I have been present at roughly forty of these testimonies.

It goes the same way each time. A woman is shown evidence screenshots, receipts, a witness with nothing to gain from lying. She looks at all of it, blinks once, and delivers the sentence.

“My baby cannot do that he could never”

Cannot. As though the man is physically prevented. As though God fitted him with a Speed governor at the factory.

Now ask that same woman about his friends. Suddenly she is an investigator. She has names, dates, patterns. “That one? A menace. That other one? Two women in the same estate, and they know each other.” She will lay out the whole dossier unprompted, with the confidence of somebody who has done the fieldwork.

Then she reaches hers, and the file closes. Different rules. Different species.

So follow the arithmetic. If every man in that group is a cheater except one, and every woman has independently concluded that hers is the one, then either we are witnessing a miracle of national scale, or somebody’s mathematics is not mathing.

You cannot all be dating the exception. Somebody is dating the rule. And if we were all exceptions, the rule would be unemployed yet the rule is thriving.

And the halo does something to the eyes. She can spot one unfamiliar strand of hair across a dark room, at night, on a black jacket. But the man has been coming home at 3 a.m. for 2 months and she has settled on the theory that his job is demanding. He works at a hardware shop. It closes at six. The hardware is not calling him.

I once watched a woman defend a man’s character while he sat two tables away with someone whose name she would eventually be forced to learn.

Meanwhile the sinner has no idea he has been canonised. He thinks he’s clever. He thinks he is getting away with it. In truth she has done all the lifting built the shrine, lit the candle, and posted herself outside as security.

I say this as a man who has been recruited into the fraud. “Tell her we were together.” Then she calls, and asks, and there is such trust in her voice that I want to lie down and be buried.

That is the part nobody mentions. It isn’t the lying that gets you. She hands you the script and asks you to please read it clearly.

Which brings me to the Sapere crowd, who long ago stopped pretending. Their saying is blunt: he might be a thief, but he is mine. He is my thief. No defence Just ownership, filed under possession rather than proof.

And I have come to respect that more than the courtroom performance. One woman argues that her man is innocent. The other admits he is a whole criminal and claims him anyway, like luggage nobody else came for.

Call him an angel long enough and he stops auditing himself. Why would he. You’re doing his books.

And the one thing he ever stole, she handed over herself.

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You are woken, the way a suspect is woken.

First the ceiling is glowing blue. Then the sound arrives, and it is not the loud crying. Loud crying has an ending. This is the other one, the soft one, the sniff that comes in installments, like Fuliza.

You open one eye. The other eye wants no part of this.

She is sitting up, legs folded, duvet on the floor. Your phone is in her hands at eleven percent, which tells you she has been at it since around midnight.

You can trace her whole route without asking. She began with M-Pesa, because in this country money is the only witness that does not lie. Every “Sent to” became a chapter. Then WhatsApp, where a chat with your workmate Brian was studied like scripture. Then Instagram, follows, followers, who liked what, in which year. Then Snapchat, best friends arranged like a charge sheet.

Then the Notes app.

Because the Notes app is where every single one of us keeps our dirt. The gallery is public property. Notes is the safe. It is where a man keeps a gym plan abandoned in 2021, a poem with four lines that refuse to rhyme, an M-Pesa PIN written as “mum’s birthday,” a business idea called Sunrise Logistics, and folded quietly between those, one screenshot he swore he would delete on Sunday.

And there she found it.

You know she found it because the crying stops. That is the terrifying part. Crying is negotiation. Silence is verdict. The room goes so quiet you can hear the fridge thinking, hear a dog three plots away being deeply concerned about nothing, hear the kesha down the road praying for men exactly like you.

There is no damage control here.You cannot say it was sent to a group. You cannot say Brian sent it. You cannot say it is your cousin, because nobody’s cousin poses like that. A screenshot in a private note is not an accident, it is a decision, and decisions are what you are being charged with. You saved it. You went in there deliberately, with your thumb, like a man burying something in the shamba at night. You even named the note “receipts.” You are a stupid, stupid man, and now the whole city is asleep except you, her, and the truth.

So you weigh options, fast, the way a man weighs options while already falling.

Option one, sit up. Turn on the light. Try words. Try “context.” Watch her laugh once, dry, no teeth in it. Watch the sun come up on this conversation and go to work carrying stones in your chest.

Option two, close the one eye. Sleep. Wake at seven and perform shock, hand on heart, eyebrows high. Success rate near zero, but at least you die rested.

Option three, the one you actually choose, which is to lie perfectly still and become furniture. Total stillness. Breathing like a man in a coma. This has never worked in the entire history of relationships and yet every generation of us tries it, because hope is a disease.

She does not shout. She does not throw the phone. She simply places it down on the bed between you, screen up, the note still open, the light from it standing there like a lamp at a crime scene.

Then she lies back down. Facing the wall. Saying nothing.

And you understand, lying there beside eleven percent, that you have not been forgiven and you have not been sentenced.

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Sunday, around eleven. The light is coming through the curtain soft like it owes you nothing. She is lying on your chest, one leg thrown over you like ownership. You have finished the mandazi and the Masala Chai. Outside, somebody’s child is being disciplined loudly for a crime he clearly did not commit. Everything is holy.

Then she lifts her head. She looks around your house slowly, the way a Gikomba broker looks at a burnt stall.

“Umeleta wangapi huku?”

And the temperature of the room changes without the room changing.

Notice the grammar. She did not ask nani. She did not ask kuna mtu. She asked wangapi. Quantity like Volume. Like your bedsitter is a warehouse and she wants the stock take. Somewhere in her mind there is a clipboard.

Your brain, which has been idle since Friday, suddenly opens a full courtroom. Judge, clerk, the whole bench. And your brain, being a coward, starts with the evidence you cannot destroy.

The watchman.

Kepha from the gate, he does not forget, and Kepha writes everything in that book with the blue cover. Name, ID, time in, time out, house number. Kepha is not a security guard he is the National Archives. Kepha has been documenting your love life with the seriousness of a man recording rainfall. And the worst part is that Kepha greets every one of them with the same warm energy, “Karibu tena,” which is a sentence that has ruined more relationships than infidelity itself.

Then the house begins to testify against you. The second pillow, which is too soft to be a man’s pillow. The hair band under the bed, curled up there like a fossil, waiting for archaeologists. The nail polish on the bathroom shelf in a shade that would not survive on her hands. The earring that has been living behind the sofa since March,biding its time, a sleeper agent.

