Old grandpa was smarter than Einstein

By Ted Malanda

Ibrahim, the Butere Intermediate School Standard Three dropout and a tipsy sage from whose loins I sprung, would have been horrified by Albert Einstein’s carelessness and naiveté.

Note in passing, however, that Einstein is never addressed as ‘Professor’ or ‘Dr’. Nonetheless, it is generally agreed, even by his worst political enemies and detractors, that he was a peerless intellectual who, apart from bagging a real doctorate, must have had bagfuls of the honorary accolades that our politicians wear like wedding bands.

Divorce and chemicals

Why would a man so brilliant pen the following piece of marital treason in 1914?

“You will expect no affection from me and will not reproach me for this... You will see to it that my clothes and linen are kept in order...I will be served three regular meals per day in my room.”

This is a letter he wrote not to his mboch but to Mileva, a woman he miraculously wooed in between titrating chemicals and chewing books. You need not be a genius to deduce that Mileza quickly became ‘ex’. In fact, it would be a shame if she got divorced instead of rightfully flinging the bushy-haired intellectual out on the fatter end of her cooking stick.

Boys, the female species thrives on affection the way a maize crop flourishes on organic manure. Affection is what leads wives to ensure ‘your clothes and linen are kept in order and that you are regularly served gizzards in your room’. Okay, a little money in your M-Pesa account helps, especially if you invest it in earrings and the latest shoes on Christmas eve.

Look, old Ibrahim never had clothes and linen to be kept in order, apart from an odd blanket and the threadbare shirt on his back. But he was served two regular meals (the logistics of delivering packed lunch to the busaa club had not been figured out yet. Not in his room, but outside his hut because only mean men ate ‘hiding’ in their rooms back then.

How he achieved this was not rocket science. First, he paid bride price to his in-laws to demonstrate that his women were worth their weight in livestock. Then occasionally, he slapped his three wives around to demonstrate the depth of his love and affection.

Old geezer

As late as when he was 75, I recall him telling one of his heartthrobs, “When you saw me in my white shirt (with three biro pens strung in the pocket), my khaki shorts and long stockings (with three multi-coloured biro pens strung at the end of each stocking), you fell hopelessly in love. How could you resist me? How? But you were a woman among women, Rhoda – a woman...”

You should have seen the smile that lit up her wrinkled 70-year-old face, never mind that he had just given her two hot slaps because his supper had not been served a minute after he staggered home.

And that is why Einstein, for all his genius, ended up with a string of exes while old Ibrahim died at 79, leaving a healthy harem wailing helplessly at his untimely demise. 

When the telegram was bad news.

These days, people like me who remember the phone booth consider themselves ancient. But I was firmly put in my youthful place by my old man last week. He was standing on a roadside in Voi, sweaty and tired, after clearing the road the whole day for President Jomo Kenyatta who was enroute to Mombasa to listen to some ngoma and eat some choma.  A junior officer handed him a telegram: “Father dead,” it read.

There it was. No ceremonies, no sissy counselling — just straight and blunt. There was nothing of promotion to glory, heartfelt condolences and such stuff. Telegrams cost real cents and villagers had to be economical with words. He remembers catching the first bus home, his heart in his mouth. There was no calling relatives because there wasn’t a phone within a ten-kilometre radius. He didn’t even know when the old geezer had died or from what ailment.

To his shock, however, when he meandered through the bush to his home, the old man was  only terribly ill. In the spirit of the times, his brothers had examined him with wizened eyes and determined that he was dead. So they sat patiently by his side, swatting flies and waiting for him to give up the ghost. But my father wasn’t letting it go that easy so he trekked 15km to the only chap who owned a pick-up truck, which he hired at the princely sum of Sh40 and ambulated the patient to hospital. The old man survived. 

That was long before the phone booth, a time when phone calls were only made at the Post Office. You lifted the handset and gave the operator a phone number. He dialled, got the person you wanted to speak to and only then were you allowed to drop the requisite amount of coins in the coin slot.  And of course you only called when someone was dead, not to say, “haki nimekumiss!”

Years later, radio announcements came into vogue as a means of transmitting tragic news. You could be listening in Nairobi only to hear, “Ted Malanda is urgently needed at home. Anyone who hears this announcement should bring it to his immediate attention.”

At that point, you had no way of knowing whether your cows had been rendered mad by the village witch or  it was a ploy to lure you home into the arms of a bride you had never seen.