The Mistakes I made with Girls: A Chapter from my Autobiography - Call Me After 10,000,000 Days

I never thought that I would ever have to write this about her. She was never a girl, and she is still not one in my heart. In other words since I met her I never wanted to treat her like any other girl. She had a special place in my heart, more than I would ever give any other girl, and I made this clear from the word go.

I met her last May in Nairobi, in one of those journalism forums I usually attend to keep updated with trends in the field. It was a big forum, but I will not go into its details. By the time I am through with this piece you will have realized that I am still careful not to hurt her. That is, although she has done everything possible to make me learn it will never work, I am still hanging on, and that for reasons best known to...I don't know...I honestly don't know.

Hapo ndipo mapenzi yamenifikisha...(That is where love has brought and left me)!

It happened that her elder sister, who in our normal circumstances is a big person, had invited her to the forum before chance brought us together at a table that was placed close to the end of the mammoth tent that was housing us during the forum which was held after sunset.

Generally I am shy and reserved. Call me a conservative, unadventurous, old fashioned and all, and I will say that's my name. Call me a coward and I will also respond positively. It is all these characteristics combined that almost cost me a life time chance with this beauty queen. But maybe I should have listened to them for by now I would not be having to deal with the wound of a heart break. But wait a minute, who said it's a heart break? Am I not still optimistic that all will be well?

At that part of the tent we were sited, the lights were romantically dim. We were being fed by rays from two different ends. First, from the bulbs that were glaring from the stage in the tent, and then from a security light that stood outside the tent. There were white egrets from where this second light shot its rays, perched on a beautiful canopy of these trees that we have planted in our beautiful but squeezed city in the sun.  

I kept on steeling glances at her, never talking to her or showing any intention to. And men, she was cute. I imagined how she was as a baby girl...a well made piece of a doll that its Maker must have created while in the perfect mood. I thought about her the more. I said she must have looked like these girls I have seen in town with their mothers, just after stepping out of the salon...with cheeks that are round and full like a doughnut that has been made by the best chef in town, and with her hair pressed together on her head in that pussy cat style that makes me long to have a baby girl.

Ooooh my goodness, I imagined her combination and mine, and what a baby girl we would have. But no! I first thought of her as the best companion ever, the best friend, the best partner in life.

Yet, I would not talk to her. I was uncertain of what would happen if I talked to her. What if she was some kind Tinka the daughter of a Chief, and I some Wamala? Would she as John Ruganda narrated in The Burdens end up inciting Kaija and Nyakake against me when I fell broke? 

What if she made me hurt in the end? What if, what if, what if. But I thought, I was taking my thoughts too far. She was only a participant attending the forum that night like me. It would not cost me much if I said hi. And even add, "I am a journalist based in Nakuru. I am interested in reporting democracy, governance, health and transitional justice mechanisms...and...I am a poet and a blogger...and that I am thick-headed for  it has taken me a cool seven years to clear a Masters degree...and..." 

I was still in my thoughts when we stood up in anticipation of the closure of the forum. And that is how, I almost sunk in the ground beneath me. 

Men, have you ever tried your hand in hunting and have you ever, while in the thick of the bushes, having shouted all the animals out of their hide outs spotted a gazelle, beautiful as the Sitotunga, from a place you least expected? That was what I saw for myself, just next to me. That mother who talked of her daughter, Edna, in Chinua Achebe's A Man of the People was right of some beauties in this world..."if you think she is beautiful wait until she has taken a bath."

Well we talked after that, for about ten minutes after the forum came to an end and I had come back from the gents where I had gone to regain my strength. I remember while in the gents, pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing but only a drop came out so weak it would not fall in the toilet basin but got soaked in my pants though still giving me the strength that I needed.

We exchanged contacts and agreed that I would call and we would arrange of how I would come back to Nairobi to visit her and so on and so forth.

