10 most annoying 'jirani' habits

                                  Neighbours                Photo:  Courtesy

Forget the days when a neighbour playing loud, boring vernacular music would make you go berserk. If you thought that warring couples next door were the most annoying, wait till you meet Nairobi’s most disturbed and disturbing neighbours:

1. Loud, screamy ‘soundtracks:’

A common pattern for the residents living in apartments is to overhear the mid-coital confessions of couples on the other side of pillow talk wall but first things first, why can’t you just fix your bed or better still keep the volume low?

Please, everybody loves a good time but not mid-morning glory… especially on Sunday morning! Argh!

2. The nosy kimbele mbele, kihere here neighbour:

There are very nosy kimbele mbele and kihere here neighbours who question almost everything about the next door jirani; from where they work, and if moving houses they want to know whether you’re shifting to Gatina village. 

Kindly mind your own, whether bibi alitoroka that is my damn domestic business...and I don’t live in your crib, you know?                                                        

 3. Laundry hanging lines dilemma, and drama

Let’s face it: all of us who live in apartments have had difficult times when we hung our white clads out. Only for a mean, mkosa dini jirani to deliberately hang his/her just washed, dripping clothes on a pole outside your window and drying clothes.  Kwa nini? kwa nini?

4. Ma-mboch in ‘tyranny of gossipy idlers’ at the balcony

I have nothing against house helps but please make me understand why you would gossip out loud about the on goings in the neighbourhood at the balcony the whole Saturday afternoon?

5. Naughty neighbour’s totos

I love kids even though mine are still inside my rural Maranda knees, but what annoys me most is just when you thought you could have peace watching The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the landlords kids won’t stop playing outside.

6. Fight for parking space

 I have no problem with apartments but surely, if you can’t afford your own palace, don’t bother having so many vehicles. That’s a parking lot not a garage. Okay?

 7. Funny smell from the kitchen

Move over cooking with ‘Jiko ya makaa’, thou shall not be close to that woman who makes obambo in her kitchen during the weekend or even worse, at night.  If you leave any of your windows open then you got real trouble breathing. 

8. Everyday is a holiday

Notoriously idle neighbour who always has a house party with friends shouting all over the place.

When you have a residential club around your hood, you understand better what it means not to have a sleepless night.

 9. Moving stuff, ‘kuchu kuchu’ in the middle of the night

They always have something done to their house every night. Moving furniture and knocking things everywhere, you may think it’s a carpenter’s workshop, kumbe it’s the neighbour from hottest part of hell.

10.Housing multiple barking dogs: Those noisy dogs that bark at anything at night.

 If you must keep dogs please remember to train on when to piga mayowe!

 (This previously aggrieved mpangaji has since wisely moved houses from East, to West of Uhuru Highway.)