ONE MAN LESSER

Do you have friends around you who compare the price of almost everything with the number of mzingas they’re equivalent to? I have such friends. Not many of them though. So don’t start thinking that I am surrounded by people who never see the brighter or the sober side of life. I am not saying such people are dangerous. Not on all circumstances. In fact in this case, they are a danger when it comes to one side of the coin. Love. Mjango these are men who have lowered the bar of manhood rather unknowingly. Alright I get it, men, we sometimes lose it and let ourselves down. However, we have to agree that we shouldn’t be too naïve to realize that we’ve dropped the ball one too many times.
“Me siwezi peleka dem date! Ata na dawa.” One of them would say. He is my old buddy from high school. He has short rastas, a stud on one ear and is ever in timberlands. Catch me dead wearing those stone caves in the name of shoes. The way I rolled with them ladies was absolutely different from how he did. It’s seemingly still the same up to date. That’s why I am here to spill it all out. He says my moves on these cherished species; women, are like those of our fathers, back in the 80s. So the conversation was all about how I should style up. Imagine me, being told to style up! Okay, let’s keep talking and we may just let the ladies say who needs to style up. Hehe, mjango.
“Na sasa kama unampenda, si unaeza mfanyia chochote?” I say in my sobriety and sanity.
“Ah! Hio doh ni mob wewe. Hebu tupige hio hesabu,” He taps my shoulder, leans on his side and takes out one finger after another starting from the index finger. We were now doing math on how cost ineffective it is to take a girl on a date.
“Sasa nishow wewe Vick eh? Si unasema unapenda kutreat the ladies kama maqueen sindio?” I nod my head in innocent-guilt.
“Ayya. Ni wapi tu base average kabisa wewe unaeza peleka mshikaji?” Folds his arms on his chest. As if he expects me to say nothing less than pizza inn, chicken inn and all other bloody inns. So I start to think and do a self-search. I ask myself in that short span of time I have to answer that question. I couldn’t believe I was being challenged for being supposedly, ‘a gentleman.’ I said supposedly, please note. I asked myself what I am worth. What do I look like? Do I look like a fly infested food joint in City Market? No wait, that’s the wrong way to ask. Can I afford a meal for two in a food joint at City Market? The answer is yes. Can I afford a decent meal for myself in one of the junk food joints? Yes. How about for two? I think I can. Yes, maybe. There I have my answer. So yea, it’s nothing less than pizza inn and her fellow calorie rich colleagues.
“Ehe! Tuseme pizza inn, kama hizo.” I answer with a brag at the corner of my lips.
Maybe I was in for a knock out, “Na how often can you take her out?”
I pause for a while. Back to math, “Eeeh, not as often.” I giggle.
“Wazi, so sasa ukipata manzi mwenye yeye zake tu kila saa ni kuenda out, mara sijui babe take me to Kempinsky, mara I want this this and that, mara I can’t go to Pepinos eti it’s for ordinary people. Kaslayqueen mti yangu na kwanza vile ata tudem tukasee tumetoka nao mashambani wanajifanya ata queen wa maslayqueen!” He clicks. I could filter the rage in his words and tone. “Weh utado?” He asks.
I kept quiet.
“Hakuna mapenzi sikuizi brathe. Wacha nikushow.” An evil laughter follows.
I fake a smile.
“Anyway. Sasa piga hesabu ya hio doh unatumia kwa date. Kwa mschana buda!” Is this guy trying to say treating a woman you probably love to a date is throwing money? Leave alone wasting.
He continues, “Umpeleke out mara ka mbili kwa wiki. Ukimpeleka out in a day unaspend fifteen hundred. Sasa hio ni times two, tenga tatu mahn! Alafu labda unamlipia transport. Ka anatoka Kite (Kitengela) ama Rongai hio ni mia mbili bila kuongea mob. Times two, hio ni four soo. Roughly tuweke transport ikuwe punch…”
He lost me when he mentioned Kitengela. Well it was funny and at the same time I was pricked and touched. See, my home is near Kitengela. Yes he said it innocently but with a lot of intimidation not meant for me. Unfortunately, it landed on me because I come from those places. Areas far enough from Nairobi, its outskirts and its diaries as well. (See what I did there.) It is a diaspora of a kind. Even thinking of going to town in itself is hectic. Just the thought of it. Oh the traffic on Mombasa Road. Oh the fares that come along with it! Just don’t talk about the distance. We even don’t say we are going home. We say we are travelling home. Going to a place where even before arriving, the tarmac road ends and what welcomes you is dust from a marram road. Sometimes there is no public transport from the house to the tarmac road. The best there is, is bodaboda. We dust ourselves before a mirror when we get to wherever we are going. Otherwise the failure to do so will have people staring at us like we were dropped from a mining site. If you come from those places or if you ever will, be sure to wipe your eyes as well. There is a lining of dust that forms on the eye lashes and the eye brows. I know these things. Why should I let you be embarrassed mjango? Maybe our ladies from there apply makeup when they get to town.
