On one hand the girl with the brown dirty fingers could have removed some mud from her shoes and in the process gotten it into her fingers you know. I know I said her dirt was from a lifetime in the rural setting but maybe I’m wrong. On the other hand she was pretty so that could have clouded my judgment too. I’m not saying it did but it could have. I remember getting lost in her eyes when she had looked at me and asked to know what had been going on. I had caught myself in good time just before making a fool of myself –I realized I had been inclining towards her as if ready to plant one on her. Plant what you ask? A kiss! What else did you think? Cactus?
The Miraa chewing fellow in his failed attempt to” break the ice” had helped me do so! I told her about the Miraa chewer’s wandering hand albeit hush hush but clearly touching her thigh in my elaborate demonstration. She did not seem to mind. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? No, wait! Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.
Anyway, I wished she had sat on my right side which is my best side then she would have had the honour of seeing my dimple. I tried turning my head sideways to show her the dimple and kept throwing one or two smiles her way. I think that made her think she was dealing with another buffoon and I was wondering why she looked alarmed until she moved her leg and I realized my hand was still on her! I quickly removed my hand and grimaced my face tightly; eyes closed expecting a slap but did not get one. When I opened m y eyes I saw her putting on some earphones and then she leaned on the window on her left side and closed her eyes. The ice had freeze once again. Come to think of it her fingers were really dirty. I hope it never comes off.
We were now just over 50km to Nairobi. Back then I thought that perhaps things would change- perhaps her phone battery would go low and then she’d have to open her eyes and I would be there with my dimple ready to start a new page. For now I can confirm to you that nothing of the sort happened. I think she had a new phone.
I decided to wait for a miracle and in the meantime I pretended to be staring out the window on my left stealing glances of her in the process. It was dark outside so the most I could see was just a few spots of light here and there. My thoughts and my eyes were in two different worlds until I heard the man with the heavy leather jacket shout at the driver to stop at a center next en route where he would alight.
The drunkard seated in front was by now fast asleep perhaps finally he had found his true age in his dreams. The hat man next to him was still quite just looking ahead at the endless road and on coming vehicles. I was grateful the driver was no longer on phone. I think he had won the phone argument .He looked apprehensive which I attributed to the blinding lights he had to face every couple of seconds from the on coming vehicles.
The passengers seated behind them were all asleep in awkward poses. The balanced diet woman and the woman with the crying baby were leaning on each other like to trees supporting each other in sleep as they had in eating. The spitting woman next to them leaned in font holding on to the driver’s seat. How could she sleep holding a seat? Isn’t sleep supposed to be relaxing? Even the leather jacket man and the two “politicians” behind her looked at the 3 in awe. “The politicians” had stopped their constitutional debate after it had emerged that neither had read the draft that they had been emotionally arguing about. They had moved on to international politics mostly American and Obama related but from what I heard they did not know much about it as well.
Perhaps if they had spent as much time as the show off reading a newspaper in the dark behind them, then they would have material to argue about. But that could also have been a death knell for their argument for what’s the fun in it if you know the facts? The newspaper man was now half way through his constitution reading. He kept nodding his head and biting his lips as he went through the lines following them with his index finger. One would have thought there was an exam at the end of his destination hence his cramming. Did he know it was a draft and that changes would be made? The Miraa chewer was fascinated by his reading and seemed to chew in sync with the nodding, his hands now fully focused on feeding his mouth with more khat. He had found himself a new obsession. The woman with the weave was however still on her weave patting obsession, now alternating from her right to left hand.
Everyone seemed to have something new going on except for the guy on my right who was still coughing incessantly after every five or so minutes. But not for long for all changed. I had gone back to looking at the girl on my left so peacefully asleep when I was jerked back to life by the loud wail of the driver. (Next: The Last part)
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Last week in the Van (part 2)
I got in to the Nissan (van) and sat at the back not because the van was full but purely on different motivation. Yes, there was girl involved. Soon the van was ready to go and I observed all its occupants starting from the driver.
At the front sat the driver busy conversing in vernacular with someone on the phone at times steering the car with his protruding belly whenever he got agitated and let go of the other hand to emphasize a point to the caller as if he could see him. Next to him was a man with a black hat, one of those given when to you when you buy barbed wire-written “seng’ege ni ng’ombe”. No! Not “Wire fence is a cow!” Don’t translate it okay? Just listen to me! The hat man kept quiet to himself never uttering a word to the drunkard seated next to him, he looked like a lost farmer. Close to the door was the drunken man who kept singing happy birthday to himself. In his song he was 31 but from his balding head and grey-white hair he must have been in his late 60’s, but no one was interested. One would have thought that the hat man being used to dealing with cows would have told him to shut up or get dehorned or neutered.
