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[ladislaokeone]

Word porn!

HEY THERE, WRITER'S BLOCK. ITS ME, KK!

Dear reader, don’t give up on yours truly, a writer in disguise. Apologies for not filling your page with my words and thoughts. It's been a long, hectic semester that just passed. I had been so busy that I forgot to do something about this relationship of ours that budded since started writing a while ago. Blame the love-hate, fighting-you-becase-you-stand-in-my-way-to-greatness relationship with writer's block.

There are a few excuses I made up to avoid this tedious process of writing. One, was that a huge catalogue of music I was listening to offered a perfect distraction from the job. Two, living in Juja-maica is not stimulating to my cerebral cortex to get me in that creative space. With all the school work, and after that, loyalty to Pablo and my mattress, I procrastinated my writing. There was always something to do, anything; I couldn't sit still for a second to reflect what I was going to put down on paper. My creative juices were diluted, or depleted...my mind was foggy from all that smoke, the dog ate my homework, Jojawa…

I'm also apologetic for being a perfectionist, hence I was afraid of producing work that wasn't up to my standards, so I created nothing. I was waiting for a Kairos moment, when all conditions would be perfect, but it never came. Otherwise, I would have tackled you, writer's block.

How I should have approached you, writer's block, I now realize, is how I charm a girl. Complementing you. “ You bring the best out of me. “ “ When you say 'no’, you build up my resilience.” True enough, you make it seem impossible, momentarily, that I could produce anything of worth. But when I stand you, and persist, I grow as a writer. I grow better when I look you in the face, when you say 'no’ and I continue to talk my shit like I didn't just get turned down. It's retarded.

Soon enough, I am fondling your supple, ample breasts and driving my hand down there. I know you like it when I keep writing even when my brain tells me stop. Even when my mind points out the pointlessness of making an attempt, I still thrust my pen on to the paper.

I have been building up the courage to approach you, instead of wallowing in self-pity. But how to start, how to plot this story? Where to pick up ideas? I'm soliloquizing, questioning myself; on these lines of query, I hang my mind on the rope of curiosities.

Then I decided to confront you, conquer you. You were on the other side of my comfort zone, looking all intimidating. Behind you, the plot thickens, thicc.

I'm trying to approach you with metaphors and similes but you mock me saying my best is not good enough. So I cross this page and start again. I threw in those lines that could make Hov lose his mind. Those puns and triple entendres.

You start warming up, thawing only so gently; initially I don't know whether to stop and check the chime of my social media or whether to keep going. I improvise some more, throwing bigger vocabulary. My mind moans in intellectual pleasure. I can feel the spasms at different parts of my brain, neurons firing and my fingers tighten on my pen, as I scribble fast and furious.

I'm writing in a style and a fashion and I am pleased with myself; even when I reach the climax of my story i can't imagine that it will ever come to an end. As the last drops of ink pour out of my pen onto the paper, I can imagine that this was the best story I even wrote.

In my mind, I'm saying, “someone should have recorded this!” Neighbors might have heard me write. I wrote on the floor, on the bed, on the wall...hell, every writable surface on this pad. It was like some word porn how I wrote it like a pro; the kind that would get maximum views and crazy reviews if it were published on Digest, Press, Medium…

After what has been a rigorous word play, I put the nib in it's case; as I looked back at what I had done, I realised the pen had gown down to the bottom edge of the page and spit a fullstop. Paragraph after paragraph, the pen had given the paper round after round of writing. From nadir to zenith, from climax to conclusion.

HAPPY ENDING, HE WROTE.

This is a fantasy. Slowly, he put the pen down.

[ladislaokeone]

Sorority girls!

Sometimes do you find to yourself in a strange place doing strange things? For me that strange place was someplace familiar, but where I'd never been. It was a few blocks away from my place, between two buildings, facing the rear of both of them. I was overhearing, and eavesdropping, secretely wishing to be invited to some party, secretely hoping to be left to my devices to do my own thing. I was typing this on to my phone.

The window to my left on the first floor was open, for some sounds to come out. Feminine sounds. Fast sounds. It sounded like a sorority in a gossip session, so I didn't want to check that out.

