Welcome To My Share of Jua Kali Life

Welcome to my share of Jua Kali life
January 10, 2009 by admin

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“I don’t know whether to trust the thief who wants a share of my neck or the policeman who has enough bullets to
shoot stray ones, but which all the same hit where it matters. In a Jua KaIi republic, you duck in the next alley
when you see a thief being chased by a policeman who looks like he has enough stray bullets to use.”
By WAHOME MUTAHI
Anything can happen in this Jua Kali republic called Kenya. It is a Jua Kali republic and that is why a Kenyan
who probably grew up on omena fish heads can walk to a safe that belongs to someone else on a Sunday
afternoon.
The same Kenyan then persuades a whole Sh54 million in Clinton currency out of that safe and pockets it as if it
is petty cash from a kiosk.
The same Kenyan from this Jua Kali republic then walks out as if he is taking a Sunday afternoon stroll, most
probably humming something like Pesa Position. He then vanishes into thin air; the man simply becomes vapour!
That only happens in a Jua Kali republic like ours because everything is Jua Kali. Actually everyone becomes Jua
Kali in this month of January which many Kenyans wish was banned from the calendar.
It is the month when car owners with Jua Kali wallets drive for only one week. They starve because the makers of
cars decided that the alimentary canals of mobiles must be fed on petrol and not water. Petrol, of course, does not
come from River Chania and not everyone can persuade money to walk out of a safe even if his children are
feeding on hyacinth.
The only people who cease being Jua Kali and whose wallets do not need much panel-beating in this passion
month of January are those belonging to the tribe called headmasters and headmistresses.
In normal circumstances, their cars run for four months in the whole year. Those headmastermobiles are close
relatives of my own Whispermobile so they really need persuasion to move for six months of the year.
For those four months that the headmaster-mobiles run, they have to be persuaded to do so through petrol taken
on credit, most times. Even in the course of those four months, they die and face resurrection through intensive
care provided by Jua Kali mechanics.
A miracle, however, happens in the month of January and those headmastermobiles as well as
headmistressmobiles get a new lease of life. They face total resurrection.
The resurrection comes because of an animal called KCPE. I hear the animal is supposed to sort out Jua Kali
heads from factory-made ones. The factory-made heads are supposed to head for the place we called “Hai” in our
days. Jua Kali heads are supposed to forget that they can find the door to high school.
Jua Kali heads
It happens that not all heads come from a district called Koibatek where heads that show KCPE dust are
manufactured. If you have forgottten, the factory where good heads are made was recently moved to Koibatek
and so the kids there gave KCPE a number of reasons why it should not joke with them.
It also happens that factories for Jua Kali heads were opened in other districts where it feared to show its head.
The result is that at this moment headmasters of high schools there have graduated from tu-mwalimu to people of
great substance.
They are men and women of great substance because many adults happen to be the parents of children whose
heads have been declared Jua Kali by KCPE. When you have such a child, you have no choice but to persuade the
headmaster or headmistress to assume that your Junior or Investment went to Koibatek.
You can only do so by persuading the headmastermobile to start moving again through donating something for its
owner to fund a project of his or her choice.
This is to say that a high school chief does not need to go to a safe and persuade money out of it. Instead, a safe
walks to him or her at this time and demands to be opened because there are many heads that have been declared
to be of the Jua Kali type by KCPE.
Let me leave headteachers alone because I happen to be the father of two products with Jua Kali heads. This
indeed makes me a Jua Kali father.
Such a father needs to be a friend of headmasters because that is the only way he can persuade them that his kids
missed the Koibatek head factory by inches.
I should actually be more worried about other things that happen in this Jua Kali republic. Right now the thing to
worry about is the fact that the month of January is coming to an end.
I should be celebrating the ending of the month because, like many Kenyans, I live a totally Jua Kali life every
January because my wallet was turned Jua Kali by the events of December.
But instead of celebrating, I am feeling like a rabid dog without a vaccination certificate. This is because I don’t
have a vaccination certificate otherwise known as a new generation Identity Card.
What happens to such a dog is that it is shot on sight. I am told that if I don’t get a vaccination certificate, I will
eat rotten meat like a dog in Kamiti for months come the end of this month.
I have nothing against that vaccination certificate except that it is not a Jua Kali affair, so I am supposed to
present my bald head in the sun for hours before I can be declared to belong to a new generation. The end result is
that I will end up with a scrambled if not boiled brain before I can get that vaccination certificate.
Something else I cannot understand is what that vaccination certificate is supposed to do to my life. I have always
been Whispers Son of the Soil and a new ID will not make me Whispers Son of the Lake.
Anyway, we are in a Jua Kali republic and that’s where a man must be made to feel like a canine because he does
not have an item called a kipande.
Next time they will tell you to learn how to bark before you can be allowed to vote. We are still in a Jua Kali
republic and that is why right now I don’t know whom to trust.
I don’t know whether to trust the thief who wants a share of my neck or the policeman who has enough bullets to
shoot stray ones, but which all the same hit where it matters.
In a Jua KaIi republic, you duck in the next alley when you see a thief being chased by a policeman who looks
like he has enough stray bullets to use.
The wrong reason
I have to duck because I don’t want to land in a coffin for the wrong reason. One wrong reason is to get shot by a
policeman who was taught in Kiganjo that the leg is located in the same place as the heart. The same policeman in
this Jua Kali republic will shoot that leg to stop you from escaping.
Since he thinks the leg is found where the heart is, you have no choice but to meet your maker. In the
circumstances, you will find a picture of a very dead Son of the Soil in the newspapers. Alongside his past tense
picture will be the picture of a pistol.
It will be said that the same Son of the Soil who cannot hold a cigarette straight because of hands that have been
turned Jua Kali by alcoholic beverages, shot at the police and that was why he was shot dead. It will be said that
the cops who shot him dead are lucky to be alive for they were almost wasted by bullets.
Since these days funeral announcements must say what turned you into past tense, it will be said that I was killed
by a “tragic bullet bravely borne”.
Children in academies
I will not be put into a mortuary. That just sounds too Jua Kali. I will be put in a funeral parlour because that’s
where bodies that are not Jua Kali are put.
The same owners of those bodies are said to be fathers of children in academies and not primary schools. Primary
schools are Jua Kali but academies, even if they are thatched with grass, are supposed to be tough.
It is all about being in a Jua Kali republic. Anything goes.
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Twists of the new post-Beijing ‘newspeak’

