(“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the
things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the
bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your
sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. -Mark Twain)
(“In order to write about life, first you must live it!”-Ernest Hemingway).
Ours
has been known as the City in the Sun but I do not agree. It is the
Murder City. Green Day perhaps had a dying generation in perspective
trampling on hot coals of the City risks. Hear them: This empty laughter/ Has no reason/ Like a bottle/ Of your favorite poison. They do not stop there. It is like they know us exactly. They rock on: We are the last call/ And we're so pathetic. Why
do I have to bother you with lyrics of the rock band Green Day? I will
tell you in a while. But I will hasten to add these lines to wrap this
crap about lyrics and explain myself: We've come so far/ We've been so wasted/ It's written/ All over our faces.
Nairobi
City and by this I mean the CBD is crueler to ‘those who have come so
far’ especially if you are pursuing your higher education. Students have
had their skulls cracked with blunt objects by semi-illiterate guards.
There are those who have been duped into the plush joints of the elite
where drinks flow and fun is there like forever. Pot-bellied M.Ps, CEOs
of top companies, drug barons and all those lumped on the side of the
crème de la crème strip young varsity students in exclusive lodges and
perform carnal knowledge with them. This is in exchange of goodies that
many of us envy and I will not moralize anything that what the girls are
doing is immoral. Live your life. That is the ‘Hippocratic Law’ my
father advised me to abide by in this Murder City. But what cannot
escape me even under extreme inebriation is the fear that another
university girl will be betrayed by these Murder City honchos before
Grim Reaper strikes like fierce lightning. The interesting bit of this
game is its addiction. The boys are addicted to substance. Ladies are
addicted to fragrance of the Good Life.
Until they stop
you from breathing is when you realize our generation is on loose sand.
Or you lose a close friend. The night guards you meet along Moi Avenue,
Tom Mboya Street, Kaunda Street or even Luthuli Avenue dozing off
intermittently, lighting foul smelling Supermarch and casting bored eyes
on the dying generation entering and exiting entertainment spots in the
CBD can be demons and sadists if activated. They are ruthless if
provoked but if you admonish their ‘Nyayo agents’ style of approaching
matters, your colleagues will find you at the City Mortuary. I always
dread the day the mortuary attendant at City Mortuary will tell those
asking of my whereabouts:
“Yes, a young man was brought here dead
by armed police officers. And he had multiple head injuries. Is it him
you are looking for?” That day may come. It is a precarious life we are
living and the tightrope we are walking on keeps getting lose. But
nobody has been able to explain the sadism of these ‘watchiez.’ It is
like the man that kills an innocent dog in Ayi Kwe’s philosophical
fiction, ‘Fragments’, in order to appease his own ego. May be
that is what motivates these guards. For what else can drive a fellow
human being to take the life of another? You tell me even if our deaths
are as result of our dim-witted arrogance of imagining being the only
students ever to acquire higher education. John Ruganda (RIP) asks in
his play ‘Shreds of Tenderness’, “What makes a murderer tick?”
Grapple with that dear reader. I understand our generation is not a lot
to sympathize for because after all we claim to know-it-all. And we know
a lot by the way.
A lot of distractions but let us
proceed. At the KBC Mess we went to after getting tipsy, I went more
loquacious, egotistical and more intellectual than before. Made friends
randomly the way drunks easily do and chatted incessantly with more
cheap beers and complimenting fag to fan the fun. Raucous and sensual we
got with ladies but nothing more than that. By the way, let me inform
you that the guy in a pink tee I mentioned in part 1 was an old youth of
36 years and contented with fate that he had lost some of his youthful
verve to bounce like us. The only ‘wizardry’ he could entertain us with
was losing a 10 bob coin in his lower elbow while seated then ask for a
drink that most of us cheerfully gave. It was completely juvenile but
nobody was ready to burst his ‘36’ bubble and foil the well orchestrated
‘wizardry’ of fun. Like Twitter we followed and like Facebook, most of
us liked.
Ghafla bin vu, two Tusker beer bottles shook
from the table of our entertainment and rolled in sequence before
dropping on the cracked dusty cement. They cracked with a real thud. For
a few seconds, the merriment fell deaf and drunken and glazed eyes
turned and fixed their gaze on our table. A commotion was born and the
waiter went into a start. I was standing behind ‘The Magician’ and
watched with ‘don’t-care-attitude’ the splinters of the Tusker bottles.
“Nani amevunja hizo chupa,” the waiter managed to inquire. Drunken rumblings.
“Nani amevunja hizo chupa,” and this time his white eyes were trained on me with a fiery blaze.
“Ni huyu kijana,” the magician said but did not look at me.
“Kijana, lipa hizo chupa saa hii…”. Can’t recall what else he said but I
adamantly refused that I had not caused the breaking of those bottles.
He got infuriated and stormed out of the counter then slammed it before
shoving me hard that I almost lost my balance. One of his colleagues, a
smooth-shaven brown man with small squirrel eyes and a dark blue
cardigan also emerged from another room behind the counter and watched
the unfolding scenario. When I regained my balance, I violently
retaliated by also pushing the waiter hard and accompanying it with
clubbed fists on his right cheek-I am left handed and yelling of my
innocence. That is when the river burst its banks and his colleague
arrived in the scene like batman and they both wrestled me on the ground
before descending on me with kicks and blows and shrieks like those
only heard in churches that speak in tongues. A crowd soon gathered but
still they would not stop…. (To be continued… the battle of the beer
bottle and the intervention of a bribe-seeking GSU officer).
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