I am not a Coward

I am not a coward,. Or so I think, because I fight my battles, sometimes, walking away is fighting, fighting to win. I am feeling terrible. I feel like a traitor. The feeling that comes with self-betrayal is one of the feelings that a man will find hard to live with, you toss in bed at night, you ask yourself endless what if’s, you wish that time may reverse a bit to that moment, even when you know that you will still run. You even fear looking at the mirror (thank heavens I do not own one). Okay, it is not that bad, but it is bad.

I feel terrible because two men confronted me at night on a deserted road. Two men, well built and visibly drunk. They talked shit, bullshit. I was not impressed. I turned round, they were behind me, and told them what they said was not cool. Cowardly move, they were not impressed. They became agitated, one reached out (wrong move boss) to hit, I grabbed that arm, twisted it and my brain felt he belonged in the drain. The other one moved, I didn’t see him, I sensed him. Instincts, that is important. In Tae kwondo  training, you don’t see your opponent, the move is unpredictable. You sense it. That is how you avoid defeat. I dodged the blow, it was well aimed. He could have gotten me clean on the temple and boy the breeze that my face felt just after the blow missed, the impact could have been, well “impactful”. I swept him clean off his feet. I was tempted to send him to the sewer too, but I was mad. This was defense, not attack. I went on the offensive. I went for his nose, one jab and he staggered a bit. I am not sure from what, the jab or the alcohol. One round kick, clinically executed. To the drain. I looked at them, slowly straightened my clothes and walked away. You should know people, imbeciles.

All that because I had looked back, well at them while looking back. I stared back, at the road, long enough to piss them off. I am been walking from the shopping centre, had gone to get myself some fries for supper (life as a bachelor, you know what I am saying).It is late, but not very late. I am lost in my own world,  I can’t even remember what I was thinking about. Then I suddenly see shadows moving next to me. I am a bit startled but not visibly. Then I hear the voices, two male voices. My very fertile and over active imagination kicks into motion. I briefly glance backwards. The road is deserted, save for a lone figure I see back there, moving towards the opposite direction. There is another guy coming towards us. But he is a bit far off. If these guys are to make a move on me, they will be done long before these guys realize what is happening, if at all they will bother, and that is if these guys are the kind of guys that make moves on lonely, weary travellers along empty roads. But this place is safe. No, every place is safe and people get attacked. I increase my strides, but I don’t seem to be making any progress as moving away from them is concerned. I decide to look back, you know, longer like someone checking whether there is a mat coming. No mat.

Now I am a bit worried. No I can’t lose my phone, my sleek, new Samsung gadget that I tap tap on when I am in a place where I want to feel snobbish, or when I want to show them that pia mimi, I am somewhere. I love my gadget, it took my hustler self( howdy VP Ruto) a pretty long time to afford one. I aint gonna lose it. I am not going back to those Nokia phones that are marketed on the premise of simplicity. Nor I am doing Chinese, the love between me and China starts and ends on Thika Road. Heck, I can’t even mimick their accents, how fake(I almost said unoriginal)  can they be. I am not losing my phone. The times when a chick went like, “give me your phone I key in my digits” and I went like, “I forgot my phone at (fill in your favourite), just flash me and I will get your number”, are long gone. I now have a phone. Well. It may not be top of the range but it is not that thing that Apple or Samsung have put in a cabinet in their museums and wrote, “this is what Nokia used to call a phone”. Man must self-preserve, (survive is for losers).

Crap. Kwani who does he think he is. Hawa ni wale mabarbie wa Ngong road hujiona sana.Nkt.

No. this conversation cannot be about me. It has moved from some other guy, their friend, to me. They have stopped talking about the fun they had just had, to me. They were mad, at me. ME. On a deserted road at night! This is not cool. At best, it is gonna get scruffy, at worst, well, it is gonna be shitty, downright shitty. I panic, for a moment. But then what eees? I can defend myself. But no, they may be having weapons. A metal road, a wooden rod, well, plank, a knife, wooden hands, a gun even (what a mind conjures when in defense mode)

No, I was not looking at you, I was checking out for a mat. I am not a Barbie ( that’s lame). I don’t live near here (lamer). I am a cool guy.

