April nostalgia our kids will never have

On Good Friday last week, the phone rang and I answered it.

On the line was my ‘twin’ (we were born in Mater on the same day), businessman, natural comedian and current ODM parliamentary aspirant for Langata – the cool man called Papa Ahmed.

‘Brother, you actually picked my call?’ the connected Papa said. ‘It indeed must be a Good Friday. After we speak, I must call all the people who owe me money and have been ignoring my calls.’

Lol

Papa is always on a conversational roll, and last Friday was no different.

I asked him why it seems Jesus did not get rigor mortis (where the body stiffens after death) because He was so supple after the Resurrection and Papa reckoned it must be the fish and bread (and a little red wine ) diet that they ate two millennia ago.

Sort of the way the Japanese eat sushi and yakosiba pan bread and drink some sake and get to live to be 84 years old. Compare that to the average Kenyan who lives to be just 64. To truly ‘get’ the difference, close your eyes. Imagine if you had died on April 22, 1997. Think of every bit of life you’d have missed. That’s how much more life the average Jap will have over me and you in Kenya, Africa.

Papa Ahmed lamented GMO chickens that cause us rigor mortis even when we are alive and ‘well.’

‘They call them ‘boneless’ chicken then give you a goo of GMO!’

His theory is that these ‘chicken’ are made in China where they mash them up thoroughly and sprinkle them with GMO. ‘Then because they are Chinese,’ said Papa Ahmed, ‘nothing goes to waste. Even the crowing of that cockerel-on-steroids is saved before it is slaughtered and sold to you, African, as a GMO ringtone on your fake Chinese phone.’

Jokes aside, Papa Ahmed also had plenty of ideas on how to make Nairobi West, Langata, Kibra and all that area great again, as it was in our childhood. So inspirational was he I almost took up an idea to run for West MCA on a whim.

As Papa reminisced on that number 34 KBS bus that used to travel in a circumference around Nairobi – starting from Langata, Kenyatta Hospital, GPO, Jogoo road and ending up at the JKIA airport , my mind wandered to our own childhood with kina Papa in the greater West, Madaraka and Langata.

We used to get to see the Safari Rally cars, flagged off from KICC, roar through Mombasa road at Easter. And I remember Easter Monday as the only time we were allowed to go out at weird hours like 4 am to see the early rally cars roar back to the finish line – also at KICC.

At around this weekend, the Marlboro Safari Rally having run its wild and thrilling course through Easter, (when newspaper sales hit peaks as people bought them to follow the rally, and not to see where the stalled NASA talks have reached) we all became Shekar Metta and made tin ‘rally’ cars from Kimbo metals and household slippers, complete with ‘mud guards’ cut from plastic cans, all pulled by a rope.

Who cared if you got belted for turning your old man’s favourite akalas or mum’s Bata slippers into wheels and colour rims? The beatings were more severe because you would come home so very muddy from the rally, considering global warming was not yet a thing. It always rained hard in April.

Even a few girls – tomboys like Regina Kanyiri then (kid feminists) – joined in this boyish Easter time fun.

They called themselves ‘Michelle Morton’ after the lady driver, we teased them as ‘Mchele Moto.’

As I look at my newborn son, Leo Drago, I sort of feel wistful that the only ‘rally cars’ their generation may play with are ‘Grand Auto Theft XXII.’

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