engrish makes me happy

'kenyan'

i was at the department of immigration today to renew my passport. they sell them by the number of pages. something like 24, 32, 48 page options. with the 48 page passport costing a little over 4,000/-

a temporary permit (valid for one year within the EA community) can be purchased for 300/- with 2 passport pictures (costing 200/- for 4 at the booth behind the tent).

there is a man who checks the validity of your documents... he told a somali-kenyan with his 'son' in front of me to go to KRA to get verified, to which the man, upset, responded;

we're being segregated for being somali!
but i thought you said you were kenyan?
yes, somali-kenyan
sir, do you want to talk or do you want to be served?
i want to be served
then go to kra and get verified
but why didn't you send anybody else there? we are equal (he began to walk away) we are equal...

what is to be kenyan? when somalis, dubbed 'foreigners' are rounded up in eastleigh, when the nubians languish in kibera and we are tribesmen before countrymen?

what does it mean to have a blue passport, if you are required to give references, if privilege and education mean none the more responsibility but the opportunity for more wealth.

we fail each other. by not living up to what it should mean to be kenyan. by not starting out with being honourable.

druv and shruti

i don't know druv and shruti but i am at their engagement as somebody's plus one. i woke up at 7am the day before to be at my neighbour's to have her wrap the saree around me. she said she needed me to come before 8:30 because she leaves for work then. i come at 8. she meets me at the door in her jammies and her poor baby is rubbing his eyes muttering to himself.

i had ironed the 6 metres of saree. i now lay it on the bed in the spare room and don the blouse and petticoat. she then wraps, pleats, pins and smoothes folds. and in less than a few minutes, is done.

(mental note: make her cookies to say thanks)

still half asleep myself, i go back next door and lay as still as i can until 11am, when the affair is supposed to start, only to find out on arrival that i had come a day early. (why don't i check these things?)

so i come back the next day, today, in a different saree that i have wrapped around myself and i'm so proud when the ladies ask me who'd helped me. "oh myself," i say casually, beaming inside.


i love to see sarees. i love the way they choose the design and colour of the blouses. i love how the lighter materials like georgette and satin fall on the body.

i'm the only non-indian there (other than the nannies and one very dark man, whom i had mistaken for being black) and everyone seems to know each other so i remain the happy but quiet observer.

the food is aptly vegetarian. though there really isn't any vegetable at all in it. and they serve it on metal plates. the men doing the serving behind the buffet are quick to warn me what's hot and what isn't. though i like chilli food.

i don't know druv and shruti but i congratulate you and thank you for sharing your day with me.

walking home

when i was about 10 or 11, we were still at the bus stop - more than an hour after it had left, my sisters and i. and for some reason, we decided we would walk home. a 12 year old, myself and an 8 year old.

armed with a prayer and our trusty hockey sticks, we set foot to cover what would take a car some 10-15 mins to drive. but instead of the shorter, more trafficked main road, i convinced them, the longer, more serene route would be better. turns out, it would be the route my dad wouldn't drive up and down frantically lookin for us.

we walked for more than an hour. the hold on our sticks-cum-weapons losing force. and the "ugly face(s)" my older sister advised us to put on (distort/contort the face as distastefully as you can) to deter anyone that might harass were giving way to fatigue.

our father finally caught up with us when we joined the main road again, a stone's throw away from our house - mad as hell - at our folly. "you could have been raped!" he yelled - which is true. but by 6.45 when dark was already setting in, we were just glad to be home.

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i walked home again yesterday. this time, as an adult, stranded. or as an adult deciding to take things into his own hands, or should i say feet. and like forrest gump, i just started walking.

i walked for about an hour and a half before i considered what i might look like. that i must look desperate or out of place because a kindly young man, stopped to offer me a lift and instinctively, i declined. it was only when he drove off that i realised, he might have been sincere. bless him. bless people who do kind gestures.

as the road began to climb on that last stretch home, it hit me - this sadness - the solitude of doing it all on my own. the realisation that no one - in the duration of that walk - was looking for me.

spotted

just outside a shopping mall


passed out comfortably at the stanley

changing mode/habit

He bought her a hairpiece because it was beautiful, because the feathers that were arranged to create the semblance of a flower was something he could imagine her wearing. Though, it was likely she never would, now that she didn’t need to appreciate it, now that she had left him.

