On a serious note with BMJ Muriithi
Life in the United States can be humbling. Before I came here, I had heard all manner of tell-tales.
An enemy of mine, who I now believe had a ulterior motive and really wanted me to leave Kenya, told me that contrary to what I used to see on TV, streets in the US are paved in gold and green bucks grow on trees.
He went on to tell me that as soon as I landed at the airport, some Americans would be waiting for me with my keys to a free brand new car after which they would usher me into my new apartment in which I would live happily thereafter.
I would have believed him, but something urged me not to. First of all, I am not so daft to believe that kind of nonsense.
Second of all, other than having a loud mouth and know-it-all attitude, this enemy of mine didn’t have much going for him. As far as I know, the poor fellow has spent all his life in Kanyuambora. Not that there is anything wrong with Kanyuambora.
But when a man is born and raised in Kanyuambora village, goes to Kanyuambora primary school and is thereafter admitted at the neighboring Kanyuambora Mixed Secondary School after which he takes a carpentry course at the adjacent Kanyuambora intermediate College, then you need to think twice when he, all of a sudden, becomes an expert on matters related to the land of the free.
Anyhow, I ended up in the United States and came face to face with the reality of Bushland (George W. Bush was the president at the time). It didn’t take me long to realize that this was not my idea of a nice place.
The big chasm between reality and fantasy was unfolding right in front of my eyes. I worked all manner of jobs, applied for admission at many colleges, applied for a number of credit cards, ran a number of red lights and ended up in court.
There were no Makutis to go to for Nyama choma and moja ya baridi, people were cold and smiles were few and far between. I missed my life in Kanyuambora more than ever before. The society was nothing close to the one I had been accustomed to in Kanyuambora.
But it was not all gloom as there was another side of the life here that I loved and still do; the society is fairly classless and nobody really cares about what you do – or don’t do, what you drive, etc., as long as the dollars keep coming. And that would have remained the case had I not developed some new enemies in the new land.
You see, I was naïve to think that I had left all the loud mouths in Kenya. As a matter of fact, it turned out that some of the loudest Kenyan mouths live here. And had this particular enemy done the right thing and kept his big mouth shut, I would not be boring you with this. But obviously, he did not and therefore, you have to read on. But not before you promise me that you can keep a secret.
You see, I recently received a disturbing phone call from a village clan elder named Mbiti (whose name literally means Hyena) who said that someone who lives here in Atlanta has been calling home (Kanyuambora ) and spreading extremely malicious rumors about me.
He has been telling all who care to listen that since I came to the land of Obama, I have become a totally different person and an embarrassment to our clan.
“We are very embarrassed after hearing what you have done”, he said and added, “we hear that your wife is the one who wears trousers nowadays and that you have been relegated to the kitchen. We hear that you are the one who does the cooking nowadays. What a shame? Those are not our ways. Those are not the virtues we taught you”, he said faintly.
The old man sounded disturbed. But how I wish he could understand me. You see, owing to the realization of how hectic life can get here, coupled with the fact that it is next to impossible to afford a technical assistant (house girl or house boy), my wife suggested that I should every so often help with cooking and doing other chores.
I agreed on condition that the arrangement did not leave the four walls of my house. I made her swear that my kinsmen in Kanyuambora would not get a whiff of it.
You see, I summoned my wife-to-be into my simba one evening and made it crystal clear that there were some things she would have to put up with should she decide to get married to me.
The Kitchen issue featured prominently in our conversation. I told her as clearly as I could that as a man from Kanyuambora, I would be shaming my clan if I behaved in a manner likely to suggest that the kitchen was my domain. I explained that I belonged to a clan that was not known to encourage the behavior.
I told her that my people consider it bad manners for a man to be hovering around the kitchen especially with the intention of doing chores therein. My wife-to-be just sat there, staring blankly at me. I did not know whether she understood what I had just said and I therefore went on to clarify further. “You see”, I said, “I am a descendant of a long line of ancestors who never condoned a man’s activity in the kitchen”. I told her a true story about my late grandfather who had divorced his aging first wife simply because she had asked him to get into the kitchen and help her get her huge milk gourd onto her back.
But even as I told her those stories, I knew at the back of my mind that she would say yes to anything I said at the time. You see, when a woman is truly in love with a man, she can do anything to make him happy. So I went on to spell out all the dos and don’ts, Key among them being the issue of exempting me from kitchen-related activities. It was not until she agreed to the arrangement that I agreed to take a beehive full of live bees as bride price to her people.
And we would have lived that way happily ever after until we came to the US where the matrix changed. And I would have live with our little secret until my enemies got wind of it and started tarnishing my name right, left and center. But I take consolation in the fact that I am not alone in this predicament. Almost all my men friends here have confessed that the frequency with which they are burning their fingers kitchen is worrying. In the meantime, I have launched a manhunt to try and identify those “friends” of mine who come to my house to “spy” on me. Thanks to them, I am now the talk of the village albeit in absentia.
-Kimmediagroup.com
