Yesterday…

Yesterday, she told me she had decided to go with him. Despite the fact that we had a rosy time together. The times I walked in the dark to go get her painkillers, the lengths she walked in the dust to get me meds to relieve my back pains. The times we lazed on the bed doing nothing, talking about everything and nothing. She said I was good but still chose him. Was it because he worked at a bank while I was just a jobless boy who depended on his parents or maybe coz he lived in a one bedroom house while all I could offer was a single room and shared bathrooms?

Yesterday, she told me I was just a rebound. That I was only good enough for use as a ‘green eye catalyst’. She walked to me, I didn’t walk to her, I guess even a bouncing ball looks for the wall and not the other way round. I thought it was worth a try as much as it had never crossed my mind. But it never matters whether it crossed my mind or not, after all no one has established yet why the chicken crossed the road. Why would it matter what crosses my mind?

Yesterday, she asked me to walk out of her room and go home. She claimed that whatever I was offering is not what she had subscribed to. Yes, I walked out but not before I thought of the miles I travelled to be with her. The money I spent out of the peanuts I saved from my weekly pocket money to spend the night with her. The lies I creatively thought out and peddled to be away from home and be with her. The risks I took to make sure her needs and wants as a young girl trying to discover life were well taken care of.

Yesterday, she told me my friend was a better person. That he was a better listener, a better care taker of hearts. But who takes better care of hearts than the man who takes time to chase after a girl like social convention dictated it should be done. Who listens better than the guy who hugs her through tough moments, always carries a handkerchief to wipe off her tears, that man who goes out to seek solutions when all other men are busy running away when things are too thick for the saw to go through. The one man who cut on the time he spent with his ‘boiz’ just to be with her, coz he knew she needed someone to tell the very hard things that wouldn’t be told to every other Tom, Harry and oh, not even me would want other Dicks to hear that.

Yesterday, she told me she wants to be in other people’s company more. It doesn’t matter the wonderful times we have had, the laughs, the smiles and the fun. The mistakes a man has done cancelled all that out. The little sacrifices do not hold water anymore and the future ambitions are only a light bulb in the middle of the tunnel, not the light at the end of it.

Source: blogs.russianpod101.com

Yesterday, is dead and gone, I live in today and live for tomorrow.

The Valentine Story

It all starts in a 14 seater ‘matatu’, well back then they were 18 seaters. Daddy doesn’t know what Valentine’s is all about and he is at pain to explain. Largely because he has been brought up to believe that anything to do with love is evil and not to be talked about, well, unless it is about “For God so loved the world…”

Source: Shutterstock.com

Flash forward and he is in a campus room, in one dirty hostel, name withheld for fear of libel, or is it defamation? The alcohol cannot allow for engagement of the brain to pick out what the hypothalamus saved when the lecturer spoke about this. Speaking of the hypothalamus why the hell did they come up with the phrase Medulla Oblongata? It’s one of those broke campus months and all he can think of is how empty the campus is after all stroll to town for “Lover’s day”. The poor man can only afford a plastic flower, oh! God, plastic? He finds solace in the fact that the missus thinks the day is overrated, maybe only coz there was nothing she could do about it. By this time HELB loan had gotten to where it belonged – The barman’s pockets, and the wallet was the loneliest thing on a day people should be coupling.

Quick! Quick! And comes the moment, 24 hours of nothing but twitter, solace in Afterhours984. Everybody had left, it was that week when the lectures created some “Masters Students Thesis Defense” activity. Who knows, they may have just deliberately decided on this week to get away from the nagging wives, fiancées, girlfriends and maybe “Mpango wa Kandos”, for the men of course. And an opportunity for the ladies to spend time with their sidekicks without raising suspicion. This was a perfect moment for the Nairobians to tell how much they hated the “bundus” and all flocked out…or is it away, like termites after a thunderstorm. All he had to look at was the two extra metal feet, maybe Carnegie would want them called steel, which had been acting as his company in the past few months.

