LETTER TO MUTURI: GET WELL SOON BROTHER

I wonna write a very long letter to you my dear friend Muturi. A letter with the intelligence of Mark Papino[I have always admired how he thinks]. In it I will endeavor to evade the mediocrity of Peter Ouma[despite having too much hair, he has never discovered ‘akili ni nywele’]. But if I start my letter this way, I may risk losing my friendship with a couple of people so I may have to take a different turn. 

So I go like this:

Hello Muturi,

I wasn’t there when some nincompoops who thought they had big enough balls could settle on a pool-stick [if that is the name] to injure you so bad. I only got the news and it pricked me so hard. Through writing this, I express my strong belief and that of your fellow comrades that you will get out of that bed and put to shame those hooligans who thought that they have the last say on your life. I have never really believed in revenge but ever since I had the horrible news, I have prayed for your good health and quick recovery. Besides, I have prayed that you become the commander in chief of the armed forces someday so that you could revive the Nyayo Torture Chambers purposely for those two cowards. All of us wonna see you again walking along those corridors smiling at everyone like you used to do.

I am particularly in deep regret of spending only fragments of my time with you and for now I will tell you the truth that it is only my faith that you will be well that has masked my deep fears for your life. If you will fight bravely for your life, then I can assure you that things will change. You MUST get well….You SHOULD get well so that you may see the great lessons that we have learnt from your state. It hurts that it took an innocent you, for comrades to discover the ugliness of goonship but in a beautiful way I may say that you have united our class. See, Muturi, today guyz met juz to make special prayers for you, would you believe that? Well, you have to get well then you will get first hand information about it. You will laugh to discover that we love you so much that we united until we divided at some point when we barely shared similar opinion. You will be told about Peter Ouma and Jeff Onami, then you will understand what I am talking about.

In the pieces of my time with you, I have always imitated how you always staggered when you have taken a little too much. Haha! This is something am gonna do again. Am so waiting for you to jump out of that bed and then your first two bottles will be on me. Wait a minute! Come to think about it again, I don’t think it is a wise, rather, clever idea. Maybe you should quit that stuff yeah but am so booking a date for Nyama Choma. You can use this letter as evidence in case I ever deny that I promised you nyama choma because I have perfected the habit of breaking promises. If it were possible, I would have roasted the brains of Salim and Mose, but I actually fear the taste. At the same time, I wouldn’t want you to put mediocre stuff into your system. It would have been very wonderful though for you to send those niggas down the Kimberly sewer systems…especially Wing B. It has a stronger legacy of stinking stuff.

You will recall that day in Busia when you were so overwhelmed to do anything. Saiguran and I picked you up, helped you to have a shower and later take breakfast. The other things you did were pretty much embarrassing and we shall laugh at them together when you are back here. That was probably the longest time we spent together and I will always be proud to know that the longest time I spent with you, I was of great importance and am thanking God for that chance.

Now, I get to the strongest part of this letter. It has always sounded so gay to tell a man how much you love him….but for the fact that I shed a tear when I saw you yesterday, I am not afraid of saying that I love you so much that I want you to get well. Everybody here wants you to get well. Classes will be different without you around, Campus will be different without you around, Life to most people will certainly change without you around…I was to skip this part but let me just say it [the nights will be colder for some lady somewhere without you around]. There are just a million reasons why you should get back here: and for I cannot sign for everyone who cares here, I want you to know that for the short time you have been away from us, we miss you and we are praying for you.

Get well soon Muturi. Fight on.

Yours crazy comrade

Sammy Nakitare

I HAVE MADE PEOPLE

I know some of you will not believe me. In my short life so far, I am bragging of having made great people and I am still going to make more so watch my space. Let me give you a breakdown of the list of people I have made.

NOTE: This is just 2.1% of the people I have made.

