For someone who has been glued to a career desk for the better part of the last twelve months, it could only be good luck to get a ride off and out of Nairobi, to the tranquility of the country, to a place where, for the locals, life is punctuated by the journey of the sun, from North to South. How do you explain to a country folk that the upper side where the sun is coming from is the East and that down side is West, tell me, how?
We were traveling as a group, seventy five young men and women, in a sixty five seater bus. Everybody had a seat, quite surprisingly. You need to appreciate the philanthropy of African men, the style of gentleman-ship, where, the man does not offer a seat to the lady who has missed one, but invites the lady o sit on him on that part between the knee and the center. Thanks to this generousity everyone was seated, and there was space for several more people, unsurprisingly, is it?
As a stranger to the majority of mates traveling with me, I had to be quick, quick with my eyes. So within a time of five minutes, the time we spent confirming if everyone was on, my eyes had done several kilometers within a circumference of ten meters. I can say the market was well balanced, the forces of demand and supply met exactly at the center but for some slight imbalance on the outward palatability. Don't worry though, even the central bank of Kenya has to chip in some dollars here and there to keep the forces at bay.
Blessed were the guys offering the extra seats. On a bumpy road, which snailed, grew and graduated to pot-holed weather road, still boasting virginity, virginity occasioned by recent heavy rains in places where the sun is a better friend, they had to count themselves blessed. You see, in such a road, the driver will have to do some unforeseen and abrupt "breaking", resulting to a natural thrust back and forth. As a cushion for the lady, one can only benefit from the unprecedented rubbing, and in such situations, mother nature never disappoints. I leave the imagination for another day.
As the unplanned comrade, I had to do with my phone as the only companion for the first hundred kilometers. As usual, on a Saturday morning, my drinking class of folks are fast asleep, some nursing hang overs which hang them down till Monday. Facebook feed is usually Daily nation and other pages like FT, Business Insider and some bloggers who are always on their feet, posting and re-posting, as if to compete who comes out with it first. I still don't know how they eke out a living. Whatsapp was dead and twitter feed was painfully slow. I resorted to scrolling my phonebook, and, I was amazed by the number of names and numbers I still don't know who they belong to, who took them down, from who, where, why and for what reason. I don't complain, though, I am African.
I grabbed the first opportunity I had. I usually choose my battles very well, and i prettily very well knew that the luxury of "cuddling" some lady eluded me completely. I chose to sit aside a lady, who was fine, I mean a lady who the great Shakespeare would say that is fair, fair in hair and wear. Ask a Shakespearean scholar and he will tell you those were the best words to put across to a lady in the medieval, otherwise known as, Elizabethan times. I had settled on this particular lady partially because she was stunning, but mostly because the guy sitting aside her all along had been mute. I knew i could do a better job.
The rest is a story for another day. I came to believe that luck is a lady. As i played my final card, I knew I had compensated for the lost time. In as much as i wasn't as blessed as some of my fellow niggers, i was lucky, at most. For guys asking, my final card is letting the lady seek out the phone number first, that's always a prove that one has done a very noble job.
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