It was the only souvenir he bought and therefore the only souvenir he had of the place; a lake whose birds people flocked to see. She had not come as planned and so he continued alone and more in the habit of loving her than to bring her a souvenir, he bought her the hairpiece; a blossoming of red and white that would settle on her bookshelf than ever on her hair.

Ndinda

She liked the silence. It meant the freedom of an empty house. She read letters then, letters not addressed to her, perused pictures then, pictures not even intended for albums. It gave her a taste of their world, a taste for their wealth.

So she waited for those silences to don the Madam’s jewels, to scrutinize the Mkbwa’s receipts, to behold what they had hidden. She was in that stillness the master of the house and the owner of those secrets.

She listened to their points of discussion, listened to their rants and their gossip. The mkubwa increasingly suspected an uninvited audience. So one day, feeling her presence behind the door, opened it abruptly so that it hit her, outright. But the warning only caused her to dig deeper and to play with her role in that house like the way children play with fire.

Like a jealous third wife, Ndinda found comfort in stirring up trouble, and it was easy to dispense it to the company around her.

‘Hakuna chai,’ she denied the askari when he asked for tea. ‘Hakuna stima,’ she refused him again when he asked if he could charge his cell-phone inside. ‘Hakuna Ndinda,’ he humoured himself when lunchtime came around and Ndinda was nowhere to be found to serve him.

But even the most patient of people had a threshold for Ndinda’s insolence. One day, the askari asked of her, “Please, if the mkubwa comes, open the gate for him. I’m going very quickly, to the kiosk, to send mpesa. I’ll be back now, now. Here are the keys.”

And like a fool handing over his money to a thief for safekeeping, Ndinda went for the kill.

“Askari?” she feigned ignorance, “I don’t know where he has gone. I don’t have any keys,” she lied to mkubwa as he waited at the gate. Incensed at the askari’s seeming irresponsibility and having to send and wait for someone to deliver a spare set of keys, the mkubwa  threatened to fire the speechless askari when he returned.

Ndinda must pay, the askari decided to himself as he threw himself at her.

“Aiee!” she screamed, as she fled from his angry fists. “He wants to kill me!” she cried, appearing bewildered and desperate.

Then, in complaint to the other househelps, “It’s not even my job to open the gate!”

Naively sympathetic, they held the askari from beating her and pacified him with assurances that he could leave the keys with them if he ever needed to leave his station again.

But like the hide of an old beast, Ndinda remained thick-skinned and not long after the askari had chased her to her room and the other househelps had saved her from a beating, she found reason again to start another fire.

Setting out to do so, she bought herself ten sim cards; one for each of her fellow househelps’ boyfriends she designed to text. And true to her intention, she succeeded in spreading bad-blood like you spread hysteria.

An uproar ensued in the estate when it was finally discovered that the only possible culprit, the common link between the househelps and their boyfriends could have been Ndinda. They rallied now to charge at her door. And this time, they came with knives.

“Wacha tuingie!” They screamed at the askari who now oddly found himself responsible for her life, “this is not your business!”

“Please, the family is here,” he pleaded, “even the children are home.”

“Haiya, we don’t care!” They persisted, stung by her betrayal, “Ndinda has been disturbing our men. Telling them we are prostitutes. Let us pass. This girl needs to be taught a lesson she will never forget!”

“Violence will not solve anything. Please go home, forget about it and don’t talk to Ndinda anymore. She is only doing childish things,” he reasoned with amusement at the reversal of roles.

“Yah! She is disturbing us! Buying sim cards to disturb us! Her money is useless, look how she is spending it. You know, we pay school fees, we pay for our children... Ndinda is just buying sim cards to disturb us! What for?!....” they blustered, slowly becoming placated with the realisation that violence would not repair the damage done to their relationships.

“We have never met a devil like her and we never will!” they concluded as they walked away.

Ndinda remained in her room after that, only leaving it to bring the askari his tea, his lunch and to return his cellphone after charging. Her demeanour was like that of a sullen child and the askari was glad to have it for he knew that this cooperation would only last as long as it would take for her to fan another fire.