Now the arithmetic starts. Because you know the number. It is three. Three is a normal number. Three is not scandal. But three cannot be said out loud in a bedroom on a Sunday, because in that room three sounds like a census.

So you begin the reductions. One of them only came to pick her laptop and left within eleven minutes, that one does not count. One slept on the sofa, and legally the sofa is a separate jurisdiction. That leaves one. And that one you can argue was a misunderstanding brought about by rain.

You open your mouth and what comes out is, “Wewe ndio wa kwanza.”

The fridge hums. It is laughing at you. The gas cylinder, which you have not refilled since June, is laughing at you. Somewhere Kepha sneezes.

She does not shout. That is the frightening part. She just smiles, taps your chest twice like a doctor checking for fluid, and says, “Kepha alinishow ni wanne.”

Four.

FOUR.

And now you are in the strangest argument of your adult life, because you are fighting to bring the number down. You are pleading, with your whole chest, that you have had fewer women. You are explaining that number four was your cousin from Nyeri. You are describing her face. You are offering to call your aunt. You are almost showing a family photo as an exhibit.

She lets you finish. Then she stretches, yawns, and says, “Sawa.”

Sawa. The most violent word in the language. Sawa means the matter is closed for today and reopened on a random Tuesday at 2 a.m. with new evidence, new witnesses, and Kepha subpoenaed.

Peace, gentlemen, is a tenant. It never buys the plot.

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It is 4:40pm on the 26th and I am sitting on a sofa at my dad’s shags with my hands on my knees, like a man waiting for results.

Nobody has spoken since three.

There is a clock on the wall that everyone in this room can hear. On the opposite wall hangs a great uncle who died in 1987, framed, and he has been looking directly at me since Tuesday, and he does not approve of my haircut.

Guka occupies the good chair. Guka does not do conversation. Guka does silence the way other men do golf. This morning he asked me one question, “Kwani hujaoa?”, then turned back to the news at a volume suggesting he is personally investigating the newsreader.

Two hundred kilometres away, at mathe’s people, a completely different December is happening without me.

You do not enter that compound. You are absorbed by it. The gate is already open because someone has been standing there since 9am, refusing to sit down. Before your shoe touches the soil, three aunties have you by the shoulders, one is screaming your name at a frequency only dogs and shosho can produce, and a cousin has taken your bag hostage. Within four minutes you have been fed, criticised about your weight, and asked whether you are still with “yule msichana wa Kileleshwa.”

Here at my dad’s, there is a handshake line. Two rows of hands. Some belong to people I last saw at a burial. None of them will tell me their names, because I am supposed to know.

Supper is served at seven. It is excellent. It is eaten in silence, like an exam. The only sound is cutlery and one uncle chewing with real conviction. Somebody says “mnakula” in the tone of an auditor flagging a discrepancy.

At mathe’s, the kitchen is where the actual country is located. Chapati assembly line running since dawn. Aunt Rose slapping hands away from the dough. A twelve-year-old sobbing because she has been demoted to sufurias. Music from a cracked phone speaker parked inside a mug for acoustics. And at nine, Aunt Mercy stands up and does one dance, badly, and the entire compound collapses, children screaming, shosho holding the wall for support.

Here at nine, we watch the news. Both languages, full bulletin. Then a documentary about tea.

Boxing Day at my dad’s means a meeting. Real agenda, real secretary, item four is contributions. Item seven is A.O.B., under which a man born in 1958 rises and mentions the boundary, and everyone quietly settles back into their chairs because we now understand we are here until 2031.

I sleep in a room containing a doily, a bucket, and a cold with personal ambitions.

At mathe’s, seven cousins share one bed and a blanket that stopped covering anyone in 2011. At 1am somebody farts and a full judicial process is convened, with accusations, a defence, and character witnesses.

My phone shows 340 unread in “Wamama wa Grace 🙏💐🕊️” and one video. I watch it under the blanket with the sound off. It is Aunt Mercy. Same dance. I laugh into a pillow like a fugitive.

A knock at the door. “Kesho tunaamka saa kumi.”

I do not ask why. There is a committee for that.

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It never begins with a phone call. That would require courage, and courage was never his strong suit, not even when he was pretending to know the difference between red and white wine at that place in Kilimani.

It begins with a status view.

11:47 pm. You posted a picture of your feet at Karura, the caption something insufferable about healing. Twenty-three views. And there, sitting in the list like a cockroach in a clean sufuria, is the name you deleted from your phone but not from your bloodstream.

He is back. Not for you. For completion.

Understand this, my sister: the man is not returning out of love. He is returning the way a student returns to a unit he failed. He is here to resit. You are the supplementary exam, and he has been revising via your cousin’s Instagram since March.

The apology arrives on a Sunday, because he has recently rediscovered God and wants you to witness the invoice. “Aki nimebadilika.” Four words that have destroyed more Nairobi women than any shylock. He has changed. He is sober now, mostly. He goes to the gym, allegedly. He has a plan, which upon inspection turns out to be an Aviator strategy and a cousin in Dubai.

And he brings evidence. This is the part that finishes people. He remembers things. He remembers that you don’t eat Gluten. He remembers your mother’s birthday, a fact he ignored for two entire years while she was alive and calling him “my son.” He deploys nostalgia like teargas at a peaceful gathering of Linda mwananchi.

Meanwhile the surveillance never actually stopped. He knows you got a promotion. He knows you moved from Kileleshwa to somewhere with a lift. He knows because Brian does not stalk, he maintains a file. Somewhere in Kahawa Sukari there is a man with a whiteboard and a red string connecting your Naivas loyalty points to your emotional availability.

You know it is a bad idea. Your body knows before your brain does. Your stomach performs that small drop, the same one it does when the gas cylinder finishes mid chapati. That is not butterflies. That is your ancestors screaming through a bad network.

Because here is the thing nobody warns you about: men do not get over you. They get over you in installments, like Fuliza, with a small daily charge to their dignity. A woman mourns loudly for three months, cuts her hair, changes her ringtone, and emerges reborn selling scented candles. A man goes quiet for four years and then texts “hey stranger” from an aunt’s funeral.

And by then he has upgraded the offer. Now he is talking about ruracio. Now his mother has added you to a WhatsApp group called “Family Blessings 🙏.” Do not go back. He is not asking to love you. He is asking you to hold his hand while he practices being a person, and the tuition fee is your entire thirties.

You are not Gikomba, where a thing rejected in Europe comes to be loved again cheaply.

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There was a restaurant in Bungoma whose name I have forgotten. The mind finds ways to protect itself.

