Who We Are

A day to xmas 20 oh nine, I was having a drink with this couple in a popular Nairobi pub. This married people and I, we sat on the high stools talking and watching, watching other couples talking and watching us. This lovely couple, the lady had picked me from the airport 2 hours earlier, taken me home and brought me here.

[Two things notable here, one, that is the only way to get me, physically, since I don’t have a phone (poverty). Two, that’s how bad this couple wanted to have a drink with me, this odd couple.]

I look at them, attractive African female, not pretty, not beautiful, attractive. And him, regular looks made better by the millions of money he has. Married they are, but not to each other. The arrangement is they tell their respective spouses that they are with me, then they be with me. Usually in this popular Nairobi outdoor carwash turned pub. He drinks American whiskey, she drinks foreign lager from a small green bottle, I drink anything costly. They would buy me 2 drinks, then leave us there, me and the drinks, the glasses half empty, sometimes half full, disappear to a nearby hotel for extra-marital activities, come back for more foreplay, have 4 more drinks, disappear for a second round of infidelity, come back, we drink, they pay (I once paid, serious), one of them drops me home. Their spouses secure in the fact that they were with a good old friend.

I don’t know why I do this.

He has no email address, would talk about business and soccer only. This was his staple. This didn’t interest her, she likes talking about love and relationships. I, well, I don’t really matter. They’re both wealthy business people, well educated, Christians, referring regularly to holy scriptures in unholy places planning unholy things. Well traveled but surprisingly narrow single minded views on many things. As parochial as a parish priest.

Occasionally they would speak in their mother tongue. I understand every word, this they don’t know. They would say nothing really. It always sounds like you’re saying very important serious stuff when you talk in some African languages.

I met her at my barber shop 11 years ago. It has been a platonic friendship since day one, not for lack of effort on her part though. I was a student, she was just back from doing her 3rd degree in the US, came back with her husband and 2 daughters and had just started her business. We formed an odd friendship. Now I know her very well, yet I don’t know her, I don’t know her values, what she stands for. It is an empty friendship. She has no passions, no favourite book, no favourite song, crazy about no sports, nothing, plain. We would meet, she would talk a lot, listen very little, then hug and then each would depart for various destinations. The only thing I know for sure that makes her very annoyed is husbands who cheat on their wives. And she knows everyone who is sleeping with everyone in this town. Everyone.

(Zo wants me to go jump with him, I swear! He’s asking if Michael Jackson is a girl, you can’t do anything with a 4 year old boy in the house. Michael is singing ‘Who Is It’, that part where he shouts, ‘don’t be judgin’ don’t be juuuudgiiiin’)

So where was I. I think I like her because of this fact. The fact that she can hate what she does without seeing it. She is completely blind to the fact that she does what she hates, So human. So uber.

So keeping with tradition, on this day, we had a drink. I am having some fancy brandy, 18 years old brandy (barely legal, in a sense). Its costs an arm and a leg, but not my limbs thankfully. He was telling us how he had made a deal with some company and his bribe was some 6 million shillings. He was taking his family to some Indian Ocean Island for the holidays. He also told us that his favourite English premier league club was beaten 3-nil a few days ago. Then he told us he hates Kalenjin politicians, they’re corrupt and don't get the job done.

She told us that a female ex-MP who was in school with her is having an affair with a senior public figure. She was a slut even in high school we’re told. I talked about my trip, they seemed very interested, in a way that a hungry rugby player would be interested in listening to the chef at Red Sea restaurant explaining where he buys the hot spices for Zigni, an Eritrean delicacy.

Shortly, they left for what they really came here to do. But not before he told me that there is money to be made in that country I was from. He is always telling me about making money, this man with a large, black, oily face. His face is always oily, oily in an expensive way. You can make money if you do this or that he always says. Am not interested in making money. I just want to live forever, hurt as few people as possible, die after 800 years and be cremated. Why do people think everyone wants to make money, do deals.

I looked at my costly glass of costly brandy. Reflecting on this year that is about to end. 2 thousand and mine. Then looked around at the beautiful people of Nairobi. The festive season, you could feel it. Everyone’s faces was shining. Glowing. Someone waves at me, a pretty girl, a fairly common occurrence, I wave back. Then she walks over, I smile and stretch my hand, then she walks right past. She was waving at someone at a table behind me.

A drunk man staggers dangerously towards a car. Two waiters whisper loudly to all of us that he is a surgeon. He gets into his 2 litre Bavarian and drives dangerously into the jungle that Nairobi’s night life is. Nothing I hate like drunk driving. I have lost 5 friends so far to drunk driving, one to suicide, one to malaria (imagine!) none to AIDS. So DUI is my biggest foe. I sip.

The couple return, the man visibly tired, and a hint of regret on his face. Poor chap. The expression that must have been on Einstein's face after the first bomb landed. The lady has a glow. The glow Einstein must have had after a meeting with his cousin. Mine was exasperation. Unwilling abettor to this clandestination. Culpable as both must be in someone’s eyes.

They talk in mother tongue. Give him your car, I’ll drop you she says. Poor chap, painfully hands me his Benz. Am uncertain which caused him greater pain, handing his prized machine to his mistress’ male platonic friend, or whatever plans she had for him. I suspect the latter. They leave. I take 2 more shots and drive home under the influence.