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A Driving Force

by Dennis Peters
Posted on September 24, 2018October 29, 2018

You can almost always tell whether someone is a storyteller or not. Storytellers have this…

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I just completed the entire collection of Ngugi's books. Fourteen books. After going through so many words, emotions, events and people, I feel like everything has been explored. Like Ngugi wrote all the words and explored all the themes and there is none left to write. I have suffered under the hands of Ngugi the last four months. He has ripped my heart open and poured the pain of the generation that came before mine. When I sleep at night I see a bunch of traumatized children recovering from years of torture and detention in a fight for freedom. I see one of Ngugi's beloved characters having his genitals been pressed by pincers in a torture darkened room as an attempt to compel him to give out the secrets of the Mau Mau to a heartless colonial government. And when I thought it was all over and it was time to celebrate Uhuru, I hold back tears trying not to remember Mumbi. Mumbi was in love before the state of emergency in 52 when her lover was grabbed and thrown in a detention camp where he experienced the worst there is to humanity. Seven years pass and he comes back to find that Mumbi has a child that is not his; while all this time coming back to her was all that kept him alive. Dealing with the consequences becomes even more difficult and it is like living through the pain all over again. At this time, I have lost all hope but Ngugi is not done. We were now in Gatundu taking unnecessary tribal oaths against other tribes because, apparently, freedom was not enough. Then came tyranny, more torture and when I am almost drowning, I have to deal with corruption, pollution and a generation that has forgotten the price paid for freedom. I would like to think the purpose of books is to broaden the mind. That would mean that I am not the same person I was five months ago. This version of me stares into the darkness from the balcony for too long wondering what could have been done differently to avoid all this. This version of me also writes like Ngugi is watching me type over my shoulder. Nothing I write is good enough and I cannot even begin explaining the frustration that comes with that. I do not know how long I will be away, but, I will be back. I think.

We have a Rongai in Nakuru. It must be the most ignored Rongai of all Rongais everywhere. It is the drunk uncle in a family function in Murang'a, everyone is aware of his presence, even the children, but no one wants to offer him any recognition. We also have Umoja Estate and Kenyatta Avenue as well. This is part of the information I tell you guys that you will never use and probably never needed to know in the first place. I have always been a village person, and an outsider to Nairobi jokes. There is one prominent one about how Rongai is far that never gets old. Fun fact, even the Rongai in Nakuru, to get there ever in this lifetime you need to start travelling today. Generally, the person responsible for naming these Rongais knew how far paradise is as a permanent residence for Ngai. Anyway, we took a trip down there the other day in one of the many Rongais, set out early in the morning at the crack of dawn, before the crowing of the rooster, in the wash of the new light; basically, 10am. All the way through immigration and customs and got to this hilarious muse and surprisingly, it is everything it is known for, distance, dust and vivacious with young people. The difference to the places I am used to like Kiambu is that if I threw a party here and left invitations open to anyone, I would get a guest number less than twenty and by 10pm, everyone would have left; while in Rongai, food and drinks would run out before 7pm. Another difference is that if say, I was courting a girl from Karen and I asked her to come over, she would come to Kiambu, no hustle, but would not to Rongai because, well, who wants to import love? In future if my ambitions led me to a political contest and the scales are dangerously close to my opponent, I bet this caption will come up in a blog and I will loose all votes from all Rongais. Then I will claim the election was stolen and it will be a movie we have all watched before countless times.

It amazing the number of ways a person can cook potatoes. Often half the menu anywhere I have been is potatoes. Even vodka, I hear its made from potatoes although I am yet to verify that. There is mashed, fried, frenched, baked, sladed*, chipped, skinned, caked, salted, breaded, fished, wedged, waffled and I assume for vodka, its distilled potatoes or something. I grew up in Nyandarua. Our farm was huge and was a farm of potatoes. The neighbors' farms on both sides were all potatoes, in fact, everyone I knew back then had a farm of potatoes. During flowering season it was like the landscape was a carpet of white and purple flowers of the potato plant although it lasted only a while, it was magnificent. During harvest season, big trucks would dig their way through our little murram road to the deepest of the farms to get these potatoes packed in huge bags. I remember one day we harvested about forty-eight of such elongated bags. Then a truck came for them and I remember father complaining about the buying prices by the brokers. After that he hang his coat on potato farming and made our entire farm a forest instead. It is still a forest to this day. See, potatoes cannot last long after harvesting especially in the fields, so every farmer has to get rid of the harvest before it all goes to waste. During harvest we had so much potatoes mother would feed them to the livestock. I had my own little farm, I used to plant a bucket full of potatoes and also harvest the same bucket full. I was not so much invested in the idea of capitalism. I bet there is a huge tree on my little farm right now. I bet this tree knows neither the dreams nor the aspirations of the one who came there before him. I hope at least one bucket full of my potatoes got distilled, otherwise, I would be very disappointed.

