sunset saga

By Eugene Kabasa Where I come from, love is hidden in little priceless gestures. It's in how Mama gets mad when you are not home yet at it's half past seven because she misses you. She won't say it. She'd rather go rounds lamenting of how annoying it is that you don't see the worrying you put people through when you are home late.  Love is in how they send that little girl Fiona to come get you because food is ready and they can't start without you. It doesn't look like love until you are old and busy and worried about traffic and recession and you grow homesick.  Love is feeling the feet of your little nephews jump over the puddles of last night's downpour like steeplechase hurdles. It's morning and you haven't woken up yet. You can feel the sun through your window. Their feet remind you of the days you were young and fragile, schoolbag pulling you down in the morning dew as you rush to school. And of course you remember love, love is Mama runni...

Hats off to my elder siblings they were luminaries. Having elder siblings is fun, but more fun if you're the elder sibling.  When you're young and naive your elder siblings will brain wash you. They will literally make you believe anything they want. After listening to a Rose muhando song that has this line '... mpaka kwenye internet. Eeeeh mwanadamu wewe endelea kutenda dhambi.'  I remember my brother making me believe that 'internet' is a place where you can actually get into physically and walk out... Eeeih! I pictured internet to be a room that has a lot of computers and lots of scattered cables. Jesus Christ on a donkey!! We used to call ghosts Ere suka a name that was founded in our family- by my elder siblings. Ere suka translates to 'where is the sheet' probably because ghosts always appear covered in sheets with popped eyes and a crack line for a mouth.  After being told the stories of Ere suka by our elder siblings we couldn't walk in the d...

  Three times I have been to the casualty lobby of a hospital. Three times I have seen people being wheeled into the hospital with their limbs suspended on their frail bodies by a thread of skin. Their bones crashed into smithereens. Clenched teeth, biting against each other to numb the pain. Shrieks of agony. And blank expressions that betray despair. Sometimes family members, or some good Samaritans, flanked these people who had both their feet on the two sides of the thin red line that separated life from death. Staring timidly into the deep dark abyss that bore their graves. Then there were those who were wheeled in solely. No one to pat their backs and whisper bitter-sweet words of affirmation. No one to heckle at the indifferent nurses to attend to them. Just them, and their God.  Two times I have been to the casualty lobby because of a knee ligament injury. I acquired both injuries while in a pursuit of a football. I have been carried to a jalopy dubbed ambulance. The c...

 The art of food is like lovemaking. The better it is, the more guilty you feel once you are finished. I don’t know much about food—which should not imply that I am the Rosetta stone of knowledge on lovemaking—but there’s no need to tell the devil to go to hell. Of course in the old literary traditions, the devil always gets the best part; and like wasps around treacle, I have discovered that chapo ndengu is God’s cheat meal. It is what God eats when He wants to reward himself for being God. There are two kinds of people—chapo ndengu and chapo ndondo. My father loved chapo ndondo but my mother hated cooking it—the mandondo not the chapo—and you could taste it, a meal not even worthy for the Philistines. Like most teenagers—stoned and rapacious—I grew up making the connection between food and love, and nothing wrapped me in love more than chapo ndengu. You might forgive me a touch of deja vu, but with every bite, the memories keep flooding back; of watching Robin Hood on Sundays aft...

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 too...

Just another  Bikozulu prowess ... He sits at the bar in a pair of shorts in blatant defiance of the cold evening of Nanyuki. He’s in shorts because he’s 25 years old & his very bones are still fire that warms his body. He smokes elegantly & holds his beer by its neck with his long fingers that reminds one of twigs. He talks fast and sleek, his confidence a strong gale.  He recently quit his job as Digital Sales and Marketing Administrator. “My boss was a jackass.” (He didn’t use the word jackass, he used a more colorful word ). “I was the company bitch for two years. I couldn’t take it." Two months ago - with the flourish of Gen-Z - he told his boss to stuff the job in his pipe and smoke it and moved back home to Nanyuki. His household items are still in his house in South B, though, because he might go back. Or he mightn’t. The wind & the moon will decide.  “So what do you do now?” I asked him.  “I hold the key to this town.” He said so confidently I ...

Because it's Friday let's get a dose of Ndugu🥳 By Ndugu Abisai In 2015, I lived on the fourth floor of a certain building in Kariobangi South. We had one bathroom on the floor, which means, at some point in the morning, we would all congregate there with buckets to wait for our turn to shower. There was a couple that used to get in together, then as they showered we would hear, “aki baaabe.” From the woman. Immediately the man would clear his throat then giggle a bit. The standard was two giggles. A very consistent man. That didn't bother us.  The guy that lived closest to the bathroom, never queued with us. He used to wake up, brush his shoes while listening to Don Carlos' Just A Passing Glance. That guy taught me that manifesting works or worked. He just would pass the bathroom glancing at us. Never said a word. A man, his shiny shoes and long face and just a passing glance. He manifested passing the bathroom. A hero in the manifesting realm. My main interest was sho...