Behind them sat a woman who knew the value of a balanced diet. She chewed her way throughout the journey changing from boiled eggs to boiled maize and kept insisting that the driver make stops whenever she saw a roadside seller with food. But man or now woman must eat right? One thing you got to give her though is her giving spirit. Half of the food she bought was eaten by the woman next to her and her crying baby. At first I thought the baby was sick but as we went on I realized it was sick alright, sick for the boiled woman’s eggs and other foodstuffs. The baby kept demanding for more. Its mother was more than happy to assist in chewing the food for it and swallowed most of it in the process. No wonder the baby wailed so loudly. The old woman sitting next to them was appalled by their behavior and kept spitting outside at regular intervals while looking at them with scorn.
The man in a heavy leather jacket seated behind them kept looking at the four of them in disgust. He told the two men seated beside him that he hated being in a van with women and children because of all their fuss about nothing. The two men had then stopped their arguments and looked at him for a couple of seconds not knowing how to reply and then continued with their politics. One of them the one with those khaki jackets with many pockets had insinuated that they would be no peace without a new constitution and that he would mobilize “his” people to reject the draft constitution as it was. This was met by a quick rejoinder that the other man also had “his” people who would vote for it. The heavy leather jacket man, he who hated children interrupted them again and asked them if they had read the draft constitution to which they replied that they had not. Their reply invited lots of stares from the whole van .Even the drunkard at the front cut his song short and asked them to tell him how old they thought he was.
We all ignored him except for the man behind the politicians with the day’s newspaper apparently reading the constitution! Show off! He told the drunkard that he was as old as the first constitution in the world. The drunkard by this time was so busy in his world that he did not know he had been insulted. The newspaper man got back to his newspaper world for he had a few hours before the newspaper became stale after all who reads a daily at 6pm? It was just a few minutes to 6pm. This I got to now from the Miraa (Khat) eating man in front of me who had finally “broken the ice” by asking the woman beside him what time it was and had nearly chocked on his saliva in the process. After a few good coughs and minutes had passed he had finally tried his seduction skills again this time asking for her name. She did not respond and there was a long awkward moment which followed.
Now I’m not saying that she was ugly but she was not beautiful. However, she was trying her best to work with what she had. She had a weave which she kept patting every couple of minutes. At first I had thought it was because she wanted to make sure it was still on her head and had not gone with the wind blowing at high speed from the open window beside her. When she dug in to the weave with her fingers, I realized that she must have had an itchy scalp and all the patting had not helped so she had decided to go in for the kill. I think I imagined it but there were some creatures crawling out going down her neck after her long scratch in the weave. She must have felt my eyes on her neck looking at her creatures because when she suddenly turned to face me, she caught me staring and for a moment we were in a gaze.
I broke the gaze and looked away not in fear or shame but in surprise at how grey her face was. She had applied so much white powder on her face that she looked like she’d fallen in to a makeup kit face first. She turned to face the Miraa chewer who had been following her head movements keenly and slapped him! The Miraa chewer spat some greenish saliva on his shirt and quickly faced the front while wiping off the green matter as if nothing had happened. The weave woman pointed a dirty looking index finger at him and told him to keep his hands to himself.
The commotion had woken up the girl sleeping on my shoulder much to my displeasure. The man on my right side who had been punctuating our journey with his loud irritating coughs gave me a wide grin and gestured with his chin and lips at the girl on my left side checking herself out in a small mirror from her bag, as if passing a coded message to me. His grin did not last long for the cough caught up with him and he gave out a big one.
I prayed that the girl would go back to sleep. I did not mind being her mobile pillow. She was pretty. I had immediately known that she did not live in the city and was probably visiting. How? Her fingers. I came from the village so it takes one to know one – she had dirt stuck in her nails. Now this kind of dirt is the one you get off after a lot of washing and zero contact with soil for a long time. Well now you know. (To be continued)
At the front sat the driver busy conversing in vernacular with someone on the phone at times steering the car with his protruding belly whenever he got agitated and let go of the other hand to emphasize a point to the caller as if he could see him. Next to him was a man with a black hat, one of those given when to you when you buy barbed wire-written “seng’ege ni ng’ombe”. No! Not “Wire fence is a cow!” Don’t translate it okay? Just listen to me! The hat man kept quiet to himself never uttering a word to the drunkard seated next to him, he looked like a lost farmer. Close to the door was the drunken man who kept singing happy birthday to himself. In his song he was 31 but from his balding head and grey-white hair he must have been in his late 60’s, but no one was interested. One would have thought that the hat man being used to dealing with cows would have told him to shut up or get dehorned or neutered.