It sat behind a hardware shop, green door, and had speakers that had clearly been fed better than the customers. On weekdays, it sold chapo and ndengu to men who ate in silence. Then Sunday afternoon would arrive, the selector would walk in carrying a laptop with Virtual Dj like a newborn, and the whole building changed religion.

This was the era of hot grabba. You could smell it from the road that sweet criminal smoke leaking out of the windows like even it wanted to dance. Boys in slim jeans and tall socks. Girls who had done their hair on Saturday specifically for this, not for the Lord. Everyone loyal to one thing only the rewind and the whine.

Now. My mother is a church elder. This detail matters the way a lion detail matters in a story about jogging.

My method was clean, and I was proud of it. Sit through the sermon wearing the face of a boy considering being a Father. Wait for announcements, which at our church were not announcements but a whole television season: harambee for the choir uniforms, harambee for the pastor’s roof, anyone with a wheelbarrow to please see Brother Wekesa after service. Somewhere around episode four, I would rise with the expression of a person going to the toilet, and simply never return.

Tie in the pocket before the gate. Shirt untucked before the road. Bible left with a friend, because a Bible does not survive a jam session. It comes back smelling of things that cannot be explained to your Mother.

Inside, the selector was a prophet with a fader. He would drop Busy Signal and men who owed people money would forget, briefly, that they were in serious debt. Then Konshens. Whine and Kotch. And I tell you, I have never seen a congregation more committed. People who could not stand through one hymn without leaning on a pillar were now going down slowly, coming back up slower, doing it with devotion.

That was the exact posture I was in when the music stopped.

Not a fade. A full stop. The selector had seen something I had not seen.

I straightened the way a man straightens when he hears his full name, all three of them. And there she was. My mother. Sunday Kitenge, handbag held in the crook of her arm like an instrument of state, standing in the doorway of a dancehall den at four in the afternoon, having come, apparently, to buy fish from the shop next door.

Somebody near the door said “Mulembe” to her. Out of pure fear.

She did not shout. That is the part people misunderstand about elders. She looked at me. Then she looked at the speaker. Then she looked back at me and did small mathematics with her eyes.

The girl I had been dancing with reversed out of my life so smoothly she should be studied at university.

Then my mother said, “So hapa ni Choo.”

The walk home was one kilometre and eleven years long.

At the gate she did not report me to my father, which I mistook for mercy. On Wednesday she stood up in fellowship and asked the church to pray for young people being pulled by the world, aiming the words at me with the accuracy of a surveyor.

I repented. I stayed home two entire Sundays.

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I’m using those old wired earphones,they are dead on one side.So Jah Cure is singing into my left ear ,which means half of me is receiving free soul counselling and the other one is still employed.

Call on me Call on me

Wah.This man has no respect for a working Kenyan. You cannot release a song like that and expect me to keep chewing like a serious person at 1:07 on a Monday manze. I am sitting on a blue plastic stool with one short leg, outside a small hotel where the beans are always sweeter than they have any right to be, and my whole chest has decided today is the day.

Because I am thinking about her

Not the way you think about rent. The way you think about the smell of rain hitting hot dust near Kangemi. She stirs her tea for forty seconds too long. She laughs at her own jokes before the punchline arrives, which should be annoying and is instead my favourite thing on this Mama Africa. When she is happy she does not call me by my name, she just says “Wewe,” and somehow that one word carries more affection than an entire wedding.You may now kiss the bride.

And in my head, we are old.

We have a small house in Syokimau with tiles we argued about for three months. We have a dog with an unfortunate political name. Her mother has finally stopped calling me “that boy” and now calls me “mwanangu,” which took four Christmases upcountry and two goats. I am the one carrying the shopping bags because she is carrying the conversation. We are seventy. Her knees complain. I am pretending my knees do not.

Then the daydream does what daydreams do in this town. It changes lanes without indicating.

Because gone are the days we spoke about growing old. We used to say “when we are old” like it was a shop we had already paid deposit for. Now we say “let us see how it goes.” Forever got quietly downgraded to a maybe, and neither of us signed anything, and neither of us complained, and that is the part that sits in my throat.

You can miss someone who is still texting you. Nobody prepares you for that.

So here is what I have decided, on this chair, over these beans, with half a song in half my ear. If the ending is coming anyway, let it find me enjoying her, not rehearsing her funeral.

Let the jacaranda drop when it drops. I will still stand under the tree.

I wipe my hands. The sun is doing that Nairobi thing where it burns your neck while the wind lies to you about being cold. I am mellow. The kind of mellow where a man might text something he cannot take back.

Then my phone lights up.

It is the love of my life.

The lady clearing my plate looks at my face and pauses. “Kwani mbona macho yako ni red?”
Ni pilipili I tell her

She nods slowly.

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Mr. Speaker Sir (the mirror has been very supportive this quarter)

I rise to present the budget for the financial year that began on the 3rd and ended on if we are being truthful in this House on the 4th.Because I’m my own accountant.

On revenue. We had projected a healthy inflow from a client in Westlands who looked me in the eye and said, “Nitakusort by Friday.” Mr. Speaker, Friday came.Friday has since married, relocated to Syokimau, and started a family. Our confirmed revenue therefore stands at forty bob, plus one coin recovered from under the bed which, upon further audit, turned out to be a bottle top.

On expenditure. Sweeping cuts have been effected.

The Ministry of Meat is hereby dissolved and its functions transferred to the Ministry of Ndengu. Ndengu is the only member of this household that has never let me down plus chapati. Sukuma wiki is elevated to the status of strategic national reserve of the Mama mboga. The Department of Bread has been merged with the Department of Prayer, and both now report directly to my mother, who sent me a photo of her farm in ushagocaptioned “kuja ushike jembe.”

On transport. The transport docket has been abolished entirely. All journeys shall henceforth be conducted by legs ukipenda footsubishi. Ngara to town is no longer a distance. Nduthi guys who shout at me from the roadside will continue to receive the official government position, which is a small wave and the words “in 6 months time.”

On foreign relations. We have recalled our ambassador to Kevo. Kevo has owed this administration two thousand shillings since January and last week posted himself at a resort in Naivasha with the caption “grateful.” Sanctions have been imposed. The sanctions are that I now leave him on “typing...” for eleven minutes before replying “Mbwa wewe”

Warmer relations continue with my aunt in Rongai. Dinner diplomacy remains our most reliable foreign policy tool. I arrive at 7:40 p.m., I say “nilikuwa napitia tu,” and I stay for a plate the size of a small county.