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“Never, ever, refer to that fellow holding a bowl before your face as a beggar unless you wish him to sue you. In
the spirit of the new language, you are to call him a Self-employed Outdoor Money Solicitor’’
By WAHOME MUTAHI
From today, anyone who dares call me bald will face my solicitors.
Note that I am not talking about mere lawyers but solicitors, meaning that they will be talking millions out of you
before you can say shilling, for calling me a balding fellow.
It is not that I have suddenly grown hair on the semi-arid area that is the top of my head. I have not benefited that
much from irrigation.
It is that since women went to Beijing, it is a crime to call certain things what they were called before.
As a result, you will be taken to court by some skirt-wearers if you call that familiar hole in the streets, a “man
hole”.
Ever since Beijing, it has become a personhole. You can also call it a “personnel access structure”. It is also called
a “femhole”. A girl is no longer a girl but a “pre-woman”. And a waitress a “waitron”.
In the circumstances, I am not bald. I am simply hair disadvantaged or, if you want it to sound like a professor,
you could say “Whispers Son of the Soil is folicularly challenged.”
It won’t make me any less bald but I will feel as if there is some vegetation on my head.
Be warned also that I no longer have a beer belly. It is a big insult to say that I have a big tummy.
Swallowed a goat
From now on, you will have to say: “Whispers the father of the pre-woman called Investment is stomach-
challenged.”
It will still mean that I look as if I have swallowed a goat together with the horns, but it will make me feel better.
I am not the only one who will sue you for using words that you thought were safe all along.
The fellow you have been calling a car washer will see Muite and Co. Advocates if you call him so from now on.
He is to be called a vehicle appearance specialist.
Please don’t forget to check whether the car radio is still there after he has cleaned the car, because his new name
won’t stop him from wanting to walk away with what is not his.
If by any chance he has taken off with the car radio don’t call him a thief or he will sue you to the end of the
world. He is no longer a thief but a personal property appropriation specialist.
It sounds so nice that one of these days, a fellow who is after your wallet will introduce himself by giving you his
business card which reads: “Mkono Wembe, Personal Property Appropriation Specialist. Specialised in Wallets.”
He will then give you a look to suggest that if you don’t part with your wallet instantly, you will part with your
life.
Parting with your life, otherwise called dying or becoming past tense, won’t make you dead in the new language.
You will not be dead but non-viable, or once again if you wish to sound like a professor, say, terminally
inconvenienced. You are also allowed to call those who are past tense, metabolically different, which is the
opposite of temporarily metabolically abled.
Watch out what you say when beggars are present. Never, ever, refer to that fellow holding a bowl before your
face as a beggar unless you wish him to sue you. In the spirit of the new language, you are to call him a Self-
employed Outdoor Money Solicitor.
You might want to call him something else – an applicant for private sector funding. I know people who have
teeth that remind you of that small creature called a mole. This is to say that they have brown teeth.
There are others whose teeth remind you of a saw that has cut through a lot of timber. It is an offence from now
on to say that they have ugly teeth. From now on, you shall say: “Jane has an alternative dentation.’’
Perhaps, Jane hangs along Koinange Street wearing a skirt the size of a thumb and calling every man who looks
as if he has money, ‘darling’ and ‘sweetheart”.
She is of the type whose greetings are; “I-Iove-you-buy-me- Tusker-Baridi,” all said in rapid fire. Hang on a
minute before you call her a prostitute or a twilight girl.
These days, your are likely to get a card from her saying: “Jane Dawn, Sex Care Provider.” She might add that
she provides escort service.
She will tell you that she is very angry with some men and name one of them as belonging to the type called
access controller in hotels. Those will turn out to be the door men who prevent sex care providers from going into
five star hotel.
She will, of course, be a friend of other men. You call some of them pimps today if you want to pay a million
shillings.
If you don’t want to pay that kind “ of money, you can call them “individuals holding management positions in
the sex workforce.”
After many years of walking up and down the streets in the name of sex care provision, Jane will certainly
become chronologically gifted.
That is the new way of saying that the subject called Jane has become old. When she gets chronologically gifted,
she will of course become cosmetically different.
This is to say that she will become ugly.
Finally, you can therefore say of Jane: “Jane, who has been a sex care provider for many years, has now become a
self-employed outdoor monetary solicitor.
This is because she is now chronologically gifted and is of alternative dentation after chewing too much miraa.
It looks as if she will soon become metabolically non-viable after 50 years of being temporarily metabolically
abled.”
She might not be so unlucky, she could actually become a utensil sanitiser which is my way of saying a dish
washer because she is alternatively schooled.
When you are alternatively schooled, it means that you did not look at very many books in your life. It means that
you saw the inside of the classroom through the window.
Last week, newspapers got it all wrong. They said that city council cleaners went on strike. They did not. The
people who were on strike were environmental hygienists, among them a number of animal welfare officers.· The
latter are often called dog catchers.
Before they returned to work, some of the workers were threatening to release organic biomass in the city.
Organic biomass is the correct term for sewage.
Don’t say that I am lying to you if you think that I am not telling the truth. Just say I have just uttered a
categorical inaccuracy or accuse me of terminological inexactitude.
There is a person who “womanages” and not “manages” my household where one of the residents is a “pre-
woman” called the Investment.
You would like to call her Thatcher or my wife, but she is no longer that. Ever since Beijing happened, she is now
called the domestic incarceration survivor.
She is also called an unwaged labourer and a domestic artist because at one time, she studied domestic arts which
you would call home economics.
Sobriety-deprived
Don’t be shocked to hear a fellow saying the following at Rhoda’s place: “Today, I don’t want to be sobriety-
deprived because the domestic artist in my house is likely to turn me into non-viable matter with her cooking stick
if I do so.”
When you are sobriety-deprived, it means you are full of kanywaji, or chemically inconvenienced because you
are perhaps a substance abuse survivor (an alcoholic.
If you really want to be kind, you call that kind people of different sobriety.
May be that fellow is scared of his domestic artist because she is more vertically gifted and differently sized. This
is to say that she is taller and fatter than he is.
Perhaps he is scared because he is cerebrally challenged meaning that he has the brain of a goat.
That survivor of domestic incarceration will not call you her husband. After Beijing, husbands are called
“significant other.” That is also what you call your Thatcher.
If you happen to be of the kind called sugar daddy, that is, you have a habit of telling pre-women that you are
likely to make them your survivors of domestic incarceration, your significant other, that is, your Thatcher, will
not describe you as a dirty old man.
She will say that you are a “sexually focused chronologically gifted individual.” She will of course not be amused
and will eventually go to court and sue for divorce.
Magistrate Kidulla will not hesitate to order that you pay something called alimony, that is, real money for being
divorced by your significant other.
That is no longer called alimony. It is called a back salary to the former domestic artist.
See with your mouth
In that case, you will see with your mouth, that is, become so shocked that no words will come out of your mouth.
In that case, the newspapers will report: “When the court read the judgment, Mr Hakuna Bibi was immediately
vocally challenged.”
Soon, children will be reading a subject called Herstory and not History. At school they will be taught about
personslaughter and not manslaughter.
Eventually, some of them will get Spinster’s degrees and not Bachelor’s or Masters degrees because the latter
were banned after Beijing.
All along, I have thought that mitumba clothes, alias Marehemu George, are called used clothes.
They are not. They are simply called previously enjoyed clothes, and you will wear them for ever if you are
differently advantaged, that is to say, poor.
So if you think that I am boring, don’t say so otherwise I will sue. I won’t tell you that you are wrong because by
doing so, I will be wrong.
I will simply say that you are differentially logical. All the same I will understand what you mean if you say I am
differently interesting or charm free. Charm free I might be but I am not alternatively schooled.
That is why I will know what they mean when they say in a supermarket that I am a non-traditional shopper. They
will simply be saying that I am a shoplifter.
If my boss comes to hear that I am that kind of shopper, I will become involuntarily leisured, that is, jobless.
Worse, I might become a client of the correctional system ending up at Kamiti .
I hear this new language is called politically-correct or Newspeak and you don’t belong to the new world if you
don’t know it.
Personally, I had better speak sheng or Whisspeak. However, I belong to the new world and so you will be
hearing it in this third rate thing.
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Why Jethro does not dread nuclear waste

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By WAHOME MUTAHI, February 19, 1995
Somebody was trying to make Kenyans nuclear-powered by selling them milk that contains what goes into the
making of bombs. This is to say that we would have entered the nuclear age through our stomachs and without
trying too hard.
I hear that if that nuclear powder had gone into our stomachs, a number of things would have happened.
One is that the Kenyans who went all the way to the Ukraine wherever that is) to get nuclear-powered milk,
would have acquired nuclear power in their pockets without much effort. They would have become the owners of
a good supply of Pattnis to keep them out of poverty for many years.
The other thing is that other Kenyans would have spent their Pattnis on that milk.
As a result they would have been so nuclear-powered that soon they, would be producing children with tails and
four heads. Very soon we would be looking like those ancestors of ours called dinosaurs.
There is one person though, who does not believe that contaminated milk can do anybody any harm. He happens
to be my uncle Jethro, that man ‘who has been married to my aunt Kezia for the last 60 years and still threatens to
divorce her if she fails to understand that he married her and not the other way round.
Jethro was once the manufacturer of contaminated milk and although he had never been to the Ukraine, he thinks
what he created in his efforts to kill a man called Loli Koro was worse than nuclear waste.
However, Loli Koro survived and that is why Jethro cannot understand how milk contaminated with something as
simple as nuclear waste can harm anybody. Loli Koro’s original name was Lord Cole.
But Jethro thought that whoever manufactured the English language did not mean it to be used on the slopes of
Mount Kenya.
As a result, Jethro’s tongue as well, as those of other residents of the slopes where I was born and brought up,
refused to understand that the man was Lord Cole and so he became Loli Koro.
Loli Koro was yet another white man with a peeling nose living up the slopes; but unlike the man from Torino
called Father Camissassius, he did not go to where I was born and brought up to fight the devil and his assistants.
Loli Koro came all the way from the land of King George the Fifth, and his mission was not, to eat the arrow
roots, sweet potatoes and other tubers that grow in the slopes. He came because he had heard that the slopes of
Mount Kenya was a land of milk and honey.
He had heard that there were fools like uncle Jethro who were willing to help him get the milk and honey.
So he arrived there and declared that the first 500 acres that he set his eye on were his although he did not belong
to Jethro’s clan or any other up the slope.
The man had never milked cows or held a jembe where he came from, but that was not going to stop him from
owning cows and maize from the land that he had taken from uncle Jethro.
That is why, like my boss, he started telling the people of the slopes that if they want to see the future, they must
work for him for the wages that he offered. Uncle Jethro
found himself working for Loli Koro not because he was a fool but since like I he needed a payslip to among
others things, pay something called hut tax which today we call the Pay as You Earn or Pay as You Eat.
Jethro had no choice but to pay the tax because if he did not, he would have ended up in the local Kamiti Prison
which is where Loli Koro who served as a land owner, policeman, the Amos Wako, magistrate and prison warden
of the area, put people who failed to pay that tax.
That tax amounted to something like five bob a year which was equal to Jethro’s total salary for three months
after all deductions, including his contribution to his savings and credit society.
You see, at one point, Jethro had planned to save enough with that society to take a loan so that he could go into
snuff business and so say good bye to working for Loli Koro.
Finally, he did not become a snuff wholesaler despite saving five cents every two months and making my aunt
Kezia eat arrow roots with water so that they could accumulate enough to go into business.
However, other things happened. One of them was that poverty made itself a permanent visitor in Jethro’s house.
The other was that Jethro knew that the same poverty would not have come if Loli Koro had stayed in England
and not given himself a large piece of soil up the slopes of Mount Kenya.
As a result, when Jethro thought of his boss, the Briton with a peeling nose, a number of things came to his mind.
He thought of a snake, a slimy snail and of a pig whose skin had been roasted by the sun.
In other words, Jethro kept wishing that he could meet his boss in a dark valley. He wished that during that
meeting, he was armed with a poisoned arrow. In those circumstances, he would have done one very simple thing
which would have been to turn Loli Koro into past tense.
Loli Koro was not in the habit of walking in a lone valley unarmed and Jethro was also not given to walking in
such valleys at night armed with poisoned arrows when his boss was in such a state.
Jethro was to be found in the Lord’s kitchen where his name now became boy although he was several decades
old. He was called ‘Boy’ by Loli Koro and his clan, because he existed for no other reason than to make his
boss’s clan happy by cooking for them.
Because he was the cook and therefore Boy, he had to call his boss Bwana, the wife Memsahib and their Junior,
Bwana Mdogo. Memsahib, however, liked to be called Leri Beti which meant Lady Betty.
Failure to call them by the right names meant loss of pay slip or demotion to work in the shamba under the hot
sun.
Jethro finally saw that he would never get a chance to take a weapon and murder his boss and his entire family
one night in a quiet valley where only crickets would witness the midnight massacre.
But being neither too clever nor too foolish (I am like him), he eventually discovered that he had a weapon
against his boss which he had owned all along but had not thought about. The weapon was the nose and what it
produced.
Jethro discovered that the nose, which was connected to the throat was not designed just for breathing and taking
in snuff. He suddenly discovered that the African nose was also created to be a weapon against such people as
Loli Koro.
The discovery came one morning after Jethro had blown his nose with his bare hands and something very thick
landed into his palm. It had come from his nose and it was a load of brown mucus.
He shouted “Eureka!” on seeing it because he thought he had seen the ultimate nuclear weapon against Loli Koro
and his entire family.
He told himself, “Jethro, God was not foolish when he created an African nose able to produce this kind of stuff.
He was not foolish either when he created snuff that goes into the nose and comes out with· mucus. If this is not
poison enough to finish off Loli Koro and his family, then I don’t know what poison is.”
With those few remarks, Jethro spent the day a very happy man waiting for the following morning when he was
due to prepare breakfast for Bwana, Leri Beti and Bwana
Mdogo. For the whole day and night, Jethro did not blow his nose or clear his throat.
He was accumulating enough nuclear power ready for attack the following morning, a process that he enriched by
taking in more snuff than usual that night.
It was a whistling Jethro who proceeded to take out the ingredients for making tea and as he whistled under his
breath, watched the water boil. Then he added milk and as that was happening, he stepped back to launch the first
nuclear weapon.
He launched it by holding his nose between two fingers, holding his breath for a moment and then blowing his
nose like an angry elephant blowing its trumpet. That nose was directed into the pot of boiling tea and its contents
landed as if it had been shot by a gold medal hopeful during Olympic.
Jethro stepped near to survey the damage that he had afflicted and he was happy with the results because floating
on the tea and ready to be boiled with the rest of the stuff was a very generous deposit of a mixture of tobacco and
other things.
Soon Jethro was, pouring the concoction into a kettle ready to serve it to Loli Koro, Memsahib and Bwana
Mdogo. My uncle was sure that what he had supplied was going to kill the lot slowly but surely without him
being discovered.
It was Jethro who served the tea with trembling hands having almost turned back during his journey to the table.
The same man withdrew to the kitchen as soon as he had laid the tea on the table and immediately broke into a
sweat as if he had been attacked by a sudden bout of malaria.
When Loli Koro shouted his name a short while later, he knew his end had come and as he presented himself
before his boss, he expected a bullet to go through his head. The bullet did not land but instead words did so.
They were not bullet-like words but instead sounded like music. They were the words of Memsabib who said in
the Kisahili called kisettler: “Boy ongeiza plus tomato halafu leo wewe nafanya·chai mzuri sana. Kwisha
wekacream ama nini? Very good.”
Then she turned to her husband and asked him, “Don’t you agree dear? Very rich tea.”
Loli Koro replied: “Never tell a native that he has done well. You know how these niggers are, you praise them
and the next time, they are going to spit in your tea. All the same, darling, I agree with you. Today the tea is first
class. Reminds me of what we used to have in Ceylon.”
Jethro did not understand a word about native and spitting but he was horrified that Memsahib bad enjoyed the tea
he had hit with his nuclear bomb. He simply could not understand why the clan did not drop dead after taking the
tea.
The following day he put his nose to work and repeated the process for a week. None of his victims even
complained of a stomachache, leave alone dying but Jethro did not think that he had wasted his time. He had at
least made his enemies drink some very nasty things that came from his nose.
Jethro had a good reason to use his nuclear missiles. It would take a man of his wisdom to know why anybody
would want to make Kenya a nuclear power through our stomachs when Ngunu, that cow owned by my mother is
still producing milk made from grass.
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In the land of bananas, no hope for dowry