I have friends from Rongai as well. There is a unity that people from such places have. They share the same problem know. I think it’s human when we see problems bringing people together. For consolation. I remember I once went out with a friend from Rongai. As a man I had to reach on time, but you bet I didn’t because of the issue in discussion you know. It should have been the same for her. So perhaps we should have got to town at almost the same time. But we didn’t. Mjango I waited! At that time you’d wait until you ask the Lord to teach you about patience with some other occasion other than having to wait for a chic from Rongai! You’d quickly remember that The Lord listens to those prayers that you make when under pressure and doesn’t consider whether you were just praying because you needed someone to let your heart out to. That was the only time you remember you have The Lord always by your side. So you quickly take back your prayer because you’ve realized that The Lord can teach you on how to be patient through someone who owes you money, good money! Anyway, the Rongai chic and I from somewhere near Kite, you’d call that a long distance relationship huh?
So people who make jokes about mjangos who come from those sides of the world, because I know their next joke is about to be something like Rongai and Kite are not in Kenya(lame of course) – please try living there for a few months and afterwards we will see whether you’d want to joke again.
Okay enough of catching feelings.
I snapped back when he said, “… unacheki hio doh inatoshea mizinga sita buda.” So don’t ask me whether I know how much bottles of booze cost. I was not listening when one of the chair patrons was reading the bar menu from his experience and friendship with the bottle.
“Six mizingas?” I ask.
“Unaona mbaka wewe unaifeel?” He said as he slapped my back. What’s up with these people who can’t talk without hitting you? Oh wait! Maybe I am like that too. Okay I’ve just remembered I stopped but only towards ladies. For a man, beat me I beat you harder.
Honestly I was not feeling his point as he said. The only thing I felt was the fading pain on the plate of my back and pity in my heart for such a way of analyzing things. Especially things to do with the celebrated being: the girl child.
But it’s not about the girl child anyway. It is about what is the right way of doing things.
“Nani alikuambia hakuna mapenzi?” I was feeling heartbroken. Our crooked generation.
“Sio mimi nimesema. Hivo ndo kuko mahn. Sasa madem wakona mentality eti kila boy anadai tu kumplay na kumtenda alafu ajikate. Na ni wote wako hivo. So si mimi, I just go with the flow?”
“But you subscribe to it?”
“Ju ni ukweli.”
“Only because you first heard people saying it huh?”
Even before he could answer, “Then if your objective is not to love, what’s your business with the ladies?”
He smiles to hide the guilt that was oozing out of him slowly. “Si for fun.” He says.
“What fun?”
“Ah! Weh wacha kujifanya zuzu hapa unajua hii maneno brathe.”
“So it’s all about ‘pata kitu, fanya vitu, ukiendanga’ eh?”
“Eiy na kwani ni siri? Kama hadai, ata yeye atembeze!” He laughs. I don’t laugh along. That is no joke.
I shake my head in despair.
“Weh mjango nakujua kutoka  madays. Wewe ni ule msee eh. Wewe unatakanga kufanya vitu kama perfect man. Ni sio mbaya. Ni vile times zimechange buda. Life is short to go around loving. Enjoy maisha. Ata madem wenyewe sikuizi ni kujibamba wanajibamba na mapesa tu ndo wanadai. This is the 21^st century boy you’re looking at now.” He chuckles and stands, “Msee, si tutapatana baadae. Wacha nifike lunch.”
I shake his hand and say, “Good talk.”
He leaves me seated along the staircase juggling thoughts about so many things. He went his way without having to tell him that that is the 21^st century way of treating himself to the ladies. He is acting in sync with the time, that is quite logic. Though he forgets there is a right way of viewing life and going about these things as a result. Time has always dictated what we do to a point we forget we were made to rule over the times.
We should understand that a woman is no tool even if the times seem to say so. But originally, was she created and the world was told, “There goes your walking tool.”? Mjango, we have underplayed our ethics as men for far too long. Its okay everyone makes mistakes. Though the rule of the game is to keep moving and play better this time. Of course I won’t spare the fact that the ladies have also openly given themselves to the wind in several ways. Here is what remains constant though, not every one of them is a ratchet or a gold-digger or both. Not all men are dogs either.
True love does exist, but to only those who are first true themselves. Its inexistence is a misconception. It is said by mjangos who have had it rough because of love: broken hearts, broken virginities, broken marriages name them. It is said by those who think it is a waste of time. It is said by those who are slaves of lust, always looking for shortcuts to what they really want.
It is not said by those who have learned the value of patience with their own lives. By those who are true to themselves. By those who dare to be wise before they say, “I love you too.” By those who look past the pain of the aftermath of what they thought was love. Because true love doesn’t hurt. Maybe love does, but not true love.
Mwanaume, before you tell her that you love her, before you win her with your seductive powers – stop and recite this to yourself, “When a woman loves, she loves for real. She is an emotional being. She is easy to manipulate and easy to break in that effect. Do I really want to break her? To see her life take a thousand and one steps backwards? If so, then I am sure to myself that I am serious with our new level of friendship and her. If not, I’d rather make it clear to her on what I want from her before it’s too late to apologize. If I am thinking of ignoring this important part of what is likely to be written in the atmosphere as history, then I am aware that what goes around always comes back around. And when it does, I should have only myself to blame.”
Just don’t be less of a man than you were made to be mjango, lest the earth should consider herself, one man lesser.
 
That is my Valentines treat to y’all. Though I know that every day is Valentine’s Day to some mjangos I know. Don’t mention me and I won’t mention you. Hehe.