“I have finally swallowed my pride and accepted what Michael Joseph said about Kenyans. We are a people with peculiar habits.” I said this as amidst the boys, you have met Martin (albeit in brief). It is he and the others who make me say this statement.
The other day, my boys and I were remembering the days when we got away with what we did.
It is only in Kenya where a lad in his right senses when busted with a lady in his father’s compound boldly says to the father “tulisoma nay eye class 8” as Martin always did. He did this with the most innocent look on his face that the father had nothing else but believe his son.
Kevin on his part was the most holy of the group, we used to tease and say that he was so holy that the devil knew him on a personal basis. He was holy because he could never lie. *wth*
Everybody lies but he would never lie. He is the reason why we never make plans in his ear shot. There was this time that we planned to sneak out of school and go to the neighbouring shopping centre for a spree. Our plan was water tight as we were to go during the games time and sneak back before supper (usually of ugali and poorly boiled sukuma wiki).
I remember that day like it was yesterday. The bloke acted nervous the whole day. He spilled the beans off his plate over lunch hour. He went for the CU lunch hour prayer to ask for forgiveness perhaps. And to top it all he mixed potassium with water in the lab during Chemistry lesson. Boy how we ran at the sound of the explosion, while he peed on himself for his acts.
That did not stop us from going over the fence. We did go but on our way back we found the deputy, yes the deputy, a man whose hand I still believe was meant to make a club for clobbering thieves but was accidentally implanted on him by God. He was waiting for us at the panya root. The guy had turned himself over to the authorities and we thought he had chickened out of the operation.
I don’t want to tell you what a beating we got. When we confronted him much later all he could say was.
“I love you guys, I don’t want to see you ruin your lives. You know God teaches us to be a brother’s keeper”
“You love us we know that, but boy you are a good example of what Judas was. Msaliti wewe! ” was all Martin could say his backside to sore to allow him to vent his anger.
So today we are back together in campus and I can tell you that Kevin has not been spared from the lies. Martin had become infectious and Kevin was a victim. The last time I checked, he had played into our plan. We agreed to something like this;
That semester we cheated our parents. I know it’s hard but I did it too. When I was asked about the HELB money all we could tell our folks was something like;
“HELB imechelewa.”
They confronted us and we gave the look of an altar boy that we had spent months practising and replied;
“Hata mimi sijui nini mbaya”
Boy that semester we were three little sonkos we ran our own IMF or ADB lending money like Shylock never did to Bassanio.
Does that make us peculiar, yes it does!
To be cont’d.