SENATOR GSO OUMA KODHEK

• PRESIDENTIAL APPOINTEE AS A MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS GEOTHERMAL DEVELOPMENT COMPANY
• VIED FOR KILIMANI WARD REPRESENTATIVE SEAT

I know he may argue about this but nobody knows this man very well better than I do, apart from his wife-that is if he finally decided that the only way he can see better without his spectacles is through his wife’s eyes. In this one I thank God, because finally GSO will not set his eyes on my woman again like he used to do. So am safe [I mean, she is safe]. Now, apart from GSO always stealing my novels in high school that he used to better his communication skills and overshadow all form ones in debate and public speaking, he had one don’t-touch-my-shoe trouser that he put on everyday while in his last year in Friends School Kamusinga. As I told you I made this man so this story of behind every successful man, there is a woman is rubbish in this case. Behind every GSO’s success, there is my missing [am avoiding to use ‘stolen’ ] form one trouser. I have just heard some rumour that President Uhuru has appointed the man somewhere in some big geothermal office, so GSO, am coming for my trouser. If at all you ever will vie for the presidency of this county, please bring my novels back too, otherwise I will publish this story in 1000 pages.

PAUL MUNGAI KIONGERA [AKA-MODO]

HARAMBEE STARS PLAYER, FORMER GOR-MAHIA LOANEE, KCB MIDDLE FIELDER

I take pride in the fact that I was not only in the same hostel with him in the great Kamusinga but his brother, Sammy Kiongera was an unsuccessful pursuer of my sister. So basically, we could have been relatives…that makes us distant relatives. I am one man who believes that it is only your left foot that can save Man-U’s terrible season this time round. If you put your right foot in too, then we can as well run away with that title for the 20 somethingth[Don’t correct me, just stick to soccer] time. I will always remind people that you were my substitute in the soccer team, until I got a 2 years thumb injury, then you took my position and I was always there to lose my voice cheering you. Now I am one man who has always prayed that you live to experience a 6 weeks injury inflicted by Kun Aguero’s elephant foot. So when you get there, don’t forget your relative.

SADIKINI BATSO NYIRO
MOTHER-IN-LAW ACTOR : ALPHA

Every time I watch him on TV, I feel like getting the Mother- in- Law director, grab him by the collar and ask her, “How could you take my double-cast when the original idea was me”. On second thoughts, I discover that I am too naughty for such roles. How can you ask me to fall in love with someone, and then later on ask me to pretend to be her cousin? If I were the one, I am sure that cousin of mine would have already been 3 weeks pregnant with triplets. Now, how did I make Sadikini? He will also not admit this, but I know there is this one time we had eyes on the same girl. Since, I was the secretary then, I just cancelled his name out from the list of people that were to travel for drama festivals. So I had the whole day with her and bought her ice creams with money that Sadikini had bribed me with to fix his name back in the list. Rumours reached him later that the girl and I did several things at the backseat that day and since then I am sure, he swore to prove me wrong with everything he did. That is why when I met him a few years ago at Bomas as an actor and I a director, he worked even harder…and pap! Mother -in -Law. Big up man.

Now I have to make a confession, whoever told you we did several things on the backseat, lied. It was  more than just several things under the bus.

JACQULINE MWANGI

VIDEO GIRL AND TAHIDI HIGH ACTRESS: JOLENE

I don’t adore Meru for the mirror [which is spelt wrongly as miraa]. No! I have a lot to say about her, but let me just leave it from: she was my single-day girlfriend at the Drama Festivals in Meru. Now you know that I was actually a great inspiration to her becoming the hottest Insyder chick at that time. Let’s just say, the rest is history. You can ask DJ Mo [if at all it’s true they are dating]. That should tell you that there is one more person added to the list of the people I have made: DJ Mo.

Almost everything here is real, just put in a crazy way…so believe it.

FATHERHOOD

I salute anybody with the tag father today, though not those who are not worth this very responsible title. My few months’ experiences as a father have taught me to value these special people. Henceforth, I will make a point of celebrating every Fathers Day as if it is Christmas. This year for example: I will buy myself a new Kaunda suit with black Mwalimu Jini shoes, then I will make sure I buy some explosive stuffs and will be awake till midnight just waiting for the day to start, then I will wake my neighbours up with threatening explosions and loud singing like the one they experience only in new year. Later that day I will get very angry with my wife because I am sure she will forget to buy me a pair of new red socks as gift to go with my new shoes. Anyway, that is neither here nor there. The most important thing right now is to let you know that every time my wife will be telling my kid that she carried her for only nine months, I will be bragging for carrying him for a much longer time than that…just that when I met her [note that I used MET not MATE] I deposited the thing to her.

