Kenyan on the street

The Kenyan on the street is smart: picture the chap wheeler dealing at a street corner, ably bargaining with one eye looking out for the city council chaps, one eye on you and another eye on your pocket! You don’t believe me? Try it around Nairobi’s Tom Mboya about 5pm. Either these guy shave more eyes than the rest of us or they have compound eyes, period. Anyway, back to the basics, okay not exactly, but I have always wanted to say that. Right up there with other clichés that make you look good. Kenyan mannerisms have been the subject of many a satirical production but nowhere are they more hilarious, and downright concerning like on the streets. I walk a lot, being the proud owner of a (pair of) miserable shoe-zuki. Lifted that from a colleague but it already makes me look wise, see? Luthuli Street on the other side of Nairobi where a few years back you could not dare pull out your phone. I walk down minding my own business then this dude appears out of nowhere. I can swear I was all alone then the next moment this blighter is brushing against my shoulder head bent to whisper to my ear like we were having an intimate conversation (shudder). “Hey chief unataka simu?” Darn him.

Flash back a couple of years (more like decades actually) a story was told to me. This chap owned a store, those one-window/door establishments that make you the go to guy in small villages. Then this man come tearing down the one street shopping centre a carton in hand (the one street detail wasn’t mentioned but that is the way I pictured it, was quite an imaginative kid. I pictured the this chap huffing and puffing leaving a trail of red dust behind him like a herd of cattle gone rogue). Anyway, the carton-bearing chap tossed his luggage at the storekeeper who being a good brother’s keeper caught it and placed it on the counter. Not very far behind were a couple of rangers looking not unlike a charging elephant. They followed the carton and nabbed the poor generous storekeeper with a couple of leopard hides. I am sure the guy got quite a hiding. I have never been sure if this was a true story or a fabrication to keep my dumb ass from taking tuff from strangers buy it certainly worked. So you understand my phobia of stuff offered by strangers. Like a chap on a night bus to Western Kenya offering you a bite out of the packet of biscuits he’s happily munching from. No sir, even bongoman knows better than that.

I quickly ditched my new-found friend fast and looked around to make sure no kanjo was after him. One thing, I’d rather be arrested by policeman any day. Once those kanjo chaps get you, you will not use that street for a couple of months. Every time you even come close it feels like everyone remembers the poor bugger who got carted away like contraband.