So Hukuji

“So hukuji?” I asked after hanging up, biting my lower lip.

“How could… how could she!” I lamented jeremiacally, if there is anything like that. Triza Triza,you tell me to iza, no pun intended though. Newsflash! Triza was my first girlfriend. Nature had, in the past, had tried to link me with Triza countless times but my inexperienced younger self could not read between the lines nature drew.

Triza was our neighbor- not immediate but you know in Kenya, everyone within a 3 kilometer radius is your ‘someone-in-need’ if the primary school definition of neighbor is anything to go by. The first time I met her was in Scouts camp. We had nothing much to talk about since she had just come to borrow a jiko to cook ‘chapo’- hold up… she knew how to cook chapo! 5 years passed then we met again, now in my ‘experienced self’. You know, experienced as in ‘big boy tings’.

Triza was a magician of sorts because everytime I saw her, everything else seemed to disappear – like the kihindi movie dissapearance. I threw my lugha; mark you, I had rehearsed, as the adage goes ‘lugha hainanga luku’, wahengaz are quite a few these days. My oh My. I dropped my bars one by one but she did not seem to budge.

‘So Triza you playing hard to get.’

“Stay taliban avalanches in tandem with amerix no simping” whizzed in my mind.

I almost gave in to them but I saw a smile build up on Triza’s welcoming lips- a smile, a smile so radicalizing that it could make a man promise whimsically. After the smile, she said that I had been her all time crush. I had gone looking for gold, and voila! I stumbled upon diamond. There was a short akward silence then, instinctively, I did what I had always seen in movies and novels:

“He caught her by the waist and pulled her close till there was no distance between them and she carefully removed his glasses and the famous lip dance- the french one to be exact was brought to life. It went to completion and they looked at each other in the eye and smiled at the new connection formed.”

Right on time, her mother called, as if on cue. She had to now leave my place and go home. As a Narobian male, I did what we always have to do first: got out first to “Safisha The Radar” then off she went. I followed her with my eyes tiil she disappeared. For the next few minutes of my life, I stood there transfixed. Lost in thought.

I was zapped back into reality from the pipe dream conjured by the hippies on ayahuasca in my mind by my neighbor who was making his way home from work.

“That denge is mixing you,” he said as he let out a hearty laughter.

Fast foward.

Five days after our previous encounter ,another meet up was arranged. Anada banger. She was to go to school the next Monday, so I saw no harm in her coming over for us to whisk the weekend away. I had started making scenes in the abstract and felt like a pashto warrior after completing a mission.

So on Thursday evening, I started doing what had to be done: bought some stuff, cleaned some things, and all that good stuff. After finishing all that, I felt like God after the end of creation. “Evening passed and morning came, He looked around and saw that everything He had made was good.” or that phrase scientists use after giving out a problem solving idea “and Bob’s your uncle!”.

So Friday came.

Friday evening I gave her a call but she wasn’t picking up. I called again like any gentleman/lady would but the same thing happened. 20 missed calls and still- mandem was not pickin up blud. She then called on Saturday evening.

She said that she could not have made it because because… It was at this moment that I told her to cut the crap and asked the painful question, “So hukuji?” and hang up like a real Taliban.

~Vic

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