So last week I received this rather odd and interesting email. It was from a chick who had attached this piece that I should read. It was a personal account of what happened to her when she recently went down to Dar’ for jobo. She wasn’t looking to be published in my blog because she’s a journalist with a well respected international digital outlet, so getting published on my blog “wasn’t a big deal for her,” she wrote. (Waah! OK!). What she wanted, she continued, was to take a stab at a genre I do here – creative non-fiction – given that her writing was mostly industry and business heavy.
Anyway, I read the attached story and I was like WHOA!! WHOA!! I read it again, this time slowly and I thought, “Shit!”
First it was obviously very well written, with a fresh, eloquent and saucy voice. A seasoned writer, I could tell. But then it was very very sexual. It was basically pornography and art meeting at a junction. I haven’t read Shades of Grey but I hear it’s about a rich guy who ties up this hapless innocent girl on chairs and on trees and on boats and in changing rooms in clothing stores and does very very bad things to her. One day I will read it. Erotica generally isn’t my cuppa.
Now it might not occur to anyone here, but there are certain beliefs I harbour that I transfer as tenets on which this blog leans on. Things I don’t compromise. For the benefit of those who joined us recently; First, we don’t do gossip here. Second we don’t ever glorify “celebrity” on this blog because I think the real celebrities in Kenya are unsung. We only have people who dress well and appear on TV, have many followers on social media or have one single song that hit just after Hardstone.
We don’t slander people here. Or offend individuals. We NEVER belittle people or make them feel bad about themselves. Sure, we will make fun of a group of people but only in the hope that they can laugh at themselves by appreciating their idiosyncrasies . Which means if you can’t get satire then don’t bother reading anything here. In fact, as a general rule, if you are one of those people who are prone to crying when they get drunk, you will probably miss the whole point of conversations here. Having said that, should I write something that is directly offensive to someone and you call me out on it, I will never have a problem offering an apology.
We don’t do “beef.” We don’t beef with people here. We will disagree on principles and when we do we will be decent and grown up about it, but we will never beef with anyone here because it’s beneath us. And because we just don’t have the time.
We don’t do tribal. Of course we will always make fun of that dreadful Kisii music (or worse their dance) but only if they are able to laugh at themselves. We will also beg Kuyu guys to try and buy shirts that aren’t always necessarily colourfully checked (cough*Andrew*cough).
On this blog there is never going to be “us” and “them.”
We don’t do religion. Hell, no. (Saw that?)
Lastly, we don’t do sexual. Migwatos is great but not in a tacky or crass way. We are tasteful. We have good sense and good judgement. (Mostly). In short, we rise above mediocrity and negativity and we come here to celebrate life and to laugh (even at ourselves) and to feel good about things that mean the most to us. When it stops being about that I would have failed and I will pack my shit, go back to shags, buy a boat and get into the fishing business with my cousins Bruce and man Otose. (You have to pronounce it in a Jango accent; Man Otose).
So then my first impulse after reading this piece was, “Aii, too graphic sexually, I can’t run this.” So I bounced it off two of my ardent and trustworthy readers here, a chick and a dude. The chick said the language was too strong, that you – readers – won’t appreciate it. Tame it or can it, she advised.
The dude said, “your readers are artists at heart, that’s why they come here. They will see this for the art in it. I say run it. Besides, aren’t your readers all having sex?” (Actually I don’t think so. I think people who comment here with odd names are people who aren’t getting laid).
Anyway, I went with the chick’s advice because generally women tend to be more pragmatic than us. They have better intuition. So I emailed the writer and told her to cut the sections I felt were too uncomfortable and words that I felt were too strong and do a rewrite with those changes and I would have it up as a guest post.
Here is the dhing. (Hehe. I will never get over that). While editing her re-write I struggled with certain phrases/words/references/ sentences. For example, I wondered if the word “vagina” was a strong or even offensive word to allow. I certainly wouldn’t use it in any of my pieces here, but then what’s the point of a guest post if I want to control a guest writer’s character? There was a particular sentence she used it in and when I replaced it with “lady parts” or “ private parts” or “ crotch” and read that sentence out aloud in the office (with door closed), I realised that the new word stole the thunder from the sentence. It changed the intended persona of that sentence, it’s very tone and intention and it turned it into a flat and lacklustre sentence that wobbled and staggered, clutching dramatically at it’s bleeding heart.
Take two words, “vagina” and “penis”, do both of them project the same “brutality”? Do they assault you in the same way when you read the? Are they offensive? Is to use the word “vagina” to sensationalize? Vagina, depending on context, mostly alludes to an anatomy, something asexual, like an appendix, no? But it’s still so powerful , graphic and loud, no? Something you can’t grasp for too long in your palms…figuratively, of course.
