Snapshots: That wild spending will only get you a hangover

Unbelievable as it may sound, I once lived in a leafy suburb.

Not surprisingly, I stuck out like a sore thumb, to the extent that I was often stopped by plainclothes detectives and ordered to produce my ID. You can say whatever you like about the boys in blue, but if there is one thing they know, it is to identify a ‘suspicious’ character.

In a rarefied environment where women wore imported underwear and kids’ sweat didn’t stink, a broke, sweaty villager pretending to belong could be sniffed out a mile away.

That is why if the detectives had put a tail on me, they would have discovered that I strolled into Kibera to buy meat once a month. The cut was better, the meat tastier and the price pocket-friendly, which was something of a miracle because donkey meat had not been discovered then. It is also in Kibera that I went for my haircut because while the upmarket barbers charged Sh25, a nice crew cut set you back just Sh5.

That is how I found myself in Kibera one sunny afternoon at an open air barber. While he worked on my head, he swapped tales with his colleague who was trimming the hair of yet another gifted storyteller. They were speaking in my mother tongue.

“When I got the money, I went crazy,” the client was saying. “I couldn’t sit still. I went straight to a pub and in no time, I noticed this beautiful ‘thing’ (barmaid). To impress everyone, I ordered a round of drinks for everyone, her included. We drunk, we ate.

“She asked for Sh100 (a humongous amount of loot then) and I said why not? That is peanuts! We hired a room and did our thing. But the next morning when I woke up, it hit me that I only had Sh20 in my pocket (raucous laughter from the barbers).

“Now that I was sober, I realised she wasn’t that beautiful after all. I was also annoyed that after pretending that I was rich and shelling money around like a millionaire, I ended up being too drunk to do ‘anything’ when we got to the room. In fact, I hardly lasted three seconds (more raucous laughter)!”

Then the barbers started talking about me: “This one is not from here. He must be from Kileleshwa, most probably visiting a relative or something. They have money, these people. Tutamgonga. We will charge him Sh20!”

On and on they went while I pretended not to understand a word. But when he was done, I stood up and, in that very same mother tongue that he had been gossiping about me, asked him to give me a discount because I was a brother. To his credit, he didn’t  blink.

Neither did the butcher when I yelped in alarm when I caught him leaning on the weighing scale to pinch a few grams off my meat: “Uko sawa bro. Hapa ni mtaa. Mwanamume asipokaa rada, anagongwa!” he quipped.

Ensure to kaa rada this Christmas. And remember all that wild spending will only get you an orgasm and a hangover. Not worth blowing your salary away, is it?