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The long Mashujaa holidays gave one a glimpse of a drunkard’s metamorphosis, the effects of ruining the liver with endless kong’o from Friday through Monday.
Waka-Knife, however, was not celebrating considering his family has not received “kimwe-kimwe” as he puts it, from the Mau Mau reparation funds.
His grandfather, claims the lifetime butcher at Wa-Hannah’s, was to be compensated for losing an earlobe in the war of independence, part proceeds of which Waka-Knife, was to throw everyone a round of onywaji. So, the only thing one observed about Waka-Knife, besides how he knocked his bottle of Naps with his elbow “kuitoa wazimu” was how he was short on low-life cancer sticks.
Waka-Knife would take two puffs characteristic of a cougher undergoing ‘Turkey’ attacks, before kunyonga his Nyota cigarette.
He would then lift his trouser, the kind his grandfather would say was fashionable in his grandfather’s time, and tuck the kanyongi on rugby socks pulled up to the knees that would have done with Susana Pomade.
When you see a kanyongi being stored kwa socks, Papa English often says, is how you know you are in a Third World country where “Africans, no matter what you do to them, are screwed.”
One screwed voter at Wa-Hannah’s is Kot-Kot. He had just returned from Idakho, which he pronounces such that those not in the know would mistake it for as Idaho in the Us of A.
Idakho squats like a Baengele waiting for hot sembe in ‘Kach-Meka’ where Kot-Kot causes inflation at the shopping centre with just Sh2,000.
But that is pocket change at Wa-Hannah’s where Kot-Kot has a habit of kukanyaga crate during long holidays like Mashujaa.
Of course, Kot-Kot becomes a part-time Shujaa for being ‘sufficiently philanthropic’ but the metamorphosis after drowning in 10 Whitecaps is the stuff of slapsticks.
Kot-Kot ambles in neatly dressed in a brown suit that appears to have been sourced from looting during the 1997 Saba Saba riots.
But by the time he leaves, his tie would be wrapped around Nyambu’s head making her resemble a pirate. His wrinkled coat would be hanging at the counter like a forlorn kilo of matumbo awaiting Waka-Knife’s expertise.
Kot-Kot’s belt somehow gets lost and he has to hold his trouser with one hand, the other not letting go of the Whitecap.
The only thing that Kot-Kot never loses is the half kilo of meat secured under the grip of his armpit.