They are not impressed by my coolness, or lameness. I don’t care. I can fight. I come from the brave stock, we are brave people. We stand up for ourselves. We fight till we can fight no more. After all didn’t my grandmother once kill a giant python that was about a kill kid even after all the men had ran away, tails ( no pun) coiled between their legs?  Didn’t my dad look a lion, wait, lions in the eye? I can fight, and I will. I remember Charlie, he was brave, very brave. He could have easily passed for a gladiator. Charlie, my late fierce grand dad, now that was a man. Then they attack, and well….

I didn’t fight. Oops, I shouldn’t have said that. Nobody fought. I stopped walking, and let them go on ahead, complaining bitterly. And then, I did what brave people do. I took a mat, and paid twenty baab for a destination a stone throw away. Because, at times twenty baab equals bravery.

The Shawshank Teachings

Andy sure made his mark at Shawshank. He came along, made his mark and left in a dramatic fashion, unlike when he had come in. He got a library built, he played music to the prisoners via the PA system, disobeyed warden Norton a couple of times, called him obtuse to his face and finally screwed him up. He got one of the most notorious guys in the prisoners beaten to pulp by simply being an asset.

Welcome back Andy. He sure was back. Not the Andy who had being cuckolded, not the Andy who was wallowing in self-pity, but the Andy who was not afraid to take risks. The Andy who dared hope when the future was only a bleak dungeon. The Andy who took his wife to a picnic in a field in Buxton and proposed. That is the Andy who was back. The Andy who was not afraid to trample you over. The hurricane had given him a thorough tear down, but sure the storm was over. And when the storm passes on, everything comes back to life.

When I was young, I used to see prisoners as the worst of mankind. The people whom the Bible condemned, whom the priest prayed, and requested us to, pray for every Sunday during mass. The bad people. They killed people, they stole, they did everything bad. I remember one day, I had gone to a market place. Then one of those huge wire fenced lorries pulled up on the side of the road  so that the warders could buy some  groceries.  I looked at the tiny window near the top and saw faces crammed, trying to get a glimpse of the outside world. It was as though they were trying to get a taste of freedom by simply looking at guys going about the daily mundane activities. They pressed against the grill of the jungle green lorry, their faces scaly, their lips dry, but some of them were smiling. Then a woman went near the window and passed pieces of sugarcane via the square spaces. I don’t know how it started, whether a prisoner asked for it, or she simply felt that is the least she could do. Others followed suit, sugarcane and bananas passed through the wire grills. The smiles broadened, some broke into grins, the initially expressionless faces broke out into a smile here, a laughter there. The wardens did not seem to mind. Maybe, the fact that there was no commotion inside the lorry contributed to that. Then I started to see them differently. Only that this time, I didn’t know the exact word to give them. I was not convinced they were human. Only felt that they could be good, at times. Until one of the catholic brothers in the catholic boarding school I attended showed up one day with a van that had  a motto, Prisoners are people too.

So sometime towards the end of last year, I happened to find myself in Industrial area remand prison. One of my cousins who live in the shanties around that area had been arrested for allegedly assaulting a woman. That is when I first experienced what had been planted in my mind the day I saw those prisoners smiling from behind those grilled windows, there could be innocent people in prison. Now my young cousin had indeed wronged that particular lady, he had verbally abused her, the person who had fought with her was a sister to the guy who was behind bars. Apparently, the said lady and my male cousin had an affair which the mother disapproved of. She was older than her by more than ten years. A cougar in every aspect. Somehow, it had not worked out, to the lady’s chagrin. Now it was her chance to get back to him. Unfortunately, I was not of much help, but my aunt, having lived in the slums new how to work the system, and sure the boy was released.

Every man has a breaking point, but for Andy, it was restarting point. He had had enough. He wanted to kick it and get on with it. Life was waiting. He had to get busy living or get busy dying. He did the unexpected, the unimagined. In his entire life, Warden Norton never imagined a prisoner could ever escape from Shawshank. The imposing walls, the brutal guards and most importantly, the thought that you can never manage to escape out of that place had successfully kept the record of break outs at near zero. Till Andy made to carve his name onto the cell wall and the wall chipped easily. Your life is as good as your imagination. The simple knowledge that the wall could chip set Andy on his first step to freedom. True to the warden’s mantra, salvation lay within.

