Late last week I was having lunch with a big boy from government, the kind of people who come to mind when you say, “Do you know who I am! You should know people!” My eyes kept drifting to his neck tie, which looked like it was slowly choking his neck with every bite of nyama—why do gava people love nyama so much?
I wanted to free it, the tie, not the neck, because the neck looked like it was used to this sort of thing, like it liked this sort of thing. Autoerotic asphyxiation. Don’t google that.
When he laughed, his Adam’s apple popped out, and my eyes moved with it in and out, in and out, and the tie got a little bit tighter, as if willing itself to kill him before we finished our agenda. What kind of luck is this? I was thinking to myself. So, I asked him to loosen his tie, it’s Thursday after all, and besides, who wears a blue tie anymore?
His Adam’s apple popped out again, in and out, in and out, and he reduced himself to a caricature of comedy, a raspy laugh, like a cat scratching iron sheets, or a pirate with stage four throat cancer, his twiggy shoulders going up and down, up and down, those very same shoulders on which he bears the Burdens of State. Fine. I’m funny, but I’m not that funny.
He is a fixer in the government. He knows everyone who's anyone, and his phone rings like 911, if 911 in Kenya worked the
way it was supposed to work. He works in the delivery unit as a liaison officer or something similar, a position that is somewhat difficult to define. Nevertheless, it comes with a handsome pay cheque, which he doesn’t touch, preferring instead to get paid through the national economy philosophy of “Kuja tu hatuwezi kosana.” Isn’t this the idea of the Nairobi We Want? We are all dealmakers and Kenya is open for business. (Si) Lazima iWork.
The details of my meeting with him are crucial but not necessary for you to know. We were in school together. If we are judging each other solely by the zeroes, he had more in school, and he has continued the tradition, only this time with his bank account.
That’s not self-deprecation. Zii. It’s self-awareness. Know thyself , I don’t know who said that, must have either been Socrates or I heard it from a “masculinity” podcast.
We were never best buddies, the kind who know each other’s underwear size, but we always had mutual respect, the way a cigarette smoker acknowledges a weed smoker, for they all need the same lighter. After school, he went his way, I went mine, and now we are here, me hoping his tie would hold out, but I have keyed in 911 in my dial pad just in case.
We are at some nyama choma joint downtown, the kind of place thieving politicians and big men gather to make deals, to decide who gets what, “delicate diplomatic duties”, holding the fate of our town not unlike in the Berlin Conference, and when they chop and cut the meat, funded by the state, I cannot stop thinking about the scramble and partition of Africa.
He doesn’t say it; he doesn’t need to. It’s our turn to eat. He tells me what my sociology lecturer, Professor Bigambo, directly injected into our medulla oblongata: Men make deals in bars, they just ratify them in boardrooms.
On the stereo, Otile Brown is weeping himself hoarse over the destructive powers of a woman’s waist. A few more people of government sprinkle in, faces I have only seen on TV—they look much shorter in person, and at least I have that over them, I tell myself, I am taller! Mwananchi 1, Mwenyenchi 0.
Meanwhile, someone else has joined us at the table. Introduces himself. An uncomfortable silence ensues between them, like Adam and Eve when they both knew each other’s secret. Says he has been looking for my friend for long. He lost his number, you know how it is in Nairobi. You have a phone, and then you don’t. He forgets I am there. Tells his life story. Life has been hard.
Does he remember when they would hang out in high school? They were inseparable. I am thinking, no, you are insufferable. My friend the big shot listens intently, a medieval Roman senator in the Colosseum basking in the adulations of the masses. This is getting embarrassing. I hesitate to speak for God, but this is why Jesus did not accept the people he healed to be his disciples. Indebtedness is the shadow of sycophancy.
I am a captive audience, driven by voyeurism as much as my appetite for a good story. We are one statement away from him declaring the big shot as the Messiah, don’t bet against it. Pandering 101. Currying favour. Like a cat endearing itself to a person with a bone of meat.
The Gava man looks dazed, like someone who has come across a vampire and found no garlands of garlic at hand. I realise what is disturbing me and what is leaving the acrid aftertaste—how dehumanising begging can be, but this is not really begging, this is genuflection and bending the knee, no self-worth, no backbone.
I pat him on the back, but he swats my hand away, and I am a little bit hurt, emotionally. The elders must have envisioned this particular kind of situation when they observed: A man with a running stomach does not take directions to a latrine from a stammerer.
It reminded me of the writ trite tale of men in bars and men who are sent by men in bars to get the jacket from the car. It’s pathetic. Humiliating. Men who can never say no—to alcohol, to their boss, to the third chapati.
I have a theory that society does not move ahead based on the things it does, but more on the things it doesn’t. Change the constitution? No. Increase term limits? No. Fire politicians? No. Hold on, which kind of fire?
Let me be clear: I have no respect for anyone who panders to anyone. Perhaps it’s ego, maybe some pride, my issue being you never know where they stand. They’d not lodge the knife, but they’d tell others which part of your back is deeper, or tender.
Their words are ornamental, purely transactional, and solipsistic, I am sure if the boss farted—where are my manners—if the boss broke wind, they would look adoringly at him and package that as eau de bosse. What happened to self-respect?
Where was I? Oh, yes. All I wanted was to take that necktie from the big shot and strangle his friend with it. If I pander to a lenient judge, I could be out before I am 50, at most 55. Not too bad. I could even come back and run for public office. Governor minimum.
Si we have precedent with that governor from that Western county? Ama bado? That was risky. Uzuri I know people.