I was almost suspended from high school one time. It is not even something I'm proud of, or something that would make me a cool gangster. We shared a cubicle, eight of us. Some of the coolest guys around school, most of them I see them around on the internet acting like they forgot what we did. Walking around in new cars, new degrees and beautiful girlfriends. They are here. So, we had this neighboring cubicle, it was not as cool as ours. It was big and they were like fifteen of them sharing that cube. Then, in that cube, there was this guy, I remember his name very clearly, but for the sake of security (his security), let's call him Guy X, actually, he was a boy, so Boy X. Boy X was apparently dating Boy Y's ex girlfriend. And, Boy Y was from our cubicle, and clearly, was not over his ex girlfriend. Naturally, brotherly instinct was to hate Boy X, it was written in the cube bro code or something. So, when our cubicle was ransacked by some very mean people who stole our illegal contrabands like blue band and chocolate, it was very easy to blame Boy X for the crime, without even trying. So we beat him up. And when he did not confess we beat him a little bit more. Kumbe, he was to go and set us to the teachers, and I thought beating each other for fun and games was a private thing, us students. It was not supposed to get to the teachers, especially when the bone of contention was contraband. Anyway, instead of suspension, the teachers gave us a serious beating and when we did not seem to have learnt our lesson, we got beat a little more. There is nothing violence cannot solve, even love.

I wanted to be a politician when I was younger. Not that I understood what it meant to be a politician, really, but I had a lot of love for the television. Every time father would tell me that he was going to Nairobi, I would ask him whether he would be on TV. He always said no. Sometimes he lied and said yes, but I never really got to see him on the television. So one day I asked him whether he would be on TV and he asked me what he would be doing on TV and I did not have a response. He explained that TV was for politicians and since then I decided I wanted to be a politician. That dream was short lived, however, and I'm glad it was. In our country it is almost impossible to become a politician if half the country does not hate you. I can handle many things, hate is not one of them. I think. Another clear memory was when I was determined to be a superhero. Not something impossible really, something like Batman. No super powers, no hot laser beams flying from my eyes or gills on my skin under water, no, I just wanted to be a Batman. Rich, resourceful and, most of all, on the television. Of course I grew up, removed the superhero and the politician part of the dream, but still the television remained. I am not sure the whole idea still exists since the television days evolved from Greatwall TV to YouTube, Cinemas and Netflix but the dream still comes to me late into the night. Like yesterday. It is not usually a big TV, nope. Just a humble Greatwall black and white set. I do not know what I am usually saying but my voice is often very soft, like the inside of a rose, and, most of all, I am usually on TV!

I'm just naturally bad at gifts. I am working on it and there is a promise to improve. My therapist prognosis is that I have an acute sense of doronophobia, which is basically the fear of gifts. This fear has dug its way to my capability to come up with legitimate gifts. I am under rehabilitation and with the help of friends and family I will make a full recovery. Yesterday, my therapist, had me describe the gifts I have ever given loved ones in the past. 1. My elder sister's 15th birthday - a bag of chips. 2. My girlfriend's 19th birthday - a bar of chocolate. 3. My girlfriend's 20th birthday - a huge argument. 4. My small sisters 12th birthday - advice about teenage. 5. My mom for mother's day - a phone call. After careful observation and comparison to gifts I have received, like an entire pool party in a 4 star hotel for my 20th birthday by my elder sister and a complete three piece suit, with a card and a dinner for my 21st birthday by my girlfriend, I have decided to get help. Getting help is first step to getting better. The other day, the one before the other one, I was reading something about the science of gifts where they said the most precious gifts are timeless and priceless. I understood all that but surely, my girlfriend will not show off with a priceless gift. She may be many things but most basic of all she is a girl. Girls like things they can eat or show off, mostly the latter. I have therefore found myself in even more conflict than when I begun this treatment. In a few days, my treatment will be put to test and I will go out looking for a perfect gift for someone very very important. I have a strong feeling that I will fail. Terribly. Mostly, because I have been administering all this therapy to myself. This is actually a cry for help. Anyone? Please?

What did the Cat say to the Donkey when they first met?

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