Photo: Internet Sources
She sat at the table, staring at the black coffee in a mug in her hand. It had been a while she had taken a sip, one sip. She liked it bitter. She smiled, a smile that appeared as a cross between a wincing face and a happy face. A song played in her mind. A song that made her happy. But she could not bring herself to surrender completely to happiness.
…….black coffee, no sugar, no cream………… (more…)
I gave the room a rapid sweep the moment I entered, I normally do that. I then proceeded to take my next step, but I stopped suddenly. My ritual had picked something, something a brain enacting a habit picks up a couple of seconds after the act. I raised my eyes and gave the room a one-over one more time. It was true, the room was full of white faces, white as in Caucasian. It was shocking. Shocking in a nice way. Scratch that, it was surprising. I hope that has a nice ring to it. What I am trying to say here is that I ain’t no racist pig. That term even sounds funny. Tell a black person he is a racist and he goes, “blacks aint no racists, whites are racists”. But that is a story for another day.
“I’m I the only black face in here?” I mumbled to myself. But I was not, there were some, at the back of the room. But it was clearly a jungu event. You see, jungus who organize events, or non jungus who organize jungu events have this habit of assuming that the only great beer in, or out of Kenya for that matter, is Tusker. And that was the beer that was there in plenty; green Tusker, brown Tusker, slim Tusker, not so slim Tusker. So I had to pretend that Tusker was synonymous to the phrase hakuna matata and down it. Okay, beer was not the reason I was there in the first place. I was here for a Social Enterprise event. It was my first time but I got the impression that it is an occasion when guys in the social welfare field (in Kenya, that means basically the NGO world and such like) get to come together to share simple and not so simple ideas that can, or will transform society. And people had these great ideas, okay the few who talked, and those who asked questions. And questions are enlightening. Like when someone asks the kind advice one could give an American student or non-student who wished to leave everything secure in the Big Sam and come out here to some place like Kenya with everything insecure.
Now, the Ihub, that is where the event was, is a place of techies, creative, creators and designers. It has never lacked, and will never lack, of ideas. Being a regular, nothing as supposed to surprise me that evening. But the language did. The language of New York, of Virginia, of college students who take of a year to travel or work in Vietnam, or Kenya, or some other developing places. Of people in search of new ideas, or into how to make themselves better. Like good Michael who kept mentioning that he did not go to University, but see, he had a startup, unlike some of you with fancy degrees still sending out job applications. Good Michael, his small dislike for the fact that his education cycle lacked that last 4 years of the 8.4.4 marathon seemd to have spurred him to be better, or to keep running from this inconsequential fact in his life. Come on Mikey, even your namesake Sonko has no degree but the good red suit wearing chap is the Senator of Le Capitale. Or you can be a good lad, still like your namesake and register for that degree programme. It is never too late you know.
Now take Houlden for example. I don’t know if Houlden was his name pre-Big Sam or whether he picked it up afterwards. Houlden was the lad whose English was all gloriously American. You see, even during a certain discussion, my good chap threw a glance at my tag and decided that a person with a name like mine has probably not seen the inside of a plane. To make things clearer, he turned to our other conversationalist and asked, “where do you live in the Us?”
“New York.”
“Aaaah. I lived in New York once.”
“Where exactly in NY, Houlden?” I was tempted to ask, but Sir Houlden had scanned the room and moved on to another New Yorky guy.
I talked social, with several sociable guys. I met some cool guys, some of whom who had moved into the country some weeks back and were carrying themselves like they had been around for a much longer time. And I made friends. Till another Tusker.
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