In front of me was the evidence of parties that had gone down. There were pieces of shattered glass and free standing bottles of liqour, only they were not exactly standing. These bottles were just lying around, like the bones in the Valley, and the Elijah in me desperately wished them to life. But lo! I was broke and not able to buy the lot. I was broken like the Whisky bottle.

So yes, I sat there and endured the smell of feline feaces and continued to write this. Undistracted by what those girls were talking about. If I had courage to go talk to them, I would, but I left my balls somewhere…

So not having the balls to go and talk up some girl, nor balling enough to take a shot, I sat here and wrote this all evening.

Its what I do - going somewhere and writing something. I should be a travel blogger, or something. A writer that has a passion for travel. I'm just the type to go vacay, and instead of posting pictures on my timeline, I will instead give you the “ It's 3 A.M here in Paris, the moon is shining brightly overlooking the Towel of Eiffel. And is that the smell of Pisa?” And I won't take pictures, because that's just how I am - if I take pictures up here (points to oversized head), that's enough.

Then I took some time to reflect, taking in the sweet sounds now reaching my auditory apparatus. That's Chris Martin's “Cheaters Prayer” and I am in no mood for prayers because I won't cheat. For that to work, I will also not have a girlfriend. And also for that to work, “Can we smash and stay friends.” Because if I like you and you like me and we get into an emotional thing, we are fried. You especially, because I have a knack of moving on and moving away so fast and basically being a person that has no regards whatsoever of other people's feelings.

I'm making a mental note to leave the cheaters to their prayers and the window to my left on the first floor is dripping. The wall adjacent and below is wet. Wet wet, and the water is collecting below.

So here goes the next fifteen minutes of my life, watching a wall dry!

In less time than that, I have become distracted by the clicking of spoons and my gut has taken the cue. “ Me hungry” the stomach said. “ Me broke” my pockets said, and the left pocket that has a hole in it said “ I haven't had money since 2016.”

The birds chirping, that how Friday is flying away. I'm keeping my stressing at Bay. There have been a lot of things that have not gone my way. Yet this feels somehow perfect.

Not only is the window to the left on the first floor open, the door is too, and the same voices are out in human form. I'm a little anxious for they keep looking at me, staring, boring their eyes at my skull and making those girlish noises.

Then they were gone.

I was left to my own devices, typing a sentence then looking up, then glancing sideways, trying to make an observation. In my mind, that was a close call. I almost got laid. But in reality, they were just doing their business.

[ladislaokeone]

A trip!

It was a bright afternoon after the PACE training had come to a close, everybody going home excited after what had been an informative session. That day, we walked abreast with Maggie, talking as we usually did, about the dreams we wanted to accomplish. I wanted to go to Harvard to become a Chemical Engineer, she had a passion for coding.

We left Parklands Baptist Church at around 5 o'clock in the evening and past the Westlands roundabout to the stage, where we took a bus to town. We were engaged deep in conversation as we handed over our fare, too absorbed to ask for our change back. We realized our mistake too late because the conductor had alighted as soon as he had done his rounds, and he took our change with him. We were hurt, especially Maggie who had given him a 500 shillings note for 50 shillings bus fare.

I tried to console her and she said she was alright, but I couldnt stop feeling sorry for her. The journey was slow, given there was a traffic jam before entering Nairobi City, so we sat there and talked and looked at the sunset which was beautiful but I didn't comment about it and contrasting it with the state of the Nairobi River and most places in the city that are littered. People were in multitudes, and on top of those numbers were the street children and beggars that didn't seem like people, because that is how people keep ignoring them and never noticing they are there.

But they were there, even on Tom Mboya street where we alighted. I also didn't point out to Maggie that Tom Mboya was my all-time dream statesman, “ a true son of the land” as some enlightened people called him. We had much to talk about but not for long. We had to part ways. I bid her good-bye and walked to Luthuli Avenue and into a Kenya Mpya. I sat by the window and brooding, observed absentmindedly the landscape along Thika Road.

I didn't notice when I drifted off to sleep...

