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.'