Wanja Kavengi:The day I ran faster than Usain Bolt

I was tipsy. I was high. I was also feeling hungry. Against my better judgement, I decided to go into a nearby food kiosk to get something to kill my hunger pangs and quell the conflict in my stomach. This particular quest went swimmingly but it got interesting on my way back home.

There were plenty of starving customers at the kibanda, and because the waitstaff, the head cook, the cashier, and the kiosk manager was the same person, she was swamped. Some of us had to grumpily stand in a disorganised queue and wait for the woman to catch a break and take our money. I already had my food, I only had to pay. Now, because my sobriety was highly compromised, after a minute or two of waiting, I forgot what I was waiting for. And since I could see I was already carrying my chapati and beans in a bag, I concluded that I had no business standing there. I squeezed my way through the small group of boda boda operators and masons, who had been bonded together by starvation and were now beginning to loudly wonder why their stomachs weren’t being served, and blindly staggered off for home. While I ambled along, I did my best not to look like I wasn’t indeed wasting my life away every time someone looked at my bloodshot eyes and uncoordinated gait. Almost halfway down the road, my memory came back to life and I figured that I hadn’t paid for my food. But I quickly rationalised that since I had walked away unnoticed anyway, I could keep the money. It is at this very point that my enemies unleashed some dark, unseen forces to terrorise me. I heard someone calling out for someone. “Kss! Kss! Wewe! Simama!”

I turned to look and saw a young man speedily marching in my direction, gesturing with his hand for me to stop. There was no one else on the road apart from us and some stray chicken. It was therefore certain he was waving at me. This young man is the one who helps around at the aforementioned food kiosk during peak hours. In fact, he was the one who packed my food. When I saw him, my inebriated mind convinced me they had realised I hadn’t paid for my food and this guy was coming to raise hell about it. Shoot. I was in grave trouble, my drunken mind assured me. I had a panic attack and my sweat glands begun to overreact.

Instead of stopping to hear what the young man had to say, I instinctively broke into a run. I made a mad sprint to the building that houses me and the guy started running after me, shouting for me to stop. I could hear his footsteps closing in fast on me and I knew it was either do or die. I couldn’t let him catch me. I ran even faster. Meanwhile, my liquored brain had managed to convince me I had tricked the kiosk owner, which meant I stole their food. I thought they would throw a tyre around me and set me on fire, alive, with spectators cheering and video-recording my unfortunate death on their smartphones. I thought about the suffering I go through whenever I accidentally burn a finger with steam when cooking and how the burn makes it had to stir anything in the sufuria because heat aggravates the pain. The thought of being burnt was just the adrenaline I needed to fuel my speed.

With the bag of food clasped in one hand and the fifty shillings clutched in the other, I bolted like a freaking cheetah. I thundered along, knocking over the chicken on the road and they, too, started running and flying noisily ahead of me, squawking and flapping their wings furiously in terror and confusion. One of my sandals slipped off one foot and flew across the road like a missile. My floppy breasts swung, clapping and slapping my ribcage as if they had a vendetta against it. My face was dripping sweat and fear. I ran as though I was an Olympic finallist in the 100-metre dash and I had to beat Usain Bolt.

It is highly likely there was a cloud of dust behind my feet as I ran. I am sure people were puzzled as they looked at me scurry past them madly, as if a nest of safari ants had infested my crotch, but I didn’t give a damn. I had to protect myself from that embarrassing public execution by fire at all costs, even at the cost of my dignity, which wasn’t even there to begin with.

Just as I got to my gate and frantically tried to open it (why do things stop working when you most need them to?) the young man caught up with me and I heard him ask, surprised, why the hell I was running. Feeling trapped, I immediately turned around to plead for mercy but he had his hand stretched out. He was giving me something. It was my phone. I had accidentally dropped it at the kiosk when I was leaving, and that was the reason he was trying to stop me.

My chest and legs suffered the consequences of that historic run. I had to put myself on bed rest and use Deep Heat for the rest of the month. But it was a good workout for my hamstrings and great cardio exercise. I also kept the money.