It all depends on how you view the world. To Andy, hope was a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good things dies. Well, philosophically. But to Red, hope was a bad thing. It made you think of things that you would not achieve. And when you fail to achieve them, it leaves you bitter. Like Andy talking of the Pacific, that was “down there”, and yet they were “up  here” in Shawshank. But Andy had hope, and a plan. To him, hope was complementary to the plan. For the plan to work, he needed to hope. For without hope, there is no need to attempt anything. Hope is all you could have, it is the only thing that someone cannot get to, touch. It is the place made out of stone. It is hope.

Sometimes we may have the best of intentions, but if we are not informed, we may be doing more harm than good. Heywood, he always intended to help, but ended up doing more harm. However, at times, intentions are all you need.

He called him obtuse, the warden, the most feared man in Shawshank, the one who could make your life hell, or even kill you. Andy called him obtuse to his face. A man doesn’t have to be meek when he knows what he is saying is the truth, or fighting for your life,  and the other man is not getting it, or pretending not to. Okay, a little tact is required but at times you may be gripped in the moment that all you see before you is a man who is well, obtuse.

No matter what, try not to be institutionalized. It could be the rat race, it could be in school, it could be the mob mentality. Try to avoid the patterns. Red and Brooks were. That is why they were afraid of the outside. It is hard. Life is funny at times my guy. But try.

Don’t remind a man in power of his Achilles heel, even with the best of intentions, or to show goodwill, or even in the name of brotherliness. Andy told Norton he won’t mention his shady deals once he gets out. He pissed him off big time. Outcome? A long time in solitary. They know you know, mentioning it to them shows you are always thinking about it. And it is not cool to think about it.

Give men what they have really missed over a long time and they will be highly indebted to you. Andy asked for beers for his colleagues in exchange of his help. And they sat and drank on the rooftop with the sun on their shoulders and felt like free men, and they never forgot Andy for being mad enough.

If someone messes you up for his benefit and you get chance to give him a polite payback, please do, but make it loud. The relationship between Andy and Norton is a good study of how men relate. Their competitive nature cannot allow them to leave a humiliation unchallenged, or to keep the other down when you are in a position of power. When Andy got his payback, it was destructive. He took everything away from Norton.

Finally, we are all born free. But some of us have a greater spirit of adventure. It is not a cool thing to keep people chained. When you meet someone, be it a spouse, girl/boyfriend, friend, brother, employee, let people enjoy their freedom, their horizons await and nothing you can do can hold them back. As Red nostalgically says after Andy’s escape

Some birds are not meant to be caged

Their feathers are too bright

And when they fly away

The part of that knows that it was insane to lock them up does rejoice

But still, the place where you live is much emptier when they are gone.

After all has been said, I still wanna ask, how often do you look at a man’s shoes … (though ladies do say they measure a man’s worth by his shoes).

*******

I wrote this after watching the 1994 movie The Shawshank Redemption starring Morgan Freeman. He is a cool actor, Morgan is. It is a cool movie. I am afraid you have to watch it to understand the gibberish up there.

I have a Beard

You don’t ask a man about what he lacks, or what he cannot do. No. men are not programmed for shortcomings, or failures. And no, it is not a question of self-esteem, it is a question of being a man. It is how we are wired, right from the Neanderthal to the tweeps. If you remind a man of his shortcomings, you are simply telling him he is a lesser man, he is not man enough. That is how our system works. That is why Jesus carried that cross and accepted to be nailed by mere mortals and yet he had options. Only that the options seemed cowardly. He chose to be a man.  That is why we elect presidents who become strongmen, why a man is quicker to throw a punch when you call him a coward as opposed, let’s see, to casting grievous aspersions regarding his appearance (as long as you do not mention his mum in between). That is, may be, why the Baks was not cool with Tinga telling him in 07 that he was not suited for the job and yet his constitutionally awarded ten years ain’t over, or uncle Bobs down south wondering why the likes of Morgan are telling him to retire coz he is about to die, who told them a man, moreover, an African man feared death. Damn, you look it in the eyes, you dare death, that is what is called manly, that is what is called living. Haven’t you people heard of the term president for life. Anyway, that is the problem with people named Morgan instead or gentlemanly (if there is such a word) names like Robert for the learned folks. Does Raila even play golf, you don’t run a country if you commentate football. The best you can do is coach a football team.

