TO THE MATTRESSES

It has been exactly three weeks since I pulled the plug on my law school career. It was so abrupt, like an Indonesian tsunami and the people in my life have been reeling in the aftershocks. They can't get it in their head that I quite law school for mass comm. Like what the fuck is mass comm??  Law is the real shit. Heck no! I don't think it was meant for me. It was a mistake in the first place and I'm glad to have corrected it. Never did I fancy myself this hard headed lawyer stalking corridors justice , with Italian suits, stacks of paper under my armpits and all that brouhaha. I lacked imagination for it. Never did I think of myself as a Cliff Ombeta or The Grand Mullah. Okay, I lie, I like the Mullah's Mercedes G class. One monster of a ride.

I don't think of myself as a writer. I don't understand who writers are and I never want to. But you see, stories do come to me all the time. I have a pile of stories I want to post here and lots more. Each day, I get a new story. I look at a flower and I see a story hidden between it's petals. I'm in the loo visiting my ancestors and a story pops up in the mind. When that happens continuously each morning, each day, I think it gets in your head. It's like nature calling you, speaking to you

"Son, maybe this is the path for you."

I started writing years ago in class three. I wrote alot of bullshit really. It was letters, missives to my mother, my father and my teacher. Then I didn't know anything about blogging, or writing in any case. I just poured out my virgin heart. In primary school I wrote novel drafts which never got anywhere. Enter highschool, I was changed. I opened this blog while in form 2 and it has been running ever since. Only this year after finishing highschool is when I started posting consistently though.

And it has grown, the blog. There was a time when only 50 people read and none of them was among my immediate or extended family. Most being my school mates and a few friends. But God has been great and the number has shot up exponentially, multiplied beyond my wildest dreams. Sometimes I'm scared that I'm getting a lot of audience for a young writer. But  blogging is about stats also, you want to know which story resonated with readers, which one made hearts skip.

When I examine my life, I think writing is the core upon which it revolves. Should I go without writing, chances are I'll fall sick( ti hi hi hi !). True, sometimes I'm doing a story and it's not picking, I get moody like a pregnant elephant. I ignore people, I don't touch my WhatsApp for days, I take a hiatus from social media. It sounds crazy maybe, but that's how my system works.

As a creative, this path I have picked ain't for the faint hearted. I know I'm up for tough times ahead. But you see, it's all vanity really. I'm a child writer in all ways. I'm 18 years old, I don't own a laptop, I borrow from  friends who believe in my dream and some who don't give a rat's ass. Some lend the laptop others don't, "Jisort budaa!". Sometimes I type away on my phone because a story can't wait, it itches to be let out. In the Godfather, there's a part called "going to the mattresses". This is where mafia families are at battle and the soldiers move out of their houses to hide in apartments  for as long as the war rages on. This is my moment, I have gone to the mattresses. I might win the war, or lose. But the most important thing is that I showed up for battle. We'll die with our heads high.

Sorry, I rant too much. Today a guest post is running and perhaps I'm stifling life out of it.

It's not fair, I'm sorry bro.

Kimaru Kim, my ninja, dropped out of law school too. We were talking on phone the other day and he was like.

" That thing is boring jo. I don't understand how people put up with that for all that time."

"Law is a premium course my nigga, people make money at the end. It's worth the hustle."

I tried to advice him, me a law drop out myself. But guy wasn't going to change his stand.

"To hell with law school! And how about a guest post next week?" 

And because at KINASISI we don't judge or blue tick people. I told him to do his thing and  send it over. Today I woke up at 5 a.m  and there it was, sitting in my inbox doing push ups.

So Gang, I give you Kimaru Kim from Woi university. Kimaru, meet the Gang.

                                  ***

What will you say?

Armed with education as your only sophisticated weapon, you left as they gobbled down thighs of poor black cocks . They were probably hoping that four years later, you would turn up in all majesty,stinking of knowledge and vomiting law jargon on everything even at the big blue insect, the class prefect in a well maintained pit latrine. And that It would be at a time when the horizon would be unanimously agreeing to showcase the last of the sinking sun's rays. The excitement injected into the air at that specific time was just enough that it could even be felt in the chewing of the thighs. Their son had just been admitted to study law, something that had never happened before . It was a rare occurrence that deserved the honour of being regaled to a lost generation in the heat of a dying fire.

