If you honk at me when the lights have just turned green, I will put on my hazard and pretend the car has stalled. If you cut me off on the road I’m like an elephant, I won’t forget, I will trail you to your house. And report you to your wife. I silently curse those chicks who drive VW Polos and who are adversely allergic to acceleration lanes. You know them. The pesky ones who will have cars backup because they are waiting to join the road when Kingdom finally comes. I’m that guy who will eat his shoelace first before he lets anyone overlapping join traffic. I will eat my whole shoe if it’s a Probox.
I just don’t let things go on the road. I’m vindictive. I curse. I sometimes show the royal middle- finger. I find little mirth on the road and even less in driving. I’m a basket case when my foot is on the pedal.
If I’m a prick off the road on the road I’m a first-class prick. I allow things to foul up my whole morning: I will walk around mumbling to myself, cussing under my breath, feeling lava flow in my veins. I’m inconsolable. Incurable. Irredeemable. Anger is my co-driver on the road.
There is something evil I’ve always wanted to do. Normally while dropping off the princess to school in the morning I usually get off Waiyaki Way and join Musa Gitau Rd into Lavington. In the mornings there are usually this bunch of matatus that illegally join Waiyaki Way by cutting right across Waiyaki Way from Musa Gitau Rd thus blocking the guys like me joining in. It’s the single-most selfish thing anyone can do on the road in the morning.
I’ve always wanted to block one of these morons before they join, get out of the car and thrust the cold business end of a pistol in the driver’s mouth and then proceed to politely ask him to suck it. I obsess about this. To see fear in the man’s eyes. To imagine the chap on the passenger seat gasp and coil away from him. To imagine this insolent and insensitive matatu driver wetting his pants and seat as he chokes on the muzzle. I want this ghastly and graphic experience to leave that matatu driver with a bad (metallic) taste in his mouth. Every time he’s eating and he’s bringing a spoon to his mouth, I want him to remember that morning in traffic and how he would have killed to wear an adult diaper before leaving the house that morning.
And this is the only reason I can never acquire a firearm: because I will shoot a matatu driver at the drop of a coin.
There are two types of middle-class men in Nairobi today: The ones who own firearms and those who don’t. The ones who own guns are also categorised into two classes; the Gunslingers and the Good Fellas. The Good Fellas are guys who acquire firearms for responsible reasons; for sport or genuine personal protection. Forget the loudmouths in bars who like saying, “wuot is money?” these guys handle real money and they need guns for protection. This guy won’t pull out a gun on a whim, no matter how badly your provoke him but when he does, he will fire it.
The Gunslingers are those who buy guns to compensate for their premature ejaculation. Now I want to make it clear that this article is about the latter not the Good Fellas. So let’s not get it twisted.
In socio-economic context the middle-class and upper-middle class are the most concerned about personal safety. They want guns. You heard of GunPolicy.org? It’s an online portal that provides accurate evidence-based country-by-country intelligence on gun violence, gun control and policy. According to them there were some 40,000 guns in private hands in Jan. And that’s just the legal guns. There are folk out there with illegal guns in their Subarus, just waiting for you to annoy them on the road or look at their women for a second longer than necessary in the bars, then they will have a reason to brandish one in your face.
The most common firearm in Nairobi in private hands in Nairobi, according to an informed source who packs a gun himself, is the Ceska 75D.
If you Google this gun you might understand why it’s common by just looking at it; it’s kinda sexy; a little over 1kg, 106mm in length and 120mm barrel length (can fit perfectly in a big matatu driver mouth). She uses a 9mm bullet, which goes for anything between 70bob and 120bob apiece. This bullet can travel at a speed of about 9.8m per second so it’s unlikely a matatu driver can outrun it if he tried. Any cat with rudimentary training can hit anything smaller than an elephant with it as long as it isn’t more than 50m away. Which means a guy drunk out of his shorts will can still nail you with it at the parking outside Brew Bistro should you cross him.
The Ceska 75D costs anything between Ksh 180k to 200k, the price of a small “ka-prot” in the bowels of Isinya. If you think 180bob for a bottle of beer is theft you most likely can’t afford a Ceska 75D. It’s for the birds.
I can assure you that VAT isn’t your worst nightmare. A Ceska in the hands of a Gunslinger is. It gets nastier if he is either drunk or is in the presence of a woman he’s trying to impress. Which, when you think about it, is the same thing really.
In fact you would rather a thug pulled a gun on you because a thug just needs your money – or your car – then he will be on his way and will most likely not harm you if you don’t try your tattered Stephen Seagal chops. But when a Gunslinger pulls a gun on you it’s a different kettle of fish; he doesn’t really want anything from you other than to arouse something in him that, unfortunately, has got nothing to do with you. He wants to feel important. Revered. Powerful. Respected. He weakly feeds off your fear. You are only but a mannequin onto which he hangs these frivolous ambitions.
You see them, these Gunslingers, at parties and bars. Swaggering in like a man with a big secret. Feeling like he has mufasa nuts. You can always tell a man who has a gun and a man who has Jesus. The man with a gun might just shade your blood, but the man with Jesus won’t, because Jesus already did. You will realise that the Gunslinger is cocky even before he cocks his gun. His gun is a told for many trivial and often complicated pursuits but what is most saddening is that its supreme role is that he uses it as a cock. The Gunslinger has transferred his manhood to the butt of the gun. The gun does things that he wouldn’t do without it. Makes him what he can never be. He will make other men cower. He will make women cower. In his head he’s a hero, the saviour of the metropolis, the sheriff who keeps everybody in line. And we are all peasants before his barrel who’re undeserving of nay a word.
I’ve only seen a gun only twice in real life and it’s not as sexy as when you Google one. It’s like gangrene. Have you seen an old septic jigger wound? Yup. A gun’s ugliness is what it personifies.
First time it was pointed at me by this thugs who took away my Nokia 5110, my first phone in 2001. I didn’t have time to have a good look at the gun; I was busy trying control my urethra. By the way there should be a rule against pointing a gun at another man when he’s in the presence of his woman, his child or his dog. A gun to your face strips one off every single fibre of his manhood. It makes you feeble. Takes away your sex and wells up such horrifying and embarrassing fear in you that you never imagined existed. And it turns you into the gun handler’s bitch. It’s unfair to place a man in that situation. If you want another man to be your bitch, at least buy him a leash first.
The second time I saw a gun was very fleetingly when some guy was showing some two ladies this gun outside a large parking lot at a hang. He was maybe in his early 40’s. He was holding it, unwrapped in a brown paper bag. The women gawped at it. When our eyes met momentarily he gave me one of those cocky looks. That look that said he was the man. Like he was Samuel l Jackson. I doubt if Samuel L would wrap a gun in a brown paper bag, though.
The Gunslinger acquires a gun because he lacks. He might be successful businessman or have good connection in the government, but he still needs to fill that void. Money and status can’t bring him that, he needs to smell fear off you to feel like the man.
At this rate you will soon meet this Gunslinger. In bar. In traffic. At a party. He will point it at you, hoping to put the fear of the gun in you. But you won’t try and be a hero. The only heroes before the gun are dead. So you will let him hold your nuts for you. Because that’s what this is about, a man rendering you useless before him.