If you have a short coming and you are cool with it, you are not man enough, or not manly. For example, if you are a man and a girl describes you as cute and you blush, there is something inherently wrong with your wiring system. A man is either good looking, handsome or sexy, period. Other descriptions are a preserve for women. The fairer sex, the beautiful people, the people with the smooth faces, without facial hairs. Facial hairs are a preserve of men.

That is why I am a happy man, I finally have a beard. Now, my friends won’t adopt that superior know-it –all- George- Bush –about- to -bomb –Saddam- Hussein tone. Now they won’t call my chin smooth. Smooth? I tell you what is smooth, a kid’s bum is smooth, my girlfriend’s face is smooth and the taste of Barcadi, is smooth. Now that friend of mine who suddenly thought it was cool to check out my chin at Kencom and shout out that sina ndevu is welcome to do it again- to check, not shout. She is welcome because at the base of my chin, there is a fine small collection of black hair. Not big, but definitely not the five strands that were there this time last year.

The small collection of hair is the reason the guy who shaved my head last week is my favourite guy right now. Jaymo, that is his name. He noted my manliness. The wiring system that had been a bit crooked had finally been righted by nature. He mouthed words that were music to my ears, “nikunyoe hadi ndevu?” There! There! He said the word ndevu and me in the same sentence, in a nice way. He mouthed what my boys have been dismissing in the simplest but most powerful way. He made it sound like it was something that I have always done, like pissing. In short, he said I have a beard that could be shaved, a very big beard that deserved the razor.  Of course I said no. not because I can floss it to thosedimwitd who thought I will never grow one, but because as much as I was alaways pissed off by guys noticing I had no beard, I was somehow cool with not having one. I am not ready to start shaving. That is one part of the male ritual that I find cumbersome, shaving a beard. If you get it right, you are cool. But if you get it wrong, you are most likely to have ballooned full stops and commas on your chin. Not a lovely sight. To make matters worse, it could be itchy and scaly. That is why I am glad I told Jaymo not to shave my beard. Oh boy, how my scalp itched for the two days following my visit to his barbershop.

For now my beard stays, my beard grows. I could even travel to Kandahar or Kabul or some other region in Afghanstan that the BBC refers to as the tribal area and join the Taliban if that will make my beard grow bigger and healthier. I am gonna  have beard that will make you refer to Anyang Nyongo’s chin as baby bum. I am gonna have a beard that Gillette will be compelled to have me in their commercials with the tag line, “you wanted a reason why we made this blade, okay, here are ninety nine”. I wanna have a beard that those yellow skinny jeans wearing boys will recoil or hide every time they see me. But I won’t give a rat’s ass what they think. I mean what kind of man wears yellow, or lumonus green shiny jeans in the name of fashion, heck, colours aside,  what kind of man wears skinny jeans? Unless you want to be a woman, or a fashion designer, they are a crazy lot, we can pass. Fine, I won’t rant about skinny jeans, there have been enough rants already, and all that has come off it are more skinny jeans appearing on the streets. In hideous colours, damn, they are so hideous that watu wa masaku no longer feature in jokes about colour any more. They even have a name for it, colour blocking.

But I will rant about those shorts. What do you call them again? They resemble what  chicks call peddle pushers( I hope I got the spelling right). You are a man, you are going to have a beard. You are supposed to show off your beard to the world, not your ass. Any body hugging garments are made with women in mind. And body builders. I know you like your body, everybody has a Narcissus in them, but that is what mirrors are for, right? Stand in your room, in front of your mirror, and admire yourself, but leave it there, no man wants to see how another man looks under his clothes (unless you like men). A woman can stand another naked woman, a man can stand a naked a woman, heck, loves a naked woman, but a a man can’t stand another naked man. Please note I am not being sexist here. So leave the figure hugging clothes for women, they are the ones who have figures, are shapely. Leave those shorts for women, they were meant for women. Can’t you see you are shortchanging men here? If you take all their clothes from them, then what, they start wearing men’s clothes? Who wants a woman all covered up? So for the sake of the people of the beard, get your sartorial sense right. As for my beard I will nurture it so that every time you see me and you are in peddle pushers, you hide.

Disclaimer: You have done yourself irreparable harm if you did not read this lightly, or you lack a sense of humour. I am not responsible.