There has never been a funnier time to tell someone ‘you are going places’. Its difficult to go anywhere in this country right now. I can’t even go to class, the weather makes it difficult to get out of the blankets and on the slim chance that you do, you have nothing to wear because the clothes you washed two days ago are still out in the lines drying.
I won’t even get into how hard it is fueling your four wheel double cabin Toyota Hilux for that trip to shagz, and that is without having to add the struggle of buying cooking oil and trying to find milk to take to Shosh considering she had to sell her cows early in the year following the looming drought.
I miss the days when I’d leave school at 2pm Friday, and it would take me till 10pm on Sunday to remember I needed a new math exercise book. The struggle was how to tell mum that I forgot to add a book to the cart yet I remembered to get a six pack of milkshakes, cheese and onion crisps and jawbreakers.
However unlike young me, I don’t forget easily and if I remember correctly this was supposed to be your year. All the encouraging words on your status every morning from the very beginning- day 1 of 365, day 2 of 365 and so on. I also remember wondering how long that facade would last, and true to it the 61st of January came with a reminder that it is indeed twenty twenty too or twenty twenty the second. That has a nice ring to it. Twenty twenty slapped hard. I’m not even going to get into twenty twenty the first(2021), and the second just seems to be mocking you. These years have sucked you into an endless cycle of hope and despair and a middle ground where you just don’t know what is going on.
Speaking of cycles, it just hit me that we never even get to experience the cycle of the four seasons.
The only cycle I care about right now is of the avatars, and like the cycle of the seasons the cycle of the avatars began again (Pardon that, I’ve been re-watching the Legend of Korra.)
I had this pair of shoes in primary, class four or five. Wore it every Friday to school along with a maroon tracksuit and a red or yellow tee printed Prime Junior School at the back in black. I loved that pair and at that point I never imagined a Friday without them.
One of the Fridays we were playing a girls versus boys police and robber game. Started by laying out the usual rules: no hiding in the latrines, no pulling on each others ties, no guarding the prisoners(we called it no kachunga ng’ombe) and so on. It was a clean game, no injuries, no foul play, just innocent fun the way it was meant, and that was a first for us.
However in the spirit of something always going wrong, somewhere towards the end of the game my foot got stuck between two huge stones and the shoe’s sole tore off in my struggle to free my foot.
I loved those shoes. I would come from school on Friday, clean them and put them back on the shoe-rack, waiting till the next Friday. Its good to see I was still excited about Fridays then, today the excitement is for an entirely different reason, but you get me. I remember not wanting to get another similar pair because it just wouldn’t be the same.
I still have those shoes, put them at the bottom next to my old toughees. They are just like they were on the last Friday I wore them, but little guy that put them there is not so little anymore, and much as I am that guy, I am not that guy.
Yes he is me because the shoe is mine, but he’s not me because even if I fixed the shoe, it cannot fit me now. Matter of fact the shoe will never fit again.
Anyway I have a pack of about a dozen ginger snaps calling my name, but just to be clear, this isn’t about the shoes. You make of that whatever you choose to. Adios.
Manenoz 