Hand to God. I was going to write about something else. Something Mashujaa-esque. About the men who fought for our country, and the women who fed them, information and otherwise. I was even going to M-Pesa my caretaker, Rayton, for he is a real hero to me. Don’t abduct my friends; just ask Rayton who I am and he will tell you. Shujaa, that one.
But then I sat down with Rayton over a round of omena and wondered, do Kenyans even know the significance of holidays? The benefit of living in a rapidly dysfunctional country is that no one knows what they are supposed to be doing. If you ask me, I think AI should be running the government, this government. This is either a good or bad thing. Which side it falls on depends on your morals, who you know in government, and a coin toss. I mean, the presidential speeches stopped making sense in 2004. Fine, 2002. Someone’s daughter was just getting born then—no, we are not going to discuss her. Rayton challenged me to name three shujaas and I told him naenda hivi nacome.
And that is how I found myself stuck on the Nakuru-Nairobi highway because, as Kenyans, we share one brain. Today is Saturday, a long weekend. The chips will fall where they may, the kind of weekend where anything can—and usually does—happen. The money for usherati that we have been saving up throughout the year is about to make a show. Sherehe haitaki hasira. This much is true: To live and die without piga-ing sherehe the Kenyan way is tantamount to never having lived on God’s climate-changing earth.
It is coming to 5.17 pm and all the bars in Nakuru are filling up nicely, I think. We are on the way. Notorious B.I.G’s Mo Money, Mo Problems is playing. This song, by the way, was about how being rich was troublesome, although it kind of seemed like the problem with being rich was that others weren’t, which seems okay with me. Anyway, every vehicle ahead and behind us is treating the law like a suggestion—overlapping, over-speeding, over-boarding. Kenyans, we like excess. Perhaps it’s because we are brought up with a scarcity mindset. We overdo it. Like the car in front of us, a Passo, has two men, with four women cramped in the back. Some are wearing mini-skirts, others in skin tights, some barely anything at all, nyash straining against their cheap Gikomba fabric—but mine is to observe, not to judge. Langu jicho tu. I tell my friend, Ken, aka Adani, since he finances our debauchery, that these ones are vipers. They are seeking some man to devour or some man to devour them.
The fact that I have no recollection of what their faces look like reveals much of the dirtier side of my nature.
My father likes to say, hizi vitu utafanya hadi uchoke , and I think he grossly underestimates my capacity and workaholism. I am, what is the current buzzword today, ah yes, I am in my “prime”; I have some little money, some notoriety, and a good back and time to spare. If you can be anything in this country, be young. If you can’t be young, be rich, then hang around young people.
Which is why I am not surprised when I see her, that strangest of creatures, well in her early 50s. She’s kept herself well, but CeraVe can’t hide that the body is clearly wearing out—not exactly Methuselah, but definitely not a Gen Z. A mama. With her handbag—a virile 20-something-year-old manboy with dreadlocks and tattoos—no, it’s not me. For some reason, mumamas prefer young men with dreadlocks and tattoos. Must be because they have ma-style deadly deadly . I am talking about hair, okay? Okay.
The boy looks well taken care of, his dreads are healthy and he has a drink in his hand. Perhaps they are in love. Or mentor-dating (mating?). But to define is to limit—and mine is to observe, not to judge. What I know is, that is not her son because me, I know things.
I know I said mine is to observe, not to judge, but I lied. I was judging. What kind of conversations are they having? Assuming they will spend the weekend together, what kind of sports will they be playing? And I thought about my father’s prescient words, hizi vitu utafanya hadi uchoke but this mumama seems like she just had a shot of Redbull and is raring to go.
I have not been with an older woman (yet) because my mother’s prayers are working against me. I think someone must live their age so these things don’t catch up with you later. It may sound naïve but I believe one should not miss/skip/postpone a stage in life. Ujana ni moshi. There are outliers, of course, but the vast constituency of people are average, and that means we generally follow the same arc of life. And seeing that mumama in traffic spiraled me. Everyone wants a Gen Z but si serious hivyo. Ama?
I have a friend who has a mumama and the running joke is that an older man, a mubaba , will send a younger woman money just for existing. Just because. But a mumama will demand “accountability.” You have to earn every single coin, every round at the bar denotes a round at the bed. It’s mathematics, so it can’t be wrong. Youth and beauty are perishable products, enjoy them but I do not necessarily vouch for banking on them. It is like having a river and yet washing one’s hands with spittle.
Society has accepted that older men will eventually find themselves a pretty young thing, sometimes to marry, sometimes not to marry. And when people see the age gap, they shrug their shoulders and suspect that there is something intrinsically unequal about it — that the older partner wants someone they can control and the younger partner has daddy issues or is just out for money. This is a common refrain. But exploitation can happen in any relationship, regardless of the partners’ ages. What is less common, or what is more hidden, is the older woman-younger man dynamic. But we all know someone or know someone who knows someone who has a mumama . They showed up to the party late, and wanted to have more fun than the hosts.
As the late afternoon sky nickered and dipped, I prayed for my brother in dreadlocks, for I can bet you my hairline, the mumama expects a shujaa kind of performance from him. My boy deserves the Redbull in his hands. Perhaps hakuna kuchoka. Perhaps my father was wrong. I have come to understand this is how it is for some older men—stuck in a perpetual time loop—and so the goose is learning just how sweet a gander’s soup is. Is it not true that what the child says, he has heard at home? In a country that is busy auctioning its future, the present is all we have—to live for the moment, to live in the moment. And what could be more momentous than a mumama?
