During my brief sojourn in the country side from new year’s eve to the 2nd of January, an unprecedented event occurred that left me with a heavy heart. On the evening of the 1st of January, an uncle of mine requested that I leave my hired fielder home and accompany him to town for a night of merry-making with his car. I was to be his designated driver if he indulged too much. After about 5 hours of heavy drinking while I slept in the car, he called me and requested that I meet him in the pub. I locked the car and sauntered into the establishment. It seemed he had had too much to drink judging by the number of empty Tusker bottles that were on his table and the two unwieldy harlots that flanked him on either side. It was a bit like a medieval English knight with his squires in a crowded inn after a long day of battling french infantry in a brutal sword combat during the hundred years war.
He tried to introduce me to the ladies but i signaled that there was no time for pleasantries as it was fast approaching 12.00am. He asked if I would fancy a drink but I politely declined so he asked that i drive him back to the village since i was sober and therefore he bid farewell to his harlots and assured them of another round of drinking the following day. It was not to be. On reaching the parking lot, he abruptly changed his mind, demanded that I hand him the keys and said that he would drive himself. I attempted to remind him that he had indulged excessively and was therefore not in a position to get behind the wheel but once someone hits you with the demeaning “kwani gari ni yako?” line, you have no choice but to let bygones be bygones.
As i write this, i’m currently holed up in a stuffy matatu sitted next to a gentleman who reeks like a rotten carcass, not entirely dissimilar to an exhauster truck that has overturned and spilt its unsightly load all over the road. He is unsuccessfully trying to ignite petty discourse but for some reason all my hints of disinterest have gone unnoticed.
The bloke is casting serious aspersions on the authorities but i’m indifferent to his machinations whether real or perceived. Yes sir, i can see that the road is bad and yes the contractor did a terrible job and indeed the authorities or partly or entirely to blame but how will my opinion, or lack thereof, alter the status quo? Furthermore, if you’re going to criticize the government, you might as well be well groomed while at it to avoid giving the impression of a retard.
Anyway, back to our story, i handed my uncle the keys reluctantly and eased myself onto the front passenger seat. I promptly belted up (he didn’t) and clutched tightly onto the roof-mounted handlebar with my left hand and hoped that karma had taken a leave of absence that night. The fact that he at least drove rather slowly calmed my nerves, albeit slightly, since it increased my chances of survival if he accidentally rear-ended a random car on the dirt road or parked us up a tree.
A few meters into the terrifying ride, his headlamps illuminated on what appeared to be a very beautiful woman in a skirt that was far shorter than what most would consider civilized. She almost seemed naked and for some reason she was standing all alone beside the road at that ungodly hour tapping away at her fancy gadget in spite of the biting cold. Anyway my uncle’s mind completely shut off and all his attention focused on the girl as he craned his head outside the window to catch a better glimpse while confidently remarking that he would dump his unsavory wife any day to have that woman. I tried to get his attention back to the road but it was too late, he rammed into a bodaboda on the far left side of the road sending it into a zigzag for a few meters as the rider desperately attempted to regain balance. He failed and eventually fell onto the red earth with a thud along with his female passenger. At this point, the scantily dressed woman was nowhere to be seen, she had somehow vanished into the night.
My uncle stopped the car, cursed repeatedly while banging on the steering wheel and stepped out to assess the damage. It was just a slight dent on the paint job, he then looked at the rider who has hastily lifting the bike off the woman’s leg as she screamed in pain. As it turned out, the hot boda boda exhaust pipe had burned her leg as the bike fell on her right foot. My uncle hurriedly got back into the car and said that we needed to get out of there as fast as possible. I tried to imply that we couldn’t possibly leave the injured woman there but I remembered the painful line “kwani gari ni yako?” And decided to feign indifference. He quickly sped off as the rider, having lifted the bike off the woman’s leg, attempted to stop the car by jumping in front of it while waving his hands in the air and almost getting run over in the process. Having failed, he threw a large rock that narrowly missed the rear window and bounced harmlessly off the mild steel boot door as the car sped off. I could hear him hurling profanity in the distance but his insults were barely discernible.
We luckily arrived back to the village safely albeit at breakneck speeds that wouldn’t be out of place in a fast & furious movie. We had been expecting a gang of blood thirsty riders to be on our tail baying for our blood as is the norm when such incidents occur, but none were forthcoming. My uncle demanded that I promise to never mention a word of the incident to anyone. If asked, i was to categorically state that a drunk driver had swiped the front bumper in the parking lot outside the pub. Way to go uncle, turning me into a symbol of deceit and lies. I was still in a state of shock and anger over the unfortunate events that took place that night so I was temporarily devoid of words and my face had been drained of all expression. He informed my grandma and my other relatives that something had come up back in Nairobi and therefore he needed to vacate the village early in the morning and true to his word, his car was nowhere to be seen the following day, he had vanished in the wee hours of the morning under the cover of darkness.