And so it happened and the rest is the history I am telling you now with a flicker of hope at one moment, and with a lump of a caustic discovery in the next moment, the two scenarios combining together to give me not anything more above the strength I need to finish this story.

She was not good at picking calls or responding to text messages. She was below average. We however made it mandatory to talk just before we slept and just before we crept of out of bed. And for the period we were in good terms the time between midnight and sunrise was the a moment I will cherish for a while if not for the rest of my life.

I seem to have lost you somewhere. This is what I am saying. That by the time we had clocked half a year with this girl that I have refused to refer to as a girl, we had met several times, both in Nairobi and elsewhere and it had looked promising. 

What I am however not saying is that it was all blossoming. No. On the contrary a fissure developed sooner than later and before I realized it had become a crack and as I talk it has the potential of bringing the whole structure down. Or may be it has...

As it is, this fissure cum crack has got something to do with my being a second hand garment and the fact that I have always seen the glimmer of a dream of a perfect wedding in her eyes, that, in her calculation, or so I see it, I might not provide. It is also about the differences of our socio-economic world view brought about by the fact that we are heirs of different communal heritage.

I too, son of Yuliana Mbithe wa Kisinga, thought about it many a time and choosing to disregard them as obstacles decided to move forward ready for what the future would hold. This is partly because I believe in miracles, the power of prayer and the power of the rosary. 

As I said earlier I choose not to call her a girl for she is one in a million, a gem, an arrow that I am still convinced will do well if placed in my quiver forever to help me shoot down the fears of the world. She it is that I sincerely called "Sweet Heart," "Darling," "My Dear," "Baby," and all those sweet nothings that you and me know of. And I mean sincerely.

I was also honest with her, at least above average. The priestly days I spent with Fr. Antonio Roberti at the Consolata House Timbwani taught me to be nothing but that.

I remember I would always call her to inform her of everything I was doing, even when I was going out at night, and even call to say I was back to the house. I was to her what a novice would be to her mother superior, and one day she even sarcastically asked why I was so bothered to tell her.

That is when I realized the crack had gone deep.

But I kept on, just as we say mwanaume ni kuwa focused, (to be a man is be focused) and a faint hearted man never wins a fair lady (this I borrow from that English Aid book we fought for on the night before an English Composition exam in primary school). 

Then one evening the crack showed its real signs. It was during our daily-dose-calling sessions when she said I was calling her too many times in a day. She laughed and I forced a smile on my face that reduced me into an ugly creature. I knew what she meant. That I was becoming a bother. But I went on, pretending to be joking, "so how many calls would you prefer from me in a day or a week...or are you saying I should stop calling you altogether?" "Call me after 10,000,000 days," she answered from the other end.

Within a short time after this 'request' she had grown from the acquaintance she was to me to a complete stranger. She no longer responded to me with the warmth I was used of her and I was reduced into a piece of wood. She has since been forcing it into my head that I should go away, or so I think. For how would you explain this weird joke of her's in one of our discussions that "what if she introduced me to her elder sister so we can date...?" and so on and so forth.

I have shared this with a close friend of mine and she has assured me that  girls can be like that, "they can play hard to get sometimes." But you see, I don't see her as a 'girl', she was more than that to me.

And as I write now, I am not sure what to do next.

I have mixed feelings of the future. I am not sure whether I should meet her and we square out things, even if we are to call it quits, I mean call it quits like 'gentle men'. You never know who among us will form the next government. We will for sure need one another. I am not even sure whether I should share these thoughts with her.  I am not sure at all. 

With these thoughts pounding in my head in successive alterations, I request you to keep it here for what will happen. That will come in the full autobiography...The Mistakes I Made With Girls: A Chapter from my Autobiography. 

Among the pieces that will be featured in the complete collection is one titled...'Fare thee well Mrs. Manga' which will tell a tale of how I was so attracted to Mrs. Manga who once lived with us at Shelly Beach before she died of issues related to gender based violence. I will also feature a piece titled 'Meet Yuliana the Lioness' and tell you of how my mother always protected me from girls. These are stories you will not want to miss. 

