Darkness – MYOB!

Darkness – MYOB!

So it is 10:30 in the night and I’m here with pen and paper writing this post wondering if the lights will be on for me to continue with my life of enjoying free things...

Today. No, it was yesterday’s night. I had this blank piece of paper before me. I had a pen in hand. Some wondering thoughts of where I should really begin at. I had a small fear. A fear of using pen and paper to write stuff after such a long, long time. I'm using pen and paper because I hate waking up to a dead phone battery. Or a dead machine...

You see, as much as we may love writing (I'm always excited about writing and I don't know why), it is quite complicated. Your thoughts may grasp a thought-line. A small one even. And you may tingle with excitement at what you’re gonna write... Most of the time you have it all figured out... like some plain that runs into a mountain, then into a sea, into the deeps of nowhere... something like that; but sometimes you are just holding onto nothing really – just a petty theme or a punch-line sort-of a thing... So for your information, I’m mostly scared to use pen and paper while writing. I used to love it, but I have no opportunity of doing thus today... not yesterday. That chance just evades me... until yesterday.

Anyways, this paper before me was (or is it ‘is’?) used paper. You know that paper you once used to print a document with and the document went wrong? Those that you preserve for ‘another day’ even if the other side of them looks weird just because you are so much into being Wangari Maathai’s faithful little brother? Yeah, those ones. I always have them stacked somewhere for some rough work, which really never comes that easily because I always happen to note down small, small things on my phone...

But let me stop there with the ‘hogwash’ talk... It is boring you, right?

I am supposed to talk about darkness, right?

Jana had been a cool day. Thursdays are always cool to me. And had wasted the whole day away doing nothing really... OK, I did help somewhere... but that was just ‘nothing’... And knowing that I am nocturnal, I knew that I was gonna recover all those wasted hours by working right into the night... Or so I thought.

My days always go something like: 1. Get from shughulis, 2. Dungilia  ‘passport’ – lol if you know what that means, 3. Then TV, from around 7.00 p.m., music, TV, movies, music, TV, movies... you know what that means..., 4. Work (what kind of work do people carry over to the house, huh?), 5. Supper, then 6. Back to TV, movies, music, TV, movies...

So I was kind-a prepared to cook the crumble and kick it rolling down the lane of commonness as routine depicts. I was high spirited you know. Thursdays always place me in such moods. No clothing to wash. No ironing of clothes. No nothing. The nights are always like that blank sheet of paper. Cool. Really cool. And waiting for my command. Which I always DO give with pleasure. But at 7.30 p.m., dude, power just went off! Electricity stopped its tour to  my house at I don’t know where. It just kwamaad. Somewhere. Gheee!
That is where it all begins. My Thursday night was predictably going to be a whacky one. The all pie-and-bliss day was gonna be turned into a dark arena without theatrics to gaze at. Dude, that was baaad! Imagine  I had to tolerate the wailing of dogs outside, the smell of air, dark air, the screaming of mosquitoes (ziko kwangu nyingi)... You can imagine how you can feel when you had wasted the whole day in order to use the night and all of a sudden, stima kwisha! Darkness has its owners (and don’t spiritualize this because that's just how I want it to be - I'm just talking about darkness ya kaawaa. Eiiiiiiiiish!). So I was sitting there thinking that those were the normal jokes electricity plays on us on this side of the world. (No pun on that. I appreciate that I’m African. I should be African. I love being African...). 2, 3 hours and there still was no power and it was then that I held pen and paper and I was writing this...

When darkness happens, things do happen. Darkness is always silent (at least where I stay) . So my immediate neighbour (a pedlar – I have another meaning for this noun, and it is the one I’m using now) came in, opened the door, and hesitated a lil’ bit then entered and his house just went blank. OK, I guess the ‘no power lifestyle’ also bores him...

So I went to Twirra a lil bit just to cool off the steam brought by the all-of-a-sudden darkeness. You know why I love twitter? Twirra is intuitive. Intuitive stuff always amazes me. Many stupid things DO amuse me. Like when I eat PK and my mouth smell does not change. I wonder why?  But Twirra is just so a-may-zin... You see, on Twirra there are no photo albums of people going places (we'd rather use Pinterest or s'm'e like Instragram - hata kama ilinunuliwa na Facebook)... Twirra impresses me a lot more than Facebook because on Facebook you meet packets of people (mostly) and not real people. And I have not said that I hate Facebook!. Please bear with me... The diffrence is, on Twirra there no common stories of 'oooh I'm feeling like this or somebody did that', no 'likes', no comments... Here, you mind your own business and keep it at that. And I love that. I love places where people mind their own business. I have it in short form (those things they call acronyms?) – MYOB! Minding your own business is cool. I then discovered that my phone may go off anytime, so I went outside. I heard my other neighbour sweeping. Sweeping, yeah. Sweeping in darkness. How and what do people sweep in darkness? I wonder. Why should they sweep at night anyway? There is tomorrow – a whole 12 hours of a glaring day to sweep, so why sweep in the dark? Morris, MYOB! OK.

I have ordained myself to be holding the record of sleeping the latest in the whole hood. Nobody beats me at that. 1.00 a.m. ain’t cheap. Try it out. It ain’t cheap! I had a dude neighbour of mine who used to sleep at 8.00. Damn! 8.00 p.m.! How can someone sleep at 8.00 p.m.? What is wrong with them? And to make it worse, whenever I went out (just like yesterday) to stretch my legs, the dude was snoring soooo looooudly... I guess yeye ndiye aliniibia usingizi wangu ndo huwa silali mapema... At those times singekuwa hata nimekula and the guy is already exploring slumberland! Again, Morris, MYOB!

And I had thought that stima itanishitua tu na ku-come! Haiku-come! 

So lazily I came back in... to write again... on paper. And it was still dark, motorbikes are all over outside... noises I couldn’t comprehend (I was told you don’t have to know what happens outside in the dark so long as you are safe because most of it crys out, “MYOB!”)... pen in hand, but a-may-zingly, words zikalost... By the way, it is acceptable that we should freely speak, right? Words zililost! Kwa darkness. Mimi ndo huyo na blanketi... mara that that...mpaka leo...

Morris.