You pity the black cocks that were slaughtered on that day. If you had given it a thought earlier , you would have written an eulogy for each of them that lost their precious lives in the joyful name of celebration . You would have done it while they were alive spreading their flightless wings , voluntarily announcing the crack of a new dawn, chasing virgin hens across the earth and climbing on broilers fat behinds. You would have written it with a font bolder than an activist drunk with the poison of toxic feminism.

You think if you had written it, It would have emancipated your portion of land in slumber from the slavery of black cocks  seeking justice . Maybe the black cocks would be in a perfect state of satisfaction. Where enthusiasm is the air that suffocates their lungs , vibrance the oil that lubricates their nerves and dancing shaku shaku to the Kenyan national anthem as the only strenuous activity they waste their muscles in. Maybe you would be the village hero , like in a traditional folklore, who leaves their home and goes to a far off land to be welcomed in a cordial reception, the tears and years left to tell the story.

While the probability of such expectations being real pollute your brain , you know you have a disability . You can't draw a straight line even using a ruler . It is better to have self esteem issues than to have the kind of disability. When you have self esteem issues, there are beautiful therapists with very warm smiles that just resurrect a certain self worth in you,and have you forgetting about all the self hate, if only you think of yourself as the inspiration behind the killer smile. But for not being able to draw a straight line is a curse . It has a deeper meaning . It's your barren ancestors telling you in wicked whispers that the only straight thing with you might as well be your sexuality. Not your career. Not your dreams. Not your expectations. Not even your life.

It is witchcraft to know that something miserable which would ruffle the many feathers of your clan will happen to you. But it's black magic to know that you can prevent it but you are somewhere seated with crossed legs making no deliberate effort to stop it . Those are your thoughts while people are busy celebrating your admission to the marketable course . It is because you know that since you can't draw a straight line, things about you don't have to go as planned. While an alien thoughts may pay for classes in your school of thought, such that you judge yourself harshly as being overly superstitious, you decide to join the dots and trace back to where it all began.

You see yourself in class five playing hide and seek. It is a dull evening before you begin night prep that mostly is a practice to your body and brain for the great studies happening in the dormitory later after two hours . You are hiding Maureen doesn't find you because if she does you will have to sit with her. I'm class five, sitting next to a girl in class was not manly, it was a motherly act. You are in the grasses hiding then from nowhere, Brayo comes and kicks you on your testicles. You scream loudly that everyone forgets about the game and comes to your rescue. By then your groin area is a burning jehanamu that not even a touch from your class five crush can cool it . You all march to your class teacher fat with fury in quest to find justice but Brayo goes without a punishment. Not even a pinch on his hardened bottom. You remember becoming very angry and you swore by weevils in your lunch githeri that you'd be a lawyer to make sure bad people like Brayo get pinched in the butt by the long arm of the government.

You are a grown up now. You are no longer interested in using the government longest arms to pinch people's behinds. You think of it as silly but then there is the clan who want you to be a lawyer. They only don't know that your main interest was to pinch people's behinds and not the passion of it. Yours was based on a revenge mission because whenever you think of it, you can still feel the burning jehanamu eating up your wealth. You have seen the black cocks that have been slaughtered, the prayers that people said while facing Mt Chemaronja and the number of cases awaiting you to graduate so that you handle them because apparently all the clan's trust is smeared right on your face.

Everyone knows you can write. You also know it's the only thing that will be loyal to you, even when you get planted six feet under. You want to get engaged to this writing forever because isn't loyalty beautiful? You try to put the point across but the resistance, acha tu. You just keep silent and walk into a law class. You become attentive so that maybe you find out whether you can fall in love. You try to change your mindset but something isn't just right. You do so for a week and then you ask a question in a lecture, everyone looks at you with their eyes bulging with pity. You had said you pity the the black cocks that were slaughtered for you to get into such a class. You pity your clan, for they will never know what that you decided to write your career away. You decided to do what you can only do, and do it best. You wish your friends all the best silently wishing you had two middle fingers to all who told you about marketable courses and talked shit about talent and passion. You believe in yourself. You say you will make it. But then if the inverse happens, you think.

What will you say?