The incident reminded me of the song by the late John de Mathew which those of the Kikuyu dialect probably know of called “mwihuguro” in which he sings about his desire to start knitting elaborate curtains for men’s eyes so that they don’t end up ramming electricity poles all the time as they look out the window to observe a passing damsel. He remarks that this behavior of men poking their heads out of car windows and twisting their necks to observe the backs of women with posteriors of extreme dimensions has to end for accidents to reduce and rightfully so. The song had never been more relevant to me as it was now. It’s unfortunate that he passed on without actualizing his futuristic eye curtains that would have probably earned him a fortune if they went into mass production.
After an uneasy night, I felt incredibly guilty afterwards and decided to make things right at dawn. I took my hired fielder the next morning and drove around the town looking for clinics since I figured she must have sought treatment for her burns. The were only two clinics in the town so my search was much easier than I had anticipated. I went into the first clinic that was conveniently adjacent to a row of pubs and inquired as to whether they had received a female patient with burns on her right leg. The doctor i found was hesitant and demanded to know who I was and the reason for my strange interest in his patients. He was a stout, bald man with a receding forehead and huge bloodshot eyes that were partly hidden behind small, concave glasses that were probably meant to correct myopia. He exuded an aura of impatience so I was keen on not wasting his time and therefore I tried to shorten our encounter by making my reasons for the visit brief and on point.
I took a deep breathe and narrated the previous night’s events in excruciating detail. The doctors’s facial expression quickly changed from that of contempt to that of remorse. He nodded and asked me to be patient as he checked through his records. He ushered me into his office where he sat behind a dusty, cluttered desk and beckoned me to sit on the heavily worn-out seats directly opposite. He skimmed through his records, paused and smiled. “You’re in luck,” he said, “she was here in the morning with minor burns on her right foot but she will be okay in a few weeks. Her name is Mary.” It felt like a heavy weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I heaved a sigh of relief and requested for her mobile number which the doctor promptly handed me. As I stood up to leave, I thanked him profusely and went back to the car briefly making eye contact with the patients seated at the reception who looked at me as though I were the devil incarnate for skipping the line. Trying to explain why I had gone past them to see the doctor first would have been an exercise in futility since they probably considered me to be yet another entitled Nairobi fool, so I sauntered on to the exit taking notice of their stares from the corner of my eye.
In the car, I called the woman, introduced myself and again narrated the events of the previous night that had led to her scalded leg. There was a brief silence on the other end of the line as the woman digested the information then asked, “sasa unatakaje?” And I requested to meet her. She paused for a moment then agreed and gave me directions to her house. I hastily bought some household foodstuffs at a nearby supermarket and went on to meet her at her house.
On arriving, she received me at the gate, directed me to the parking space and ushered me into the house. I could see that she had a large bandage on her right leg and she walked with a slight but noticeable limp. I felt deep regret that she had to suffer in this manner due to my relative’s ineptitude. I expressed my remorse at the events of the previous night and reaffirmed my resolve to right the wrongs. I went back to the car and retrieved the goods I had bought for her. She was ecstatic and thanked me for my kindness but I promptly rejected her gratitude remarking that I was the one who was indebted to her for being kind enough to allow me to right the wrongs of my uncle the previous night. I then inquired how much she had spent at the clinic and refunded her the full amount plus more for subsequent visits to dress the wound. I also left her my number and told her that if she ever needed anything at all, she shouldn’t hesitate to call me.
The woman was overwhelmed with emotion and tears flowed freely. She narrated how the expenses had eaten into her meagre finances and thus putting her son’s return to school in jeopardy since she was a single parent. I asked whether she knew the whereabouts of the bodaboda operator but she said she didn’t. He had delivered her home that night and left. It turned out that he wasn’t at all injured and his bike wasn’t significantly damaged with just a broken rear mud-guard. I would have liked to meet him too but the woman didn’t have his number and she wasn’t sure where I could find him so I left it at that for the time being.
On my way back to the city that afternoon, I felt content at how I had handled the situation. I wondered how my uncle had been so indifferent that he felt no remorse whatsoever. How he went back to normal life in the city without an iota of regret was beyond me. As for me, I now had some much needed peace of mind since the incident would have nagged me for long and consumed me from the inside out. I later caught up with my uncle in the city at his huge bar and restaurant in Thika and realized that he was yet to repair the damage so I managed to snap a picture of the same as shown below while his car was at the parking lot. I never revealed to him what I had done and he also never spoke of the incident. It was as though he had confined that memory to the back of his head and he wasn’t particularly keen on ever retrieving it again.
Off-topic, all my attempts at reaching out to Dakota Fanning seem to have hit a snag for the past 3 consecutive years, I urge all well-wishers (including Nawaz Khan and his henchmen) to keep me in their prayers as I relentlessly pursue this ever-elusive damsel.
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