It has become such a ‘Story of the Week’ joke, that one of the top corporate firms in the country has used it on its online advertising platform.
‘What better weekend plan for a boy, than just hanging out in your boxers in your apartment?’
‘Call Eva wa Loresho!’
In case you’ve just come back from the Congo or Yemen, this is what happened in brief: Early this week, a rugby lad called Lyle went out for a drink with The Boys after a hard match. Come Monday night, he was not yet back home, and his mobile phone had been switched off. Worse still, none of ‘The Boys’ seemed to know where the dude had disappeared to after drinks.
Worried, the partner he lives/lived with, took to social media, complete with a poster with his picture on it. ‘Missing. Have you seen this person? Contact Shiko on 07XX-XXXXXX’
Later that night, some snitch chick (it had to be a woman) went on social media to say, ‘Usijali! Your man is safe. He’s just here in Loresho, having drinks with Eva.’
On Tuesday, poor Lyle switches on his phone to say ‘honey, I’m okay …’ But by then, it’s too late! He is all over social media, trending with memes (as is his alarmist girl), competing for ‘troll time’ in between the abuses of Akothee (directed at Nyakundi and Alai) and the endless quarrels of Vera Sidika and Otile Brown (about ‘mujulubengs’ and cavernous caves).
Please don’t ask me anything about the latter. I am a writer, not a geologist specialist in wide open and vast subterranean spaces!
If many of my male readers here were to tell the truth, a Lyle like situation has happened to them at some point in their lives. You leave the house nicely at 8 pm, intending to watch the 8.30pm Chelsea versus Spurs game, with your football lads at a nearby pub. ‘Keep dinner warm for me,’ you say, because the domestic kitchen deejay only starts to play the dish called dinner after KTN Prime News has began, no matter how many times madam tells her ‘supper should be ready by 8 pm, latest.’
By the way, a girl called Kacy Hill has a song called ‘Dinner’ (which has lyrics like ‘had a dream where a girl with blue lips kissed you,’ but nowhere in the song does she drop the word ‘dinner.’).
Anyway, so you go to the bar, having reassured madam you’ll be back straight after game time.
‘By 10:30pm latest,’ you say.
‘I’ll wait up for you in that sheer white lingerie,’ she says, her voice sexy. And when she says ‘white lingerie,’ you picture those hated Spurs shirts whose sheer white is like negligee material, so you say ‘gotta go now, boo,’ and blow outta the door.
Somehow, 11:59pm Guinness Time finds you and The Boys still analysing the game. Then at midnight, the Sports Bar turns into a karaoke pub, and because you Think You Can Sing, there you are howling Toto’s ‘Africa’ at 2am, to derisive howls from the lads. At 3am, you are the local Lothario, throwing ‘raos’ to the ‘angels over at the counter.’ But by 4am, you are Koffi Annan, breaking up near fights, even as you almost get into some.
Come 5am, and there you are at the corner of the pub, in deep political discussion with some clever whiskey genius who has bought you a couple of beers so you two can decipher what Uhuru meant by ‘I will shock people by my 2022 choice of successor.’ At 6am, the barman is shutting it down, as Sunday sunrise pinks the horizon …
The Last of the Lads, a big bachelor boy with a fast blue Subaru, loyally offers to drop you home. You snooze on the passenger seat, and when you wake up, it is noon, you are in the middle of a party camp in Naivasha, and your Loyal Boy is screaming in your face: You’ve got to YOLO!, as a girl called Yols hands you a cold can of Heineken ya ‘kuvunja lock’ as she calls it.
That is when you call your ‘bae’ to say: Hey, I’m okay. But I have this situation in Naivasha …
But it is too late! Your face is in MISSING posters all over social media. And by Monday you’ll be trending under the hash-tag #YuleYolsWaNaivegas.