Introduction To Sin

Am I not a supportive and understanding husband? When my wife requested me to attend to her clients because she was attending her cousin’s wedding in Kiambu, did I not wake up at 4.30 am to help her prepare for the journey? You know, she was traveling with Ted and Ted is quite a piece of work. It is hard to get him inside the wash basin and even harder to get him outside the basin. By around 5.30 am they were all set to go. I walked them to the bus stage and on coming back to the house, I decided not to go back to sleep. Instead I checked my mail and updated by blog.

Am I not a hardworking man? By 6.30 am I was already at the shop, setting things up. Being a market day, customers started strolling in as early as 7am to get the most out of their shopping experiences. Many of the customers I dealt with were women, either pregnant or new mothers, because the shop sells baby clothes. From light outfits like socks,vests,tops,underwear,feeders,dresses,tights,shorts,trousers to heavyweights like baby shawls, sleeping bags,sweaters,jumpers,track suites and much more.

At around 12 noon, I received a call from a buddy of mine who had been trying to connect me with a certain jobo.He had booked an appointment with one of his closest friend who had promised us something. They wanted me to meet them in town at exactly 3pm and so I decided to close the shop at 1pm.I rushed back to the house for a quick shower and change of clothes. By 2.15 pm I was seated inside a matatu headed to town. You know how hard it is to wait for someone in town? I hate waiting for someone so I also did not want to keep them waiting for me.Does the bible not say that we should do unto others what we would like done unto us? And besides, I was the one asking for a favor, not them and if there was someone to lose, it would be me.

Jam! Jam! Jam! Traffic jam! Even on a Saturday yawa! Me I am tired of this Nairobi jam owada.3pm we were still stuck in South C.I texted my friend that I would arrive a little late, around 3.30pm and if they could find it in their hearts to bear with me, then they should. My friend responded that there was no problem as he was not even in town yet. He suggested we meet at 4pm.That was a relief to me.

There is always this thing about traffic jam.That when you are in a hurry, it gets worse. When you are not in a hurry, it clears up very fast. Or just when you give up waiting and you decide to alight, that is when it starts moving, making you feel a little bit sorry for yourself. 

Now that my new target was to get to town by 4pm, the jam cleared very first and we got to town by 3.20pm.Now it was my turn to wait.40 minutes was such a long waiting time for me that, to shorten it, I decided to buy the Saturday Nation newspaper. After finding a space on one of the city benches, right in front of the Kenya Cinema plaza, Moi Avenue, I settled down for a long read. My eyes first caught the story of Oyoo Mboya, a fellow poet who got involved with a rogue publisher.Titled,”Save upcoming writers from rogue and greedy publishers,” the article, penned by Clive Olero,narrates the sad state that upcoming writers like me find themselves in while trying to get published. The next page captured the journey of another performing poet, Wangui Wangare (Qui Qarre).The article reminded me of when I interviewed her at Kenya National Theatre about two years ago.

At exactly 4pm, I received a call from my friend. He was caught up in a staff-meeting and so he requested me to bear with him. It was a hard thing to do but I had no choice. Two hours later, I was still seated on this bench. My eyes were getting teary from too much reading and my buttocks were sore. It was not until 6.30 pm when we finally met. We crossed the road to the other side of the avenue and entered Lazarus’s restaurant for a chat. We were roommates in Campus back in the day and so we had a lot of catching up to do. The other guy who was to join us called and said he will join us later, at around 8pm.For two hours, we reminisced on our campus days and updated each other on the current happenings in our lives. Our current projects and future plans. Which of our friends are married to whom? What work are they doing? Who is breaking the corporate ceiling and who is losing it? Lucky enough, we never talked of who is dead because there were not such news or rumors of the same.

8.45pm, my wife called me that she had reached town. Accompanied by my friend, I went to meet her hapo Kenya National Archives. We then strolled to Railways station and when she had safely boarded, we strolled back to the city Centre to wait for the other guy.He had called to apologize that he would be running late. After taking tea at Lazaru’s, we thought this second round of waiting we might do a lot better with a bottle of Tusker, maybe? Yes? No? We then entered Highlands Platinumz club along Moi Avenue just in time to catch Manchester City scoring a goal against Manchester United to make the scores 2:1.The club was too noisy for our liking but a bouncer came to our rescue just when we were turning back to descend the stairs. He ushered us into a private lounge where we ended up paying Kshs 600 for two Tusker bottles.

The call from the guy we were waiting for came at around 10.05 pm.

“Nimefika town, mko wapi?”

“Highlands Platinumz, Moi Avenue.”

“Highlands Platinumz?? Kwani nyi ni madem?”

“Kwanini?”

“Hiyo ni club ya madem.Kujeni Fareinheit.Mtanipata hapo.”

“Sawa.”

Walking from Highlands Platinumz to Fahrenheit reminded me of how, as campus students with raging hormones, we used to hop from one club to another in Eldoret town. That was close to seven years ago when we possessed free souls. Now we are grown-ups with young families to take care of. All we want is a quiet place to enjoy our drinks and go home, say at around 1pm.But club Fahrenheit was just as noisy as Highlands Platinumz. You have to extend your ears close to another person’s mouth for you to hear what they are saying. With that kind of environment, our main topic of discussion (about me finding a job) was given little time. It was, perhaps, better that way, because as time went by, we were increasingly getting inebriated and that would lessen the seriousness of our talks.

When the clock ticked 11.30 pm, this guy turned his seat to face our backs. Out of curiosity I also turned to have a look at what was going on behind our backs and behold, a woman, with only a thong and a bra, was wounding her lithe body around a shiny pole! Like a rattle snake, she climbed up the pole and then came down in a spiral motion, her hands stretched and her legs zigzagged on the pole to maintain her balance. When she reached the floor, she turned her head up, like swimmer coming out of the water and then spread her legs wide to expose her clean shaven midrib for like three seconds before closing them. Bending in such way that her bare buttocks faced us, she then started shaking those buttocks super-rapidly as if they were connected to a conductor plugged inside a socket and then the power, running from an alternating current supply, turned on.Or was I the one turned on?

(image credits: fanpop.com)