Behind them sat a woman who knew the value of a balanced diet. She chewed her way throughout the journey changing from boiled eggs to boiled maize and kept insisting that the driver make stops whenever she saw a roadside seller with food. But man or now woman must eat right? One thing you got to give her though is her giving spirit. Half of the food she bought was eaten by the woman next to her and her crying baby. At first I thought the baby was sick but as we went on I realized it was sick alright, sick for the boiled woman’s eggs and other foodstuffs. The baby kept demanding for more. Its mother was more than happy to assist in chewing the food for it and swallowed most of it in the process. No wonder the baby wailed so loudly. The old woman sitting next to them was appalled by their behavior and kept spitting outside at regular intervals while looking at them with scorn.
The man in a heavy leather jacket seated behind them kept looking at the four of them in disgust. He told the two men seated beside him that he hated being in a van with women and children because of all their fuss about nothing. The two men had then stopped their arguments and looked at him for a couple of seconds not knowing how to reply and then continued with their politics. One of them the one with those khaki jackets with many pockets had insinuated that they would be no peace without a new constitution and that he would mobilize “his” people to reject the draft constitution as it was. This was met by a quick rejoinder that the other man also had “his” people who would vote for it. The heavy leather jacket man, he who hated children interrupted them again and asked them if they had read the draft constitution to which they replied that they had not. Their reply invited lots of stares from the whole van .Even the drunkard at the front cut his song short and asked them to tell him how old they thought he was.
We all ignored him except for the man behind the politicians with the day’s newspaper apparently reading the constitution! Show off! He told the drunkard that he was as old as the first constitution in the world. The drunkard by this time was so busy in his world that he did not know he had been insulted. The newspaper man got back to his newspaper world for he had a few hours before the newspaper became stale after all who reads a daily at 6pm? It was just a few minutes to 6pm. This I got to now from the Miraa (Khat) eating man in front of me who had finally “broken the ice” by asking the woman beside him what time it was and had nearly chocked on his saliva in the process. After a few good coughs and minutes had passed he had finally tried his seduction skills again this time asking for her name. She did not respond and there was a long awkward moment which followed.
Now I’m not saying that she was ugly but she was not beautiful. However, she was trying her best to work with what she had. She had a weave which she kept patting every couple of minutes. At first I had thought it was because she wanted to make sure it was still on her head and had not gone with the wind blowing at high speed from the open window beside her. When she dug in to the weave with her fingers, I realized that she must have had an itchy scalp and all the patting had not helped so she had decided to go in for the kill. I think I imagined it but there were some creatures crawling out going down her neck after her long scratch in the weave. She must have felt my eyes on her neck looking at her creatures because when she suddenly turned to face me, she caught me staring and for a moment we were in a gaze.
I broke the gaze and looked away not in fear or shame but in surprise at how grey her face was. She had applied so much white powder on her face that she looked like she’d fallen in to a makeup kit face first. She turned to face the Miraa chewer who had been following her head movements keenly and slapped him! The Miraa chewer spat some greenish saliva on his shirt and quickly faced the front while wiping off the green matter as if nothing had happened. The weave woman pointed a dirty looking index finger at him and told him to keep his hands to himself.
The commotion had woken up the girl sleeping on my shoulder much to my displeasure. The man on my right side who had been punctuating our journey with his loud irritating coughs gave me a wide grin and gestured with his chin and lips at the girl on my left side checking herself out in a small mirror from her bag, as if passing a coded message to me. His grin did not last long for the cough caught up with him and he gave out a big one.
I prayed that the girl would go back to sleep. I did not mind being her mobile pillow. She was pretty. I had immediately known that she did not live in the city and was probably visiting. How? Her fingers. I came from the village so it takes one to know one – she had dirt stuck in her nails. Now this kind of dirt is the one you get off after a lot of washing and zero contact with soil for a long time. Well now you know. (To be continued)
Friday, December 11, 2009
Last week in the Van (part 1)
I think I told you what happened last week. I did. I didn’t? Well there’s nothing better to do now so I guess I’ll go over it again for you- one last time, ok?
