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Family and Friends



By Ndugu

I envy the people in this city, that have relatives they intentionally see often. Living in this city erects a wedge between kin that is not easy to scale. Your brother lives in Kitengela. It is a general consensus that Kitengela is far from anything and anywhere and anyone. You seriously begin to question the wisdom behind the adage, damu ni nzito kuliko maji. Because as I have heard from time to time, even that maji is far from Kitengela. 

Anyway, because of the way the city is set, you bump into your relatives in town. Bump into your relatives. Yes! You take one pensive look at each other and in that mad dash the city delegates to you, you tap them on their shoulders and say, “kuna mtu nakimbiza hapa KICC, wewe tutafutane weekend hivi.” 

That's the rub!

Nobody in this city speaks with any clarity. “Tutafutane,” could mean anything including, tusitafutane which is its most prominent meaning. The people that tell you nitakutafuta are the masters of euphemism as a tool of city survival. “You are in the city to look for money and not people,”  a still small voice whispers to you. 

So you condense the meetings to WhatsApp chats. And adults being the adults they are, there will always be that one sibling that has left the family WhatsApp group so many times whenever they are added back you ask them, when are you leaving again? And they get mad and leave again. 

Then you see a Facebook post like this, one with details in fidelity to your kind of problems and you get affirmed that yours is a normal family in an abnormal city. And the default status of things in Nairobi is to have friends that became family and family that became friends or enemies. 


Shaka!


#nduguabisai

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