An ode to the men stuck in their rich parents' houses
What you need to know:
- Yet success breeds complacency, complacency breeds hubris, hubris breeds arrogance.
- Entitlement lurked in, the future that was promised was aborted, and some of them refused to grow up, stuck in perpetual adolescence, peaking too early, a form of arrested development.
- No jobs, they still cultivated dreams, that unbreakable habit of the young, that tomorrow will be better, but tomorrow is always a day away.
I should have gone home when the crew suggested we skip to Nairobi West. One part of the problem is, I am easily suggestible. The other part of the problem is my crew has money that day, and in Nairobi West, money is Jesus. And who doesn’t know that watering holes in Nairobi West live forever? Meh. Life is for the living. Off! We go, hitting a pothole that almost swallows our car—a sign? And yet clearly, I must not be big on signs, either, because someone offers me some powder white substance to snuff, which, for journalistic objective reasons, I can’t legally say was cocaine or legally admit that I tried it. I am not one of those cats who easily enjoy (taking) hard drugs, which is stupid because everyone tries to offer me hard drugs, but when has morality ever gotten in the way of adventure?
Meanwhile, the future of the city hangs in the balance, things going from bad to worse—public transportation, drug abuse (ahem), garbage disposal—thanks to the governor, billions in budget and still nothing to show for it. “Nai haiwork,” is how we greet ourselves nowadays, much more in resignation than in hope. What is hope but delayed disappointment? This city has a great future, behind it.
This is a family newspaper, my editor says, when I tell her I want to be truthful without being honest. The truth is, that white powder has made me excited, and I can feel things hardening nicely around my pelvis. This would not be a good time to get abducted by the government, I consider, so I choose to observe rather than air out my opinions, not when surveillance is at an all-time high in a fledgling democracy in East Africa. They could easily say I was carrying a cocked gun in my pocket, and they wouldn’t be wrong!
Where was I? Oh yes. We have passed Mbagathi Way, now Raila Odinga Way, past the murals of Flossin Mauwano, Sonko 4 Gavana, and Waititu Baba Yao. We are in Nairobi West, at one of the estate bars. In there, we meet three or four 40-something-year-olds who are still drinking after a long, hard day of drinking. Not drunks, however, because do you know how hard it is to get a reputation as a drunk in Nairobi West? A girl passes by, and we all stare while pretending we are not staring. From where we sit, I can see the imposing Nairobi West Hospital with its glass shields looking like an Afrofuturist bus. It looks like it was designed by an architect who loves playing Tetris. I know it is Nairobi West Hospital because it is written, in fluorescent lights, The Nairobi West Hospital. A friend’s grandmother died here earlier in the year, and she called me to give her support. Grandma was still warm when we arrived, and she looked like she was just taking a nap, and my friend was devastated, but I couldn’t help myself thinking, this hospital is one giant Tetris, the pieces snapping into place in my mind’s eye, a rolling present of interlocking blocks, complete with moving colour stimuli and the perpetual beep! Beep! Beep! that reminds you life is a game with no extra lives.
Every man must die, but not every man lives. Today, we live. Here, with its hundreds of bars, every child knows that the only thing better than cheap beer in Nairobi West is free beer. Throughout the night, nyama choma and ugali would trickle in, someone always offering to pay for the next round. “Pombe inahitaji foundation,” they would say, with Socratic wisdom. But, the more one ate, the more one drank. And a man had to eat until he felt sick from eating, and he had to drink until he no longer cared if he felt sick from eating.
The bar is getting crowded, so Jojo, our driver, offers to take us to another place—a “hidden gem,” he says, with great pork and beautiful girls. He had me at girls, beautiful or otherwise. We get there, and sure enough, girls were there, optical nutrition, and I washed my hands at the sink where management had issued a “polite notice” with three exclamation marks, to not, in general, behave like a cretin. POLITE NOTICE!!! Do not spit in the sink! Do not wash your face in the sink! Customers only. No idling! I splashed some water on my face, one to refresh myself, and two, because nobody tells me what to do.
I sat back at the table, and we were beating stories into the night. Some of the men here are well into the baby years of middle age, late 30s, early 40s, still wearing caps and bling bling and sagging their Savco jeans like it’s 2004 and their role model is 50 Cent. They quote Bamboo and E-Sir and dismiss Nyashinski. Their sheng is thumb tracked in time, calling the police “ponyi”, radio “tenje” and shoes “njumu.” One of them starts telling me why the 20 bob coin was called “blue”, from the colour of the original Sh20 note. I “aaaahh” and “oooh” as another one chimes in with why the 20 shillings was also called “pound”, ‘after the pound sterling note.’ I doubt the veracity of their accounts, and on a normal day, I would point them out, but I am in high spirits, and our elders were on the money when they counselled that a man who uses his mouth to drink cannot use it to argue. So I shut up. And drink.
Alcohol tends to loosen tongues, and once the bartender closes for the night, we pack and head to one of the guys’ houses in Madaraka, passing by the many 24/7 wines and spirits dens, almost always located next to a pharmacy for obvious and non-obvious reasons. My friend inherited his house from his parents, who have since moved back to the village. His parents who worked for Moi or held a civil servant job back in the 90s. It was a promising time for a certain cadet of players, and the future was theirs, promise and possibility. He grew up here, attended Uhuru Gardens Primary School, which, in the spirit of full disclosure, I also attended, and serves as a beacon to our bromance. Bright child, went to Sunshine Secondary School. Believe it or not, in high school he’d drive himself to school with his dad in their metallic grey Nissan Xtrail. I grew up idolising him, you would too if you too visited his home and got served bread with jam and blue band and peanut butter. Like I said, easily suggestible.
Yet success breeds complacency, complacency breeds hubris, hubris breeds arrogance. Entitlement lurked in, the future that was promised was aborted, and some of them refused to grow up, stuck in perpetual adolescence, peaking too early, a form of arrested development. No jobs, they still cultivated dreams, that unbreakable habit of the young, that tomorrow will be better, but tomorrow is always a day away. I drink with them, but the beer isn’t as good as it could be when you’ve sold the family silver. What’s worse than failing to live up to potential? Knowing that you failed to live up to your potential.
This is how the days murder the months, living for the sake of not dying, inoculated by the pleasures of cheap sex and estate stardom. The Njokas. The Kiprutos. The Ochiengs. Those days when the name carried some weight, if Jesus didn’t answer, you could invoke the Njoka/Kipruto/Ochieng name, and doors would crack. Not anymore. Not these days.
The guilt has scaled the walls of my conscience, seeing in the bottles that we raised to our mouths as I sat with these men, the man I was and the man I could turn out to be. Youth promises everything to the young, most of all the future. We accept the outrageous assurances without blinking. I am beginning to understand how I went wrong, how we all go wrong. The roulette wheel spins, the seconds suffocate, the clock begins its final countdown. These days becoming those days.