So this day, Mama DY sees a message from a colleague, asking me to cover her work the next week in her absence. Now she is an extremely jealous one. The text had two problems: Number one, it had an extremely toxic word somewhere. A word that does not auger well with extremely jealous wives: ‘swthrt’. I couldn't even read the word because it never looked like English but somehow my wife could and she got totally furious, leaving me wondering when she learnt Japanese. Number two, the colleague was a very beautiful lady that she knew, so I understand why she was three times furious. Anyway, for this second reason I am not apologetic because, it would have been very annoying if the text was from an average-looking girl, and horrible, if it had been a man.

I am a smart father; I know how ladies enjoy seeing their husbands babysit. It works miracles.  So I assure her that since the following day was my off-day, I would take care of the baby. She seems excited about this but I only discover the next day that she is yet to trust me when she sends the house girl to the furthest part of the town and flattens my car tyres just in case my other brain makes me think of following the house girl. So in my house that day, it was just me, my three months old tadpole and Jehovah Al Shaba….something [or is it El Shadai….that part of my Bible got torn].

I had planned to compensate for all those mornings I am forced to wake up early to go to work but just as soon as Mama DY left, DY started yelling as if I had pinched him. I decide to ignore thinking that he was messing with my mind but this kid was smart. It is not only the yelling that would keep you awake. I suspect  the mum must have given him a piece of skunk meat because the pungent chocking gas that he was unleashing, could not even allow a tse-tse fly victim  to sleep. So I get up and rush to get some milk to feed him. Only then do I discover that I was so hungry. Despite being alone, I look around twice to confirm that no one was seeing me, and I quickly take a huge gulp of DY’s funny tasting milk. It is then that my phone rings [Mama DY calling me to remind me that he had left some breast milk there for DY]. Whaaaat! The rest is History. Just know it had something to do with me trying to force myself to puke.

Now DY wasn't that kid who sleeps all the time as if he was on a dosage of sleeping pills. You needed to soothe him to sleep with several sweet lullabies. His mum had taught him this bad habit. So now I am forced to sing for him the same so that he could sleep then I could compensate for my sleeping time. Unfortunately, this is the time that all lullabies you have ever had disappear from your mind. The only song that you remember is one: “Timboroa ni mbali sana”. Now this song can only make Kibera babies sleep, not my Lavington-type DY.  Luckily Jehovah Al Shaba…something comes to my rescue. I quickly remember that lullabies have some ‘lala’ word. And so there is this Willy Paul’s song that comes to my mind. It is a fast one though, so I try to sing it very slowly to create the soothing effect. It is only when my DY gives me that crazy smile of his that it hits me that this song was a dedication to the dead. I curse myself ten times with ten different obscene words and thank God that DY doesn’t understand them. I finally figure out something: even Christmas songs sang with the right pace could be perfect lullabies and so I start singing a few. But the only person these songs can make to sleep is…me. I wake up an hour later only to find DY staring in space just like he was doing while I was singing.

I guess at this time, the boy must have done a few blunders on his diapers so I decide to fix the mistakes. Now this is the part where the baby decides to send you a very rude message right to your face.            Just when you are getting of the diapers, he sprays you with a fresh supply of boiling urine on your right eye [I have never understood why it never gets the left eye]. Am left wondering why he didn't do that mess in the diapers. At this point I must confess that I am struggling so hard not to punch his tinny red balls. Anyway, the answer was right in my face, I am taking care of his generation but not really his generation, it is more personal: I am taking care of my future generation. Assuming that since, he had just messed up the diapers, he wasn't going to do it any time soon, I leave him free and go to warm some water to clean him up. From the kitchen, a very ugly loud sound sends me running to the room to check on DY, only to find that my good boy had released all the pieces of skunk meat that his mum gave him on my brand new 5000/= duvet. Here, my black skin was turning red with anger. I rushed to the kitchen made sure that I not only warmed his water but boiled it to 112.31⁰c. He would know that I am the boss and he should not mess up with me. In my anger, I didn't even notice that I wasn't having a holder in my hands to get the sufuria off the fire so I used my bare hands. All I remember is that my hands got scalded and the water found its way to my body.

