FOR OLD TIMES’ SAKE

Today is Throwback Thursday. Now I have absolutely no idea how this tagline came to existence, though my best guess is KOT were involved, but am glad it did all the same. ‘Cause, at least once in a busy week, I get to have a moment to myself, reminisce all the crazy stuff I did in the past and just let my lungs have it all the way. Today I picked up my childhood album where most of my old personal memories are stocked to date and I swear to you, am literally dripping tears of laughter in within aching ribs as I punch in these words. Childhood was crazy, I just realized how much fun I had back then that I only wish I had the power to relieve right now. Kids, enjoy while it lasts. Adulthood is watching close by, only waiting to pounce and usher you into a whole new cold world filled with struggles and semi-nude women covered in half-a-million’s worth of weaves and three-thousand-dollar pair of shoes whose only principle in life is “No romance without finance!” Son, it’s a tough world for mud-faced and equally broke blokes like you and I out here. Especially the broke ones, the mud-faced but rich folks get away with it. Raila Junior na Pastor Anselm Madubuko sijataja majina hapa!

 

Back to my childhood. Where do I even start? The part where my big brother and I had the first ever BMX bike in the whole neighbourhood? Nah…that has been told a couple of times already. By him. But just off the record though, I might have used that bike to earn my first extra coins and land a few invites to some of the cutest girls’ homes. Heck big bro even got to date one of them some years later on, only to ‘break her heart’. To date, I have never understood why he dropped that chic. I mean, do you imagine how nonsensical Juliani would look if he dumped Brenda Wairimu? The brother probably hasn’t had a single luck with love to this day. Okay, you didn’t hear that from me. Moving on.

 

There was no celebration like Christmas. Forget the current generation whose only definition of fun is dressing up in Versace tees, ripped trousers coupled with YMCMB snapbacks and rushing to town only to stroll all over the place looking like misguided sheep unaware of which direction to take or who to bang. We saved for Christmas like the very air we breathed depended on it. Every single coin carelessly placed around the house went to the Christmas kitty carefully tucked below one’s pillow and guarded with the precision only akin to sworn soldiers on a battlefield protecting their nation’s secrets. And am not talking KDF here. I admit we never had the nicest of clothes but we, sure as hell is with my sinful butt, had more fun than the current generation. Once my mum even made my sister put on the clothes I had pictured myself in the whole year long and you can guess how that went. No? Okay, I received a couple of iron-hot slaps on the face and a few punches to the jaw, was consoled by a packet of sweets before I finally let go and gave a wide smile to the camera like nothing ever happened. That’s Auma Nyar Keya for you. Our First Lady, one hell of a mother I tell you. Photo sessions in village studios posing like Van Damme with bad-ass black shades and Ready to Drink juice on the hand may sound ridiculous now but they were the in thing back in the day. Every ‘cool’ kid had two or three photos of those.

 

I attended a little-known primary school in Siaya County by the name of Rang’ala Boys before I got struck by the pangs of boarding school and left for Fr. Scheffer’s in Asumbi, alias ‘Jela Ndogo’. My experience there is one of those I rarely talk about but for the sake of Throwback Thursdays perhaps I could give it a little airtime this time. You know when you’re about to attend a boarding school, you hear stories of bullies and brush it off as mere hate speech. You don’t let it get to you. I didn’t either. I experienced it first-hand. Stay with me here, am not saying I was bullied. Am just saying my food wasn’t mine alone and whatever I got in an English paper, I was forced to make sure ‘he’ never got any less. That’s that. Funny thing is we landed in the same campus as well. Now I hold grudges but revenge is not my thing. Every second we pass each other by the entrance to Hall 5 and I feel like jumping to his throat and squeezing the very daylight out of him but I don’t let the hate get to me. I loathe him to the very core of my survival but the one thing I took home from Mahatma Gandhi’s notes is “An eye for an eye policy only leaves the world with a lot of blind people”. All in all, I only spent a meagre two years there before hanging my uniform and demanding a transfer back to Rang’ala. Before you judge me, look on the brighter side; East or West home is best, right? Anyway, there was nothing I looked forward to in primary school like the closing days. Not that I yearned for home. I didn’t. I was practically home every day. I longed for those ‘closing fights’. Back in our days, all rivalries and beef were put to bed on closing day. If you had stepped, even accidentally, on my toe before and I walked away without a word and you thought all was well, wait a week till closing and I’ll pass beside you with my puppets and whisper threateningly into your ear, “Raundi hii nafunga na wewe!” Personally, I avoided bad blood with anyone at all costs. I still do. Last weekend a couple of guys heckled me and my buddies to a duel for the fittest but I kept my calm…*whispers* even though one of my friends went raging like a scorned bull. I took a punch to the cheek but still just stood there looking like a mannequin. See am a Hip Hop maniac, but the very day I let my sister talk me into listening to Country Music it changed my whole perception of baseless squabbles.

“Son, you don’t have to fight to be a man”, Kenny Rodgers (Coward of the County…look it up).

 

There’s a lot I could tell about my childhood crush, it’d probably cover the next five pages. Yes, it was that serious. Let’s talk about it in the next piece, one of its own. All you need to know for now is I got my thirsty butt dropped in the dreaded friend-zone and as it turns out, it’s not so bad after all. Okay, I take that back!

#ThrowbackThursdays

 

Don’t hate, Those 50 Cent trousers were legendary man. See the way big bro was posing like a baby chicken rained on all night long. LOL…Dude, we had just ‘jetted’ back to the hood from the land of ‘bread and butter’ (read, Nairobi) here. Show some swag. Hahah…Notice how the  left part of my ‘Snoop Dogg’ t-shirt was at my waistline? Now that’s swag. Or was. *Being picked up from the floor*….

 

Enjoy the memories people!