On public debt. Fuliza now knows me better than my own mother. The lending apps have started addressing me by my first name, which is emotionally confusing. There is also a gentleman in the neighbourhood called Baba Mercy who lends money and smiles with too many teeth for a man in that line of work. This House recommends we avoid Baba Mercy’s side of the road.

On health. The gym membership has been terminated and rebranded as intermittent fasting which I am reliably informed is extremely fashionable in Karen. What is poverty in Pipeline is wellness in Lavington. Same hunger, different marketing budget.

On communications. Bundles have been suspended. The House has entered a digital detox. The neighbour’s network “Router Thuruari” remains a matter of national security, and negotiations are conducted nightly while standing very close to the wall in a specific corner near the window.

On the development agenda. Our long term plan remains the chicken or the egg.

Mr. Speaker, this budget is lean and this budget is due for revision the moment anyone deposits anything.

God bless me. God bless the ndengu.

I thank you.
Mashallah

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Under a tree in Nairobi, on a plank of wood with squares drawn in permanent marker, two grown men are playing draughts with bottle tops. Fanta caps versus stoney caps. Around them stand eleven consultants. Not one of them is playing. All of them are advising. This is the entire Kenyan economy.

The man on Fanta has been frozen for six minutes. He has seen two moves. Left, he loses one piece. Right, he loses two. That is his whole universe now, a corridor with a wall at either end. He is sighing like a man being asked to choose which of his children to hand over.

Meanwhile the board has fourteen other moves available. One of them is a jump that eats three Stoney caps in a diagonal so gorgeous the tree itself would applaud. He cannot see it. He is not looking at the board. He is looking at the two squares nearest his fear.

Watch how this happens to you.

You walk into the kinyozi. On the wall is a laminated poster of thirty numbered heads, styles with names like “Punk 4” and “Mohawk Executive” and one gentleman who appears to have been shaved by a court order. Thirty options. And what do you say? “Kawaida.” The usual. You have just walked into a thirty item menu and used it as a two item menu: the usual, or an unplanned personality crisis.

Or the wedding committee. Seventh meeting. Still no venue, but somebody has already printed a budget in Comic Sans and laminated it, because in Kenya lamination is how we say “this is now law.” Then the chairlady turns to you slowly, the way a lawyer turns, and says, “So. Are you giving thirty thousand, ama wewe si mtu wa hii family?”

Thirty thousand or exile. Two doors. And there you sit, doing quiet mathematics against your rent, sweating through a shirt you borrowed.

But there is door three: you know a guy with tents. Door four: you handle the whole sound and lighting for eight. Door five: you give twelve and volunteer as MC so loudly that nobody audits you. Door six: you ask, gently, sweetly, with the face of a newborn, why the budget contains a line item reading “Miscellaneous, 40,000.” Watch how fast that committee discovers brand new options it did not know it had.

Same thing with the auntie who has appointed herself Registrar of Marriages for the entire clan. She corners you near the sufurias. “Are you marrying that girl, or are you wasting her time?” Two doors, both of them small, both of them hers. Nobody told you door three exists: “Auntie achana na hiyo story.” Ninety percent of ultimatums do not survive being fed.

Because that is the trick, and it is such a cheap trick once you see it. Nobody actually traps you. They just hand you a very small map and hope you never lift your head. A corner is simply a room where somebody switched off the lights and then whispered that it was tiny.

Back under the tree, Fanta finally moved. Left. Lost his piece, then two more, then his dignity, then his Fanta, because one consultant took it during the confusion. The crowd scattered like he had something contagious.

And one of them, walking off, said the truest sentence spoken in Nairobi that whole year: “Ulikuwa unaangalia wapi mzee?”

Were you looking at old man?

Next time you are cornered, lift your head. Count the squares. There are never two. There are usually six, and one of them wins the whole game.

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At twenty five I had requirements. Unwritten, but firm. She must be able to cook. She must have ambition, but not so much ambition that she outgrows me by Thursday. She must not have male friends, a rule I enforced from inside a Supermetro I was still paying for in instalments.

I called it having standards. It was fear. Fear wearing a nice shirt.

Nairobi teaches a man to negotiate, and not with women. With himself. First you drop “must be from a good family.” Then you drop “must not live past Ruiru,” because Bolt to Rongai three times a week is a financial position you don’t want to be in, not a romance. Then one Saturday in Kikuyu, with the choma taking suspiciously long, you look across the table at a woman laughing at a joke that was not that good, and you think, this is fine. This is actually more than fine.

Meanwhile the weddings kept arriving. I have been a groomsman three times. Three. My history of hired suits is longer than my career. There is a WhatsApp group in my phone that has never been renamed, it simply changes purpose, and every eight months it demands 5k for a man I last saw in 2019. My mother stopped asking me directly and began praying loudly in my presence, which is worse. My shosho no longer asks about a specific girl. Any girl. She has lowered her own standards to meet mine, and she just wants to hold something before she goes.

And I kept repeating one sentence. “When I stabilise.”

I said it at twenty seven. I said it at thirty. I said it in a bedsitter in Juja after the job went and the boys who loved me suddenly became very busy men with tight schedules.

I said it to a woman who had every reason to leave and did not.

She came that week with pilau. No speech, no lecture. She sat on a floor that had no sofa on it and asked me what I was applying for.

Nobody tells young men this part. The standards you are guarding so fiercely are usually a wall built around a boy who is terrified of being seen while broke. You want a woman who matches an image, and the image was assembled from other men’s Instagram and your uncle’s commentary at a funeral.

So people say I settled. Sawa. Let them.

She does not resemble the list I never wrote down. Her opinions about my life are, irritatingly, correct. She belongs to a chama and will not disclose the amounts. She laughs at things that are not funny and refuses to laugh at my best material, which I consider a form of assault.

But when my father was admitted, she reached the ward before my own brother.She calls him on Sundays and never mentions it, and I only found out because he told me, and the way that old man said her name opened something in my chest that has not fully closed since.

That is the whole thing. The bar was never complexion or a woman who makes other men look at you twice. The bar is who is in the room when there is nothing to gain by being in it.

Whatever you do with this information is upto you.
Peace out

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Yeah, I’d rather be a lover than a fighter
‘Cause all my life, I’ve been fighting
Khalid-Circa 2017

Let us begin with definitions, because some of you need them.

A fight requires two sides. What you are doing is not a fight. What you are doing is standing alone at the Arboretum at six in the evening, monologuing into the wind, while the other person is in Roysambu laughing at a reel deeply unbothered.

Identify the symptoms

They have started replying like a customer care survey “Ok”. One word with no soul. You send a whole paragraph containing your actual feelings and they return a thumbs up emoji. Understand what that is.