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By WAHOME MUTAHI, April 3, 1994
I am still in the land of bananas, that very, place where there is a man who answers to the name husband of
husbands and elder of elders.
If you were not with me last Sunday, then know that I am in a town that was once called Kasozi Ka Impala or the
Hill of the Antelopes.
The town later thought that being called Kasozi ka Impala was as old fashioned as a young warrior wearing a box
hair style calling himself Alphaxad or Albequeque, so it manyanganised its name and became Kampala.
Very soon, it might actually change its name to Kasozi Ka Kaloli. It might later manyanganise its name to Kaloli.
Kaloli happens to be a tribe of birds that likes city life.
So many clans of Kaloli have visited the former hill of antelopes and decided to stay because they are assured of
getting three square meals a day from the garbage dumps.
I did not come to have a look at the Kaloli. They are nothing to look at since at best they remind me of someone I
know when he is naked. That person happens to be Whispers Son of the Soil, meaning they cannot win a beauty
contest.
Elder of elders
I came here to do other things, one of which was to get some wisdom from the husband of husbands, alias the
elder of elders, alias the Kabaka, on how to be an elder and a proper husband. I have not moved an inch towards
being an elder or a proper husband. However, I have done other things.
One of them is to discover whether the local Jeremiah has enough talents in brewing liquids capable of making a
man sing about his banana plantation when he does not own a single banana stem.
I have discovered that the local Jeremiah inherited proper kanywaji skills from his ancestors and his Ruaraka are
the banks of Jinja river. There, he brews Jinja waters that go by names that tell you what they are trying to do to
you.
From the banks of the Nile, the hands of the local Jeremiah produces a froth that the people of Kasozi ka Kaloli
call Kabaka wa Beer. This Kabaka of beers goes by its original name Nile Special.
Since the people of the land of bananas have a habit of speaking as if they are trying to swallow bananas at the
same time, they call it “Nailo”.
The thing about this Kabaka wa Beer, this Nailo, is that after the first two, and particularly if you did not line up
your stomach with enough bananas at lunch, you start imagining that you are indeed, the Kabaka and the husband
of husbands.
Finally, after five Nailo, the temptation is to throw yourself into the Nile in an attempt to show the world that you
can do battle with crocodiles.
The local Jeremiah does not stop at brewing Kabaka wa Beer. His able hands also brew something called Bell.
Once again the people of the land of bananas speak as if they are trying to swallow bananas when ordering for it,
so they end up asking for “Beelo”.
Beelo has a habit of living to its name particularly if your stomach has not been visited by such solids as matoke.
The result is that the following morning after encountering Beelo, you feel as if a thousand lunatics are ringing a
thousand lunatic bells in your head.
You feel as if the St Peter Basilica bell has been transferred from Rome into your head and being rung by a priest
who has just won a wrestling cup at the Olympics.
Even after leading you to the Nile and visiting you with bells, the local Jeremiah is not satisfied. His hands also
brew something called Club. The people of the land of bananas (with bananas in their mouths) are enemies with
anything that answers to letter “C” and “K” so they have never heard of Club.
Instead, they have heard of “Chilab”. Having failed to meet the husband of husbands but having met what the
local Jeremiah brews down the Nile, I have of course met the local Rhodas.
Unlike the Rhodas that I know where I go for my kanywaji at the right temperature, the ones here in the Kasozi ka
Impala do not go to judo and karate schools to qualify to serve you with your liquids.
In other words they don’t first threaten to throw you out if you fail to pay the bill and then later actually do so.
Instead, they kneel before you and after reminding you that you have the capacity of being a major man in your
clan and that in any case you look like the real Kabaka in your house, ask you to pay.
After you pay, they kneel again and thank you for understanding that they too have stomachs. They remind you
that no one has ever developed scabies from being the owner of the Kaguta shilling.
The last time that a skirt wearer knelt before me was when my Thatcher fell on the floor as she tripped when
trying to dance at her age and so I am liking the idea of Rhodas kneeling before me here in the land of bananas.
The only thing I am not liking about them is that their idea of a swallow at the right temperature is rather cold.
They think that a kanywaji at the right temperature should taste like something that has been brought down from
the top of Mount Kenya and that is not very good for my throat.
I don’t know how long I’ll be here in the land of bananas where if anything is not cooked in banana leaves then it
cannot qualify to be food. I will have to run away either because of being driven bananas by the Kaguta shilling
or Luwambo, meaning things cooked in banana leaves.
The Kaguta shilling likes playing deaf and you have to persuade it to behave like money. That is why before the
local Rhoda can part with a Beelo or Nailo she first kneels down and then tells me that it is only “one sausand and
six hundred shi1lings only”.
Then unless I persuade that one “sausand” to leave my pocket, my throat cannot encounter Beelo at ice
temperature.
Right temperature
The Son of the Soil and “sausands” are not very friendly and he cannot continue forever being capable of telling
the local Rhodas, “Mwana, mpereza Beelo erikifuuka”, which is another way of saying, “Rhoda, hand me a Beelo
at the right temperature.” So he will either give in to thirst or return to the original Rhoda.
If he does not return because of thirst, he will return because of encountering things cooked in banana leaves or
Luwambo. A man who was brought up on arrow roots has a throat that finds it difficult to understand things like
matoke muwambo.
He cannot understand chicken luwambo. He certainly cannot understand goat luwambo. A man from the Slopes
understands that a goat, and particularly its ribs, are supposed to taste charcoal fire and not to be wrapped like a
baby in banana leaves. That is mistreating a goat and I am not going to sit around watching it happen.
You never know next time, they might decide to serve something called Bell Luwambo or Whispers Luwambo.
Considering that the Kaguta “sausands” are about to desert me, I have been looking around and thinking quite
hard where to get a fresh supply.
Certainly, the first idea that has come to my head is to announce that I have an Investment, alias a Pajero, to
marry off to the first man who can prove that he knows the language of “sausands.”
I had planned to head for a place called Mbarara where I had heard that fathers of young warriors wanting wives
part with those long horned cows that look fit for the Slopes of Mount Kenya where I was born and brought up.
My only and big trouble is that there is another fellow here in Kasozi ka Kaloli who has been calling himself
Baba Pajero. The fellow shall remain nameless but let it be known that he is also a third rate scribe like I am and
therefore a wage earner.
He has been going round here telling everybody that he is the true Baba Pajero and that he has an Investment
ready to go to an ambitious young man for quite some “sausands.”
He is saying that his Investment has features that say that she is a Nyankole and a Muganda, that is a hybrid of
two sources of beauty.
A Nyankole skirt wearer normally borrows something from the cows in her country.
The horns are very long and so not to be beaten to it, they have long necks on which sit heads that are shaped like
oranges. Their legs suggest that they are wearing two pairs of gumboots.
The skirt wearers from Buganda like wearing some long dress called busuti and when they do s0, they look as if
they are carrying a whole bunch of bananas on their bottoms.
The whispers around here say that an Investment having a Mnyankole neck and a banana bunch load behind will
get a young warrior before one that has Slopes of Mount
Kenya blood, so I am being told that I have no chance of leaving this place with any dowry.
I therefore don’t think that I will leave here with any Ankole cows in the form of a dowry.
I have to do something though to get some “sausands” if I have to stay on in this country of everything Luwamho.
Perhaps by next Sunday, I will have found something.
Let us meet then in this third rate page and find out.
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SoS meets his match in Pajey

