Let’s get a few things out of the way first. Merry Christmas. Don’t overdo it—the alcohol, food, sherehe . Remember the needy—the have-littles and the have-nots. Be grateful. Any Luhya in Nairobi by the end of this week is not to be trusted.
That said, it’s a beautiful weekend. It’s late in the year; Christmas is just around the corner. Leaves are dropping like your net pay after gava is done taxing you and the sun is shining like it too has received something small—or big—from Adani.
It’s been a tough year, but we have made it through. Ni God, manze. We’ll boogie all night. Shake your moneymaker. Go out and play, or play with yourself (yes, in that way). That is your Christmas present, from me. Usidanganywe. Enjoy it. Because like honeymoon periods, term limits, and a pair of knees that fully work, all good things come to an end.
I know I speak like I know a lot of things but nobody knows everything, except that Indian guy on YouTube. But even he doesn’t know what to do with the forthcoming “Bring the Wife” home Olympics that is about to afflict men of a certain age headed to the village. All I know is this: men if you are debating whether or not to take that girl home, do not take her home. Kwanza if she has those rose and feather tattoos kwa thighs. Shauri yako. Ni sawa they don’t know her like you do but watu wa nyumbani are not very progressive.
Me, I am in the village. I am not a superstitious man but before I left for the village I saw a black cat hovering near my kitchen window. I was deeply unsettled because a) I actually believe it is cats who have domesticated us and not the other way around and b) I generally don’t like cats with their snobbish highbrow attitude. How they just sit there in perpetual judgement. Paws crossed over each other and head upright like a disapproving Victorian aunt.
It’s for similar reasons that I don’t date women who keep more than one cat and even have a veterinary doctor on speed dial. Some people would call me old-fashioned, perhaps just old, but I prefer the term “mature.”
Those relationships don’t last and if they do, they end up as a “catastrophe”—I didn’t need to do that but I did. I remember reading in a book about people who come to a crossroads in their life and suddenly have a come-to-Jesus moment.
They say there is something otherworldly about the space where two roads come together. The devil is said to set up shop there if you want to swap your soul for something more useful, like a bigger nyash. If you believe that God can be bribed, it’s also the hallowed ground to make sacrifices.
“Maybe watu wa nyumbani are sending you a message,” K— my friend from Majengo in Vihiga said when I told him about the cat. At first, I laughed about it, but his face was expressionless, like he might as well have been written by R2D2. I told K— that it was just a cat, if anything, he, K— was being cat racist (catacist?) because what is this discrimination against black cats? Has he not heard the Maragoli say that the cobra that blocks the path is going his own way, yet people run from him when they see him?
Anyway, I decided to set the cat among the pigeons—ha!—and told him that while I understand life is both physical and spiritual, it’s imperative that we do not blame our choices, especially as men, on forces of nature.
That it is crucial to look the man in the mirror and accept that perhaps a black cat is just a black cat, and not a villager spying on you and your taxes. That the truth with a capital T is that we ascribe a lot of meaning to the random nature of life, but only we are responsible for delivering the truth, even when we do not live up to its message.
To be clear, I am not negating the fact that witchcraft exists. If good exists, then we must also concede that evil exists. Some time back I started spending time at the Langata Cemetery because I have always been afraid of the darkness and graves, so I decided to combine my fears because I am efficient like that na masaa ni machache.
I would cycle through the cemetery during the day, careful not to disturb the dead or linger in a pedestrian’s eye too long lest they be the dead just taking a stroll, bored in their tombs. At night I would stop at the gate, hesitant to enter because mama raised no fool, so I would sit there, praying nobody taps on my window asking for a lift and then I find out later that I am mad and that person actually died 20 years ago but because watu wa nyumbani did not do proper burial rites he is still wandering in the land of the living.
Still, I walked through that denuded graveyard, a library of completed lives. Here, I intuited stories suggested by short lives, graven names, and the very quality of their marble carving. And in there I saw many graves unattended, their names fading from the earth, and earth.
Others, behind a moat, with a fence and black granite carvings. Even in death, they seem to suggest, we are not equal. The poet Darwish asks, but what are graves other than just comfortable mattresses? Isn’t this what we spend our life savings on—procuring the privacy of this permanent address? Anyway, before I lose you, I completed my mission. I no longer fear the darkness.
The point I am trying to drive is that we come to a crossroads in our lives when we have to decide whether to continue having beliefs that do not serve us or to face them and debunk—or confirm—them. True knowledge, a wise idiot once said, is like the sun. Always near but always out of reach. What beliefs are no longer serving you? These are the things the white man did not put in the book.
But when that feels hopeless, why on earth wouldn’t you fall back on magic and manifesting, on superstition and delulu? I’d like to tell you that I “manifested” someone’s daughter but that would be a lie, alternative facts.
I communicated my feelings like all normal, rational human beings do: I “liked” three of her photos on Instagram kumbe she liked me ya ukweli offline. I sent her photos of me preparing spinach (it was for my rabbits but she doesn’t need to know that). She sent me photos of her feet, I decided they were too good to walk away from, and the rest does not concern you.
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf. So if you are from Nakuru discard everything I have written. I read you guys still occasionally serve (or get served) cat meat samosa, and I just wonder, do you serve the cat meat nine times? Get it? No? Anyhow, for those who are wondering I saw another black goat at home…but I don’t think it will live past Wednesday…and not for spiritual reasons…
