The past few weeks have seen me know that ukambani is bigger than Kenya itself. Am still reeling from the effects of having been a passenger along a dusty and bumpy road which my fellow occupant claim is better since the coming of the new constitution, braving the cold of the night, occasionally cursing under my breath when one of the other non human occupants on the pick-up, some three male goats oblivious of their fate, stepped on my foot.
I complained not, where I come from, people do not complain when they are sharing an inch of space between them and the man who sired their wife, and especially where this said object of desire is a few feet away, though in the comfort of the driver’s cabin, listening to the ubiquitous musyi fm this side of God given land. I braved it all, my mind wandering to the expectant future ahead.
It is while cuddled up with these seemingly unfamiliar representations of God’s creation that I discovered that there are some TVS motorcycles which fly, literally. Otherwise what would you call a motorbike overtaking a pickup on a bumpy road never to be seen again in the duration of the journey in a speed that can make Carl Tundo want to give way with anguish. These motorcycles were majestic, standing tall, so to speak, for a 120CC machine, their owners having made it clear that this was an investment worth noticing, with make shift rear spoilers inscribed something in the local language that I was later to learn roughly translated to, ”a monkey who cannot reach a fruit will always say it is not ripe”, and a music system to boot.
I came back to Nairobi a changed person. Having picked a few words of the local lingo, enough to ask for water from a passing muetu and give some warranted near-obscene remarks when and if need be.
Things have not changed at my camp.While away,my pets,the cockroaches who leave in the cracks under the kitchen sink moved houses.I realized this the same evening I came back as the neighbour came knocking at my door,to ask what make my television set was.She wanted to borrow the remote control as hers had stopped working, ostensibly due to some chewed wires from the crawling visitors. I offered her some of the remaining mixture that the anti pest guy I had hired before had left behind. She has not complained again,and I am thinking those once a time regular visitor are moving house again.
While I was gone, my land lord had made a private box of my door.I stopped wondering a long time ago how one can receive two different electricity bills for the same month. Now I just ignore them knowing that technology has made me to forward think,literally.
My younger brother who is in campus trying to spend some five good years learning how to spell a-dai-yo-do-kai-ne-sia correctly had also passed by, the note on the table screamed in near illegible script. Since he started pre-unit, to just before he left for Chiromo, I could read his hand writing a yard away. Now I have to squint even when he is writing something as simple as, ”I was here. Took your sunglasses and the sock note”. If the hand writing was to exemplify the work people do, I wonder how our politicians would write.
Back in the office, tea tastes sweeter. I notice they changed the tea girl, to some frail looking lady. Every time she holds on to a tray of cups, with mine on it I keep wondering whether I will ever take my tea in it again. Apparently, somebody either found a way of doing away with the office cat or the cleaning people have been given a pay rise.
Everything looks sparklingly clean, even the recycled papers I had left under my locker have since gotten a new owner. My neighbour , whispers to me that the bosses have been doing random rounds in the offices and nobody wants to be seen as inhibiting the new order of things.
Indeed one month is a long time to be away……………
The early worm, is the one caught by the early bird.........