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“In the circumstances, I could not leap from the bush, shout a war cry and proceed to play Sani Abacha, that is to
break Brayo’s neck. Instead, I watched the two of them pass near where I was hiding. They were also talking the
highest sedition any two criminals could manage.”
By Wahome Mutahi, November 26, 1995
I happen to be the vice-chancellor of that university called the Whispers homestead where my troubles are more
than those of all vice-chancellors of universities in this country.
My troubles are more because I cannot take a lesson from a man called Prof George Eshiwani who is the
headmaster of Kenyatta University. The man is a big headmaster and that is why his name is followed by the
letters PhD and EBS.
PhD means that he has really seen books in his life. EBS means he knows things about burning spears. Because
he knows something about burning spears, he has closed his high school after his boys and girls attempted to
teach him a thing or two about burning kitchens and cooks.
A man does not become a professor for nothing and that is why after telling his boys and girls to go and set fire
elsewhere, he sat down immediately and wrote a book. The book is called, How to Eat Well Every Day With
Sh30 by Professor G.S. Eshiwani, PhD, EBS.
Although the book has been written by the good professor for his students, I hear it has sold so well that Eshiwani
is now thinking of quitting being a headmaster and going into the business of selling food. I also hear that the
professor is trying to be Jesus. He is studying how to multiply five loaves to feed five thousand people and two
fish to feed two thousand.
I was telling you that I am the vice-chancellor of die Whispers homestead, but I can’t do like teacher Eshiwani. If
I had powers like his, I would just shut the home and tell its residents to return after reading and understanding
How to Eat Well Every Day With Shl0 by Son of the Soil, ENC, MDHA.
I happen to be a man in my clan and that is why I am an Elder, Nyaituga Clan (ENC). I also happen to be a
husband and that is why I am a Member, Distressed Husbands Association of East Africa.
Those titles don’t help me much in my activities as the vice-chancellor of the Whispers homestead because,
unlike a certain headmaster, I cannot tell the men from Kiganjo in blue to start finding out what is in the skulls of
the residents of the house by opening them up with rungus.
The good professor (PhD, EBS) has been receiving quite some help from those men in blue in opening the skulls
of his boys and girls and that is why I think he should have another title.
He should be called Elder of the Swinging Rungu (ESR). Whoever gives titles should also consider giving him
the title of Master of Stomach Economics (MSE) because he has indeed proved to the world that he knows
something about stomach structural adjustment programmes without even being persuaded by the IMF.
Professor G.S. Eshiwani, PhD EBS, ESR, MSE, author of How to Eat Well Every Day With Sh30 is now
considering writing other books. There are whispers that he is about to finish another one called How to be a
Kanu Youth Winger and a Professor in Two Days.
Because I am not Whispers Son of the Soil, PhD, EBS, I don’t know how to deal with the people in my campus
where I am the vice-chancellor particularly now that schools are closed. If the good headmaster of Kenyatta
University were not busy writing books on how to restructure stomachs I would have invited him over to do a bit
of administration on my campus.
I would like him to deal with a member of the female species in that campus called the Investment, alias, the
Pajero, alias Pajey, alias Paje. In case you have forgotten, Thatcher and I brought her into this world so she should
remember always that I deserve dowry from the man who will be bold enough to be my son-in-law.
But the girl has other ideas and that is why as a good student of Prof Eshiwani, PhD EBS, ESR, MSE, I have
taken some very serious steps to make sure that she understands that getting a husband capable of paying dowry is
a sensible thing.
One of them is to put metal bars on windows. Right now the house looks like a high security prison and this has
nothing to do with keeping away thieves who are likely to walk away with my eight-inch, black and white
television which I am still paying for in instalments.
The security system is to keep away misguided young men with enough money to show Pajero that something
called henging is a good idea. I should hang those young men because henging is the business of taking a
daughter of the soil out to shake a leg and discover the contents of a green bottle with the picture of a bird.
Pajey, in her wisdom, thinks that henging is the best invention ever since the wheel was invented. The same
wisdom tells her she cannot walk over to me and say; “Hey dad, tonight I am going out henging with that good
for nothing fellow called Dixon. You could call him Dickie.
We are transnighting, that is henging until morning so I will roll in tomorrow morning. See ya!”
Instead Pajey puts on the face of Mother Teresa, that nun from Calcutta who knows that stomachs need to be fed
on real food unlike the good teacher from Kenyatta. She takes Thatcher’s drum and both mother and daughter go
into singing against the devil as taught by the Sect of Many Waters.
As Pajero heads for her bedroom, I tell myself that I can see her becoming a nun. I tell myself that daughters like
her are the material for convents. I smile and later dream of receiving dowry in the form of a four-wheel Pajero
Intercooler.
I wake up in the morning and while everybody else is awake, even an earthquake cannot wake up the Investment.
The same thing happens quite a number of Sunday mornings and since I don’t have the brain of a Mogotio goat, I
begin to suspect something fishy is going on.
I decide to use my only ally in the homestead where I am the vice-chancellor. That ally is none other than
Whispers Junior alias Ras Whis, alias Whispero Junior. Whispero is, of course, not the kind of fellow to give you
information on a silver platter. You have to buy that information.
I bought part of the information by promising never again to stop him playing what he calls Roots Dubs at a
diabolical volume on the cassette player when I am trying to make my brain stop walking away because of a
hangover.
Roots Dubs is reggae music and that rascal of a son says he has a constitutional right to play what he calls Aire
meditation because “I-an-I are the lions in this kingdom”, whatever that means.
The information I got from Ras Whispero was that somehow, the Pajero walked out of the house on Saturday and
went henging.
I thought there was some truth in that, so I started coming home early on Saturdays and making sure that I kept
the house keys under my pillow. Nothing changed. Pajey continued oversleeping on Sundays and when she
finally woke up, she held her head as if her brain wanted to storm out.
When I asked her why she was behaving as if she had a hangover, she muttered something to the effect that I was
not gender sensitive in the spirit of Beijing. Thatcher joined her in accusing me of being insensitive to the rights
of women and children and cited other examples of my behaviour including failing to provide money to have
Thatcher’s hair cooked at the hairdresser’s.
The truth came out the following weekend. It must have been the end of the month because while I was at
Rhoda’s place before going home, people had been calling me Mutongoria!
Mutongoria is the slopes word for leader and the fellows at Rhoda’s place don’t call you that unless you are
buying them swallow as if you own the Grand Regency. I only buy swallow like that at the end of the month.
Anyway, I had swallowed enough cold ones and the rent money was gone. I was wobbling home, in the small
hours of the night, my head trying to cook up lies to tell Thatcher about what happened to the rent money.
I had thought of telling her that I had been mugged but then, I remembered that I had cooked the same lie too
many times before. I was in that state of confusion when my dim eyes saw two shadows.
When I see shadows like those, I immediately think of Kiganjo products and their misconceived idea that I should
sleep in their cells. In the spirit of avoiding those cells, I ducked into a bush and observed the shadows.
They came to a street light near my house and a miracle happened. One of the shadows, translated itself into the
Investment. The other one became a fellow who lives in our estate and calls himself Brayo. He is actually Brian
and is known, for a number of things.
One of them is that he has been responsible for increasing the population of our estate. The other is that he is
known to be a friend of a green substance that I hear Junior’s agemates calling week grass of skank.
They also call it ngoto, mboza or vichwa. The third thing is that he is known to have knocked off the teeth of
some ambitious fathers who have gone to complain to his parents that he should keep off their daughters.
In the circumstances, I could not leap from the bush, shout a war cry and proceed to play Sani Abacha, that is to
break Brayo’s neck. Instead, I watched the two of them pass near where I was hiding. They were also talking the
highest sedition any two criminals could manage.
The Investment was saying: “Usimind yule buda was mine. Yeye ni wobbler sana. Nasneakia tu kwa Udiro na eti
saa hiyo amefichakeys.”
That Brayo fellow who can only be handled by Prof Eshiwani said: “Pajei usikahahe! Si nilikushow nitakumarry.
Next weekend unashora je.”
Pajero responded: “Tutaishia tu kama kawa. Tutaishia Kanj.”
My warrior blood was boiling because what Pajero was saying was that I have the brains of a slopes goat. She
was saying that while I was hiding the keys all the time, she still sneaked out. Brayo was saying that he had
intentions of increasing the population in my house.
I must have made a noise that sounded like a charging bull. The two criminals parted hurriedly. I was about to
leap out of the bush when I remembered that Brayo had the blood of Mike Tyson.
My eyes followed Pajero and I saw her head for her bedroom window. She opened it from outside and jumped in.
I also jumped from the bush roaring towards the house.
Thatcher took her time opening the door and when she finally did, she accused me of being a nuisance to the
neighbourhood by making noises that are normally associated with animals.
I therefore could not dare to go to Pajero’s bedroom for fear of, once again, being accused of acting against the
spirit of Beijing by waking up Pajero.
I slept and when I questioned the girl the following morning as she held her head in agony, she denied everything.
She denounced Brayo and said she was horrified by the accusation.
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Why ‘clan experts’ will have a field day

