Literary Madness, adrenaline & TeamKenya

It was a mad weekend for me. I was a bunch of nerves since Friday all through to Sunday evening.

As our athletes Sally, Vivian and Prisca took to the 10,000m race tracks in the Olympics being held in London on Friday night, I was there with them. Via Television but still, I was there. When they were requested to take their mark, get set and go, I took the orders with them. When Dibaba and her team began to rain on our parade, I stayed positive. Hoping for the best. Cheering them on. My heart raced in tandem with their well-trained feet and, I am sure, hearts.  I craved for medals. I yearned for the sweet melody of our National Anthem resounding in that stadium miles away for the multitudes to hear and recognize Team Kenya!

 I refused to despair when we had to contend with second place. Dibaba was good, but it did not change the fact that our representatives gave their best. They carried our flag.

I was nervous all right. Come Sunday Night, my adrenaline was on an all time high when Big Brother Africa aired the show’s Grand Finale and evicted the finalists one by agonizing one. Naturally, I rooted for Prezzo because he held the Kenyan flag. He even said it himself, that he wanted to win to make Kenya proud. He flaunted code 254 every chance he got, the only housemate to have had a jersey and a mug adorned with the colors of our flag. That was enough reason to have me voting for him. Like everyone else, Prezzo came with his flaws. I called him an asshole under my breath when he got intoxicated and unnecessarily argued with South Africa’s Barbz. I rolled my eyes when he lashed at DKB bragging that he lived in a mansion, had taken a bullet and was not afraid of no one. I was dumbfounded when he wielded an empty bottle at Wati and Keagan threatening to ‘put them in their place’

But that did not deter me from voting for him. For doing this, I and other Kenyans of my ilk got insulted by a blogger who believes they hold the most revered opinion in the land. Woe unto you should you disagree with them! We were called ‘spineless bitches’ for voting for someone they did not like. While defending their right to an opinion, they trampled on others’ opinion asking why we were voting for Prezzo who “…had more mood swings than a class full of women”

Don’t ask me where women and mood swings come in because I am still trying to find the connection.

An insult to women and an insult to Kenyans for defending their own - warts and all.  Using their own words, “Who DIED and made your HYPE the end point for all competitions?”

What followed on twitter after Prezzo was announced first runners-up was a sad series of tweets on why we are all shallow for supporting him and for daring to think that he could win.How dare we dream of a victory? It was sad seeing such juvenile reaction akin to a toddler jumping up and down in excitement for getting a lollipop. I kept asking myself what the celebration was for; Kenya’s lose? A laugh at yourself?

Sadly, there are some ailments that only advancement in age and subsequent maturity can cure. All we can do as the Kenyan fraternity is sit back and patiently wait for such individuals to advance from using the feeding bottle to using the Sippy cup.

Amidst all the madness though, Ezekiel Kemboi sprinted to the finish line with the Kenyan flag and his trademark jig to boot. Now what better way to end an adrenaline-packed weekend?

The Whys & Wherefores

There is this song by Toni Braxton “Why won’t you love me”. First of all Toni is one woman who can totally gerrit. That woman puts the FAB in fabulous! Let’s see; promoting her album while pregnant simply because her recording company would not put it off. She has a cancer scare which thankfully turns out to be benign, but in a twist of fate she is diagnosed with lupus. Add to that raising an autistic son whom she talks about in an emotional spurt, only like a mother can.  You have a woman who at the age of 45 is sexy as hell (no homo) with a sultry voice and who is above all, a survivor of divorce.  It doesn’t get any more woman than that people. Na-ah! 

The song is very soulful and sweet and painful. You know the kind? Those emotional songs that can make you fall in love with some random unkempt stranger seated next to you in a matatu? There are songs that make the most impervious of men to go down on one knee and declare their undying love to a woman.  Add some poignant lyrics to Toni’s vocals and you get such a song; a song so powerful that it would make the abecedarians at Tusker Project Fame to hide in their play pen. Good job though EABL, but Ruth? I don’t know…. Really, I don’t. I never got to watch most of season 5 so I won’t pull an ‘Alpha Rwirangira’ on you guys.  Then again, it’s a bit too late for that now, innit?

Moving on swiftly….

Toni.  Asking why? And don’t we all, at one point. “Why won’t you love me the way I need to be loved”, she asks. So why won’t he? Is it because of the way you wear your hair, the way you talk, walk, dress? What is wrong with you? What can you do to be perfect for him?

As much as I love Toni, and as much as I love this song and a good number of her other songs, I do not like the lyrics to this particular song. A woman who asks what she can do to be perfect for a man is a woman who doesn’t think she is worth much to begin with. It all begins and, sadly, ends there.