Understand the physics

Nobody has ever been dragged into affection.You can drag a suitcase down Ngong Road at 4am while your relatives call you a disappointment. You cannot drag a person’s interest. Interest behaves like network in a lift. Either it is there, or you are just standing holding your phone above your head looking unwell.

Audit your own tactics

You have started doing things you would mock a friend for doing.

Posting a status at 11pm engineered for one specific viewer.

Asking a mutual friend “so how is everybody” when you mean one very particular body.

Rehearsing an argument in the shower with such conviction that you win.

Watching “typing...” appear and disappear like KCSE results being released in slow motion.

Accept the accounting

Every relationship runs like a chama. Everyone contributes, everyone eventually eats. When one person is depositing every month and the other one is simply enjoying the merry go round, that is not a chama. That is you quietly financing somebody’s lifestyle and filing it under love. At some point the treasurer, meaning you, must stand up and ask a hard question in front of the whole group.

The lesson, said plainly

People who want you in their life are not hard to identify. They are loud about it. They text first.They remember the tiny thing you mentioned once on a Tuesday while eating a smokie at a bus station. They do not need to be pursued across Ngong Hills like a goat.

Meanwhile here you are strategising.
Should you go cold for two weeks?
Should you post something mysterious and slightly poetic?
Should you vanish so they can feel your absence?
Aki, my friend. They will not feel your absence. They will feel relief, plus a noticeable improvement in phone storage.

Conclusion

Wanting somebody is not a crime. Wanting somebody who does not want you back is simply cardio.

So put the phone face down.It is that Nairobi cold that pretends to be gentle then betrays you, somebody at the corner is selling roasted maize to people who did not plan to buy roasted maize. Life is proceeding, with or without a reply.

They already left the conversation.
The only person still sitting in that meeting, taking minutes, is you.

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In which I am asked, for the ninth time this month, what “sawa” means

I want to say up front that she is brilliant. Runs a whole department. Reads contracts for fun. Once told a guy off so cleanly at a bridal shower that people still bring it up. This is not a stupid woman.

This is just a woman with a man in her phone.

Stage One: I Am Subpoenaed. It starts with a screenshot. Always a screenshot. It lands in my DMs at 10:40 pm with the caption “what do you think he means.” What he means is on the screen. He has typed “sawa.”.There is no second layer yet, here I am being asked to interpret it like it is a dead language recovered from a cave, and because I have a beard (sweet banana asione hii) and a Y chromosome, apparently I am the department of ancient translation.

I tell her the truth. I say, mtu wangu, he means sawa.

Stage Two: I Am Fired. My testimony is inconvenient, so I am dismissed and a second lawyer is retained. That lawyer is her friend from campus who says “aki he is just shy” about a twenty eight year old man who runs a business and negotiates with suppliers daily. Suddenly he is shy. Bashful, even. A whole introvert.

Meanwhile he is online. Very online. Dropping flames under other people’s posts like a man doing community service.

Stage Three: The Renovation. Here is where it stops being funny for me, because she decides the problem is her packaging.

New braids. Gym at 5 am when it is still cold and Nairobi is doing that grey thing it does before sunrise. Nails done. A new perfume she cannot afford. She sends me pictures asking if the outfit is “too much” and I say it is perfect, and it is, and I know it will not matter, because you cannot solve a looking problem with a beauty solution. The man is not looking. He was never looking.

Stage Four: The Logistics. She restructures a Saturday around a “maybe.” Cancels her cousin. Cancels me. Cooks pilau for a man who says “will confirm” and never confirms. Buys the shirt in his size. Sends fare she does not have because he is “stuck.” Then defends the whole operation with a straight face like she is presenting to a board.

The word she keeps using is “supportive.” That is the word she has chosen. Not “invested.” Supportive.

Stage Five: The Prophecy. Somewhere in month five, her aunt has a dream. Something about a wedding and a white dress and a man whose face was unclear. The face was unclear because God, being a serious person, did not want to be quoted in this matter.

Stage Six: The Part Where I Shut Up. Because I said it once, plainly, at a table, and she went quiet and started editing what she tells me - and a woman who edits what she tells you eventually stops telling you.

So now I hold the bag. I say the outfit is fire, because it is. I answer the screenshots with something soft and useless. I uber her home along Waiyaki way at midnight while she explains, again, that he has been going through a lot.

Stage Seven: The Thing I Actually Know. She will get there. They always get there, and never one day earlier than they were going to.

I just hope she will get there before the Knotless braids grow out.

There is a pothole on the road into my side of town that has been there so long the residents no longer call it a pothole. It has a shape. It has moods. In April it becomes a lake and small boys fish in it for fun. Somebody once planted a banana stem in it as a protest and the banana did quite well. That road has been launched three times, by three different men, with three different ribbons and three different choirs, and it remains a rumour with tarmac at the edges.

So the question, can our politicians compare to Zohran Mamdani, is an absurd one. Comparison requires a shared unit of measurement. You cannot compare the temperature to a Tuesday.

Look at what the man actually does. Cheaper buses. Rent that stops climbing. Childcare. Boring, functional, unphotogenic things that quietly improve an ordinary Wednesday. There is no ribbon in that. no MC shouting “let us receive our leader” while a choir sweats through the second verse. Nobody claps for a bus fare. It simply works, for people who will never know your name.

Now bring that concept here and watch it fail to launch. Our leaders do not reject it. They cannot load it. It is like sending a document in a format the machine has never met. The screen just sits there, thinking.

Here’s why - our version is basically a political reality show. First the groundbreaking, with a shovel that has never touched soil and a hard hat that has never met a construction site. Then the folded arms. Then the inspection, which is the same photograph as the groundbreaking but with mud. Then the commissioning. Then, two years later, another groundbreaking on the identical stretch, because in this country a road is not infrastructure, it is a renewable resource of press coverage.

Ask one of them about the drainage plan and watch the face change. Not angry. Confused, the way you stare at a question in a subject you dropped in Form Two. They will answer with a story about their late father, then something about our people, then a promise about a stadium. Never the drainage. The drainage does not clap.

That is the real gap. It is not that they are worse human beings than Mamdani. It is that they were raised inside a system where visibility is the product and function is a side effect nobody audits. Fixing a road buys you one afternoon of goodwill. Launching a road buys you four years, a hashtag, and a nickname.

And here is the uncomfortable part. Good leadership looks like almost nothing happening. No convoy, no envelope, no ecstatic crowd bussed in at dawn. Just a fare that drops, a rent that holds, a road that stays a road. It is so undramatic that if it happened in Nairobi tomorrow we would be deeply suspicious. We would ask what he is planning. We would say somebody must be funding him.

