DOGS OR WHAT! III

“Then there is The Hyena. He’s not a picky eater. He will go home with anyone. He will go home with your woman if he has half a chance.”

Bikozulu: The Lacoste of Samburu.
I remember when I was admitted to a new school during my transition to class six, he was the first and only friend I had for quite some time. I never used to do so well with new environments so seeing him extend a hand of friendship came in handy for me.
(Read the previous post here.)
So I was this new guy in class. Fighting with the acceptance of a new school and new hood altogether. We had moved from Roysambu to Kitengela and have in mind it was those days when Kite was still wallowing in the development mud. It was not an exciting place to live. It felt like we had moved to shagz all in the name of, ‘Kuishi kwa nyumba tumejenga. Tuache kulipa rent town saa yote. Tutalipa rent ama tutawalipia school fees?’ As my parents would put it.
The school again was just nothing close to what I called school. The school where I was from, the air there smelt of competition. It would make you stay on your toes academically. Everything was organized. The classes had these double lockers. So you would have a deskmate whether you liked it or not. But I didn’t because being new I sat on the desk at the back that had not been occupied yet.
On the second day Shaddy, in his courtesy, came and sat next to me and introduced himself. That was after I had rubbed shoulders with the Math teacher during the previous class and it left me feeling like shit. I sensed that that son of a gun had bad blood over me.
“Bro, sorry about that teacher. Lakini wafaa kukaa ngumu ka mwanaume, au sio?”
“Yea it seems so.” I said.
“Me naitwa Shaddy by the way.”
I nodded and said, “Ian.”
And the fuse of brotherhood was installed from then.
Everyone saw Shaddy as a stubborn boy. But I thought he was just being a boy. Anytime I needed to let loose, I’d go and be around Shaddy. We’d crack jokes about everything. He thought I had a funny laughter and I thought he had a funnier one. We made jokes only we could understand. He was a sensible mjango when you flip his coin. He was the voice of the undermined and never liked to see anyone suffer, considering we were in boarding school. Suffering is normal in boarding. But since it’s normal suffering then it just called normal. But there is a deeper level of suffering in boarding school that is close to inhumane. That is now what is called suffering. He hated that. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t suffer. In fact, on many days he suffered more than everyone else. Teachers would beat him like pulp but life would go on for him. He was a heavy sleeper. If you sat next to Shaddy in class and you’re both dozing, it is highly likely he’d be marked faster than you would. And so he’d take the fall for both your sleepy heads.
When it was time to get serious with books, stay away from Shaddy. He seemed to have a very short concentration span that I didn’t find to be very academically friendly. It never crossed my mind that he had some bad boy genes. But anyway, he was a good friend.
Life happened and after class eight we were thrown into very separate worlds probably with an abyss in between them. We went to different high schools. I never saw him again since then. He went down the drain of my memory and got stuck somewhere in the sewers probably with akina Ratatouille.
I had my first relationship when I was in high school, form one. Just like every other first relationship, mine hit the rocks real hard. With time I got used to it. But I had a rather different way of looking at girls. I valued them. Even just touching them without their consent was a no go zone for me. Like avoiding to throw stones at a police station. I tried to treat them with respect. No wonder I was able to have an admirable relationship in my senior years of high school. Everyone knew the empress of this emperor. She was one of the famous divas in her school and as you know, real meets real.
What I cannot say is that I was so loyal in the sense that I couldn’t roll with other chics but in the friendly way. I had a list of them enough to fill a Braeburn bus. Everyone was always like, “Man! In every funkie you’re the one walking with the prettiest on your right and the prettiest on your left. What’s the secret bro?” And I’d say, “Show them respect. They love that. It works like magic.” Okay, the working like magic part is what I used to say but not aloud.
When another asks I’d say, “Y’all fighting to grab them girls’ behinds when the music hits the roof. Dare to be different. Say, “Girl your behind is a killer, but it’d be more fun to know you as a person. What do you say?” Of course, not all girls would want that. There is a lot that actually prefers to have boys know their behinds instead. It’s cool. But at least you would have had a cutting edge over the rest because, out of my experience, friendships struck from ‘I’d like to know more about you, over a cup of coffee perhaps?’ stretch longer than those struck with one night stands.
