Maish quickly ushers me into his mat signaling that I should replace some kinky, edgy poser seated by the driver. He is adamant that on this particular instance I should pay more because I wouldn’t wait longer for departure (the mat was shy of 1 passenger to exit). Something else, he claims he helped me secure a VIP seat so I wouldn’t have to rant about legspace, at least for that trip. Of course I trash his extortionary antics. Now for starters Maish has been my long serving tout whose mat I seemingly won’t avoid. Elsewhere, posers are those bastards who straddle shamelessly in mats thus fool you into boarding as you hope it departs sooner (It’s a full time career in Nairobi by the way). Finally, VIP slot is that seat next to the driver often occupied first, mostly by prestige-seeking men as it is generally more comfy, and has ample space to stretch and nap.
At a high gear we speed off through Thika Road before joining Eastern bypass. It’s around 4pm on a Monday, expectedly everything seems distasteful given its mid-month. The sun is furiously scorching, it’s dusty and grim all over. Neither does the driver seem hyped on engaging me in his usual chit chats. Amidst the loud silence two ladies can be clearly heard ruminating about their hubbies. Unsurprisingly, all passengers are quiet pretending to mind their apparent business as they follow through the conversation. This is how dramatic passengers get when they realize one amongst them has a loose tongue. Maish even becks the driver to put off the music as their gossip got spicier.
Now here’s how juicy the gossip turned out. For purposes of this narration, we’ll tag one Lady A and the other Lady B meanwhile you may reach out for popcorns or coffee. Lady A is visibly furious and bitter intermittently getting overwhelmed. She was dressed to the nines, has a beige scarf noosed round her neck save for some awful make-up that made a blob fish admirable. At face value she looks cockier and craftier though bougie. She can’t get herself together to the curse of having the world’s stingiest and most mean sucker for a hubby. Admittedly, this SOB gladly foots general house hold bills-rent, electricity, internet, food, water and school fees. Their rubber meets the rod when it gets to her personal effects. He gives no hoot regarding her salon, wardrobe, make up, chama contribution and local travel on the justification that she also works and earns. On confrontation the previous evening, his “useless” man affirmed that he won’t be succumb to any form of extortion and proffered that she was free to leave and marry the World Bank president or Jack Maa for whoever cared. To her disbelief, he called her elder brother and lashed about the ungrateful hog she got for a wife whose only God given talent was to nag, nag, nag.
On the flipside, this dickhead religiously sent money home for his mum’s upkeep, medication, church dues, Catholic women contributions, shopping and routinely bailed out her all-time-loss-making kisiagi (maize-mill) business. All these without flinching nor being reminded. In the meantime, we maintain necropolis quietude, some even muting phone calls to keep up and others pretending to be fast asleep. Occasionally we can’t help nod and shake heads in approval or dissent. Maish is fully absorbed and luckily for him all passengers are to alight somewhere along Mombasa Road so he’ll have no pick-ups nor droppings to do. Her accomplice, Lady B is keenly following sometimes interjecting with sighs of empathy.
Back to our gossip you might want to refill whatever is in your cup. So Lady A out of uncontrollable vex decided to change tactic away from aggression. She narrates how desperately she wanted to fetch some info in her man’s phone. She timed when her hubby slept unplugged her phone from the charger and headed to the living room. Shock on her, local man had changed his SIM pin number and after three unsuccessful attempts, the SIM card got blocked. Keen on evading probable trouble, she got his ID card from the wallet, shrewdly called customer care to request for PUK and had a new PIN reset. Having accessed whatever info she wanted from his gadget, she calmly switched off his phone and got it back charging. A distraught hubby of a croc woke early morning only to realize that his SIM PIN had been changed only after blocking it again.
As things get thicker, a sharp yell emanates from some passenger at the backseat asking the driver to pull so he can alight. To everyone’s awe we had cruised all the way to General Motors almost in town. You can imagine the smirk on our faces when the driver laughed it off that he didn’t alert anyone coz we all had been too engaged in the gossip. Worse off his moronic Maish suggests that we could just proceed to town at least we follow up gossip to the end.
That is how abrupt our journey adjourned as everyone left to catch a mat backwards and get to their respective hoods. Moral of the story, purpose to check your stage whenever mat blabs get yummy.
Mane primer 