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Keep ‘forward travelling’

My Man
 Photo:Courtesy

I remember the August 7, 1998 bomb blast on a Friday exactly 17 years ago and a day that first ushered Kenya into the era of terror. I was a ‘budding’ poet, Campus freshman and the host of a T.S. Eliot forum at the British Council, and I had just finished reading a poem, the Hollow Men, that ends:

‘The world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.’

And we were going for mid-morning tea when BC staff said the Americans had been attacked, we needed to ‘get the bloody hell out of the British Council.’ So we did, walking slowly through the streets towards Ground Zero, watching pieces of paper meandering in the air like paper birds, post blast wave.

Shortly thereafter, I got a job working for the gutter press - a coloured gazette held together by staples whose stable was scandal - and thus went 1999.

In the year 2000, one David Makali made me editor of ‘Campus Vigil’ alongside Ken Kwama and Ng’ang’a Mbugua, and we all wrote for ‘eXpression Today.’

Then the following year, it was onto a mainstream paper as a regular Saturday book reviewer, irregular magazine feature writer and general freelancer, for a couple of years. It was here that the origin of ‘Men Only’ began in a column called ‘Man Talk.’

Originated by a mystery fellow called Clyde Morvit, I got to do ‘Man Talk’ on-and-off alongside one Oyunga Pala, my good pal, who eventually got to ‘own it.’

(It would, a decade down the line, be inherited by his more-than-worthy successor, Jackson Biko).

I moved on to the Standard Group, and ten years ago in August, 2005, ‘Men Only’ by Tony M began. In a Sunday magazine called ‘Society’ for a year and more, very briefly in a man’s magazine called ‘Society,’ then for a short moment in a Saturday magazine called ‘Moments’ before firmly settling in ‘Woman’s Instinct,’ the predecessor of this magazine called ‘Eve.’

‘Men Only’ has long been for me not just a column, but a metaphor for survival. It has morphed, jumped spaces, been squeezed, stretched, tried and tested - but because it has its own humour and intellectual integrity, it survives.

So should we, as human beings. And, always, as Beryl Wanga often says, ever forward travel.

Being a Nairobi lad, first and foremost, I have seen ‘plenty outside of our borders’ as that line in our national anthem says. I have experienced the hostility of Kampala (those Baganda babes are a myth!) and the slowness of Dar (though them TZ babes are real dolls).

I have forward travelled to see sunsets and white nights in St Petersburg and the harness and machismo of Moscow. The coldness of London, chaos of Lagos and utter coolness of Lisboa and its art scene. I have witnessed the infamous black outs of Abuja, and Montreal, where the lights never go out and the Canadians don’t stop smiling and being just very nice.

I have played foos-ball in Vienna and sailed the canals of Venice. In other words, the world is a big place and forward travelling takes us to places beyond tribe, country, nation, race, gender or gay agenda (which is a non-issue). As in, one has no issues with it.

At the time of that bomb blast, I was living on Campus, but the next year I was out in Ngong with my old man, the long-distance 111 mats and the muddy farm. Then Zimmerman in the era of tarts and robbers, Tena, Umoja, followed by double stints in Nairobi West, South C and now South B (closer the office to thee).

From crib to grave, job to job, heart to heart, we never really stop travelling.

On that morning 17 years, and a day ago, as we descended the British Council staircase in a panic, a poet-architect called Alf Omenya stopped me.

‘Sometimes, Tony, the world ends with a bang.’ Not really.

The world will spin on its orbit once today, and then it will be Sunday. It will revolve around the sun, our shining star, 15 times, and one day you will wake up with this magazine and you will realise it is Saturday, August 10, 2030.

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