I think the word “penis” in comparison isn’t as harsh, it sounds practical, like something you would use to open a beer bottle should you not find an opener. “Boss, ebu pass that penis I fungua this beer with.” No really, a penis sounds like a multipurpose tool, something you can go camping with. It sounds, I don’t know, inanimate. It doesn’t sound as brash and as “threatening” as the word “vagina”. Vagina sounds sacred, respectful, something you whisper in reverence: (Insert scared whisper) “Today I saw a vagina. It was just sitting there, basking in the sun.”
Ok. I’ve probably said too much.
Look guys, I don’t know, but I let that word run. I let many things run. Maybe it was a wrong call and if this piece is too concentrated for you, I apologise. But I’m going out on a limb here and letting it run purely on the strength of its lovely prose. If you get totally offended by it then don’t worry, this week you can always read about Chero’s good time trying to shed off some weight. (Hey, Chero!).
Gang, meet Nduta.
Nduta, karibu sana, you filthy filthy woman.
***
Bridge Pose
By Nduta
It’s my first time in Dar es Salaam, and the day begins with me shaving my pubes.
In our ‘naturalista’ community (you might know them as Natural Hair Nazis, na mimi ni member), I have what’s known as 4C hair –kinky, tightly coiled curls, and the hair shaft is actually quite thick. So I hate hair grooming in general, and pubes in particular, and only do it for social acceptability. Except armpits. Armpit hair I am happy to get rid of regularly, because having underarm forests is just nasty.
So in the shower at this hotel in Dar es Salaam, I suddenly figure that I’ve been doing shaving wrong all this time. You’re supposed to aim for the base of the hair and take it off with a clean stroke, not scrape back and forth and get chunks of hair stuck in the razor.
I smile.
This feels nice! And it’s almost like a Buzzfeed headline: “One More Thing You’ve Been Doing Wrong Your Whole Life.” I toss the razor in the bin and finish off my shower, then look at myself naked in the mirror. I’ve never been this slim in my entire adult (and even teenage) life. My ab muscles are even almost defined. But I still have a big ass.
***
He walks into the conference room, smiling broadly and says a boisterous hello to some of the guys there; he must know them from somewhere else. I’m the only woman participating in this workshop/ summit/ conference breakout session. Later, I’m going to try and remember the moment he said hello to me, but I can’t remember. Even now.
He’s Tanzanian, I can tell the moment he says, “Vipi, baba!” and goes on to use words like “kibali”,“stakabadhi” and “kana kwamba” in the first five minutes of conversation with his mates in that lilting Tanzanian Kiswahili. Words that I only ever hear during the 7pm news bulletin. Here, people actually speak that way in real life.
(By the way, it’s pronounced Tan-za-nii-a, four syllables; not the way Kenyans say it, Tan-za-nya, three syllables). But when he switches to English, there’s a very Kenyan middle class edge to it that is instantly recognisable. The over-pronounced consonants; the broad, open vowels; the phrase “you guy”.
And there’s a ring on his finger.
***
We’re talking data and statistics, and I doing my presentation – a reinterpretation of a bunch of surveys conducted in Tanzania. He’s sitting right in front of me, slightly wide-eyed behind his Ray Ban glasses, a little crinkle in his brow.
The problem is that he’s pretty, in a Hassan Omar Hassan or Ali Hassan Joho kind of way – light skinned, thick lips, goatee and moustache. Normally, I’m not attracted to pretty boys. They are rarely layered or complex, and are generally lazy and entitled, especially in bed. Some even think they can make you cum by gracing you the privilege to look at them. So the sex is just mediocre, always.
But this one is smart. Really smart. And it throws me off. During the break we talk representativeness, urban/rural skew and the framing of research questions, and how that influences responses. Then he tells me that he was the author of the bunch of surveys I had basically just torn into. And smiles.
***
When the day is done, and the mzungu World Bank guys are milling about talking “impact assessment” and “scalability”, he asks if I want to go somewhere and catch a drink. I say yes, and he calls up his driver who comes and picks us up.
There’s a pillow in the back seat, with flowery embroidery. He says that it’s for his daughter, for when she wants to take a nap in the car. We go to a rooftop bar on the 11th floor of some building – the driver waits for us in his car – with coloured fluorescent lights that glow and change colour from under the white seats. The view of Dar es Salaam is incredible – the dark-blue ocean, the yellow cranes hanging over the port, the high-rise buildings right at the water’s edge.
He tells me he’s from Arusha, and went to school in Kenya, right from primary up to university. That’s why he has that Kenyan edge when he speaks English.
He asks me what set books I did for KCSE. I start firing them off (of course I remember them all) – “For English: A Man of the People, Encounters from Africa and Aminata; For Swa: Kilio Cha Haki, Kiu…” Then I notice a twinkle in the corner of his eye, and realise it’s a clever way of finding out my age.
He recently started as head of research at a leading Tanzanian NGO; it’s hectic, really late nights, and stressful too. I tell him about my sons, he tells me about his daughter. My older son and his daughter are almost age-mates (born October 2012 and January 2013).
