It all starts when you bump into someone you know on your way to the shop to purchase a bamba 20. They honk at you to get your attention, then roll down a tinted window, but just halfway. A nice cologney smell escapes the window. They are wearing sunglasses, but they slide them up their foreheads. They are from shopping and they are carrying the entire supermarket or mall in their cars. They tell you that umepotea sana, and ask if umekuwa Kenya hii kweli. You embarrassedly lie that you have been terribly busy. Then they whine about how tired they are from withdrawing large amounts of money from Mpesa, and how they hate last minute shopping because of the congestion in the supermarkets or malls. They complain about how they are afraid that they may miss their flight to an exotic island this weekend, where they plan to spend the last days of 2015 with their loved ones. Then they ask the question you wished most that they wouldn’t ask: “What are you doing this Christmas?”
Your head starts spinning. It is an insensitive, rude, cruel and uncalled for question, especially since you are flat broke. It is a question that is meant to finish you politically and emasculate you in the most brutal of ways. Your enemies are at work. They don’t rest even during Christmas. You were waiting for deal fulani iivane so that you can get a little cash, but the deal is still ivanaing and the one pikaing it went to ushago for Christmas and has been mteja for 4 days now. You are using that 20 bob, the only money you have left, to buy a bamba 20 to try call them for the 4,567,790th time and see if they will be reachable this time.
“What?” you ask as you clutch your 20 bob in a tight fist.
“What are you doing this Christmas?”
“This Christmas?”
“Yes.”
“What I’m doing?”
“Yeah.”
“As in?”
“As in, what are your plans?”
“My plans?”
“Yes.”
“For?”
“For this Christmas.”
“For this Christmas?”
“I mean, are you going somewhere to have a good time, getting together with family…you know, that kind of thing.”
“Ooh, that kind of thing?”
“Yes. What are your plans?”
“My plans?”
“Yes. Or perhaps you have none?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“So you have them?”
“What?”
“Plans.”
“Plans?”
“You don’t have any plans, do you?”
“You have some little disgusting, yellowish-white substances at the inner corners of your eyes.”
“Oh, goodness!” they exclaim as they wipe the corners of their eyes with their fingers. “I have been so busy I haven’t even noticed, haha.”
“Look, it was nice seeing you,” you lie.
They nod in agreement.
“And I would really love us to continue with this conversation,” you lie again.
They nod in agreement.
“But I really have to run,” you say impatiently.
They tell you that they will catch up with you over coffee once they land back from that exotic island.
“I will call you!” you lie as they roll up their window.
For us, the broke members of society, it’s hard to hold conversations at this trying and testing time of the year
kavengi