Back handed thoughts
about distant memories.
Boredom usually gets me writing, takes me out of my hole like a rabbit. I wonder what is cooking in my mind, sitting bored, thinking that time moves too fast for me to sit and write. I get bored to the point I begin observing the world at a different pace, from different angles, zoomed in so thoroughly that I start seeing things that don’t usually catch my eye. How many years has it been since I really chilled out with my friends? Three. Let’s keep it there. Four is too distant for memories to float from the deep. Three years ago, it was still a new world, and I wasn’t as naive in my final year at uni as I was in my freshman year. A Kikuyu man with a strong Kirinyaga accent, who was old enough to be my father, supervised my project. He made it a living hell, but I used to laugh at him and the pressure he used to give us. “Usipofanya venye nataka hutaingia pass list,” he used to say threateningly. I wasn’t the first he was mean to; the man was on rotation, probably suffered from an inflated sense of importance, authority, throatmaxxing him. Getting in over his head. You’d think he’d have some semblance of composure as head of department. I don’t think I chilled that often after COVID. But before that, it was a different experience altogether. Something I can’t explain now because three is too much, eight is overdrive. I can’t trace my memories past COVID. I’d be just lying. I will be selective, picky, and curative with my stories.
But I thank God I had that authentic Kenyan university experience, without ever thinking of that Ivy League feeling. Skipping classes in bedsitters, doing nothing but talking, sharing stories over loud systems. VON. Then going together with friends to watch football games, in those joints you had to pay 20/= shillings (or more) to watch Premier League games. If I had to dredge out a memory, it would be tracking through dingy routes, attending Co-operative University in 2018, when people barely knew it. It would be looking for a bedsitter in Gataka, next to abandoned quarries, buying nyaru za 10 bob and drinking 2ltr coke bottles, over a game of PES on my phone. It would be skipping therapy, and draining my serotinin pills down the drain because the doctor said I had trauma from an experience I won’t bother retelling. Taking a pill, and acting like it gave me confidence in approaching a girl, coaxed into talking to her by my peers after a lengthy three-hour macroeconomics class.
It would be attending class for the first time, and finding weird chairs spread all over the lecture room with blue walls, broken windows that were close to the ceiling, meshed up with wires, dusty with crumpled paper and empty biro cases on the window sills. I think I can dredge out a few things. Pull them by the scruff of their necks and place them unhurt at your feet. Here!! Time was so chill. Things didn’t seem like they could escalate, but here we are 27 floors up in an elevator that is on freefall. What do they say? When shit hits the fan, you'd better smell it.
What a time, what a time!! Kupanda Naboka haina mafuta na kukwama kwa njia. Kama huwa unapitia rongai ama langata unazijua. Naboka unaeka radio ikizima. So we just had to cope with the silence. But no hate, that’s monopoly at its best. Going to raves at Club Legend next to Tuskys. Siron rooftop with some baddies. Finding a girlfriend at a chocolate festival party, only to find out she’s from JKUAT. Waking up to bake pancakes for her, and cook up the day’s pleasantries from my sweet, simping, slippery mouth. Gate C kwa container, I took her there, and found out she was popular. Fuck it!! Took a lopha back home because of my mannerisms. I hate to say this, but I did not cope well. I didn’t love the attitude adjustment. The change was violent. Got a heartbreak of the decade, that left me pleading through my iPhone 6 phone, that made me feel like I cooked with the way Tim had me hooked with a false sense of luxury.
NWC wrestling commentary plays in the background on a sunny Sunday afternoon as I clip my toes seated on the front door of my small self-contained bedsitter. My friends used to come and chill, and we’d close the door and draw my blue scooby doo curtains. I had a hot shower, so occasionally they’d shower. We’d cook and eat straight from the saucepan. Tony used to bring the weed, together with his friend called Sparta. We’d cook in the room as the weed got us higher. To God be the glory, we’d go to random churches, from street preachers who came looking for lost sheep, students idling in their quarters, before promising us supper. I’ve been out of place on many occasions. I even found myself in a female-only party once, with the guys outside the door, begging to get in. Round and around it went, people switching partners.
My memory oscillates between experiences, beating against each other like pendulums from my therapist’s office. I didn’t grow into my own with time; I just stumbled into an empty room and occupied it. Now that I’m here, sitting with time in my hands, I can picture things quietly. I spent too much time editing myself into a readable pamphlet. This is a connect-set of my mind to whoever’s reading next. You won’t get the experience you dream of, only what you make. Smoking on dark rooftops with the city skyline glittering into the night, eyes red like obstruction lights. Indoors was my chosen moodset. Classes turned into illusions, as I mixed my drinks and snoozed off. There was a lot to do, and time was my friend, always sharing itself with me. I was more concerned with who my friends were than who I was or what I meant to myself. It was too late when I got ahead of my head. But even late was fairer than never at all. So did I really chill, or was I moving through the motions? Playing the game until I made it to graduation. Threw my cap to the sky and watched my life fall off. Roboranks went on to create his online radio station, Mark aliyekuwa anajiita tajiri, now works at his father’s farm in Kitale, managing large fields of maize. Rita has two kids now, but you wouldn’t think she’s the same person who threw me her bag from outside the lecture hall door, before crawling into class two hours late, and fooling a strict assistant professor who chased you out if you came late. These Mathafakas really turned new leaves, while I am still waiting for a new season?!!
You know what I tell myself, staring at the ceiling at 3 am? picking up the pieces. You know how it feels picking up the pieces? Hard labour, and I’m almost about to sing old negro spritual rhymns. Maybe after being disappointed by my campus experience, feeling as though I did not utilise my entire intellectual might, is when I decided to write, and be this way specifically. Writing might be the way I chose to face my disappointments without blaming anybody. Someone went to university, did their entire course, might not be thinking that they didn’t get their full pays worth. Maybe to them, that was the ceiling, and there was no breaking through it. CalTech, UCLA, London School of Economics might feel like a different world. Studying abroad just to experience a version of “campus” invented in the mind might be a stretch for them. Even though it’s not for me. Even though I want it so badly that I could do another four. There’s another layer above my atmosphere. Bigger clouds above my thin sheet ones.
Tony once bought a bag of weed, and we boiled the sticks over coffee. A girl not used to chain-smoking weed began to undress. We stopped her, and she ran out the door. We had the neighbours calling. The pastor from the next-door church arrived, took off, then came back with anointing oil. We tried to intervene, but he sprayed water on us. He thought it holy, that maybe we’d burn if he splashed it. She came back to her senses after we gave her milk. Now I get why the name, Mother’s Milk, sticks. Fortunately, nothing else came out of it. We could have been framed and made to look as though we had something else planned for the day. I stopped smoking altogether. Didn’t want water all over my face.
“I’m not talking about… following people.” Westside Gunn’s song. Mandela.
These fragments of memory will never make my obituary. If they did, I’m sure the audience would be shocked at the lack of piety and respect for death. I want them surprised. Grand exits are much more glorious than grand entrances.
mtashangaa sana!!