I am typing away at the computer. This is my favourite part of the job. Not the data entry, that makes me feel like the Epson machine next to me. I laugh at that very techie joke in my standards and think about Wendy back in high school, the girl’s idea of studying was making a replica of her notes in a different exercise book. Oh well, we can’t all be interesting. I draft, edit and save all documents and would you look at the time…4.00 pm.
This is starting to get old, I think to myself. I need some excitement in my life. Like why do we have to queue for a bus? Why don’t we just crowd the place like it’s a mini-crusade and scramble to get in the tiny door all one hundred and fiftyof us like we did in my old neighbourhood. Then have our phones and wallets so craftily taken from us for safe keeping, those of us dumb enough to put them in our back pockets. Aaah fun times those were.
My train of thought is rudely interrupted by a flush of hot air just below my neck. Not a good day to wear a low cut dress it seems. It is never a good day to wear something you paid with your food money. I turn and my eyes meet stark-red weed eyes. A rugged façade, with one of those Rick Ross-type beards. I want to scream at him but I am interrupted by a very important announcement, “bus is here!”
Saved by the bell
Or not. Mr. breathe down my neck sits right next to me. I wouldn’t place his face anywhere but the eyes and facial hair, not hard to forget, even with my very poor short term memory. As is my ritual, I pull out my John Saul novel. “Nathaniel”. And in that moment my thoughts of stabbing Mr. weed with my nail file if I can find it in my loaded bag, disappear and I enter the world of re-incarnation.
It’s funny, I can read tons of books in a month but manage two chapters of mine in months. Writer’s block is a bitch.
“So you like to read?” just when I was starting to have fun.
“Yes, I do.” I hold my book higher so it covers my face and start to move my lips as I read. Not that he’d see but just incase he is weird enough to peep through the gap between the book and my head, I was going with this plan: look like I am from a non-English speaking country, and this is my assignment.
“How many books a week?”
No hablo ingles weirdo
“One or two,”
And with that I decide this breed of hairy-face-guy lacks the very rare ability to read between the lines.
“Wow! I can’t even get through one a month.”
Doesn’t surprise me.
“So what’s this one about?”
A child who didn’t know when to pry and ended up stabbed with a pitch fork out of nowhere.
“Ghosts.”
I would want to burden the child with complicated issues such as reincarnation. Especially because I was hoping in the next life I am reincarnated a million miles from his kind.
Traffic is an attention seeking woman. A nag. She wants to get noticed at the expense of your nerves and people like hairy-face-guy lives. I have tried to ignore her, by reading during this period she feels she has to impose her “feelings” on the poor Nairobi residents, trying to get home to a loud neighbourhood with bards and wines and spirits every three steps. However, she has decided to gang up with karma who clearly has been plotting out my punishment for God knows what I did.
“You like ghost stories?”
Holy mother!
“You can say that.”
“Pesa madam.” Luckily for this guy, I had clutched tightly in my palm coins amounting to exactly the bus fare. A breath of fresh air for a lot of us.
“Wow, you must be brave to like ghosts,”
Can anyone get more boring?
“I am actually.” Brave enough to throw you out this window if you say anything else.
“Let me get back to my reading.”
“Oh, okay. Am I disturbing you?”
I am now convinced that stupid people do exist.
“I like reading in the quiet,”
“Alright, nice to meet you. I am…..”
Before he could finish, I am head-set on and book so close to my face I can barely read. Tough times, tough calls.
Photo credit: pear83 & mckenna71
You might also like:
Living is a risk, as you stand to lose your life. Chasing dreams is deemed a waste, we chase money instead. But why preserve time you have no control over? So I chase my dreams praying time’s end finds me risk fully happy. Find more on her blog kimarinyokabi.blogspot.com