, of course, anything but cabbage, but in this sense, she is looking for direction not diffidence or hesitation. Girls hate boys’ doubts: they amount to insults.
Anyway, as you are reading this, we are driving from Mombasa to Nairobi. We are in a silver car, KDS something-something-something. Don’t flash your lights, we in German cars don’t do that. Don’t honk your horn either. It is primitive behaviour. If this were a serious country, there would be a law against that.
Me? Me I am riding shotgun, so I can ape someone’s daughter's skills in unyielding judgement of my homie’s driving skills. Still, I am proud of him because you can only do things for the first time, once.
Like that time I went to a shooting range in Karen and got handed a gun. I felt power course through my vena cava into my capillaries into the index finger, like a natural extension of my body. The seduction of the barrel. The line between life and death. A gun knows how to be still and it knows how to keep a secret, and it knows how to tell that secret so no one ever forgets.
I am not so sure it is the gun I love, or the effects of having the gun in my hand, but I suspect the latter and that is why I know I would not be a good gun owner. So, this is what it feels like to steal the power of the gods? Al Capone was onto something when he said you can get a lot more with a kind word and a gun than just a kind word. I am sure some people in gava know this to be true…
Oh, one more thing. We are doing 40 km/h. Hopefully; we will get to Nairobi before Easter…
