Nairobi

I know it’s been ‘long’ since I last wrote. Ok….. It’s just been three weeks and friends be like

“Boss, uliacha kuandika?”

In my defense I was writing my final year exams. So I had to prepare myself emotionally, physically, physiologically, chemically and all other …..somethningology not listed.

You know it is at this time that you realize that campus life is finally coming to an end and you have to squeeze the joy up to the last drop in all the good things that made your life. I know perverts are already ahead of me in their thinking. Keep thinking that way. That’s what in poetry we call reading in between the lines.

However if there’s anything that I enjoyed most in my campus life was hockey. My people say ‘gimoro mit karumo .That’s just French for it gets sweetest when it’s about to end. Think of anything that you ever enjoyed that’s no more and you’ll know that what I’m saying is true. I remember when we were kids and my mother was going away on some trips. She would ensure that she cooked nyoyo in nyuol ber enough to last till her return. Nyuol ber are those huge sufurias used to cook ugali in luhya funerals.

The githeri would get monotonous and boring but just as it ended the taste would be juicier.

This season was a great campaign….winning tough league matches in the hostile cities of Kisumu and Mombasa, lifting the Nairobi conference KUSA cup in style among several accolades. That’s why I say it’s sweetest when it’s ending. As I wait to decide my hockey future I am well aware that it won’t get better than this.

A lot has of course happened since we last spoke. Kenyans of Somali origin have been rounded up and faced interrogation methods worse than Guantanamo in their own country. Lilian Muli faced the full ridicule of KOT due to her alleged flirting with Jamaican dancehall sensation Konshens. Kenyatta University coughed us into the job market after four years of being reminded that elimu ni ngumu. I fell in love and got dumped in three weeks!.......That’s a record right. Jicho Pevu fed us crap for two days about election malpractices. One wonders what they wanted the good Kenyan people to do. Take to the streets? There’s one thing that I feel I’m forgetting…..oh the first lady ran and completed the London marathon. That is perhaps the only achievement of the Jubilee government. And talking about Jubilee reminds me Baba has refused to come back from Boston University to address these issues.

But if there’s something that I learnt the most is that I don’t know Nairobi. Yea, I don’t know Nairobi.

You think just because you board your matatus from Accra road and work or go to school on the mezzanine floor of Revlon professional plaza you know Nairobi.

You don’t.

You think just because you can navigate your way from Latema road to Casino Hospital across Kirinyaga Road as you move towards Nyamakima you know Nairobi.

Wait you don’t even know where Casino Hospital is? Don’t worry, you’ll know…..just try catching some funny STIs from drunk sexing some of these Nairobi night nurses who charge you fifty bob in downtown Luthuli. You’ll surely know. That’s not how I came by it of course.

There are two groups of people who know Nairobi. There’s of course the taxi drivers. Those whose hairs are getting white and have been in the profession for some time. They are the people who have witnessed Nairobi. Not just Nairobi the streets but Nairobi the culture. These are the people who have without any attempt at eavesdropping listened to drug lords plan mega operations, listened to philandering husbands tell their wives that they are out of the country as they are being driven into a dingy house of shame somewhere in Umoja. These are the people who have witnessed men and women with insatiable and uncontrollable appetite start and finish their eleven second romping on their back seats.

As a taxi driver you need to know Nairobi.

You need to know how to navigate between the jam filled streets of Nairobi, get to where your client wants and still escape with your side mirrors intact.

The second person who knows Nairobi is Matolo. Sorry, he doesn’t like that name. He prefers to be called by the name of his favorite son, Baba Lithium to show that he’s a big man now. He reminds us every day that unlike us he has responsibilities. Matolo is a great asset to anybody around him.

If you suspect that there could be war then Matolo is your guy. He is a true brother. It doesn’t matter whether you are outgunned and outmanned. I remember sometime last year I lost a hockey stick and to cut a long story short picked some random player who looked like a suspect and of course Matolo was there to argue besides me. Too bad we lost the argument and of course the hockey stick. Not because of limitations of his powers but there was tones of telegraphic, audio and video evidence to sink our case.

Matolo is the kind of guy who doesn’t have to win a war by throwing ammunition. He has that gift of garb that knows when to threaten, when to fake sincerity, when to hold an aggressors head and remind him that he is a circumcised fertile  Bukusu who kneels to no one but God and of course some few hundred kikuyu ladies . But hey that’s not what we are talking about.

I don’t remember the last time Matolo slept in a hotel in our away games. He had some relative in Mombasa…..three actually. He had an aunt in Kisumu, a sister in Eldoret, an ex girlfriend in Nakuru, a mother in law in Nyeri.  He had never been to Meru , Dar Es salaam and Tanga before but he knows the right places for ugali ya mluhya.

For any Luopean locally or internationally our elder sister is Lupita, our father is Baba and of course our hometown is Kisumu city. When the vultures came to town last week I was supposed to be their guide. Informing of places where they could fill their bellies with quality meals at affordable prices. But I realized Matolo knows Kisumu more than I do. Not because he’s been there but because he knows the paths to the poor alleys of the cities of East Africa. And they are all the same. You just look at the direction of dirt and follow it. I’ve never known that at forty bob you can fill your bell in Nyanza Republic’s capital city. Anybody who has been to Lwangn’i beach in Kisumu will tell you that fish is more expensive than a bullet but at three hundred shillings Matolo had his ngege and swallowed it. 

He is your jack of all trades. He has been a truck loader, a hockey coach, a sand harvester, scrap dealer, an online writer, a tour guide, a bonga points dealer, a bus driver, a funeral crier name it. That’s why he knows his stuff. Confirmed rumors have it that he knows Nairobi so much so that at five hundred shillings he knows where to get diapers supply for three weeks for his seven infant sons. He knows where to get fake IDs, where to get vehicles to take you to Westy at night when there is supposed to be a ban on night travel. By the way Westy here does not refer to Westlands.

So last week I was moving my stuff from the hostels of KU to Embakasi. Being the end of the semester and after hosting Boka for such a long time a man’s financial fortunes are allowed to dwindle. The reason I mentioned Boka is because he’s a true Luhya. True Luhyas guzzle tea just as Mercedes guzzle fuel. Tea equals sugar. Sugar equals cash, buzinga you got it!

So we split costs with one Mchill and called a taxi guy. Naturally I had to bring Matolo along the ride. You know how taxi drivers are. They are worse than Duale. They change prices depending on their moods. Matolo would of course be an invaluable asset if that were to happen.

From Doonholm the route I know to Emba is through Outering road and through Fedha. The driver was equally limited in knowledge. To cut a long story short Matolo navigated us across some slums where the roads are just as bad as the rough road to my village with a bridge that threatens to fall into the dirty sewer below. He knows what buildings were there in 2004 and which ones came up recently. He navigated us through places that you never knew existed. Small towns each with their own story. Baraka….Jua kali….Sinai….Village…..

And of course continuously assuring the driver that we almost there.

By the time we finally got back to a tarmac road the reality hit me. I don’t know Nairobi. I’ll probably stay in Nairobi for the next Jubilee and still just know The Mall in Westlands, the KWS Headquarters on Langata Road and the Imbiss, the Nevadas and the City spaces of Nairobi.

Nairobi kumbe ina wenyewe.