Yet I also ask of a request from you. Pray for me so that this statement of "call me after 10,000,000 days," will be converted to "call me 10,000,000 times in a day." And as you prepare to do that let us write she who said such, a love letter:

My dear sweet heart.

I am writing to tell you that I have decided to hang on,

Even if the going seems to be headed nowhere.

I told you once

I told you many more times,

You are in my estimation the perfect gift I wanted in a woman.

Why you seem to be taking a different route is a puzzle I would want unraveled,

By Cupid through the intercession of Hamlet,

That I too may come to discern this question:

"To leave or not leave

"And whether to forget you and imagine we never met,

"And perhaps look for the sister you proposed

"And with her make it a reality.

"To leave or not to leave...that is the question."

Yet, my dear sweet heart if you may know

I love you and the gods know better than me

That even now I long to talk to you

Only if you would pick my call after the first ring

And not mock me from your end.

I pray that if you feel me,

And that I pray you do,

Please pick up your phone and call me

And tell me that all this I write here is nothing but imagination

And that in you I never committed any mistake...

................

The Mistakes I made with Girls: A Chapter from my Autobiography - Girl Number One

If you have been following me closely by now you know that I grew up in Msulwa - a rural village in Kwale County, and in Shelly Beach - a village in the outskirts of Likoni, Mombasa County, where the rich and the poor are put apart by a road.

I once described that road as 'The Road to Shelly Beach' in a poem that was inspired by George Orwell's novel, The Road to Wigan Pier, which I read while working as a casual at the Consolata House some months before I joined Egerton University in 2001 to study Literature, Sociology and Economics.

I said in the poem that, we the poor, having been put apart from the rich my the road, survive on the left side while the rich live on the right side. Please note my emphasis on the words 'survive' and 'live' and read in between the lines.

Anyway, in the poem I wanted to demonstrate capitalism by showing that although we are set apart by the road, we of the left and those of the right are often brought into contact through the demand for 'labour' as Karl Marx saw of capitalistic scenarios. I was saying that we of the left are the movers of the economy in Shelly Beach but we did not have the means of production, and so on and so forth.

Whether we would organize ourselves and cause forth a revolution I didn't know, at least at the time of writing the poem which was 2002, 2003, or there about. But now I know. In Kenya, a country that is so divided on tribal lines, Marxist revolutions will be the least to come by. And I dare ask, why are so tribal that we always fail to see the common enemy within us?

But that as it is, is a question for another day. Take a deep breath now and let me take you back to the first story of the mistakes I made with girls.

My first girl was Kalasanda. Of course I have changed her name just in case I end up embarrassing her in wherever she may be, with whoever she may be.

We lived with Kalasanda on this other side of Shelly Beach. Her family was slightly above average, that is economically. Her parents were business people. Dealing with drugs, and I mean the normal drugs, not the hard stuff. So we often referred to her father as Daktari.

Quite often he would pass by our house in the evening feeling high, after a bottle or two at God knows where, and if in good mood he would talk to us. Nope. He would speak to us in English. And we would feel excited talking to Daktari in English. And I would rush to my mum and say, "mum, when I grow up I want to be a Daktari, like Baba Kalasanda. And my mum would caution me immediately, "yes, but only if you avoid the bottle will you be a good one."

Kalasanda was a mtoto wa geti kali. That means a child, especially a girl, who was ever locked up in their home and would never get out to play with other kids in the village. She and their house help would only get out in the evening to buy bread. It was a tradition. Done every day, without failure between 7-8 p.m.

During that time the boys who felt man enough to talk to their house help would get out and line on different spots of the path between their home and the shops. And the competition would be on - the vulture style. Besides that, the only other time I would see Kalasanda was when she passed by our house in the morning headed to school. She would be in the company of one of her parents or both and they would be speaking English.

