Shyly the girl jumps into the pool. She’s teaching me how to swim, but I am learning how to leave. This falls on the wrong side of my pleasure principle. This won’t work. The swimming, and the relationship. She’s a good girl. The kind of girl God gives you young so you can know loss for the rest of your life. Junot Díaz. She paddles. As she moves in the water, her body contour, serpentine in its agility, in this very moment, she rivals all my lovers, past and future. The memories come flooding back. The splash of the water reminds me of Splash Water World. I never learned how to swim but don’t try me at the local dufa mpararo contest. Otherwise, you will know what happened to Onyi “Jino Moja” Otieno in 2006.

Childhood snapshot. 90s games. Kati. Bladder. Cha mkebe. Bano. I was the local chobo ua champion. Those days we didn’t give an F about concussions. Vichwa ngumu. Still, losers would get proper ngoto. Three sticks. Kalongolongo. We didn’t know it then, but just like in Kalongolongo, we are living the past. So, it was so shall it be. Brikicho? Banture! Now we have more sinister games, now we play with people’s hearts.

Another snapshot:

A syzygy of emotions engulfs me here in my 2008 bedroom. The red-oxide floor, smelling like a damp handkerchief, is falling apart and someone needs to start thinking about repairing the roof. A lizard scuttles across the wall. The rest of the house is landlord-cream here, omo-blue roof there and an intoxicating off-white with grey hues that gives the walls “character.” At least, that’s what I tell my friends when they visit. “Khutsi Ingo” by Jacob Luseno is playing on the stereo, on West FM. Mother is rolling chapatis for mgeni. Our white cooker has been alive as long as I have been alive, a sort of Rosetta stone of the faith I have in my childhood—in the books that my father keeps in his wall cabinet, in the chapati ya brown and mboga ya kienyeji that my mother so lovingly cooks—and my siblings. This is the tabernacle where my faith expresses itself, and where I wrestle with its limitations.  

Another snapshot:

I am alone in the bedroom. I kiss my hand. I practise kissing with my hand. An hour later I meet Purity. We kiss under the awning of the Ebenezer Plot. King’ori the caretaker spots us. King’ori is cross-eyed. I don’t close my eyes. There is a lot of saliva involved. Are we doing this right? I should have learned swimming.

More Snapshots:

There are memories that time does not erase and the past beats inside me like a second heart. Like CMB Prezzo. Prezzo had a song about Prezzo. Prezzo landing with a chopper. Before Young Money Cash Money. There was Cash Money Brothers. There was CMB Prezzo. CMB Prezzo

on Insyder Magazine. Insyder magazine, the samizdat clandestine literature of our time. We used to be a real country.  

Another Snapshot:

Chaguo la Teeniez awards. Channel O. EATV. Tusker Project Fame. No one remembers the winners, no one forgets the romanticos: Hemedi. Illuminata. Ng’ang’alito. Judge Ian. Metro 101.9FM, House of Reggae. Arthur K and The Beat on NTV. Beat ya Clemmo. Ogopa Deejays vs Calif Records. Kapuka vs

Genge. E-Sir “South C’s finest” and Nameless vs Jua Cali “King of Genge” and Nonini “Godfather of Genge.” The others: Jomino of course. Grandpa records with Fimbo Inachapa. And fimbo ya pili. Na dawa ya moto ni moto. Historians. Abbas Kubaff. Kleptomaniax. Hardstone. Deux Vultures with Monalisa “nipe shilingi!” Na wasee tumetoka Githurai! PiliPili then was not just a spice. But Nonini was my black conscience: manzi wa Nairobi was my personal mantra and I suggest it should be yours too.

Another snapshot:

I am 13 or 14. I engage in what I call “wealth redistribution” from my father’s wallet to mine. 100 bob. Pesa taslim ya Kenya. I buy kangumu and bwibo. The rest I splurge on DJ Afro movies. Each five shillings. Ngovo. Kobole. King’ori. Dj Afro was all about the starring. Sterro. Otero. And that intro…. “Alllrrigghttttttttaaaa.” Later, we would go to the filed to play Police and Robber, wielding our fake dushnyaos, the Makmendes in the street, kangu’ura! What did kang’ura mean? I don’t know. Me, what I did was conclude that a word meant whatever the speaker wanted it to mean. I would fight those zealots who would caution us. DJ Afro made me feel unbwogable, and, like a KungFu kid, I will fight for my master’s honour to the end as a matter of course, I told myself. Liwe liwalo.

Another Snapshot:

2009. I have been suspended from school. Reasons don’t matter. I am in Kakamega, bored with Alfie’s Cobra Squad. I go to town, near Yako Supermarket. My regular CD guy tells me I should watch something more exciting. I give him 100 bob. Turns out it was porn. And not even quality porn. I am disappointed. I compare my thing with that ebony man’s thing. I am disappointed. His is bigger. Way bigger. I never watch porn again. I never forget his thing.

More Snapshot:

Uncle J calls alcohol “keroro”. I remember Nonini’s “niko gauge, niko maji, niko keroro.” I laugh. I first tasted Guiness in 2000-and something. I hated it. Uncle J made me have two sips as he told me that mawezere will always be there. Mawezere is ass. He counselled that I should always, as a man, have cash, common sense and condoms. Majuala as they were called then. Juala lent itself coolly to Kibaki’s “Pamoja Tuangamize Ukimwi” campaign. The fear of getting mdudu set us on the narrow path. Liwalo na liwe.

The apparition rises from the waves. Mpenzi majini. Mpenzi jini. I drown in my memories. Memories of the motherland itch like a scab I refuse to scratch. My state of affairs. Affairs of my state. Before everything was made in China. Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas. All is without meaning. We will all be laid low. 

Man, where did the years go?