Not to throw shade on one night stands though. I said out of experience, right? It was just after high school. Yes it was one night but it never stood. I don’t know where she is today and neither do I know where she is. I’m afraid that if I was to say her name, I am pretty sure I’d go over six different names before I can solidly remember hers. So let’s just say I’m the kind of guy who prefers a cup of coffee to a one night stand.

****

“Once again life happened and this time it bridged an abyss. I was admitted to MKU after high school and guess who I met on the admission day.”
“Shaddy!” I say.
You guys remember I travelled to Kisumu some one or two months ago. Upon travelling back to Nai, I arrived very early in the morning so I had to crash at my cousin’s. That was when I first met Ian.
Apparently, he was crashing there too. He is a staunch Christian. In fact he was crashing there so it’d be easier for him to go to some church on that Sunday morning.
Well, ask yourself what are some of the reasons you had when crashing at someone’s place. Shall I ask the club or you’d say, “Cheza chini Mjango.”?
So the conversation about campus life evolved and more specifically in regards to life in the hostels. It triggered his story about how he ended up sharing a hostel room with Shaddy in the name of it’d work well for them since they already knew each other from back then. ‘Kutoana mbali‘ you’d say.
“What I didn’t take into consideration was that four years was a very long time. Many things can change in a span of four years. People, so to say, can change from black to white or from white to black in those four years.
Personally, I had not really changed as such. I changed after this experience. But there are things that were just me. Like I said earlier, how I treat and view ladies. I don’t have the heart to play chics. Just have as many of them as friends but don’t play them.”
I cleared my throat when he said that.
“Anyway,” he continues. “So si Shaddy and I start catching up and all. You know the way it’d be so organic after seeing your good old buddy again. And coincidentally, we hadn’t secured hostel rooms yet. So even our parents met and were like, yea the boys can get a hostel together.
By the way that was the day I realised that the guy’s got swag. I think I had to notice because we had never seen each other in clothes other than a pair of maroon school shorts and the rest of its uniform associates.
When choosing a hostel, he suggested we should pick the one that had a window overlooking the highway to the girls’ hostel. He said, “Room ndo hii bro. Hapa sasa ndo tutakuwa tunawaona wote.” I was like, okay, why not.
So life in campus began. We hanged out a lot and told each other endless tales about our lives. I told him about my chic who was in Nai and he told me about his that had just joined UoN like we had but she was from Mombasa, his hometown as well.
He showed me a picture of her and she was something. I showed him a pic of my chic and he was like, “Bro si unakula vizuri aisee.”
Ian made a face like saying, “Dude what the hell! What’s with this guy? My chic and kula? Should they have a connection? If so then she does cook real good.”
“Most of the time I liked to stay indoors because again, I was in a new environment. It was my way of flowing into the system. But Shaddy was a different soul altogether. So for the times we’d go hang out with him outside, we would either stop for him to say hello to a bunch of chics or we’d stop because he noticed some good looking girl.
Even when I thought she was not good looking enough to deserve a ‘stop’, Shaddy would say, “Weh hujaona vile huyo mtoto akona haga na nusu!?” I’d just shrug and say, “Enyewe!”
Friday nights and sometimes Saturdays would not find Shaddy in the hostels. He had a gang of boys teamed up with another gang of girls to go to Thika town to cause havoc to the night. The following day would be filled with two activities. One, he’d be nursing an elephant of a hangover. And two, at the same time he’d be nursing crap, he’d also be narrating stories about what went down on the previous night.
He was telling me, “Unakumbuka ule manzi nilikuambia usimdharau kwani ana haga, mwanangu si anaserereka kama aliye na engine!” All this time I’m just listening. Then he continues, “Nakushow jana amevaa mini na hana chochote kingine mle ndani. Walai I swear huyo lazima fimbo litachapa!”
By now my cousin and I and are in stitches at Ian’s story. You should have seen the dramatics on him that tagged along with the narration.
“And true to his word, that chic he was talking about was the first one he ever brought to the room. I just went to the hostel one evening and they were both leaving as I entered. My bed was the upper decker but I still never understood why it was messy after they left. I mean, hio kazi si imetosha kitanda ya chini pekee?