I never had any chance to speak to Kalasanda until I joined St. Mary's Junior Seminary Kwale and moved from Form One to Form Two. That was in the year 1997. And even so we never talked.

I had come back home for a midterm break. I can't remember which period of the learning calendar it was but I remember it was some short break. My elder brother Joe, whispered to me that both Kalasanda and the house help were looking for me. I asked him "for what?" He said he didn't know but went on saying that I should have stopped being stupid the moment he told me I was being looked for by girls from the strong gate (geti kali) and act like a man. He said if a girl had presented herself at my door step I should know better than act slow.

So then I started being among those who would wait for them in the evening. The first day, Kalasanda did not appear. The second day Kalasanda never came out. The third day, only their house help came out and she was in a hurry. Then our short break ended. And I had to go back to school. But I reasoned, "why should I not leave her a love letter?" And I mean a love letter. The ones we wrote during our days as boys, before the invention of Facebook and Whatsup and Google Talk and all. The ones we smeared with Yolanda or Yu. The ones we would post with 'Boombasticate it to...' or 'Circumnavigate it to...' Oooh my, I mean those ones.

So then before I left for school I boombasticated one of those to Kalasanda and left it with my brother Joe, the Posta man. That way when I went back to school, I would have a story to tell in our closed chit-chat circle of acquaintances.

Well, let me cut this story short. I am telling it on a day I should be going for a burial. The young man we are burring today died of blood cancer. The very one that killed a childhood friend of mine last year. May they all rest in peace.

Kalasanda finally got my letter. No. I am not sure she got it. For, getting it in this case would mean she got the meaning of it all...my desire to have her as my one and only.

I waited for her to reply the letter through our school address...P.O Box 14, Kwale. Or to just do a hand delivery. But wapi! She never did.

But how could she. She was too young to understand such things. Only in class seven. And that superimposed to being a girl from a strong gate. How could she understand such things. Never mind that I was also a boy. Too young too, to know what to do with a girl, let alone a young girl like Kalasanda.

Then one day I got the courage to ask her why they were looking for me. I had come back for the long holiday and Kalasanda was at home too. This time they luckily came out during the day. And saw her macho kwa macho.

What she told me left me dead!

She said they had been looking for me because on some fateful night, read fateful twice - the night that led them to start looking for me - they had lost one of the slippers that her young brother was putting on. That the only person they had seen that night was me and they were wondering if I had seen it. Or still, if I had stolen it.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph, come and go with me for King Herod is about to kill me." That's what I said inside of me, biting my lower lip, with a lump of disgust forming in my throat almost chocking me.

I ran never to look back at her, or even ask if she ever got the letter. And years later I thought I was foolish to want to start engaging a small girl on matters of the heart. I had joined the university then, and kept on asking what if someone came upon the letter. Would I become a laughing stalk in the village?

By then Kalasanda had left Shelly Beach with her family. The house help had since found a man in the village and they were cohabiting. She had since stopped working with them, and I had since discovered that they were normal human beings. I mean, I had since discovered they too were normal girls and it was okay to send them a letter or even flirt with them.

But there was something inside me that kept on telling me that I should look for her and apologize, at least for sending the letter. And that was granted by God one beautiful night.

I was travelling back to Mombasa from University in a Mash Company bus when Kalasanda came and sat next to me. We boarded the bus together in Nairobi. I was the one who sat first. Then the bus was almost leaving and my next-seat-neighbor had not appeared.

Then as we were almost setting off, a slim, sorry thin, short girl got in. She said to me, "is that seat next to you number three?" I said yes. I was seated on number four. As she sat I looked at her and recognized her there and then. Although it had been years, her face had not been erased from my memory. How after all, does a man forget the face of a girl he had once eyed? It never happens and if it did, it would be an abomination.

In ten minutes of our journey I had confirmed her name. She said she was studying medicine within one of the East African countries. I told her who I was and what I was doing, and she did not even feel moved. I told her of how I had wanted to meet her to apologize about the letter and she said she remembered none of that.

