Aha charonyi ni wasi / Viilambo vose ni igome / Kakunda mufu ni igome /
Kakunda mnavu ni igome / Machi ghenywa ni igome / Kila kilambo ni igome / Ni
wasi! Ni wasi! Ni wasi! / Ni wasi! Ni wasi! Ni wasi!
By George, I think I’ve
bloody solved it!
Wadawida call them “Mboga za majani”, which obviously
implies several different types of mboga.
Now I’m reminded of a time when I lived exclusively with my dear and much
beloved little brother Oscar. Our parents had just immigrated back to Kendu
Bay; our awesome big sister Olivia was long married and, gone and with her, our
sweet baby Chichi; second-in-line Alvas was also married and off to begin a new
life in holy matrimony; and my immediate follower, Kodhé, was in uni; which
left Oscar and I in that big house, along with the perpetual house help,
‘Susu’, carried over from the previous Administration. We called her that
because she was fairly elderly, and also that is how she preferred to be
referred to, which I suspect must be a close relation to the Kikuyu ‘cũcũ’, but for my fledgling Bantu; I
don’t know, but you Bantu speakers can fill
me in me on another day, perhaps another post.
Anyway, one day Oscar
and I get home, fresh from our daily travails, when we find Susu at the gate departing.
“Mpoka iko kwa kas na mjele iko hapo kwa
microweff,” she proclaimed as she strutted off; it was month-end and my then
incongruous employer hadn’t yet deposited my wages for the month’s
labours into my bank account, which in turn presaged that I hadn’t salaried
Susu. (It was my turn to pay her, alongside covering shopping, utilities and
drinks for the month.) So I completely understood her diva-ing; whereupon I ventured
into the kitchen only to find two sufurias
sitting pretty on the gas cooker. Assuming that she had somewhat messed up the serving
instructions, possibly on account of fatigue (it really was a big house,
occupied by two bachelors), Oscar and I proceeded to the living room to watch The Gladiator, firm in the conviction that we were staring at rice and sukuma wiki or some other variant of
vegetable on the evening’s menu (us Nairobi-borns cannot countenance a meal
sans beef, you see).
Well, some 149 mins. (approx.)
later (we always got the DVD box sets), as our collective tapeworms began a
fervent push for nourishment—mostly on account of Oscar somehow remembering to
accompany himself home with a bottle of Courvoisier
(yep, it was around that time: “Pass The Courvoisier!”)—which we chivalrously imbibed as we witnessed, with
mouths agape, Russell Crowe yelling “Are you NOT entertained????”, we called it
a loss and streamed, in a file, to the kitchen where, to our collective pleasant surprise,
we found one sufuria of beef and another
of sukuma wiki atop the gas cooker,
and yet another of rice in the microwave.
And so it transpires
that the Luhya nation was right all along: ugali
si mboga!
Annexe 1
If you’re in my age group/set, then I suppose you can tell that I’m listening to Charonyi Ni Wasi by Maroon Commandos (#RIPHabelKifoto)
on my iTunes Zilizopendwa playlist,
and I’m fucking missing home! This song instantly takes me back many decades, to
my first day of school and possibly long before that, when I spent many happy
salad (pre-school) days with my favourite cousin Amongs—my other favourite
cousins were either too old to play with me or much further adrift—and younger sister
Kodhé while minding baby Oscar, all in the company of our cruel distant cousin,
at once babysitter and general household factotum, Atieno Nyar Akola (she of the thrash-children-black-and-blue-with-slippers-and-don’t-tell-mother
fame), when all life had to offer was waking up to the soundtrack of my life on
VoK (Voice of Kenya National Service to the uninitiated) and coming back home
to the same music because yes, I’m fucking old and my body is fucking weary; I’ve
done all a brilliant writer can do in this fuckéd advertising industry and
kicked colossal arse in the process. But I miss home, the familiar things and familiar
people, connecting with familiar memories and my salad days. And mummy! The
Flying Spaghetti Monster knows it’s been a fucking long time! #HomeSick
#MaroonCommandos #WasiMdu
******
Thing 1
In light of what looks
like a classic meltdown up there—so you may think, or might have been led to believe,
apparently— I will mitigate with one of the more inspirational quotes I have
come across in this life, one I find captures my worldview on any given day and
keeps me grounded on this cold, dark road, the way of the writer (not to be
confused with The Way of The Samurai):
"The mind of a writer can be a truly terrifying thing: isolated, neurotic, caffeine-addled, crippled by procrastination, consumed by feelings of panic, self-loathing, and soul-crushing inadequacy. And that’s on a good day!" – Robert De Niro
Mind you, I’m not one
of those self-help, Think-And-Grow-Rich types. So, there.
******
Thing 2
It’s pitch season inUganda and as you all zero in on the hallowed hallways of corporate Uganda,
hearts on sleeve and more contrite that Saint Augustine (C.E. 354-430)—although
let’s not lie to each other: some of you will ‘approach the Bench’, as per well-honed
tradition, with brown envelopes or backpacks full of brand new money and the
rest, like a lost ball in high wheat, with empty hands and meticulously
prepared and carefully stacked tomes of bid documents (in quintuplicate)—I
thought I might chip in with some timely advice on this whole pitching
business. Provided, of course, that you are not inclined to bribe your way
through the entire affair; in which case, open a new tab and proceed to
Twitter. But we all know that you’re too obtuse to collect your thoughts in 140
characters, which is probably why you resort to ‘inducements’ to begin with.
Moving swiftly onwards,
below is a meme I found online which, it transpires, is precisely how I would
go about the bloody thing:
Annexe 2
“...Perhaps the finest copywriter of his generation...” Nice touch,
if I say so myself! So I will just leave this here also; I think it speaks for
itself. Do come through and let’s have a candid yak about this whole pitching
business, shall we?
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