What I am saying is, right now I have two marks that remind me of fatherhood: my crazy DY and some funny looking scars on my body. This are the main reasons why I am never taking Fathers day for granted again. And any other father who has gone through the same experiences, I am welcoming them to my place this year. Remember to carry your explosives. Sorry, Mama DY reminds me that they are called Fireworks.

THE THREE BOOKS: BOOK OF LIFE, BOOK OF DEATH & BOOK OF LIES

I bet I need to make a few explanations about my recent silence. Well, it is because I feel so deceived and I wonder how my friends could take me for such a nincompoop. Recently, when going through my high school gallery, I came across this book, that I henceforth decided to call it ‘book of lies’ well because nothing in it seems true.

There are three books that I am very familiar with:

The book of life – This is where my name was erased just the other day when Manchester united lost to Stoke City and you tried to make fun of it, so I told you a few things about your mother, that you probably didn’t know.

The book of death – This is the book where someone speedily scribbled my names some few microseconds after it had been erased in the fast book. Now, somehow this book has fallen in love with me and has refused to understand the fact that I am not interested. Anyway, I am a smart guy. My name will be out soon and rewritten where it belongs [the first book]. Well, this is the plan: I am praying so hard that when I wake up tomorrow morning, there will be a rumour like Mesut Ozil has had 10years brain injury and is unable to make clever decisions, so I will come to ask for forgiveness for what I said about your mother. I know you won’t forgive me [it’s so hard to forgive one who deases your mother] and since your refusal would be sin, your name will actually replace mine in the book of death then I will definitely take your slot in the first book.

The book of lies – This is what you otherwise call auto-book. Now this is the reason why I feel so cheated. So I thought after finding it I would have a wonderful reunion with my high school friends only to end up disappointed that it wasn’t the case. Give a human being chance to lie then he can convince you that he has never been a sperm, rather, can even convince you that you are a plant. This book gave students the chance to lie. I will tell you how:

Residence

This part was called with names such as Hood/Base/Bayz (Or Hoot/ Pase/Payz) depending on where you came from. This is where my friend Erick Shibweche who stays in Khwisero lied to me that he lives in Donom [I just discovered that it is Donholm he meant], Nairobi. I hadn’t been so keen on that but the other day I discovered that he wrote ‘HOOT’ and am more than certain that that was such an intelligent lie.

Contacts

This is where you are given numbers that have never existed and if they exist, they probably belong to the neighbour’s watchman. Well, most numbers started with +254… but I remember being uniquely smart in this one.  My number was something like  -254…I can never forgive Hillary Edalia who wrote me contacts that when I called some masculine voice with a heavy coastal accent was like, “Hee! Niliweka nambari zangu kule kwenye choo za umma, wewe ni shoga mwenzangu baibe!” [For this: No comment, I have never understood how he got that number and if he guessed, it would take a lot of money for him to convince me on that] Matters were even worse when it came to the email section. My friends took advantage of the fact that I always got Es in Biology. It only hit me recently when I saw emails like streptococcus@gmail.com, testosterone@ova.com . There was one Laban Majora who also acted smart with me and wrote labiamajora@yahoo.com which I have refused to believe was a way of telling me that I was a virgin. That email must really have been from his names.

Dreamdate

In this part you discover that you are not the only one who was admiring the ‘butt’ of someone’s wife and now a mother, Beyonce. There were several hyenas that also had eyes on your target date and there you were praying that she breaks up with Jay Z so that you have your chance. Anyway, I am a smart guy, in this section my dream date was Sheila Mwanyigha, more realistic and I can tell you that I am 20.1% away from achieving that. You should see how she smiles when I make that call every morning on AM Live to remind her that she is as beautiful as the girl I am planning to dump for her. My jealous friends however think that she is always smiling at the cameras because of her profession. I don’t blame them; I blame their choice of dream dates.

Parting shot

Now, this was where they told you their honest opinion about what kind of a person you were in school. At this point you discover that some people consider your birth a curse. One that really interested me was this by Ralphson Akoto who wrote: “Sammy, huko nje hakuna ubeste story ya madame”. Now my whole life is miserable because I am very insecure, not sure where Akoto will appear from to grab my wife and run away with her.