So the answer is not that we lack the men. We lack the appetite for boredom.

Give us a leader whose entire record is that the road did not rot, and half the country will look at him and ask, with real concern, what exactly he has been doing all this time.

Every Nairobi man is walking around with a small folder in his heart labelled “Do Not Open.” Inside that folder lives the version of himself that once did something so embarrassing for a woman that the memory still arrives uninvited at 2am and taps him on the shoulder. He will tell you he is a erious man. He pays rent in Kinoo. He has a LinkedIn - but ask him about 2019 and watch him suddenly remember an urgent phone call.

Brothers, today we open the folder. Ladies, take notes. Everyone else, please laugh quietly. Some of us are still healing manze.

1. The Escort Mission You walked her from Kilimani to her gate in Lavington at 11pm, chest out, hand on her back, assuring her that Nairobi is really not that bad. Then she went in, the gate closed, and you turned around and walked back through that same darkness at the speed of a man being chased by his own decisions. You got home sweating and texted “reached safely, you?” like a hero. Lies. Structural lies.

2. The Mother Tongue Ambush She said her parents were “not strict,” so you learned four greetings from a random stranger at Bus station. At the homestead you delivered them beautifully to her mother, who blinked, laughed for eleven uninterrupted minutes, then went to call the neighbours. Turns out you had greeted her the way one congratulates a goat. You spent the rest of that visit smiling and nodding like a wall clock.

3. The M-Pesa Martyrdom She mentioned, very casually, that her hair appointment was on Saturday. You sent everything. Everything. Then you ate chapo madondo from the same corner for eleven days until the mama started adding extra soup out of visible concern. When your boys asked why you looked lean, you said you were “cutting.” Cutting what, exactly? Your own financial throat.

4. The Handbag Sentry Toi Market. Saturday. She said “twende, nanunua kitu moja tu.” Three hours later you are standing between two stalls holding a handbag, two paper bags and a mirror, while a stranger tells you that you look like a good man. You smiled. Internally you were drafting your own obituary. She bought nothing. Absolutely nothing. She just wanted to “see prices.”

5. The Sudden Gym Conversion She once said she likes men who are “active.” That same evening you bought shorts. By day three you were doing squats you had learned from a reel, and by day five you could not sit down without holding furniture. You climbed stairs sideways for a full week. She never noticed. She was busy. Your knees, however, remember everything and have never forgiven you.

6. The Committee You Had No Business Attending Her cousin was getting married, so there you were in a hall in South B on a Sunday afternoon, holding a small notebook, nodding gravely that yes, the tent budget was inflated. When the envelope came round you contributed money that had responsibilities at home. You did not know a single human being in that room. You still clapped. Loudly.

7. The Gate Vigil She said “come.” You came. Ngong Road traffic, drizzle starting, shirt ironed twice, cologne applied with genuine optimism. You reached her gate and the message landed: “Aki sorry, my cousin from Nakuru just arrived.” So you stood there. In the rain. Doing arithmetic na hakuna mtu wa mazematic hapa. Then you walked away typing “no problem, next time” while your entire body was screaming a completely different sentence.

8. The Dance She wanted a TikTok. You said you do not dance. You then learned a full routine in your sitting room, filmed twenty six takes, and posted it. It performed well. Extremely well. So well that your supervisor referenced it in a Monday meeting. You now have a nickname at work. You will carry that nickname until you resign or die, whichever comes first.

The Finisher

And here is the tragedy, or maybe the beauty. Ask any of these men if they regret it and they will look away, scratch the back of their neck, and mutter “ilikuwa ni ujinga tu.” But watch the eyes. There is a small smile hiding in there, sitting quietly like a man who knows exactly what he did.

Because love in this city is not roses and violins. It is walking back alone in the dark. It is sending your last coin and calling it a lifestyle choice. It is standing in drizzle outside a gate that refuses to open, and then somehow showing up the following Saturday with a clean shirt and a fresh plan.

We are not embarrassed. We are veterans.

And if she called today, we would do every single one of those things again. Badly. And with our whole chest.
Not me though

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Nairobi! Nairobi! Nairobi! (in Shiti’s voice)
Nairobi will teach you how to believe in yourself the hard way without warning.

It’s best if you understand this clearly as early as possible - no one is going to believe in you for you. Nobody is sitting in an office in Upper Hill saying, “Wacha we hire Ashley, we must encourage her”. Your CV is resting peacefully in forty seven inboxes, unopened, undisturbed, like that quiet tenant that always pays on time. Your mother is biased - yes she believes in you, but she also believes you should have done medicine, so she is not a reliable ally.

Our elders put it plainly long before we started writing vision statements - Nairobi ni shamba la mawe. A field of stones. Are the stones labelled? No. Is the field flat? Absolutely not! My grandfather, a man who has never opened an email in his life, told me one December in Kakamega, a person who waits to see the whole road before starting will die at the gate. Well rested man. Very unemployed. Very wise nonetheless.

You’ll see it for yourself. You are walking down Uhuru Highway at 9 AM with a face only a mother can love. Arms swinging. Phone in hand. An expression serious enough to frighten a child. Only God knows you’re going to the cobbler, fervently hoping he’s finished stitching your one presentable shoe. That’s not foolishness - its faith.

Meanwhile the marabou storks perched on the trees along the highway sit there silently judging you. They have watched thousands of us pass below with dreams in one hand and a bundles receipt in the other. They’ve seen it all- they’ve watched people quit and they’ve watched others soldier on. They are indifferent to both. Do not go to them for encouragement.

Then comes the season nobody warns you about. We’ve all experienced it - the one where you must move and you do not know where you are going.

Someone says there is something for you in Ruaka. You do not know where in Ruaka. You do not know the person’s second name. What you have is a pin, a voice note ending with “utanishow ukifika,” and hope. You still walk. You ask three people for directions along the way. Two send you the wrong way with tremendous confidence, pointing like they built the road themselves. Yet somehow, you find it. Maps announces you have arrived. You look up and you are standing at a gate with a fierce dog behind it who has clearly been waiting for this moment his entire life. Decide whether you’ll go in or keep walking, searching for what can’t be found.

That’s the key to cracking this field of stones. Not knowing, and going anyway.

The fire is the last test, and the hardest.

That fire you had at nineteen when you announced you’ll do that thing with too much confidence and a zero bank balance - that fire is the one thing you should never let go of, but it will be hard to keep it burning. Whatever you wanted from the get go, you have to keep going for it. And know that this town is full of people who want to sit near your fire and warm themselves without carrying firewood.