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By WAHOME MUTAHI, September 1, 1996
When death harvests you in Kenya, you really get into trouble. Now that you have been translated from present
tense to past tense, you become another matter all together.
You don’t get into trouble of course if you are like Whispers the Son of the Soil. The Son of the Soil belongs to
the class called loafless. This is the class that lives below diet all their lives and are likely to find themselves
loafless in the next world.
When you have been loafless all your life, they want to plant you in the grave very quickly. Perhaps they fear that
even though you are past tense, you are likely to rise and start borrowing a pound here and a hundred bob there
from the gathered mourners.
They will plant you in the grave very fast if you are lucky enough to find a priest who does not have much respect
for himself. These days when you become past tense and you have been loafless all your life, the local priest will
suddenly become very busy and find no time to turn you into the condition called “from soil to soil”.
Of course if you have been living above diet, that is if you have been having enough loaf, the local priest will
suddenly be seen in your compound with all his paraphernalia ready to tell the world that he had a breakfast
conversation with God who assured him that the late loafed person is already in heaven.
You don’t have to give up though when you become past tense after a life of total loaflessness. Not when you
come from the Slopes of Mount Kenya where I was born and brought up and where a man with a peeling nose
called father Cammissasius used to battle the devil.
In these days of small five bob coins which avoid your pocket when you need them, there are enough priests
there. There are enough such priests whom I shall call mtumba priests.
They are mtumba priests because they wake up one day and decide that they are material for the dog collar. This
is to say that they declare themselves capable of doing what Father Cammissasius used to do after many years of
being cooked into a real priest.
Such mtumba priests are like police sniffer dogs and know when there is trouble, meaning when a real priest is
not available. You see, they happen to live a life of loaflessness and hope that one day they will earn a real loaf by
dispatching you and me to the grave when a real priest is not available.
Lack of a real priest is the only real trouble you are likely to encounter after you have lived a loafless life. There
are exceptions though like in the case of this man who came from Maragoli land near a place called Nyang’ori or
something like that.
Past tense
That is of course where even when a man is becoming completely past tense, he still demands his right to have his
share of ekelenge and zimondo. Ekelenge are the firestones or legs of a chicken while zimondo are those tiny but
juicy parts of a chicken called gizzards which are only eaten by total human beings called men.
Anyway, this man from Nyang’ori where I hear my friend Cricodilus Niloticus comes from had lived a life of
being loafless and that is what made him visit Nairobi to see his brother-in-law.
This brother-in-law was a man of loaf so he generally put the man from Nyang’ori in a state called feelanga free
and freelanga good. This is to say that the man from Nyang’ori who had all his life bathed from a karai now saw
a real shower.
The same man who had in his life believed that the only vegetable God in his wisdom created was mrenda now
discovered spaghetti in Nairobi.
It happened that death harvested the man from Nyang’ori a few weeks after he returned home and his brother-in-
law from Nairobi went to Join the others who were going to plant him. Like a true Maragoli, he did not edit his
mourning on the funeral day.
He started his mourning a long way from the compound and he was heard screaming that his clan had lost the
only man who in the history of the land had knocked down a bull with his fist.
By the time he got to where the coffin was, he had called the man who had become past tense “the thigh of an
elephant”, “the shoulder of a buffalo” and “the terror of leopards”.
Then he finally came to the coffin to view the body of the late relative by which time, tears had blinded him.
Suddenly his eyes dried up and let out a scream. Then he yelled, “Msuti endahi! My best suit! I have been looking
for it for weeks. Now I know who took it!”
He had finally discovered who had stolen his suit in Nairobi but that did not stop Pastor Nehemiah Castor Philip
Abednego Walumbengo of Nyang’ori Pentecostal Most Reformed Church of East Africa from going on with the
service and declaring that the man who had become past tense was now one of the angels performing in the
heavenly orchestra musica.
I am not like the man from Nyang’ori so when I become past tense, I won’t be found dressed in a stolen suit even
though I generally live a loafless life. I am not quite sure though that more trouble than missing a real pastor to
plant me in the soil will not follow me.
I have now reason to believe that some people have had this idea that the Son of the Soil has some real money
hidden somewhere and that when I become past tense, they might have some of it.
I have those fears because in the past, there have been some members of a certain gender who have suddenly
declared that they will commit suicide if they are not photographed with me.
As a result, there are photographs of a balding fellow who also has a beer belly in the company of members of
that gender, some of them accompanied by their juniors and investments.
That balding fellow also called Whispers has been photographed with members of that gender with their
offspring, knowing too well that the said human beings also carry the title Miss or Ms.
My fears now are that once I become past tense because one day I will certainly be harvested by death, a member
of such a gender will emerge and produce a photograph also called a graphic diagram showing a smiling Son of
the Soil.
The diagram will also show an equally smiling member of the opposite gender accompanied by a smiling
investment belonging to her.
Opposite gender
The member of the opposite gender will then declare that once in my life, I was truly married to her and one thing
led to another. One of those things is the investment pictured in the diagram.
Overnight there will be experts on the matter and many members of the clan from where the member of the
opposite gender comes from will become experts on genes. One will be heard to say: “Look at that nose and tell
me if it is not a photocopy of that of the Son of the Soil. I can tell a familiar nose when I see one.”
Another one will say: “Look at the hairline of the girl in the picture. It says that if she had been a boy, there would
have been total loss of hair just like her father the Son of the Soil. The hairline says that Whispers is the father of
this child.”
There would be other experts on how to divide my so called wealth. There would an authority on matters of the
soil who would say: “That piece of semi arid land in Ng’arua belongs to our daughter whom Whispers brought
into this world. According to our traditions, the first wife, namely Thatcher can only inherit ancestral land in the
Slopes.”
They will say that because I will not be in a state to answer. I would have wished to tell them that in my loafless
life, I had done many crazy things but I had not managed to produce a child by E-mail and Internet.
Since I will not have a chance to defend myself, I have from now on declared it illegal for any member of the
opposite gender who is not my Thatcher or the Investment to be photographed with me. I will not be
photographed with any even if she is having a moustache, a beer belly or the severest of gout.
Since I am Ioafless, I have never disowned my clan. I belong squarely to the Nyaituga clan which I hear might
have migrated from Kisii. That might not stop another clan claiming that I belong to them when I become past
tense. In this case they will claim that if they don’t bury me, they will be “eaten” by a curse that makes men grow
tails.
In the meantime, my real Thatcher will claim that in the course of my loafless life, I wrote something called a
will.
I will not be there to say that I wrote the will in a moment of weakness; that is to say one morning when my brain
had been fractured by what I had drunk the previous night.
I will not be there to say that I wrote the will with a trembling hand and declared that when I become past tense I
should be roasted instead of being planted. That will of course not stop Thatcher from making sure that I am
roasted and my ashes scattered in all bars where I used to drink according to my wishes.
That will make the living and dead members of the Nyaituga clan declare that Thatcher has brought them a curse
from which they will not recover in a century. Experts will emerge overnight and declare that the clan must be
cleansed now because they cannot wait for the year 2000 and beyond.
Swallowing places
That is why they will decide to bury me although at that moment I will be in the form of ashes scattered in all
swallowing places where I had murdered my payslip and in the process made myself loafless.
I guess since I will not be there to be buried they will have to look for something else. Coming from the slopes, I
suspect they will bury an arrowroot and call it the late Whispers Son of the Soil.
I guess that will be all right since you can’t accuse an arrow root of having fathered a child by E-mail and
Internet. You can’t accuse ashes of doing that either.
But you can accuse a man lying very dead in a coffin with or without a stolen suit of using Email to father
children who should take a piece of his Ng’arua estate now that he is past tense.
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It’s tough being a hunter and gatherer