All wasn’t lost though coz even when the light at the end of the tunnel refuses to show up, there’s always a light bulb to light the dark alleys. And this presented itself in the form of a homemade card, should I call it ‘hostel made’? And, oh, there was the week or maybe plus of brainstorms. Note, it was brain and not brains. But it wasn’t a waste because it bore fruit in the form of a close to milk like liquor, from one of the best stores around, specially delivered on a motorbike, famously known as ‘bodaboda’

The aftermath, a walk across town, with yet another a bit whiter substance in a slimmer bottle and an all so common chocolate, inspired or maybe not, by those Cadbury – Mobile Money sales. The succession was a first time visit to a middle class coffee shop and a taxi ride. All in oblivion of the opposite direction runs a few months later.

But it doesn’t end there coz there is yet another phase, one that starts at exactly midnight, and it all starts in a bar’s bathroom….

Happy Valentine’s Day people!

In love alone…

He pulls up, sits in for a few minutes, he has to let the engine run a bit before he can finally leave the jalopy, otherwise it may not start at all tomorrow. He opens the cranky doors and the noise from the rusted hinges is succeeded by one light after the other as neighbors wake up to check what is happening at the parking. He gets out; jacket in hand and from the back seat pulls out a bunch of flowers. He bought this with the only money he had left. He had to do something to affirm his love for her.

He walks up the stairs. Water has poured all over the staircase, the pipes up there are leaking. Water sips into his shoes. This is the only pair he has. Life has been so tough he can’t afford any other. He curses at the thought that a few hours later he will have to put them on again, this time wet from the water that sipped in. Yes, he lives in the Leafy Suburbs Estate and everyone imagines how well off he is, little do they know that he lives in the poorest flats in that estate.

He knocks on the door. Today he came thirty minutes early and yes with flowers in hand. He has this sheepish grin, he hopes this gesture today gets him at least a bowl of soup for the show of loves. He has to stand at the door for 15 minutes, she is asleep. When she finally opens she throws a casual “hi!” and walks back to the bedroom, evidently tired from the five months pregnancy.

He doesn’t understand why she hasn’t left all this while. He walks into the kitchen and as usual there is nothing to show that he lives with a woman. He pulls out his phone to call the pizza guy then he remembers he used the last money on the flowers, flowers she never even realized he was carrying. Oh! He remembers, the text, the text that came in when he was busy in the office and couldn’t read, busy working hard for their future. He hopes it is an M-Pesa message from one of his debtors. He opens with a smile, it reads “Come home with food, I haven’t eaten a thing all day. I feel like Gallito’s kuku”

He has nothing to do. He walks into the bedroom, changes and gets into bed. He can’t even have the evening shower he used to love. The thought of using that fish smelling bar soap again. He couldn’t get a few coins to get toilet soap. He wants to kiss her goodnight; she covers her lips, turns and faces the wall. It has been long, very long since he last had a touch.

He can’t sleep at all. He has been on twitter all night, scrolling what everyone else is saying. The dates at Serena, the night outs at Skylux, the camps at Crayfish and the business flights to Dubai; these were the thoughts he had a few years ago when they met. The life he struggled to prove to her he lives. He had a car, no sorry a jalopy but at least she saw him go get insurance. He lived in Leafy, well no she never knew he struggled, he had the most expensive shoes, what she didn’t know was that they were his only pair. He was in a suit; she never knew he went hungry for a whole month to get one.

He logs off twitter. Tomorrow is another day, payday is here. *phew* He wants to budget his salary. His keypad is too faded he can’t find the figures to key in. But life is a struggle and he finally manages. Rent, insurance, fuel, hair, shoes, birthday, cologne, clinic, before he gets to food, new shoes and shirts – DEBT. The calculator reads “NEG”.

He looks again. It reads “NEG” because he is in love alone!

On suicide watch…

He walked to the door and hoped she’d let him go, he knew he could easily throw her out of his way and walk past the door. He knew better than to use force against a lady and held it in with restraint. He only gave a slight shove when it was clear she wasn’t going to let him through. He looked at the others look on, probably with fear, probably not knowing what was happening, or probably not bothered at all. He was on suicide watch!

