Nailolongo...

Living in Mlolongo comes with additional intrigues that never cease to amaze me. I am not saying that I live in Mlolongo, but I can say that I reside there when I come visiting the big city. There is always that awkward moment where a friend calls me to ask me where am at. I say ‘am in Nai’. The friend is like, ‘which part of Nai do you stay?’. ‘Mlolongo’ I answer, enter #thatawkawrdmoment moment. I am not to blame for transferring a place from the municipal council of Mavoko to the city council of Nairobi. You see the distance I traverse from my home to that place lets me to assume that I live in Nairobi. Plus, there is no big difference anyway, wait, there is….

Matatus plying this route (especially minibuses) have one thing in common, Kamba songs. Recently I boarded one of them and it was all Ken wa Maria. I have never gotten to listen to those songs, but I did it that day. Looking around, the passengers seemed to be enjoying the ‘mahewa’. I was in time as Mr. Ken was churning out name after name. The dude went on for like 5 minutes. It’s like he mentioned names of all kamba people in the census register. I never heard the name Curtis Musembi being mentioned. So I asked the guy besides me (who was vigorously showing his undying love for the songs) why that name was not in the recitation list. He told me the song was about wa Musembi and so the other names he was mentioning were just to fill up the song! By the way if you claim to be a kamba yet you do not know Curtis Musembi then you are not. Stop pretending and go back to your original tribe. This is the brightest kamba-some guy that the larger eastern province has ever produced. In every society, the brightest person is well known. Even in school, the no1 kid is known by the whole school. That is why you will baffle me if you are a progeny of Masaku and have no friggin idea who this guy is. FYI he is warming up to take up the governor position for the Machakos county come next year. Go tosh! O.K I might be partially kidding.

Mosquitos living in this place have this swag that those from other places (like kisii) just dream about. It is like there is a MOU that was signed making it a right for them to suck your blood ANYTIME they deem appropriate. While other mosquitoes retire to ‘bed’ at around 6 am, these creatures stick around up to like 8. At 6 pm they will be up and buzzing. They also have these powers; probably they saw this fringe episode where people are able to pass through solid walls. In the morning, on opening you eyes, you will notice many of them inside the net yet you had done a thorough job tucking it in. On my first night I never bothered to use a net. The first bout of usingizi ended in 15 mins. On the brighter side, I hear these little guys do not carry malaria virus. They just come to irritate your ass.

I went to watch the Manchester united/Manchester city game in mlolongo town (town?) on Sunday. I thought the place could be immune to the arsenal loudmouths. The fool besides me kept shouting into my ears how horrible manutd was and how arsenal could have beaten mancity. That was in the first half. He must have gone to make love to a transformer in the second half. He disappeared the moment we scored the equalizer. So as from next week the football ghosts will arise….can’t wait.

Boom Box playlist:

Vilomena – Ken wa Maria