GIRLS, WHATS WRONG WITH YOU?

Girls, what is wrong with you
 

Sobs wrack her body. He stands watch.

Silently she cries herself to sleep.  Sleep haunted by dreams of fear, self-doubt and misery. The neighbor’s cannot learn of this. After all aren’t they the newly wed couple that is oozing all of little chubby cupid’s blessings? He finally relents and pours himself a drink from the scant remains at the bottom of the bottle. He throws the bottle at the far end of the room where it shatters on the wall and startles her wake. She tries to make herself as small as possible wrapping the blankets around her, sneakily moving away to the farthest end of the bed her fears awakened.

“Moseti…sobs… please come to my house,…sob… please…sob… please,” a plea from a sobbing girl at two am in the morning.

"Hey, whats the matter?" I ask as I rub sleep away from my eyes, I look at the phone again and realize its Mo.

“Just come over, I am hurt.” She says between sobs.

I am bewildered, what could have happened this time round? Many a time I’ve lent my shoulder to be cried on but this seems different.

“what is the matter?” I finally ask?

“Its that Bastard Kim!” Her sobs are forgotten as she hurls out these words like some disgusting offal she wants to spit out of her mouth.

When I get there, she has a gash across her shoulder from which blood is seeping out from beneath the face towel she has held to the wound to try and stem the bleeding. Thank God she is not queasy as at the amount of blood.  Kim has hit her with a gas cooker stand. The kind that is used on the 6kg gas cylinder. Kim is not around when I get there. I probably could have gotten physical with him had I chanced on him. At the hospital, she doesn’t want to press charges. She tells the doctor that she fell in the bathroom. The doctor clearly does not believe her and keeps shooting me this evil look like he is convinced I am the perpetrator.

A day later I find Kim and Mo sipping coffee in one of the restaurants I frequent, laughing gaily and looking like the happiest couple in the world. I go over say hi and ask about her shoulder, Mo smiles guiltily as she tells e she is healing.
*************

Zippy is pregnant. She is pregnant with the same guy she swore of leaving. The same guy she spent hours telling me how much he was stifling her. Hours spent tucked away in my room high will youthful defiance. When she was looking for an escape channel from the enclosed capsule in which she was being suffocated. Watched like a hawk, all her movements questioned, all her interactions interrogated. I once asked her why she still stuck there. I understood her response and at the same time pitied her. She was in the relationship because the guy paid her rent and sustained her pocket whims and fancies. She however swore to leave once she finished campus. She was year ahead of me. That was last year. Now she has graduated and she is pregnant. She cannot even bring herself to face me. It has been five months since we last saw each other. I was wondering about the black out when I found out she is in the family way with the guy when I bumped into her in town. Her dreams of flying out of the country have either been put on hold or done away with, who knows? 

************

In my first year of campus, she was the talk of town. That ethereal flower that everyone coveted. Petite with a Somali body and the curves of a Luo.  Before long, this guy snatched her up. Then the stories started floating around, stories I brushed off as jealous male type stories meant to backbite the guy. Until I saw him slap her at nightclub. I watched flabbergasted, bottle frozen in my hand and mouth wide open. Then I spoke to his roommate and the things I heard. Oh, God! Poor child! 
Where is the self esteem when you walk in on your man having sex with another lady, he tells you wait outside while he finishes up then he asks you to sit and wait for him as he escorts away his ‘mpango wa kando’? Where is the pride and what does that guy have that whenever you want sex you have to buy him a bottle of vodka first? This is the same chic that men could have gone down on their knees for in first year.

Ladies, what is it that makes you stick to abusive relationships?!

KAKAMEGA

KAKAMEGA

They (county government) have erected a new street light by the Kisumu stage.

A mockery really if all it’s meant to illuminate are the potholes that scar the surface of the once smooth tarmac. A glory of forgotten days when the town was a small neat, lazy town. Before the students from MMUST invaded the town and overnight thrust it into a vortex of activity that was previously a bedtime story of “I can’t believe how much other towns are crowded.”

Once upon a time, there were road signs marking every junction and street in kakamega. Now what remains are skeleton posts so aged, weather beaten and rusted to the point that they have bent over. These are the lucky few signs that have escaped the marauding street urchins who vandalize them for scrap metal. The roads are a sorry sight. Especially when it rains and whole streets get flooded. Drainage has simply gone down the drain, pun intended.

The new market building looks so nice, and so small.

The traders have had to change location three times to give room for the building of the market. The old market was a relic of the days when Kenyans dreamt of a good tomorrow. Of a market that could sustain the small population. That was twenty years ago. Today a new market stands at the same venue. Traders who had previously owned stalls in that maze of tents, nylon papers and iron sheets thrown carelessly over a few supporting poles to form  temporary structures that  could stand for five years. That smelly jumble of pathways barely wide enough to accommodate two people walking side by side in which chicken that have been reared in the chicken runs in the  market stink, mixed with the smell of an assortments of  all traditional vegetables and the ever present smell of garbage from the pits around the market. These traders moved with all their wares setting camp first in front of the New KIE before being relocated again to the behind the stage.

