Holidays are here and the ‘mboys’ are loving it

By Joseph Maina

Friday evening found me chilling out with members of my sub-clan after a hectic day at the office. My mboys were patently having a good time enjoying computer games on the laptop as Tiff enjoyed her favorite cartoon. Tyson the family cat was catching a few ‘z’s on the couch as usual, snoring like an MP.

Now, December is the month of festivities. That’s right. We’re approaching that time of the year when we spoil ourselves with goodies purchased using next year’s money. Sound familiar? Come on, just admit it. I won’t tell on you. Raiding your children’s next year’s school fees doesn’t necessarily make one a monster. And who’s complaining, anyway? This is Kenya, a land of where bottled mineral water goes bad after a few months, yet it is supposed to have trickled down mountain ranges for centuries.

And much as my boss had ‘autographed’ my paycheck for the guys at Kenya Revenue, at a time when the shilling has taken a beating and people are crying foul over the economic state of things, I was still eager to know how my heirs have been faring in school.

"Nilikuwa number two!" Tiffany proffered triumphantly while smiling like an attorney general who has just been vaccinated by a Cheshire cat. This was hardly surprising coming from my little angel. But coming to my mboys, I have no words. Let’s just have a moment of silence as we muse over their grades. I really hate to say this, but looking at their report cards, I now understand why some creatures eat their young ones alive.

Anyway, it’s never too hard to know when you’re dealing with a mboy. If it looks like a mboy, acts like a mboy, pumps volume on the stereo like an Eastleigh-bound matatu, nags like a mboy, eats copious amounts of food even though it hasn’t worked all day and speaks a brand of sheng that would make Tuju turn green with envy, that’s a mboy. However, grades speak louder than words.

"Masomo inawapeleka aje?" I posed to my mboys. As you might have guessed, they both hated me immediately.

"Ai, daddy si tumefunga chuo?" relayed Ras as Jimmy sat back and threw me the kind of skeptical look you give the TV weather forecast lady whenever she says "there’ll be showers and thunderstorms tomorrow", yet she said the same thing last night and it didn’t rain all day.

"Daddy wacha tutulie kwanza," Jimmy relayed while throwing me the kind of look that a miraa eater would give you after finding a dead moth in the chunk of twigs he’s chewing. With this kind of attitude, that boy could have an extremely bright future in the lands division of the Mavoko Municipal Council.

"Tunataka kurelax tu," he stated on behalf of his younger broda seemingly not caring much about his tear-inducing grades. I’m sure my mboys love knowledge, but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t pay much attention to the kind of publications that you’d find in the magazine rack at your local dentist’s waiting room. The army might easily wipe off Al Shabab and they’d never know, but name any song by Beyonce and they’ll recite it, word by word. By the time I fully understand them, my youngest grandchild will probably have completed college. Heck, perhaps even the VP’s residence will have been completed.

"So how do you plan to study over the holiday?" I put it to them rhetorically amidst a sea of murderous stares. None of this was really important, just a bit of mind-candy for them to ruminate over.

To my ultimate chagrin, they mumbled something that sounded like "Daddy, next time you use glue – even if it’s office glue – try not to inhale too much of it", before promptly exiting the room at what seemed to be three times the speed of light. I was starting to feel like those chokoras who walk around your estate carrying gunias filled with God-knows-what.

At this, I mentally slapped myself for bothering to ask before collapsing on the couch. Since then, I’ve had an extremely hard time with all the noise from the stereo, which is permanently blown up to a volume that Nema would consider unsuitable for people who have retired and found new jobs in the post office. A little bird tells me that throughout this holiday, they won’t peruse any book unless it bears a bikini-clad model on the front cover. The only things that will ring in their heads are movies, the stereo, food, Facebook, neighborhood girls and ensuring that I do not sleep in peace.

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