I have one reader from Papua New Guinea. I know this because Google Analytics told me so. I used to see him last month, one lone reader from a random nondescript country. Who would have thought? What the hell would anyone be doing in Papua New Guinea? An even better question would be; what the hell would anyone in Papua New Guinea be doing reading my weekly ramblings? I thought maybe it’s an Ex, some girl who reads me while constantly rolling her eyes, bile streaming out of her ears and nose and finishing each article by mumbling, “boooring!” or on a good day, “prick!” God bless you too.
Then I thought it must be an adventurous Kenyan working for an NGO, doing maritime research and he found himself down there, by the beach, putting rare plants and animals in a small jar, forming a nomenclature. Maybe it was a chap who found himself on an unlikely honeymoon because his new bride had always wanted to visit “that place that is called PNG” and they got booked into this grungy hotel by the beach that had deceivingly great pictures online. So maybe he’s lying there, naked, next to his snoring bride (they somehow never snore before you marry them) and reading this blog while trying not to stick his elbow in her ribs to stop the snoring.
Maybe it’s some Kikuyu guy from Molo who is running a curio business, speaking fluent Tok Pisin (but with kuyu accent, naturally) and who all the natives now lovingly call Swando: “Hey Swando, we saw Yengo throw a spear right out of the stadium on TV, is he one of your family?” Kids shout at Swando as he opens his curio shop and he smiles and says, “Oh yes and he’s called Yego. He’s one of us, so is Rudisha and Kemboi.” Then the kids gather around his shop in the afternoon when it’s hot and he tells them about lions and that time he almost got eaten by one near his house when he went out to take a piss. “So are you maasai?” the kids ask through licks of ice-cream and he lies to them. Swando the maasai.
Or maybe that one person in New Guinea is actually a slave, being held there against his will. (As opposed to willingly?) Maybe he’s locked in this ominous haunted house in the palm-treed woods, being fed yams and left over pig-ears and made to work in the farms. He’s gaunt with sunken haunted eyes and his hip bones prick his sides as he curls to sleep on the mat in the damp basement. He found a way of tinkering with the old dusty PC in the basement and one day he powered it (he attended Rocky Computer College) and took three months to log onto the nearby wi-fi but because of the emotional torture he has been through his memory fails him and so has forgotten all his passwords, so he logs on here and somehow he keeps sending an SOS on the comment section but my CMS (yes, I know some computer stuff) thinks it’s a marketing company trying to sell those penis enlargement pills so it keeps getting flagged SPAM and sent to trash.
I haven’t seen Swando online again. If you are the reader out there in Papua New Guinea and you are being held against your will we will get you back home as soon as we are done creating a hashtag. So hang tight.
But then I have Rwandese readers who my analytics have chosen not to pick. Yes, Google found the ONE guy in New Guinea, but has no love for the Rwandese down the road.
A few months ago some lady called Viva Muzungu sent me a long message via Facebook, saying she is a big fan etc etc and finally at the end she said her boyfriend who is an even bigger fan and the one who introduced her to this blog (it’s normally the other way round) was turning the big 3-0. She said that if I could just make a phone call to him on his birthday it would literally kill him because apparently he’s in the habit of quoting shit I write here or saying stuff like, “I wonder what Bikozulu would think of that.” (Aww). So would you please call him on the 28th of August? She asked. So I told her, look, I’m supposed to come down to Lake Kivu but I will hang on and align my trip with his birthday and then maybe we can surprise him? She thought I was bluffing, naturally. But then I wasn’t. That’s how I ended up in Rwanda last week – to kill two birds with one stone.
Here is what they say about Rwanda. That the girls are a knock-out. Nobody talks about the lovely hills, the infrastructure, the terrific groundnut sauce, the Umuganda where people diligently come out once a month to clean their neighborhoods (sounds like high school), the odd shaped corrugated roofs, or about the law and order, the mildness and politeness of the people, or how they drive on the wrong side of the road and from the wrong side of their cars or how shit generally just works down there. Everybody just talks about the chicks. And how amazingly hot they are and how the place is a hotbed of hotness.
You hear so much legendary stuff about the beauty of Rwandese women that you imagine that when you step off the plane you will be knocked out cold by a rush of beauty. You imagine streets upon streets of beautiful women with sparking eyes, long slender faces, longer legs, chocolate skin, glorious asses shaped by mother nature, long hair and that look that says, “rescue me from this beauty please, rescue me, it’s too much.” You imagine aisles upon aisles of hot women in supermarkets, reading labels of products, their supple lips moving silently, others fondling and pressing fruits in the vegetable section while some others bend over healthy products, their hips blocking other customers from passing through. You imagine that they all speak French and that they could be telling you “excuse me, may I please pass?” but when they say it in French, “Excusez-moi, puis-je s’il vous plaît passer?” It sounds so sexy you want to reply, “Yes, I will marry you.” You imagine going to Kigali and come back home with a neck brace because of all the head turning you will be doing to stare at the beauties.
You imagine that there is no richter scale of beauty because every chick is a strong 10. You picture Rwanda as this small last outpost of beauty, a place where the expression “beauty is only skin deep” has been rendered completely useless and even laughable. That the expression “The beautiful ones are yet to be born” is complete poppycock because the beautiful ones get born every day in Rwanda.
The folklore makes you think that Rwanda is about the only place where Toni Braxton will stand in the middle of the street in a short white fitting dress (fan’s self furiously) and traffic will continue as usual. (And on the wrong side of the road, no less). Which is something that is both ambitious, wildly futuristic and somewhat of a pipedream. And so you go to Rwanda with your head full of all this dreamy romanticism of beauty and you realise that, fine, the place is indeed teeming with exceptionally beautiful women but not all of them are hot, because once in a while you see a woman who looks like Diamond. And that consoles you. But also makes you wonder what happened, maybe they got off the boat too early.