They say it always starts with the WHY before the how, what, who, when or where can follow.

For example, I know the reason why I go clickety-clack on my keyboard, not as much as I would love to perhaps, but every once in a while. It’s because of such lyrics, such representation of women as ineffectual beings. What’s with all that I’ll-be-anything-you-want crap anyway?  It’s deeply unsettling.

Why won’t you love me? Why do you love me? Why is the sky blue? Why is the alphabet in that order? Do some questions have answers? Just like Toni might not get a satisfactory answer to her question, some people can never answer why they love the person they claim to love. Sometimes, you cannot put your finger on that je ne sais quoi that makes your woman or your man tick. Sometimes, you can only appreciate that when cupid strikes, some nerdy girl with braces, a flat chest and the smallest behind or some loud obnoxious midget of a man could get you sprung.

Or maybe sometimes we (I) should just sit back and enjoy a beautiful soulful song without getting agitated about the lyrics, neh? Ok. I am stepping away from the keyboard and putting my earphones back on.

Peace!

Alone in a crowd

I looked up and our eyes met. His cold and grim, mine scared and surprised. How is it that he spotted me amidst  this mammoth crowd? He kept his eyes on me. OMG! There were about five hundred people gathered here, why me?

He was unfazed that I had seen him. He seemed not to care that I could out him and have the crowd turn on him. Did this guy know anything about mob justice?  Even then, the thought of the mob meting out justice on him was not much of a consolation to the effect his disturbing piercing look had on me.

Choosing to ignore him, I stood on my toes and stretched my neck in an attempt to see what everyone else was trying to see. There were two sets of people; the crowd at the periphery that was struggling to surge forward to find out what the fuss was about; and the other (lucky?) ones at the centre who had access to the ‘action’. These were the crowd pullers who attracted the rest as they looked on curiously at something. I couldn’t make out their faces; was it shock, fear, disgust, or sheer curiosity written on their faces. What were they all looking at? Was it a dead body? A man hit by a car perhaps? A victim of violent robbery? A sick man or woman with epilepsy maybe, who had suffered an attack on his way to Godknowswhere? Was it a woman giving birth? A fighting couple? Two men fighting over a girl? Ha! It could easily be two girls clawing at each other and pulling each other’s weaves because of a man!  A lost child perchance? A new-born infant thrown and left for dead? An aborted fetus? What was it?!

As I wondered what the reason behind the gathering could be, I was apprehensive of the man looking down from the storey building above us with a rifle in his hands. No one seemed to have seen him but me. That was not the scary part. The scary thing was that he had spotted me and he knew that I knew that he was up there.  With a gun! I was afraid to look up again, lest our eyes met for the second time. Oddly enough, I could not move my feet yet my head was telling me that I should scurry off to safety, as far away from this crowd as my feet could carry me. My brain communicated this danger to the rest of my body, but my feet refused to take any orders. So I stood there, rooted to the ground. A part of the crowd yet all alone. Singled out.

Soon the crowd at the centre (the lucky ones) started looking around as if searching for something, someone perhaps? It appeared as if they had discussed something amongst themselves and decided that there was a puzzle missing that would complete the mystery of whatever it was they were witnessing. They searched the crowd with their eyes, sifting through the hundreds of people. Instinctively, I looked up again to see if Mr. Rifle was still up there.

Sure enough, he was still there, still looking straight at me and still holding his rifle. Only this time, he aimed it at me! There was no sound when he pulled the trigger. I saw the bullet leave the barrel and come straight at me. Slowly, like it was determined not to miss its target. My legs insisted on disobeying me and so I stood still, my feet glued to the ground. Since I could not find my voice either, I looked down and covered my eyes with my hands. Then I waited.

The bullet hit my skull neatly. Imagine when you drive a nail with a hammer into a soft piece of wood and it goes in without much resistance.  That’s how the back of my head received the bullet. I tasted blood at the back of my mouth, like it was trickling from my brain, or up there somewhere. Then I felt some fluid oozing from my nose. I wiped it with my hands. More blood.

I found my voice (FINALLY!)  and  asked the crowd to help me! To take me to hospital quickly, fast! That I had been shot! That I did not want to die! That I had children who needed me! That I was losing blood and needed medical attention!

The crowd looked at me with blank faces. No one moved and no one said a word as I stood there with a bullet lodged at the back of my head, bleeding from my nose and mouth and my heart pounding like a drum…

When I woke up my heart was pounding indeed like a million drums!