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You part with the money but you don’t see the man for the next one week. When you bump into him in the
streets, he seems surprised to see you and says, “Chief, you are a lost man. Just imagine, the day before yesterday,
I had a whole three thousand shillings . . . I have nothing in my pockets. Would you by any chance have a ka-
fifty? I will pay back with whatever else I owe.”
By WAHOME MUTAHI,December 6, 1998
Now I think you all know that there are people who carry a whole one million bob in the boot of their cars and
then call that petty cash. It is so little petty cash that when their wallets dry up, they dispatch their drivers to go
the boot to refill the wallet.
I know all about it because I have been reading about certain Kenyans who have been borrowing millions from
banks and then pretending that they owe what I owe Man Kiboro, my local kiosk man.
I have been getting the idea that all they need to do to have a million in their pockets as part of their lunch money
is walk into the bank at around mid-day.
Once they are inside, the manager opens the safe and asks them: “How much today? A million or three. Please
don’t take less than a million. You will break my heart if you do so.” The fellow would not like to break the heart
of the manager so he takes two and a half million very reluctantly.
If that is not what has been happening, then I don’t know how those Kenyans we have been reading about and
their millions have managed to get so much from banks, the same places where hunters and gatherers like
Whispers the Son of the Soil are not welcome.
Ask me how the manager looks like and I will tell you that I have absolutely no idea. I have made attempts to
meet them but next time, I will try to shake God with my own hands instead of trying to talk to a bank manager.
I have tried to meet those characters called bank managers and they have made me understand why they are called
so. They are called bank managers, because they operate from bunkers where the likes of Whispers the Son of the
Soil are not supposed to come near.
So what happens when I present myself wearing a borrowed suit because none of mine is fit to be worn when one
is seeing a bank manager? I go to the counter where appointments to see the manager are made and I meet the
kind of character I was telling you last Sunday is found in a bank.
The character is otherwise called a stone face because as I said, bankers look like funeral home attendants and
think smiling is a crime. I announce my name to the stone face and I say I want to see the manager.
“What about?” asks the stone face giving me a look that suggests that I have just escaped from Kamiti Prison. I
reply, “1 am interested in taking a loan.”
The stone faced sizes with my head. I add, “just little money to finish a house I am building. Stone face asks:
“would you by any chance be having an account with us?”
The way he asks suggests that he expects a No. I tell him that I have an account. He cannot believe me and he
looks at me in a way to say that if indeed I have an account, a mistake was made by whoever allowed me to have
one.
Stone face demands that I produce documentary evidence to show that a mistake was made sometime in the past.
The mistake happens to be for anyone to have imagined that I qualified to have an account.
Relevant documents
I produce the relevant documents to prove that indeed I have an account. Stone face takes the documents and
disappears into the stomach of the bankwhere I cannot see him. I assume that he is finally impressed with me and
has gone to book an appointment for me with the mysterious character called a bank manager.
The fellow returns after half an hour and asks me, “Yes, can I help you?” I mutter things to the effect that he had
taken my documents in and that I was expecting him to come and tell me whether I can see the manager. He
scratches his head as I pray to God to strike the man with dandruff and other afflictions that affect the place he is
scratching.
He makes a quick turn and this time returns after five minutes, holding my documents. He asks again why I want
to see the manager. I tell him that I have always wanted to join the class of landlords and therefore that I need a
loan to build a house.
The man manages a smile and I tell myself that he is pleased to know that I am an investor. I expect him to open
the door so that I can meet this mysterious man called the manager.
I discover that I am very wrong when the same stone face, now wearing a face that looks like granite asks me:
“Do you belong to a co-operative society by any chance?” I say I belong to one. The man then asks: “Why then
don’t you take a loan from it?”
I give him the look that I normally give the landlord, that is the one that says that I would like to see him in a
coffin. The man does not get the message and he says, “if your co-operative society is not co-operative, why don’t
you try your funeral and benevolent society?
“You know the Nyaituga Burial and Benevolent society. Such societies are known to help the less, fortunate
members of society.”
The man is telling me that it is easier for me to die than to see the bank manager. In other words, the man is
offering me sound advice that my kind does not qualify for loans from banks. My kind can only be trusted by co-
operative societies. However, I still insist that I must see the bank manager.
Stone face now puts on a face that suggests a hard rock and says: “At the moment, we are not lending for house
building. It is our company policy.”
The way he says “we” and “our” suggests that he is the chairman of the bank. The next thing I know is that he is
very busy opening the door to the manager’s office, for a fellow who carries petty cash in the boot of his car.
The man has come to try and not break the manager’s heart by agreeing to take yet another three million shillings
from the bank. Once again I cannot get a chance to see this mysterious man called the bank manager. May be I
will see him in the next millennium.
It was one man called Bill son of the Spear Shaker or William Shakespeare who said something to the effect that
neither a lender nor a borrower be. Of course Bill was not living in Kenya where if you don’t borrow, you are not
a Kenyan. He also did not live in Kenya so he would not have known that try as you may, you must lend.
I only wish Bill could have offered some sound advice on borrowing because those of us who live by hunting and
gathering live on borrowing. The only things that we own and are not borrowed are our names.
I have yet to know how to count a borrowed million shillings lent to me although I hear it is some hundred
thousand multiplied by a ten. However, I know what is to borrow from Mama Mboga who has never handled a
million either but sells those vital greens.
Apart from those greens she also owns a dog-eared book where she is willing to put your name and enter what
you have borrowed. Mama Mboga does not of course lend to anyone. She does not lend to civil servants.
She is old enough to know that they are very good at telling stories about an item called the computer. She is very
familiar with a story that emerges from some civil servants at the end of the month that goes: “Mama, the
computer has broken down and as a result I cannot pay you.”
Very simple argument
Her argument in that kind of case is very simple. It is that in the first place she did not lend to a computer so it is
not her business whether that machine broke down or not. In that case, the next time the civil servant wants to
borrow from her, she is very firm that her dog-eared book does not welcome his kind.
She still makes the mistake of lending me sukuma wiki (kale) and associated greens believing that since my life is
not controlled by a computer, I will pay. She does not know that by the time I am taking those greens from her on
credit, my neck is wanted by those others I have borrowed from.
She does not know that in the previous days, I have behaved like other Kenyans who are permanent borrowers
because they are hunters and gatherers. If you are one, you know how they behave.
A Kenyan who wants to borrow two pounds from you does not come waving his title deed and declare that he has
no bus fare. Instead, he will come to where you are obeying your thirst and first of all observe your buying habits.
He is trying to see how much you are worth and therefore how much he can get out of you. He is a patient
creature and will stick at your table as he chews that packet of groundnuts costing five bob that he took on credit
before he came to where you are.
The man will chew as if he is contemplating on the future of the world’s economy. Then he will finally say: “Son
of the Soil, it is you I wanted to see a small one.”
When a Kenyan tells you that he wants to see you a “small one”, he is not likely to talk to you about the dangers
of liquefying your liver and brain with Pilsner Ice but you might not be aware so you rise.
The man leads you to a corner as if he is about to make you take an oath and he says; “Whisey, I know that you
are a busy man and I would not have disturbed you.
“Why I needed to see you a small one is because, you know . . . It is like this. I had a cheque that was supposed to
be cleared today but you know how banks are these days. They behave as if they feel pain when they pay.”
“This is to say that as you are looking at me, the mother of my children who really is also your wife because she
and yours are the same age does not have anything in the house. The bank of course does not understand that pain
but I am sure you do. How about just one hundred and then – I promise in the name of our God – I will pay you
back in two days.”
You part with the money but you don’t see the man for the next one week. When you bump into him in the
streets, he seems surprised to see you and says, “Chief, you are a lost man. I have looked for you all over, kwani,
did you change your swallowing places. Heehe! Hee! I have looked for you really. I have been touring this city
like Vasco da Gama looking for you.
“Just imagine, the day before yesterday, I had a whole three thousand shillings and guess what? We had fun and
we all missed you. Anyway, you know how money is these days. It just vanishes and I cannot believe my own
pockets that as we are talking, I have nothing in my pockets. Would you by any chance have a ka-fifty? I will pay
back with whatever else I owe.”
Since you are not as wise as Mama Mboga, you part with another fifty. Mama Mboga is not that foolish and when
I have vanished for days because I have been evading her, she maintains surveillance on my house. She keeps a
close watch until she is sure that I am having tough visitors. Then she strikes.
Holds her waist
When she strikes, she is a tornado. She enters the house and plants herself at the door and holds her waist. She
does not say a thing for a moment. She just surveys me and my visitors.
Then she says: “I see! I see! So you think my own children can get scabies if they also eat fried food, eh? So you
think they can become sick if they eat butter, eeh!
I cannot silence her by calling her the local mad woman. I have to silence her by calling her aside to ask for extra
time or paying her.
All this is to say that I would not mind to carry petty cash in the boot of my car. I would like to assure the banks
that I am a good borrower just like the others and so I will not pay back the loan.
Any offers?
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Running from myself into the past

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By WAHOME MUTAHI, January 27, 2002
When things are as elephant as they are in this month of January, I tell myself that my mother Appep was wrong
to bring me into this world at the time she did.
She should have given birth to me when the man I was named after, the one and only son of Nyaituga, was
brought forth. Those were the days when men did not have to worry about tomorrow.
If you have forgotten why, I will remind you. The son of Nyaituga was the husband of five breathing wives and
the father of over two football teams.
All the products of the son of Nyaituga were exact photocopies of the man. The members of the two-plus football
teams and their mothers owed total loyalty to the man although he did very little to earn it.
As a matter of fact, the biggest job that the son of Nyaituga ever did was to manufacture the children and leave
them to worry about how to survive for the rest of their lives. This is to say that if they wished to live on hunting
wild animals and gathering wild fruits, that was their business.
The man had better things to do, the two most important ones being cleaning up goat ribs and washing them down
with good honey alcohol. After he was full of the two consumables, he went back to manufacturing babies.
I know those things since I was his official stool-carrier. The man was always accompanied by his three-legged
stool because he did not want to arrive where honey alcohol was in plenty and then be told that there was no stool
for him.
He also carried a knife and a horn in a bag that was always over his shoulder. He carried the two items because he
did not wish to arrive where honey beer was being consumed and then be told that there was no spare horn. He
did not wish to be told that there was no knife to tear goat ribs when there was a goat .
How to eat goat ribs
One of the most vital lessons that I learned from the man was how to get maximum feeding when you meet other
people tearing goat ribs. You pick a bone, chew it a bit and put it aside saying that it is too hard.
Then pick another with more meat and eat it halfway through and then put it aside. Do the same to a few more
ribs. In the meantime, those who are not schooled in matters of meat eating are struggling to clean the goat ribs
clean.
When there is nothing on the plate, go back to your stock of half-eaten ribs and massacre them clean. At the end
of the day, you will have more contents of ribs in your tummy than anyone else in the whole location.
That is the only lesson I can practise today from the many that I learned from the son of Nyaituga. I would have
wished to do the other things that he did.
One of them is that he could have a goat murdered any time for many of the reasons that men of his time created.
It happened that there were many sins that could be committed against men and all of them could only be
cleansed if a goat was massacred.
One of the sins was for a man’s Thatcher to step over the legs of Nyaituga’s son. If that happened, a goat had to
be murdered to make the spirits happy. I suspect that is why whenever the son of Nyaituga felt like eating goat
ribs, he sat with his legs stretched out in the smoky room of one of his Thatchers’ huts.
Then he would ask her to get him something from across the room. The something would be at a place where it
would be necessary for the Thatcher to step over the man’s legs.
If the Thatcher hesitated to cross over, the son of Nyaituga became a Taliban. He promised to carpet-bomb the
Thatcher and her offspring out of existence if he did not get the something he wanted in the next few blinks of his
eyes.
The Thatcher knew that among his talents, the son of Nyaituga was the village champion in what was called the
art and science of making Thatchers obedient. It involved the use of his bakora.
That is why the Thatcher rushed to get the something that the son of Nyaituga wanted. In the process, she stepped
over his legs. The moment she did so, the man yelled as if he had been stung by a bee.
He screamed for half the village to hear: “Gods of Kirinyaga! This woman will be the end of me. I will never bear
children again. She has committed the crime of crimes by stepping over my legs.
My ancestors, and their ancestors, come to my aid before I lose all my powers to make babies.”
All to hear
The Thatcher in turn screamed for all to hear that she had not done it intentionally. What she did not know was
that by saying so, she was admitting to half the village that she had committed the crime of crimes.
That is why ten or so minutes later, the senior men in the village, including the most respected medicineman (he
claimed to be the spokesman of the spirits), arrived and a council was set up.
The son of Nyaituga then proceeded to table his case. He said: “My fellow elders. When I was marrying this
woman, something was telling me that 1was digging my own grave.
Something was telling me that she belongs to the breed that is known as “red thigh”. You know them, the very
ones who bring misfortunes to a man at the speed of lightning. Now I have confirmed it.
Wind crossing
“Just imagine it, my fellow elders, here I am dozing waiting for her to give me food. My eyes are closed, then I
feel something like a wind crossing over my legs. I ask myself, where “could this wind be coming from? I open
my eyes and the truth is revealed.
“The wind was caused by the foot of this very woman crossing over my legs! My eyes caught her when she was
about to cross over my legs. I could not withdraw my legs fast enough to avoid the crime being completed.”
The other elders looked as if they would cry. The chief medicine man trembled to hear such terrible news. He
moved his trembling lips and said things to the effect that the whole village would perish if something was not
done to remedy the situation at once.
He declared that the spirits became very short-tempered because of crimes of that nature and had to be made
happy.
They could only be made happy through the death of a goat to be eaten by the gathered men. So a goat was
murdered. I don’t know why the son of Nyaituga had to stage all that drama just so that a goat could be murdered.
I don’t know why he did not just pick a goat from his herd and kill it. After all, those were his animals. Perhaps he
did not wish to be seen as misusing his resources and so he had to create reasons to use them.
I guess men of his age liked drama and that is why if he wanted to eat a goat another time, he created more
theatre. The theatre involved tripping himself somehow and falling in his compound.
It was said that if the man of the house fell in his compound, that was a bad sign and if he did not wish his entire
family to perish, a goat had to die.
Son of Nyaituga fell many times in his compound. It would happen at the end of the day after a tour of the homes
where there was either goat ribs to be cleaned or honey beer to irrigate the gills of elders.
Son of Nyaituga would have consumed a huge amount of meat and alcohol but he would not be drunk. He would
be just a happy man a little high.
However, when we got to the gate of his compound, Son of Nyaituga changed all of a sudden. He started
staggering and singing songs about the day he faced the circumcisor’s knife. In short, he looked as if he had
consumed the whole brewery.
He shouted, “You women, so you want me to fall, eh? So there is a conspiracy to end my life, eh? So now you are
the ones who married me and not the other way round, eh?”
When his Thatchers heard that, they rushed from different directions hoping to hold the man before he could hit
the ground but they came late each time. Son of Nyaituga fell down in his compound just at that moment when
the fastest of his wives was about to hold him.
The moment he hit the ground, he screamed that no one should touch him as that would add to the damage done.
He screamed for half the village to hear that he had fallen in his compound as his Thatchers watched.
Grown horns
Once again, a council of elders, headed by the spokesman of the spirits, arrived and Son of Nyaituga said,
“Representatives of my ancestors, my women have grown horns. Just imagine, I have been out there in the sun
and you know what happens when the sun eats the top of the head of an elder. The brain gets weak and fainting
becomes very easy.
So I arrive here after being in the sun looking for wealth to feed these ungrateful women and what happens?’ I
feel faint. I shout for the women to hold me so that I don’t fall and what do they do? They walk towards me as if
their feet are aching. So I fall down in my own compound on the same spot where you have found me lying
down.”
The chief spokesman of the spirits declared that only the death of a goat could cleanse the compound and so the
following day a goat would die.
I only wish I lived then and not now when I have to step into my compound with fear as if it is not mine because
1 don’t know whether my Thatcher will open the door for me.
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Lesson from street mini-skirt drama