Anyway, am somehow glad that almost everything in this book was a lie so I know Akoto maybe nowhere close. The closest he can be is to a television still drooling over Beyonce. 

I LOST MY JOB: I SUPPORT MOTHERTONGUE

I am tired of teaching languages to people who just don’t understand, so I am in full support of teaching of mother-tongue in schools. It is not like I am poor at teaching. No! You see when I was a music teacher, I managed to hit my target: To make my students sing better than Raila. Having said that, then I can proudly tell you that I am the one who advised one of my students, Duale to quit singing and try comedy [and you can see he is doing well].

In my several years experience in teaching, I have found nothing so hard to teach like these two foreign languages: English and Kiswahili. So I advice, that going back to mother -tongue will really ease things for language teachers.

 I had this student that I was teaching Kiswahili. We had successfully covered ‘ngeli ya Ki-Vi’ and so I decided to give an exercise; but the answers I got made me think thrice about teaching that language again. I had told the student: Wingi wa chakula ni vyakula, chetu ni vyetu,  cheupe ni vyeupe and so on and so forth.

Anyway, this was the exercise and the answers I got:

Andika sentensi zifuatazo kwa wingi:

• Mama amechoka – Wamama wamevyoka
• Chatu amekunywa chai – Viatu vimekunywa vyai.

I asked the headmaster to change my classes so that I would be teaching English, which I was very comfortable in. My request was immediately granted. Soon, we were told that there would be experts from the Ministry of Education who would be coming to supervise our teaching. I am a smart guy. I told my class in advance that when the supervisors come, I would be teaching on adjectives since we had learnt adjectives the whole of the previous term.

When the D-Day arrived, I wanted to prove to the supervisors that I was the best teacher of English alive and if they had any doubt I would prove it by selecting one of my poorest[am avoiding to use worst] student to write a grammatically correct sentence in  on the blackboard, and so I chose Khadija Mohamed. Khadija walked confidently on the board and scribbled:

I MATE MY TEACHER WHO WAS LONG, BIG AND HARD.

This was probably the biggest mistake of my life. I had warned Khadija severally that the spelling of mate was met and that those adjectives are not the best to describe a man, especially a teacher  but apparently she was determined to prove me wrong. I tried to explain to the ministry that she meant that I was tall and tough but it made things even worse.

To cut the long story short: I lost my job and so I support mother-tongue fullstop [oh, sorry (.)]

MEN ARE THE BEST MARKETERS

First, allow me to begin by excusing myself. In this writing, I will endeavor not to show how exemplary I am in the field of Sales and Marketing by using relevant and contextual words, but just so you know I know, I will explain some of them, lest you think I don’t know what I am talking about:

• ·         Return on Investment – This is what you get back after you have heavily invested on something. E.g Dowry. The perfect example is this though, when a man spends all he has in his wallet to buy a lady drinks, he is actually targeting the return on investment.
• ·         Market penetration – Market is an open place where things are sold. Penetration is ‘going into’. Putting the two together, Market penetration is the process of going into a market. E.g When a man pays a ‘hooker’ for services; you say he has penetrated the market.
• ·         PCV (Product Category Volume) – This is the confusion of PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride) E.g If a campus boy has a carpet at his place, rest assured it is PVC or PCV, whichever.

Well, at least now that we have looked at the definition of terms, we could go to our main topic. Our thesis statement here is: Men are the best Marketers.

Over years now, men have demonstrated their power of using the tongue to convince, which is the whole logic behind sales and marketing. So if I am to start a company that would require such services, then all my employees will definitely be men. I have all the reasons to believe that they are the best.

