There’s a new guy at The Estate. This new guy is bad news for all of us. He just moved in to the other side of our estate but everyone knows him, has heard of him or is about to. In case you have forgotten I told you the other day that there’s the real estate behind our ‘estate’. Well ours is really the one behind but that depends on your location and is neither there nor here or vice versa.
This guy lives in that estate. I have had the misfortune of meeting him at the shop while he was buying a smoke and five hundred shillings worth of mobile airtime recharge voucher on his way to the real estate. The shopkeeper was all over him and barely noticed me when I asked her for a quarter of the quarter kilogram of sugar.
“Keep passing by here…. not many people promote me like you do” I heard her say in a fake American accent I never knew she had. She then turned to me and said,
“Wewe! Shika, na ujue hii ni ya mwisho sitashinda nikiandika hapa madeni saa zote!”, as she handed me my sugar.
The guy took his eyes off her and ran them over me from head to toe as a looked down in shame. To say the least, my shirt, buttoned to the top, with its worn out collar- the one I prided myself for being “iron-proof” was no match for his half unbuttoned, hard-collar “very-ironed” shirt. I wondered if he had seen that I had put on two pairs of socks as the second hand pair I had rarely fit me and so I had to reinforce it with another pair on the inside lest I find them shriveled at ankle length. He then gave me a wry smile-the sort that says “I know what you’re up to but I just beat you to it so what are you gonna do about it?”
“Aii Vero, mbona hivyo leo? Si unajua ni hali ya maisha tu” I said trying to divert his attention back to her.
“Maisha kitu gani? Wewe nawe umezidi”she retorted.
“Lakini si...” I began defending myself, but she cut me short.
“Chukua uende!” She blurted, and then spoke softly to the guy, “You’ve saved my number? It’s 07…”
I retreated and left him sharing his airtime with her. What bad luck, what misfortune- all those debts I had acquired at the shop were my leverage for getting to know her, at least that’s what I thought on my side. How dare she discard me like that, I thy faithful customer in deep-bad-debt?
I felt like throwing a stone and smashing the tinted windscreen of his branded 4x4 vehicle parked beside the shop. Apparently he works for one of the mobile network providers in the country currently running a huge promotion. Come to think of it, could that be why he bought that much airtime from the shop? Was he in fact promoting himself?
I’m bidding my time. Promotions come and go and so will he.
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