The new market is complete. Resplendent   in yellow and cream colors. It’s been over a year since construction came to an end. The grand opening is still being waited for though not with as much bated breath as a year ago. Dreams of owning a stall in this new storey building continue to gather dust and fade away to wherever dreams fade to. A court case bubbles away slowly in the cauldron of time. A case regarding the market that will probably take years to resolve while the market stands barred and useless, a relic under the unforgiving African weather.

I was Craving a burger the other day.

Two thirds of what could pass for decent restaurants had no idea what a burger was. Family kitchen had, well, “am eating this because I am really craving this.”

“ I asked for a beef burger, meat well done, not overcooked and charred,” I furiously mouth at the unapologetic waitress who has just brought me the burger at Bel cibo.”

“I will inform the guys at the kitchen.” She responds and walks away not bothering to glance at my table until it’s time to slam the bill on my table.

“I thought this might be different.!” I curse as I regret the why I dint go for the at least edible Burgers at Family kitchen.

I eventually found a place where they sell good burgers over at the Tusky’s mall. In one of the fast food joints. Something you can actually enjoy eating. There is a minus though,  their burgers come with fries which you pay for. “gods don’t they have awful fries!”

“There is a rugby game at Kakamega High today, are you going?”

Thanks to university students, there is now culture in Kakamega. By that I Mean what might constitute pop culture. Night clubs have opened up with a majority of the patrons being students from the universities in the town. Older generations, with sugar cane money are finding a fancy picking up college girls as the town slowly rises from its depths of slumber during nights to parties and functions and drunk youths walking under the solitary street lights leaning onto each other for support in the wee hours of the morning hopelessly drunk as a result of last night’s binge.

Western Bulls is Playing Homeboyz. Half the people who have turned up for the match are drunk already. The air is rife with a smiles, shouts and catcalls. Ladies have turned up looking sharp in floral dresses, miniskirts, dresses, low cut tops and tshirts. The men too look carefree with body fit Tshirts and lots of rugby jerseys. The groupies who consist of almost the entire crowd are here sitting together cackling over drinks and making fun of the others. No one really pays attention to the game. This is an excuse to come out and have fun and be easy before hitting the clubs later in the evening. Bulls lose the game.

CRUSADE

CRUSADE

A ghost.

Lost in the multitude that line the street on my way home. In the fading light of the picturesque african evening. a stranger among a thousand other strangers who are brushing shoulders literary pushing one another out of the way. Over the periphery of Holden mall providing the backdrop, stalls are erected all along with small time opportunistic businessmen plying their wares. Smells of all kinds of frying foods mingle in the light evening air that is already ripe with various human smells escalating into that cocktail of smells that is synonymous with overcrowded camps.

A worldwide crusade is being staged here by some religious nuts. The strangest looking people are here with the ever ubiquitous Karl Marx’s exemplified drugged by religion types. “Mungu ni mwema! yaaaay!” A man suddenly shouts in the street throwing his arms up in the air and almost hitting a few passers bys.

Traffic has ground to a halt. a few jerks as it opens up a little to let through one car and then halts. In this fashion, the bored drivers of the Kisumu- Webuye road look out of their windows with through tired exasperated faces of, “when will this madness end so we can go back to normal?” Boda-boda’s weave in and out of the almost stationary vehicles. broad chested men on bicycles forming the majority of them as motorbike riders patronise the road shoulders hooting continuously to force their way through.

In this din I get to the stadium where folk are camped keeping vigil and praying for their poor souls. The prophet was here today. That is what the faithful refer to their religious leader. A bigoted preacher who enjoys demigod status among his flock. A resemblance of a presidential motorcade comprises of his fleet of cars complete with hard faced security and a chain of ushers that see to his every whim. Red carpet pavilion. So he performed miracles, the deaf were granted hearing, the blind vision, the cripples hobbled up and down the stage throwing away their crutches and wheelchairs in jubilation. Faith, how amazing! At this rate it may not be long before someone is resurrected!

By the University gates, the faithful throng the stalls to grab their supper before going back to their fires to brave the chilly African night. A bath costs sh 40 in n enclosement of curtains. the water is cold. People are queuing to bathe in between the eateries where these baths are located.

I meet a few people I know walking home or going to town. Normally the town is never crowded as it is now. They all seem to have that irritated look on their face as they mingle with these faceless strangers who have come to invade their space. Annoyed, as they have to jump over puddles of dirty water that the ‘hoteliers throw out, being shoved out of the way and the noise.

The crowds have thinned by the time I get to lurambi. Darkness has  set in the sun having retreated behind the clouds on the Horizon to await another tomorrow. The night is pitch black, no stars or moon for you tonight. The usual suspects hover here, the barber chatting amiably with the salonist. Alfa Cafe is open and full, The Mutura guy Outside Karumaindo is laughing at a joke with the gathering around him. A lone Waitress stands Opposite the Butchery making a phone call. There are men with potbellies leaning on bonnets of their cars outside Karumaindo clutching onto their Tuskers.

I am reminded of a story I read in one of my High school class readers. The title of that story was “who cares for the new Millennium?” Its New Year’s Eve after all!