Skip to main content

The Requiem Mass

All Saints Cathedral, Nairobi



I was at All Saints Cathedral on Friday. I go there to pray during the day. There was a requiem mass. Before you get serious, this is not a very serious post. Shall we continue please, minus the seriousness?

Okay.

Sasa, I stood outside to wait for the service to end. Now two guys approached me. One with the Eulogy and another one with a small white thing he stuck on my chest and half a litter bottle of water. They both insisted on shaking my hands and saying pole sana. I played along and said, “yote tunawachia Mungu.” 

Minutes later the service ended. Now I looked like part of those mourning. I was dressed in all black. And my specs must have looked like sunglasses under the sun. 

A guy, a famous guy, I think I have seen him on TV giving opinions about the economy or the Sakaja or the Jubilee Government or this other current government. One of those guys. He approaches me and hugs me and offers his condolences. “Pole sana my son.” Then he proceeds to ask me, “na níúheirwo cai?”. That is to ask, if I had been given chai. I almost said that I didn't have the appetite given the circumstances. But he encouraged me to be strong and to take tea. He even said, “maisha ni fupi sana. Wacha sisi wenye tumebaki tukule.” Then he whistled and seemed to be lost in deep sorrow  and trepidation.

I called my sister to ask her if our family had lost somebody and they had not told me. Maybe they wanted it to be a surprise. With family you don't know these things. 

Anyway, we went on to take tea and samosas and sausages and mandazis. Then the guy asked me, “Úrathie atía Kariokor?” there is where I knew there was no way that dead guy was ours. Our family cannot cremate. Even if you write a will and declare that that is how you want to check out. My people cannot accept it. They will form a committee and say, “ithue tútire twacina múndú.”

I slid away into the crowd and got into the church. Getting out, there was a photo of me and the famous guy condoling with me taken by a paparazzi and going for 50 bob. I looked at it and wondered, if I took this thing home, how would I explain to people of how I know the guy?

Anyway, is it Monday where you are? Be truly happy.



As told by 

#nduguabisai

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Major Ariel

Ariel studies Chemistry, but is also a footballer who retired prematurely because of a bad knee. A knee that chose chemistry over football. He is a farmer during long holidays. He keeps chicken and milk his father’s cow on a good day. On a bad day he goes to a nearby dusty arena to play football, to see if his knee could have possibly changed its idea about chemistry. Ten minutes into the  game he becomes a living testimony that his knees were actually meant to stand long hours in the chemistry lab doing tests and mixing chemicals to see colour changes, precipitates and what have you that don’t excite me. He is a vocabulary expert and a story teller. He is a fitness aficionado. He is a brother and a son. I can’t prove that he is a boyfriend but I can prove beyond any limits that in the past 7 days he has eaten chapatti at least thrice.  He's authored   THE FAMILY MAN ,   WHAT I WANT , GRIP REAPER ,  J'S COCUNUTS just to mention a handful. He is a huge Chelsea fan, a bruised te
24 comments
Read more

Half a head

There were thin and bleak sounds, noises that were either real or imaginary. A sound of a wild bird in distress from a far, an owl maybe or a cardinal, accompanied by what sounded like uneasy movement and groaning noises from within. Those unnerving noises that make you believe hell is real and the damned has flung the gates open. He was in the police cell, the cell had huge shelves and guys were sleeping on the floor like they always do. You might have met this somewhere; you might have heard of it from the walls of your sitting room or the streets. It is a tale of this guy Boniface Kimanyano Ayoti, an epic face of crime, larger than life. A guy whose weakness was crime. Anything criminal triggered something in him. Something that not only made him content but also put him in a zone where nothing else could. Even though it can’t tell it all, Bonnie’s face is a tale of crime. Before you hear a word from him you know he’s not been an average human being. He has a swelling just above
21 comments
Read more

The Holy Studio

  I met Philip Mutemi in the streets of wanderlust diaries. He wrote a piece that caused stir and led to a lot of fuss. If you know the wanderlust diaries you're safe. You may actually go to heaven if Christ comes today. His display picture is of a man seated with arms crossed in what looks like a pub. A man probably past middle age. Looking at him another time, I feel like he has four children. Again looking at him, he doesn’t look like in 2014 he was 20 years old, I mean he almost looks older than my father. He honestly couldn’t be 30 right now. All these observations I made because of how some people in the comment section threw stones at him. So, Philip claims that back in 2014 his 3 cousins, 4 neighbours and himself were to join campus. They were given money to go and buy laptops. What is campus life without a laptop? The next Monday early in the morning they were in Nairobi. There was one cousin who was street smart and managed to convince them the he was well acquainted wi
12 comments
Read more