It’s only in Kigali that you will see a woman so beautiful, and with such delicate features and amazing symmetry and skin that looks made purely from milk and honey. A woman so delicate looking, you are sure if you touch her she will bruise. Those women who will turn to look you but they are so hot you are forced to look away because looking at them is like looking at a burning bush.
And it’s in Kigali you will see, the really tall woman. Like the big man’s daughter. Makes you wonder; what would you say if President Paul Kagame’s daughter walked up to you to say hallo? First she’s taller than her dad, who is an inch taller than even Obama (and Obama is tall), which means Paul Kagame’s daughter is most certainly taller than all of us, even if we all wore platforms.
Amazingly there are men who are turned on by women who are taller than them. That’s some freaky shit. I wouldn’t know what to tell a woman who I have to tilt my head to look up to. I’d feel so small and vulnerable and weepy. I’d feel like she’s always feeling sorry for me. If she told me she loved me I wouldn’t believe it even if she tattooed it on her inner thigh. Gosh I’d be a mess.
So how does dating a tall Rwandese lass go? When she hugs you and your face is buried in her bosom, how do you feel as a man? And in that position does she pat your head lovingly and say, “There, there, good boy, it’s going to be OK?” How do you even kiss her goodnight? Do you stand on your tippy-toe or does she lift you up and place you on top of a cut tree stump or do you drive around with a step ladder? How do you playfully grab her ass if you have to raise your hand to that? Or is she the one who has to grab your ass? And when you go to a restaurant, do you ask for a pillow for your seat so that you can stare lovingly into her eyes, under the flickering candle? Most importantly, how do you tell a woman who is taller than you, “Come here to daddy?” when she is taller than your daddy?
Had Kagame’s daughter walked up to me in a bar in Rwanda, all words would have flown out my head leaving only seven measly words, which I would breathe out in a whimpering whisper, “Uhm…your daddy? I’m a big fan.” Then I’d stand there looking dumb, feeling very shy because she wears shoes bigger than mine. You know you are in over your head when you try to seduce a woman who wears shoes bigger than yours. Or if she is the one who has to change the light bulb while you peel the onions. Thankfully, I saw some amazingly tall men in Rwanda. Tall and willowy, swaying dangerously in the wind with centers of gravity higher than an Isuzu Dmax. Men so tall they looked like pine.
Viva’s boyfriend – Joel – introduced me to a ton of young professional chaps who read this blog; Victor, Joseph, Frank, Isah, Sankara, David…Cool chaps. Guys who will take Rwanda to the next level. We met at KGL bar. Bars in Kigali don’t play loud music by the way. You play loud music and the fuzz will walk in and confiscate your equipment, no questions asked. They take noise pollution very seriously, that includes loud Kenyans, I hope. So as Sauti Sol whispered from the dj’s deck, these chaps flatteringly recounted to me articles from the blog, with their favourite being “the 3-am Man.” Ladies, note all men, regardless of the level of suave or what language they speak or what country they hail from, are the same. Everywhere. They were a happy bunch.
I noticed that Rwandese men don’t drink like we do. They are very moderate. They drank mostly beer, specifically some beer called Skol in a green bottle. Skol sounds like a cough syrup to me. Skol. I was the only one with whisky on the table. The ladies drank red wine. Talking of ladies, its common practice not to shake hands with women but to peck them on the cheeks. We mostly hug our women in greeting, they peck them on their cheeks. So a lady would join the table and she would go around getting pecked by every guy on that table. Nobody told me that it was light a peck so I just kissed their damn cheeks. Give a Kenyan a peck and he will take a kiss.
Oh and get ready to be hugged by Rwandese men. It wasn’t uncommon for a guy to have his hand on another guys shoulder. The camaraderie was palpable. When I met the boys at the bar, one of them Victor, a very burly chap with big shoulders grabbed me and pulled me towards him in this huge bear hug. I disappeared into him, literally, my face was buried in his beefy shoulders, his big hands around me. I immediately understood why chicks call it a bear hug. As I disappeared in his hug, I felt safe. I felt like no harm could ever come to me as long as Victor was there. I wanted to lie there for a little longer, as long as it would be acceptable. He whispered in my ear, “I love your work, man.” and I wondered what work he was referring to. Hehe. Victor, bottle that hug and sell it to Kenyan men, we’d buy it in buckets.
This group of boys were very close, they all met in campus and have maintained the friendship since then. They call themselves “wandugu” and even have a WhatsApp group. I wonder how they relate in there. Do they send mushy smileys? Do they say goodnight to each other? Good night Paul, bonne nuit Frank, Nite Joel, Nite Joseph, gentlemen don’t forget to apply mosquito repellant, the mosquito season is here Good night Sankara, I’m happy I know you guys, bonne nuit David. Kisses. Etc Etc.
Joel’s birthday went very well the next evening. It was held by the swimming pool of a bowling alley. I was his surprise (I know how that sounds), and Joel is one of those very calm guys who aren’t moved by many things. He seemed surprised but thankfully, he maintained his cool. Like a guy. Nobody cried or hugged for too long. Nobody said anything in french. liked him. Later we all had these massive burgers and someone kept sending Jack Daniels my way. The two love-birds are walking down the aisle mid-next year, hopefully I will get an invite.
Rwanda was epic. To the Wandugu Boys and to the very kind, beautiful, gracious and soulful Viva Muzungu, thanks for being a fantastic hostess. To your fiancé, Joel, happy birthday brother. Last but not least, to Victor, thanks for that hug. Bisous. Hehe.