Introducing....Sham

Before I even cracked open my writing pad and bic, my mind was already wandering the wastelands of thought in full blown hate mode. This is the kind of thought process that guarantees you a place in the news for all the wrong reasons…if you don’t believe me, just ask Onyancha or Harun ‘the godfather’ Mwau. The trigger to these very homicidal thoughts is none other than my neighbour. This is one dude that makes going to Kamiti for first degree murder, with all the toppings (including the dropped soap bidness) seem almost worth it!!

Before I describe what about this ignoramus gets me foaming at the mouth, let me give you a brief mental picture of what this asshole looks like. Right off the bat, the thing that hits you about my neighbour (this is too long to type, lets call him Sham), is that other than his larger than normal height, he is incessantly dark! The kind of dark that is damn near navy blue…its so bad, my Sudanese friend kinda looks normal hue next to Sham. Nigerian women with all their advanced bleach technology wouldn’t be able to help Sham out of the curve ball nature threw him. Couple that with the unnatural shape of his head and the abnormally large nose, the weird dude from Notre Dame starts to look a whole lot more appealing! I wholly subscribe to the notion that good looking people get preferential treatment through life, and the more aesthetically challenged among us get squat. If you do not believe me, think about that brainless, lazy, unmotivated hottie you know in your life with exceptionally well sculpted breasts and look at how she lives. I think this dude is trying to show life the middle finger by being an ass, but along the way, it’s the casualties of their private war that suffer. I happen to be the guy into whose body the shrapnel from the I.E.Ds land!!

Let me try and summarize the habits that the Sham species exhibits, in one long paragraph, and at the end, the reasons for enriching my resident copyright infringement guru (jamaa wa mamuvi mtaani), buying seasons of CSI. I am still trying to find that perfect murder. Sham wakes up at around three in the morning. This is an admirable trait, yes? Well, its not all roses for me when he proceeds to pump his stereo with that annoying soap opera inspired brand of bongo music! It does not end there, he then decides it is time to get his fitness on…by skipping. Here is a 6’ 4” ninety something kilogram individual, thudding the floor with his size 14 feet at three in the bloody morning! Birds are not even awake at that time! The sun is still somewhere near Saudi on its way here! Keeping I mind that the walls between our two residencies are paper thin concrete, it sounds like an earthquake is coming to an Ali Kiba soundtrack! After his very early morning routine, this dude then concocts the foulest smelling of breakfasts! The gods only know what is in that meal, but whatever it is, it will drive the appetites right off you! Yes, the appetites. Especially for that early morning performance for when you have company of the big breast variety.

This dude’s hygiene is also questionable, judging by the stench that reeks from his house every time the door cracks open. He borrows every damn thing; my clothes pegs, Salt, my movies, washing powder, my mop and broom, my special blend coffee, a cup of rice…this is despite the fact that he earns a lot more than I do! I guess the idea of planning and living within your means is really a foreign concept where he comes from! I try not to categorize people by where they come from lest I come off like other ignorant intolerant people, but this dude makes the lakeside look really bad. I once forgot my conditioner in the third floor bathroom (First, yes I use conditioner, the kind that smells apples. Second, I am not rich enough to afford a self contained setup, but am getting there.). Now where was I? oh yeah, I had to get the bottle of conditioner back. I go this fella’s house to ask if he had seen it, and two things washed over me….relief and horror, in quick succession. Relief was that he had my bottle of conditioner and I could get it back (it was that time of the month when you have had a moth live in your wallet so long, you have named him Kanja.), horror was that Sham, in all his sophisticated glory, was using my conditioner for lotion. Lavishing it upon his skin like cocoa butter!!

To cut a long story short, Sham is the kind of human being that makes you doubt evolution. After a long ass time changing into better functioning beings, surely evolution must have weeded people like him off! I hope, for the sake of equality of state, and just so I can be a selfish prick, there are more people like Sham tormenting others out there. That would guarantee that someone out there will utilize the knowledge gathered from TVland to come up with the perfect murder. When they do, please share. I am rather disinclined to showing up on the news, accompanied by the headline “Man attacks neighbour with a claw hammer in his sleep.”, with the stoic news presenter warning the audience that some of the images might be more than a little disturbing. Since moving out is not an option,( Kanja and me are still hanging), I would appreciate any help I can get. Even the DR MAMA ZAINABU kind.

Bringing back the romance.

In the heights of intoxication attained by chewing the leaves of a certain legally obtainable plant material (that is a fancy way of saying-“tulikuwa tunachana veve”), my friends and I were reviewing the effect of change on our current lives. The result left us feeling nostalgic and in a way, more than a little old. It occurred to us that due to the effect of social networking, the roots of true romance have died off. The emergence of Twitter, 2go and Facebook, has taken away the pleasures that were involved in the writing of love letters…the old fashioned way! During our time in high school, Mr Zuckerberg had not thought of a way he could communicate with other people who weren’t there, without having to get out of his chair, or use his voice. We had to put a whole lot of effort, and in the case of the creatively challenged; collective effort, to come up with a means to which our hormone fuelled teenage crushes would be put across. Girls in those days, were also a lot harder to convince. It took a lot more than a thirty minute chat on 2go where you profess insane amounts of lust for someone you have never met, to even get to first base. In the eventuality of this post, I thought it prudent to TRY and recreate the experience of a proper love letter…

  Darling,

I hope this letter finds you in high spirits. This is the umpteenth attempt at composing it, the others having been deemed unworthy. They did not seem to capture the essence of my feelings for you. I do not want to bore you with the details, but suffice to say, I am fine, and school work is not as bad.

Lately though, thoughts of you seem reluctant to leave my head. I find myself in a constant state of daydream, with you at the centre of every waking thought of mine. Remembering your beauty gets me through the day, and the memory of those gorgeous eyes filled with laughter and joy, gets me through the tough spells. Sometimes, I fill so full of love for you that I want to shout it out from the rooftops of the tallest building.

You are to me, my dear, like an exotic flower, cradled within you is a beauty not often seen, and demands that it be admired. The thought of you evokes the faintest whiffs of the exquisite scent that surrounds me at every embrace. I wish I could feel your touch once more, the light caress of your fingers on my skin as you lie on my chest during those lazy moments. Your smile always seems to light up even the darkest of moods.

I long for those stolen moments we shared during the long break. The moments we carved out for ourselves, just to be alone. It was risky business going about it, with your father’s legendary temper to consider, but the moments we had were always worth it. It is times like this, when memories seem to wash over me in waves, that I realise just how much you mean to me. I love you my dear, and that nowadays, is the only thing that seems to matter.

With every sunrise, a promise is born. That which vows to live and lead in the path of true love. Your love for me is an embossed seal, a vow and a promise; to lead in its path, my quest. I love you.

Your love,

Flani wa flani.

That was a hastily composed sample, of what used to rule the written world. Letters were awash with creativity and inspiration. Writing pads were bought by the bundle, and usually soaked in sweet smelling cologne, cheap as it was, before writing commenced. We even came up with ways of beating the postal system, involving used stamps, toothpaste and a curiously simple forgery process. The writing of those letters was akin to a sacred ritual, that was accorded the utmost respect. That was the heights to which we would go, to jot up our girlfriends.  If our teachers of English had us writing love letters instead of compositions of irrelevant topics, I bet all that I possess (however little it may be), that tour command of the language would have increased tenfold.