Teenagers grew up admiring adults smoking Aspen cancer sticks, which had hit the local market when Embassy Lights had adverts with the tagline, ‘Smooth all the Way.’
By the way, cigarettes had very memorable slogans like: ‘Blow some my way,’ ‘Just what the doctor ordered,’ ‘Tobacco is our middle name’ and Ni Sawa Hasa! which beckoned every Sportsman smoker.
Smoking represented the cool of being liberated from parental grey headedness, besides the patent rights to put estate lasses in the family way. In rural Kenya, where those sporting high school moustache learnt how to puff inside the cattle dip come nightfall, one wasn’t considered masculine enough without a cigarette balanced at the point where the ear meets the mango head.
Before Aspen, there was the Marlboro and the 555 which sponsored the safari rally, when Crown Bird, Nyota and Score were considered lowlife fegi for Third World lungs.
And wasn’t it really cool when latter day smokers rolled mifangi (Mexican Marigold) leaves in newsprint. At the slightest contact with a flaming matchstick, the rolls cracked to life, with smoke filling the lungs as you coughed like an old Bedford ferrying charcoal down Juja Road.
The coolest coughers emitted smoke through their nostrils, what was then cool, but probably so 1945 today.