See, I am not that kind of person that you call very handsome, well because a few of my friends have severally commented that I resemble Julia Ojiambo. To add insult to injury, rather, subtract hair from my head, I have this al shabaabs who have my head under siege and are responsible for the speedy loss of my hair. Now, my friends believe that I am not so clever. They say “brain is hair” [akili ni nywele] and so my encroaching bald screams the level of foolishness in me. My teeth are not really the best but I won’t complain [it is not everyone who is blessed to have teeth that are almost white]. My tummy has constantly been a disappointment. The four cubes that I once had have successfully coagulated and collaborated to form an OPU coalition. Now, for my brothers who understand me, they know that a political opposition ONE PACK UNITED hanging right below your chest does not auger well with pretty ladies, maybe average ones. This has led me to a general conclusion: Lucifer was somewhere around distracting The Almighty with funny stories when He was busy creating me. He must have cracked a joke like: “Eh Mungu, mbona usipatie huyo mtu mapua kama chimney!” The Almighty must have definitely found it funny… funny enough…it is like He followed the advice. Now I am stuck with a nose that looks like a range rover’s exhaust pipe. In conclusion, I have only two consolations left:

• ·         The Bible, which assures me that despite my physical appearance short comings, I am frightfully [I have forgotten the actual word] and gorgeously [I am sure about this one] made.
• ·         Women. Ever since my last home science class that reminded me that I had reached puberty stage, I have never been single.

It is this second point that has made me arrive to my fact, men are the best marketers. In a society where competition is very high with an abundant supply of similar commodity yet demand is for the best commodity, an average looking human being like me must have perfect marketing skills to sustain your value in the market. Unfortunately, you are your own salesman. Remember you are also competing with products that are not readily available like: Chris Brown, Trey Songs, Alejandro Lombardo and so on and so forth. Putting this into consideration, it is my tongue that has sustained my value in the market. I have been quite able to confuse several women that I am the perfect choice commodity available in the market. I have wittingly convinced them that my pot belly is an artificial cover to some six -pack hidden in there. Somehow, I have also managed to prove to them that in as much as I may be a Julia Ojiambo look- alike, I smile better that Atwoli and that has made me popular. Though recently, I met this customer, who I told, “You leave me breathless”. She looked at my nose twice, gave me a horrible sneer and walked away. Point is, there are times business is also not quite good but you learn from mistakes. I will work on some marketing strategy for my nose to make me entirely hot potato or is it hot cake. That depends with your preference, I like hot potato.

So now you know that I am not the only man with these marketing skills. If you are a lady in a relationship, your man is the evidence to this because I can bet that every time you tell him, he is the hottest man in the world to you, you are actually lying to him. Someone may also argue that how can a man be the best marketer when it comes to dealing with men customers. Mmh…I had thought about that. You don’t need to convince him, convince the WIFE.

I ALWAYS OUTSMARTED UNCLE MARK

I almost made a grievous mistake yesterday of blaming God for giving me such an uncle, but as I always say and I will repeat, I am a smart guy. So instead of blaming God, then I find myself in hell-fire in future [With uncle Mark], I shifted the blame to one of my relatives that I don’t quite know very well; but somehow he/she misbehaved or rather messed up and now I am stuck with one Mark as an uncle. All could have been smooth, if at all I didn’t meet Uncle Mark, but somehow my being smart landed me at FSK…and BOOM! The accident…..I met Uncle Mark who henceforth insisted that I should never call him uncle but ‘Sir’. I almost laughed at that joke, until I discovered that he was actually serious. But even as a tiny Form 1, this was the only teacher who apart from a defiantly protruding belly, he was my size. At this point I must confirm that I found it easier to call one Martin Kitong’o ‘Sir’ but it always seemed like an intimidation using the same title for Uncle Mark.

Anyway, I am a smart guy and soon I knew I would deal with Uncle Mark, the Drama Club Patron then. Rumours had it that the man had been very hostile to my brother, who had also gone through his hands [I mean, in class and drama club…don’t allow your mind to be derailed]. So even as I joined the club later on, I was 100 steps ahead of Uncle Mark. It’s like preparing for a battle with an unsuspecting woman. I was on a mission to revenge.

In 2006, I made a point of asking Uncle Mark for Ksh.500. My Ministry of Pocket Finance had all of a sudden run bankrupt due to the extremely hot conditions at the Coast Province that had made me misappropriate funds into buying sodas and ice-cream for my crowd of high school girlfriends. Well, to cut the long story short, I was broke even before the festival started. Uncle Mark however was not the understanding type. Basically, I use “I will refund” as a cliché when asking for a loan from a high profile relative. So I expected Uncle to understand that it was more like, “forget about it” but hell no! It dawned to me that Uncle Mark was not the one to easily let go a hardly earned ksh.500, when I found myself headed home for a suspension the next term….apparently for failing to payback. Anyway, usually suspensions took 2 weeks, but mine took 2 days, so let’s just say I won. I still returned the money, very bitter at heart of course.