Rent arrives on the fifth like it memorised your address, which it did. The chama wants its monthly dues. A wedding committee has added you to a group without consultation and there is now a budget document. An aunt will corner you at a funeral, sweetly, in front of everybody, and ask, “so hiyo your dream, is it still going on?”

Say yes. Eat the rice. Feed the fire anyway. Small logs. Daily. Nobody is checking.

Now stand up, fix your face, and go. Look like you know exactly where you are going.

Half this city is doing the same thing.

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I watch as house number B07 and B08 share a wall thin enough that when Mary sneezes Collins says “Bless you”from his bed.It doesn’t start with roses.It starts with borrowed salt,then a Cup of Unga,then 30 bob of tokens on Sunday when KPLC has decided to test your Faith.Then the final surrender The password to your Zuku Wifi which is a heavier commitment than meeting their parents.
Two months later Kitanda ilishatingika and now we arrive at the actual reason why this rule exists.It is never about morality because Nairobi has no Moral high ground.We sold it and built apartments on it. The rule is about exits.
You can’t ghost a person you share a water tank with.

When the clean water tanker comes on Wednesdayyou will meet at the tap holding jerricans,pretending to be deeply intrested in the sky.When the caretaker knocks you will hear his voice through the same wall and know she she is also home and awake but not opening.You will begin timing your movements like a Thief.Leave at 5:40 am and return at 10:15 pm.And the watchman who is the most reliable database in this apartment more accurate than CRB.Will greet you with “Wewe siku hizi umekuwa mgeni”while smiling in a way that says he knows everything.
Even the mama mboga knows.She will count your sukuma wiki slowly and ask with tenderness “na huyo dem wa B07 ?”

Campus clasmates carry the same curse on a shorter timeline. You quarrel three weeks into the semester. 7 weeks later the lecturer the man who has never known joy announces group presentations and reads both of your names in the same group.You cannot even leave the class whatsapp group because this is where the timetable is posted so you stay muted watching your “ex”react with laughing emojis to somebody else’s memes.

Now the office.At what point are you guys doing this at work?
Let me report on where we are as a country.The boardroom has glass walls and a calendar visible to the entire company,so somebody had to title the meeting “Sync”for 45 minutes with blinds down and Finance saw it.The stair well between the second and third floor is famous for reasons the building manager has stopped investigating.

So the commandment stands.Do not fall in love anywhere you are still required to be tomorrow at 8am.Certainly not in the open plan office your ex processes payroll.

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Capitalism! Capitalism! Capitalism! who came up with this concept.They say life gives you lemons make lemonades,lemonade tena mnipatie miwa nitafune buana because the economy is not doing wonderfully.Every other day I wake up look at my 40 Kenyatta shillings Mpesa balance and hope that maybe over night I might have won the Sportpesa Jackpot or Just maybe Just maybe that bank I depend for my Salo like nameless has credited my account with an ungodly amount of money.Just like BTS I’m a dreamer and the dream is that the 40 bob would have met investors and grown on it’s own in the few hours I had put my soul to recharge.
Lupita said “All dreams are valid” mine might me be doing 12 years a slave of the matrix because the 40 Kenyatta shillings is still 40 Kenyatta shillings. The only other entity believing in me is Fuliza and she charges intrest for the faith.

Today I don’t look like my problems,I’m dressed like a King and as my hand hand slides through the door hole for me to press the Mindy padlock.The reflection on the window looks back at me with chewing a toothpick like it has opinions like Gachagua. Swali ni Moja G tutatoka block lini?

I ask this question everywhere.At the barber who rivals Mutahi ngunyi on political analytics and has opinions on the economy better than Githinji.At the jobless corner the boys have graduated from when we finish campus to when the economy stabilizes to a silence so loud that it speaks volumes.

From boomer parents to millenial siblings theories are thrown around.My Uncle says it’s consistency.The person telling me about consistency had a track record of 11 failed business and he always drank himslef to a stupor.
One of my friends says God timing is the best.Don’t get me wrong I believe with my whole chest but sometimes I feel like God has put me on “DND”.
Phases come and go.There is a cyrpto season where every guy became a miner for gold he had no knowledge about.Then came the forex season that had us posting graphs we learnt new words and old lessons.The online writing account you bought from Bernard and he vanished with you 40Gs.Then came the mutumba thrift hustle on instagram that had only your friends cheering you up with fire and heart emoji’s.

The brown envelope with your CV has been to the void and the void writes back to notify your application was unsuccesful but they will always have you in mind.Even when your CV is being used to serve Mandazi’s in the office.

It’s 2 in the am, I have let the bedbugs bite.
You are looking at the top of your bed sitter,your back on a warm mattress as you hear the neighbour’s baby cry through the wall thinner than the government’s promises,You do the math you already know the answer to.
You are mellow from thinking about how your mother has your Graduation picture framed up on the wall and she flexes to her fellow chama mates that he has a son in Nairobi doing something with his life and you cannot bring yourslef to explain what the things are.You think about everything at home you left like a prodigal son but you have no option of not making it despite the city trying to squeeze you.

And you say
“Tutatoka Block”
not “nitatoka” which means the block is a waiting room and everybody in the waiting room is family
So I ask you again
Tutatoka Block lini? When will we leave?
It might not be today,it might not be tommorrow
But the odds are not zero
Tutatoka.

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Two love birds are seated at Jenga Jungle on Mutithi road watching the orange sun lay it’s withered evening rays on the bustling westlands. He has been speaking for 40 minutes about how he is about make it as a Forex trader,his gym routine and the cousin in the States that sends him a dollar on his birthday.The babe has said “mmh” 7 times each one a different temperature followed through with a dull nod.Later on with the mandem he says the date went well.It didn’t go well.He was talking while she was communicating they were not operating on the same level.

There is a whole elephant in the room built of this confusion and we have named it the talking stage. A honest name because that is what is precisely happening “Talking”.5 months of good morning texts reels neither of you find funny and if you ask either party what they are,they say “Tuko tu we don’t want labels”.Two Adults sharing confusions with no intentions to disclose and somehow we both end up hurt.

The actual message was never in the words.It was in the typing bubbles that appeared,deleted and disappeared.The bubble communicated everything.It said “I want to explain myself but I have decided you don’t deserve the explanation” A soliloquy performed by the dots.

No where in this world can a person be destroyed by punctuation and spelling.You send a paragraph you have rewritten 8 times you watch it turn blue then nothing.Delivered to sender, read and understood then dismissed without prejudice.Meanwhile she is online posting her OOTD message was received loud and clear without even typing one letter.

