The first time I read about London was when I was in high school in one of the school library novels. It was about immigrants from the Caribbean living in London. A boy and a girl were walking down Oxford Street. The boy was pouring his heart out to the person he thought he loved. For thirty minutes he waxed lyrical about the girl and how his heart was heavy laden with love. He summarised by telling the girl, “My love, you are the love of my life. I love you so much”. The girl went silent for something like two minutes and turned to the boy telling him, “I love London”. What a rejection? So I grew up with that picture of London as place of resentment. Whether my attitude changed after my first visit to London I am not sure.
I am sitting outside a cafe and watching all these English women passing by. You see, in London you can sit outside and enjoy the outside view, like the way Green Corner used to be a few years back. I think City Council got fed up and brought a bulldozer to clear those chairs and tables which had actually taken half of the road next to it. When you give a Kenyan a foot, he takes a kilometre! That is how sitting on the pavements as you enjoyed coffee or tea while watching bottoms on a nice evening came to an end. I have to tell you something about The Nairobi City Council. If they are coming for any type of rates, there is a bulldozer on standby! I guess without a bulldozer they can’t work...and don’t you think they behave like bulldozers!
Now, looking at all these women, I think I am not lucky. I can’t see anybody with anything that can bear the name buttocks. The women are thin and bottomless! Their bottoms are as flat as the bottom of my grandmother’s sufurias. You can imagine for yourself what kind of sight that can be. And when you see a fat woman she more or less looks like Mrs Plato, I still wonder why whites claim to be a superior race when they have women who are shapeless. Forget about those you see from Hollywood. Like prize bulls, they are selected. Did I tell you what Plato told me before I left? I don’t think so. Plato told me that he is worried about his wife because she is growing more and more fat with each passing day, and that it has become increasingly difficult for the tailor (not dressmaker) who adjusts her clothes to locate where her waistline is. After searching for several minutes, the tailor could be heard muttering to himself, “Let us just imagine that the waistline used to be here”. How I pity Plato! We will have to find a solution for him. How I don’t know yet.
I will tell you more about London women later. Kasamu, Plato and Shakespeare are waiting for real life experiences when I get back and they don’t want to hear about Ben 10, Westminster Abbey, Wembly stadium etc. They want to hear whether English women wanapiga duru na hiyo duru inakuwa ya juu kiasi gani. So it is time for me to do shopping. I am in central London and walking down Oxford Street. When you are in London and you earn your living honestly like me, the place to shop is NEXT. There you won’t meet every Tom, Dick and Harry. The stuff there is of high quality. It is what you see being sold as mutumba, but here you are the first wearer. But if you go to PRIMARK, on the other side of the street, you will meet all sorts of poor English people. Even though they give us money for our children education which we swallow unashamedly, don’t think there are no poor English people. If you have stolen their money or created fuel shortage or eaten maize, or sold cemetery land, the place for you to shop is HARRODS. There, you can even get a bill for farting inside there! So I am at NEXT where first of all I have to pick a number of skirt suits to make madam happy. You see when Madam is happy, the whole world is happy! The only problem is that I have forgotten her size, which she repeated several times and I can’t dare ask again because you can imagine what she will say, “You never listen to me”. Anyway, since her waistline can easily be located by the local tailor, I will pick sizes slightly bigger. But wait a minute, I can also measure with my arms, how I hold her....
For Kasamu and Plato, I will get each a suit. But for Shakespeare, a pair of Jeans and a T-shirt will do. If you think I will buy the T-shirt and Jeans for Shakespeare at NEXT, You better have your head examined. How do I buy something from here for him when I know he may exchange it with alcohol? You can’t trust these university students. Tomorrow I am heading to Camden. I have been told that at Camden, with 3 pounds (about 420 ksh!) you can buy Shakespeare 3 T-shirts and 3 pairs of jeans. You can also sample meat there...!!!
Ohhhh what a boring night life! Every club I go to is all quiet. Don’t they have ‘one man guitar’ around here? I think the English have no other life outside football!. So I head to a place in East London, where I hear you don’t have to look far to trace a Kikuyu. Nice food, Kenyan beer, nice kwasa kwasa music and some booties to write home about! Nice evening.
At Camden market the following day... Mmhhhhhhhhh...Never joke with K-street girls of Camden...Those women charge. Imagine one helping is equivalent to the cost of 50X100 Malili plot...Aiiii Ayee...Asi...Hapana Haiwezekani! Don’t get me wrong! I got this information from one of the Kenyans I spotted around there... Kenyan brokers are everywhere, dealing with everything. I guess the guy I talked to is a pimp, going by what was coming out of his mouth. And don’t forget he is sending money home from pimping. He told me he has even bought a plot at Kitengela...
There, even touching is charged. ...and you are not even touching there! The time you spent talking to her, you also get billed. All these services are free back home. I said to myself, “Magigi you are not going to throw away a whole Malili plot down that gulley”! Afadhali I squeeze avocados and mangoes. But where in London...Marks and Spencer supermarket? But I say to myself this is not Kenya where Kasamu spoils all the avocadoes and mangoes in supermarkets and gets away with it. I just have to wait to get home. If Kasamu and Shakespeare and Plato are waiting for any juicy stories of how I displayed my Kamba acrobatics on English women, they are going to get disappointed.
Just a thought
You never know how important what you got is until you lose it....