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By WAHOME MUTAHI, February 11, 1996
There was once a lady who thought that she knew a thing or two about fashion. So she went ahead and designed
the smallest miniskirt ever seen on earth.
She did not get very far with her miniskirt as she and her husband were banned from the land where they were
trying to open a clothes shop.
The lady was none other than Eve wife of Adam and the mother of a fellow called Cain and another one called
Abel. She and her husband lived in a place (or was it a garden?) called Eden and she thought that a single leaf was
enough to wear as the only form of clothing.
She wore that mini-skirt in Eden until she and her man discovered that man and woman could not live on
mangoes alone and so they ate forbidden apples.
Soon Adam and Eve were Enoosupukiad from Eden but that woman had already started enough trouble in the
world. By inventing the mini-skirt, she brought trouble to many men and women who today would have been
living in peace.
If you do not believe me ask a lady called Zainabu Musa, who happens to live in this city of “I is the mayor and
they are just Kanjuras”. She lives in this city where even the mayor cannot use a public toilet since there isn’t a
single one which has not been turned into a kiosk and she knows what Eve, wife of Adam did to her.
If you have forgotten, Zainabu is the skirt wearer who took Eve’s lessons on how to make mini-skirts very
seriously. As a result, the other week, she walked out of her house wearing something close to a fig leaf to cover
the lower part of her body.
When you wear a fig leaf in the name of a skirt, a number of things are likely to happen. One of them is that some
Kenyans who happen to be of the male species suddenly develop X-ray eyes. This is to say that they see more
than the mini- skirt is revealing.
Borrowing a leaf
The sight of a woman borrowing a leaf from Eve and wearing a fig tree leaf also tends to make the imagination of
men who certainly have the brains of Mogotio goats to start imagining that there is more than what they are
seeing revealed by the mini-skirt and what their X-ray eyes have seen.
It would be alright if they just saw and imagined.
Instead as Zainabu will tell you, they decide that they were given the sword of fire by none other than Jehovah
himself to strike those who dare wear fig leaves when such attire was banned a long time ago in the Garden of
Eden.
So they struck Zainabu with that sword of fire and in a flash she was looking like Eve before she discovered how
to make a mini-skirt from a fig leaf.
This is to say that she was left wearing a three-piece suit, meaning totally naked. Some of those men said that they
were trying to teach her how to dress and their idea of doing so is by taking away even the single leaf covering the
vital statistics of a woman.
I do not have X-ray eyes and my imagination is not quite up to date so I do not imagine things when I see a skirt
wearer trying to show more than she wants to hide by wearing a skirt that is as short as a thumb nail. What I
wonder is why some of them do not just decide to go totally naked.
Let us start with this one whom I saw last week. It was one of those crazy February days. I say crazy because in
the morning, the sun was threatening to bum the top of my head until it became as soft as a boiled egg and then in
the afternoon, the heavens opened and it rained.
This means that all umbrellas were taking a break at home including that one of this lady who was walking as if
her waist was made from coil springs.
The waist was bobbing up and down, left and right as if being moved by a programmed computer.
The rains didn’t understand that the skirt wearer who had a waist made of coil springs was also wearing not less
than two thousand shillings on her head.
The two thousand was in the name of hair that had been cooked and re-cooked in a hair salon.
In other words, that hair had suffered from a pressure cooker for that is what I call those pots that are put on
women’s heads when they go to hair salons. I hear those pressure cookers are officially called dryers when the
only dryers I know are those used to dry maize by the cereals board.
Anyway, that skirt wearer I am talking about had put her head into that pressure cooker for a number of hours and
the result was that she was wearing something called a perm on her head
It might not have been a perm. It could have been a bob, a weave, curly kit or a straight kit.
For those who don’t know, those are different tribes of hairstyles. I should know all that because I happen to be
the father of the Investment alias the Pajero and the husband of Thatcher. The two happen to have hair which is in
love with pressure cookers in salons particularly when I am doing the paying.
I was telling you about this other skirt wearer who was wearing a perm or in other words, some two or so
thousand shillings on her head. When a skirt wearer is wearing that kind of money on her head, she does not wear
a helmet to hide the Bob hairstyle.
She walks with her head high like a secretary bird so that all can see that she also knows a thing or two about
pressure cookers. She then assumes that God is not such a sadist as to make rain fall when she has no umbrella
and destroy the two thousand bob job on her head.
Rain has its own programme and it does not consult anybody when it decides to fall. It fell without warning and
when the first few drops dropped, you would have thought that a nuclear bomb had exploded. The lady with two
thousand bob on her head turned towards the heavens with a look that said that God must have something against
her.
Looking for some place
She then dashed to her left looking for some place to put her head but there was nowhere to hide. She dashed right
and once again there was nowhere to hide. Then she saw a car that was parked nearby and dashed towards it. It
was closed and her head told her that her hair would be safe if she ducked under the car.
She made an attempt to get under that car but then something happened and it was that the mini- skirt that she was
wearing defied the laws of gravity. It made it impossible for her to bend down and get under the car without
giving those who were watching a full view of the geography of her lower body.
Wisdom invaded her head and it told her that if she could not hide her hair under the car, all was not lost and she
could still save her precious hair. As a result of that reasoning, her hands went to the bottom of her blouse.
She got hold of her blouse and raised it a few inches up. We saw how part of her belly looks like although her
idea was not to be a belly dancer at that moment. Her idea was to make an instant umbrella.
She managed to make part of the umbrella when she raised the blouse to the level of her KCC, that is, the breasts.
I have no business telling you whether she was wearing a bra or not. What I will tell you is that she managed to
pull the blouse up behind her shoulders until it covered her head.
In that situation, she had a brief thing called a mini-skirt covering the lower part of her geography and nothing
between the waist and the neck. Her head was of course very respectably covered in a self-made umbrella which
was formerly a blouse.
The Son of the Soil and those who were watching of course laughed very loudly although the rain drops that were
falling on my head were feeling like stones because unlike the skirt wearer, I have a semi-arid patch on top of my
head.
The skirt wearer (if you can call what she was wearing a skirt) did not seem to hear our laughter. Perhaps her ears
were properly covered by the blouse so she walked on, her waist still swinging as if it had springs. She seemed to
be saying, “better naked than wet”.
I could not understand why a whole female adult was more scared of her hair getting wet than of showing her
anatomy but I told myself that I might as well try to find out why skirts must suffer from cuts and slits.
A skirt as I understand it is something with a waist and a hem at the bottom. I understand that there is a difference
between a skirt and a half open curtain and that is why I cannot comprehend why anybody should buy a skirt with
a major split either in front, behind or on the sides.
Although I cannot comprehend, that it does not stop some skirt wearers putting on what I call the Great Rift
Valley skirt. Such a skirt has a split that runs on the front from the hem to the very close neighbourhood of the
waist.
The Great Rift Valley skirt behaves like two curtains that are very hostile to each other and so they cannot meet
whatever you do. What that means is that when the owner is wearing it and sits down, she reveals more than she
can hide.
I suspect that is the whole idea about split skirts.
Imagination
Their wearers do not wish to make your imagination work too hard so they bring the picture nearer home.
I advise them to ask Zainabu a few things and they will be told to keep away from the neighbourhood where she
met the fellows who had the sword of Jehovah.
If you ask me, those fellows who think that they have the duty to make sure that skirt wearers do not wear fig
leaves in the name of skirts are just jealous of beautiful legs being put on display. They are jealous because they
know that they themselves have no legs worth showing. They know what a disaster it would be if men made a
habit of wearing mini pants.
Just imagine a fellow like Whispers in mini pants, that is pants that are slightly bigger than a thumb nail. I
suppose a mini pant would have to go with what is called a top, that is a relative of a blouse.
The knee caps are another story all together. Mine simply look like two bones that are threatening to explode
through the skin. I have no intentions of causing anybody nightmares so I will not wear hot pants.
However, I can do nothing about some people in my house wearing fig leaves in the name of skirts. One of them
is the Investment.
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Agony of a grand coalition at home

