All weekend I had been starved of the English Premier League (EPL) thanks to the international friendly matches taking place all over the planet; which meant the players who make up the EPL teams had been dragged back to their homes to play for their countries. Like Wanyama, leaving London to come boot the ball about in Machakos versus the DRC Congo.
Then because it was the 'kona mbaya' (twenty something date) of the month, my regular local was not in operation past 11pm, so I went round the corner to get my football fix ( a meaningless 'England versus Germany' match) at a bar called Sanaa that has been there so long – since the 1970s – that the matatu stage is named after it (the stage before 'Sanaa' is called 'Corner' and the one before that 'Harakisha' because it is in the middle of the road, so, hurry up before you get run over, aunty)!
Sanaa pub is a wooden staircase affair that leads up to a place made of mildew wood and old straw for a roof. If not for the incongruously large TV screen that lights up the joint, it would be a dim affair.
And I can only imagine the convincing ( by a younger man) that persuaded the old man to bring this touch of 21st century gadgetry into his bar that, but for the TV, is like stepping into 1973.
The game began and I watched it as I diddled with a fiery kinywaji, in the spirit of the place. At half time, though, as I paid a quick visit to the loo (I had half expected the buxom barmaid in her mid-forties to direct me to an outhouse) I caught an odd site away from the TV action.
There was this afro-haired gentleman in a faded Kaunda suit, totally white hair, well into his 60s, who was seated with a lady who looked in her mid-fifties and still in official Monday wear – and with a sense of shock, I realised the old man was a retired lecturer who used to teach either chemistry or biology when I was in college at the turn of millennium.
With a sense of awe, I also realised that the two of them were on a date – him on a White Cap like an elder, her holding and twirling a red wine in her plump fingers. Listening intently and laughing occasionally at something he had said. He used to teach biology, I decided. Because a chemist's idea of humour is an anecdote about reactive elements along the lines of – 'Imagine one of my students, Beryl, mixed butylithium with water during a titration practical and the room went BOOM!, ha ha ha ...'
(If you have laughed at that last sentence, you are ready to be married to a laboratory chemist).
Why was I so startled to see two 'old' folks on a date? I suppose because there is a place in our head where the libido of the old is dead. Where their only excitement is cows and chicken, the only thrill they look forward to a visit from the grandkids.
So I took a longer peeping look at the two – every journalist is a closet voyeur.
Were they a long term couple, out on a Monday night date, with their kids now gone from home?
That would be so sweet!
Or was it a sadder story?
Maybe the old man's wife had passed away, and her husband of 30 years had run off (with a buxom barmaid) and they were on their first tentative date, like teenagers.
I sat there, suddenly gripped by the thought of being 70 vis-a-vis relationships.
Would the fire from the old tinder be all gone, or would I be wondering if one can get a heart attack from mixing vodka and Viagra? Then Lucas Podolski, by way of retirement, scored the only goal of the game.
That's how to go!
And, strolling home alone in the post-midnight Stygian gloom, I decided it is time, too, to hang up the boots.
'Men Only,' a compilation of the best articles of this column across the years by Tony Mochama is now available as a book at the Prestige Bookshop.