You are starving as the waiter brings the potatoes you ordered. The menu had complex names that sound(ed) like Italian witchcraft so you chose the most fancy name, thinking it is one of the rich and famous’ dishes that you see on reality TV shows, sitcoms, and soap operas.
You are lucky you get to eat, your mother had taught you, and there are starving kids in North Eastern province.
You take a fork and dig into one potato. It releases a steamy aroma as you slightly open your salivating mouth. You close your eyes and aim the fork into your wide mouth, careful not to touch your lips lest you wipe off your lipstick and devour it together with the potato. In your mind, you are imagining that you look as sexy as any babe in a Vaseline advert does. Then you feel your mouth burn.
Shit!
The potato is too hot; you open your eyes wide and breathe on it like a fish out of water, trying to extinguish an imaginary fire. Nothing. The tongue cannot take the pain so you place it on your premolars. Your dentist had chucked all molars so you almost blister the gum. Too hot. You swipe your tongue and hold the piece of potato between your incisors, but you realize you look like an ovulating goat sniffing on another goat’s vagina. There is no water to drown your pain as you desperately look around.
Then Satan shows up and whispers,
“Swallow it and your troubles will go away.”
“Why don’t I just spit it?”
“Swallowing is better than withdrawal and you are a diva, remember?”
You swallow. A huge fcuking mistake!
You can feel the potato as it burns your uvula. It is a little too big. It widens your throat like a head-boy destroys a mother’s birth canal. Peristalsis assists in your torture by pushing the piece down your throat slowly, making sure you feel the pain as the potato descends. You remember the drawings of the esophagus by your biology teacher in class six and realize the human body is a work of art and that the esophagus is one long tube from hell.
Tears fill your eyes.
You feel the flaming potato it as it passes the sphincter and drops into the stomach with a barely audible thud. It announces its presence, by a tiny burning sensation, before Hydrochloric acid calms it down.
You cough and cough and cough. Tears flow down your cheeks into your mouth like a bodily cavalry sent to cool down your innards.
You realize you have your tongue out and breathing like a tired dog. As you recover, you silently thank God that the episode is over.
“Oh!” You exclaim when you recall you were on a date, “Sorre.”
Your date is looking at you with his head tilted slightly to his side. He has not touched his food because as you coughed, some phlegm fell on his rich-looking food. You had told him your name is Mercilyn Marmuke Nyarbhourkerine but your I.D reads Mercy Nyaboke Kemuma Moraa from Kisii Central.
His name is Adeudeu - a doctor. Very classy and extremely wealthy. You can tell from his suit, cap, and white Adlidlas sneakers.
He is still looking at you without uttering a word. You panic, you are desperate to get over this embarrassing occurrence and prove to your date that you ‘hail’ from Kileleshwa as you lied in your WhatsApp conversations when Satan visits once more and whispers like a someone’s murderous cheating wife,
“ingiza tena.”
You foolishly mouth a bigger potato, hotter than the last.