When I came to, I was a terrorist and the year was 1969. I had a mission to stop the assassination of Tom Mboya. I was seated at the Nolfolk hotel reading the days’ newspaper while waiting for a man I had arranged to meet at this very place. The man I had travelled through time to rescue, Tom Mboya, was abroad, shaking hands with John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the US president, like they were childhood friends. That kind of affair sent a message back home, and the top brass didn't like it. In fact, they felt threatened, they felt he was becoming too powerful. His popularity was growing by the day and soon, people would demand him for president, if something was not done quick.

I was here to prevent that from happening, and the man I was about to meet was going to help me. I was reading about the fallout between KANU and KADU when he walked in. I saw him over the top of my newspaper and waved at him while I set it down. Everybody in the hotel was white, except me and the man that had just walked in, and they stared at us with evil eyes that seemed to say men of our color ought not be here. Even after independence, there were places you just didn't go to.

I asked him to walk with me to my car parked outside so that we could talk.

While at the car, a 1942 Volkswagen, I try to initiate a bit of small talk but the gentleman is in a kind of rush, or anxious or both, and he keeps looking at his watch, then me, and over his shoulders every now and then. Failing to break the ice, I head straight to the point.

“ I have called you here because there is something very important I want you to do for me. This job has to be our secret, do you understand? “

He nods in the affirmative. I inform him of my mission; as I am speaking he looks at me like I am crazy and he seems confused.

“ Una kasoro bwana. “ He says in plain Swahili, then goes ahead to inquire why I would travel across decades to rescue such a man as Tom Mboya.

“ Mr. Tom has helped the president acquire imperial powers, with which the country and it's resources have been at his disposal. He was one of the people that allowed the One Party state instead of majimboism, the power of the people“ He pause to judge my reaction, hoping I understand, and seeing that I do, continues. “ The president has set up the Settlement Retransfer Funds to resettle the displaced persons of this country. But it is a ploy to hoodwink the British government to allow them the monies to buy back the land that the settlers took from us. And instead of giving the land back to the people, he and his cronies and syncopants, yours truly Tom Mboya being one of them, formed scheme's to procure the land at throwaway prices at the expense of the poor Kenyan that was dispaced. “

We sat in silence for a beat or two, before he finally added, “ you were sent back here to save a traitor? “

Somehow, the pain of his truthful statements stung, but his words fell on dead years. I couldn't get the picture of Tom Mboya the statesman out of my head, one of the formulators of the first constitution, a member of the Legislative Council, and I could remember vividly the scene he walks with Martin Luther King in protest for black human rights, Pamela and Tom before a Pope, The JFK Airlift program that he initiated that sent thousands of bright Kenyan students to the US on scholarships.

Apparently, we saw two different versions of the same guy, and my mission would go on as planned. I set the rest of the conditions, that I'd be referred to as an alias in our communication, if our mission backfired I'd not be mentioned, how much he would get paid and how he would get the money, and only after the mission was complete.

I handed him a packet containing 5 milligrams of Potassium Chloride. “ You know what to do. “ As a medical student, he completely understood. Finally, we shook hands and promised to never see again.

As he locked the car from outside I said to him, “ be careful. Discreet. “ Then I threw in some futuristic lingo, from Drake Aubrey's song, “ This is the type of content that could get your top picked. “

“ Una kasoro bwana,” he said as he laughed hysterically, and left in a hurry. As I looked in the rearview mirror, I didnt see my reflection, the car was empty. I put my hand outside against the sunlight, I had no shadow. It was as if I didn't exist.

I had nothing to do for a while, so I decided to go to Karen to while my time as I waited for the mission to proceed as planned. I had to pass by my girlfriend's house to meet her for the very first time. It was this girl I had seen in some Safari movie. Anna Hathaway! Her hair was short and cut at the bud. Her lips were red and surple.

The next destination was the capital city of plush back in the day. Karen! The trip back and forth was convenient as I kept coming back to Nolfolk Hotel every morning for a cup of coffee as I read the days’ newspaper. On August 28 I read in the papers that the President had died in Mombasa. Heart attack! His cardiac musles had been arrested, his soul imprisoned in the darkness of time.

Mission over!

When I came to, the bus was full to capacity and stenchy and full of noise. The ride was over and people were alighting. The concrete was heavier on alighting as if I was lighter than I actually was; signifying a loss of quantum particles as I went through time; ending up there at that time felt like after a hundred years. I felt like I had absorbed a huge part of history.