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...

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