“Wyd”at midnight is way too convenient to be a question about activities.Nobody ever wonders what you are doing at midnight.Its a question with only one answer

Then there is “I’m fine”every bedsitter from Kinoo to Roysambu to Rongai to Umoja has experienced this.70% of relationships in this Nairobi die after a man hears “I’m fine” and believes it and goes back to the base ya PS.My G that fine had layers like an onion.

Silence between people who communicate with each other is different.There is silence that means I’m thinking,then there is silence that says I’m here and then there is silence for tutaongea nyumbani.Every kenyan can tell the difference the way we can tell hii jua ni jua ya mvua.

The who love us to the moon and back are usually very terrible at saying it.Your dad par exemple will ask whether that job of yours is treating you well and each question is a small letter same as your mum will not said she missed you she will just put 3 pieces of chicken on your plate of rice.

Talk ni cheap and available anybody can send you paragraphs and anybody can call you baby.Communication on the other hand is the person who notices you have gone quiet in the crowd and speaks to you separately.
Are you a good communicator ?

Nobody in this city has ever said those words before good news. Not once in the history of Nairobi has someone grabbed your hand, looked you in the eye, said “promise me you won’t be angry,” and then announced that they have cleared your rent. The phrase exists for exactly one reason: to give your soul a two second warning before it exits through the top of your head.

And it never comes alone. Bad news here arrives wrapped like something from Gikomba, layer upon layer, and by the time you reach the middle it is one sock. First they ask how you are. Then how work is. Then whether you have eaten. My friend, a Kenyan asking about your appetite at 10:47pm is not worried about your nutrition. They are checking whether your stomach is strong enough to receive impact.

The friend version is John. John calls and says, very calmly, “buda angalia WhatsApp kidogo.” John has never in his life used the word kidogo about anything small. You open it and there is one message, “ulinipatia ndege ama gari?,” and beneath it a photo. Just a photo. No caption, no explanation, no context, because John is a coward who has outsourced his confession to a camera. And there, in flash lighting, at an angle that suggests he took it while crouching and possibly crying, is your rear door, folded inward like a Weetabix wrapper. He then types, “but the car is fine.” The car is in the picture, John. We are both looking at it.

The mother version is slower and more dangerous, because she opens with love. Umeamka? Umekula? Uko na baridi? Then, softly, “kuna kitu kidogo.” Small. Small has no measurement in that house. Small is a cousin arriving with three suitcases and a mattress for “wiki mbili tu,” and the two weeks started during a previous administration, and now he has opinions about how you arrange your fridge.

But the babe version is a different sport entirely. It begins with typing. Then the typing stops. Then it starts again, then it stops, like someone standing at the edge of a swimming pool negotiating with God. Then: “Ni promise hutakasirika.” Brother, your heart immediately starts doing hill repeats on Kingara Road. Your chest is now a construction site. You are sweating in a way that has nothing to do with weather, doing forensic accounting on your last three weeks, wondering which sin has finally matured like a fixed deposit. You type “promise” with fingers that belong to another man. She takes four more minutes. Four. You age visibly. And then she reveals that she used your card to do her nails, or she told her mother your full names, or she has invited Cindy to stay “for a few days” in your one bedroom in Kinoo. And you laugh, but the laugh is damp, because in those four minutes you had already ended the relationship, moved out, and started attending a new church.

The training for all this started in boarding school anyway. Prep time, silence, teacher on duty peeping through the window like a hawk with a marking pen, and someone leans over from the next desk and whispers, “umesimama ama umekaa?” You are seated. You have been seated for two hours. But the question is not about furniture, it is about structural integrity, and you already know your Chemistry paper has done something unforgivable.

The correct answer, obviously, is to never promise. Say “sema kwanza.” Say “let me hear it while standing.” But we never do. Someone asks us to sign a waiver on our own peace and we sign it, in permanent ink, and say “ni sawa tu, si it’s fine.”

So how do you do it? Do you say umesimama ama umekaa? Do you feed them first? Do you send the photo and switch off your phone like John? Or are you the type who says nothing and lets them find out on their own? Confess below, we are all guilty here.

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How do you know you have made it ?
Is it when she introduces you as ‘my person’.
But not her boyfriend.
Not even we are seeing where things are going.
My so called ‘person’ introduced me as “we are not something serious,we can’t be anything”
As she chuckled heartily as she placed her hand on my shoulder the guts to describe me like a fundi who has never once inflated a quotation.

For three years I was her pillar without strength.I had escorted her home more times than the presidential escort.I knew how her mother liked the concoctions of dawa za kienyeji.I frequented her shosh’s prayer every other time and everyone said amen except the one person who mattered.

The shackles of the system had me by the neck.Every other month at around 2:00 am a message would light my phone in the dark “Uko awake?”The message read.I was awake,I had been awake since Kasongo’s term started.She would tell me about Joel who had always left her on read,I would comfort her with the patience of a man reading a menu he is not allowed to order from.Then she would go for milk like somebody’s Dad and reappear after 9 days.This is where you realize breadcrumbing is portion control.

I knew the game,I was not a fool I was happy being there for her.I was a stakeholder who had put in fare airtime and an entire fuliza,Birthday dinner at artisan blend where the waiters danced to the bongo song and a jersey that never came back.My returns arrived as bonga points for the heart which you know cannot be exchanged for anything even a Quickmart hotdog.Anyway you keep checking the same balance.

Then on a random Saturday Michelle happened
Michelle was in her friend group.I met her when we were strolling,she laughed at my dry jokes without me needing to explain and something in my chest that had been lying down for years stood up straight.
Sheila saw our photo on a date,the network coverage improved dramatically from 9 days to 9 seconds.Suddenly asking if i she can bring me my jersey.She remembered our conversation from 2 years ago that she had not attended.She said “Kwani we are not vibing?”You were vibing I was on standby like a generator at Mp shah.

Then came the Ambush cocktailed in tears.”Ati you are seeing Michelle?The one Michelle my Girl?”and I just stood there admiring the crumbling walls.Three years no boundary but everything came in place when I started to leave.

The not so funny part

I know some of you are in a similar situation they don’t want you they want a version of you that will always be available.They want a light left in the house they were never coming back to just so the compound dosnt look abandoned.And you have paid the bill for the duration you have tried chasing with no avail.

The day you will leave the friendzone,you will understand that the friendzone is not rejection.Rejection is quick like the flash and the friendzone is slow lick a tick.

Michelle called while I was walking to her
Never have I been happier

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