Let Them Have Birthday Cake

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I have never had a birthday cake baked or bought in my honor. Never seen my name on a cake. I don’t know how it feels to blow a birthday candle. See, we didn’t grow up celebrating birthdays as tots. I can’t remember that incessant birthday song being sung in our house. Ever. I certainly don’t recall any cake cutting. Or a balloon being hoisted. Mom – good old mom – would remember it was our day and wish us a happy birthday. Maybe a special meal would be whipped – sausages and bacon for breakfast, chapo and chicken for lunch – but that was it. There weren’t any gifts being handed to you wrapped in shiny paper, complete with a bow. Nobody hugged you and told you that you were special and “sweet” and that despite your forehead you still had a chance to take over the world. None of that stuff.

I know what you’re thinking, “kwani this bikozulu guy grew up in the middle of the desert or something? Someone give that guy a hug before he breaks into tears!!”

I refuse to cry over a bloody birthday cake.

I will have you know that despite the lack of birthday hoopla; there was so much love in our digs. There was laughter. We sat around the table every Christmas and broke bread. Mom prayed every day before we went to bed. There was discipline and respect and love. And we had that framed Desiderata prayer hanging on the wall, like everyone else. We grew up well adjusted. Fairly. Ok, the rest are well adjusted.

Then of course you get into early adulthood and you start dating and you meet strange girls who treat birthdays like it’s the Second Coming. They wait for it anxiously and even drop hints on what they want as a gift months before and as the date nears they say “I’m really not big on birthdays” but it’s lip service – a pit with snakes at the bottom. And the D-day comes and when you get them what they have been hinting at feverishly for months, they act surprised and say, “aww, you shouldn’t have” but we all know you really SHOULD have for the sake of world peace and your sex life. Then the birthday ends and you think, phew life can now go back to normal? Oh No…of course it doesn’t, because soon after the actual birth DAY, they start calling it “birthday month” and you realise your life will turn into one long birthday celebration. Then your birthday comes around and they smother you, and honestly if you had a childhood like mine, that shit embarrasses you. I can’t ever imagine blowing a candle to celebrate my birthday with people singing drunkenly around me.

Then of course you get kids and you realise that you will forever be trapped in birthday prison. Take Tamms for example, the quintessential birthday lover. Crazy about balloons and cakes and the requisite off-key singing.  She wants balloons and she wants a white forest cake and she wants candles and she wants a new dress and new shoes, and a tiara because of those princess programs she watches on TV and you have to throw her a party and invite loads of kids, some who will pee on your carpet and while you’re distracted by the pee, they sneak into your bedroom and come out wearing your old underwear on their head as everybody is gathered to sing. They always know how to pick the old underwear. Can you imagine that scenario? Guys gathered around the cake and suddenly this two year old walks out of the bedroom wearing your oldest, ugliest and luckiest underwear on his head and the guests snicker and laugh and pretend it’s no big deal but you know they will discuss your tattered choice of underwear as they drive back home:

The wife: Did you see how old that underwear was lakini, waah!

Your boy: It wasn’t that old.

The wife: It was, Patrick, come on. The elastic band was coming out and it had three holes in it –

Your boy: You had time to count the holes?

The wife: Anybody with a full head of white hair who was blind as a bat could have counted them. You see why I always tell you to dispose of your old underwear? His wifey must have been sooo embarrassed. Gosh! I wouldn’t have been able to handle it.

My boy: It’s no big deal really, I’m sure everybody has forgotten about it.

The wife: They haven’t I can assure you. And why are you defending him anyway, that’s the thing with you guys, you are always covering for each other even if you shouldn’t…

My boy: I’m not covering for him. Come on, it’s…..

The wife: Yes, you are. It’s always hard to know the truth with you guys, in fact sometimes I wonder if your pals, kina Felix, tell me the truth when I ask them about –

Let’s stop here and analyse how a woman can change the tide of a conversation and make it about HER? How does my bad underwear choice become an assessment of my friend’s character? I swear it’s a talent women have, to twist a conversation so effortlessly. What my boy should have said at the beginning of that conversation when she asked if he saw the state of my underwear was: Biko really needs to invest in new underwear surely, what rubbish is that? Then she will feel that you are on HER side and that story will die.

Which brings me to the things I have learnt as I marked my 38th year on earth yesterday, 12 October.

I have learnt that I’m very old. To some people. In fact, I’m very old to young-uns who are in their mid 20’s.

There is a girl in our office (the only girl in an office of about nine) a campus girl called Lucy who has been hired by Fred to handle his social media things. She’s a mouthy, brash, witty, and quite hysterical.  She’s about 20-years old and offers a window to the weird world of what youth is nowadays. She speaks funny, says weird things, follows “famous” people on twitter I’ve never heard of, watches even weirder videos and listens to music I don’t fathom and laughs at things I find odd. The generation gap between us is so wide you could grow wheat and bananas on it and still have enough space to raise turkey in time for Christmas.