Uncle Mark always seemed to doubt my potential in leadership and somehow I suspect he jokingly discouraged members from voting for me as an official of drama club wit statements like: “We want someone who is serious. Someone who can take you to the nationals. Someone who understands what he is doing.” Then when I am very optimistic thinking that I was that person, he would get to his punch line, “….not like Nakitare!” The Form ones [usually the majority] would laugh but the seeds of doubt had already been sown. I lost my target seats to smaller people like Dennis Liyai. What he failed to discover was that I am a smart guy and I eventually outsmarted them all. Somehow, I always found myself later on as an official, with or without their votes. In this one, I laugh at them.

I will never forget this time when Uncle landed 12 slaps on my handsome face distorting it with his fingerprints. Now, 12 slaps are far too many. They are especially abnormal if they are from a linguist punishing you for speaking ‘sheng’ language. Anyway, my friend Richmond Embeywa convinced me to forgive him for two extremely strong and understandable reasons:

1.       Maybe he thought when you said ‘unacheki hiyo solar panel inakaa kama parabolic reflector’ you were referring to his under-construction airport [ a respectful phrase for a developing bald]

2.       Or when you commented, ‘walai uyo msupa ana haga’ he probably thought you were making fun of Mr. Shitubi’s spectacles.

Well, these points were strong enough for me to forgive him for misunderstanding me but am still waiting for a financially-related apology regarding his slapping me right in front of his future in-laws. From this encounter, I knew Uncle Mark would have a problem with taking me to the national in the next season, no matter how good I was. And just as expected, something came up just before the nationals. We qualified to go for the nationals with a narrative that initially was made up of a cast of 15, but due to some reasons we had to reduce the number to 12. Ideas hit me quickly, that after the encounters I had with Uncle Mark, he would not think twice before dropping me out of the squad, so the smart guy had to act quickly and the INFAMOUS CHEMSHA event came in handy. While my friends Erick Shibweche, Graham Nduko and Euclid Shilaku went home for suspension[leaving a perfect figure 12] due to the involvement in the saga…the actual man behind the beginning of the whole CHEMSHA thing was in Meru, enjoying the nationals, Nakitare. I owe them an apology, but for now allow me say that I was smarter than Uncle Mark once again.

But one thing has returned me to square zero. After the Ksh. 500 shillings incidence, I didn't actually let go until I played my last cards. I had to make Uncle Mark believe in me a little. That I did and he found himself putting one of his very great narratives, BABUSSA, in the hands of a man who was set to make sure, the name Mark does not appear on the National Drama festivals that year. We had several narrators but funny enough he insisted that I was the one to narrate it, despite my deliberate strategy to lose my voice before the Provincial festivals performance. To cut the long story short…for the first time in many years, we flopped. I only realized my mistake when the Choral Verse qualified for nationals and so it meant that Uncle Mark would make a grand entrance to Nyeri town without his nephew. Uncle Mark also ensured that I did not attend the provincial galas in spite of all my begging and pleading. I even promised to help him push his car that always needed pushing whenever he started it, but it was all in vain. Lately though, Uncle Mark has made a point of reminding me of how chubby my cheeks are, and in creative ways calling me fat. I can’t help but go back in time and discover the description used for the huge fat african ladies in that script BABUSSA. With this I feel like Uncle finally has outsmarted me. It is like he is shouting into my ears, “It’s not like I believed in you to give you the script kijana, I was actually laughing at your looks in the narrative. It looked funny to see you foolishly describing yourself!”

ALL THE RESPECT TO MY FAVORITE HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER: MR. MARK MUTALI CHETAMBE. I MISS THE FSK DRAMA SQUAD THAT YOU MOULDED. I NEED 12 MORE SLAPS, MAYBE I WOULD BECOME GREATER!