Not long after he’d be eyeing another bird. I’d ask him about the previous one and he’d say, “Ah! Huyo kaisha ladha bro.”
One time he told me, “Kaka nimeanza kukuona na wasupa pia nawe umeamua eh. Kwanza kuna huyo mweupe nakuona naye sana.”
“Mgani?”
“Ni mweupe, mrefu kiasi lakini ana bumper kama lorry.”
“Ooh ah! Huyo ni rafiki yangu sana tu.”
“Weh bro umeamua utakwamilia ule wa Nairobi? Hayupo hapa nawe bado wajikazia raha. Si basi unihook up naye kama huna mpange naye bro. Au sio?”
Ian said he brushed that off. I asked him about the times he felt like he was fed up with him and he said,
“One day I was from class and I was so exhausted. We had had practicals the whole day. I went to the room so tired, mandazis in my bag that I had bought and all I wanted was to make tea. Manzeh I get to the room and found it locked from the inside. I knocked thrice and noticed there was no need to knock any further because loud music was playing in there and most importantly, there was no reason enough on earth that would make them cut their copulation short apart from a fire outbreak or the trumpets of the end times. I suspect even a fire outbreak will have had to wait for them to finish.”
I ask him, “Did you get to see who she was?”
“Eventually yes I did.”
“Was she something?”
“Yea. Many of the chics he bags were hot. He got the hot girls and the rest stampeding over him because you know girls, they quickly fall for the bad boys and rich boys. Shaddy was both.
The other time was worse than the first. He later said that he had forgotten to tell me that he would have a visitor on that night. He was going to sneak her in. They had been drinking so it hit him that he had not told me to ‘exile’ myself earlier – at the time he wanted to open the door and realised that I was already inside, sleeping. But did that stop him from continuing with the hot mission? For all he cared, as long as there were two separate beds, that was room enough. Ata ningetoka, ningetoka niende wapi usiku?”
By this time we were rolling on the floor laughing especially because it seemed like they were nightmares to him. He didn’t enjoy telling that story.
“And finally the one that was worse than the two. My chic in those days came to visit me in school. We went to the hostel and she got to meet Shaddy, my roommate. So there we were just chilling and talking.”
I cut Ian short and asked, “Don’t tell me you left her in the room with him by any chance.”
He sighed and said, “I wish I didn’t. But it was meant to happen because if a girl loves you she would say no to every other approach no matter how good it may seem. I noticed that she was into his stories but not because they were fascinating as such but because he was good looking. I noticed how she looked at him. The ‘damn boy’ kind of a look.
What you expect to have happened after I left the room to buy us all something soft to drink did not happen, at the time! A fool is the only one who would think of doing that kind of crap in a window of five minutes!”
“So what happened then?” We asked.
“They exchanged numbers. I didn’t know it until she came crying and confessing two months later that she thinks she has a STD of some sort. I asked her from where and she first asked me not to get mad. Immediately, I knew that the answer wouldn’t be someone far away from me. I played with her mind and said I wouldn’t get mad. She then told me everything.”
We held our chins in pitty as we looked at Ian.
“That was the day I knew God was taking care of me. Me niliamua kuwa serious na God sasa. You can imagine we were about to shag. Me and her. That was during the long holiday. I even don’t know whether she got tested to confirm it or not but I was gone by then.”
“You dumped her?”
“What could you have done? Ever since that day, we left the hostels and Shaddy and I were not friends any more. Okay we meet sometimes and just goteana. But I see it in the way he behaves whenever we meet that he knows our friendship can nevet go back to what it was.”
Pin drop silence reigned in the room for a while.
“What about his girlfriend? The one in UoN you said.”
“I hear they are still dating.”
“Aje sasa! Kwani she doesn’t know about him?”
“I knoweth not! Although I see them on social media from time to time. But I still hear vile anatesa warembo hio campus. But as for me, I decided wacha Mungu anitafutie bibi. Right now maybe I’d still be on medication from an infection hapo kwa Mzee Abdallah! Or maybe I’d be six feet under. Wacheni niende kanisa Mjango.”
Ian stood and exited.
So dogs or what? Maybe hyenas.