People die everyday, every second, right now? Anyway the reason for this story is that I had travelled to attend a funeral. No, it’s no one that you know, I think.
I think there was sadness for some minutes and then joy on learning that workers would be allowed to travel to attend the funeral. I confess I was a little bit happy. At my work place we only get official permission to be absent on such occasions. Jose being now a member of the in house welfare association had promised me that all was being organized for the bitter-sweet travel. By “all being organized” I mean he fixed me in the entourage even though the deceased was not in my department. What? My department? Cleaning, but that’s beside the point. Stay focused. Where was I? Oh, the travel.
Yeah, so I got in and I must say it was fun- it reminded me of that time our primary school teacher took us to the agricultural show. Despite the 3 hour walk in the muddy paths we took in our school uniforms it was still fun. The teacher was quite frugal though he made us make groups of four each to share a loaf of bread and a soda. Someone said he took some sodas home for his family. That someone really had it rough for a couple of days later. He experienced what we used to call “global warming”- our frugal teacher lay the rod on his behind every now and then at will. What? The other story? Oh! Ok.
Well we got there and buried our colleague. We made a few stops on the way to sight see- the driver called it “kuuwa nyoka”- killing a snake. Most of the sight seeing was done in the heavily forested areas and individually in hiding. Ok! I’m getting to it. Alright!
When it got to time to travel back some of the deceased relatives said that they wanted a ride back to the city as they had some pressing issues that they had to attend to – rumour had been going on that they wanted to inherit the deceased’s position and the way they saw it the first to get back to our boss would be the rightful heir, thus the race and scramble.
And so they called out for the list of those supposed to have been attending the funeral and my name was not there! I looked at Jose but he was nowhere to be seen. So now I was left stranded in a place I’d never been before with my colleagues not in the least interested in my pleas.
Just before they left I cornered one of them and bled my soul out to her shamelessly. My efforts were rewarded with some money for me to use private means to travel back and that is where the story begins, ok? In the van? The Nissan? The story begins in the van. What? It did not the last time? Do you want to tell this story or will you let me? Fine! So this is what happened….I got in to the Nissan (van) and sat at the back not because the van was full but purely on different motivation… (To be continued)
People die everyday, every second, right now? Anyway the reason for this story is that I had travelled to attend a funeral. No, it’s no one that you know, I think.
I think there was sadness for some minutes and then joy on learning that workers would be allowed to travel to attend the funeral. I confess I was a little bit happy. At my work place we only get official permission to be absent on such occasions. Jose being now a member of the in house welfare association had promised me that all was being organized for the bitter-sweet travel. By “all being organized” I mean he fixed me in the entourage even though the deceased was not in my department. What? My department? Cleaning, but that’s beside the point. Stay focused. Where was I? Oh, the travel.
Yeah, so I got in and I must say it was fun- it reminded me of that time our primary school teacher took us to the agricultural show. Despite the 3 hour walk in the muddy paths we took in our school uniforms it was still fun. The teacher was quite frugal though he made us make groups of four each to share a loaf of bread and a soda. Someone said he took some sodas home for his family. That someone really had it rough for a couple of days later. He experienced what we used to call “global warming”- our frugal teacher lay the rod on his behind every now and then at will. What? The other story? Oh! Ok.
Well we got there and buried our colleague. We made a few stops on the way to sight see- the driver called it “kuuwa nyoka”- killing a snake. Most of the sight seeing was done in the heavily forested areas and individually in hiding. Ok! I’m getting to it. Alright!
When it got to time to travel back some of the deceased relatives said that they wanted a ride back to the city as they had some pressing issues that they had to attend to – rumour had been going on that they wanted to inherit the deceased’s position and the way they saw it the first to get back to our boss would be the rightful heir, thus the race and scramble.
And so they called out for the list of those supposed to have been attending the funeral and my name was not there! I looked at Jose but he was nowhere to be seen. So now I was left stranded in a place I’d never been before with my colleagues not in the least interested in my pleas.
Just before they left I cornered one of them and bled my soul out to her shamelessly. My efforts were rewarded with some money for me to use private means to travel back and that is where the story begins, ok? In the van? The Nissan? The story begins in the van. What? It did not the last time? Do you want to tell this story or will you let me? Fine! So this is what happened….I got in to the Nissan (van) and sat at the back not because the van was full but purely on different motivation… (To be continued)
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