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‘‘Then she says in full volume: ‘God of Abraham and God of Isaac. God of Noah and God of Abednego. Look
upon this house of ours that was abandoned by the man you gave us to look after us. Lord God, even as we starve,
we thank you for life.’’
By WAHOME MUTAHI
If Baba Moi really wants to learn some real wisdom about how to deal with these jiggers called coalitions, he
should seek my advice.
He should consult me although nobody has ever seen it wise to vote me into any office, even that of a school
prefect.
However, one woman, some years back, voted me the most handsome man she had ever seen. You see, I had
plenty of hair on my head and I walked as if I was the younger brother of James Bond; also called Special Agent
007.
If you were not around then, 007 was the toughest film man. The guy had all the beautiful women and drank only
Scotch on the rocks.
Well, in the films.
When she saw me, she asked me to form a coalition with her and since she was also being voted one of the most
beautiful skirt-wearers by acclamation, I was in a mood to consider a merger.
In short, I was turned into a husband and we formed a new government in the village with Thatcher as the prime
minister. I was named the president.
Under the arrangement, I was to be the chief hunter of money and she would be in charge of distributing it. I was
also given certain conditions. The main one was that I should never ever think of a coalition with any other skirt-
wearer.
In turn, my new Thatcher swore before a priest that she would stay with me in times of hair and in times of
baldness. She has stuck with me even in these times that I have very little that would please Wangari Mathaai on
my head.
At the moment
The results of my election as a husband, or the domestic Taliban as some of the people I am going to talk about
call me, are two characters.
You already know them. One of them is the domestic thug, Whispers Junior, he who sometimes professes to be a
junior priest in the Mungiki Sect. Then there is the Investment alias Pajero, she who now drinks only onion juice
for lunch because she is afraid of putting on weight.
The coalition with Thatcher over the years has seen me being put in the situation that Baba Moi is in at the
moment. Although I am supposed to be the president in my house, I have faced many situations where I have
been told that my projects are zero and that I should try and sell them elsewhere.
People who are supposed to show me total and direct loyalty are forming their own alliances.
As Baba Gideon will tell you from his experience in the main house, that thing called loyalty is given to you
depending on the state of your wallet. The same thing happens in my house where coalitions are formed with me
or against me, depending on the state of my wallet.
So come that time of the month when the wallet is loaded, I see all the signs of coalitions. My Thatcher discovers
a new vocabulary, and indeed, she becomes reborn.
That is why come time to wake up in the morning, she does not do her usual thing. Her usual thing when she is
not in my coalition is to open her mouth and direct it towards the sitting room of our neighbours.
Then she says in full volume: “God of Abraham and God of Isaac. God of Noah and God of Abednego. Look
upon this house of ours that was abandoned by the man you gave us to look after us.
Lord God, even as we starve, we thank you for life. We thank you because we are alive although the man you
gave us wants us to starve.
Give us sugar, God, if nothing else.
Give us half of a quarter of real meat, oh God! Give us even half a tomato for those are the little things of life we
don’t get in our house though Lord God, you gave us a husband and a father.”
The idea is not to ask God for sugar, meat and onions. The idea is to tell my neighbours that when husbands are
finally counted, I will never be among them.
It is to tell the world that she made a mistake to have a coalition with me, in the first instance, but that since she
swore to stick with me in times of hair or baldness, only God can save her and her clan from my sinful ways of
diverting sugar money into the bank accounts of Kenya Breweries.
Then she rises as if she is feeling pain all over her body. The only part of her body that is active at that moment is
her mouth, which is now singing things to the effect that the good day will come when she will join Jesus in that
part of the world where there are no husbands.
In the next 10 minutes
Thus she is trying to be slower than a snail in getting out of bed and doing what she is supposed to do. One of the
things she is supposed to do is to warm water for my bath.
As she inches slowly out of that bed, I mention that water and suggest that if I don’t get it in the next ten minutes,
some things that were promised at the altar when we were making our coalition might be changed.
Thatcher looks at me with one eye half-open and says: “Some people speak as if they have never owned hands in
their lives. If somebody feels he is getting late, si he can even use saliva for bathing? If that person does not know
the way to the kitchen where water is warmed, why does he not ask for direction?”
That is the kind of talk that would have made the man I am named after, Son of Nyaituga, marry another wife
instantly. However, although I have the blood of that man, I don’t have all the privileges that he had.
One of them is that I cannot go into several coalitions with people who call me husband. The result is that I am
just forced to swallow the insult that my Thatcher has swung at me.
I get out of bed feeling the way Baba Moi must have felt that morning when one of his in-laws rose and started
singing that he now belongs to rainbow and not to the cockerel clan.
In short, I was feeling like committing several murders. Then I meet the Investment and I greet her in the hope
that she will see the desperation on my face and warm my water. Instead of answering my greetings, she begins a
mini speech.
What speech says
The speech says that she is what is called pre-woman and that she has her rights in the house. One of the rights is
to “hang out with the sisters and to share vibes with them.”
She swears that she is not what she calls a “domestic slave like my mother and will never be one.” I am supposed
to understand that being a domestic slave is to be a wife so she is announcing that she will never marry.
In short, I am supposed to understand that I will never get dowry from a young man aspiring to form a coalition
with her. I am also supposed to be so understanding that I should no longer question when she sleeps out because
she is “sharing vibes” with the so-called sisters.
The so-called sisters wear faces and other things that make them say that God made a mistake to create them
women.
I get a very good idea that the Investment has a coalition with her mother who now manages to edge out of the
bedroom at that moment.
Even before she has asked what is happening, she asks: “Can’t children have peace in this house? What is this
business of quarrelling children in the morning even before their eyes have met water? Why are my children
being given stress? How are they supposed to excel in school if their father cannot give them peace?”
In other words, I’m being accused of being a Taliban against my daughter. Then at that moment, Whispers Junior
enters the house.
He has spent the night out. His eyes look like a pair of rotten tomatoes and his cheek is full of a ball of chewed
twigs of the variety grown in Meru.
The fellow walks in as if he is in a senior dream and I give him way because I don’t want to be accused of child
abuse any more at this time when my Thatcher is talking about “my children” as if were was not involved in the
making of the Investment and the domestic thug.
The mother takes his hand and says: “My son, what will you have, juice, chocolate or coffee? Thatcher is asking
that thug that question when my thoughts are on murder.
I am thinking about the quickest but most painful way of sending a young man to his maker.
When I leave the house half an hour later, the rainbow coalition in my house has become a super alliance all
against me, Baba Pajero.
When I leave, the three are agreeing on how to fight my new project, which is to upgrade the Whispermobile by
buying some wheels that don’t cough when they are supposed to start and transport me to places.
More efficient
I later learn that Project Whispermobile is opposed on the grounds that if I get better wheels, my throat will
become more efficient in handling kanywaji now that I will not have to worry about how to get home. Mother and
children finally agree to fight the Whispermobile project until the end.
They don’t reach the end because the end of the month comes sooner and then my wallet becomes loaded. Then
once gain I become “our dear father and husband”, in an effort to seek a coalition with me.
Then Thatcher does not wake me up with her prayers. She wakes me up with, “Dear husband, how do you want
your water? Do you want it medium hot, medium or just hot?”
Don’t be afraid: Don’t be afraid that Kenyans will remember all the crimes you have committed against them if
you are seeking votes.
Drink and be merry for they have very short memories.
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Welcome to my share of Jua Kali life

January 10, 2009 by admin

Jua Kali heads

The wrong reason

It is all about being in a Jua Kali republic. Anything goes.

Twists of the new post-Beijing ‘newspeak’

This is to say that she will become ugly.

See with your mouth

Why Jethro does not dread nuclear waste

By WAHOME MUTAHI, February 19, 1995

In the land of bananas, no hope for dowry

By WAHOME MUTAHI, April 3, 1994

SoS meets his match in Pajey

By Wahome Mutahi, November 26, 1995

Pajero responded: “Tutaishia tu kama kawa. Tutaishia Kanj.”

Why ‘clan experts’ will have a field day

By WAHOME MUTAHI, September 1, 1996

It’s tough being a hunter and gatherer

By WAHOME MUTAHI,December 6, 1998

Very simple argument

Holds her waist

Running from myself into the past

By WAHOME MUTAHI, January 27, 2002

How to eat goat ribs

Lesson from street mini-skirt drama

By WAHOME MUTAHI, February 11, 1996

It would be alright if they just saw and imagined.

Looking for some place

I suspect that is the whole idea about split skirts.

Agony of a grand coalition at home

Well, in the films.

Give us sugar, God, if nothing else.

What speech says

Drink and be merry for they have very short memories.

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