[FONT=georgia]Someone is knocking on the window. I look, and my eyes lock with a pair of red, sleep-deprived, drug-ridden eyes. The eyes are lodged deep in the skull of a tired, demoralized man. He must be harboring hatred towards the world and especially politicians, as if they owe him something. In his hands, he has a power bank, a phone charger and a pair of earphones. He is clearly a hawker, but my attention is drawn to his merchandise; I’m used to hawkers carrying whole supermarkets on their shoulders, but this one is carrying only three goods. They could easily have been snatched from (a) poor Nairobian(s). My interest draws his interest. Then I make (as I realize in retrospect) a gross mistake: I slide open the window and inquire for the price of the power bank. I know I won’t buy it, but asking never hurt anyone. Well, anyone except me.
Without uttering a word, he hands me the power bank, walks around the matatu, enters and sits next to me. I’m sitting behind the driver’s seat, waiting to leave for Namanga.[/FONT]
[FONT=georgia]My phone’s battery level indicator reads 5%.[/FONT]
[FONT=georgia]I plug in the power bank. Nothing. He extends a freckled hand and fingers a button. Five tiny blue lights next to the button blink to life, and the phone starts charging. With the concentration of a watchmaker, I study the power bank’s structure. I turn it over and carefully inspect it. Like a mountain gorilla grooming her baby and eating fleas off her fur, I look for a reason to reject it. I find nothing.[/FONT]
[FONT=georgia]The battery level indicator now reads 9%.[/FONT]
[FONT=georgia]It suddenly draws to me that the power bank is pink, my wife’s favorite color. Jackpot!
“It’s too pink. Too girlish,” I unplug the power cable and hand him the power bank. “Sorry.”
He looks at it, then at me.
“Would you buy if it had a different colour?” he says.
“Yes,” I nod. “I’d certainly buy it if it were in a different colour. A manlier colour.”
“Which colors are manly?” he asks.
“Black, navy blue, jungle green,” I answer, plunging my foot deeper into his trap.
Without uttering another word or touching the power bank, he jumps out and disappears behind a crowd. The power bank is still in my hand, so I plug in the phone. Maybe he has decided I need it more than he does.[/FONT]
[FONT=georgia]10 minutes elapse, and a second passenger boards. 15 more minutes and at 20% of power later, the hawker is back. In his hands are four power banks. They’re all identical to the one in my hands in all manner but color. Black, blue, jungle green, and white — my supposed manly colors.
“Choose one,” he says and places them on my lap.
“Feck!” I mutter.[/FONT]
[FONT=georgia]I engage the watchmaking, flea-eating gorilla’s persona. I study the power banks, looking for the slightest bits of reasons to reject every single one of them. I have to. I must. The stars align, lady luck smiles, and God’s grace descends upon me; the black and the white power banks won’t power up. An evil smirk appears on my inward face when I see a barely visible scratch on the jungle green one. It’s so tiny that I might have as well imagined it.
“Not these,” I give him the rejects.[/FONT]
[FONT=georgia]The battery level indicator now reads 35%. A family of six boards.[/FONT]
[FONT=georgia]The navy blue power bank appears to be flawless. Oh Lord, please strike this power bank and fill this matatu, I mutter a short prayer. A minute goes by and the lord mother luck smiles once more.[/FONT]
[FONT=georgia]But she isn’t smiling in my favor…[/FONT]