And we drink.
***
He sends his driver away, and takes me to dinner at a restaurant on the 21st floor of another building. The view is even more incredible, but in a few minutes, I realise that’s not even the clincher. It’s actually a revolving restaurant, which gives you a 360-degree view of the city below. That shouldn’t strike me as so incredibly amazing, but it does. (Why?)
We eat, and drink, and talk.
He tells me of his barber who disappeared for some time, only to return with a fantastic story about a beautiful woman he had met, who kidnapped him, locked him in a room at a guesthouse and fucked him for hours, maybe days – he lost track of time. The woman then suggested sex on the beach, which the barber readily agreed to. When they got to the edge of the water, the woman walked into the waves and disappeared. Kumbe she was a mermaid.
I take out my phone and snap a photo of him, “In case you’re a merman,” I say. He laughs.
I tell him I’m getting a little drunk, and I can feel myself loosening. I tell him I can feel the night going downhill. He says he wants it to. Later, he goes to the bathroom, and when he comes back from behind me, he puts his hands around my waist and kisses my neck.
There’s a smell that a man gives off when chemistry between you reaches beyond a certain tipping point. It smells like heat. That’s a horrible word (think, ‘the cow is in heat’,) but really, it’s the most apt word I can think of – it’s something partly earthly and visceral, but mostly just pure, radiating heat. That’s what I smell when he kisses my lips and sits down across me.
***
We go back to the bar with the coloured fluorescent lights. He lights up a cigarette, and I light one up, too. My first one in six years – except for the one I shared in May with my girlfriend, when she was crying about her abusive husband, who had kicked her in the back with his shoes on, and she couldn’t sit down properly for days. They are back together now, and that just breaks my heart.
But this is a happy cigarette. We smoke. He tells me he feels so light, and relaxed, like this is just what he needed. He’s sitting on a high bar chair nestled in a corner, and I’m straddled in between his knees. He puts his hand up my dress, and pushes my panties to the side, and just brushes my shaved lips with his hand.
When he pulls my dress back down, I notice his ring is gone.
***
In the hotel room, I first get into the bathroom to pee, and when I come out, he’s already standing naked. That makes me burst out laughing (I don’t know why. Is it the wine?), but I immediately regret it because he looks deadly serious. This means business, I think to myself.
He’s built in a stocky way that I see with Tanzanians, and especially Ugandan men sometimes – he has thick thighs, and has an ass too. He takes my panties off first, then my dress, then bra. He kisses me; then kisses my breasts. I’ve lifted my hips and most of my back off the bed, with my shoulder blades hugging at the back (my fellow yogis will recognise this as ‘bridge pose’), and I’m rubbing my vagina against his abdominal muscles.
He puts a Durex condom on, and then begins trying to push inside.
***
Now, the thing is, I haven’t had sex for over 300 days, nearly a year since I broke off my previous relationship. I had taken a one-year vow of celibacy, just to clear my mind and regain control over my body, mind and spirit. It’s six weeks to the one-year mark. Sex is all wrapped up in contradictions for me, and I struggle to pull it apart and arrange it in neat little rows, the way my mind likes things to be.
On the one hand, women are sexual beings. We can – and should – be sensual. Sensual in the way James Baldwin used the word: not just in the common understanding as something erotic, but something “much simpler and less fanciful,” Baldwin said, “To be sensual is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.” Baldwin thinks that something very sinister happens to the people of a country when they distrust their feelings, their life force, and I agree.
That’s why I love sex.
But on the other hand, my intellectual and analytical mind struggles with the loss of control, with the sheer depth of the earthly, visceral heat. I don’t understand it, and that bothers me.
***
But the immediate problem at hand is that I’ve literally tensed up like I’m a virgin again (later, when I tell this story to one of my girlfriends, she ululates and high-fives me. “Girl! Mungu halali. Thank God you got laid! I was starting to pray that you don’t shrivel up!”) So with a little difficulty – and me persuading myself to please relax, please relax – he finally succeeds. But after a short while I push him off and turn around, so that he can enter me from behind. I want to come quickly. (This is a good place to watch the video “Nasema Nawe” by Diamond Platnumz ft. Khadija Kopa, especially after minute 4:00, to get a sense of what I was attempting to do with my ass at this point. When in Tan-za-nii-a, do as the Tan-za-nii-ans do, right? Warning: NSFW).
He enters, and I gasp immediately. Then he leans to the right a little, and with that, there’s a spot he’s touching that makes me feel like he’s just about to make me explode.
I want to tell you the all the dirty things he was whispering in my ear in Kiswahili, but I can’t. I can write fuck in English, but I can’t write fuck in Kiswahili. It’s a hang-up of my 8-4-4 education. I feel like Wallah bin Wallah or Ken Walibora will come looking for me to scold me because, “Nimekosa nidhamu.”
The End.