A LETTER FROM KISII

I am not big on memes. I don’t care about them. I rarely look them up. They don’t motivate me. I don’t find folks who post memes interesting. I don’t compile them, God forbid. One time, I was talking to this cat who is crazy about memes, he kept banging on how life is meaningless without memes. I was sleepy all through the conversation, then one thing startled me awake. He was compiling his memes on google drive. Shhh... That caught me off guard too. Like Anthony Joshua against Kijana fupi round. I thought to myself, memes??? Does it have to be that serious? But again, men have weird passions. Maybe all some want is to wake up and upload memes to their google drives, keep them for posterity. They want to preserve memes for grandchildren, and their grandchildren too.

I don’t see the purpose of memes in the grand scheme of life. There has been a plaque of meme lords in the past months, folks running the internet laughter industry. I wish they could listen to the song ‘A lot’, 21 Savage, (the guy wasn’t deported after all) and J Cole. In his lines, J Cole sings, “Some niggas make millions, other niggas make memes.”  It made me sit up straight and think. What kind of nigga should young men aspire to be? Some clownish, laughter maniac who makes memes? Or the one who makes millions? I want to make millions, no, billions, screw memes.

But once in a while, something comes along which shifts you.

I saw this meme with a photo of clouds. Shot from a high altitude certainly, it was a sea of clouds. The tag line was a pure mockery. It asked folks who fly regularly to identify the said point in the sky. Do you get it?? I knew you wouldn’t.

The photo accompanying today’s post could have been taken anywhere. It’s not anywhere though. Those are the skies above my village. The place of my little existence buried deep in Gusii territory. Maybe you’ve seen the same cloud formation in your home town but no, I have never been there. These are Kisii clouds. They’ve been forming here since time immemorial. It’s a monotonous circle of boredom. Evaporation, condensation and falling back as rain and once in a while, hail. But they are dutiful clouds. They don’t get bored. Each day, at the crack dawn, like a herder’s whip, they get on to work. Doing as they have, since the beginning of time. Watering our bananas.

I am attached to this village. Whenever I am in the city, nostalgia catches up with me. I might be in a Java, drowning in the uptown life, but I hear a Gusii accent and it all floods back. At that point, all I want is to jump on a bus and head home. Thus, whenever I have nothing going in Nairobi, I head home. To this bleak existence, I so love.

Nothing much happens here. Time drags by at the pace of a chameleon, we call it ‘enyambu.’ The speed of life is deliberately slow. As if Kisii elders sat in a meeting and decided, “you know what? People in Kisii will never be in a hurry.” And that was it. Other times I think we are locked in a time machine. And the machine stopped working in 1980.

If nothing works out in the big, bad city, this what I return to. A world locked in the past. But I’ve realised that there’s beauty in these ruins of nothing. And whatever happens, this is where I belong. The first men of my line walked here. And as the saying goes, sons of monkeys are monkeys. Thus, I walk this land too and should I have a son, he will learn of this place too. The circle is eternal, never-ending.

Unless of course the Chinese colonise us, make us slaves and send us to work in their Beijing homes. There is no humour in slavery but I think a Chinese pushing you around is fun. The way they talk, their gestures and everything. And if I am to be a Chinese slave, I will want them to call me Shui, meaning water. No reason, I just think Shui is a cute name and it will make the masters fear me. In their little cabals, they will whisper, no, try to whisper. Because I don’t think one can successfully whisper in Chinese. Their syllables are too loud.

One will say.

“Ching has a slave. Kenyan guy, pure badass. He’s called Shui, the god of water. What happens should he go rogue? I think we should return him to Kenya before things go haywire. You can’t trust a Kenyan guy called Shui to be a good slave.”

My master will protest.

“He is my slave. He is not going anywhere.”

 “One of these days, you will learn a lesson.” Another will say.

Months later I’ll kill my master, tired of his jokes and disappear up the mountains.

A few days ago, I bought myself a cockerel. Not like am into poultry or animal conservation. I don’t care about the rights of poultry. I was in the market, joshing around with my boys and I saw this cock on a stand. Though it knew it would be sold and later turned into stew, there was an attitude about it. I parted with some money and carried my trophy home. A new alarm in the homestead.

As I write this, I wonder though? What goes in the mind of a cockerel before it’s slaughtered? Does it see life’s choices flashing perilously before it’s very eyes? Do waves of regret bombard it? All the chicken he never got to pump his seed in? Does he get worried that maybe he’d not been a cock enough? Show an example to other cocks in his lineage? Does he question his status in the poultry society? Does he feel sorry for all the chicken he had his way with by force? Because let’s face it, cocks are not the most romantic of birds. When they decide they are dishing out dick, then they are dishing out dick. There’s no grooming, no romancing, foreplay is a myth.

Feminists and misandrists should launch a case against cocks. “Due to the aggressive nature of their approach, they are causing too much discomfort in the poultry kingdom.”

Then there are these men who can’t slaughter hens. What’s the deal with you guys? Are you afraid that maybe you won’t go to heaven? That on judgement day, God will ask murderers to step aside, of course, I will ignore such an order as I haven’t killed a man.

But then God will boom.

“Osoch I see you hiding back there. You slaughtered lots of chicken in your life. I am charging you with over 200 hundred accounts of murder. You will burn in the eternal fire. Didn’t I say in the book of Exodus, ‘don’t kill?' But because you think you’re tough, you went ahead and slaughtered my poultry, my beautiful creation! Hell is where you belong! Bloody sinner!”

And of men who can’t slaughter chicken. I think you are spineless bitches. Indoctrinated by this bullshit, metrosexual ideology. You’re losing your manhood, and you can’t see it, folks. You can’t fucking see it.