A few years ago I was a child. I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But I am a man now, I have had to put the ways of childhood behind me. I have done good things, but I have also done terrible things. I am not rich. In fact, my only claim to relevance is sanity. Like most Kenyan men, I cheat on my girlfriend. I go to church sometimes, but not as frequently as I visit 1824 And The Tunnel, and Quivers – Just about any bar to keep me away from my house a little longer.
My girlfriend is a menace. Since she got a promotion at work, she has been very disrespectful. She says I am not ambitious. And compares me to Mr. Oluoch – her boss – who knows how to be a man. He recently bought a Prado. He is younger than me too. My gf told me this. She tells me everything about Mr. Oluoch. His decency, his Mercedes Benz. I would not know otherwise. She is probably cheating on me with him. I would not dare look inside her phone though. It is better not to know.
Yet, it was not always like this. I am as much a victim of fate as I am a perpetrator in the narrative of my life. I first came to Kisumu in 2015. I had been called to Maseno University for a degree in Economics. It was an exciting period of my life. Hitherto, I had known only the red, dusty paths of Ugunja, Siaya. My parents had lived and aged on the farm. It is here that I was weaned. They were not a sentimental lot but they had made it work: raising and educating 3 children in the process. They were teetotalers and church adherents. If they ever fought, we never saw it. It was my hope that I would replicate such traits someday.
My mother, old and pasty-faced, had sent me off with prayers:
“Work hard, my son.” She had croaked pensively.
“You are old enough to know right and wrong.” My old man had dismissed me after a long prayer.
My first year in campus was one of discovery. I made new friends but I also made enemies. I avoided girls and focused on that which had brought me. I was not given to partying. Conversely, I spent the majority of my time in the library. Some days were harder than others as I had to contend with limited finances – if any. Such is the legacy of poverty. It did not faze me. I was going to make money one day. I just had to complete the macroeconomics assignment first.
The second year went by fast. There was nothing remarkable to it. By the third year, I was living outside the campus. I had rented a dilapidated tin house in Mabungo area. I would walk past Nyawita market, through Makerere Dam, to get to school. I wanted a girlfriend but could not afford one. There were a few to tolerate privation. Most of these were not as beautiful.
“I will make money one day. I will have a beautiful woman and kids.” I would mutter under my breath every time I was rejected by the object of my passion.
It was my assumption that I would get employed as soon as I graduated. That was not to be. After graduation, I interned in several organizations. The kindest of them catered for my fare. The meanest demanded payment from me. To survive, I took up online work such as writing, editing, and transcription. I was ever so tired at the end of the day. Yet rent had to be paid.
My classmates had since secured employment – the laziest and raunchiest among them at least. They had relatives and fathers in the right places. I had no one. Those were haunting days. They would initiate WhatsApp groups for trips to Naivasha in their cars. I had none. I did not even know what I was going to eat the next day. The pressure caught up with me. Soon, I was taking pictures in random buildings, beside random cars, and outside random restaurants. I would post these on Instagram and Facebook with cryptic captions:
“If Jesus says yes, nobody can say no”
“I’d rather hustle 24/7 than slave 9 to 5.”
“Sleep late, wake up early!”
“On my grind 24/7”
My old man had since passed on. Mother was pensionless. I sent money home whenever I could. Between the internship and online work, I had no time to spare on women.
To numb the sting of inertia, I turned to alcohol. Depression has a way of blinding you. It was lonely with no one to talk to. Talking to my mother was out of the question. I only talked to her when I sent money. I would buy Konyagi and KC on my way from work – which was almost always 5 pm. Before long, my house had more Konyagi bottles than I could keep.
I was sleeping with a few girls here and there. I mostly picked them from clubs. I was also seeing a student from Maseno, Martha. She had been a friend during my time in campus and was three years younger than me. I had moved into a bedsitter in Jogoo road, Nairobi.
One weekend morning in the month of June, I received an email from my boss. They were formally hiring me with a starting salary of Ksh. 60,000. It had been 4 years of internship. I was 29. If anybody had told me it would be so hard a few years ago, I would have ended my life. Still, I was grateful. I called Martha with the news. I had grown fond of her.
“Hey M, what are you doing?” I asked buoyantly.
“Nothing.” She sounded distant.
“Come over, we will cook”
“I am pregnant, Owen.” She blurted out.
My body froze. My heart was still – still as a mouse. I knew she meant it. She was not one for games.
“Are you sure,” I whispered inaudibly.
“Yes.”
I had just gotten a job. I was not going to let this woman kill my dream before it had even started. I promised to call later, then I hang up before she could respond. I did not call her for the next two days. On Wednesday evening, I called her to my place. I had come to a decision. She did not wish to see me before we had come to an agreement. I insisted. She yielded.
“Let’s get rid of it,” I started casually when she arrived.
She had anticipated this as she did not move an inch. She was seated on the right edge of the bed. She turned to me. There were tears in her eyes. She wiped them off, looked at me, and said:
“I am going to keep it.”
With that, she walked out. I wanted to share the news with someone but I was not that open with people close to me. In the end, she kept the kid. I decided to go along with it and she finally moved in with me. Such was my life. I had not had time to enjoy anything. It seemed to me that every time I was on the brink of freedom, or glory, darkness descended. I had not known the pleasures of life – not as my agemates did. My life was a series of bad luck, hardships, and responsibility: one after the other like pellets in a storm.
I stopped liking Martha as soon as she moved in with me. It was easy to imagine fancy when I was not accountable for her and our child’s existence: now she was a responsibility. I will not pretend for a second that I loved it. But I sat through it. She gave birth to our first son. Then the second. And before long, she finished her campus studies and found work with Mr. Oluoch. It was official, we were married.
Do not get me wrong, I love our kids. I provide for them. But this is not the future I had in mind for myself. I had hoped for a soulmate in a mansion, next to a glittering river somewhere. I had conjured sunsets by a foreign beach and big SUVs in the garage. I had sacrificed and pinched for that. Isn’t that the promise of education? Wasn’t that why I worked so hard all those years in school? Yet despite all that, I have to contend with Ksh. 80,000 well into my forties. With two kids, and three siblings in school.
And every time Martha has to spend money in the house, she makes news of it.
“I do everything around here.” She will shout.
So you will forgive me if I have to escape in the arms of another woman every once in a while. If I have to hide inside dingy bars next to men and women reeking of disillusionment and depression: If I have to arrive late and rush to the bedroom before my kids ask of the pungent smell in my mouth. You do not know what it is like to lose your dreams to fate. You had fathers and mothers to afford you your dreams. You had luck to cushion you from falls. What have I had? I ask you, what have I had?
Do you think I don’t want a car too? Do you think I am not tired of putting on the same shoe year in, year out? That I don’t want a vacation to Dubai, or Bali? Like my agemates. Do you think I wanted to be 35 with more loans than hair? Yet, I must provide. Because that is what a man does. You do not know the turmoil beneath this suit: The battering, the mauling. I am a shell of my teenage self.
I have given everything to everyone but me. The least you can do is oblige me a moment’s rest in another woman’s bosom without judging me. That is my vacation and I will have it. You can’t cheat on a woman you never loved. You can’t betray an imposed reality. I should live before I die. I deserve it. I have earned it.
