I’ve always admired bartenders. Anyone who can convince you that Sex on the Beach at 11 a.m. is a good idea understands the human condition, or what dreams are made of. And when the Manhattan floods the hole in your soul, and the right colour of black hair has come and sat down at the bar nursing a margarita and the stereo is playing some snooty Fally Ipupa, well, you begin to understand things. Like, why we vote for governors based on looks and dimples and a wicked hairline. Heck, we don’t even mind their alleged drug problem. Which, when you think about it, is our problem—not his. Which is interesting because some county governor here is having a drink, where I am having a drink. And that either means he is living below his means or I am living beyond mine. Could be none, could be both, could be the fact that I am on the bartender’s tab. Friends in ‘high’ places. You have to give me that one.
I asked him, the bartender, to make me the manliest drink he can, because you know how it is in this regime. You don’t want people calling you a soy boy, or an incel, or whatever the manosphere comes up with next. My order is: Something that would make the manliest man you know even more manly. And so he does. It tastes like donkey’s piss, which is what a manly drink should taste like, I guess.
The drink is making its way up my system, and I can feel my inhibitions loosening, the unbearable insanity of the sober world, the loneliness of bar lobbies. A fortnight back, I almost got swept away in Lake Sakaja, caught in the Friday night melee after chasing a deal the whole day. In case you are wondering, the deal haikuivana. It doesn’t matter how hard you work in this country, a former flame told me while applying for her visa, unless you have the right name or sleep with the right names, you don’t get very far. I didn’t believe it then—youthful idealism—and the Kenya economy had not bared its fangs yet. I’m a little older now, and the older you get, the more baggage you have to carry, and the less you’re able to lift it. I don’t know if I’m wiser, but I’ve learned a few things. I am not stupid, not particularly—no stupider than anybody else, anyway. I’ve done a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Jobs came and went. I’ve miscarried dreams because you cannot outhustle a sterile government. New Singapore my foot.
Every time I turn to the left and meet the politician’s eyes, which are surprisingly small, I have this gnawing feeling of loathing. Or is it disgust? I don’t know what he saw in my eyes—anger, pain, weakness—but I know what I saw in his, and it was a look you only see in charismatic churches, the look of a person transported into ecstasy.
I would have loved very much to pick up that pencil my bartender friend is toying with and stab it gently in the politician’s neck. Or maybe not so gently. His face had become unbearable, repulsively carnal. I couldn’t not look at it. He looks like an African warlord, and he might as well be. He is 50% there anyway. It’s not even that I hate politicians, or maybe I do, maybe that’s it. But no, it’s also that by the time this government is out of office, I will be well into my thirties, the prime of my bean-counting years gazumped by limp governance. I cannot afford for the government to fail, and it’s thoughts like these that make me crave a cigarette, just to blow off some steam, but Christ, that is an expensive habit. And of politicians, I know one thing, a saying in a focus group I once attended: A politician may appear to be a good fellow, but better to hang him.
It’s easy to dole out blame in this country. To be a man with plenty of excuses for why things just aren’t working. The way Manchester United fans complain the referee is always against them. Or the ball isn’t inflated enough. Or the grass was too greasy. Something. But what starts as a talisman can quickly become a crutch.
Keep on an even keel. That’s what they tell you in therapy. Because Kenya is designed to test your sanity. Matatus driving on pedestrian paths, nduthis on top of pedestrians, a president more interested in amassing personal fortune and stocking up on Subarus. I’ve always had a theory that he-who-shall-not-be-named has never been interested in being president, but he was definitely interested in the presidency. When the president talks about monetizing your skills, I listen, with pen and paper, because just look at how he has monetised the presidency. A true hustler. Kusema, na Kutenda. Is it not our elders who said even the man you do not greet may have wisdom in his mouth? Mgalla muue na haki yake mpe. All hail the Sugoi!
My bartender friend reels me in from my ocean of thoughts, sitting me at the shore, before the labels of my misery. “One more?” he asks. He seems eager to impress, and I let myself be impressed. “Moja tu, ya mwisho,” I say, as good a liar as my politburo friend over there, who is caressing his glass the way I dreamed of caressing Halle Berry. He is good at this bartending thing, building up drinks the way a mason would build a skyscraper, the way a good movie director builds suspense. Poor chap. In a different country, he would be offering mixology classes as an expert. Now he is a bartender, yes, he would have preferred to use his civil engineering degree, but Kenya abhors experts, and he makes no excuses for his lot in life, doesn’t ask questions he doesn’t want answers to. He just bends over and takes his shafting like a man. Labda ita-work.