I mean she said she did not even remember meeting me in the whole of her life!

From there on, I leave you to imagine if I ever talked to her for the rest of that journey and if I did what kind of talk it was.

Mean while keep it here for the second story of the ' The Mistakes I made with Girls: A Chapter from my Autobiography.'

The Mistakes I made with Girls: A Chapter from my Autobiography

At some point in my life, I aspired to become a musician. I remember sharing this with my grandfather, the late Kisinga wa Ngumbi and we agreed it was the coolest thing to do.

It was in the evening and we were preparing a meal in the open at the farm of Wayua, a departed daughter of his. The farm is at the foot of the Shimba Hills national reserve, and several kilometers from our main home. We preferred farming at it, first because it was more fertile than my grandfather's land and secondly, so as to take care of the cash crops that had been left behind by Wayua, and then his husband who had since relocated to Mombasa to look for some kibarua.  

Well, I can't remember the year, but I remember it was that time when Katitu (M)Boys (M)Band was the 'talk of town' in my small village, Msulwa, with their Chokora hit, and Kasyoki the band leader was the envy of many a boy. That time I had not discovered the likes of Bob Marley, and the likes of Jaguar had not been born, at least on the music scene. So it was only fashionable, and fair, to say the least, to associate or to seem to be associating with Kasyoki when it came to music. 

I told him, "you will listen to me on radio one day singing like Kasyoki." He then encouraged me. But that I think was the last time the thought ever crossed my mind.

Later on, in life, I discovered another call. That of becoming a priest. I was by then a fresh student at St. Mary's Junior Seminary Kwale and in the chit-chat group that I belonged to, this discussion always came up. And while picking those who looked like they can be potential candidates for the Senior Seminary - read  Priesthood - I was always pointed at. After all, I had the curve and the gait of a clergy which included a simple and reserved life style as we so thought.

During holidays at our home in Shelly Beach-Timbwani, I would pick a circle shaped biscuit and a glass of juice and armed with the small red-covered missal I would force my younger sisters and any of our friends around to join me in celebrating mass. Of course with me as the celebrant. 

Whether a biscuit and the Eucharist are all made up of wheat, I later discovered that it was not the best thing to do, that is, comparing them and wanting to make the former fit as the 'Body of Christ.' But you also notice that I had none of those powers of making that which is made of wheat turn into the Body of Christ, Eucharist or not.

Anyway, I have no doubt that even the Papa himself, had he found me in the act would only wink and go away, very concerned, not because I was adulterating with serious matters, but because I showed the desire to grow in faith. 

I also had no doubt that even the holy angels themselves, would approve of such a childish indoor game than they would of the other  games, played outdoors, of father and mother aping that would often end with the loss of  some 'innocence.'

Yet that dream did not last for long too for one day, having lost a year or two after these Christly games, my benefactor, one Fr. Antonio Roberti of the Consolata Missionaries asked me, "Nikodemo, what would you want to become after you leave the Junior Seminary? Do you want to become a Priest or do you want to go the University?" I said, "I want to go the University."

The word University then sounded classic. It like was a beauty picked in the land of the fairy tales. How could I let her pass without a show of interest? 

Yet making it to the University was an uphill journey in its own rights. But I was determined. Then I sat for K.C.S.E, then we waited for results, then I was above the University entry mark that year by two points. So we celebrated with Fr. Antonio even though he wished I would become a priest. 

Then one day in the year 2001, around June (now I can talk of the years) I received an admission letter from Egerton University. It was signed by the then Registrar Prof. Nephat Kathuri. And I felt great. 

At that point no one had told me that you could still go the University and become a Priest later. So I kissed the dream good bye for good at time, at least inside me. And you know better than me, that, that which is dead inside you never shows outside you.

So having refused to follow the road less traveled by - that of Priesthood - I found myself getting ready to introduce myself to the world of the opposite gender. The world of girls. 

And this is what happened...(to be continued)