When I’m Gone

I don’t know why I am thinking about death. Actually I have been thinking about death a lot of late. Maybe I am just idle. Maybe quarter life crisis just descended or maybe I’m suddenly getting philosophical. You never know maybe I was sitting on my calling all along. Talking about condoms and pregnant women instead of being a deep thinker. Providing thought provoking solutions to questions like: Who came first, the chicken or the egg? 

Maybe it has something to do with the high number of people I know dying. Old people. Ailing people. Tragic road carnages. Young People. Holy People. Kisiis. All kinds of people including those that turn up to play hockey, take one for the road, sleep on/with/beside/by other people and never wake up. 

Truth is people die every day around us. This is not about statistics in some donor-funded report, these are real people; some we know, some we were best friends with, some who owed us money, some we owed money, some we used to sleep with, some who had smelly gums but we never got to tell them.

This got me thinking. 

When will it be my turn? How will it be? Will it be sudden or long and torturous? Will my sisters start some Pay Bill number to enable me travel to India for some surgery or will devolution have borne fruit and I will access palliative care from the local Ragwe Dispensary.

Will it be sudden? Will Njeri be beside me? Will my unexplained sudden death be attributed to the innocent woman whose only mistake was falling in love with a man from the wrong tribe?

Stop squirming in your seat. 

We all know we are going down there. Whether we want to believe it or not. The only uncertainty is how and when. Maybe today? Tomorrow? Next week? Next year?

God must really be having fun. Knowing what he knows, knowing we don’t know what he knows but knowing we know He knows. 

So I’m gone.

My lifeless body lying in some hole somewhere.

I imagine my mother and the women in my family sobbing uncontrollably while my father and the other Luo men trying to be men about it.

I don’t know if any women will show up with my kids and lay claim to my vast fortunes consisting of a simba, two phones (Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo Plus Duo and Nokia 1200), some five plates and some five sufurias?

I don’t think I would mind that. If people don’t claim you in death then perhaps your life didn’t mean anything at all.

What will guys say about me? What will be worth saying?

Will they just say he was a good man, as traditional African customs demand?

I have always had a problem with the word good. It’s not only amorphous, but very relative and greedy.

What exactly is good? Patient? humble? proud? chauvinistic? feminist?  radicals?

Who determines who is good? The church, community, the government?

Will you log on to your Facebook find the news there and  lazily type RIP on my wall and move on to more interesting things like liking that photo of the overfed girl in a tiny bikini? 

Or will you be hungry for traffic and post the picture of my lifeless and bloated body and caption it with those irritating and unending captions like #deathtings #sixfeetundertings #burialtings?

By the way what’s it with people and hashtags? Does there have to hashtag for everything? When did we become this #morguetings people?

Will guys struggle to remember unique and spectacular things about me and resort to the #youwerereal lines?

It won’t be their fault though.

What extraordinary feat have I achieved with my life apart from writing and talking about sex on newspapers and on radio?

Surely, my excuse can’t be that am young. 

Friends my age are doing great things.

Lord Rungu and Jehovah Sikhundi aren’t that older themselves and between them they have stained over 2000 concubines (next blog post).

At twenty two, Mzee Mcwho was already the founder/president/ director/proprietor/CEO of Inda Industries, a firm dedicated to campus printing solutions.  I have never understood though why people use so many tittles. Can’t you just be the founder or the CEO or the proprietor or the master? Have you seen Lord Rungu call himself God’s Gift to Women/ Owner of Concubines/ World Record Holder/ etc.? 

My congressman Juma was already the Founder of FAKU (Fathers Association of Kenyatta University) even before we realized that that thing isn’t just for passing piss. 

At twenty five, Mzee Byudeh has worked in over 12 banks in the city. 

Baroson and Pokot have demolished the great Gladiators, Pompo has drunk over fifty barrels of Keg Guinness on his own. Even Joe of the Creatives Lounge has been founder/admin/ leader/ convener of a WhatsApp group!

Mabangi went over twelve hours uninterrupted in a live episode of Keg binging gone naughty.

What have I done with my life?

Even Magunga has a stake at history, what with a broken tooth and a documented passion for ‘kusugua bastola’?

Even Sumu was once a CEO of Sumu Movies in KM. It doesn’t matter that the business did not survive a week after he gave out free CDS to all his girlfriends. By CDS I meant Compact Discs you perv*.

But this post isn’t about me. It’s about all of us. All of us dragging ourselves through another day, waiting for the sunset and for the weekend to start living. 

What will you tell God when he asks you to account for your life?

“Hi, Mackiche, I gave you bundles, I even talked to Safaricom to provide night bundles. What did you do with the bundles?”

Were you that guy who posted computed generated grotesque photos of babies with seriously malformed limbs and asked people to share if they really cared?

Were you that guy who sent those long texts to people and threatened them to share it with over thirty people in one hour or something terrible will happen to them?

This is not to scare you. 

This is to encourage you to do something today. To live your life to the fullest.

I know it’s not New Year yet to make those resolutions that we forget about after two weeks, but maybe the Ethiopian New Year will still do. After all a New Year is just a New Year. 

Just in case I die before you, I would really appreciate if you remembered me as proud yet humble, talkative yet great listener, imperfect yet struggling for perfection…….You get the drift?

Whatever you do, don’t wait for people to die to write stuff on their social media walls. Tell them now!

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Editor  @gety_nandwa