Every time I do or say something she always admonishes me by saying, “Biko, that’s such an old thing to do/say.” Every time I do a small jig she says, “people don’t dance like that anymore, Biko” The first time she reported to the office she said, “I don’t know why I used to picture you as old and only wearing sweaters,” then I asked hopefully, “But?” and she said, “But I’m surprised to learn that you are only old.” One day I will put laxative in her tea, I swear.

I used to think I was super cool. That I knew what’s up, but she – at 20 years- looks at me like a scientist looks at something she wants to carbon date – with intrigue and curiosity and slight awe that I have survived in the world this long. I bet she wonders if I can still pee while standing. The language I use is wrong. The things I watch are odd. I speak funny. I follow the wrong people on twitter. I keep dried fruit in my desk drawer, and she’s always making fun of those dried fruits, asks if they are for my arthritis or hip problems. I can’t wait for the day Fred will fire her ass.

But seriously, regardless of my dried fruits, the best years of my life are still on their way.  So here are my 14 gems as I enter my 38th year:

1. Don’t worry so much about who you are. If you are a banana you know you are a banana, be happy to be a banana. You shouldn’t pretend you are an apple and so don’t go to places frequented by apples or oranges. Go where your fellow bananas go. You are yellow and long and you shouldn’t look at an orange and say, “I wish I had the balls to be round.”
2. I have learnt that you will never find a dignified way to eat a burger. That you will always have to open your mouth ridiculously wide and contend with things spilling out from between the bread and landing on your white shirt. I have learnt that there is no point ordering one if you will use a knife and fork to eat it. That’s like buying shades to wear in the dark.
3. Half the women who go to the places where bananas go, wear corsets. That the illusion of shape is so amorphous and deceptive it only exists in the minds of hopefuls. I will try holding onto my hope for at least 2 more years.
4. That, when you are feeling overwhelmed by life and you seek quiet, sometimes you will find peace not in a silent place, but in a noisy place. Like driving to Diamond Plaza at 9pm and sitting in your car with your window open, radio off, taking in the sounds and smells of little-India creeping into your car.
5. That you really don’t have friends in this city. You have acquaintances. People you drink with. People you eat with. People you work with. People who sell you stuff. People you sell stuff to. That you have less than six true pals. The chaps who will get out of bed at 2am to come to your rescue without a thought or a single question apart from “Where are you?” or “How much do you need?” Those who only need to stand silently next to you when you are embattled with loss. Which means the people who find peace are the people with low expectations of people.
6. That you can never win the battle against the weaves. It’s a war that is full of guerillas and insurgents who are armed to the tits with superior weaponry and ride fast on the backs of strong horses. It’s a losing battle that is just not worth it.
7. That there are very few more special & pleasurable moments of fatherhood than dropping your child in school and watching as her classmate, who was waiting for her, reaches out, holds her hand and they walk together, hand in hand, and at some point they turn back and look at you and giggle and you really hope she just told her pal, “that’s my dad, and he’s a nice guy.” And not, “No, that’s my uncle.”
8. I have learnt that it doesn’t matter if your soak your beans or use soda on them before you cook them,  your fart will still be gaseous and lethal.
9. I have learnt that it doesn’t matter how far or how extravagant you go for a woman. They will always forget what you did. That the guy who pulls a chair or notices a new hairstyle and comments on it goes further faster.
10. That death masquerades as life. That unbeknownst to us, we enjoy it, we celebrate it right up until it shows its face then we unfairly call it death.
11. That the best time to think of about life is when you are waiting for a connecting flight in a foreign land and you have no WiFi and for two hours you sit on a cold silver bench and take stock of your life as strange people pulling stranger luggage walk all around you.
12. I have learnt that the only thing uglier than jealousy is a peeking crack – from either men or women. Especially if it’s hairy or ashen and it’s staring at you as you nibble on peanuts.
13. That if your urine stream isn’t strong enough, you should see a doctor.
14. Lastly, I have learnt to be suspicious of any man who isn’t crazy about chapos.

I would have loved to write more, but I’m in Bangkok as I write this and after an 8hr flight my brain is dead. Tomorrow I will go to the one place I thought I would spend my 38th birthday – bobbing around the floating market in a dugout boat, munching on some fruit as the sun slaps me in the face and the smell of the canal rises around me and mixes with the aura and spice of Asia. Away from mentions, away from IG, away from deadlines, away from unapproved comments, away from long heartbreaking and emotionally draining emails from people trying to save a loved one suffering from cancer and need help, away from press releases from PR folk, away from following up on my payment. I just want to sit on that bobbing boat and hear people talk in a strange tongue. Peace, that’s what.

Talk soon?

P.S.:  I’d like to say a special thanks to Emmanuel Angalwa  and Captain Mike Shiyuka of Kenya Airways for their graciousness.