He had not had it easy for the past few weeks. He had no one to tell what he has been going through. He had no shoulder to lean on, he had no chest he could cry on. He thought maybe the knife was a shoulder enough; maybe an overdose was a better chest to weep on. He felt like he had a stone resting on his heart, or probably an anchor pulling it down and holding it there. He was on suicide watch! 

He managed to get past her, at least after using a little force. He had managed to get the door open but she had held to his jacket collar. He struggled to get off the “hook” and just as he unhooked himself from the grip he saw the younger one walking along the corridor. He wouldn’t know how to restore the respect she has had for him all this while. He wouldn’t know how to deal with the high esteem she regarded him with that would now chase the center of gravity. He was on suicide watch!

“He is going to commit suicide”, she shouted, as he walked out of the door and knocked down the beer bottle that stood on the door mat. He walked faster with brisk steps as she tried to catch up with him, but she couldn’t. He galloped down the stairs wondering what a scene this had been. He hated drama; no it wasn’t one of the things he lived for. He was on suicide watch.

He thought to himself “This is the greatest disrespect she has shown me ever since’. He had her secret safely kept and thought that maybe it would be the perfect comeback, but love held him back. He wasn’t just for the promise made but for the love he felt for her. He walked past the gate but couldn’t go far. He couldn’t leave at least not walk out on his brother even if love died. He was on suicide watch!

He turned back, not sure why he was headed there. He just had to go back and say how much he felt abused. He had to let it known that he wouldn’t let out, not even with the embarrassment he had faced. He called and wanted to speak with her, her alone and no one else, just like it has always been. He couldn’t understand why others had to be brought in on this particular morning. He was on suicide watch!

He had felt bad all night, he had had little sleep. He woke up to texting, he felt that the way out and end was the only way. He had tried all there is to be understood but all efforts seemed futile. He was still poor, still stressed, he was still overwhelmed. He knew, what they couldn’t tell was that he had actually embraced the knife, the only shoulder he knew. He was on suicide watch!

He had to come back, at least for love and to affirm that the secret was safe. He knew love was greater than the selfish thought of hugging a knife. He was on suicide watch! 

To my girlfriend on our anniversary

Today, we mark one, one like what we intended to be a date like this last year. The day we decided to let go of all the fears we had, the day we choose to cut off all branches on us and grow as one stem. One like the first step a baby makes.

Just like the baby’s first step, we would be lying if we said it was a perfect step. We let go of the support we had as we were getting off the floor with reservations, mainly due to the fear of the unknown. Just like a baby’s it was shaky and not stable and not once, not twice, not thrice we wanted to go back to the props we held to as we rose to stand.

But we held on and stood firm in love, after all wasn’t it much better than the crawls we had had before this? Was it not encouraging that we wouldn’t bruise our knees again, that we wouldn’t need to look up to others when they talked with us but would look straight at them? And how awesome was it with the support we got from family and friends, they cheered us all the time, clapped as we lifted our foot to make this step and applauded every time we took the foot forward.

Forward it was, forward we were determined to move and our eyes were set on no other direction other than forward. This despite the mockery, laughs and discouragement from some. Them who eagerly waited for us to topple over and hit out forehead on the table, them who couldn’t wait for our tender gums and lips to meet the ground.  They who always waited for an “I told you so” moment, they who would only be too glad to see us mourn in pain.

Pain has been an alien term to me. So alien that I can’t even find an opposite term for it because what you create in me is just more than joy, more than happiness, more than delight, this is more than even being elated. You have been there, I wouldn’t say through thick and thin and neither would I say through ups and downs because with you here it feels all so normal at all times.

Times have been awesome, times have been great and just like the Times Towers we have known abundance, not in monetary terms like it is with the towers but in goodness, joy and love.

Love, I would wish to define but all stands still when I think of you and can’t go past there. Just like the Best Man Quartet I would like to sing “Help me be the best man I can be” but I am left with no choice when with you but to say, thanks for making me the man I am today.

Today, like I have said all other days, for us it is never “the rest is history” because the rest for us lies in the future.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY BABE!

