By Joseph Maina

To most parents and teachers, Sheng is one of the worst plagues that ever befell this land. It is a bastardisation of Swahili and English, characterised by a criminal abuse of words, with a peppering of local vernacular tongues.

Despite the opposition, Sheng is undisputedly the most popular street slang around, appealing mainly to urban hippies, public transport crews, school-going teenagers and some youthful politicians. Other people, however, see nothing wrong with the use of Sheng. This includes Mama Jimmy, who keeps defending our children’s use of this lingo.

“Just let them be,” she says, adding that most Nairobi youth prefer this language. Apparently, Sheng and swag are tied at the hip, and a teenager is not considered “cool” unless they can communicate in this ridiculous patois. Further, she feels that our kids risk being ostracised by their peers for failure to communicate in Sheng.

“Wasipokoroga sheng watalengwa na mabeste zao,” she says, looking completely unaware of Sheng’s effect on their school performance. Now, that’s how the cookie crumbles in my hacienda. It pains me to say this, but as we speak, my mboys can barely construct a coherent sentence in any examinable language under the eight-foo-foo system. Thanks to Sheng, their Swahili grades have taken a nosedive. Their English — if any — has been camping in the academic ICU.

Sadly, Sheng is spreading faster than the flu, particularly in my hacienda. My mboys are consummate Sheng aficionados. Little Tiffany — who is a second year student at the local kindergarten —  has slowly become acclimatised to this lingo, and Mama Jimmy has also joined the bandwagon. Maggy the mboch, too, has elected to kaa ritho and learn how to bonga like a true mnati. Not to be left out, Baba Jimmy has taken a crash course in Sheng.

For instance, thanks to my piecemeal knowledge of the lingo, I am now aware that policemen are known as makarao, magava or masanse. “Chuo” means school, daro means class, thafe stands for Math and odijo is the universally accepted misnomer for teacher. Modo means a random person such as you and I. In plural, we are mamodo. Wathii, wasee and kirindi are polite terms used to refer to members of the public. A beautiful lady is known as mresh, msupa, manzi, msusu or mroro, while a not-so-attractive girl — the kind that will only get a husband through prayers and fasting — is known as an otwong’o.

Back in the hacienda, everything has been renamed and rebranded in line with this “language”. For starters, our house has been baptised keja, mbanyu and base. Mburungo stands for cargo, iza means sorry, and the family car has been christened moti. Being their father, my official title is buda, which they prefer to call me behind my back. Their mother, too, has not been spared this name-calling. She answers to several unaccredited monikers that range from mathe to mthama, mnyaka, mokoro and moda.

Things get worse when my mboys dialogue in this lingo, as many are times when I don’t know what they are talking about. The lads could be seated right there, discussing the length of my nose, and I wouldn’t have a hot clue what they are talking about. One such conversation happened on Thursday evening. I had just stepped in from work, and I was chilling in the living room with my comptroller, Little Tiffany and my Assistant Couch Potato, Tyson the cat. At around 6pm, the lads stepped in from school.

“How was school, boys?” I queried the lads, attempting conversation. ”Chuo iko poa tu,” announced a visibly tired Jimmy, while dumping his fossils on the couch. Having uttered these words, he then turned to his broda.

“Manze niko na unenge ile deadly!” he moaned, referring to his everlasting hunger pangs. So there you have it. There is a language crisis in my hacienda, and we are officially in a “Kiswahili kifukuzwe” situation.