In university you learn how to learn – my story

“Hey, do you know what time the next class starts?” when you are this naïve boy in blue “Bata bullets” a ridiculous back pack and a brown interesting sweater, you wouldn’t understand why this chic would run to you just to find out what time the next class is. What do I look like, a geek or something? Anyway we exchanged numbers, and that is how I made my first two friends in campus; Munira and Aquino, and through the four or so years in school, we had so much with these girls. We had this sort of friendship that only we understood, everyone else had their own interpretation of what we were that was never right.

It has been a pleasant four year period and I look at the leaps and bounds I have made through campus and God! ain’t I a different person from the nineteen years and 364 days old teen, accompanied by mum to school with a brown suitcase. If there’s anything that changed most in me then it must be the dressing, from the white graffiti decorated T-shirt I had on that day of the 25^th of August 2008 to the stripped polo shirts that today decorate my closet. The studded ears I had, to what today I call “growing out of it”, it has been a major transformation.

Class wasn’t the most exciting bit in campus, but when you’ve got four friends who believe the five of you are “extra-ordinary gentlemen” despite the fact that they haven’t gone through the complete evolution process and still “Party like Homo Habillis”, then you are sure to love the sessions at the back left end, at times getting out of the lecture room not having heard a single word from the lecturer. The mean moments when trying to make chatter boxes quiet while making a presentation in class (that was stupid, I regret it), the moments we’d laugh at classmates for their “weird” trends, assign each other funny girlfriends, the fun we made of lecturers, laughing at the accents, “A busy in the pushes”, “Hiso msigo sote ni sangu” and the legendary sign language lesson that saw Ms. Kiarithe want to faint – “F*** Me”, just to mention but a few, the laughs could not find a match.

Slowly we learned to love Thursdays, and the fact that we had lecturers lazy enough not to want anything to do with school on Friday made it even much better, turning them into the new Fridays and I can’t forget the third year Thursdays after the “Editing and B(P)ublishing” class when we’d leave class and head straight to the bar (The lecturer was a nun, just so you may know). You can imagine what a fish does in water, we drank like fish and the house parties that would follow later in the weekend at Klaus’ place and the ugali I cooked every time I attended beat any party you thought was your best. I once drowned 750 ml neat vodka and blacked out only to find myself in bed the next day, I’ve never thanked Alfie best for seeing to it that I was safe, and apologize for the embarrassment I caused him when I puked in the damn “matatu”.

Then we happened to meet Georgie, the tall “Bad Boy” I’d once wanted to pick a fight with in first year. With him there must have come something to do with road trips. Two to Coast in a span of four months, “Mombasa we’ve never gone” my friends. Life was easy, singing “Coasto Olele” and Hum4 rejoicing at every “M-Beza” message that buzzed. We must go back to “Coba Cabanna Beach” and help the tourist police clean his “mkwaju”. Klaus couldn’t have just asked for “mchele” (Raw Rice) in a Mombasa Restaurant, that was the shit man. Then, came the Naivasha trip when a bottle of Vodka (Name Withheld) made me miss the fun when I drank too much and fell into the food. That thing saw me stick to Tusker exclusively till a few months ago when I realized, Tonic poured into Gin has a heavenly taste and a glorious high.

And oh! Have you defined the word persistent? If you haven’t met Mwawaka then probably tell A. S. Hornby to re-do the dictionary. This guy would give the persistent widow in the Bible a run for the pennies the other widow gave as offertory. He was my roommate for the greater part of campus life and if you thought campus love is fake then you should hear his love story. This guy always came in handy when it came to complaining about whacky services like the time we realized “Kerio Valley Kibanda”  was serving us “see through” chapatis and opted to go for Abu’s option of “Viazi Mix” at “Kwa Chela’s” or maybe the 35 of Wachira’s samosas that Vivian would devour just before a drinking session. I must have forgotten to tell you that Mwawaka missed several drinking sessions because he was left cleaning his computer. I saw it the other day and it looks like it just got picked from the stores, this dude can polish, and you should know the number of times he went to Eldoret for treatment, probably it must have been the dust out of wiping every available surface he came across. But he taught me great, now I can never stand crumbs in my house, I just hate them.

Love would never escape a campus story and it predominantly characterizes our story. I cannot thank P-Unit more for having thought a song would ever be named “Gentleman” and if you thought using song lines was lame, wait till you see my girlfriend. This girl saw my fourth year in school have nothing but smiles and to date with each waking morning the smile broadens. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that in Dee, Dee found the best and don’t try figuring out which of the two Dee’s comes first coz to us Dee is more than just short versions of our Christian names.

Good times, good times, good times they were, but campus experience wouldn’t be complete without the limp, the walking sticks, the morphine infested drugs and the amputation scare. This must have been my lowest moment but friends are great, simple texts and FB inboxes saw me smile through pain. I felt bad every time my friends couldn’t let me touch a beer bottle, it was weird every time I accompanied them to the bar and had to do “Afia” – soft drink, for the whole night. I resorted to having sneaky lone drinking moments, a behavior that I have held to up to date – drinking alone. I loved it when they took my walking sticks and fought with them, tried to do it like I did, always made me think “They are trying to have a feel of what I go through”.

I’d write a book about campus if I had to go through everything, the groups I led that submitted 2 paged term papers, the times I wanted to fight  in a bar coz Muuz was there to protect, the heartbreaks and exam moments when I would suddenly turn into a sought after hero and many more. The end result is what makes me happy and like Diana sings to me “proud”. I thank God for sharp brains, protection, guidance and blessings, my parents for support and love, my sisters for adequate preparation and alcohol lessons and my bro JoeJoe for having a big head that was always ready to help me sort out problematic issues. My girlfriend without whom smiles wouldn’t have meaning to me, my relatives for being there when I needed them, my friends at all levels; roommates, crew, classmates and bar mates, honest critics and haters who made me realize I got something that others would probably never have, the none-defined that I wouldn’t know why and how we met. As I receive powers to read on Friday, I promise I will transfer it to you all by writing a book on this interesting journey that taught me how to learn.

“In university you learn how to learn” – Dorothy Ghettuba

My heart sank!

“You look sharp!” These words echoed in my mind as I pulled my tie up the neck, looked into the mirror and smiled at the image opposite me. I actually did, I was finally meeting her today. I put the jewellery into my left trouser pocket. I have to tell her how much I love her.

“Jeez! Where are you going to in a tie on a Friday?” they all asked in the office. “My week just started” I answered. I didn’t want to delve deep into detail. This was my day, the day I wanted to be Davie, the day I wanted to be that different and unique man I have always envisaged, the cool and calm man. The guy guided by wisdom, patience and understanding.

“You guys can’t be serious, it’s a Friday and there is no music in the office” Malcolm kept shouting. It didn’t matter then. My mind was stuck at five. I couldn’t wait for my computer clock to read five. Then I would go out there and show her just how much she means to me.

“I can see things working out” my boss said as I bid goodbye. “Thank you” I replied. He thought I was thanking him for appreciating my work. I was actually thanking him for not giving me more work. I just wanted to be in town, where my love was, where I’d let her know that she was my all, my present and hopefully my future. I just wanted to bury the past.

“Damn this traffic, Tusker is calling” I tweet him. What he didn’t know is that it wasn’t all about Tusker this evening. There was more to it than was Tusker. Yes, I yearned for Tusker and wouldn’t wait for its sweet taste down my throat, but she was more important than the Tusker he thought I was running to.

“Sema boss” the bartender greeted me as I hoped onto the bar stool. He pulled out the Tusker I hadn’t asked for yet. This guy already knew what I like; I wish it would have been who I love. I wished I had found her there, just like I had the Tusker. I wish everyone knew she was the ‘sweetest taste down my throat’ just like the barman thought Tusker was.

“Get me a double shot of Gin and Tonic” I ordered as I remembered the drink she so cherished when we first met. Then it was all she did, and of late the taste of Tonic in Gin has me all smiley. I tweeted and facebooked, waiting for my phone to buzz and read “I’m here”, all along, couldn’t wait for the time I’d be that man she has in her dreams.

I carried jewellery in my pocket all day” I thought to myself, “I had my favourite shirt on” I reminded myself, “I had my new tie on a Friday” it hit me. I looked at the text message again “Can we do it some other time?” it read. My heart sank…….!